Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

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A basic podcast that I’ve found useful is Manager Tooks. It contains a lot of good habits and tools. Listen to it on your commute for a month or two and you’ll get the gist of it.

The Effective Executive by Drucker is a great intro to leadership. He puts the role in the context of getting results.

A couple other thoughts:

1 - Communicate the same message over and over. Do it verbally and in writing.

2 - Have weekly 1 on 1s with all your reports. They should own the first 20 mins. You own the last 10. Take notes.

3 - Make sure Meeting notes go out for every meeting.

4 - Talent is your job, not HRs. It’s up to you to hire and train the good, and nudge out the bad.

5 - Assume you only get your best people for 1-2 years. Plan for succession.

6 - A good relationship is “My top 20% will work for me again” and not “Everyone is my buddy”

7 - Be careful about off work socializing. If you go to a happy hour with subordinates, disappear after the first round. Don’t make these events mandatory.

8 - Keep performance discussions between you and your reports. Don’t belittle anyone to their peers.

I will second the podcast recommendation. I listened to it religiously when I first started in management and I continued its suggestions with modification until I went back to development. It was a great crutch to lean on until I got my bearings:

https://www.manager-tools.com/

Weekly 1 on 1s with all reports is not useful or feasible. If you have 8 reports that's 10% of your work week swallowed.

I did weekly 1 on 1s with 8 direct reports. I made them all on the same day and I didn't budget them for an hour each. I found it extremely valuable and I left it up to the employee to drive the meeting. If they needed to cancel the 1:1, then that was fine but I never would without rescheduling. It really reinforces that people are #1.

This is all Manager Tools basics. I think it's the best set of guidelines they offer. (The Hard Thing about Hard Things also emphasizes weekly 1:1s as does Managing Humans.)

Exactly. It’s best if they’re prescheduled. That way they can be moved but not accidentally forgotten.

I try to spread mine between slower days.

Welcome to managing a team of eight people.

Even if it takes 50% of your time, this is like coding for a dev - it's your primary job and you can't skip it. Andy Grove had a rule of thumb on how much time to spend on what in his book High Output Management. Summary here: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/high-output-management/

More than that when you consider the To Dos and followups. That’s why it’s hard to stay active as an individual contributor when you have a large team.

If you don’t invest the time in advance, you pay it more with fighting fires later.

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