It's easier to manage four people than one
staysaasy.com
staysaasy.com
I spoke my grievances to the owner who listened with open ears, but he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. I appreciated his honesty, and started job hunting immediately. I only worked under that senior dev for 7 months.
When I get there, the guy had already written one page of the app, and he did it by doing System.out.println in the servlet for ALL THE HTML. In other words, he didn't use JSP templates at all.
System.out.println("<html>"); System.out.println("<head>"); System.out.println("<title>This janky ass code</title>");
I looked at that abomination and said, "This isn't JSP at all...." He rambled on about sometimes in a project, we just need to get things done with the tools we knew, etc. etc.
I went to our boss and told him I wasn't learning JSP, which was the mandate of the company back then. He just kind of smirked and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Ken. He knows programming, though, blah blah blah."
2nd worse boss I ever had, the dev was a lunatic, and that company was a joke.
Guy was a trip. So many stories about that guy, many of them very disturbing. Even worst was the manager that let him get away with that shit. These were the days when technical managers weren't a thing. He had an accounting degree and he managed engineers. I, a junior dev, spent about 40% of my time explaining basic things to the guy.
Joke of a company.
This is not a senior developer, this is a [bad] intern who has two months of experience 60 times. Although now I see you have senior dev in quotes and maybe that's why!
I've met a couple. Often they are more irritating than harmful, but one was the tech founder of the company. That was probably the worst work experience I have ever had.
This is what lead me to leave what was otherwise one of the most fulfilling jobs I’d ever had working as an engineer for a B Corp that provided tech consulting exclusively to non-profits humanitarian organizations.
Loved the mission, appreciated the leadership team, but absolutely loathed the this one developer on my team. So did the rest of the team.
Guy went through a divorce and became the worst kind of person imaginable. The engineering director suddenly retired due to a life-threatening medical condition, and this fella made it his mission to usurp as much power as he could. Pretty soon people started leaving the company because of the guy, leaving me and the other juniors as the only people behind.
Guess who was made the new engineering director. His code was fine and performant but he was an absolutely miserable, awful, truly rage-filled person but those open ears when anyone tried reporting up just happened to be attached to the same body that would shrug and point to his seniority and tenure as a means to not do anything about it.
He’s still there. I can see his picture on the company about page to this day. Everyone else is smiling jovially and he’s literally, actually, I’m not kidding you scowling at the camera.
And I’m still remiss because aside from that and that alone, I really enjoyed what I was doing there.
And long term, when this affects the company negatively -- maybe they don't care? What if they're in it for the money and status (they had nice sounding job titles?).
Seems like possibly rational "leadership" to me :-(
The dev needed peace of mind and job security. To do as little work/thinking as possible at the stable pay.
They kinda found each other and it was working just fine for both of them.
Then you came into play, bringing more work to the dev at the same pay, if he agreed with you. Had the company owner taken your side, he would likely lose the senior dev, and lose you in a couple of months once you get everything working and decide to move on (I doubt you would be happy with the kind of work the previous dev was doing).
Generally people put a part time job on the back burner and focus on the main full time job.
Just speaking from experience.
For the person working it, both sides often expect priority or "more" than 50%.
When someone wants to 50/50 me, I tell them, 51/49 is fine. But there must be a clear priority when there's a conflict.
Strangely, when I do this, the urge to 50/50 me usually goes away. I have nothing against working 2-4 projects. But there must be clear priorities, or I must be able to set them.
The only time this can work if the person knows their work really well and can do it in their sleep. Otherwise the context switches are way too much for most people.
50+50% but each week it's clear what the priority is? And fewer task switches
(But I guess most of the time it s better to focus on one & finish it first)
While I can "come by" managing just one person (cutting the managerial corners), for 4 persons I need to organize myself more efficient.
And if "people" was only the manager in question that would be somewhat okay, but usually it's the reporting chain above of that person that thinks the same too.
I made the mistake of accepting to manage an intern (not mentor, manage) once, and I was expected to do 100% of my normal job on top of managing him. It takes an unbelievable amount of time.
I refuse to do it again / anymore.
I've been asking for contractor's actual working hours before assuming a 9-5 time schedule in their timezone, then looking at actual working hours of overlap. But no matter what, I absolutely require 3-4 hours of overlap a day. I'm DONE with the one round-trip communication per day routine.
Our team in central EU and second team in US. 8h difference. We learn about everything last and have nothing to say. One sync on manager level per day. Cant get anything done well.
Already filled papers to quit.
Everything is asynchronous, flat hierarchy, only seniors hired as freelancers though, so quite autonomous people. Two dev syncs per week, fine if you skip one for whatever reason. One single manager for 10 people. It works quite well.
For me this is remote working done mostly well.
I see arguments for essentially the same problems from the article:
- Managers aren't reliant on the feedback or success of individual reports. >80% of people will always give positive feedback. - Managers don't give feedback or help resolve problems. It's effort on their part with no upside. - We're all still isolated because there is no consistent team. - No one has context. Managers can't understand 10+ projects.
I solve problems by working with my project managers. But mostly, I can deal with the customer myself when it comes to tactical issues.
If you're ever assigned to manage a single person, it's better to go big picture and wonder if this is a reasonable way to run a company (imo). If a single person is working on a project that requires oversight that person should be senior enough to "manage themselves". If they are too junior, the team should be bigger (because it's important enough to require oversight). If it's oversight due to legal issues that's fine but then the management can be hands of and should basically spot check that everything is following said legal requirements.
At least that's my humble opinion. I treat one on one manager to technical role relations as an organizational smell.
But yes, its absolutely an anti-pattern, because as you've pointed out junior hires do need more oversight and help. I've rarely seen the situation work out.
Thankfully, I was relieved of managerial duties shortly there after. I had only agreed to manage in the first place because we were a team of 12 with one manager, and that was too many reports, so half the team got to manage the other half, and my initial report was self-sufficient (well, we kind of all were), add some new hires and report moves and manager:report numbers got better.
I have never had this experience in my entire professional career.
How does one arrive at such a privileged and pampered existence? Like... they treat you with dignity and respect? What sort of war crimes do I need to commit to get this kind of job?
An even more challenging situation that I've seen since is the 1-1-1 management system (manager manages 1 person, who in turn manages another). When that arises, you really need to fix it as soon as possible, either by rearranging, or hiring people to spread the number of reports.
Anyway, thanks for all the great content.
(thankfully joking)
Thanks for reading! We've definitely made our share of mistakes too, but Stay SaaSy has been a helpful way to organize the thousands of tips that we've learned across many stages of growth. Really glad that you've found it helpful!
Nothing gets done, everyone gets blamed.
I just don't get the why. I guess it is some career driven insanity, everyone wants to be a manager.
Short story: RTO in pandemic due to executive fiat, team revolts, HR fires everyone, I quit two weeks later.
The job I held towards the start of the pandemic, I had been there for almost four years. The CEO and a Director at the company directly asked me to join the 120+ person company. I jumped ship because the job paid way under market rate (game development, natch), I was working really long hours with a hellish commute and the company laid off about 40% of its workforce at the start of the pandemic so it could control costs. I wasn't going to stick around to find out if I was next. There were other problems with that company, but this is going to get long without any extra asides.
I walked out of that job straight into my next one. I got hired on as Lead Firmware Engineer, and I was hired as full-time remote, that was explicitly in my contract. The job paid just below market rate, but we're three months in to the pandemic, the work sounded interesting and a friend, who was a head of a division at the BigCorp, directly reached out to me and asked explicitly for help because we had worked on previous projects together and he knew my abilities.
So this job, I was lead engineer of a team of a dozen developers which we grew to around 19 over the course of about four months. The higher ups decided that there would be no cost of living increases for anybody below the level of director and all bonuses would go unpaid for anybody below the level of director for the next N quarters, meanwhile the company posted two most profitable quarters in its very long life and was well on its way to a third.
In June of 2021 it came down the pipe from the higher ups that everyone was to RTO on July 15th. No exceptions. Don't care what your contract says. We didn't even have a decent vaccine at that point. Most of my team, and the two other teams in my division said "Hell no" and lodged formal complaints. I did not. Within two days everybody (about 80 people) had one-on-ones with a very nice lady from HR and a director, and I log in on Thursday morning to find out they had fired everybody who had said "No." I was left with one developer on my team. The other two teams were left in similar numbers. The only reason I didn't get fired was because I would have a claim against the company for breach because it said in my contract "permanent remote." The environment was mired in process - I had 19 standing meetings per week and was still expected to get 30 or 40 hours of software development done. There was a reason they needed help. Management believed that in one of the hottest job markets in industry in history that they could fire all the dissenting software developers and just rehire new teams at below market rates with required in-office presence. I also went from having two direct managers and a team of 19 developers below me to five direct managers and one developer below me. Hell on Earth. I had been there a little over a year by that point. 14 months or so? I'd have to check my LinkedIn. The past few years have been a bit of a blur. Checked. Almost 17 months.
My friend, the director, came to me and said "But you're going to stick around, right?" I jumped two weeks later. The BigCorp closed the entire division and laid off any remaining staff. My friend went to Google. I had lunch with him just the other week where he probed about needing some help.
I jumped to a start-up, whereby a friend, who was CTO, said "we could really use your help." I had offers from six companies, one included a FAANG, that all paid well above market rate. I spent a while happily working at the start-up, but it was stressful, it was long hours (I logged several back-to-back weeks of 110 hours per week), but there's a big recession coming, funding is getting cut left & right, including ours. I wasn't willing to do 90+ hours per week every week but they kept demanding it, and I was burning out, this company is at least two years away from shipping a hardware product with no revenue and VCs tightening their belts. We decided to part ways after 9 months.
And now I am at a new start-up. My last job hunt was three casual conversations with three companies, lasting a total of three hours that resulted in three solid offers of around a quarter of a million base compensation each. The start-up is less than a year old. We've got an ARR of around $2M+ and enough runway for the next three years. I've been there two months, they just gave me a 10% raise. I work exactly 40 hours a week and I don't turn my computer on over the weekend. Everybody's happy with my output and productivity. I spend time in my workshop on the weekends building furniture and enjoying my Summer.
It's not that I am a bad employee. My "interviews" usually consist of "This is our company, this is how much we will pay you, when can you start?" The interview is almost always a casual conversation over coffee, and then an offer is made.
But sometimes...
Sometimes I pick shit companies to work for.
really appreciated the time you spent with us and hope you keep up with the insightful, concise advice!
I've always been confused about the terrible reputation of "stack ranking" for roughly this reason. What other kind of ranking is there?
You can rate people according to metrics that have been established for the task they're doing, but the nature of software is that when a task has been done once it doesn't need to be done again.
incoherent angry mumbling
There are tasks you can conceivably determine some thresholds:
You pick up 10 bushels of apples a day, you "meet expectations". You pick up 15, you "Exceed expectations". You pick up 5, you "need to improve".
But again, I will make an argument that these are curved as well, it's just that curving was done previously and on large data sets.
You can establish seemingly absolute criteria in software - from seemingly hard numbers (line of code, programs deployed, tickets closed, IRs in prod after deployment, etc) to softer numbers (are your comments good, is your code maintainable, etc). But again... how do you come up with these numbers? Either you make them up, in which case they'll have to be adjusted based on reality of your actual developers, or they're based on previous experience, in which case it's the reality and curve of previous developers.
> But again, I will make an argument that these are curved as well, it's just that curving was done previously and on large data sets.
Yes, that's what I was saying. But that doesn't work in software because the job cannot be standardized (or rather, to the extent that the job can be standardized, it can also be immediately automated and therefore ceases requiring any employees).
So what happens is the manager throws up his hands and evaluates you based on intangibles; how nice you are to him. How many people complain/praise you. How much friction people assign to working with you. All vague and all completely orthogonal to your true performance and value to an organization.
As contributors figure this out (usually around year 5 or earlier unless they're socially clueless), they learn how to game this as well. "Managing up." Promoting themselves whenever possible, deflecting blame, avoiding risky projects that could tarnish a reputation, and for those with a Machiavellian mindset, sabotage coworkers.
And while some managers might be able to detect this behavior, most in my experience don't. Most enjoy the flattery, and since they're usually not technical, or not versed in current technology, defer to whomever sounds the most authoritative.
This, in my experience, almost never happens. Companies just assume you know how to be a good manager. They shouldn't make that assumption even for experienced hires, especially if they're looking to establish a specific culture.
I am not trying to be argumentative. But there are a lot of arguments in this thread basically going straight past each other
My two cents are
- user proxy (product manager)
- standards enforcer (linter)
- resource gatherer (arguing for resources from other managers)
- political actor / representative
- mentor / coach
Now, most of not all of these are also things everyone says one should do for one's own career.
I am just wondering, what do most managers bring to the table other than neat hierarchy drawings? Is it basically a nice coach like role?
How much power should a coach have?
Nobody knew what anyone was doing. The lead was stretched too thin. One project would flounder while he focused on managing the others. It was just a mess.
It didn't help there was some low performers on the team constantly slacking off but that was part of the problem room lead wasn't seeing these problems.
I have a peace lily and despite my best efforts to kill it through neglect, it is still here almost 4 years later, kicking and thriving.
It survived being not watered for over a month, overwatered, cut in half [1] and being left outside in near-freezing temperatures accidentally for a week or so.
1. Cutting it half is actually the preferred propagation method, so it wasn't an intentional way to harm the plant.
their point was they love them to death. in my house, i prefer to keep fish because they do well with lots of attention. i don't keep the plants because i would over-water (over-love) and then kill them :( this is all half-joke, half-serious.
Think about it like if a small company’s accounting department grows to need two people. One position being above the other in the org chart is fine, but don’t expect much stratification in the roles. They’re basically splitting the work but one person is also representing/responsible for the department to the rest of the company.
Accounting is an easy example, because it's pretty clearly an isolated discipline. It's also possible that there is specialization that needs a 1-over-1 managerial relationship elsewhere in org chart. But it runs more risk of being a ladder-climber taking their first step and cocking it up by acting like there is a non-trivial amount of stratification between them and their report.
Personal anecdote: I have done it twice as a manager and had great experience and collaboration both of the times (at least this is my take in both of them). The key is to not see yourself as a manager but more like a mentor and equal contributor to the projects. It also requires great communication skills and openness, as well as taking as many opportunities for new projects and cross team collaborations as possible, in order to not alienate the team as well as make the direct report feel that he can grow with you. Of course it happened that no bad experiences or bad hires happened in both my cases, but tbh i suspect the consequences would be small as small team usually means small projects. I have seen worse cases from bad hires, or bad collaborators in larger teams and way larger projects, which can also deteriorate the morale in more people and teams.
I own a 4 person company. That is how we work. My clients talk to me (and sometimes my report -we don't isolate) I talk to my report about internal stuff and he decides if his report should be involved. Highly productive.
The truth becomes more clear in later in both individuals professional journey. I can look back early in my career and realize I had a terrible 1:1 manager, but thought it was me. I can also look back on a time I managed an employee 1:1 and recognize where I could have been better.
Sometimes you don't have a choice.
Next most common situation is that someone wants to be a manager, and the company wants to support that purely for career or employee happiness reasons. This is where you're more likely to end up in an awkward situation.