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Ask HN: How to manage a team of clowns when you are a young 19yo manager?

4 points by clownjuggler 13y ago

I am working at a huge corporation. I just turned 19. I am part of a small team working on mobile applications (about 40~ people total). I was hired at the highest pay grade right out of college after 1 year and given a team because I impressed execs. Since I'm 19, people disregard me. I'm the office "wonderkid" and people frown upon anything I say on account of being a smartass, however hard I try to come across as genuine. I am not taken seriously, however, nobody can deny the work I do is great and beneficial. I've upgraded out tech stack, introduced new methodologies, new tactics, that have increased our efficiency near ten-fold. However, there are a plethora of teams under my project, and they only want paychecks, they don't care, they just need to support their family. And I get that. I do, but if you're put on such a high profile project, you need the best. There are better departments suited for their mentality. If I'm to speak frankly, 80% of this team could be let go and we'd be much more efficient, things would run a lot smoother. These teams are bogging us down by not meeting deadlines and producing shit work. They don't interact with the rest of the team. Nobody cares, just want to get paid. I can't attach my name to something I feel doesn't encompass every fiber of my talent and skill, and it's making me angry. I literally created a working demo of our app with over 120+ screens in three days. Asked my manager if I could work from home. Didn't sleep, created it, pitched it to all managers and everyone. They genuinely loved it. But at the end of the day, it can't pass because it'd put 80% of our team out of their jobs. And that's the problem. There is no passion in our team, deadlines and shit members are destroying this project and thus, morale is down and I'm not remotely motivated anymore to make this the best I can make it. What do I do?

vitovito 13y ago
1. You don't have enough life experience to relate to anyone working for you, let alone to have them imagine they could relate to you in response. Respect and trust is something you have to earn; it doesn't just come from the title. You're currently lacking in about ten years of empathy and "soft skills." Management should be 100% about people skills and 0% about getting your name on something. Maybe you weren't given this team because you're awesome; maybe you were given it because it would knock the chip off your shoulder and take you down a peg. 2. Go pick up rands' book, Managing Humans. Read it. Try to understand your actual purpose in running that team. Then, either: 3a. Quit. Go work somewhere where you'll be mentored and taught all of the things you never learned in school. Relationship-building. Being nice and personable. Negotiation. Communication. You'll learn amazing things. 3b. Fire people. If you're really a manager, you have hire/fire power. Fire the 80% you think suck. Push your project live. Become a terrible, powerful figure. Set fire to everything in your path. You'll learn amazing things that way, too.
- clownjuggler 13y ago
  1. I was given this team right off the bat, I've been here for a few months now. It's not to take me down a peg. I had a great portfolio and track record in this industry, however young, and they believed I can do it. I didn't get here without being a people person ;) I am so uncomfortable with 3b, but if that's what needs to be done.. What if they can't find a job? What if they lose their houses/apartments? It can seriously screw some people and I can't have someones life situation resting on my shoulders because they failed to do a great job.
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    I've had to fire people pretty young too (I think I was 20, but I'm not 100% sure). It is hard, but at the end of the day, nobody likes doing a shitty job. Get them out the door immediately and don't give them a chance to finish something. Assure them that you will format their computer and not look at their personal files they had on it, and have security ready with a bankers box. Make sure you tell them why they are being let go but also focus on your own personal failure to fix it or make it work (because lets face it, you are failing right now if you want to fire 80% of people). Then get on with life. Be kind and fix problems, but stop getting pushed around. Stop trying to do hero-coding, if you are a manager that should be eating up at least 50% of your time, not programming.
  - vitovito 13y ago
    Hi, sorry, I think this is really jumping the gun, and this is going to sound like a personal attack, but I'm not sure there's another way to phrase any of this. The way you've described the problem, the way you've classified your coworkers, the things you called out to comment on in this reply, these are all giant red flags of immaturity to me. I ran companies and teams of half a dozen to three dozen people when I was your age (and younger, and older), and I hired people, and I fired people, and you sound like me, and I was grossly immature. If you've only been there a few months, it takes 3-4 months just to get a feel for the job. If you haven't been networking and talking with everyone above and below you, and instead your head has been down grinding on some possibly pointless deliverables, you don't know anything about your role or your company yet. You don't know why your coworkers are the way they are. You don't know why you were hired. You don't know the real expectations for you from your employees. And you don't know what kind of a manager you are, because you have no experience being managed. You need to read rands' book, and then quit, and go work for a less immature company until you yourself are less immature. Management is a skill you don't have yet, and can't possibly get without making a lot of terrible errors in your current role.
lmg643 13y ago
I can certainly identify with being a younger guy in a large corporation and never getting taken seriously. That dynamic is the root of startup culture, typified by ycombinator - since young people frequently are talented enough to run a company, they might as make the opportunities for themselves. I think the choice is to leave or to make the most of it - and if you have the authority to reshape your team, you should do it.
NicoJuicy 13y ago
If you're going to get people fired and don't meet the deadlines. You're going to get screwed either way. Try to get the worst 20% off and give the top 5% a payraise, use gamification techniques. I don't know if something like that exists. But their's a reward for doing good and a punishment for doing this bad. Most people will understand, except the once who get fired. Slow people bring you down, good people bring you up. Motivate them, so you'll get motivated to. PS. 120+ screens is really impressive!
- clownjuggler 13y ago
  Thank you. It's less impressive when you realize that it's just designing a handful of reusable styled html assets, arranging them per page, then linking them to another page.
icedchai 13y ago
you should quit and go work at a smaller company.

clownjuggler 13y ago
You are making an incredible amount of assumptions. We were all hired at the same time. Everybody is new, but not new to the field, we got to work from day 1. We are hired for very specific tasks, we get in, we get out, and right now we're not getting in fast enough. Make sense? I know the way they are, I know why they were hired. It doesn't matter what their expectations are from me, because it's below what I'm capable of getting accomplished and that's not the game I play. Don't get me wrong, we're all friends. It's not me vs. my employees. It's an internal struggle of mine to get my teammates to properly match my level of expectations, not just make something passable that hapazardly works. We are a team of contractors here to get a job done, and it's not being done as best can be. I work for one of the biggest companies in the US. There's a high probability you use one of our applications. We all work in a common space. When one co worker is on the phone with their tenant and divorce lawyer on and off all the time, then complaining about hitting deadlines and not meeting them, we have a big fucking problem. I know what I'm dealing with, thank you for your input. What I'm having a hard time with is determining the route to solve this problem without ruining lives.
- vitovito 13y ago
  Oh, okay, cool. In that case... Just kidding, that doesn't change my core premise, that it's an immature organization and you're dealing with the problem in an immature fashion. "It's an internal struggle of mine to get my teammates to properly match my level of expectations, not just make something passable that hapazardly works." That's the problem, right there. Your expectations are yours and yours alone. Everyone under you is a person, a human being, with thoughts and feelings and goals and, rightfully, they don't give two shits about what you think they should be doing. Real life is not a meritocracy and everyone is not a highly disciplined type A producer. Your expectations are your problem, not theirs, and holding other people up to them is the express route to disappointmenttown, population: a bad version of you. You need to understand what it means to be a manager, and an empathetic human being. Pro tip: those are mostly the same thing. Maybe you will need to separate the wheat from the chaff one day, but that day is after you understand exactly what it is all those people do, and why they do it, and how they do it, and what their goals are, and what their motivations are, not as employees, not as cogs in your great machine, but as human beings. That day is not today. You don't know enough, and it's not possible for you know enough yet. You haven't been doing the job long enough, you don't know the people well enough, and you don't have enough life experience.
  - clownjuggler 13y ago
    Did you read my other responses? You are here at this company and are being paid exorbitant amounts for the 7 hours you are here every day. That time is not to goof off and take two hour lunches, then complain about missing deadlines that I didn't set. If you want to say something, then say something instead of spouting bullshit. I'm dealing with a tough fucking situation and I didn't come here to get shitted on by a 1 upping random (really, you were younger than 19 working at a fortune 500 managing 40 people, okay kid). Really, if you want to offer proper advice other than "you're a piece of shit" (to summarize) then fuck off. I came to ask HN because it's a professional community with people that have a diverse range of skills in these very environments I'm struggling with. Stop replying, you are stressing me the fuck out, thank you.