Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?

36 pointsblahman221 comments

This thread seemed pretty successful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15033156 . Let's see what the impressions on the other side are.

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Being stupid about compensation was a pattern when I was managing.

Want people to be happy? Give them no benefits, no health care, no 401K, no bonuses, and plow all of that into salary. People would rather have bragging rights about how much they make. Doesn't matter if you point out that they get a bigger package when the employer pays the health care (if the employee pays then they pay with after tax money).

It is mind blowing to realize that people that are way smarter than me are stupid about money. But I've definitely seen that pattern.

I ignored what they wanted and gave them good health care, did 2:1 match into their 401K, and did bonuses so we didn't get double taxed (corporate and personal).

In a decade or so, when they are scanning their investment portfolio and see their fat 401(k) or they are expecting their second child, they'll (quite justifiably) thank you, ex post, but at the moment, they probably just think you're a cheap bastard and/or that you're trying to screw them over somehow.

no good deed goes unpunished--sigh

This might speak to the cost of education. When you're so far in debt, you don't think twice about not putting money into a 401k, health care you don't need, etc because of crippling student loans.

I have a friend who took a 1099 job over a W2 job because "they offered more money". I tried to explain that because he is now paying a higher payroll tax he's earning less per hour than the other job.

He doesn't get it though. "The other company was offering X. This one is offering 5% more."

He also doesn't have PTO, 401k, or medical insurance.

Yeah, this is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. How can you be a brilliant engineer and make this sort of mistake?

I was trying to hire a very senior guy from Sun and we didn't get him because our salary offer was lower than Sun's but the package was better than Sun's. This guy was a distinguished engineer (equal to a director in the management track). We wanted him for VP of engineering, he was smart, good people person, got stuff done. But couldn't add up all the things in a package.

Just weird.

This is interesting. Can this be thought of as the flip side of matt_s' second point[0]:

>Thinking that pure technical merit of an idea will magically sell it to me (manager) and above.

This, being the flip side, can be formulated as:

"Thinking that pure managerial merit of an idea will magically sell it to me (managéè)[1] and below/lateral".

I'm at my first job. Every time I'm asked to make a presentation I invariably ask: "Who's the audience?". I'm an Electronics Engineer by training, so my eliciting question came because I think of "impedance matching", an expression that's often used but seldom appreciated for what it really is. The first sentence of the Wikipedia entry is clear and concise:

> In electronics, impedance matching is the practice of designing the input impedance of an electrical load or the output impedance of its corresponding signal source to maximize the power transfer or minimize signal reflection from the load.

Controlling the input impedance of the load (my interlocutor) is out of my control as far as I know. Controlling the output impedance of the source (me) is within my control, so this is where I start. It's also wonderful that doing this effort reveals gaping holes in my implementation sometimes.

What's your opinion on that? (that's it the flip side of the same problem of an Engineer who complains management doesn't "get it", as someone who's been in both roles)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15047382

[1]: Not an actual word but I just love how content written in English uses French words with accents in all the wrong places. In case you're wondering about the order, I didn't use èé because it looks like an angry frowning dude and I aimed for dumbfounded, which is exactly what éè looks like.

I use the phrase "that's an impedance mismatch" all the time. Software guy who has done some hardware stuff. I use it in the context of humans: "Sending $ENGINEER to do that job is an impedance mismatch, they'll screw it up". Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it.

On "is it the flip side of the same problem of an Engineer who complains management doesn't get it" I'm not seeing it. I mean, maybe, but management usually gets it in my experience. It's a much more rare event to see a manager not understand all of the costs of doing something, that's a big part of their job. So maybe it's the flip side but it's just not that common (in my experience, I've had mostly good managers).

Here's maybe why I don't see it: I see good engineers screw up on the money stuff all the time, it's very common. I very rarely see good managers "not get it". In the engineer, it's like a blind spot, it's not because they are stupid. When managers don't get it it is usually a sign they aren't a good manager. So to be the flip side, you'd have to have good managers not getting it and I believe that's uncommon.

> Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it.

Yeah, love those concepts that lend themselves well to other systems (signal to noise ratio, inertia, etc).

What I meant, I may have "packaged" my message clumsily, was the following: is an Engineer's duty, in the context of their job, to package "technical" information for the manager not the flip side of the manager's duty to package "managerial" information for the Engineer.

The Engineer complains that management doesn't get "obvious technical" information the same way management complains an Engineer doesn't get "obvious management" information, which might cause mutual disdain, and ~°we all know°~ it's easier to have disdain for people with questionable hygiene and appearance, so there's that.

I guess an Engineer's struggle with money stuff is really the same as the inability of someone to solve a Physics problem: one needs to have the data in the right dimensions, the laws that apply to them, and know how to apply them. Then practice doing so.

An Engineer's inability to "get money stuff" is one or more of the above missing (cash vs cash flow for figures of the right dimension, for example), knowing the rules to apply to money, and then the practice of applying them.

I dunno. It seems more weird to me that the engineer, um, "engineer" as in good at math, good at seeing a whole system, doesn't apply those skills to their own compensation package.

It would be a whole lot less weird to me if we were talking about, I dunno, anyone who isn't good at systems/math.

It's just a big blind spot, at least it is in the USA. I don't get it.

It should be the case.. Then again, there's the "conjunction fallacy"[0]. There's the case where the staggering majority of participants who were trained in probability got the test wrong.

Anyway, thanks for the input. Fascinating how we function.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

Side-stepping management and complaining to the HR department. The HR department's job is to protect and side with the company. Often enough they will call or email the manager asking "what's going on with employee XY" and sometimes even forward the full complaint email to management. Unless there's serious misconduct (e.g. sexual harassment, fraud) expect little privacy.

Assuming that leaders are promoted to mangement first and then they lead rather than they lead first and then they are promoted to management.

That meetings are an open mic comedy venue.

If people you manage are consistently making the same mistakes... I think that reflects back on the manager more than the individuals.

Thinking more broadly - I think a very positive behavior in employees is actively seeking and integrating feedback. Many people have a mindset where feedback comes to them. Being proactive on this front can be be really transformative.

I read a few comments on the other thread. So much of the output fall's on management's shoulder to clarify, motivate, and inspire.

Thinking over my stint at running a few teams, so long as we hired well, there was literally nothing I could complain about, but there were infinitely many more shortcomings I could see in myself.

This one will be harder since you have had to manage people to get some anecdotes. Its much easier (and fun) to poke fun at management. I used to manage people, doing SW engineering now and enjoying the "freedom".

* Assuming that the I (as a mgr) am in charge of their career. As a manager I can coach you but you have to have some sort of goal other than "be employed". Take some initiative.

* Thinking that pure technical merit of an idea will magically sell it to me (manager) and above.

* Under estimating the effort to get something complete.

* Not talking to people. If you go back n forth a couple times via email or chat and can't resolve something, talk in person. Before you complain to me about another person or team, please have at least talked to them first.

The one that I've seen and mostly righted is them thinking that the direction of their career is my or the companies responsibilities. It's not, but I still drive them and advocate for them to grow on behalf of the company. I tell them that if they find themselves in a different environment, they might find a company or manager that cares about them and their growth. They must find ways to be self driven and drive their growth and keep learning. Learning only during projects is not enough, one must step ahead of the pack or get left behind.

It's also their responsibility to leave for a better opportunity if they can't advance their career at their current job. It's the manager's responsibility to try to retain good talent.

Absolutely, but most managers and company care only about getting the current job at hand done even st the expense of nurturing and growing their employees

Not running the tests before checking code in.

(Disclaimer: I don't actually manage them. I'm kind of a lead, but nothing more.)

You simply need a gated check-in.

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