[pommers]

My favorite manager taught me how to navigate the workplace. He managed 20 very different people and always found time for one of us if wee needed it. He would fight other people to say that we (graduates) were valuable to the company and would always feed back to us the responses he was getting.

One thing I am really grateful for is that he expected me to be able to find and point out the policies and procedures for anything I needed him to do. This meant that I could keep him honest, and he could learn from me instead of having to search himself whenever I came up with an unusual problem (like being a graduate and getting called for an incident while not on call). I still do all my own reading before I go to my manager now with things I need them to do, and it helps me to help them help me (for the most part).

He was also always there for me if I was getting beaten around inside or outside work (even after he stopped being my manager). He is the best manager I have had by far, and I would work with him again in an instant.

I am still amazed how he managed to do so well after being thrown into the job managing a large group of people working across the department, while other managers I've had who have only needed to look after a small team (10 people) seem to never have time for us.