4 ms·

I'm going to get downvoted by the managers, but chances are, your team is doing just fine, but you can't keep up with that remotely. When you're in the meeting

by kubb 3y ago

I'm going to get downvoted by the managers, but chances are, your team is doing just fine, but you can't keep up with that remotely. When you're in the meeting, everyone politely explains to you what they're doing and they say "yes" to your ideas, so you feel like you're making progress. But when they actually need to do focused work, which you don't want to know the details of because it's too hard, they do far better outside of an oxygen-deprived, loud office that they need to commute to.

palata 3y ago
This. Most of my interactions with managers are about explaining to them why I am doing what I am doing. Once in a while, they give valuable information. I definitely don't need to be onsite everyday to keep up-to-date with a manager. One call a week is already a luxury, some interactions via chat (where I can report some progress and stuff). Mostly it's managers who want to see their team everyday and talk to them, I guess because it makes them feel like they are managing?
- notagoodidea 3y ago
  I don't know your special teams/managers etc. I switched from a technical position to a manager one one year ago. My team is remote mostly, myself included in different countries/continents. I do travel to the office to meet colleagues going to the office and having face-to-face time with some. I don't need to see my team everyday but I do need to have a vision of what they are doing and busy with because we are working on a lot of different projects, pursuing sales opportunities and trying to balance the work based on skills/time available/opportunities to learn or emergencies. So I tend to do 1 team meeting weekly and weeklies with most of the time on the side at least, track project on slack/jira/crm and try to have a board view of my team while being read to deep-dive when needed. Do I like being on site? Yes but mostly to talk with project manager and product owner, it is more easier to brainstorm/have meaningful discussions in a semi-informal setting of a coffee. For technical colleagues on my team, it is different depending on the tasks : creative/architecture/whatever or routine/operational. Can't see my team on site everyday anyway but would prefer for some specific type of interaction. Well that's just me trying to find my way in management so grain of salt and personal bias and imposter syndrome warning :)
cauch 3y ago
That sounds very presumptuous, which is a pity because your message is valuable, but the presumptuousness implies that your opinion has absolutely no value. The value in your comment is on bringing one aspect that makes the situation more "grey", but you lose it all by then depicting the situation as "managers are useless and devs don't need them", which is very black-and-white. I'm not a manager and I'm not a dev (I work with data and often ended up coding my own system that sometimes ended up in production against my will), but I have observed a lot of devs who were saying "I'm doing fine on my own", and they were convinced it's the case, and ... they were not doing fine. Some red flags are devs that complains that "the requirements are not clear" or "the company seems to not care about my effort". Sometimes it is true, but I've observed a lot of the time the same people also saying "just give me some requirements that I can follow step by step instead of explaining the bigger picture, I don't care of what this other team do, I'm busy" or "I redirect all the company-wide meeting invites directly to the bin folder" or "when I go into details of the code, the manager don't get it because it's too hard, but when the manager explains their needs and why it makes sense, I don't get it because I'm wayyyy too smart" or "when I go into details of the code, the manager don't get it because it's too hard, but when someone talks to me about something else than code, they have to learn to adapt to their audience and be happy that I pretend to listen to their boring work tasks". They are truly thinking the problem is the others and incapable to even imagine their mentality is the problem.
- kubb 3y ago
  Devs need managers who... code. This is the only way they can understand the underlying work. Otherwise their usefulness is significantly diminished. The fact that the OP thinks you move the needle primarily by having great meetings together, and leaves out the engineering aspect completely makes it seem like he's the out of touch "ideas" manager, and for this archetype, the office is indeed a more comfortable environment - you can have coffee with everyone whenever you like.
  - cauch 3y ago
    As I've said, I'm coding and I understood perfectly the code of the devs I was working with, and yet, what OP said correspond to what I have observed sometimes. This demonstrates that your logic "OP reaches this conclusion, so it's the proof that he does not understand the code, which is the problem" is wrong. If this logic was true, who do you explain that someone like me, who clearly understands the code (I've reviewed it, I've modified it, I've put stuffs in production integrating with their system, ...), agrees with some of OP's considerations? When reading your comment, it is difficult to not be drawn to the idea that you are one of those persons I was mentioning, who are not understanding other employees needs and point-of-view and who interpret systematically any communication failing as "the other person's fault".

by kubb 3y ago

palata 3y ago

This. Most of my interactions with managers are about explaining to them why I am doing what I am doing. Once in a while, they give valuable information. I definitely don't need to be onsite everyday to keep up-to-date with a manager. One call a week is already a luxury, some interactions via chat (where I can report some progress and stuff). Mostly it's managers who want to see their team everyday and talk to them, I guess because it makes them feel like they are managing?

notagoodidea 3y ago
I don't know your special teams/managers etc. I switched from a technical position to a manager one one year ago. My team is remote mostly, myself included in different countries/continents. I do travel to the office to meet colleagues going to the office and having face-to-face time with some. I don't need to see my team everyday but I do need to have a vision of what they are doing and busy with because we are working on a lot of different projects, pursuing sales opportunities and trying to balance the work based on skills/time available/opportunities to learn or emergencies. So I tend to do 1 team meeting weekly and weeklies with most of the time on the side at least, track project on slack/jira/crm and try to have a board view of my team while being read to deep-dive when needed. Do I like being on site? Yes but mostly to talk with project manager and product owner, it is more easier to brainstorm/have meaningful discussions in a semi-informal setting of a coffee. For technical colleagues on my team, it is different depending on the tasks : creative/architecture/whatever or routine/operational. Can't see my team on site everyday anyway but would prefer for some specific type of interaction. Well that's just me trying to find my way in management so grain of salt and personal bias and imposter syndrome warning :)

cauch 3y ago

That sounds very presumptuous, which is a pity because your message is valuable, but the presumptuousness implies that your opinion has absolutely no value. The value in your comment is on bringing one aspect that makes the situation more "grey", but you lose it all by then depicting the situation as "managers are useless and devs don't need them", which is very black-and-white. I'm not a manager and I'm not a dev (I work with data and often ended up coding my own system that sometimes ended up in production against my will), but I have observed a lot of devs who were saying "I'm doing fine on my own", and they were convinced it's the case, and ... they were not doing fine. Some red flags are devs that complains that "the requirements are not clear" or "the company seems to not care about my effort". Sometimes it is true, but I've observed a lot of the time the same people also saying "just give me some requirements that I can follow step by step instead of explaining the bigger picture, I don't care of what this other team do, I'm busy" or "I redirect all the company-wide meeting invites directly to the bin folder" or "when I go into details of the code, the manager don't get it because it's too hard, but when the manager explains their needs and why it makes sense, I don't get it because I'm wayyyy too smart" or "when I go into details of the code, the manager don't get it because it's too hard, but when someone talks to me about something else than code, they have to learn to adapt to their audience and be happy that I pretend to listen to their boring work tasks". They are truly thinking the problem is the others and incapable to even imagine their mentality is the problem.

kubb 3y ago
Devs need managers who... code. This is the only way they can understand the underlying work. Otherwise their usefulness is significantly diminished. The fact that the OP thinks you move the needle primarily by having great meetings together, and leaves out the engineering aspect completely makes it seem like he's the out of touch "ideas" manager, and for this archetype, the office is indeed a more comfortable environment - you can have coffee with everyone whenever you like.
- cauch 3y ago
  As I've said, I'm coding and I understood perfectly the code of the devs I was working with, and yet, what OP said correspond to what I have observed sometimes. This demonstrates that your logic "OP reaches this conclusion, so it's the proof that he does not understand the code, which is the problem" is wrong. If this logic was true, who do you explain that someone like me, who clearly understands the code (I've reviewed it, I've modified it, I've put stuffs in production integrating with their system, ...), agrees with some of OP's considerations? When reading your comment, it is difficult to not be drawn to the idea that you are one of those persons I was mentioning, who are not understanding other employees needs and point-of-view and who interpret systematically any communication failing as "the other person's fault".