Why are there so many bad bosses?
freakonomics.com
freakonomics.com
My dad has also always refused managerial responsibilities, but he was very much appreciated at his company. He said he had nobody below him and only one person above him, and he made more money than his boss (until his boss was replaced and the new boss gave himself a raise so he made more). My dad did get responsibility for all sorts of projects, just not for the people on those projects. And he has always remained very hands-on, sometimes replacing an entire team on his own.
It's basically what I want, but a lot of companies are apparently structured too rigidly to allow this.
Sorry, I just needed to vent.
we're calling it "advanced professional", and has 3 levels, the highest being equivalent to the leader of a function, if you're familiar with the domain / function / specialty paradigm. This is essentially a director level individual contributor which I think is a pretty cool.
We're just a medium sized services company (localization, AI training data production, digital marketing). so if we're doing this I expect a lot of people will be soon enough.
They get in the way majority of the time. They try to make decisions for their own self interests rather than empowering their teams to make the best ones possible. They don't say no to things, but rather use it as yet another opportunity for a "quick win". They get offended easily and have fragile egos with blunt feedback. Literally the opposite of every characteristics of a "good manager".
Many people in these roles are classic examples of narcissism and nepotism. Nobody has ever humbled them before or questioned their confidence that can easily be seen as an authority figure in most developer teams. I'm sad to be saying this, but I don't think many developers stand their own ground against these types of people and they should. Teams should be able to vote out their bad managers because it is so apparent on certain teams that there's a bad manager.
Even with decent managers on a team, you still hardly get anything meaningful done. You can spend years on things that have little to no impact externally, but will be praised internally because of the "hard work" done even at the cost of morale and questioning ICs saying "why are we still doing this?". Good managers should see through this bullshit and get the team to self-direct course by talking to everyone and getting a sentiment for a new common vision.
Bonus: Steve Jobs thinking most managers are bozos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo
There are also these ridiculous dynamics to the system that a new incompetent manager can burn a department to the ground and then get another promotion for rebuilding the department to 25% of what it was before they burned it down.
What is missing is a type of null hypothesis to judge the manager against. Would the department actually be better off if we paid them to watch Netflix?
This is probably something deep in human nature though when it comes to money and business because it is almost the definition of Keynes animal spirits. A spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction. We just don't like the idea of inaction when it comes to business and money.
In my experience, a lack of spine, a sturdy gaslight, a talent for office politics, and and utter lack of care of the people beneath you is what's conducive to a successful career in management. The majority of managers I encountered had these attributes, and built successful careers on them, while ignoring real world concerns and frustrations to the point they literally had no idea what the people under them did exactly.
Conversely, the people that did care, that pushed back against unfair expectations, that did champion meaningful change were not as apt at playing office politics and often drew the short straw when a shakeup happened.
I could list numerous horrible archetypes, but the most common one I encountered was the Yes Man - when upper management comes up with a new idea, he nods eagerly and pushes it down the throats of the team members, ignoring their protests, and when the idea inevitably fails, he blames the team for not being enthusiastic enough. When his bosses move the deadline forward, he gives the thumbs up, then tells the team that they are going to have to work just that much harder.
His bosses love him since they feel that this guy 'gets' it, it's a joy to work with him, when other middle managers grumble at their ideas, he just jumps into action, this guy is a real go-getter, clearly has potential.
> JOHNSON: For me, this is where the idea of splitting out those levels of seniority — so maybe you don’t become the manager, but you become a technical expert and you are paid and rewarded for that — is something that helps with the incentives. What I would say on that, though, is often we have this dual-career track of, “Okay, you can be a manager, or you can be a technical specialist.” But even though you might get a quote-unquote promotion and be paid more, the technical specialists still might be excluded from high-level conversations. [...]
Being an IC, I usually find out about a technical direction that arose out of management discussions and by the time I hear about it it's usually too far along to change course of, and have to watch it play out. At best it's a learning experience, that can refine the next attempt. Other times it's a rabbit-hole with no light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately this usually happens on other projects, but sometimes I join a project mid-way and there's redesign that happens along the way, or banked for v2. This is a symptom of a top-down style of company management. A more technically managed company with former engineers all the way to the CEO are less likely to be this way. Unfortunately as even those companies grow, and more layers of management are added, not every link in the chains can be so-minded and there's a disconnect.
I hear you. Not only that. In our case - even if by regulation expert track and managerial track should be seen and compensated the same I know that lots of managers not only are compensated in the upper quartiles of the distribution, while experts overwhelmingly are compensated in the lower rungs. No managers also are fast tracked more easily for promotions making the factual gap even wider.
I know of executives that ensure, that experts are always one level below respective managers, even if they should be on the same hierarchical level.
To an employee, a good manager kinda makes it feel like everything would be fine with the manager not there. And a good team could probably operate without a manager for a while. Until it comes time to write reviews or do other HR related things like filtering resumes, etc.
To me a bad manager is one that actually makes things more complicated. Once you have some experience under your belt you tend to see managers that add friction, unnecessary process and are more in it to feel the power and control. While others are adding lube to the system and making problems/friction disappear.
I agree that there are teams that miss the experience to see when crap is being shoveled out of their way by their manager. And I envy them, as they never had to endure a shitty one.
But from experience I would say that doesn't last long. Sadly.
now - how many great engineering managers have you come across? i mean really great, not just OK. not just barely acceptable. great - you'd want to work for. you'd quit if they left level great. in my case 2-3.
you think engineering is hard? engineering management is the rarest skill there is
I’d look to the armed forces for an alternative set of models.
So if you really want to promote an engineer to management, don't promote the engineers who knows everything and does everything, because they're going to micromanage everybody. Promote the engineer that asks a lot and listens a lot.
Very Very True. This is the main thing that matters, everything else is secondary. "Trust" implies that you "Respect and Recognize" them as "Intelligent Decision-making Individuals" and that's what one's ego needs to do their best.
Above all else, they must be nice and demonstrate a large capacity for empathy.
At the end of the day, their job is to get their team to efficiently get work done. Regardless of method used, fear,micromanagement and threats as a proverbial stick with your salary serving as the carrot, that never works.
Anyone can manage, but a good manager must be a leader. They must have the capacity to inspire their workers to want to excel in their work. For certain team types (like retail, manual labor, call centers,etc...) you can get away with a nasty task master yelling "the beatings will continue until morale improves" because your workers perform repetitive and simple tasks with critical thinking and creativity not being part of the job.
Lastly, I hope everyone tries to introspect and find out who you are and if you would make a good manager/leader. I have, and I am confident I will make a terrible manager (one of the many reasons being I would simply hate it!). I can't help thinking with the bad managers I have had to work with: Do they really lack self-awareness that much? Is their management not able to see their mess?
A theory I have is: There are two types of manangers, the first type will make excellent top or bottom level management, the second kind are great middle managers. I can't help wonder if some of the bad managers I have run into would make good middle managers and they're put there until a position opens up or something.
I’ve managed teams where the devs just wanted to be left alone to build things and they were skilled enough to manage their own career growth, which made my job as a manager very easy.
I’ve also managed teams where, before I took over, the devs had consistently been lied to by the organization leadership, hadn’t been given the work that would grow their skills and confidence, and needed constant coaching and a platform to vent. This team didn’t want to “be left alone to do their job”. This was a very hard management job.
Your comment suggests that you’ve only experienced the first case of being a manager, which may be why you strongly disagree with the other comment.
>Engineers are difficult people to manage.
This is an atrocious blanket judgement if i ever saw one. And was quite rightly called out for it. I too have argued elsewhere that most Managers are only too eager to blame the Engineers when they themselves are clueless/incompetent.
All the negative tropes like a) Engineers are socially inept b) Engineers are difficult c) Engineers do not understand Business etc. etc. need to die. For too long has "Management" ascribed to themselves all the virtues/wisdom of Business and treated "Engineering" as "Simple Workers" who need to be "Managed".
Otherwise the team will never come close to benefitting from very much of the whole members' combined abilities.
Outstanding qualifications and productivity will find a way to be successful even with a bozo executive, and it will be OK for shareholders, some may even think it's the best thing they've ever seen.
Little did they know the possibilities that could have been if there was a leader who could have actually herded the valued cats into the happy pastures where they could really spread out.
What the manager should be doing is aligning the direction of higher-ups and developers. This takes being able to clearly understand and communicate interests and needs two-ways.
As an IC I've always been vocal about the technical needs of product or platform development as it grows and expands capabilities. There's no chance higher-ups would know these things without being exposed to situations as they develop. At the same time I have to learn about the longer-term product direction and how to sequence development, and in particular research that can uncover the unknown unknowns heading in that direction. I'm lucky to have access to information and background that lets me make good guesses. This is the kind of process that the manager should be creating and refining.
The problem is that too many 'technical' managers behave as middle managers, merely allocating developers to teams by skillset (or worse title Sr/Jr Frontend/Backend) to projects picked by product managers and let project managers try to make it work. Instead of remembering all those times as an engineer that a timely refactor would have saved the company so much money and pain and getting key ones 'in the books', they take the easy route agreeing with the hand that feeds and only aim to satisfy one side's requirements without trying to fully understand the other's.
Sounds like a happy path but what happens when things go wrong?
If all engineers needed to do their jobs was for someone to leave them alone and let them do what they wanted there wouldn't really be a need for managers.
Delegate responsibility, Clarify deliverables, Request regular progress reports but at the same time give them the Freedom and Autonomy to do their job their own way.
Relevant Reading:
1) A radical article from HBR, First, Let’s Fire All the Managers : https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers
2) Speech by Dave Packard to HP Managers (1960) - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-... (this is one of my favourites)
3) Also see the book Why we do what we do: Understanding Self-motivation by Edward Deci for insights.
>So sick of this attitude.
I think you are proving his point.
- approval of your manager
- approval of your engineers
- approval of your customers on things your team has delivered
- correcting course set by upper-management
- communicating high-level directions to engineers
- communicating and getting action on issues raised by engineers to higher-ups
- levelling up your engineers and team
- likeliness of promotion in title or compensation
- anything else important that I didn't list
My experience is different: engineers are quite comfortable to manage. What makes management hard is the whole (office) politics with respect to your management career and the managers above you.
I.e. business/law/finance used to run the world for centuries, suddenly technology talent is valued, but the old power structure doesn’t know how to keep these people a peg below where they ‘belong’. Spending more money, and being the ‘boss’ of people will be ‘valued’ by the ōld-ˈɡärd more than technology chops for many years to come.
Forcing people who want to have more of an impact and be paid more into ‘boss’ like rolls is a causality of this old power structure being challenged.
Programming is also about knowing rules; just different kinds of rules.
Getting promoted to an EM position is one thing. Getting good at it is... very hard, and requires new skills. There's very little in your day to day job as an engineer that prepares you to become a good EM.
One can both be a bad EM and become a good one.
The key questions are:
- Does the person have a growth mindset?
- Is the environment helping the new EM grow?
It's like a prisoner asking, "Why are there so many bad prison guards?. They tell me where to go and what to do. If I get out of line they use increasingly coercive tactics to bring me back into line and if it gets too bad they ostracize me and put me into a box."
That prison guard is probably going to get an award for prison guard of the month and a small bonus. Bad for you, good for someone else.
A bad engineer simply does not deliver. In a way, the product provides feedback to the engineer by not working.
But providing feedback to a bad manager from below rarely ends well. So people work around them.
Jerks are motivated to climb the ranks and willing to climb over you.
I'm originally from the Detroit area. Naturally you have lots of factory mentality. Wherein workers will not work unless you're standing behind them whipping them. Largely speaking unions got very strong because these middle managers live and die by metrics they themselves dont control and can become brutal to their workers. Like for a long time you couldn't go to the washroom while at work. So what would people do? They took a dump right there on the job.
Somehow this is how managers are trained; and this is how you're expected to operate as a manager. Doesnt matter if you're white collar or any other collar. Your manager is expected and actively trained to micromanage you as often as possible. Your manager will come by hourly or so and look at or ask you what you're working on. They'll often input how you're doing it wrong... even if they have absolutely no chance of knowing how to do it properly. The bikeshedding becomes extreme. It mostly demotivates people to be responsible for everything and often 1 person ends up responsible for everything and that person takes all the heat from the manager.