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While I do think the manager bears the vast majority of the responsibility in situations like these, the reality is that you're right, and oftentimes managers do a bad job because they're getting pressured from above to communicate and don't know what to do.

You can often get them on your side by giving them a plan that makes them feel like they're in control (again, totally not your responsibility! But better than dealing with them being obnoxious constantly). If they ask for an update and you say, "I don't know what's wrong, but we're looking into it" then they don't know what to do. If you tell them "I don't know what's wrong, but right now we're investigating x because we suspect that's the source of the issue. I'm checking the logs and other engineer is trying to recreate the issue in a clean environment. Unfortunately I don't have a good answer as to how long it'll take, but we'll update you either when we've learned something useful or in two hours, whichever is sooner," then they have something to say to the people above them and they understand when they'll get an update, so they don't need to bother you.

A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure.

> A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure.

What they really need is to find a different job. Needing to "manage up" is the ultimate waste of resources IMO and puts a lot of stress on the employees, why even have a manager at that point.

While I tend to agree with you, this doesn't look like anything actionable.

I've even tried it by saying something like: "I get the impression you don't really enjoy your job" and getting a response something like "no, I hate it, I hate trying to manage people", and then suggesting the look at job ads.

Nothing has changed since.

I agree, and to make matters worse, IME managers of managers tend to be very apathetic of their reports and don't have the same kind of scrutiny of the folks under them that they expect those same people to have of their reports. So the people that shouldn't be managing others don't really have a "check" above them to confirm it, especially if they're good at deflecting blame/sacrificing their reports.

I'm a big advocate for no confidence votes from reports to signal to someone that this person needs to go.

Right, circular logic. If I have to manage my manager, can I just manage myself?

I think more often than not what they need is training - I tend to see this kind of thing in people who were promoted from IC to manager but never actually trained for the job.

A manager can definitely be helpful in this situation - a good one will be a barrier between you and whoever is above them, credibly telling those people that the best thing to do is leave you alone.

And what's their managers' excuse, then?

Strong disagree. Managing up is an increasingly necessary and valuable skill, the further in your career you progress.

I never said it's an unnecessary skill. My point is that having to do it should be a red flag for dysfunctional leadership.

That doesn't seem fair to me. An example from my job—we had a SEV 0 incident, and an _extremely_ important partners was calling our CTO directly to find out details, estimated time to resolution, etc. Being able to clearly articulate the problem at the CTO → 3rd party level in a way is a pretty important example of managing up in my opinion.

Re-read the post you have been commenting on and point out where it says that managment isn't important.

What that post said is in fact that managment can be so important that it can't be left to people who are bad at it.

Huh? Maybe your comment was aimed elsewhere in the thread; I never said management isn't important. I responded simply and directly to this comment:

> Needing to "manage up" is the ultimate waste of resources... why even have a manager at that point.

This kind of blanket refusal to engage meaningfully with one's manager and provide upward feedback creates a vicious cycle that compounds the problem.

(PoV based on 25y in the industry, spanning startups and enterprises, in IC and managerial roles incl VP.)

> I don't know what's wrong, but right now we're investigating x because we suspect that's the source of the issue. I'm checking the logs and other engineer is trying to recreate the issue in a clean environment. Unfortunately I don't have a good answer as to how long it'll take, but we'll update you either when we've learned something useful or in two hours, whichever is sooner,

Just don't get too specific, especially with even a bit technically inclined ones, because they will have ideas to help and bother tech people to check their random guesses when trying to be helpful

People in management have a wide spectrum of technical proficiency and to imply that someone in a management position could not legitimately help reeks of inexperience.

Experience varies. No doubt some can help and there are better companies but there are often those that can't as well. There's a side where all the managers / decision makers are so far removed they don't even know what the tech we use on a day to day basis is.

We must have different experiences. I’d expect someone with more experience to lean towards management not being able to legitimately help (with a technical issue).

It doesn't matter, it's not their job. They weren't hired to perform that job, they don't perform that job daily, and so they can and should leave the people who's job it is too do it.

Part of the job is to unblock their teams. Sometimes that's achieved by their own technical knowledge, sometimes by coaching, sometimes by coordination with other teams/resources. It's very situational.

I obviously did not written that to encompass every single manager in the world

> and to imply that someone in a management position could not legitimately help reeks of inexperience.

You reek illiteracy at best, purposeful misunderstanding to have a fight at worst

30+ years of experience here. 8+ years of successful management experience:

9 out of 10 managers I have ever worked with were incompetent.

are you saying the employee should propose a plan of action to control their boss?

I'm reading your post and it sounds like you're trying to heard cattle

Obviously yes? You know what needs to be done to fix the issue, you simply need to communicate upwards that it’s in check. A certain amount of herding is to be expected.

> You can often get them on your side by giving them a plan that makes them feel like they're in control

Only if they hear you. Had one that's too focused on the pressure from above that my advice is being totally ignored.

that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them

Communication is a two-way street. Proactively calling a meeting with all those involved to understand the situation and then letting the team get on with their work is 100% a managerial skill, not a function of the seniority of the engineers.

My knee-jerk reaction is to offer a riposte of additional data demonstrating it really was about the managers. But I think you've got a valuable and generalizable point here. I'm going to reflect a bit on that.

You know what's difficult? Looking back at a younger self and being truly critical. Gosh, it's so easy to just say, "yeah well his employment future at that company proves my point." But then I learn nothing else that I can grow from.

Having that knee-jerk reaction in the first place is something you want to lose ASAP.

> > Every 40-60 mins wanting to check with the ~3 engineers working on the issue for an update

> I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa.

I get that sometimes it's not (only) the manager's fault if there is no trust, but if as a manager you need a status update every 40 minutes while the people are fire fighting and working on an incident, I feel like you failed as a manager.

I feel like there's a good and bad way to do this at the same interval. Of course it depends on the situation as well and what you say, but when I'm dealing with an actual emergency, I can't imagine not posting an update every hour or so. Usually much more as a way of documenting what's happening for a later PIR.

If a manager doesn't get the required details to know what's happening (I'm situations where they do and still ignore it), then the whole process could use an improvement.

From my SRE perspective, if an incident takes longer than 30min, I want my manager/coordinator to be constantly updated and handle communication with the rest of the company/customers.

I’ve been that SRE senior manager in some longer-than-ideal outages.

One of my biggest roles was chasing off the lookie-loos and fending off the VPs and CIO (usually by telling them to GTFO of the war room but then going to give them an update away from the team with what we knew and what I thought).

Usually there’s a primary and a secondary. One person handles the actual debugging and the other handles the communication and coordinating. While I agree it’s poor management to ask for an update every few minutes, it’s not because asking for an update is bad, rather because they themselves failed to communicate and train their employees to properly handle communication. Looking back, this was something we did in our team when I was just <2 years out of college. I was the secondary and posted updated to the tickets and emailed the team every 30 minutes. I was also the one calling in people to help when primary needed help. My manager didn’t bother us because he had already clearly laid out how we handle issues of each severity and who does what. It was also clear what the chain of escalation was and who and how to reach out. Incidentally, it was also my job to close the issue by identifying the cause and fixing the issue from recurring - because the secondary was only observing and communicating they get to see the bigger picture and also a welcome break for the person working hard to fix the issue.

Learnt a lot by working with a team that knew how to handle themselves. And we weren’t SRE - just regular devs. This manager - my very first one - has also been the best one I’ve ever had. I wasn’t surprised at all when he quickly scaled the ladder and is doing really well for himself now.

> In every situation a manager is only ever as effective as the information they have, and that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them.

So much true in these words

> I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. Building up that trust by getting both sides to work on improving comms fixes a ton of problems.

Sometimes it's beyond that. The problem can be layers up where neither the manager nor the rest of the team can solve. The team wants changes / improvements but the manager is powerless or forced to act in a certain way.