I can't believe this wasn't policy already. Seems like good practice.
see also https://eddiots.com/2301
> How do you know what's going on if you're not there?
> Ask a restaurant manager. Or a bartender. Or the manager of a retail shop. Or a call center or an office. Or the supervisor of a factory or warehouse floor. What do you think they'd say? [...]
> Ask anyone responsible for something, "How do you know what's going on if you're not there?" and you'll always get the same answer: "You won't."
> Unless they were an I.T. manager. > In the case of walking the floor in a store it is just aesthetics mostly.
Toyota calls it a "gemba walk" -- managers and even executives need to walk the factory floor and see problems with their own eyes, not through hearing reports.
With software, the codebase is the gemba, not the office. Managers don't need to be writing code, but they should be reading it. Otherwise it's like a production manager who has never seen the inside of their own factory.
For example, I documented how to load an OS image for assembly. Watched them use the guide and saw they flipped through the document. Afterwards, I inserted an extra page of what shows up in the text stream and said, "sit and wait for ...." at that point they started flipping around.
On the other hand, my boss had a de facto policy of visiting each remote office at least once a year and conducting one-on-one meetings face-to-face as much as possible. I found this useful for myself to understand the team/environment/product and good for building connections with people, especially when cultures are significantly different.
It did result in my visiting Wuhan 16 times between 2012 and 2019, for better or worse.
I believe the idea is for the manager to be visible and approachable so people can feel comfortable coming up to the manager raising issues etc. If the manager is away off site in an executive office or similar then it becomes an added barrier for people to be able to approach them, to notify them about issues etc.
At one of the largest tech companies.
Since every company seems to come up with their own job titles, it would be more useful if you described how large your organisation was compared to the entirety of the engineering organisation at your company.
He was a leader not a manager or supervisor, a trait I’ve found common among military people.
He took cleanliness and safety seriously from the navy and applied that to the store, the store staff vacuumed and cleaned the store as it was his and we took pride in it from top to bottom and he lead workplace safety efforts very early on.
He ran the store like a family, and he shined his boots every morning.
But I’d typically get some instructions and then be left to clean up or stock things. Tidying up isn’t that complicated or high stakes. Normal people know what messy and clean look like.
My favorite managers were aware of what the store looked like and could say “tidy up the pillows” or whatever if something needed particular attention. But the manager that came by with attention to detail and an intention to keep me on my toes? Nah, that’s annoying. And even in a pretty small store, there are a lot of aisles to tidy up. If a manager is known to be annoying they’ll also have to waste time looking for me.
> My favorite managers were aware of what the store looked like and could say “tidy up the pillows” or whatever if something needed particular attention. But the manager that came by with attention to detail and an intention to keep me on my toes? Nah, that’s annoying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_arou...