Some mistakes I made as a new manager

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it.

This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but like.. can we be more specific here?

The other side to this is - don't ask for feedback if you don't plan to action any of it. I worked for a guy who must have read a book that told him to ask for feedback, but he was so rigid that he would vehemently defend against any feedback he was given. Not like personal stuff either, but structure/length/schedule of meetings, standups, etc.

The "strong ideas loosely held" type guys need to be careful when they become management, because while it may work with peers (if they also love arguing), it doesn't work with a power imbalance. All your "strong ideas" will become "permanently held", congrats.

> ANGSTING INSTEAD OF ASKING

This is a great way of describing one of my biggest peeves in the office: So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication.

There’s a related dysfunction where managers are (wrongly) convinced that they must answer every question in the most positive and upbeat way possible. I had to leave a company once because my manager was frustrated with many people, including me, but he was too nice to actually explain what he thought we were doing wrong. He thought it was best to try to gently encourage us with hints and rhetorical questions and vague allusions to what he was actually thinking, but when you’d ask him for a direct answer he’d switch to “everything’s great” mode. The faux positivity turned into toxic positivity and destroyed morale across the team.

> You upset them so deeply that they respond by unleashing the incredibly vicious-yet-perceptive tirade that they’ve been stewing on since the incident, reducing you to tears. Congratulations on hiring someone in the bottom ~2% of professionalism? At least your conscience can be clean at this point I guess.

"Well your reaction was bad, so it doesn't matter what I did"

This sort of discounts what the manager did to piss the person off, and if it's a recurring thing. A tirade isn't usually the first response. Maybe consider that you've overlooked some cues leading up to it.

I particularly liked the "managing the wrong amount". I hate being micromanaged. So I told myself when I could manage people that I would not micromanage them. Big mistake, some people need more of a guiding hand. One glaring missing point from this though that I would add is "don't think because you are a manager people will listen to you or respect you". You still have to earn that kind of relationship with people and a lot of people think they can do better than you if they had your title.

This sounds like the words of an a good manager, simply because of the healthy amount of self-doubt. It’s a strange status quo that management is something you’re expected to handle simply from experience as an IC, which is absolutely not a guarantee. The predictable result is that only those with great mentors or willing to self-learn the hard way actually become good, after much trial and error. It’s unfortunate and borderline insulting to genuinely good leaders to say that popularity, company loyalty and/or domain experience is enough. So we end up with what we select for.

Otoh, what ICs often overlook is that managers often lack the hard and soft power to manage effectively, which of course is a leadership problem in itself. I’ve had well-meaning managers who still were bad for me because they didn’t have enough influence or respect in the greater org. Just like with engineering, even the best can’t do a great job if they are unable to access the right tools.

The article reminded me that I don't understand what managers are for :-) Especially if a manager is in fact a software engineer promoted to that role. The promotion likely occurs because a) the person is good at being a developer, and b) the manager's position is better paid than his previous one. Which combines a perverse incentive (of course anyone would like a raise) with a completely different set of responsibilities that the person hasn't been trained for.

I do like the ideas coming out of scrum, some of which would fit well with what the author is describing.

For example, the anecdote about a junior engineer struggling with documentation for a new feature sounded like an opportunity for pairing with a more knowledgeable team member, and talking through the feature while planning the documentation for it. When the author said that he instead would write a design doc and the engineer would implement it, he was not acting as a manager, but rather as a software engineer.

As another example, the author talks about planning the work, which, in a scrum environment, would involve a product owner (someone from the business side), and the rest of the team, to collectively identify and plan the next set of features. In a (sprint) review, the team, together with other interested parties, can inspect their progress and talk about the roadmap (something that the author is trying to do on his own).

I understand the purpose of senior software engineers, or of a product owner. Of a manager, not that much.

Using Twitter likes as a "thing to make you feel good about yourself" might give you a short term dopamine rush, but probably leads to long term unhappiness IMO.

I've been managing teams for 16 years, I think it's actually really beneficial to stay hands on in lead or director roles. After that it's usually not possible given the work load. It improves team alignment, you can evaluate people's work better, understand their issues better and help level them up.

Some of the companies that promoted the hands-off style of management, like Twilio are currently really struggling. Datadog is a great example of a more hands on approach and they are crushing it. If tech is more core to a company, people should stay hands on.

Wow. the level of mistrust and fear shown by reactions here is ... at least I am not alone :-)

We (most of us) live in democracies with clear rules of law and strong defence of individual rights.

But we work in feudal hierarchies with arbitrary rules and love by whim of the powerful.

I think that's the first thing to chnage rather than hoping the training middle management to be "better communicators" will improve things. Would Britain still have a colony in the US if we had handled that Tea situation better?

Some experiments to try:

- executive management (C-suite) to be elected annually by all FT employees voting anonymously.

- annual project plans (do we build a new CRM or do we fix the existing one) again voted for by employees (one is referendum one is representative elections?)

- stop remote working. I am fairly convinced the best most effective e means to build software is to put the right developers in the same room as the right business owners and let them fix it. Every step away from that, each time the business owner has to go to a different project, the time zones mean that a daily stand up is communication, every step back is a cut in efficiency. just stop it

I'm a new manager and am facing a conundrum over a supposed super star who joined my team but, at least from what I can tell, is far and away the least productive member of my team. Any ideas?

I spent some time as a manager and decided I'd never do it again. Many of the places I've worked and observed have directors, principals, architects etc who've never been a manager, and do not include managerial experience as a component of hiring for those roles, so I personally have moved on from thinking it's a required step in the Path to Engineer Leadership. In my experience (a decade, many companies including multiple consultancies) Manager is very directly a "Middle Manager" type position. Meaning, mostly, there is no leadership or autonomy but instead a position derived purely from all the administrative "did you do your job" type checks and balances. "Did you update Jira", "Did you respond to Steve", "Are you stuck?" Everywhere I've worked, the actual "software" or "engineering" components of "Engineering Manager" are handled by someone else.

I am glad I spent the time, though, as I have a much better understanding of workplace politics and interpersonal scheming. Telling someone something specific that is also almost-untrue, just so they get out of your business. Having different narratives for different units of work, depending of who's asking. The ridiculous concept of "dotted line managers". The process was pretty illuminating, both in terms of how unnecessary most workplace hierarchies are and how low the bar can be for individual contributor competency.

After writing all of this, I think it'd be easy to say "Well this person just did a terrible job as a manager", but I received extremely positive reviews from both my reports and my superiors. Once I gave up trying to do a "good" job and just kind of let the ridiculousness flow, everything improved dramatically (on paper; my mental health plummeted).

This has turned into a bit of a rant, and I suppose I apologize in advance for what turned into kind of a scathing venting.

The author seems to have a lot on his plate. One way to improve the situation is to delegate more technical leadership work, such as code and design reviews, to principal engineers and rely on them keep you appraised.

I worked as a manager for the past year and fell into a lot of traps this article describes. I've realised that managing people isn't for me and I'm moving onto a technical role but I've gained a lot of respect for engineering managers. It really is a tough job that I think many commenters on here don't fully appreciate.

Thanks to the author.

This resonated with me.

It was helpful to see here a couple of the same issues I grappled with (to know "I'm not crazy"): feedback loops, prioritization / importance, communication.

On the topic of the dreaded Micro-Management, I read recently somewhere, "better to micro-manage than to not manage at all". That also resonated.

This is a good article, and matches my experience and my mistakes :)

I would argue that the workload part ("delegate or drop what you can't do") is not ideal tho.

IMHO your default should be to delegate, and only do what the rest of your team can't do, or what you can do much more efficiently (e.g. manage a tricky stakeholder, gather information at the management level).

If you were an IC promoted to management you likely were good at delivering and proactive but this will bite back when you're a manager, cause your instinct is that you can do all that you were doing before, plus whatever your old manager was doing.

Taking the default stance that your team can handle things on their own helps with preventing the "I'm in the middle of the road" issue and at the same time reduce your risk of burning out.

Reading that article really makes me never want to go back to being a manager. It was almost everything I disliked and found stressful about the job. That I don't really understand why others find being a manager appealing is probably the best sign that it's not for me.

This is a really good post. As someone with very similar challenges and situation, I found it highly relevant and a very useful read.

Only thing I'd have to modify for myself is .... "made as a new manager" => "continue to struggle with after 10 years".

Most of this advice applies to non-managers too. Even "staying on the critical path" is not entirely manager-specific. Line employees also sometimes stay on the critical path when they shouldn't.

I recommend experienced engineers dip their toes into management to see if it's the right career path for you. But make sure that you're able to back out if you hate it, which is a very likely outcome.

That’s a nice looking site…

Does anyone know a low-effort way of making something similar?

>> You did upset them,

You did upset them, but they are unwilling to admit it and will passive aggressively sabotage you for the next 3 years, all the while smiling and assuring you nothing is wrong.

Great article. Thank you for sharing your experience.

"Manage projects according to the owner’s level of task-relevant maturity."

This is really important. Even your highest performer isn't going to be good at everything you throw at, and will want some handholding.

Great article! I also find this one very useful for a new manager. https://www.benkuhn.net/abyss/

First of all, being in a managerial role is usually not enjoyable (expect manipulative antics). Here are a few styles/philosophies on how to accomplish a profitable department:

1. The Dictator: Follow orders, report regularly, or you are fired. If productivity under-performs, than do fire someone in case people forget who is in charge

2. The Coach: How do we win as a team, who has the best skill/will to take on the big challenges, and if individuals bring down our team they are fired

3. The Cult leader: Listen to the customer, how can we serve the customer better, how can we indoctrinate our brand into people lives, and if you violate our doctrine you are fired

4. The Con/Sociopath: Make money at any PR cost, scam the consumer/shareholders/departments, and if you won't break ethical norms you are fired

5. The Masochist: How should I manage the team, what should we be focused on, why are we burning budget and still failing, you are victimizing me with costs, so we had to cut costs and you are fired

6. The Idealist: An irrational infatuation with the impossible makes all other features irrelevant, and everyone still gets fired when the budget expires

Depending what the company does, each role’s style has its strengths and weaknesses.

Have a wonderful day =)

> and see users happily using it all within a day or two

kind of optimistic I would have said

I have told this story here several times (never in this much detail) but why not once more.

I had worked at my first software company for around five years when our lead developer left for greener pastures. Soon thereafter as the most senior developer on staff I had a meeting with the owner of the company and his assistant talking about the need to interview people to fill the lead position and it was kind of half floated “I don’t suppose you would want it” and I champed at the bit. I was young and desperate for what I saw as career advancement. They agreed and drew up a new contract.

I moved out of the bullpen and into the office. Pretty quickly started trying to fix things I saw as “wrong” with our process by laying down decrees.

One of the biggest being trying to get people to use version control (git) - it was 2009 and it was frankly still “acceptable” not to use version control. I had a lunch-and-learn where I taught everyone how to set up and use git. They didn’t understand the why. We had nightly backups, isn’t that good enough? I tried incentivizing them with a literal weekly “whoever has the most commits by the end of week gets a gift card“ and the same very green junior dev won it every week because she was the only one who bothered.

At this same time a developer I had considered a friend was vastly underperforming. Prior to my time as lead, his desk had been moved to be in public view to try to keep him on task, it had not worked. He would mess around all day every day and when due dates rolled around he would turn in half completed rush jobs. He was already on notice when I took over. After a talk with the owner it was very clear we were trying to get rid of him. I had to be the one to place my friend on an improvement plan he was fully expected to fail. It was very difficult for me emotionally. A couple days later we were both working late and I called him into my office and I basically told him on the low down that the owner was gunning for him and he should start looking for a new gig. He was gone very shortly thereafter and I thankfully never had fire him.

Around the same time as this, a developer told another developer a joke with exceedingly mild sexual innuendo - something not at all out of place in an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle hidden for the parents. Well a third developer overheard the joke and put in a formal complaint and after bouncing off our HR person I was tasked with formally reprimanding the joke teller and the intended joke recipient. Joy.

This entire time I am doing a very poor job of delegating, working 10 hour days and weekends and falling further and further behind. Hardest I have ever worked in my life, even to this day. And then my yearly review comes due. The owner’s assistant conducts it. It is the first negative review of my career, I am not getting enough done.

I am working harder than ever, being put into positions I hate, and being told I am not doing enough. I went from loving my job to hating it. My stress level reaches 9001 and something in me just breaks, I get the worst headache of my life followed by what I would describe as jolts of “face lightning” followed by numbness and facial weakness. I go to the ER.

They suspect stroke and do a CT scan, but find nothing. I end up getting diagnosed with stress induced trigeminal neuralgia and put on a drug to relieve apparent inflammation of my nerves.

I had a former colleague who regularly tried to recruit me to whatever gig he was working at the time. Literally the next day I text him asking if he’s looking for a developer. He is, he sets me up with an interview with his boss. Within a week of the negative review and the trip to the ER I am putting in my two week notice.

As one final insult, the owner points out that in my contract I had agreed to three weeks notice. I had planned to take a week off between jobs, but that’s gone I guess.

And that’s why in the last 14 years since, I’ve made zero new attempts to become a manager again. I am a firmly believe I was not built for the task. I just want to build cool things.

I'm so tired of these humble brag posts.

Always remember: as a manager you are still an employee, and you are still required to observe the law.

Being a manager does not mean you are correct by default. It does not mean you cannot receive feedback from your managees.

Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages.

We should sue managers more, when they indulge in bad habits such as lying about performance and making false accusations.

Some managers realize that their opinion is authoritative truth and abuse this to fork reality, creating a psychopathic fiction where everything they say is true.

We should sue each and every of these entitled tyrants.