6 ms·

People can read their manager's mind (2015)

199 points by luu 2y ago

hunterrrrrr 2y ago
Sometimes you just have to stand on business.
lupire 2y ago
(2015) People respond to incentives.
munchler 2y ago
(2015)
corytheboyd 2y ago
I reflect a lot on how tech leadership can’t seem to find a way to incentivize preventing problems. It’s so so so easy to measure fixing problems that have already happened, and so so so hard to measure effectiveness of decisions that prevent problems. It always, despite stated intentions by said leadership, leads to celebrating heroics, and punishing prevention. It’s so fucking stupid, but whatever lol. I do sympathize though, it’s not exactly easy to measure this… but it’s also not impossible?
- bcherny 2y ago
  That’s true — it’s hard to measure hypotheticals. The best solution I have found for the problem of rewarding prevention, is having leaders repeatedly tell their people that prevention is important. And when performance review season comes around, folks that do preventative work can ask for quotes from people more senior that were close to the work to speak to its impact. YMMV, and this may not work in every org. It did work reasonably well in a number of technical orgs I was in.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    > it’s hard to measure hypotheticals Once you phrase it that way, I start to think it might be literally impossible. How did Aslan put it? "We're never told what would have happened." It's basically the same problem as predicting the future, just starting from a time in the past, with even less grounding in reality. Impossible, right? Measurement is important, but it isn't everything. If it's your only hammer, you're going to have... exactly the bad time our society is currently having, I guess.
    - saghm 2y ago
      This seems like a place where viewing things as a Bayesian instead of a frequentist could help. We only have one outcome that actually occurred, but that doesn't necessarily mean we can't reason about likelihoods of alternative scenarios. I'm not saying I think it's worth trying to be as granular as "reduced risk of an outage by 10% in Q3" or something like that, but it seems a bit too extreme to assume that we don't know _anything_ about what might have happened. If we didn't have any intuition at all about potential risks, how could we be taking actions that we think reduce risk in the first place? We (hopefully!) don't try to numerically quantify how productive an engineer in raw numbers like "number of lines of code modified" or "number of commits merged", but that doesn't mean we treat it as impossible for experienced engineers to be able to judge the performance of their subordinates. I honestly don't see this as that much harder to measure than the type of engineering work that does already get rewarded; the reason it doesn't get measured as much is because it isn't valued as much, not the reverse.
      - bcherny 2y ago
        I think that hits the nail on the head. It’s important to supplement metrics with estimates, stories about the real world impact of the work, quotes from others close to the work. The less measurable, the more you need to lean on those other tools. Assuming 75% of reactive work can be measured and 10% of preventative work can with any degree of certainty, you’ll reach for those other tools more often for the latter.
      - andrewflnr 2y ago
        Yeah, obviously you have to try to predict the effects of your disaster prevention measures, and if you can use quantitative methods so much the better, but that's not "measurement". Not even close, and especially not in the sense that the people who want to count lines of code yearn for. And yes, those people are still out there. Some of them have learned their lesson about LoC in particular, but they haven't lost their craving for simple (often simplistic) metrics. The difference with "regular" engineering is that working features are in fact quite tangible, even if their exact costs aren't. You put a ticket on the board for a button, or a bridge, and eventually you can push the button or drive on the bridge. Not so for prevented disasters. By the time a disaster becomes tangible, it's usually too late.
- fendy3002 2y ago
  Not just in tech, it's everywhere in world. There's so much preventable accidents happen in workplaces. Like when during loading / unloading cargo for ships and trains, up to Space Shuttle Challenger disaster which comes from leadership cutting costs.
- hinkley 2y ago
  The problem with doing things right the first time is nobody appreciates how hard it was.
skybrian 2y ago
Maybe the corollary is "...except when they can't." Communicating: still important, and doesn't automatically happen.
swatcoder 2y ago
> People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for. This key assumption behind the whole article is actually a terrible mentality to take for true and self-evident, as the author has -- at least within the scope of one's relationship with a manager. The people that most of us have been impressed by in our careers, and in our life, are often very hard to characterize this way. They aren't going around fitting themselves to the next nearest supervisor's desires (stated or unstated). Instead, they've generally developed a strong and characteristic signature to the way they approach their work and they've learned how to quickly impress that personal signature onto the people around them so that those people know what to expect. Here and there, that mean leaving some workplace for being a poor fit to its needs and capabilities, but the long term arc is towards settling into some role as a respected expert who advises and informs the management team that leverages them. If you think everybody ("generally") will just strive do what their immediate boss wants, and so don't challenge yourself to not do that, you just trap yourself into thrashing around and being frustrated by trying to read people's minds, parse direction vs incentives, impress people who can't even pin down what you're about (because you yourself don't know), etc. It's a dead end. Don't buy into it. A defense of the initial assumption might be made by tossing the bit about the proximate manager who you're either obeying or anticipating and widening the scope to say that we're all pursuing reward over plain obedience. And that's a good defense, but only because the "reward" is something abstract and personal like fulfillment of our own career/lifestyle trajectory or our own vision of the craft.
- lmz 2y ago
  Would you really associate "generally" with "The people that most of us have been impressed by"? I would think that the impressive people are impressive precisely because they stand out from the general masses.
- Joker_vD 2y ago
  You probably didn't read the rest of the article because the author actually mentions the kind of people you're talking about. See Corollary 1.
  - 2y ago
gavinhoward 2y ago
This is definitely a thing. However, there are some people who can't. I am one of them. And that is why I am not successful in my career.
SanjayMehta 2y ago
This is definitely true. I joined a team where the manager used to measure LOC per week and chastise “low performers” in public. (Early 90s for context.) Now this was a telecom MMI product with lots of what we now call CRUD operations, bracketed with range checks. Instead of making a library, this team would copy/paste code and customise each MMI command, and naturally they had copy/pasted defects galore across the system. I came from a firmware background (16kbytes of 8 bit micro assembly) and this enormous waste of resources was astounding to me. When I called it out in public in the weekly review meeting, well, let’s just say it was not a pleasant experience.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Just build a script to generate this boilerplate code, and run it 15 minutes a day and work on side projects the other time I guess.
  - SanjayMehta 2y ago
    I wanted to build a DSL, was exiled to the RTOS team for suggesting this. Worked out well in the long run for me.
- devsda 2y ago
  > measure LOC per week and chastise I don't know if this is a recent thing. > Instead of making a library, this team would copy/paste code and customise each MMI command If it has been for a while, then a library call is few lines vs copying that meets the arbitrary metric of higher LOC. At the end of the day, it's down to the incentives
  - SanjayMehta 2y ago
    This was in the early 90s.
- OnionBlender 2y ago
  I had a director that was obsessed with github enterprise stats. He forbid people from squashing commits and told people to commit every day, even if you're in the middle of something. One of our interns was close to the end of his term and this director wanted to hire him. He thought he was amazing based on all the code he wrote. The problem was that this intern was bad, so we had him write unit tests. But he was bad at that too so he had to make a lot of revisions based on feedback. Thankfully we didn't hire him after myself and others explained why the intern had so many commits and LOC.
sqeaky 2y ago
There is a huge amount of detail and nuance to digest in this one. Though the author speaks in absolutes he puts forward examples that clearly indicate they mean "Most people do ..." and that fuzziness should be more prominent because the problems will be fuzzy too. Consider the hypothetical shop that values fancy math but claims to reward bugs. There might be an official bug hunting program. But the rewards might be low value like pizza or a lame company award while the mathematicians are getting raises and promotions. There are mixed messages and it won't be clear to every what is valued and some people will overhear at the water who just got a raise and put the pieces together and others won't. It is messy and fuzzy when goals and statements don't align internally, and I suppose talking about it is also often messy.
ryandrake 2y ago
I had a very frustrating relationship with a manager once, where it seemed every conversation went like this: Manager: [Situation] is happening. What is your plan for dealing with it? Me: I'm thinking I should do A, B, and C, for reasons X and Y. Manager: No, that's not right. I think you should do D. Me: OK, I will do D. Annoyed looking Manager: Don't do D just because I told you to. I want you to understand why you should do D so next time this happens, you can reason yourself into D without me suggesting it. Me: <shrugging> OK, help me to understand why we're doing D. Manager: No, that's not what I want. I need you to get to the reason by yourself! Me: OK, I don't know what you want me to do at this point. Should I leave this 1:1 and do D or not? I wish I could read [Manager's] mind. We could just never get past this merry-go-round, and I eventually just left the job. I think this was [Manager's] attempt at career development for me but we just couldn't see eye to eye on any decision I made.
- airstrike 2y ago
  That... sounds like a terrible manager.
- saghm 2y ago
  > Manager: No, that's not what I want. I need you to get to the reason by yourself! Honestly, this just sounds like a manager who isn't very good at their job. A good manager doesn't just blindly send you off to learn skills they think are necessary; they either teach you themselves (if they have the necessary expertise and spare time) or help you find resources where you can learn what you need (mentorship, suggested reading, etc.). If you describe to someone where where they need to end up without giving directions, it shouldn't be surprising if they get lost!
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Manager watched too many kung fu movies. And the wrong ones at that.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > I think this was [Manager's] attempt at career development for me Just from what you've told, it doesn't sound like it was. Sadly, some people just have to prove that they're smarter. Whatever you suggest, they will insist that the correct answer is something else. They won't give you a reason for that supposed correct answer because there isn't one. It's an ego thing. "I need you to get to the reason by yourself!" is not something any competent manager is going to say. That's not how learning works. I'm glad you were able to leave. That sounds horrible.
jspaetzel 2y ago
This cuts a little deep "Who can, and sometimes does, un-rot the fish from the bottom? An insane employee."
vonnik 2y ago
One problem is that while many managers may know what they want, but not how to prioritize. They just want all of it. They don’t know what they want most or like to believe they don’t have to choose. Another is that what they want depends on the last person they talked to. That is, what they want changes. Within that situation of shifting goals, often what they want from their direct reports is validation. “You’re right, this org is broken, let’s fix/purge it together.” Sometimes there is not much mind to read.
- dheera 2y ago
  Yeah this, I had a manager that kept flip-flopping between (a) "you should do things on your own and present them as your individual work" and (b) "you should work on what the other team members are working on, not your own thing". I did (a), next meeting he said I should do (b). I did (b), next meeting he said I should do (a). This went on for a whole year and a half before I finally left.
- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  > One problem is that while many managers may know what they want, but not how to prioritize. They just want all of it. They don’t know what they want most or like to believe they don’t have to choose. IMHO, what you have identified above is a dysfunctional work environment. Any manager whose interaction with those they work with is dictatorial in nature, who assume what they want is not to be questioned nor analyzed, almost certainly speaks in terms of "resources" and not "people."
kovezd 2y ago
I find this behavior when using ChatGPT. If I ask for a task, and the output is not the one expected: I ask for the motivation that lead to the bad decisions. Then, ChatGPT proceeds to retry the task "incorporating" my feedback, not answering my question!!
archsurface 2y ago
Flattering my managers.
langsoul-com 2y ago
Incentives rule this world. Words are weak, if someone says they'll be rewarded for something, but isn't. Will they truly do the same thing again? Valve is a good example, their long term support of existing features is poor. But their ability to come up with new and interesting features is amazing. Their compensation for new things is much higher than maintaining old things. Yes, on an individual level people might not always chase the rewards. In fact, it's better not to always do that. In tech, it's way better to learn more to up skill ones self as that'd lead to better earns later. However, on average, what is rewarded will advance further than what is not.
dang 2y ago
Related: People can read their manager's mind (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436 - Feb 2023 (68 comments) People can read their manager's mind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158 - Dec 2015 (60 comments)
afterburner 2y ago
Most Managers Are Bad, Part 32678
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AdieuToLogic 2y ago
The underlying premise of this post is an autocratic one, wherein a manager is assumed to be the originator of value for whatever dominion they rule. In this model, the higher said manager exists in an org chart, the more value they purport. For example: People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for. The kindest way I can describe this managerial perspective is "transactional." A more honest description is feudalistic. And: Finally, don't expect people to enlighten you and tell you what your blind spots are. Becoming a manager means losing the privilege of being told what's what. This sentiment is the same found in many writings throughout history, often regarding kings and the like. But managers are not kings. No matter how much they wish it so.
charles_f 2y ago
> Managers often say they'll reward something – perhaps they even believe it. But then they proceed to reward different things. Going on vacation, a manager once sent me a long message detailing all the priorities (sic), in order, that I should focus on (sic). Not 2 weeks later, the same person proceeded to escalate things, borderline shouting at me, when something that wasn't even in the original list "wasn't receiving the proper attention". I should have known, somehow.
ben_w 2y ago
Ah, that explains what I've been doing wrong. I generally take people at their word, even management, and when I spot the difference between words and choices I find things more difficult than they need to be. If they're deceiving themselves, that's more interesting than my old model, and suggests possibilities I need to think about.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
It sounds like this boils down to stated vs revealed preferences. The more interesting part to me is realizing that people care so much about what their manager values. I've always had the mindset of focusing on what the team/product/org needed the most.

199 points by luu 2y ago

hunterrrrrr 2y ago

Sometimes you just have to stand on business.

lupire 2y ago

(2015) People respond to incentives.

munchler 2y ago

(2015)

corytheboyd 2y ago

I reflect a lot on how tech leadership can’t seem to find a way to incentivize preventing problems. It’s so so so easy to measure fixing problems that have already happened, and so so so hard to measure effectiveness of decisions that prevent problems. It always, despite stated intentions by said leadership, leads to celebrating heroics, and punishing prevention. It’s so fucking stupid, but whatever lol. I do sympathize though, it’s not exactly easy to measure this… but it’s also not impossible?

bcherny 2y ago
That’s true — it’s hard to measure hypotheticals. The best solution I have found for the problem of rewarding prevention, is having leaders repeatedly tell their people that prevention is important. And when performance review season comes around, folks that do preventative work can ask for quotes from people more senior that were close to the work to speak to its impact. YMMV, and this may not work in every org. It did work reasonably well in a number of technical orgs I was in.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  > it’s hard to measure hypotheticals Once you phrase it that way, I start to think it might be literally impossible. How did Aslan put it? "We're never told what would have happened." It's basically the same problem as predicting the future, just starting from a time in the past, with even less grounding in reality. Impossible, right? Measurement is important, but it isn't everything. If it's your only hammer, you're going to have... exactly the bad time our society is currently having, I guess.
  - saghm 2y ago
    This seems like a place where viewing things as a Bayesian instead of a frequentist could help. We only have one outcome that actually occurred, but that doesn't necessarily mean we can't reason about likelihoods of alternative scenarios. I'm not saying I think it's worth trying to be as granular as "reduced risk of an outage by 10% in Q3" or something like that, but it seems a bit too extreme to assume that we don't know _anything_ about what might have happened. If we didn't have any intuition at all about potential risks, how could we be taking actions that we think reduce risk in the first place? We (hopefully!) don't try to numerically quantify how productive an engineer in raw numbers like "number of lines of code modified" or "number of commits merged", but that doesn't mean we treat it as impossible for experienced engineers to be able to judge the performance of their subordinates. I honestly don't see this as that much harder to measure than the type of engineering work that does already get rewarded; the reason it doesn't get measured as much is because it isn't valued as much, not the reverse.
    - bcherny 2y ago
      I think that hits the nail on the head. It’s important to supplement metrics with estimates, stories about the real world impact of the work, quotes from others close to the work. The less measurable, the more you need to lean on those other tools. Assuming 75% of reactive work can be measured and 10% of preventative work can with any degree of certainty, you’ll reach for those other tools more often for the latter.
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      Yeah, obviously you have to try to predict the effects of your disaster prevention measures, and if you can use quantitative methods so much the better, but that's not "measurement". Not even close, and especially not in the sense that the people who want to count lines of code yearn for. And yes, those people are still out there. Some of them have learned their lesson about LoC in particular, but they haven't lost their craving for simple (often simplistic) metrics. The difference with "regular" engineering is that working features are in fact quite tangible, even if their exact costs aren't. You put a ticket on the board for a button, or a bridge, and eventually you can push the button or drive on the bridge. Not so for prevented disasters. By the time a disaster becomes tangible, it's usually too late.
fendy3002 2y ago
Not just in tech, it's everywhere in world. There's so much preventable accidents happen in workplaces. Like when during loading / unloading cargo for ships and trains, up to Space Shuttle Challenger disaster which comes from leadership cutting costs.
hinkley 2y ago
The problem with doing things right the first time is nobody appreciates how hard it was.

skybrian 2y ago

Maybe the corollary is "...except when they can't." Communicating: still important, and doesn't automatically happen.

swatcoder 2y ago

> People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for. This key assumption behind the whole article is actually a terrible mentality to take for true and self-evident, as the author has -- at least within the scope of one's relationship with a manager. The people that most of us have been impressed by in our careers, and in our life, are often very hard to characterize this way. They aren't going around fitting themselves to the next nearest supervisor's desires (stated or unstated). Instead, they've generally developed a strong and characteristic signature to the way they approach their work and they've learned how to quickly impress that personal signature onto the people around them so that those people know what to expect. Here and there, that mean leaving some workplace for being a poor fit to its needs and capabilities, but the long term arc is towards settling into some role as a respected expert who advises and informs the management team that leverages them. If you think everybody ("generally") will just strive do what their immediate boss wants, and so don't challenge yourself to not do that, you just trap yourself into thrashing around and being frustrated by trying to read people's minds, parse direction vs incentives, impress people who can't even pin down what you're about (because you yourself don't know), etc. It's a dead end. Don't buy into it. A defense of the initial assumption might be made by tossing the bit about the proximate manager who you're either obeying or anticipating and widening the scope to say that we're all pursuing reward over plain obedience. And that's a good defense, but only because the "reward" is something abstract and personal like fulfillment of our own career/lifestyle trajectory or our own vision of the craft.

lmz 2y ago
Would you really associate "generally" with "The people that most of us have been impressed by"? I would think that the impressive people are impressive precisely because they stand out from the general masses.
Joker_vD 2y ago
You probably didn't read the rest of the article because the author actually mentions the kind of people you're talking about. See Corollary 1.
- 2y ago

gavinhoward 2y ago

This is definitely a thing. However, there are some people who can't. I am one of them. And that is why I am not successful in my career.

SanjayMehta 2y ago

This is definitely true. I joined a team where the manager used to measure LOC per week and chastise “low performers” in public. (Early 90s for context.) Now this was a telecom MMI product with lots of what we now call CRUD operations, bracketed with range checks. Instead of making a library, this team would copy/paste code and customise each MMI command, and naturally they had copy/pasted defects galore across the system. I came from a firmware background (16kbytes of 8 bit micro assembly) and this enormous waste of resources was astounding to me. When I called it out in public in the weekly review meeting, well, let’s just say it was not a pleasant experience.

mewpmewp2 2y ago
Just build a script to generate this boilerplate code, and run it 15 minutes a day and work on side projects the other time I guess.
- SanjayMehta 2y ago
  I wanted to build a DSL, was exiled to the RTOS team for suggesting this. Worked out well in the long run for me.
devsda 2y ago
> measure LOC per week and chastise I don't know if this is a recent thing. > Instead of making a library, this team would copy/paste code and customise each MMI command If it has been for a while, then a library call is few lines vs copying that meets the arbitrary metric of higher LOC. At the end of the day, it's down to the incentives
- SanjayMehta 2y ago
  This was in the early 90s.
OnionBlender 2y ago
I had a director that was obsessed with github enterprise stats. He forbid people from squashing commits and told people to commit every day, even if you're in the middle of something. One of our interns was close to the end of his term and this director wanted to hire him. He thought he was amazing based on all the code he wrote. The problem was that this intern was bad, so we had him write unit tests. But he was bad at that too so he had to make a lot of revisions based on feedback. Thankfully we didn't hire him after myself and others explained why the intern had so many commits and LOC.

sqeaky 2y ago

There is a huge amount of detail and nuance to digest in this one. Though the author speaks in absolutes he puts forward examples that clearly indicate they mean "Most people do ..." and that fuzziness should be more prominent because the problems will be fuzzy too. Consider the hypothetical shop that values fancy math but claims to reward bugs. There might be an official bug hunting program. But the rewards might be low value like pizza or a lame company award while the mathematicians are getting raises and promotions. There are mixed messages and it won't be clear to every what is valued and some people will overhear at the water who just got a raise and put the pieces together and others won't. It is messy and fuzzy when goals and statements don't align internally, and I suppose talking about it is also often messy.

ryandrake 2y ago

I had a very frustrating relationship with a manager once, where it seemed every conversation went like this: Manager: [Situation] is happening. What is your plan for dealing with it? Me: I'm thinking I should do A, B, and C, for reasons X and Y. Manager: No, that's not right. I think you should do D. Me: OK, I will do D. Annoyed looking Manager: Don't do D just because I told you to. I want you to understand why you should do D so next time this happens, you can reason yourself into D without me suggesting it. Me: <shrugging> OK, help me to understand why we're doing D. Manager: No, that's not what I want. I need you to get to the reason by yourself! Me: OK, I don't know what you want me to do at this point. Should I leave this 1:1 and do D or not? I wish I could read [Manager's] mind. We could just never get past this merry-go-round, and I eventually just left the job. I think this was [Manager's] attempt at career development for me but we just couldn't see eye to eye on any decision I made.

airstrike 2y ago
That... sounds like a terrible manager.
saghm 2y ago
> Manager: No, that's not what I want. I need you to get to the reason by yourself! Honestly, this just sounds like a manager who isn't very good at their job. A good manager doesn't just blindly send you off to learn skills they think are necessary; they either teach you themselves (if they have the necessary expertise and spare time) or help you find resources where you can learn what you need (mentorship, suggested reading, etc.). If you describe to someone where where they need to end up without giving directions, it shouldn't be surprising if they get lost!
- hinkley 2y ago
  Manager watched too many kung fu movies. And the wrong ones at that.
crazygringo 2y ago
> I think this was [Manager's] attempt at career development for me Just from what you've told, it doesn't sound like it was. Sadly, some people just have to prove that they're smarter. Whatever you suggest, they will insist that the correct answer is something else. They won't give you a reason for that supposed correct answer because there isn't one. It's an ego thing. "I need you to get to the reason by yourself!" is not something any competent manager is going to say. That's not how learning works. I'm glad you were able to leave. That sounds horrible.

jspaetzel 2y ago

This cuts a little deep "Who can, and sometimes does, un-rot the fish from the bottom? An insane employee."

vonnik 2y ago

One problem is that while many managers may know what they want, but not how to prioritize. They just want all of it. They don’t know what they want most or like to believe they don’t have to choose. Another is that what they want depends on the last person they talked to. That is, what they want changes. Within that situation of shifting goals, often what they want from their direct reports is validation. “You’re right, this org is broken, let’s fix/purge it together.” Sometimes there is not much mind to read.

dheera 2y ago
Yeah this, I had a manager that kept flip-flopping between (a) "you should do things on your own and present them as your individual work" and (b) "you should work on what the other team members are working on, not your own thing". I did (a), next meeting he said I should do (b). I did (b), next meeting he said I should do (a). This went on for a whole year and a half before I finally left.
AdieuToLogic 2y ago
> One problem is that while many managers may know what they want, but not how to prioritize. They just want all of it. They don’t know what they want most or like to believe they don’t have to choose. IMHO, what you have identified above is a dysfunctional work environment. Any manager whose interaction with those they work with is dictatorial in nature, who assume what they want is not to be questioned nor analyzed, almost certainly speaks in terms of "resources" and not "people."

kovezd 2y ago

I find this behavior when using ChatGPT. If I ask for a task, and the output is not the one expected: I ask for the motivation that lead to the bad decisions. Then, ChatGPT proceeds to retry the task "incorporating" my feedback, not answering my question!!

archsurface 2y ago

Flattering my managers.

langsoul-com 2y ago

Incentives rule this world. Words are weak, if someone says they'll be rewarded for something, but isn't. Will they truly do the same thing again? Valve is a good example, their long term support of existing features is poor. But their ability to come up with new and interesting features is amazing. Their compensation for new things is much higher than maintaining old things. Yes, on an individual level people might not always chase the rewards. In fact, it's better not to always do that. In tech, it's way better to learn more to up skill ones self as that'd lead to better earns later. However, on average, what is rewarded will advance further than what is not.

dang 2y ago

Related: People can read their manager's mind (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436 - Feb 2023 (68 comments) People can read their manager's mind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158 - Dec 2015 (60 comments)

afterburner 2y ago

Most Managers Are Bad, Part 32678

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

AdieuToLogic 2y ago

The underlying premise of this post is an autocratic one, wherein a manager is assumed to be the originator of value for whatever dominion they rule. In this model, the higher said manager exists in an org chart, the more value they purport. For example: People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for. The kindest way I can describe this managerial perspective is "transactional." A more honest description is feudalistic. And: Finally, don't expect people to enlighten you and tell you what your blind spots are. Becoming a manager means losing the privilege of being told what's what. This sentiment is the same found in many writings throughout history, often regarding kings and the like. But managers are not kings. No matter how much they wish it so.

charles_f 2y ago

> Managers often say they'll reward something – perhaps they even believe it. But then they proceed to reward different things. Going on vacation, a manager once sent me a long message detailing all the priorities (sic), in order, that I should focus on (sic). Not 2 weeks later, the same person proceeded to escalate things, borderline shouting at me, when something that wasn't even in the original list "wasn't receiving the proper attention". I should have known, somehow.

ben_w 2y ago

Ah, that explains what I've been doing wrong. I generally take people at their word, even management, and when I spot the difference between words and choices I find things more difficult than they need to be. If they're deceiving themselves, that's more interesting than my old model, and suggests possibilities I need to think about.

shepherdjerred 2y ago

It sounds like this boils down to stated vs revealed preferences. The more interesting part to me is realizing that people care so much about what their manager values. I've always had the mindset of focusing on what the team/product/org needed the most.