Comment by hibikir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hibikir | Hacker News Reader

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Disclaimer: I was Will's direct report, and then Will became my skip level in a past life. I'd rate him as better than average manager, who was surrounded by a lot of well under average managers.

I'd love to hear longer stories on your opinion here, because I have theories on the issues with Will's advice, but nobody sees quite enough organizations to quite be certain. The more stories we hear, the more likely we are to get things right.

My hypothesis is that Will's advice is a lot of recipes to create change in organizations, but lacks focus on when to apply them, and how to be sure you aren't bungling it all up by fixing the wrong problem. This makes the ideas more attractive to the dashing, aggressive, confident executive, whether he has a good pulse on the problems, or he is the kind to trust on the wrong people, and fail to see that they are building enemies (as all agents of change do), without getting sufficient number of fans in the right places. So people that like his advice will tend to fail by overstepping. I know some executive who have an entire career like this, company after company: Seeing themselves as the protagonist of every story, and acting like bulls in a china shop, therefore failing politically even if their diagnosis was somehow right, and their changes made sense.

Ultimately the best advice is 'make sure your manager likes you'. Which works just as well if you are a CTO reporting to a CEO, or an engineer reporting to a line manager. It's trivially easy for executives to think this isn't the case, and then be surprised when the reorg comes.

> but lacks focus on when to apply them

The gap between theory and practice - tacit knowledge - is probably a factor here. It seems quite likely that a lot of really good managers in software have theories about why they are good managers. Those theories could all easily be wrong and they are actually experts at communication or weird technical details that happen to make great managers. A manager's theoretical base is always built on a large tacit "I know how to X, Y, Z in a social setting".

If we look at this article through a very abstract lens, software managing advice fits the pattern of "at the appropriate moment, do the appropriate thing". Obviously the advice he gives is heavily tinged by the managers ability to identify the appropriate moment to do something unusual. He's pointing out some times where the appropriate action seemed to be the counter-intuitive one, which is fair and interesting. But I wouldn't ever trust a random manager to be able to pick the moment to do a counter-intuitive action; unless they were mentored with extreme care.

"make sure your manager likes you"

This is always the best advice I've found. And I've also found that if your manager likes you, lots of other things just work out.

it's pretty goddamn stupid and seems to need constant reiteration for some people (like me!!!) but if you don't feel a cultural fit (from you as an employee point of view) - DON'T TAKE THE JOB

With the current market, I wish I had the power to refuse a job in lieu of a better culture fit But alas.

And what if your manager seems to just not like you for whatever reason and won’t tell you why?

Try to change roles or companies?

I don't mean this flippantly here, it's a crap situation to find yourself in but sometimes people just don't get along, or people are just not great, and you do need to know when to cut your losses and make a move.

Running away shouldn’t be the first option IMO.

Never said it should be the first option but if your direct manager doesn't like you and won't talk about it, you don't have that many options.

There is a power imbalance at play, and you are not on the good end of it.

Framing it as "running away" is weird.. One of the most important life skills is to know when to pick your battles.

If you go over their head, and they get forced into a discussion with you, then what? You think that will improve the relationship? And do you want to have that person responsible for your ongoing career opportunities and advancements?

Unless they are actually breaking some rules, there isn't much HR or a leader high up can or will do. In fact I bet their recommendation would be to change teams as well.

I'd love to hear your suggestions though.

Thanks for adding more context and nuance. In the scenario you seem to be describing, I‘d consider leaving too - my situation isn’t that bad. I think a last resort could be to request a 1on1 and speak Tacheles, and maybe find a better basis on which to communicate. If that doesn’t work out, I think leaving is an option to definitely look at, life‘s too short for bad relationships (if they can be avoided).

Let me start by saying I didn't realize you were speaking about your own experience! I thought we were having a theoretical discussion here. That changes the stakes on your end of course..

Just a question, when you say "request a 1 on 1" do you mean request to specifically speak about this? Or do you not have regular 1-on-1s with your manager already?

I think it's a concern that your manager doesn't already have or want weekly 1-on-1 meetings. Do you know if this is with all their reports, or just you?

If it's with all their reports, that's.. honestly? not a great manager.

It's just with you, then I think that's further evidence that this person does not, and will not, have your best interests in mind.

I'm sorry you're in this situation, I hope you find a good outcome!

People will never tell you if they like you or not and why

The emotional intelligence to pick up on that sub context is critical. Observe how they treat others, look for subtleties, think about them as people rather than your boss.

It really comes down to 2 things: if you had a beer with them would they enjoy your company; are you a good employee who’s not making them look bad by their managers.

The ability to enjoy a beer with them is irrelevant.

The only question is, “Are you making them look good to their manager/customer/spouse/peers?”

Ultimately, that’s what you’ve been hired to do.

In a healthy context, you’re doing that by hitting your KPI’s, adding velocity, etc., but not necessarily.

But that's missing the point. You can be doing all of those things but your manager still may not like you. Admittedly they're probably more likely to like you if you're a good employee, but if they like you and you're a subpar employee you're going to be much better off than if they don't like you. And, if you're a stellar employee, you'll likely be presented with more opportunities/more favourable tasks/etc than a stellar employee your manager doesn't like.

You can take the view of "I'm doing my job" but don't be surprised if those around you who are more liked by management get picked up for promotions/etc more than you. Most people (management included) are not 100% objective in their decision making, and someone liking you (or not) is going to influence their decisions involving you.

Thanks, that gives me something to think about. I guess being fully remote makes it a bit hard to pick up on these clues, but maybe I can make better use of the HQ visits.

And you ignore the fact that maybe you are more to credit for his success than he was. Engineers aren't fungible, aren't all the same, arent all compatible with each other and the manager. Your conclusion is the right one but can we always make it happen ? No.

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