Doing a Job (1982) | Hacker News Reader

Doing a Job (1982)

govleaders.org

70 pointsgeorgecmu16 comments

What is one to do when a manager does not provide autonomy and also insists on paying attention to detail?

Find another place of employment? I'm being fairly serious, with the obvious caveat that switching jobs isn't something you can do at the drop of a hat.

Or change teams if that is possible.

I agree switching teams can be an alternative but in my experience it's always seemed too little too late

Speak to the manager about your concerns. They are people too, and they improve over time with genuine feedback.

When I managed just a half dozen of people (in a 300 person org), I soaked in every bit of feedback, especially if there were concerns -- whether in our group or at executive level. I get there are some "managers" that just skirt by and don't care, but there's many more that actually want to see the company succeed.

I worked under people who really couldn't take any criticism and I always suffered whenever I opened my mouth. Eventually it did lead me to switch jobs, which is a shame really because there was a great potential for interesting work there but I just couldn't stand the people anymore.

I was having some communication problems with a coworker not so long ago.

I have past experiences that made me unsure about what to do with the situation.

I talked with my therapist about it, and thought a lot about what to do.

In the end I did three things:

1. I took a couple weeks PTO, to get some time away from the stress.

2. In my performance review self-evaluation, I mentioned that me and my coworker were not aligned.

3. I sent a message to my coworker asking if we could talk about the status of our project and in what direction we are moving.

Since then, things have improved greatly.

I went from feeling on the brink of burn-out, to feeling that we are working better together now.

After I reached out to my coworker, he also took a great number of steps by his own initiative to help improve the situation. I think that probably he was also feeling worn down by the situation and that he may have been wondering what he could do about it as well.

If you don't have a therapist to talk to. Find one! That's what I did. I used a third-party wellness platform to find a therapist that I could talk to. I pay for it myself but it is well worth it. One hour per week.

During my performance review all that mattered to management was what my co-worker said about me but it did not matter at all what I said about them, no matter how nicely I tried to put it. The other guy just had too much influence in the company to be criticized. I did 3 weeks PTO and after it came at the peaceful conclusion that it was time to move on.

Easy you overload them with details. Hound them wherever they go with decisions around the smallest things. Use this reason to hold up other groups work when they ask for anything. Most important thing is to feed into it and overwhelm the person to the point they begin to avoid you. Now you have reached Zen

Doing a Job – The Management Philosophy of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28574622 - Sept 2021 (47 comments)

Doing a Job (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415853 - Nov 2019 (14 comments)

Doing a Job (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18153566 - Oct 2018 (15 comments)

Doing a Job (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9448556 - April 2015 (1 comment)

> There is also the tendency to establish more and more levels of management, on the theory that this gives better control. These are but different forms of shared responsibility, which easily lead to no one being responsible—a problems that often inheres in large corporations as well as in the Defense Department.

Observations from 1982, relevant even in 2023.

Managers taking responsibility for anything going wrong is basically taboo today. Weird to see people even mention that even in the past.

I have seen managers who will enforce some rules on the team, which takes time away from them. Then PIP them 6 months later for non-delivery.

If there was a way to vote managers and skips away, a large number of managers would disappear.

It’s a shame that people like Rickover and the ideal leader he describes are nearly an extinct species in government, military, and civilian life.

It would be nice if only the people with real conviction were doing things by choice, but that isn't realistic. Most people are compelled to have a job, and the system has no guarantee of placing you in the job where you best fit.

It's possible he is right, but it is also possible that these traits aren't trainable, and without that, you may not have a population sufficient enough to sustain his ideal.

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