6 ms·

Being a Manager Is Lonely

59 points by platz 12y ago

ia 12y ago
totally agree. i think it's why many many many tech managers aren't technical. most truly technical people cannot put up with the cognitive dissonance required to convincingly say one thing while believing the opposite.
drderidder 12y ago
I don't like the manager / developer separation. I've had better results using lightweight strategies to let projects be more or less self-managing. Basically just creating a shared vision, giving responsibilities to people, letting them set their own goals, and then publishing to the group how those goals are progressing on a weekly basis. It doesn't take much time and people usually appreciate the communication.
smacktoward 12y ago
This post is not so much about management being lonely (though it is, at all levels) as it is about the special loneliness of middle management. If you're a top manager, a founder or C-level type, you still have to deal with loneliness (since the power you have over the people below you in the org chart inevitably crimps any relationships you form with them), but you at least get the compensating benefit of being able, to some degree, to determine your own destiny: you make decisions, the company pivots to follow them. Middle managers don't even get that; they're sandwiched between the people above them, who actually get to decide what the "company line" is, and those below them, who just have to follow it. Middle managers have to not just follow it, but enthusiastically agree with it, even if they think it's stupid or counterproductive. (Or at least they have to do so whenever the people they manage are watching.) Failure to do so, to participate eagerly in whatever fad thinking the people at the top are high on this week, is what I used to hear described when I worked on an Air Force base as "a career-limiting maneuver." And on top of that, they have to work in an environment where even the limited power they do have to make a difference can be thrown out the window at any time. All it takes is for someone higher up the food chain to take an interest in your team and suddenly all the decisions you've made start getting overridden. Their reasons for doing so can be completely arbitrary, but that doesn't matter. If you're lucky, the person doing the overriding is at least generous enough not to do that to you in front of your team. If you're lucky. This is part of the reason why the traditional career path of promoting senior developers into middle management is so destructive. The usual critique of that model revolves around programmers often not having the kinds of skills and experiences that make good managers, and that's true. But it's also true that middle management just generally sucks as a job, regardless of who you put in it.
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  "generally sucks as a job" probably means that someone who is good at it is extremely important to a company's success.
- lemdj 12y ago
  The best-liked and most effective managers that I have worked with did not always show support for the company's decisions. Instead, they would say "we have to do this, but: (1) here is how I can make it as painless as possible for you (2) here is how we can make sure that you still achieve your personal objectives" Sometimes (depending on the sensitivity of the issue) they would also tell the team what they were doing to try and get the decision changed. I have been fortunate to work places where the higher levels of management welcomed dissenting opinions - maybe that is one of the key bits to look for when determining if a (traditionally-structured) company is a good place to be a mid-level manager.
  - sailfast 12y ago
    Agreed - I don't think that all honesty has to go out the window just because you are in a management position. Communicating decisions is one aspect, but effectively implementing them in your team is a whole other thing. Honest discussion of concerns and what can be improved is important, and as much as management likes to think their poker face is awesome, employees are smart and see straight through bullshit. Secondly, what I heard in your comment (and agree with) but don't see in the original post is anything about engaging to be an advocate for your employees up the chain, giving them an opportunity to tell you what they need, the questions they have, the things you can do. To a certain extent this might make you lonelier on the "who do I talk to?" side, but helps a great deal as a reminder of the purpose of the job.
- jtbigwoo 12y ago
  When I was a middle manager, I never had a problem implementing decisions I didn't believe in per se. Reasonable people can disagree on strategy and tactics without having to sell their souls. On the other hand, I had all kinds of problems working for upper management I didn't believe in. When I didn't trust the folks above me, it was very difficult for me to implement even fairly benign changes.
walterbell 12y ago
Leadership is lonely. There's always a boss behind the boss, even in the C-suite. Good managers can translate in all directions of a network graph, not merely from the nonlocal to the local. The Manager Tools podcast gives insight into the language and thought processes of top-down thinkers. Useful for learning how how to work within and around such structures: http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-1 http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-... & http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-2 http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-... . This should be balanced by authors like Tim Ferris, Chris Malburg (http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris-Malburg/dp/0425127346 http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris-Malburg/dp/0425127...), or your favorite historical barbarian. There's a Heinz von Foerster essay on free will within deterministic systems, "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide. Why? Simply because the decidable questions are already decided by the choice of the framework in which they are asked, and by the choice of rules of how to connect what we call "the question" with what we may take for an "answer."", http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html & http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park Complex bureacracies (academia, airlines, government, large enterprises) illustrate that thinking humans are most valuable at the boundary of system determinism. Any human who just does what the "rules" or "book" or "computer" says, will eventually be replaced by a mindless algorithm/app. But airline customer service people in First Class, or executive assistants who have worked with the same CEO for decades, or great managers - define human free will and agency, with their decision-making capacity for handling the entropy of "irregular operations". If we view large organizations as semi-deterministic programs for which we have lost the source code, how would that change our view of management?
ChuckMcM 12y ago
You need a mentor. Someone who is also a manager, you can trust implicitly, and you can talk to about your thoughts without it "getting back" to the people.
sheepmullet 12y ago
"But their advice is clear: if you are asked your opinion, you must agree with the decision, maybe stoically, but you must agree, not just concede. You must speak for the company, not for yourself." And this is why middle management is next to useless and why there have been so many cuts over the last 20 years. If you aren't honest with your direct reports then you will be seen as untrustworthy and/or clueless. Either way I'm certainly not going to feel inclined to be honest and straightforward with you.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
Learn to say "no". I have a company that I managed. In the company I was the "boss", but my boss was our customers. You need to say no to customers often. Before learning to say no life was miserable. After I did it was heaven. Learn to say reasonable noes to your customers, to your upper managers, to your partner,to your kids, and your life will be much better. Forget the advice of that stupid blog. You should not always support upper management, you are not a drone. If you work in the army and they tell you to kill every civilian inside a village, you must say no. When upper management wants to do something that is stupid and you will have to support and be responsible for it, you should say no(after you double proof that it is not you who is wrong). Get a mentor you respect and admire. Create a mastermind of the best managers you could find. You will discover management is not what you think it is(or better said, it does not have to be that way).
seasoup 12y ago
As a middle manager there will be some decisions that are yours to make, the higher you go in middle management, the more of these decisions there will be. An important part of your job is knowing which of these decisions is yours to make and not criticize people above you in the hierarchy for making decisions that they can make. Sure, push back a little before the decision is made to influence it, but once it's made you do have to back it. The key for me was to not focus on things I thought were wrong, but focus instead on the good parts of the decision. If there are no good parts of the decision and it happens too many times, may be time to move on.
Spooky23 12y ago
There's way too much black and white in the blog post and these comments here. It's more art than science. The reality is as a manager you're an influencer and leader. You also need to have personal integrity or you'll just end up depressed. If you have no ability to influence upper management, you need to work on how to connect with your boss.

59 points by platz 12y ago

ia 12y ago

totally agree. i think it's why many many many tech managers aren't technical. most truly technical people cannot put up with the cognitive dissonance required to convincingly say one thing while believing the opposite.

drderidder 12y ago

I don't like the manager / developer separation. I've had better results using lightweight strategies to let projects be more or less self-managing. Basically just creating a shared vision, giving responsibilities to people, letting them set their own goals, and then publishing to the group how those goals are progressing on a weekly basis. It doesn't take much time and people usually appreciate the communication.

smacktoward 12y ago

This post is not so much about management being lonely (though it is, at all levels) as it is about the special loneliness of middle management. If you're a top manager, a founder or C-level type, you still have to deal with loneliness (since the power you have over the people below you in the org chart inevitably crimps any relationships you form with them), but you at least get the compensating benefit of being able, to some degree, to determine your own destiny: you make decisions, the company pivots to follow them. Middle managers don't even get that; they're sandwiched between the people above them, who actually get to decide what the "company line" is, and those below them, who just have to follow it. Middle managers have to not just follow it, but enthusiastically agree with it, even if they think it's stupid or counterproductive. (Or at least they have to do so whenever the people they manage are watching.) Failure to do so, to participate eagerly in whatever fad thinking the people at the top are high on this week, is what I used to hear described when I worked on an Air Force base as "a career-limiting maneuver." And on top of that, they have to work in an environment where even the limited power they do have to make a difference can be thrown out the window at any time. All it takes is for someone higher up the food chain to take an interest in your team and suddenly all the decisions you've made start getting overridden. Their reasons for doing so can be completely arbitrary, but that doesn't matter. If you're lucky, the person doing the overriding is at least generous enough not to do that to you in front of your team. If you're lucky. This is part of the reason why the traditional career path of promoting senior developers into middle management is so destructive. The usual critique of that model revolves around programmers often not having the kinds of skills and experiences that make good managers, and that's true. But it's also true that middle management just generally sucks as a job, regardless of who you put in it.

ojbyrne 12y ago
"generally sucks as a job" probably means that someone who is good at it is extremely important to a company's success.
lemdj 12y ago
The best-liked and most effective managers that I have worked with did not always show support for the company's decisions. Instead, they would say "we have to do this, but: (1) here is how I can make it as painless as possible for you (2) here is how we can make sure that you still achieve your personal objectives" Sometimes (depending on the sensitivity of the issue) they would also tell the team what they were doing to try and get the decision changed. I have been fortunate to work places where the higher levels of management welcomed dissenting opinions - maybe that is one of the key bits to look for when determining if a (traditionally-structured) company is a good place to be a mid-level manager.
- sailfast 12y ago
  Agreed - I don't think that all honesty has to go out the window just because you are in a management position. Communicating decisions is one aspect, but effectively implementing them in your team is a whole other thing. Honest discussion of concerns and what can be improved is important, and as much as management likes to think their poker face is awesome, employees are smart and see straight through bullshit. Secondly, what I heard in your comment (and agree with) but don't see in the original post is anything about engaging to be an advocate for your employees up the chain, giving them an opportunity to tell you what they need, the questions they have, the things you can do. To a certain extent this might make you lonelier on the "who do I talk to?" side, but helps a great deal as a reminder of the purpose of the job.
jtbigwoo 12y ago
When I was a middle manager, I never had a problem implementing decisions I didn't believe in per se. Reasonable people can disagree on strategy and tactics without having to sell their souls. On the other hand, I had all kinds of problems working for upper management I didn't believe in. When I didn't trust the folks above me, it was very difficult for me to implement even fairly benign changes.

walterbell 12y ago

Leadership is lonely. There's always a boss behind the boss, even in the C-suite. Good managers can translate in all directions of a network graph, not merely from the nonlocal to the local. The Manager Tools podcast gives insight into the language and thought processes of top-down thinkers. Useful for learning how how to work within and around such structures: http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-1 http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-... & http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-2 http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-... . This should be balanced by authors like Tim Ferris, Chris Malburg (http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris-Malburg/dp/0425127346 http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris-Malburg/dp/0425127...), or your favorite historical barbarian. There's a Heinz von Foerster essay on free will within deterministic systems, "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide. Why? Simply because the decidable questions are already decided by the choice of the framework in which they are asked, and by the choice of rules of how to connect what we call "the question" with what we may take for an "answer."", http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html & http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park Complex bureacracies (academia, airlines, government, large enterprises) illustrate that thinking humans are most valuable at the boundary of system determinism. Any human who just does what the "rules" or "book" or "computer" says, will eventually be replaced by a mindless algorithm/app. But airline customer service people in First Class, or executive assistants who have worked with the same CEO for decades, or great managers - define human free will and agency, with their decision-making capacity for handling the entropy of "irregular operations". If we view large organizations as semi-deterministic programs for which we have lost the source code, how would that change our view of management?

ChuckMcM 12y ago

You need a mentor. Someone who is also a manager, you can trust implicitly, and you can talk to about your thoughts without it "getting back" to the people.

sheepmullet 12y ago

"But their advice is clear: if you are asked your opinion, you must agree with the decision, maybe stoically, but you must agree, not just concede. You must speak for the company, not for yourself." And this is why middle management is next to useless and why there have been so many cuts over the last 20 years. If you aren't honest with your direct reports then you will be seen as untrustworthy and/or clueless. Either way I'm certainly not going to feel inclined to be honest and straightforward with you.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

Learn to say "no". I have a company that I managed. In the company I was the "boss", but my boss was our customers. You need to say no to customers often. Before learning to say no life was miserable. After I did it was heaven. Learn to say reasonable noes to your customers, to your upper managers, to your partner,to your kids, and your life will be much better. Forget the advice of that stupid blog. You should not always support upper management, you are not a drone. If you work in the army and they tell you to kill every civilian inside a village, you must say no. When upper management wants to do something that is stupid and you will have to support and be responsible for it, you should say no(after you double proof that it is not you who is wrong). Get a mentor you respect and admire. Create a mastermind of the best managers you could find. You will discover management is not what you think it is(or better said, it does not have to be that way).

seasoup 12y ago

As a middle manager there will be some decisions that are yours to make, the higher you go in middle management, the more of these decisions there will be. An important part of your job is knowing which of these decisions is yours to make and not criticize people above you in the hierarchy for making decisions that they can make. Sure, push back a little before the decision is made to influence it, but once it's made you do have to back it. The key for me was to not focus on things I thought were wrong, but focus instead on the good parts of the decision. If there are no good parts of the decision and it happens too many times, may be time to move on.

Spooky23 12y ago

There's way too much black and white in the blog post and these comments here. It's more art than science. The reality is as a manager you're an influencer and leader. You also need to have personal integrity or you'll just end up depressed. If you have no ability to influence upper management, you need to work on how to connect with your boss.