Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

I have held management and non-management careers in roughly equal proportion over my career. My list would look like this:

1) believing you can dramatically change the performance of an employee -- it's very rare to save someone and less experienced managers always believe they can.

1.5) corollary to the above: not realizing the team is aware and waiting for you to fix the problem and won't thank you for taking longer to do what's necessary.

2) believing that people don't know what you're thinking -- people see you coming a mile off.

3) thinking you can wait to fix a compensation problem until the next comp review -- everyone waits too long on these.

4) believing HR when they tell you that you can't do something that's right for your team -- what they're really saying is that you have to go up the ladder until you find someone who can force them to make an exception.

5) not properly prioritizing the personal/social stuff -- at least this is my personal failing, and why ultimately management has not stuck for me.

6) believing your technical opinion matters -- I've seen way too many VP's making technical decisions that they are too far from the work to make, trust your team!

It'd be fun to see a list of these from the non-management point of view. I'd start off with the inverse of #6 above:

1) believing your technical opinion matters -- the business is what ultimately matters.

6) believing your technical opinion matters -- I've seen way too many VP's making technical decisions that they are too far from the work to make, trust your team!

This! It needs management people who understand their role as being "facilitators", rather than being "decision makers". And they are kind of rare.

In response to 1 and 1.5 the company should expend reasonable resources to support those who are struggling, and these rules are laid down in Human Resources policies (as I'm sure you know).

Management are just as bound by the rules as non-management, or should be.

Of course, "reasonable" here has a strong subjective component.

I have seen dramatic change in an individual, but it's the exception. More likely is a slow progression to dismissal. This can be handled well by management with appropriate skills, but is hard and is a often suboptimal. However it's possible that this process is a necessity in any organisation that supports its staff. Wishing it to not happen is unrealistic, and indicates naivety. Perhaps these naive, disgruntled employees are part of a larger problem?

You can't change it dramatically overnight, but you can certainly change it enough that it's worth it.

It's a boatload of work. Expect to spend as much time per week as you usually spend on 3-5 people. Then make the call if you can afford to do that. It's buying you a lot in terms of employee goodwill and team morale. (The second one only if you don't neglect the team over it, obviously :)

In our current job-hopping world, where you are lucky to even get 4 years from an employee, you can take someone from good to great, acceptable to good, or bad to acceptable in the time you work with them. Your investment should almost always be on the first two, especially because the last one is a much bigger investment of time and energy. Keep in mind many times what you're fighting is not just lack of experience or some other easily fixable thing, you're fighting personality traits the person has had for years, and will continue to have (to a lesser degree) even if you _do_ "fix" things.

It is one of my signals of inexperienced management that they believe they can/should take on this sort of challenge.

Yeah, ~10 years as a manager (and 30 in the industry) is not a lot of experience. But it's enough to know that "focus on the stars" mostly aims at making the managers life easier - anybody can manage a team of great performers.

Of course it's a judgment call. Some things, you cannot fix. But some things, you can, and the cost of doing so is much less than rehiring. Good management means making those judgment calls, not just saying "meh, I don't care about low performers, too much work".

Maybe, just maybe, that's a tiny part of the reason people on my team seem to stay longer than 4 years. Because we don't just treat them as disposable cogs.

I'd be happy to discuss over a beer. I don't believe there are any hard and fast rules in life, and I've tried to help people more than once in my career (currently I do it in a non-management capacity which is arguably harder). But I think we can agree some situations aren't going to be saved. Good management is knowing how hard to try and when to stop.

Oh and an addendum: the error bar for inexperienced managers is way too far in the "this is fine" direction.

That, I'm not debating. Rule of thumb for new managers: Assume the world is on fire, just in case ;)

Always happy to discuss things over a beer. (Well, I'll have white wine, if you don't mind ;)

And yes, not every situation is salvageable. Alas. Knowing when to stop is why I'm in favor of having a defined process well before you come to the "change, or else" part. That prevents the sad effect that your bar shifts as you collect reports, just because you've got more things to do.

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