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As a manager, when I get a high-performing engineer, I get out of their way. And then I get other things out of their way. When I talk with these engineers ab
by jawns 3y ago
As a manager, when I get a high-performing engineer, I get out of their way. And then I get other things out of their way.
When I talk with these engineers about what they actually want, it's not time to goof off and play ping-pong or cut out early. Rather, they want to be given interesting projects; they want a hand in the decision making without being sucked into endless meetings; and they want acknowledgement.
Basically, they want the opposite of Maslach's three facets of job burnout: depersonalization/cynicism, emotional exhaustion, and inefficacy.
I managed a great engineer who'd been in the business longer than me and had phenomenal tech chops. And in our 1:1s, he said he was content as long as the work was interesting, the meetings were short, and he heard "nice work" every once in a while. I assure you, he heard it much more frequently than every once in a while!
- goodmunky 3y agoIt really is this simple most of the time, but I have not yet been fortunate enough to land a manager who understands this. So burnout and on to the next job it is every few years.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThis has been my experience. I hated being a manager, but I didn’t trust anyone else to do it. My style draws a great deal of contempt from the HN crowd, but it worked extremely well, for 25 years.
- factorymoo 3y agoAs a new (ish) manager, curious to hear more about your style and what has worked well for you for 25 years.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoMostly, individual Respect for each of my employees, and the backbone to negotiate with, and feed back to, my superiors, when they tried to get me to be a bad manager. I don't think my advice will be helpful, though. I have found that it is something that would probably get you fired, in today's companies. Even the people that work for you are completely indoctrinated in the Tech Industry Zeitgeist, and will refuse to work with you. Look at some of the comments that I get, when I talk about it. Really nasty. People take it as a personal attack, when I talk about my own experience. I've found that management is an intensely human vocation, and efforts to commoditize it, fall flat.
- reneherse 3y agoI'm very curious to hear more about your approach. Do you happen to have any blog posts describing your management style?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoFrankly, as I stated in another post, I think it would be worthless. If you tried it my way, you'd probably get fired. In any case, I absolutely hated being a manager. Since being forced into retirement, I've returned to my tech roots, and couldn't be happier. I'd much rather talk about that, and I do[0]. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/
- reneherse 3y agoI appreciate the response and will take some time to peruse those articles. I have limited experience as a manager, but I'm starting a new SAAS company and one of our priorities is to establish a humane and engineer-friendly culture.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI am always happy to talk about my experience, but it seems quite incompatible with today's startup/MANGA culture.
- icedchai 3y agoYep. You listed all the bullet points. It's incredible how few managers will actually even discuss what engineers actually want.
- user_named 3y agoThe absolute worst is when you run a project, you do it well and independently, and the only feedback your hear is tiny nitpicks about stuff you didn't do because it didn't make sense, or some tiny nonsensical improvements that were out of scope. And never a Great work!
- icedchai 3y agoOr you're in a company meeting and they thank the PM for "building" the project, not the actual team. It makes me kinda mad.
- flashgordon 3y agoThis. Only sad thing is how normalized/formulaic perf reviews have become. You have to hit X rubriks and have to show potential for growth and you have to be a leader and ....