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Comment by OldGuyInTheClub | Hacker News Reader

I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.

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The best managers I've worked with don't do much of that stuff. They do use the cliches and obfuscation, but only upwards. They talk to the team in the team's language. As for the crap coming down from the leaders, if anything, the best quality in a manager is understanding what is crap and what's actually useful, and deflecting the crap stuff before it gets anywhere.

This is something I learned in management that I think also made me a better engineer. It's important to be able to code switch on the fly. Shift your whole persona to fit in with the group with which you're immediately dealing, and be able to translate things into their own language. Then go to the next group and immediately morph to fit their culture. Rinse & repeat.

> The best managers I've worked with don't do much of that stuff. They do use the cliches and obfuscation, but only upwards. They talk to the team in the team's language.

It's not a big consolation because, esp. in larger organizations, managers spend most time speaking to other managers, not to their team.

This isn't particularly different from any leadership role, even technical ones. To some extent, you have to own decisions you had say in making. If you just whine about upper management or their decisions, you demoralize your team. So, you have to do the opposite: cheerlead for the new status quo. Depressed people aren't going to get any work done. The situation you disagree with probably has no real day to day consequences. So you have to be positive about it. I guess you could quit if you really feel strongly, but in this economy? It would have to be more than a tooling decision you didn't agree with.

Matrixed organization: I had a functional (provide people to slots) role and separately a program management role (build and deliver mission-critical hardware with a completely different set of people.) I couldn't cheerlead a bunch of Ph.Ds in my functional role about the lack of raises, rising cost of healthcare for ever lowered coverage, perpetual layoffs, and ever-thickening bureaucracy. Similarly I couldn't lie to high performing technical staff on the program that the cutbacks in equipment, facilities, and training along with increased "oversight" by non-technical chumps were in their and the product's best interests. When you lie to good technical people, they will never trust you again and they will tell other good technical people. Without that trust, nothing good gets built.

I decided to put together the best team possible for the program and keep the nonsense away from them. The hardest part was realizing I would not be an intellectual force but rather the bozo deflector. We succeeded but bozos have thin skins and long memories. At that time, I gave up all management roles and went back to being a technical guy looking for technical growth. This was over a dozen years ago and it has been difficult as technical work gets more and more offloaded but I'll never accept another management role again.

This was one of the hardest things for me as a manager too. You have to own the company’s message to your reports (and others) even if you disagree with it or don’t know how it came to be.

> You have to own the company’s message to your reports (and others) even if you disagree with it or don’t know how it came to be.

Why?

In the one bit of company management training I got, the company lawyer explained: As a manager, you represent the company and its interests 24/7. You can try to help an employee but only so far as it doesn't affect the company's bottom line.

There was a lot more and it was eye-opening.

When the company lawyer is teaching management how to manage, the company culture has lost all positive vitality. As a first-line manager, my reports and my boss understand that my job is to align in both directions. We're in this together. At times I have to help our team understand that they need to make some sacrifice for the sake of the business, and at times I have to help my management understand that the business needs to make some sacrifice for the sake of the team members.

I'm trying to build a culture of loyalty where we take care of each other and where people can stay and continue growing for a decade or more. The day my management tells me the company's bottom line matters more than the people who deliver that bottom line is the day I'm out the door, and my team with me if I can swing it.

Others have flagged the legal obstacles. More practically, not doing so can affect your own perceived performance and career trajectory. There's also the problem that reports don't take the following message very well: "you're getting screwed. It's not my fault. It's the system."

There's a reason I said this was in the past. I felt like you had to become dead inside to succeed.

Good managers I had did not pretended orders from up above are their own nor that they agree with them. They just told us to do it anyway, but validated our concerns.

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