5 ms·

Everybody is the main character

79 points by tim_sw 4y ago

kodah 4y ago
The first half of the article is a great perspective for managers and senior engineers. Then I got to this: > If you think about it, we should all love micromanagers: they are helping us do our job! By making decisions for us, checking our work, and giving us constant feedback, micromanagers are making our jobs easier, not harder. But despite this, nobody likes micromanagers. Why? Absolutely no. There is no form of micromanagement that is acceptable and it always represents an ethical failure. Full stop. Micromanagement is all about undermining the technical authority and agency of an IC whose job it is to have those things. It's really a form of paranoia and secondarily a desire for control to appease that paranoia at the end of the day. If you want more awareness in your team and you want to be kept more up to date then you need to foster an environment where everyone knows exactly what their role is and isn't. Next, you need foster an environment where people can admit mistakes, laugh about them, and learn with a sense of urgency to rectify them when appropriate. People need to be confident of their agency, and it needs to be put on display at times. Managers should not be "visible" or working leaders, that's what engineers do, and certainly not part of a managers skillset. If you're going to directly engage with your reports based on progress, or want to challenge technical merits you need to have the technical relativity to do so. If you don't, then you need to stick to talking about goals and outcomes and how they align to higher goals and outcomes. Lastly, you need to be building trust constantly. You need to be willing to spend political capital on your team, and not just when it's advantageous to you. This post then goes on to mix the roles of EM and Senior engineer. As a senior engineer, I'd probably lose my mind working for anyone that did this.
- parpfish 4y ago
  i don't think they're actually advocating for micromanaging, they've just redefined training/mentorship as "good micromanaging": > We should micromanage as much as possible without making somebody feel like we are reducing their agency. In my experience, the best way to avoid this is to treat them like an apprentice: > > 1. Demarcate the areas where they have agency. > 2. Give feedback without killing their agency. > 3. Graduate them out of apprenticeship when they are ready.
  - kodah 4y ago
    If you go on to read "micromanaging done right" it's pretty clear that the author is a micromanagement apologist.
    - webdood90 4y ago
      interesting life you must live if everything is so clearly black and white
      - kodah 4y ago
        Micromanagement has been around for a long time and workers have long fought to undo the entrenched philosophy of it. It isn't just an expression, it's an entire ideology that's well-defined and has been for some time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement
      - ilyt 4y ago
        By the very nature if something gets called "micromanagement" it is bad. People call "good micromanagement" just "management"
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    The problem here is that managers are less qualified than the individuals they manage in actually doing work, since the reports are the 'doers'. It would be more appropriate for a higher-level 'doer' to provide the mentoring than the manager. mentorship != managering
    - watwut 4y ago
      Micromanagement is bad and contraproductive even if done by senior doer. The same negative impact of micromanaged person will still be there.
    - dasil003 4y ago
      Qualifications are not the same as roles. A manager may or may not be qualified to provide IC mentorship. A more senior IC should be, but good mentorship does not automatically flow from being a good engineer, and there can be a fine line between micro-managing a junior engineer and mentoring them towards meeting their full potential. At the end of the day, it's on the manager to understand the dynamics at play and figure out the right way to maximize the team (whether that be development oriented or results oriented).
- mediaman 4y ago
  This is laudable, and you sound like someone who is both competent and works with competent people. In those cases they should not be micromanaged because it will stunt their growth and result in worse outcomes because of the greater knowledge the IC will have for the task at hand than the person not doing the task. But those preconditions of competence are not always in plentiful supply. Some team members must be empowered, be given a target to go after, be given a domain of responsibility, and then let loose, with little interference except to assist in politicking or obtaining organizational resources. There are others, however, where this will be disastrous. Frequent errors, stopping progress without raising a flag, inability to adjust course and learn, inability to be resourceful, lack of agency, inability to map objectives to tasks required. Experienced managers have all had this kind of team member, and recognize after many attempts that "be a better leader" often doesn't fix it. The easy answer is to say, "well, simply don't hire this latter group of people, or PIP them if you do." But they exist, and they will wind up working somewhere, even if perhaps they are not working at a large, extremely well-paying tech company that typically will have plenty of applicants for their RSU-laden opportunities. So, yes, those classic leadership qualities are great when the team member will thrive with them. In those cases the leader must provide the target, the support, and 'get out of the way.' But it is the rather ugly reality that this is not always the case. And in those, the leader must adapt their approach.
- theonething 4y ago
  Micro-manager or not, I like anyone who can give me good details specs in Jira.
PheonixPharts 4y ago
> As a manager you are seen as the default main character of your team. In my entire career I have never known anyone who viewed managers this way. The best managers I've known have been viewed as great supporters of the team, people that advocate for you, get you the resources you need, and help run interference with leadership. The vast majority, from the "meh" to the horrid have been viewed by the team mostly as obstacles in hero's journey to solving problems and shipping products. And that's only from the IC perspective. From the leadership team perspective the view of manager ranges from seeing them as useful goons that keep lazy workers in line to, in the best cases, people who might be able to rise through the ranks to approach, but never quite reach, their level. But I've never, ever encounter people who think of a manager a the "main character".
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Yes, a manager is more like the coach of a sport team. Not really a part of the team proper as such. They can't be and still be able to do a huge part of their job -- acting as the interface between the team and the other parts of the organization. A manager's job is to coordinate effort on a high level, to ensure that the team has everything it needs to function well, and to remove as many roadblocks as possible. A managers's job is to "grease the skids" and run interference.
  - ThalesX 4y ago
    > Yes, a manager is more like the coach of a sport team. Do a lot of sports team have coaches that have never played that sport in their life?
    - mmcdermott 4y ago
      Never played at all would be strange (it seems uncommon to watch a sport you have never played, let alone make a career of it). It's pretty common in the NFL to see coaches who were never professional players and possibly only played at a small college to boot.
      - 4y ago
harrisreynolds 4y ago
I also love the basic ideas of this article but think the discussion on "micro-management" should be revised. What about the idea of "Coaching Done Right" with some discussion of how to mold and encourage direct reports toward the path that leads to optimal growth for them? The term micro-management is an inherently negative term. It connotes the idea of hovering over a person and trying to correct every detail of what they are doing "wrong". It takes away their agency and ability to learn from their mistakes. Love the core idea of the article though! Thanks for sharing.
notShabu 4y ago
To feel like a main character you have to feel "observed" by a reader. This becomes interpersonal conflict when attention is zero-sum. When all employees depend on the corporation-as-observer the team dynamic can become toxic However most people have other "observers" like parents, friends, twitter-community, God, etc... Though they can generate feelings of love, acceptance, fame, oneness, etc... it is fairly difficult to transmute this effort into money to make a living so these stories are subservient to the money-attached one. Newer generations don't have decentralized observers. Everyone is online so social just converges into performing for the "algorithm". Religion and other traditions feel out-of-touch with where the world is headed. etc... Work ends up becoming the sole pillar that is supposed to hold up all these requirements. Partners & colleagues are expected to be Virtuous by serving the one true lord of light Managers have to act as priests...
titzer 4y ago
> By definition, they are the main character of their own story. But large companies often don’t make them feel that way. This is universally demotivating. If you don’t feel like the main character of your story, you don’t do much, you lose agency. This just shows how much the culture and psychological context of daily living has changed these days. It's like that line from "The Incredibles"--if everyone is super, then no one is. I read the article. It flirts with the line between coddling and training. I don't know if I agree with everything it says, but I do regret the underlying dynamic that is at play; you can't criticize anything or anyone because they can't take it. And the recommendations it gives for communications aren't bad; it just sucks that have to be so exquisitely crafted these days. Really, the article doesn't say it, but the better parts of it are really just working on employee expectations. You need to manage (i.e. recalibrate) your employees' expectations. While their entire schooling might have taught them they are the main character in the story, they are a special snowflake with above average talents, you will succeed at everything without trying hard, it just isn't so. What's really going on is deprogramming the decades of school coddling and setting up a clear relation between cause and effect.
- watwut 4y ago
  The "autonomy" being important for human motivation is part of old school management textbooks. The motivation was supposed to result of "autonomy, mastery and accountability" combination. For last 20 years, with move to agile, we have been loosing both "autonomy" and "accountability" parts. Frequently also mastery. We did gained predictability and there is less pressure then it used to be. We lost agency over years. > It's like that line from "The Incredibles"--if everyone is super, then no one is. This sounds like sci-fi, only because there is no autonomy anymore in software development. But it used to be that you had some small part where you could make autonomous decisions, did some estimates and could feel in control of your own situation if lucky. The process had issues ... but you had more agency and did felt like "main character in your own situation".
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  Managers can make their subordinates life difficult with basically no recourse except quitting or maybe changing teams. Speaking up is not a good strategy. Because of this tenuous relationship managers may have no idea they are stepping on the toes of their subordinates. They can break trust without any feedback. Being encouraging really costs nothing and assures people that their contributions are valued.
jgilias 4y ago
Everybody already _is_ the main character of their story by default. For most people work is just one plot line, likely not even the most important one. A good manager realizes this and accepts that the only choice they have here is to choose their role in everyone else’s stories. Being the main protagonist of other people’s stories is just not possible and trying to be one makes one a horrible manager.
- asplake 4y ago
  A better manager understands that everyone’s experience is different, and the role you play in others’ stories isn’t entirely your choice. Just getting to the bottom of that takes effort in itself.

79 points by tim_sw 4y ago

The first half of the article is a great perspective for managers and senior engineers. Then I got to this: > If you think about it, we should all love micromanagers: they are helping us do our job! By making decisions for us, checking our work, and giving us constant feedback, micromanagers are making our jobs easier, not harder. But despite this, nobody likes micromanagers. Why? Absolutely no. There is no form of micromanagement that is acceptable and it always represents an ethical failure. Full stop. Micromanagement is all about undermining the technical authority and agency of an IC whose job it is to have those things. It's really a form of paranoia and secondarily a desire for control to appease that paranoia at the end of the day. If you want more awareness in your team and you want to be kept more up to date then you need to foster an environment where everyone knows exactly what their role is and isn't. Next, you need foster an environment where people can admit mistakes, laugh about them, and learn with a sense of urgency to rectify them when appropriate. People need to be confident of their agency, and it needs to be put on display at times. Managers should not be "visible" or working leaders, that's what engineers do, and certainly not part of a managers skillset. If you're going to directly engage with your reports based on progress, or want to challenge technical merits you need to have the technical relativity to do so. If you don't, then you need to stick to talking about goals and outcomes and how they align to higher goals and outcomes. Lastly, you need to be building trust constantly. You need to be willing to spend political capital on your team, and not just when it's advantageous to you. This post then goes on to mix the roles of EM and Senior engineer. As a senior engineer, I'd probably lose my mind working for anyone that did this.

parpfish 4y ago
i don't think they're actually advocating for micromanaging, they've just redefined training/mentorship as "good micromanaging": > We should micromanage as much as possible without making somebody feel like we are reducing their agency. In my experience, the best way to avoid this is to treat them like an apprentice: > > 1. Demarcate the areas where they have agency. > 2. Give feedback without killing their agency. > 3. Graduate them out of apprenticeship when they are ready.
- kodah 4y ago
  If you go on to read "micromanaging done right" it's pretty clear that the author is a micromanagement apologist.
  - webdood90 4y ago
    interesting life you must live if everything is so clearly black and white
    - kodah 4y ago
      Micromanagement has been around for a long time and workers have long fought to undo the entrenched philosophy of it. It isn't just an expression, it's an entire ideology that's well-defined and has been for some time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement
    - ilyt 4y ago
      By the very nature if something gets called "micromanagement" it is bad. People call "good micromanagement" just "management"
- karmakaze 4y ago
  The problem here is that managers are less qualified than the individuals they manage in actually doing work, since the reports are the 'doers'. It would be more appropriate for a higher-level 'doer' to provide the mentoring than the manager. mentorship != managering
  - watwut 4y ago
    Micromanagement is bad and contraproductive even if done by senior doer. The same negative impact of micromanaged person will still be there.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Qualifications are not the same as roles. A manager may or may not be qualified to provide IC mentorship. A more senior IC should be, but good mentorship does not automatically flow from being a good engineer, and there can be a fine line between micro-managing a junior engineer and mentoring them towards meeting their full potential. At the end of the day, it's on the manager to understand the dynamics at play and figure out the right way to maximize the team (whether that be development oriented or results oriented).
mediaman 4y ago
This is laudable, and you sound like someone who is both competent and works with competent people. In those cases they should not be micromanaged because it will stunt their growth and result in worse outcomes because of the greater knowledge the IC will have for the task at hand than the person not doing the task. But those preconditions of competence are not always in plentiful supply. Some team members must be empowered, be given a target to go after, be given a domain of responsibility, and then let loose, with little interference except to assist in politicking or obtaining organizational resources. There are others, however, where this will be disastrous. Frequent errors, stopping progress without raising a flag, inability to adjust course and learn, inability to be resourceful, lack of agency, inability to map objectives to tasks required. Experienced managers have all had this kind of team member, and recognize after many attempts that "be a better leader" often doesn't fix it. The easy answer is to say, "well, simply don't hire this latter group of people, or PIP them if you do." But they exist, and they will wind up working somewhere, even if perhaps they are not working at a large, extremely well-paying tech company that typically will have plenty of applicants for their RSU-laden opportunities. So, yes, those classic leadership qualities are great when the team member will thrive with them. In those cases the leader must provide the target, the support, and 'get out of the way.' But it is the rather ugly reality that this is not always the case. And in those, the leader must adapt their approach.
theonething 4y ago
Micro-manager or not, I like anyone who can give me good details specs in Jira.

PheonixPharts 4y ago

> As a manager you are seen as the default main character of your team. In my entire career I have never known anyone who viewed managers this way. The best managers I've known have been viewed as great supporters of the team, people that advocate for you, get you the resources you need, and help run interference with leadership. The vast majority, from the "meh" to the horrid have been viewed by the team mostly as obstacles in hero's journey to solving problems and shipping products. And that's only from the IC perspective. From the leadership team perspective the view of manager ranges from seeing them as useful goons that keep lazy workers in line to, in the best cases, people who might be able to rise through the ranks to approach, but never quite reach, their level. But I've never, ever encounter people who think of a manager a the "main character".

JohnFen 4y ago
Yes, a manager is more like the coach of a sport team. Not really a part of the team proper as such. They can't be and still be able to do a huge part of their job -- acting as the interface between the team and the other parts of the organization. A manager's job is to coordinate effort on a high level, to ensure that the team has everything it needs to function well, and to remove as many roadblocks as possible. A managers's job is to "grease the skids" and run interference.
- ThalesX 4y ago
  > Yes, a manager is more like the coach of a sport team. Do a lot of sports team have coaches that have never played that sport in their life?
  - mmcdermott 4y ago
    Never played at all would be strange (it seems uncommon to watch a sport you have never played, let alone make a career of it). It's pretty common in the NFL to see coaches who were never professional players and possibly only played at a small college to boot.
    - 4y ago

harrisreynolds 4y ago

I also love the basic ideas of this article but think the discussion on "micro-management" should be revised. What about the idea of "Coaching Done Right" with some discussion of how to mold and encourage direct reports toward the path that leads to optimal growth for them? The term micro-management is an inherently negative term. It connotes the idea of hovering over a person and trying to correct every detail of what they are doing "wrong". It takes away their agency and ability to learn from their mistakes. Love the core idea of the article though! Thanks for sharing.

notShabu 4y ago

To feel like a main character you have to feel "observed" by a reader. This becomes interpersonal conflict when attention is zero-sum. When all employees depend on the corporation-as-observer the team dynamic can become toxic However most people have other "observers" like parents, friends, twitter-community, God, etc... Though they can generate feelings of love, acceptance, fame, oneness, etc... it is fairly difficult to transmute this effort into money to make a living so these stories are subservient to the money-attached one. Newer generations don't have decentralized observers. Everyone is online so social just converges into performing for the "algorithm". Religion and other traditions feel out-of-touch with where the world is headed. etc... Work ends up becoming the sole pillar that is supposed to hold up all these requirements. Partners & colleagues are expected to be Virtuous by serving the one true lord of light Managers have to act as priests...

titzer 4y ago

> By definition, they are the main character of their own story. But large companies often don’t make them feel that way. This is universally demotivating. If you don’t feel like the main character of your story, you don’t do much, you lose agency. This just shows how much the culture and psychological context of daily living has changed these days. It's like that line from "The Incredibles"--if everyone is super, then no one is. I read the article. It flirts with the line between coddling and training. I don't know if I agree with everything it says, but I do regret the underlying dynamic that is at play; you can't criticize anything or anyone because they can't take it. And the recommendations it gives for communications aren't bad; it just sucks that have to be so exquisitely crafted these days. Really, the article doesn't say it, but the better parts of it are really just working on employee expectations. You need to manage (i.e. recalibrate) your employees' expectations. While their entire schooling might have taught them they are the main character in the story, they are a special snowflake with above average talents, you will succeed at everything without trying hard, it just isn't so. What's really going on is deprogramming the decades of school coddling and setting up a clear relation between cause and effect.

watwut 4y ago
The "autonomy" being important for human motivation is part of old school management textbooks. The motivation was supposed to result of "autonomy, mastery and accountability" combination. For last 20 years, with move to agile, we have been loosing both "autonomy" and "accountability" parts. Frequently also mastery. We did gained predictability and there is less pressure then it used to be. We lost agency over years. > It's like that line from "The Incredibles"--if everyone is super, then no one is. This sounds like sci-fi, only because there is no autonomy anymore in software development. But it used to be that you had some small part where you could make autonomous decisions, did some estimates and could feel in control of your own situation if lucky. The process had issues ... but you had more agency and did felt like "main character in your own situation".
swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Managers can make their subordinates life difficult with basically no recourse except quitting or maybe changing teams. Speaking up is not a good strategy. Because of this tenuous relationship managers may have no idea they are stepping on the toes of their subordinates. They can break trust without any feedback. Being encouraging really costs nothing and assures people that their contributions are valued.

jgilias 4y ago

Everybody already _is_ the main character of their story by default. For most people work is just one plot line, likely not even the most important one. A good manager realizes this and accepts that the only choice they have here is to choose their role in everyone else’s stories. Being the main protagonist of other people’s stories is just not possible and trying to be one makes one a horrible manager.

asplake 4y ago
A better manager understands that everyone’s experience is different, and the role you play in others’ stories isn’t entirely your choice. Just getting to the bottom of that takes effort in itself.