[HN Gopher] How to manage software developers without micromanaging
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How to manage software developers without micromanaging
Author : gk1
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-02-14 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.infoworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.infoworld.com)
| Oras wrote:
| Micromanagement is a behavior related to the obsession with being
| in control. I don't think the article will change how they manage
| their teams. Not even sure if micromanagers identify it as an
| issue.
|
| A better title might be: how to improve your developers'
| performance.
| irateswami wrote:
| Literally the way to "manage" developers is to enable them to do
| good work, and then get the hell out of their way. The git logs,
| uptime, and slack messages are all the records you need for
| evals.
| blurker wrote:
| Oof, please no. Simple metrics like LoC, story points and
| number of commits are lazy ways to evaluate developers. And
| people will recognize this so the metric becomes the goal.
| Might as well replace managers with a bot. Good managers should
| be in touch with the full picture of their reports work and not
| rely on simple heuristics. That's what makes a really good
| manager.
|
| edit: fixed autocorrects
| beebeepka wrote:
| Does that actually happen, though? Do managers have enough time
| to go through git commits, chats, etc. Sounds like a full-time
| job on its own
| sz4kerto wrote:
| I'm a VPE at a small-ish org (30 devs or so, currently), and
| I regularly skim through commit history and keep an eye on
| various technical chat (we're fully remote, so there's lots
| of chat). I don't think I spend more than 15 mins per week
| looking at git history, but that's very informative -- it is
| not enough to make robust decisions but it is good enough to
| spot issues once in a while. (I have written my fair share of
| code in the past, so that helps.) So it's like going to a
| book shop, reading two pages from a book and deciding whether
| I like the style or not.
| sdesol wrote:
| Full disclosure: I'm trying to find a way to use development
| insights to help us develop software better, together.
|
| I tried a lot and I mean a lot of ways to see if we could use
| git commits to help us better understand productivity, but
| I've found commits by themselves lacks a lot of context.
| Especially since some commits may never be merged.
|
| What I've personally found so far, is that using pull
| requests is a very good way to help us understand development
| effort. By looking at pull requests, like the following for
| cockroach:
|
| https://oss.gitsense.com/insights/github?t=crc-
| insights&tb=a...
|
| it is much easier to grok what everybody is working on or has
| worked on. Having studied a lot of open source projects, it
| is kind of shocking how some developers can move and manage
| so much.
|
| As a side note, if you are wondering what the lightning bolt
| icon is for, it means another pull request is modifying a
| similar file. The left arrow means the pull request has a
| file that is not up to date with the target branch.
| irateswami wrote:
| I can't tell if you're making a joke about do-nothing
| managers or not, but if so, brava.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I wasn't making that joke but I did get a good chuckle out
| of myself while typing it. Glad it worked for you, too
| wpietri wrote:
| This is missing one of my biggest tools: establishing the right
| feedback loops.
|
| For example, there was a novel situation where we thought we
| might be able to do something for the internal team of experts
| that was handling it. So we paired one of their people up with
| one of the developers and said, "Take a few weeks and try out
| things that might help." That short feedback loop between need
| and solutions let them iterate through a variety of things to see
| what had the highest ROI.
|
| Or at the last company I co-founded, we started out by doing
| user-testing every Tuesday afternoon. My co-founder and I would
| try things and see how they worked on real users, iterating from
| there. Later, as we got more developers and enough users, we
| gradually built up a sophisticated set of tools for conducting
| experiments. Developers were closely involved in that work and we
| had a ship-early, ship-often approach that let people release
| something, see how it was working, and then adjust.
|
| I think of it sort of like game design. If you can structure
| things so that teams can develop a rewarding emotional connection
| via an overall purpose and frequent feedback, they'll just do the
| right thing naturally. Through that lens, the need for a lot of
| active bossing people around can sometimes be seen as a sign of
| bad management.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Manage them with listicles! Everyone loves those. They solve
| every problem. Have a problem that seems complex and want to make
| sure you give a nod to everyone who matters but really just make
| a bunch of words and no cohesive strategy?
|
| Listicle it!
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Whenever I'm presented with a problem that I don't have enough
| information to meaningfully estimate, a "helpful" manager
| suggests "breaking it down into subtasks". I usually end up
| breaking it down into tasks something like:
|
| 1) Figure out what's going on 2) Fix it
| rchaves wrote:
| This article provides nothing new to me, my current company has
| it all and I don't like
|
| Does anyone here actually feel personal goal setting as
| beneficial anyhow?
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't. But I have found it useful to think about personal
| development in a kanban-like sense, with various queues and WIP
| limits. E.g. for physical/health stuff, I have a limit of 1
| must-do change and 1 stretch-goal change. My stretch goal for
| December was moving back toward intermitting fasting. That went
| well, so my main goal for January was doing the intermittent
| fasting for real. That also went well, so my main February goal
| was about starting to train for an upcoming race.
|
| I have a whole backlog of physical/health goals that I could
| do. Having a WIP limit forces me to decide what's most
| important when a slot open up. That involves a bunch of
| thinking about goal-like things, but in a way that makes more
| sense to me. It also helps me balance desire with capacity;
| when I tried goal-setting outside of a kanban-like framework,
| it was easy for me to dream big and then crash when I couldn't
| hit the goals.
| DerArzt wrote:
| It's beneficial to your manager in that they can tell you
| exactly what to write on your "personal goals list" and then
| string you up with those words come review time when they
| weren't met due to things out of your control and they will
| feel like the onus is on you for not delivering.
| openknot wrote:
| >Does anyone here actually feel personal goal setting as
| beneficial anyhow?
|
| Personal goal setting has helped me a lot, though I haven't
| developed many personal goals at the request of a supervisor
| (they're created just for myself).
|
| The assumptions that make personal goal setting work are:
|
| i) Time and energy is limited, so I can't pursue all my
| interests at once.
|
| ii) If time isn't made for personal goals, they won't happen,
| as requests from other people (or unfocused activity) will
| occupy my attention.
|
| iii) By keeping goals in mind, it's easier to maintain
| boundaries on time, by politely declining certain tasks or
| opportunities to focus on my goals.
|
| This has helped with developing skills outside the workplace
| (which have indirectly helped with my work), as it provides
| clarity whenever there is uncertainty about how to spend time
| and energy when there isn't external structure.
|
| In a past workplace, I've set personal goals with a non-
| technical supervisor (e.g. suggestions to add features to a
| website). This helped with skill development and showed
| initiative that was appreciated, as the supervisor wouldn't
| have thought about these potential features (as their primary
| responsibilities weren't in development).
| dbodin11 wrote:
| TLDR
| https://www.kontxt.io/document/d/smGsYCTufoEDsK8qc_7kc7-1QSa...
| golf_mike wrote:
| Interesting read, but it feels like a catch 22. Any organisation
| that is mature enough to practically implement stuff like [non-
| negotiable KPIs, quantified peer-reviews, mentoring programs,
| work-life goals, ...] seems like a place that does not need
| advice against micro-managing. The places that do need that
| advice are in my experience ill-equipped to practically implement
| such measures. In order to get an organisation to such a maturity
| level you need strong leadership that is sensitive to the changes
| needed and how to get their people to actually make those changes
| in a constructive and permanent way. So if an organisation needs
| changes like this, take a hard look at who lead you to the
| current state and ask yourself if it is worth the battle. Because
| chances are that without change in leadership (be it approach or
| replacing people) you will not be able to get the things in place
| mentioned in this article.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > One way to strike a balance is to work with human resources on
| defining work-life goals and objectives.
|
| Pardon me if this sounds nitpicky but let's stop calling it human
| resources. Those two words establish the wrong precedent and
| perpetuate the wrong message.
|
| If you treat people like resources you're going in the wrong
| direction.
| core-utility wrote:
| Nothing I've read in this article sounds more appealing than what
| I've dealt with in the past. Performance metrics at my recent
| careers have really become "Write what you did well in the last
| year aligning to these and we'll give you what we think you
| earn." It's a flawed system, but it's understood and doesn't get
| in the way all that much (especially when you start building
| templates year-after-year). Those who receive the highest
| performance rating are pretty well known by everyone, as are
| those who receive the lowest. Everyone else just wants to be left
| alone and will deal with this little bit of red tape to get by.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| What I've always dealt with is "goal setting": at the beginning
| of the year, you're supposed to write down all the goals you're
| going to accomplish by the end of the year - usually five or
| so. The goals you write down are usually based on whatever
| random priorities are most visible during goal setting time (if
| you actually try to make up your own goals, your manager just
| tells you you have to change them before he'll sign off on
| them), but then priorities change, management demands you work
| on dozens of other things, so at the end of the year you write
| down some lame excuse for why you didn't accomplish any of the
| things nobody cares if you accomplish any more and if your
| manager likes you he rubber stamps it and if he doesn't like it
| he uses it as a stick to try to get rid of you.
| core-utility wrote:
| I have this same experience, but goals are editable all the
| way through evaluations, so there's nothing saying you can't
| change your goals as you're writing your self-evaluations.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. The theory of annual goals is you already know the
| most valuable ways to spend your time for the next year. But
| that's true only if nothing changes and nobody learns
| anything important. It's generally just fantasy.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Try writing the goals for the year at the end of the year
| instead. Significantly more accurate.
| grahamm wrote:
| I would love to do that but unfortunately every
| organisation I've been in demands that I set them at the
| start of the year. Then at the end of the year I can
| reflect on all the goals that were no longer relevant
| because plans change and being able change is agile.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Same at my company, biggest pile of shit waste of time.
| andi999 wrote:
| You can also use goals as a shield. Since the company agreed
| it is high priority other work should not interfere with it.
| Of course if you manager thinks otherwise one can mutually
| change the list (which ppl only will do if the new thing is
| reeeaally important).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Surely you're joking.
| beebeepka wrote:
| It does make sense, though. This would be a great
| opportunity for deflection.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Why would they be? If my manager wants to constantly
| change priorities, then it's THAT much easier for both of
| us when that same manager wants to know why the five
| things we agreed to do in January didn't get done come
| performance review in November.
|
| Just seems like logical record keeping to me.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| You sound fun.
| willcipriano wrote:
| This mirrors my experience. Setting goals for what you will
| accomplish when you aren't in charge of what you are tasked
| with doing is classic responsibility without authority. It
| mostly feels to me that it's management trying to deligate
| out performance management to their reports.
| brentis wrote:
| This is so true. As a PM, it's very arbitrary to set OKRs,
| when you don't even have the KPIs in place to evaluate what
| is meaningful.
|
| On top of that when you have a vision, roadmap, backlog
| what are you going to say other than, "yessir, I'll do more
| better" and will definitely help out more on the
| distractions or "quick-wins" as you like to refer to them.
|
| In a matter of weeks l, it's clear who is moving the needle
| and think peer review would show this more than management
| alignment to OKRs.
| a_c_s wrote:
| I've never had goals that are project-specific. Some examples
| of the types of goals I have had:
|
| To lead engineering on a project that has at least one other
| engineer attached to it.
|
| Or go review 3 PRs/week from teams other than my own.
|
| Or to give a presentation at least every other month to the
| engineering guild.
|
| These types of goals would be much less affected by changing
| priorities.
| lmkg wrote:
| Several of those goals are still subject to the whims of
| factors outside of your control.
|
| E.g. "lead engineering on a project that has at least one
| other engineer." What if no project comes about? What if
| you start such a project and it gets canceled by strategic
| re-alignment? What if management keeps re-assigning the
| other engineer out from under you? What if executive
| leadership decides a larger project is priority #1 and
| demands 100% of your time? What if your division re-
| organizes how it assigns work and changes what it means to
| "lead" a team?
|
| Not attaching goals to specific projects is certainly step
| number 1, and insulates you from _some_ measure of change.
| But all of your goals are still subject to varying degrees
| of being de-valued or re-defined after a year 's time.
| thackerhacker wrote:
| When I went from contractor to permanent at my last employer
| the goal-setting really stressed me out as I knew I didn't
| want to be held responsible for something that might change.
|
| In the end I just decided to stop thinking about it to avoid
| the stress and my manager stopped asking. End of the year I
| filled in suitable goals based on what I had done and
| explained how well I'd met them.
|
| It worked very well for me and I did the same for every year
| I was employed there.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Same here. This was at GE, the goal and review structure is
| elaborate, shifting, and based on a slew of cultural and
| corporate factors and cult bullshit. A real mess. You
| better have a cool manager that knows how to deal with it
| in an optimal way or it is a very very painful waste of
| time. My manager was brand new and by the book...greatly
| hastening my exit.
|
| On top of all that it actually did influence your ability
| to progress (I just told them I had no aspirations of
| advancement beyond my current position...again, further
| hastening my exit lol).
| civilized wrote:
| The problem with this kind of article is the dry, abstract,
| formal presentation, which feels devoid of content. A lot of us
| don't quite know how to operationalize it, and often the users
| of such language don't either. It feels like religious doctrine
| that everyone pays lip service to but doesn't really affect
| life in any meaningful way.
|
| The manager-bureaucrat many of us are familiar with does not
| understand or care how to _put these ideas to work,_ and
| reduces "OKRs" to forms to be filled and boxes to be checked.
|
| We need context, examples, and explanations that show us when
| these ideas are working and when they aren't. We need them in
| plainer, more candid and more relatable language. And they need
| to be relevant to the problems developers and managers actually
| face. We need the why - why is it helpful to think in terms of
| OKRs rather than some other more familiar or simpler way?
|
| Bottom line: the secret missing ingredient is often "actually
| use your brain when doing all these things".
| synergy20 wrote:
| is it still 20% of the people doing 80% the work in software
| projects?
|
| if so finding those 20% and rewarding them accordingly. give them
| a raise, assign them stock options, make them feel appreciated
| and financially tied with the company.
|
| this should be more effective than micro-management.
|
| in my book, management is basically trying to use the least money
| to get the most out of employees, if instead reward people based
| on their measurable finished items(e.g. work got done on time),
| most of the management tricks go away on its own, they will
| manage themselves better than you can ever do.
| paulio wrote:
| Thanks for your comment, it's enlightened and motivational.
| Unfortunately so much management isn't like this.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| This sounds so sensible, yet the only company that ever did
| this did it with no other option but when they needed to re-
| hire me away from a sabbatical.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| My objection to this is someone's contribution is a factor of
| culture / role / assignments and person. You could have a great
| person who's had to do some low-impact work (someone has to fix
| those bugs!), finds themselves in the 80% and then realises it
| (they will), and self-selects out of the company. You don't
| want to lose such people.
|
| The trick is to bring out the best talent in everyone in my
| opinion.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm gonna say something pedantic and perhaps obvious.
|
| You don't manage people. If you do, you're a bad manager. You
| manage problems and projects and enable people to do their jobs
| well. You facilitate conversations and make sure they have what
| info and tools they need.
|
| People are not robots you control. You are not better than them.
| You aren't above them. In fact you're usually far easier to
| replace than them.
|
| Maybe I have a chip on my shoulder but this is core to bad
| managers: they think their reports are their subjects to lord
| over.
| cammil wrote:
| I was going to say basically this.
|
| Let me add a thought. You manage something that needs managing,
| that is to say, problems. If you see people as problems, then
| you are the problem.
| Kranar wrote:
| It's fine to feel that way, but it's not a particularly
| effective approach in my opinion and in fact quite the opposite
| of what I look for in a manager. A good manager manages people;
| they understand people's strengths, weaknesses, goals, how to
| motivate and reward people, how to resolve potential conflicts,
| how to delegate, and how to help people grow. These are all
| people things. People are not robots which is exactly why they
| need to be managed. After all you typically do not manage
| robots, the point of using robots is that they're autonomous.
|
| Problems are not things you really want to manage, maybe in the
| short run you can try to manage a problem, but ultimately the
| goal is to solve a problem as opposed to managing it. The goal
| of a manager is to assemble a team of people who can work
| together to solve problems.
|
| Your issue is conflating management with superiority, you seem
| to think that someone who coaches a basketball team feels
| superior to its players. That couldn't be further from the
| truth. While Michael Jordan's coach was in his time a competent
| basketball player, he would never claim to have ever been
| better than Michael Jordan, and yet both he and Michael Jordan
| had an excellent working relationship without either of them
| feeling superior to the other [1].
|
| The issue you have about superiority has nothing to do with
| solving problems or managing people. You could be a lawyer
| working entirely independently from developers and feel you are
| superior to them (or vice-versa). A good manager can cross
| multiple projects and multiple problems, because a good manager
| understands people first and foremost and lets competent people
| work on solving problems, as opposed to trying to manage
| problems.
|
| [1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80203144
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| > Your issue is conflating management with superiority...
|
| Your issue is not realizing that many managers feel this way.
| They think that being a manager puts them above the people
| they are managing, and that their job as a manager is to boss
| people around (thus the genesis of that term).
|
| Edit: I'll see your Phil Jackson and raise you Bobby Knight.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Are you arriving at this conclusion from a place of jaded
| bias or from actual data? Some managers feel that way sure,
| but your statement implies that its essentially the norm to
| be expected which is not the case.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Why is this argument so easy to make for politicians that
| get corrupted by power, but not for managers that might
| suffer from the exact same human weakness?
| [deleted]
| mikelockz wrote:
| Bobby Knight led the Hoosiers to three national
| championships and 11 Big Ten championships. I'm not sure
| the definition of "bad manager" would fit succeeding at the
| most important metrics in sports - championship wins.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Isn't this exactly the point GP was making? That managers
| conflate the team's wins with their own 'succeeding'?
| It's not the manager that wins the championship, it's the
| team that is comprised of the manager also. Why is this
| so hard to grasp for managers? Is it the power? Is it the
| disconnect from the actual work?
|
| As someone involved in both the technical and business
| side, but heavily biased towards tech, it's amusing to me
| just how cliche the management parties after a 'big win'
| on a 'visible' project are. It's almost unbearable to be
| around save for the brilliant food.
| scsilver wrote:
| A college team churns ever 4 years at most. Consistent
| wins in that space is all about management, as the talent
| is fleeting.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Why would a college team need to preselect players if
| it's _all_ about the management? Couldn 't they just pick
| random players?
|
| Thinking about this more, I find it hilarious to imagine
| that you would expect the same results from A and B given
| the same set of performant managers:
|
| A - team of highly unmotivated, undisciplined players
|
| B - team of highly motivated, disciplined players
| bell-cot wrote:
| If you think that your manager could improve...if only he'd
| read the Evil Overlord list* and really give that some thought,
| then your "manager" is actually an Evil Overlord (or wanna-be),
| and you _might_ want to look for a new job. Working for a real
| manager.
|
| *http://www.worldconquer.org/evil_overlord.html
| willseth wrote:
| You're correct about bad managers, but not about the idea that
| you shouldn't manage people. You summed it up:
|
| > People are not robots
|
| Exactly, people are motivated in different ways, have different
| backgrounds, aptitudes and weaknesses, the list goes on. A good
| manager takes these aspects into account to help people and
| teams do their best work. There is no generic template.
| [deleted]
| senko wrote:
| > You don't manage people [...] You manage problems and
| projects and enable people to do their jobs well.
|
| This is, like, the definition of managing people. Let's call a
| spade a spade.
|
| > People are not robots you control.
|
| Control is not management.
|
| > they think their reports are their subjects to lord over.
|
| Bossing someone around is not management.
| ThalesX wrote:
| >> You don't manage people [...] You manage problems and
| projects and enable people to do their jobs well.
|
| > This is, like, the definition of managing people. Let's
| call a spade a spade.
|
| That's not like. The definition of managing people. A project
| is some stakeholders (including the people you 'manage'),
| some wants, some resources (including the people you 'manage'
| as well as yourself) and some constraints. People are people.
|
| >> People are not robots you control.
|
| > Control is not management.
|
| What does this even mean? If control is not management,
| therefore people are not robots you (not) manage, so, are
| they robots you do manage? I think GP was sort of leaning
| towards the 'people are not robots' part of that.
|
| >> they think their reports are their subjects to lord over.
|
| > Bossing someone around is not management.
|
| It can be. If you're a shit manager. This 'is not management'
| thing feels very similar to 'is not Agile'.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I wonder why I've never worked for a company where the managers
| shared a task board with us.
|
| If you plan on answering with a 'because our tasks are too hard
| to quantify' I would like to remind you that some people on this
| board implement hard to quantify things every day, so please make
| an effort to give realistic counter examples.
| peter303 wrote:
| Lots of free doughnuts.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I managed people for a long time (not software developers but
| think some of this transfers).
|
| At times well over 100 people with sub managers in some outfits.
| I did pretty well at it from a results perspective watching
| others who came before/after me. Here's some observations:
|
| -People are emotional creatures. They will behave irrationally
| much of the time without realizing it. Everything isn't logical
| game theory when the rubber meets the road.
|
| -People want to feel valued and not in a fake "You folks did a
| really good job" when everyone knows it isn't true way. They want
| to feel important and needed. It's something instinctive in the
| human psyche. You have to give people the space to become heros.
| Also you need people to feel what they are doing makes a
| difference to get the best out of them.
|
| -Most people will put out given the situation allows them to do
| so. Some people very simply will not. Don't tolerate those few
| people and don't let it get started. Nothing threatens a team's
| morality like those not pulling their weight with no
| consequences. Also if someone plain isn't happy in their
| situation (and everyone has bad days and even weeks) it's time
| for a change. Helping those people make that change when it's
| needed resolves friction both for them and the organization.
|
| -Ambiguity and complexity are mind killers. As a manager your job
| is to make the path forward simple and make sure the resources
| are available. People shouldn't have to doubt and guess much to
| do their jobs. That's your job. Fine grained and very clear tasks
| are best.
|
| -Humility is key. And honesty. Also a leader that wants to be
| followed is on the front lines with a sword. Not slacking off in
| comfort and showing up periodically to upbraid or threaten. Not
| throwing his team members under the bus. The leader is ultimately
| responsible and lack of results fall on their shoulders.
|
| -People have to feel fairly compensated and not taken advantage
| of to be "happily working". If these are missing in the org don't
| try to manage it, it's a shitshow revolving door and not
| somewhere you want to be. On the other hand money doesn't buy
| everything. People will do amazing things for reasons other then
| money.
|
| -People have an innate sense of fairness dating back to our
| earliest times. You can be strict in your expectations, and in
| fact must be to have quality results. But if you have uneven
| expectations or don't subject yourself to the same standards
| moral goes out the window in a hurry. Never "pick on" a person.
| Try your best not to favor people. Don't get cliquish. Employees
| are not your friends in this context. But do everything in your
| power to help people working under you. It's easier if you don't
| go out drinking etc. with your employees. Keep your relationship
| at a professional level.
|
| -A feeling of being a team is very powerful. Create this. But
| don't create a gang. It's not "us against upper management, other
| departments, irrational customers etc." The gang instinct is also
| powerful, and it can work for a bit, but it's a lie and
| ultimately harmful in the larger picture. Try to avoid
| negativity.
|
| There's a lot more I could write. People are much more complex
| then say, dogs, but there are general stimuli people respond to
| and they can be induced in not dissimilar manner. But at the end
| of the day they also need to eat. It's not about "tricking"
| people or even "training" people (you train plants, you teach
| people and "training seminars" is an utterly abhorrent term).
|
| It's a ton of work and stress effectively managing people. It
| made me very tired after some years and I just wanted to write
| code.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| zwieback wrote:
| Surprisingly perceptive and useful tips, I think peer-review is
| something that's both underused and hard to get right. We all
| love to self-manage but SW development can be a bit insular and
| some feedback from peers, if they are respected, can really help.
| [deleted]
| paulio wrote:
| > Ask developers to propose work-life goals and objectives
|
| I think I'd just hand my notice in. If that was ever asked of me.
|
| The whole article feels way over the top and honestly
| suffocating. Most people I work with struggle through the usual
| set of goals/targets every year and hate every minute of it.
| People are complex and have a wide variety of skills, treating
| people like this isn't motivational and you'll find good people
| moving elsewhere.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> Asking a developer to report to a manager with no software
| development experience ...
|
| This is gonna big a big problem.
|
| The article focuses solely on the setup but IME you rarely have
| the luxury of starting from zero. What would be really helpful is
| telling me how I step into a role and start moving in the right
| direction, or what do I do when things go off the rails? Also,
| how could a manager without dev experience quantify peer review
| requirements, or validate key metrics and results?
| d--b wrote:
| Jeez, this article is all wrong, this sounds like cattle
| hoarding...
|
| I've worked with two good non-technical managers in my career.
|
| First thing is that they keep their measurements to themselves.
| You know they're tracking how fast bugs are resolved and these
| kinds of things, but they don't talk to you about it.
|
| Second is that they don't pressure you to finish things with
| stupid release cycles.
|
| Third is that even though they don't know how to program
| themselves, they should at least be interested in the content of
| what's being produced and how. Cause programmers aren't all good
| at the same things, and knowing what to do means that you
| understand who needs to do what.
|
| Fourth is they take the heat if shit's not in time or buggy.
|
| Fifth is they take the tasks they can do to make people happier.
|
| And Sixth is they can't micromanage cause they're not technical,
| so the whole premise of the article is moot, and in fact, they
| should micromanage as much as they're able to.
| sleepingadmin wrote:
| Micromanagement is a negative and is unhealthy. If you are being
| micromanaged, that's grounds for finding a new job instantly.
| Absolutely nothing to do with what industry you work in.
|
| Performance reviews is another bag. That is bag of issues. My
| last job, I got my first performance review. I was expecting a
| good raise. I was a leader of the team, people would come to me
| constantly looking for help with their issues. Out of a team of
| ~30 sysadmins, only 2 people(including me) had any networking
| skills. I was valueable. I was available afterhours regularly, I
| billed ~50-60 hour weeks. I worked on multiple teams for clients,
| I had many clients who wanted me exclusively. When a coworker
| ended up in a disaster, I was often dispatched to help in the
| situation. I often gave out kudos to my coworkers and thanked
| them for the good work they did. Positivity in MSP is so
| important because everything we deal with is negative. Something
| broke, someone ran a virus, etc.
|
| Went into my performance review. I got very poorly rated
| justifying no raise. So I went into it... why was I so poorly
| rated?
|
| I had over 40 lates to work. Except that wasn't true. I was often
| one of the first people into the building in the morning. So what
| gives?
|
| Oh, every time I worked a weekend and clocked in at say 10am to
| respond to an emergency... I was late to work. I had worked 40+
| weekend days. So if I worked a saturday and sunday, I was late
| twice. When actually properly evaluated, I was late once and that
| was with pre-approval for a doctors appt.
|
| That wasn't all, my boss was under the impression that I had no
| friends there. That I was out of the office too much to build
| interpersonal relationships with coworkers. That there was 2
| people who at the time were anonymous in that they didn't speak
| highly of me. Turns out... I was being harassed. I had one of my
| clients provide me a phone recording of my coworker badmouthing
| me pretty badly.
| GoToRO wrote:
| You were working too much and you made everybody else look bad.
| Also, they didn't have budget for a raise so they gave you a
| poor review. I worked at a company like that. You see, if they
| give you a raise then the budget must grow. This is the job of
| the manager. But as he isn't doing his job, budget is not
| growing. So bad reviews all around. This is when top manager
| think they are so smart and come up with these rules, and then
| middle managers bend the rules.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| It's also possible management didn't know what all you did. Or,
| you were running around like a headless chicken-not aligned
| with the company goals.
| Twisol wrote:
| Did they formally update your performance rating? Did you end
| up getting the raise you were expecting, or did they give an
| excuse like "well all the raises have been allocated at this
| point"? The immediate situation sounds like it sucked enough,
| but if it had continuing ramifications, I'd be beside myself.
| datavirtue wrote:
| If people are cognizant of when I start work then I'm
| scrambling for the door. Everyone always thinks I come in at
| 7am for some reason. I always have this reputation as an early
| bird. I start ramping up somewhere between 9-10am. I have had
| co-workers that guilty-ly admit they don't start up until 8:30
| and they notify everyone about the munitia of thier schedule
| like we work in a restaurant or a factory or some shit.
|
| I don't get any of it.
| lumost wrote:
| Biggest two lessons of job performance I ever learned.
|
| 1) Your future hire-ability is determined by the work you do
| and the results you achieve. If you aren't an A-hole to work
| with this helps.
|
| 2) Your performance rating _within_ a company is based on
| perception. If you are perceived as doing good work then you
| get a good rating. There are no objective internal measures of
| engineer quality in any company.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> 1) Your future hire-ability is determined by the work you
| do and the results you achieve. If you aren't an A-hole to
| work with this helps.
|
| I agree with these but you've got them backwards. I'll help a
| positive & kind but marginal performer get better or find a
| role where they can excel; An a-hole is a cancer on the team
| regardless of how talented.
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