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Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (and What to Do About It)

(terriblesoftware.org)
85 points signa11 | 2 comments | 24 Jun 25 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.619s | source
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GianFabien ◴[25 Jun 25 00:45 UTC] No.44372619[source]▶
In my experience the bad managers are constantly trying to impress their bosses and curry the next promotion. They treat their reports like serfs who are obliged to burnish their image.

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.

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1. troyvit ◴[25 Jun 25 14:30 UTC] No.44377773[source]▶
> In my experience the bad managers are constantly trying to impress their bosses and curry the next promotion.

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.

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2. GianFabien ◴[27 Jun 25 02:18 UTC] No.44393206[source]▶
>solving the problems asynchronously instead of actually having the meeting.

Yes and over time we got better at knowing what needed brainstorming to fix as meeting of minds.