4 ms·

In my (big tech) company, managers have little leverage to retain people. Salary/bonus aren't in their control. Even evaluation aren't decided by them. They ca

In my (big tech) company, managers have little leverage to retain people. Salary/bonus aren't in their control. Even evaluation aren't decided by them. They can try to make people happy so they stay in the team, but I find that they aren't very good at that either. When the team has issues, I don't find them effective to solve any problem. They do administrative work, communicate with leadership, hire, 1:1 which are more or less useful, help with roadmapping and alignement, attend calibration meetings for evaluation. I'm not saying they're not useful or that they don't work, but I find they leave the hard parts to the team to figure out. The hard part would be things like pushing backs on leadership demands, helping prioritizing tasks in the team. Concrete example: right now, everybody is overworked in my team, oncall is hard because we're pushed to ship new features, not work on reliability. Manager pretends to be empathetic, "always happy to help". But practically does nothing. My criteria for a good manager is that they're not harmful and don't add friction and stress (and those ones aren't appreciated by higher management). More than that, I've never seen it. But maybe i wasn't lucky.

mhss 2y ago
Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.
somekyle2 2y ago
Oh, that explains a thing. A decade or so ago, I was a well regarded engineer at a FAANG who got an offer from a startup. I told my manager I was probably going to take it, as it sounded fun. He and his lead tried to talk me into staying, showed me other departments I might find more fun. Really, they could've offered me a trivial raise and I probably would've stayed, but I was too meek to ask for money, and they didn't bring up money at all. That always struck me as very strange; I assumed it was either a mistake, or a "if they're going somewhere that is a pay cut, clearly it isn't money, and if you offer them money they'll leave in 6mo anyway". But, if they don't have that level to pull, that's a much simpler answer.
willjp 2y ago
I would wish that they would also: - Listen to their team. Issues arise, complexity may be higher than appears. Being receptive to reality and not being obstinate. - Manage priorities, when there is too much to do everything, so progress can continue instead of gridlock by stakeholder updates, changes, and context switches leaving you feeling like a husk - Not an expectation, but I find the good ones almost play the role of team therapist. I had a very kind manager stay up until midnight with me being supportive when it got really bad. The opposite of this is the not-my-problem people - Really really good managers understand the pressures you are under, and give suggestions on how you can work smarter. I do think sometimes there is pressure and they get in the way of work to produce visible artifacts to have something to point to that they did. I’m empathetic, a lot of their work is invisible.

mhss 2y ago

Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.

somekyle2 2y ago

Oh, that explains a thing. A decade or so ago, I was a well regarded engineer at a FAANG who got an offer from a startup. I told my manager I was probably going to take it, as it sounded fun. He and his lead tried to talk me into staying, showed me other departments I might find more fun. Really, they could've offered me a trivial raise and I probably would've stayed, but I was too meek to ask for money, and they didn't bring up money at all. That always struck me as very strange; I assumed it was either a mistake, or a "if they're going somewhere that is a pay cut, clearly it isn't money, and if you offer them money they'll leave in 6mo anyway". But, if they don't have that level to pull, that's a much simpler answer.

willjp 2y ago

I would wish that they would also: - Listen to their team. Issues arise, complexity may be higher than appears. Being receptive to reality and not being obstinate. - Manage priorities, when there is too much to do everything, so progress can continue instead of gridlock by stakeholder updates, changes, and context switches leaving you feeling like a husk - Not an expectation, but I find the good ones almost play the role of team therapist. I had a very kind manager stay up until midnight with me being supportive when it got really bad. The opposite of this is the not-my-problem people - Really really good managers understand the pressures you are under, and give suggestions on how you can work smarter. I do think sometimes there is pressure and they get in the way of work to produce visible artifacts to have something to point to that they did. I’m empathetic, a lot of their work is invisible.