Hacker News Reader

Comment by satisfice | Hacker News Reader

Why do people espouse goals like “not to be needed?” I never understood that. It sounds like LinkedIn virtue signaling. It’s a capitalist talking point along the lines of “I seek to be good and inexpensive capital for my corporate masters.”

My goal is to help my team succeed in such a way as to keep my job or else get a better one. Being “not needed” hardly serves that goal.

Look around you. We are in a world that is turning away from middle managers. Don’t play into their hands.

View on HN

The way I read it is not to be needed for normal functionality of the team, not to "not be needed" at all. Akin to a ship's captain - for the most part a ship works without a captain just fine, but that doesn't make the captain's job redundant, it's just he's needed for specific occasions, otherwise, he's just making sure the crew works as a well oiled machine.

Because it's a good heuristic for a functional and resilient team. People don't usually means it literally, more like "if I disappeared it should be pretty painless for the team to continue along for a month or so and to find and onboard a replacement".

You’re taking it too literally, it’s not saying don’t be useful, it’s saying don’t make yourself a bottleneck. It’s a very common failure mode for new engineers turned manager, leading to a frustrated team that feels micro-managed and the perception from leadership that you don’t have your shit together and can’t adequately handle the scope you’ve been given.

Your interpretation does not fit the text. You are talking about someone who is micromanaging. But he's not saying "don't micromanage" in that section.

“Don’t be needed” isn’t “don’t be valuable.” The EM should not be a bottleneck. The EM should be able to take a vacation without being paged. (So should anybody on the team!)

My teams would slow down without me because I can due process tasks more efficiently, but nothing demands me to be in the loop.

Someone I know used to be pretty senior at a major SV company. Over dinner one night, he told me that the CEO would take vacations with instructions to the effect of "handle it" if something comes up. (Assume it wasn't absolute but that was the basic gist.) Apparently, a new PR head came in and was like "I can't work under that condition" and quickly left.

A really good book on this is "Turn the ship around".

Your role is to improve your staff to be better in their jobs. Ignoring the Manager/Engineer caste system, there is a lot general leadership in both roles.

You want your staff to be able to integrate and find information that allows them to make decisions, you don't lose accountability or responsibilty.

There is a big difference between

- "I've looked at the details, and I think we should do X, what do you think?"

and

- "What should we do about this?"

In the former, you can add extra context, and help your report understand details that may have been hidden or unknown to them. In the latter you are allowing your report to shift all the burden to you.

I appreciate that book and that context, but that's not making yourself unnecessary. In this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rGATwZRr0) Rear Admiral Mike "Nasty" Manazir talks a lot about empowerment, but also about how the commander of an aircraft carrier never gets a lot of sleep.

Its more about being a servant leader and not a bottleneck than literally being "not needed". Its a mindset of wanting your team to be able to operate without having to check with you (the EM) on every little thing. I've also heard it called having IC's be a "manager of one" where they can independently work on things, get work finished, etc. without needing constant nagging.

A good manager I had once had the approach of setting guidelines and "just getting out of the way" and I try to follow that, it works well for most people.

I like being a servant leader. In no way does that mean I can go on holiday and people won't miss me. They will miss my services. If people don't miss me, then they must HATE me as a manager.

I think of it this way:

Is your goal for the software you write to need constant intervention, or would you say you'd aim for it to run smoothly with few bugs?

The team is akin to a piece of software architecture, only much more complex and comprised (partially) of humans.

You want someone to build that team and then have the team up and running, delivering value. When it breaks, or you want it to do new/different things, you need someone to step in to fix it or change it.

The fallacy there is that I am not merely "building a team," I am managing. Managing is a live, interactive skill that involves certain services. A perfect team still needs management to help create the environment in which that team can effectively operate.

I saw a wonderful interview with a former commander of an aircraft carrier. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rGATwZRr0) Rear Admiral Mike "Nasty" Manazir speaks of his main job as being clearing away obstacles that no one underneath him could clear. That's a service that no "self-managing team" can do for itself. A good manager also serves as a focus for the strategy, and deals with conflicts that would otherwise become impasses.

The goal should be to have teams who want you to be supporting them, not need you to be supporting them. Getting teams to the point where they don't need you isn't actually that hard. They might be only performing at 50% effectiveness, but that's fine if the work is getting done. You should build a relationship with the teams so they want you to support them to get to 90% or even more.

If your teams fail to function without your help then you're clearly not supporting them well enough, and you can't take a vacation or go off sick or be promoted. That is not optimal for anyone.

I think the points made at mostly for a front-line manager though, not so much for a middle manager.

cause it means: I lead them so good that I do nothing and still get my salary.

the coder's equivalent is not get paged (or bug reports). the system run's itself with no dramas, so I get to work on improving it.

I think you don't understand what a manager does. As a manager, I'm not standing there telling people what to do all day. Instead I am creating the conditions for the team to succeed. This is an active and every day service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com