Boss is 90% of the 'Employee Experience' | Hacker News Reader

Boss is 90% of the 'Employee Experience'

linkedin.com

242 pointsmooreds56 comments

This is so true in my experience. I've had the same boss for about 15 years. He is awesome. He is the main reason I've stayed in the same department for so long. He works really hard to make sure we have the tools we need for our jobs and that we aren't bothered by things going on outside of our department. He makes it so easy to just get our jobs done.

I have friends who work in other departments at the company who complain so bitterly about their managers. They are constantly looking for new jobs.

Do you have any examples of specific things this awesome manager does? I want to be the best that I can as a new manager.

Highly recommend to start here: https://www.manager-tools.com/map-of-the-universe#1186

The manager tools "hall of fame podcasts".

The manager tools podcast gives you actionable advice on being a good manager.

Based on the fundamental idea that what defines a good manager is 2 things: Results and Retention.

the manager tools concepts revolve around 4 key activities and principles.

1. one on ones 2. coaching 3. feedback 4. delegation

Focusing on these builds trust, facilitates mentor ship, builds an environment for improvement, and asking for more.

The crux is that one-on-ones are a set format they they advocate that put's the focus on the direct report.

Not him, but good bosses I had listened what people said and treated people fairly even when they did not liked them. The latter also means that people who criticize things are not retaliated against in any way.

Note that listening does not mean agreeing nor doing exactly what employee said. It does not even mean trusting it all, because people do lie or make mistakes. It means that they knew what was said, thought about it, checked and verified it and allowed it to change their opinions based on result of said check.

The technical aspects like delegation, task assignment and general organization pretty much follows and are dependent on listening.

Meanwhile, the boss who did not listened to people ended up with mess, because she ended up not knowing what is going on and solving non-existing problems (while ignoring real ones).

Imagine how transformative it would be if there was a reliable way to share/report your amazing bosses in a way that can’t be gamed. In a parallel universe, LinkedIn would perform this function. (Instead of being a cesspool for narcissists, recruiter replicants, superficial pr hype and desperate pleas for “connection”).

This has been my experience as well. I just left a company after only six months because my boss was the most hellish micromanager I've ever encountered in my almost 30-year career. I asked him repeatedly to just give me a list of what he wanted done and leave me alone to do it, but he insisted on being a hinderance and causing all kinds of technical debt.

I told H.R. during my exit interview that working for my boss was like having Tilman Fertitta, the owner of the Houston Rockets, run out on the court every five minutes to stop the game and show his professional players how to dribble correctly. It was absolutely ridiculous!

I don't know why companies keep micromanagers around. They don't help and in many was detract from the company's success. If nothing else, they drive talented employees, who know they don't have to put up with that shit, out of the company.

I started a job at a new company about 6 months ago after a stressful 20 months at my first real engineering job. I didn't know that I had one of these 'bad managers' until I had a good one. The difference between a manager that knows what they want, and know the product/environment over a manager that simply knows what they want in very broad strokes is staggering.

All the good managers I've had share some characteristics: they don't micro manage, they tell you exactly what they want, they don't try and be your best friend and clearly establish themselves as a boss so you can honestly deal with each other, they are proactive so aren't waiting around for us to tell them we may be late, they can see for themselves delivery will be late well in advance, and they take responsibility for failure instead of trying to sell out everybody underneath them. It's always refreshing to deal with an honest manager that recognizes they hold the power. The wannabe best friend managers weasel around and are manipulative, a cancer in your team.

As an engineer, all the good managers I've had have had their hands in the tech in the present or the past. Really confuses me why companies hire externally for managers working directly with engineering. Knowing the tech makes a huge difference in managing expectations.

Because Engineering and Management are a completely different skill set, so most Engineers do not make good Managers.

It is true that engineering and management are a different skill set. However, why is it that we simply throw people into being managers, while we realize that even after 4 years of training and engineer is still highly inexperienced.

Management is a skill, and it can be taught. Why does nobody do so?

In a lot of places you do. One starts as a team lead, (which is kind of a journeyman manager where you can defer to the real manager) then might move to managing a subteam of 1-3 people, and then on to a full team.

But being an engineer (or at least a recent one) is a key part of engineering management. My favorite article about that:

https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pe...

The trouble is that managers with non technical background do not make good managers either. It is not like they would have some awesome impressive track record.

Most engineers don't make good managers until they get some good mentoring or training. They're not unmixable skills and it's not impossible for an engineer to become a good manager with time and dedication to that craft.

I completely agree most engineers suck at it though but I think that's because most companies promote engineers into management for lack of a better career path.

I'm not sure that's specific to engineering; I think most people in general might not make good managers

Then again, this can really make your manager suck too. If they have the “I’m a developer!” attitude but haven’t actually done any programming for a decade, they’ll waste a ton of your time with their outdated ideas rather than just being your manager.

Some examples?

Agree on all these points except I’d elaborate. I’ve seen managers go from good to bad by not realizing a key difference between management of junior and senior engineers. For junior teams you want a manager who tells you what they want, clearly, as you said. However with senior engineers the manager needs to ask their reports what to do. Key difference! You tell junior people what to do but you _ask_ experienced people what to do. That’s the only way to benefit from their experience.

It's also a good idea to pick the brains of your junior and mid-level people, you never know when they have some information that might change your plans. If they spend all day working on a single component and you spend all day in meetings, they are virtually guaranteed to know a lot you don't - the only remaining question is whether or not something they know impacts your plans, and the only way to know is to be proactive.

It's easy to get into an uncomfortable situation where a superior gives an order and it falls on a junior to slam the entire team's brakes because something they know was overlooked.

they tell you exactly what they want

Let me turn this around. I've run R&D at my startup for six years now. The #1 thing that sets apart a star engineer from an average one is the ability to work successfully during situations of incomplete information.

In other words, the star engineer already knows what to do, without me having to provide all the detail.

The subpar engineer is paralyzed by ambiguity; the excellent one thrives in it (provided the problem or objective is well defined).

If you're an R&D manager, you likely have much more latitude to rely on subordinates and not know what you want.

At my current company, I've had two managers in the 10 months I've been there. Neither of them has directly been a big part of my employee experience, which has been great and is certainly to their (and the company leadership's) credit.

As a developer in a scrum team in a scaled agile organization, my team gets technical guidance from a software architect, organizational guidance from a scrum master, and the purpose of our work is to support the product for which we get guidance from a product owner. So there isn't as much left over for our boss, who checks in on us regularly to listen to our concerns. It's certainly less stressful that the people who tell us what to do have no direct power over us, and that they trust us to figure out how to get things done.

Of course the real test comes from how they handle problems when things go wrong, but it's been a good 10 months so far.

I can somewhat understand that you like that the people who tell you what to do don't have power over you. But doesn't that imply that people that you don't work with much have power over you? Is that better?

Good point. I've noticed that risk, but it hasn't been a problem so far. Maybe it's not much different from the risk most developers have from being less familiar to their boss's boss and higher ups.

As a society we've conditioned people that when your manager or someone in authority "asks" you to do something, it's not really a question. I think when that particular power dynamic doesn't exist, people are more willing to push back, question priorities or outright say no.

Having the wisdom to let well enough alone - to be available if needed, offer guidance when prudent, and otherwise trust in your professional judgment as a team and focus on other behind-the-scenes stuff - _is_ your boss being a big part of your employee experience. That's what it looks like.

Now the big question: what determines how your boss behaves. You can bet that it's not just how nice or competent she is. She also has a boss, etc.

So your boss is someone who really affects your well being, but it's not completely down to her what work environment she can provide to you. Recognition, rewards, projects - employees perceive it's all down to their boss. It's not.

Similar attribution fallacy as when CEOs of successful companies are found amazing, insightful, etc.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, this explains why the bad habits or choices of a CEO tend to percolate down through the organization.

But your boss doesn't have to cave. My boss has no problem pushing back at his hire ups and has straight out refused to do things (at the risk of his own job) because he knew it would negatively affect us. He is a terrific manager.

Yeah I think about that when I see good boss/bad boss discussions - all of the properties that people attribute to “good bosses” are ones that only people who are secure in their own jobs can exhibit. If your boss is just as worried as you are about getting the axe next time cutbacks are made, he’s going to be covering his ass, too.

A good boss is a good boss because they know how to treat people well. They're not going to throw their people under a bus because it is advantageous to their career. Outside of completely disfunctional organisations most bosses can do a lot to insulate their people from their management chain.

I would agree. I don’t work for companies, I work for managers. It’s constantly repeated on the Manager Tools podcast that as a manager, you are the company to your reports.

The hard part about this is that you may not know your manager, especially when beginning a career.

If you are interviewing, make sure you talk to the manager who you will report to! It's such a crucial part of the job experience.

I've only listened to the 'one to ones' part of the Manager Tools podcast, but that was so useful.

Why wouldn’t you know your manager at the beginning of your career? You still would be interviewing with the hiring manager at most companies wouldn’t you?

But at the beginning of your career you really don’t have too much leverage.

At this point in my career, I’m really picky. I don’t work for non technical managers who aren’t a semi recent developer. It gets tiring trying to explain the reasons for doing things or explaining the complexity of something to non technical managers. But, also at this point in my career, even if I’m officially just an individual contributor, companies don’t hire me at my asking salary (not SV salaries by any means) just because they need a warm body who can develop a feature in yet another software as a service CRUD app. They are hiring me to bring higher level architectural experience to the team.

On the other hand, if I am being hired as a contractor (not consultant) as just staff augmentation, I do whatever job they are paying me for, submit my hours and go home.

If I am coming in as an overpriced “digital transformation consultant” or “cloud consultant”, I will talk the language of business and start talking about Gardner Magic Squares, and levels of the cloud maturity models, etc.

For my walmart automotive job, the automotive manager actually did part of the interview, which was nice.

You might be careful about that last paragraph. Many people would expect you to know that it was “Gartner magic quadrants”.

Yeah I was being sarcastic. I haven’t had to talk about Gartner (stupid autocorrect did it again). I have had to talk about the cloud maturity model and mention my certifications (which were stupidly easy and don’t prove anything).

> Why wouldn’t you know your manager at the beginning of your career?

Sorry, I was I'm. Of course you can know your manager when just starting out. You'll probably get 1-4 hours of interaction with them over the interview process (and if you don't meet them, it's probably a company you don't want to work for).

But that level of data pales in comparison to what folks who have been around for a while have. They have a number of advantages:

* Not first job, so can compare data points, and make better judgements based on that limited amount of manager access

* May have worked with the hiring manager in the past (possible)

* May have worked with someone else at the company who can give them the inside scoop (more likely)

This is not true for a lot of organizations though.It’s not rare for people to effectively have multiple “bosses” that switch depending on what you’re doing.

For instance a product/project manager is effectively a boss to you in that they have the strongest influence in what you will doing. These PMs might not properly represent all the stakeholders and you end up dealing with other departments project sponsors as well.

Then there’s an actual direct manager who can influence your whole career, you can have to deal with your manager’s manager on specific missions or tasks, especially if you are yourself in line to become a manager.

It becomes a mess, but that’s the reality for a lot of people I think.

I think that I don't work for companies or managers, but clients. I'm director level at a consulting biz where basically no one on a project team is directly above me, but the client (or our client services team) can still kinda boss me around because they pay the fees. My actual manager runs tech for the company and she doesn't ever really do project work anymore because there's too much management and biz dev going on. I haven't even spoken to her one on one in like 2 months and it's great. I know what she wants to see (successful deliveries and inbound sales) and I know when I need to go find her to defuse some issue. Or I handle it myself. It's salutary neglect.

"Boss is 90% of employee experience" was only true for 1 of my 4 employers so far (across 20 years).

Now the bosses are great but I hate the nature of my job deeply and sincerely. Maintenance and bugfixing, only reward after tormented patching of a pile of crap is more piles of crap coming up.

Is there a reason you haven't left for greener pastures?

This IS the greener pasture.

I'm not quite to your level of distaste for your job, but I absolutely empathize. I don't know if this is the case for you or not, but I don't find any joy in software; I just happen to be good enough at it and it pays well. What has worked for me is largely pulling a minor Peter Gibbons from Office Space: work hard enough to not be a drag on my team, but no more. I go to work to make money, not make more work for myself by spinning on a treadmill.

I've had terrible, great, and mediocre bosses too. The phenomenon that gets me most is why so many of the terrible ones clearly have destructive personality disorders. If you have your own page in the DSM, the damage you can do to the organization as an individual contributor is limited, but you can do 100x more damage as a manager. And many of these people are very good at convincing people above them in the organization that they are wonderful.

I wish it were standard procedure in organizations to give full psychiatric evaluations to all manager candidates prior to promotion so that at least the psychopaths, narcissists, and sexual predators could be weeded out ahead of time.

In 6 years of working in sf tech I can’t say I’ve had a good manager yet. It’s maddening.

What was the average age/tenure of your managers?

Well, it is harder to go back to a bad manager after you have had a good one.

Or you might just not like any managers.

Excerpt:

"The insightful and interesting role model bosses were amazing. They were people who inspired me to come to work. Every day I was learning something new about a business or a tool from their experience. They saw strategy and complex issues with clarity. I was often humbled in their presence and felt the need to work harder to keep up with their example. Quite often these leaders were pleasant, had a sense of humor and yet knew how to get the job done. They knew how to listen, and they knew what to ask. Several of them are some of the smartest people I've ever met."

I would argue it is not just your immediate superior. It's all the people above him as well. I had an amazing boss when I look back but he never was able to protect me from the incredible toxic crap at all levels above him.

In fact, I would argue it's not really your boss but the average of the bosses above you, or even the maximum of the worst boss in the chain.

Absolutely true. Treat your employees right and they'll return it.

between 90 and 100% (it depends if you get fired or not)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com