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Comment by cdevs | Hacker News Reader

I was recently a lead developer and asked to manage the team by the team. I noticed running the team can't be generalized in one size fits all, some people just want clear descriptions of projects to work and and some people want to over engineer and make a 1 day thing a 2 month job no matter how you say it should be done. Problem is how do you handle a engineer that says something can't be done in 2 hours? Well so far I have sat down with them and showed them it can be done in 2 hours, beyond that argue with me enough and I may be forced to rethink your employment. It hasn't come to that yet. most of the room follows my instructions and we are kicking butt, there's a small part of the room that wants to be dramatic about everything, their computer isn't good enough "needs 64 gigs of ram for their command line", the tools aren't good enough etc etc - basically they have management envy and that's my only struggle right now.

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>most of the room follows my instructions

Be aware that this works only because you were technical lead of the project and recently active in a hands on capacity. It will likely fail you once you are on a new project that you don't know technically and your skills are years out of date. So learn to find, trust and nurture the experts on your team instead.

We're no google but I have lead the software department on techical decisions and scaling for the past 3 years as the company/startup tripled in growth. We are a tiny power rangers sized team, I probably just have angst in my comment as there is one particular employee who was recently hired before me stepping on that goes left when I "and everyone else on the team" says go right.

You sound more like someone who let a modicum of authority go to his head and projects a lot than a good manager, here. It might work now because you're directly familiar with the inner workings of this project, but you can't expect that in general.

To be honest im a passive aggressive push over, I believe in jumping in, failing early and finishing early, I asked if i could have my job back of just throwing head phones on and working but the ceo says EVERYONE is happy with me and he likes the processes im putting in place unfortunately I spend my weekday drives thinking about how to deal with a certain someone on my team who wants to act like he is ALSO manager and thats sort of why this article/blog triggered me.

Not particularly directed at you, but it's certainly a dichotomy in that managers are the only ones responsible for "rethinking another's employment". I'm curious to know how often you would consider reflecting on / rethinking your own employment?

I say this because I was recently hired to work on a project where managers are obviously the only ones responsible for deciding how a developer should function within the organization. It is obvious the state of the project is anything but healthy at the moment. Attrition rates are astronomical and the code is beyond ugly in a lot of cases.

"rethinking employment" was a clever way of "firing someone who cannot take direction".

If you're suggesting a manager sometimes needs to self-reflect, sure, but a good manager does eventually have to make the call that someone isn't up to snuff.

There are several people in my department who probably should be "rethought" or let go, but management is too soft to make the call. It's actually more harmful to several, who could easily move on to other roles.

This is a much longer story than I jotted down on my phone as a comment, also a tiny mutli million dollar startup but after the mostly negative comments I recieved on this post I'm starting to think there is easily a phsycological US vs THEM mentality between devs and management. I miss being able to complain, I still did the work but there was something magical about us banning together to complain about horrible management & lack of leadership. If you're going to fuss about a comment about firing and if you havent noticed some weak links at your other jobs then most likely youve been the weak link and to be fair thats fine when your job or title fits you appropriately but im talking about someone making double or triple the guy busting his butt, i was the busting his butt guy and im looking out for the rest of those guys. Theres one of many reasons I didn't go into a software job for the government.

A lead developer is certainly not a manager and is in no position to rethink someone's employment. A lead developer can lead and guide, and generally make technical decisions, but must do so with humility and respect. I've been a lead developer and have never used my "authority" to dictate what people do, but that's just my style.

Whatever your job title might be if you are the eyes and ears that generate feedback for the CEO and other management teams what are your ways of leading and guiding a lazy employee? Software developers or not it seems like as soon as everyone gets a degree they forget that we can still have toxic people in our field that slip through the hiring process and just bring everyones day down. When I say I would let someone go I mean I would suggest it and only after many attempts of me and the rest of the team trying to get through to them which seems pretty standard to me. I'd rather not work in a corporate place where I'm forced to work under or over negative people without options. Though I'm sure I come off as a typical grumpy jerk online I have to deal with being a passive aggressive person at work and I have noticed that has led to a employee or two attempting to take advantage of my hospitality and I end up working crazy hours to get things done for releases because I'm not the type of person to demand you stay late or work weekends. Everyone under me has a laid back job, I would also have a laid back job if I swapped one bad egg with a good egg or rebranded his position. I feel bad for the guys destroying work left and right while this other employee wants a red carpet laid at his feet every week to write a line of code. Maybe the 10x programmer doesn't exist but people who read about silicon valley and think free cupcakes and energy drinks should be everywhere certainly do.

Honestly you sound like you want to be dramatic about everything.

A certain quote or just trolling by?

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