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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 t

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.
  - 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.

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.
- 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.