> The best engineering managers I’ve known — the ones engineers actually like — have figured out a few things:
> 1. They protect focus time like it’s sacred. […]
> 2. They stay technical enough to make informed decisions. […]
> 3. They give credit lavishly and take blame personally. […]
> 4. They make feedback actually meaningful. […]
The best managers (very few) I've come across are like a mother bear. Protective of their team, running interference and pushing back on out of scope work, etc.
I've only ever had one manager whose calendar was viewable by his team. If he needed a meeting with you, he would ping by email with the subject and any supporting materials and asking you to block out the meeting time in his calendar. Talk about respecting your productive times.
Are they there to be communication and documentation experts, or are they there to turn requirements into something that works?
I agree that there is benefits in having engineers who can engage with their managers, advocate for required changes and influence the management to act in a more beneficial way, but at some point the person doing this stops being an engineer and starts being a manager themself.
Managers are there to manage, that is organise, coordinate and ensure that their staff are completing tasks in the most efficient way possible. That will at time require them to communicate with both their superiors and their engineer staff. That requires them to be the the communication and documentation expert, not the engineer.
It’s taken me a long time to come around to recognizing this as the common thread in all the ‘bad bosses’ I’ve had over the years - each has felt pressure from above, but been unable to level with me about the position they’re in, and unable to sit down with me as an ally to allay upper management’s concerns. Instead, they’ve essentially sat on the issue, until they can’t anymore and find reason to let me go - and there’s always a reason if you care to look, no one is a perfect employee.
My exit interview ends up being the relief to the pressure they’ve been feeling, and then, in turn, I can imo assume they resume incubating, until they’re ready to hatch the next scapegoat.
Having one’s professional fate so haphazardly tied to an untrustworthy comrade is really only made tenable by the compensation this industry tends to offer - and between the layoffs and hiring freezes plaguing the SWE field lately, it’s definitely becoming less of a comfort. I hope I can get away with retiring before I run seriously afoul of the situation.
There are companies where the entire upper echelon is like that. Full of career people that is only looking up to get a promotion and ignoring their responsibilities toward their teams.
One of the symptoms of this disease is that there is a total disconnect between leadership and the average employee. As everybody is looking up there is no connection or communication down.
And it is very difficult to fix. People at the top have that mindset. So, their expectation is that people below them will be tending all their desires and laughing their jokes. They do not understand promotions as a reward for performance but as a reward for personal loyalty.
The bigger the corporation, the easier this occurs. Small companies die when this happens, big monopolistic corporations get so much money that they can afford to sustain such an inefficient way of working. For big enough corporations it looks like "nobility" in a feudal system. Backstabbing, office politics, and sectarization dominates the environment.
you could have an empty chair and things would still get done
in general there are too many useless or noise making people in companies i worked in
when they go on holiday the work continues in peace
Worse, those that are good at talking are going to waste everyone else’s time.
I said half because that seems to align with the marketing budget vs engineering budget, so it might be the best spot for companies as a whole.
This is why, besides maybe a small time window at some startups, management will always on average consist of ruthless looking after number one personality types.
While in a small business their goals migght still by nescessity align with those if the actual company, in a more corporate setting the relation between actual company performance and personal activity is so detached that even those taking into account alignment to a certain degree are handicapped relative to those going 100% self promotion.
The systemic stable equilibrium is therefor a shark tank of rutheless egoists trying to exploit anything and everyone they can to climb over each other and pull each other down.
I also think some of the most variable managers you get are at the smallest companies. Like one company had a CTO who was 25 with no prior professional experience that I know of other than co-founding this company. He wasn't bad, bad but certainly not doing half of what he could at that level.
However I've also had experiences where the manager changed 2/3 times in 2-years at a larger company, which IMO is a bad experience.
remove upper management too. problem solved.
Heh, I'm a worse manager. I keep trying to impress the people I manage. Working on the mama bear part though.
That's frustrating that you've only had one manager whose calendar was viewable by their team. That's the norm all up the chain of the current place I work. I think it was like that previously too.
I like that your manager had _you_ make the meetings for them after sending all the materials to prep for it. I get the feeling that several times that resulted in solving the problems asynchronously instead of actually having the meeting.
At level 3, the best level: The company is curing children's cancer or something else that you are personally motivated to do and satisfied by. The work is something you would do without pay (though you might not have as much time to do it if you weren't paid). Your highest purpose is to cure children's cancer.
At level 2: The company is doing work you are not personally interested in, but you work with good people doing good work. The company and people support each other and build a profitable product. Your highest purpose is to make the company profitable.
At level 1: The company starts doing stupid shit and acting in self-destructive ways. The company is run by managers who care more about growing their own headcounts than the overall profitability of the company. Your highest purpose is to make your manager happy.
At level 0: Your manager is also doing bad things. At this level the only purpose the job fulfills is giving you money, and there's no reason to not go full psychopath and do whatever it takes to maximize the amount of money you get. Your highest purpose is to make money without doing anything too illegal and avoid trouble.
What level is your job at?
Level 3 is rare and always will be, that's okay.
Level 2 is good, and I sometimes hear people on HN offering level 2 as the correct attitude to have towards work. But we need to recognize that workers are often asked to do stupid or semi-dishonest things that are not profitable for the company.
Level 1 and 0 are stages of hell, and it's sad how common they are.
The company as a whole might serve a noble purpose, but your purpose as an employee will have no connection to that if you're just redesigning the coversheet for TPS reports.
Doctors don't have managers. Lawyers don't have managers. Professors don't have managers. Architects don't have managers. Bankers don't have managers.
Engineers should not have managers.
There should just be different levels of engineers.
The dean of their department, and other administrative staff who don't have any clue what they do. Trust me that the clueless sociopathic administrative layer can absolutely interfere with professors' lives. Tenure can protect them somewhat, though.
> Architects don't have managers.
Yes they do. I don't know why you think this.
> Lawyers don't have managers.
They do unless they're partner, which is probably a small percentage of lawyers. A lot of lawyers are in the legal department of a larger company, with managers.
> Doctors don't have managers.
I know less about this but I'll bet there are plenty of hospital administrative staff above them who are sociopaths and get in their way.
> Software development is the only high-skilled work where people have managers.
All forms of engineers have managers: aerospace, civil, environmental, mechanical, etc. Only if they're running their own consultancy do they not, but you could say the same thing about plumbers and electricians. I'd actually wager a higher percentage of architects and engineers have managers than do tradespeople. Whether you have a manager has less to do with your profession, and more to do with whether you run your own business or not. Some professions run their own businesses more often than others, but I don't think engineers and architects are at the top.
There is the strategy side of things which you won't get from talking to customers, but I've seen many cases where senior management make absolutely terrible (and obviously terrible, not only with hindsight) strategic messes, so I'm not totally convinced that senior management are necessary for this part either. Senior management do usually have a better overall picture - eg. that some product is losing money and some other product is growing rapidly - but that's usually because detailed revenue numbers are hidden from everyone below the C-suite.
Management is not a product of university MBA programs and power-hungry corporate animals seeking to impose their will on others; it is an inevitably of group labour.
Is that so? Here is an open position: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/management/ro...
> Lawyers don't have managers.
Hmm, we seem to have very different information: https://timeanalyticssoftware.com/what-is-a-law-firm-managin...
> Professors don't have managers
I wonder what do the Dean and Chair at my university do then.
> Architects don't have managers
They do. See https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/architectural-and-enginee...
> Bankers don't have managers
They do. See this open position: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/bank-man...
> Engineers should not have managers.
I think nobody should have managers, but your examples were so confidently wrong that it's hard to agree with your whole statement. I am on the opinion that any work, no matter whether "high-skilled" or not, doesn't need managers, unless that's just an euphemism for more senior employees that also do the work.
Whether engineers do or don't do documentation and how much of it is decided by management.
Second, unless you are specific, I will assume the "improve their communication skills" is purely stereotype based. They are engineers, therefore they do not have communication skills. And we are going to pretend so even though they just communicated what they need very very clearly and politely.
The dean & chairperson at your university are not line managers. They are not in the classrooms with teaching professors. They are not in the labs with research professors.
Having someone be in charge of you is not the same as having a line manager. Line managers are down in the trenches with the employees, unlike most of your examples.
Yes and over time we got better at knowing what needed brainstorming to fix as meeting of minds.
Ironically I think bad managers replacing their teams with AI will be crushed by AI because 1. wtf do they even do and 2. suddenly the work being done correctly is on them with nobody to scapegoat later
I expect, for this reason, we'll see AI stabilize at managers telling their teams they must use AI and then demanding more output but not see entire workforces replaced.