I was once the sole report of a "senior developer", and the article nails every pain point that caused me to leave. His code had tons and tons of serious problems. The database was a mess; he insisted on storing multiple data points in a single column, querying the entire table, then regexing out the information he wanted in php foreach loops. This was because the database was so bad you couldn't join more than two tables without crashing it. He vetoed everything I tried to do to improve the codebase, really normal best practices. I read books and books and tried coming to him with sources on why we ought to normalize our data, or use prepared statements instead of the unreliable homemade sanitizer function he brewed up. He had been insisting for years that long load times were unavoidable. I was so frustrated with the situation that I didn't bother to help him save face when I fixed everything with a couple of indexes.
I spoke my grievances to the owner who listened with open ears, but he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. I appreciated his honesty, and started job hunting immediately. I only worked under that senior dev for 7 months.
I was a very junior dev when I worked for a huge health insurance company, I was placed under a senior dev to learn JSP and Java Servlets using an internal app. I quickly ran through a book on JSP to prepare for the project.
When I get there, the guy had already written one page of the app, and he did it by doing System.out.println in the servlet for ALL THE HTML. In other words, he didn't use JSP templates at all.
System.out.println("<html>");
System.out.println("<head>");
System.out.println("<title>This janky ass code</title>");
I looked at that abomination and said, "This isn't JSP at all...." He rambled on about sometimes in a project, we just need to get things done with the tools we knew, etc. etc.
I went to our boss and told him I wasn't learning JSP, which was the mandate of the company back then. He just kind of smirked and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Ken. He knows programming, though, blah blah blah."
2nd worse boss I ever had, the dev was a lunatic, and that company was a joke.
> he insisted on storing multiple data points in a single column, querying the entire table, then regexing out the information he wanted in php foreach loops.
This is not a senior developer, this is a [bad] intern who has two months of experience 60 times. Although now I see you have senior dev in quotes and maybe that's why!
he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company.
This is what lead me to leave what was otherwise one of the most fulfilling jobs I’d ever had working as an engineer for a B Corp that provided tech consulting exclusively to non-profits humanitarian organizations.
Loved the mission, appreciated the leadership team, but absolutely loathed the this one developer on my team. So did the rest of the team.
Guy went through a divorce and became the worst kind of person imaginable. The engineering director suddenly retired due to a life-threatening medical condition, and this fella made it his mission to usurp as much power as he could. Pretty soon people started leaving the company because of the guy, leaving me and the other juniors as the only people behind.
Guess who was made the new engineering director. His code was fine and performant but he was an absolutely miserable, awful, truly rage-filled person but those open ears when anyone tried reporting up just happened to be attached to the same body that would shrug and point to his seniority and tenure as a means to not do anything about it.
He’s still there. I can see his picture on the company about page to this day. Everyone else is smiling jovially and he’s literally, actually, I’m not kidding you scowling at the camera.
And I’m still remiss because aside from that and that alone, I really enjoyed what I was doing there.
That's because the business owner wanted stability and predictability. He needed somebody to go and fix that server when it crashes due to an update, or to add a new column to the database when the customers request it, at the lowest price possible.
The dev needed peace of mind and job security. To do as little work/thinking as possible at the stable pay.
They kinda found each other and it was working just fine for both of them.
Then you came into play, bringing more work to the dev at the same pay, if he agreed with you. Had the company owner taken your side, he would likely lose the senior dev, and lose you in a couple of months once you get everything working and decide to move on (I doubt you would be happy with the kind of work the previous dev was doing).
That’s true. That’s why is m against people with a 30% allocation on my team. Projekt Managers think you can just split a person’s work into parts but when somebody is allocated at 30% tk you, you actually get way less performance.
> Generally people put a part time job on the back burner and focus on the main full time job.
And if "people" was only the manager in question that would be somewhat okay, but usually it's the reporting chain above of that person that thinks the same too.
I made the mistake of accepting to manage an intern (not mentor, manage) once, and I was expected to do 100% of my normal job on top of managing him. It takes an unbelievable amount of time.
If you manage one person you get all the overhead of managing people but only the productivity of one person. Same for offshoring. My company has people in India so we often get one or two persons added to the team. This produces enormous overhead due difficulty of communication over a 12h time difference but we still get omit the work of two people. It would be way more efficient to have ten people there so the overhead is worth it.
>This produces enormous overhead due difficulty of communication over a 12h time difference
I refuse to do it again / anymore.
I've been asking for contractor's actual working hours before assuming a 9-5 time schedule in their timezone, then looking at actual working hours of overlap. But no matter what, I absolutely require 3-4 hours of overlap a day. I'm DONE with the one round-trip communication per day routine.
My manager has ~14 reports. We're all on different projects every quarter and my manager knows nearly nothing about any individual project.
I see arguments for essentially the same problems from the article:
- Managers aren't reliant on the feedback or success of individual reports. >80% of people will always give positive feedback.
- Managers don't give feedback or help resolve problems. It's effort on their part with no upside.
- We're all still isolated because there is no consistent team.
- No one has context. Managers can't understand 10+ projects.
There is a sweet spot of amount of reports, where a manager is able to handle the projects and the performance of the individuals -- once you hit the 8 people mark, you should be looking in to splitting the team up - the manager could delegate and mentor a jr manager to take on a part of the team, etc. But 14 is too much.
I work in the cloud consulting department at BigTech. We have the same structure. But we don’t have that problem. It’s up to us to be able to describe a project, create documentation and artifacts, seek customer feedback, etc and prepare a “promo document”. I approach each 1 on 1 like a miniature interview where I describe my projects in STAR format.
I solve problems by working with my project managers. But mostly, I can deal with the customer myself when it comes to tactical issues.
I think the key question here is...why manage one person. A one to one ratio of managers to "workers" seems completely rediculous to me. If you insist on one to one then assign a mentor, not a manager, at least if it's a technical domain and there's an option to assign someone that is not a pure manager.
If you're ever assigned to manage a single person, it's better to go big picture and wonder if this is a reasonable way to run a company (imo). If a single person is working on a project that requires oversight that person should be senior enough to "manage themselves". If they are too junior, the team should be bigger (because it's important enough to require oversight). If it's oversight due to legal issues that's fine but then the management can be hands of and should basically spot check that everything is following said legal requirements.
At least that's my humble opinion. I treat one on one manager to technical role relations as an organizational smell.
So this is primarily a problem with small companies, although you'll sometimes see it on teams when several people leave around the same time. The typical example is a non-VC backed small business, where a senior individual is hiring a junior person because that's all there's budget for at the moment.
But yes, its absolutely an anti-pattern, because as you've pointed out junior hires do need more oversight and help. I've rarely seen the situation work out.
I was a manager of one, and it's not even about junior or senior. My first report left (not because of me!), and my new report was much more senior, but I had a lot more managerial work to do because they didn't have the company knowledge and contacts to self-manage.
Thankfully, I was relieved of managerial duties shortly there after. I had only agreed to manage in the first place because we were a team of 12 with one manager, and that was too many reports, so half the team got to manage the other half, and my initial report was self-sufficient (well, we kind of all were), add some new hires and report moves and manager:report numbers got better.
Small companies often have situations where a clearly distinct function/department goes from one person to two; where someone who wasn't really an individual contributor but running a separate thing alone now is managing a 'team of two' including themselves.
>Note: mangers should be very invested in their report’s success.
I have never had this experience in my entire professional career.
How does one arrive at such a privileged and pampered existence? Like... they treat you with dignity and respect? What sort of war crimes do I need to commit to get this kind of job?
I mean... managers want their ICs to do well and get promoted. It makes them look good, because they're growing their own team. Most healthier organizations work this way?
Co-author of OP here, cool to see this post come up again.
An even more challenging situation that I've seen since is the 1-1-1 management system (manager manages 1 person, who in turn manages another). When that arises, you really need to fix it as soon as possible, either by rearranging, or hiring people to spread the number of reports.
Just wanted to say that the stay saasy blog is terrific. It makes me really wonder who you folks are. 90% of organizations just suck at everything you write about, so you must have some great experience.
Agreed with article; the 4th point around context is almost universally true - to put it another way, you cannot make a bell curve with a single data point. It becomes difficult to accurately evaluate how well a single person is doing. Yes, there are some absolutes, but underneath most seeming absolutes ("this is how long it should take to accomplish activity X", "this is the minimum acceptable quality for product Y"), lies experience and statistics. ~four people is a good starting size as you can more accurately plot how well people are doing, and how well you are doing as a manager.
> the 4th point around context is almost universally true - to put it another way, you cannot make a bell curve with a single data point. It becomes difficult to accurately evaluate how well a single person is doing.
I've always been confused about the terrible reputation of "stack ranking" for roughly this reason. What other kind of ranking is there?
You can rate people according to metrics that have been established for the task they're doing, but the nature of software is that when a task has been done once it doesn't need to be done again.
This is why I'm reluctant to consider Founding Engineer roles. It doesn't matter how well you do, how much benefit you bring to the team, or how much value you create for the company. Most founders are first-time managers and will have absolutely no context for how to measure your productivity.
This should also mention as a generality that managers should get training and support from the organization.
This, in my experience, almost never happens. Companies just assume you know how to be a good manager. They shouldn't make that assumption even for experienced hires, especially if they're looking to establish a specific culture.
Even if they don't assume the manager is a good one, I think it's common to have cultures where first time managers are expected to just figure it out for themselves, because their manager had to do the same thing.
Usually managers get trained in the bureaucratic processes of management but yes, there is usually no training in how to actually manage and often no mentoring either.
I was once put in the position of co-managing a single report. Two managers, one of them a first time manager, and a senior report - it was one of the hardest management experiences I've had. I was far easier to manage two parallel teams of 5 than to manage half of one person.
Why did they want you to manage just 50% of a person and were you doing more precisely as a 0.5 people manager? (Eg planning? Or mentoring?) Sounds odd indeed :-)
If your whole job is to manage one person, your real job title is probably 'personal assistant'. Of course, this inverts the power structure in hierarchical organizations, and it probably points to some kind of problematic internal organizational issue with the outfit.
I've managed a team with only 2 reports. Wouldn't recommend it unless you're the founder/owner. In my experience the minimum size for managing a team should be 3 direct reports and not more than 9.
I have a peace lily and despite my best efforts to kill it through neglect, it is still here almost 4 years later, kicking and thriving.
It survived being not watered for over a month, overwatered, cut in half [1] and being left outside in near-freezing temperatures accidentally for a week or so.
1. Cutting it half is actually the preferred propagation method, so it wasn't an intentional way to harm the plant.
Is it really not uncommon for a manager (even a new one) to manage a singleton? That has always felt like an antipattern to me. On my team I would not mint a new manager unless they had at least 2-3 reports.
It’s not uncommon, weird, or counterproductive when there is a team of two and one is the other’s direct report. The problems arise when the manager treats the situation with more hierarchy than the situation warrants.
Think about it like if a small company’s accounting department grows to need two people. One position being above the other in the org chart is fine, but don’t expect much stratification in the roles. They’re basically splitting the work but one person is also representing/responsible for the department to the rest of the company.
Accounting is an easy example, because it's pretty clearly an isolated discipline. It's also possible that there is specialization that needs a 1-over-1 managerial relationship elsewhere in org chart. But it runs more risk of being a ladder-climber taking their first step and cocking it up by acting like there is a non-trivial amount of stratification between them and their report.
I don’t get all the negative comments about 2 person teams. It happens in small companies and startups. You bring a domain expert and you also hire a junior or less senior person. And sometimes you don’t even need to hire more, the team can be super productive or the projects are as many as required for a team of 2.
Personal anecdote: I have done it twice as a manager and had great experience and collaboration both of the times (at least this is my take in both of them). The key is to not see yourself as a manager but more like a mentor and equal contributor to the projects. It also requires great communication skills and openness, as well as taking as many opportunities for new projects and cross team collaborations as possible, in order to not alienate the team as well as make the direct report feel that he can grow with you. Of course it happened that no bad experiences or bad hires happened in both my cases, but tbh i suspect the consequences would be small as small team usually means small projects. I have seen worse cases from bad hires, or bad collaborators in larger teams and way larger projects, which can also deteriorate the morale in more people and teams.
Managing one person becomes hard because neither manager nor subordinate have a comparison point. Particularly because in these scenarios the subordinate is new to the working world and the manager is new to managing. They are both the best and worst employee/ mangager either have ever had and they have no context to know which is true.
The truth becomes more clear in later in both individuals professional journey. I can look back early in my career and realize I had a terrible 1:1 manager, but thought it was me. I can also look back on a time I managed an employee 1:1 and recognize where I could have been better.
[+] [-] Timpy|3 years ago|reply
I spoke my grievances to the owner who listened with open ears, but he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. I appreciated his honesty, and started job hunting immediately. I only worked under that senior dev for 7 months.
[+] [-] snapetom|3 years ago|reply
When I get there, the guy had already written one page of the app, and he did it by doing System.out.println in the servlet for ALL THE HTML. In other words, he didn't use JSP templates at all.
System.out.println("<html>"); System.out.println("<head>"); System.out.println("<title>This janky ass code</title>");
I looked at that abomination and said, "This isn't JSP at all...." He rambled on about sometimes in a project, we just need to get things done with the tools we knew, etc. etc.
I went to our boss and told him I wasn't learning JSP, which was the mandate of the company back then. He just kind of smirked and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Ken. He knows programming, though, blah blah blah."
2nd worse boss I ever had, the dev was a lunatic, and that company was a joke.
[+] [-] pc86|3 years ago|reply
This is not a senior developer, this is a [bad] intern who has two months of experience 60 times. Although now I see you have senior dev in quotes and maybe that's why!
[+] [-] dvtrn|3 years ago|reply
This is what lead me to leave what was otherwise one of the most fulfilling jobs I’d ever had working as an engineer for a B Corp that provided tech consulting exclusively to non-profits humanitarian organizations.
Loved the mission, appreciated the leadership team, but absolutely loathed the this one developer on my team. So did the rest of the team.
Guy went through a divorce and became the worst kind of person imaginable. The engineering director suddenly retired due to a life-threatening medical condition, and this fella made it his mission to usurp as much power as he could. Pretty soon people started leaving the company because of the guy, leaving me and the other juniors as the only people behind.
Guess who was made the new engineering director. His code was fine and performant but he was an absolutely miserable, awful, truly rage-filled person but those open ears when anyone tried reporting up just happened to be attached to the same body that would shrug and point to his seniority and tenure as a means to not do anything about it.
He’s still there. I can see his picture on the company about page to this day. Everyone else is smiling jovially and he’s literally, actually, I’m not kidding you scowling at the camera.
And I’m still remiss because aside from that and that alone, I really enjoyed what I was doing there.
[+] [-] matrix_overload|3 years ago|reply
The dev needed peace of mind and job security. To do as little work/thinking as possible at the stable pay.
They kinda found each other and it was working just fine for both of them.
Then you came into play, bringing more work to the dev at the same pay, if he agreed with you. Had the company owner taken your side, he would likely lose the senior dev, and lose you in a couple of months once you get everything working and decide to move on (I doubt you would be happy with the kind of work the previous dev was doing).
[+] [-] cpursley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric4smith|3 years ago|reply
Generally people put a part time job on the back burner and focus on the main full time job.
Just speaking from experience.
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iLoveOncall|3 years ago|reply
And if "people" was only the manager in question that would be somewhat okay, but usually it's the reporting chain above of that person that thinks the same too.
I made the mistake of accepting to manage an intern (not mentor, manage) once, and I was expected to do 100% of my normal job on top of managing him. It takes an unbelievable amount of time.
[+] [-] idiocrat|3 years ago|reply
While I can "come by" managing just one person (cutting the managerial corners), for 4 persons I need to organize myself more efficient.
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|3 years ago|reply
I refuse to do it again / anymore.
I've been asking for contractor's actual working hours before assuming a 9-5 time schedule in their timezone, then looking at actual working hours of overlap. But no matter what, I absolutely require 3-4 hours of overlap a day. I'm DONE with the one round-trip communication per day routine.
[+] [-] NAHWheatCracker|3 years ago|reply
I see arguments for essentially the same problems from the article:
- Managers aren't reliant on the feedback or success of individual reports. >80% of people will always give positive feedback. - Managers don't give feedback or help resolve problems. It's effort on their part with no upside. - We're all still isolated because there is no consistent team. - No one has context. Managers can't understand 10+ projects.
[+] [-] elliottcarlson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarface74|3 years ago|reply
I solve problems by working with my project managers. But mostly, I can deal with the customer myself when it comes to tactical issues.
[+] [-] kriro|3 years ago|reply
If you're ever assigned to manage a single person, it's better to go big picture and wonder if this is a reasonable way to run a company (imo). If a single person is working on a project that requires oversight that person should be senior enough to "manage themselves". If they are too junior, the team should be bigger (because it's important enough to require oversight). If it's oversight due to legal issues that's fine but then the management can be hands of and should basically spot check that everything is following said legal requirements.
At least that's my humble opinion. I treat one on one manager to technical role relations as an organizational smell.
[+] [-] twunde|3 years ago|reply
But yes, its absolutely an anti-pattern, because as you've pointed out junior hires do need more oversight and help. I've rarely seen the situation work out.
[+] [-] toast0|3 years ago|reply
Thankfully, I was relieved of managerial duties shortly there after. I had only agreed to manage in the first place because we were a team of 12 with one manager, and that was too many reports, so half the team got to manage the other half, and my initial report was self-sufficient (well, we kind of all were), add some new hires and report moves and manager:report numbers got better.
[+] [-] PeterisP|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dirtybirdnj|3 years ago|reply
I have never had this experience in my entire professional career.
How does one arrive at such a privileged and pampered existence? Like... they treat you with dignity and respect? What sort of war crimes do I need to commit to get this kind of job?
[+] [-] johnfn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riversflow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackitup7|3 years ago|reply
An even more challenging situation that I've seen since is the 1-1-1 management system (manager manages 1 person, who in turn manages another). When that arises, you really need to fix it as soon as possible, either by rearranging, or hiring people to spread the number of reports.
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|3 years ago|reply
Anyway, thanks for all the great content.
[+] [-] cardanome|3 years ago|reply
I just don't get the why. I guess it is some career driven insanity, everyone wants to be a manager.
[+] [-] forbiddenvoid|3 years ago|reply
Nothing gets done, everyone gets blamed.
[+] [-] swyx|3 years ago|reply
really appreciated the time you spent with us and hope you keep up with the insightful, concise advice!
[+] [-] roflyear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaNovak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|3 years ago|reply
I've always been confused about the terrible reputation of "stack ranking" for roughly this reason. What other kind of ranking is there?
You can rate people according to metrics that have been established for the task they're doing, but the nature of software is that when a task has been done once it doesn't need to be done again.
[+] [-] victor9000|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangus|3 years ago|reply
This, in my experience, almost never happens. Companies just assume you know how to be a good manager. They shouldn't make that assumption even for experienced hires, especially if they're looking to establish a specific culture.
[+] [-] thenoblesquid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cd00d|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leaflets2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|3 years ago|reply
I am not trying to be argumentative. But there are a lot of arguments in this thread basically going straight past each other
My two cents are
- user proxy (product manager)
- standards enforcer (linter)
- resource gatherer (arguing for resources from other managers)
- political actor / representative
- mentor / coach
Now, most of not all of these are also things everyone says one should do for one's own career.
I am just wondering, what do most managers bring to the table other than neat hierarchy drawings? Is it basically a nice coach like role?
How much power should a coach have?
[+] [-] siva7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nfhshy68|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dymk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antisthenes|3 years ago|reply
I have a peace lily and despite my best efforts to kill it through neglect, it is still here almost 4 years later, kicking and thriving.
It survived being not watered for over a month, overwatered, cut in half [1] and being left outside in near-freezing temperatures accidentally for a week or so.
1. Cutting it half is actually the preferred propagation method, so it wasn't an intentional way to harm the plant.
[+] [-] fatjokes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogleash|3 years ago|reply
Think about it like if a small company’s accounting department grows to need two people. One position being above the other in the org chart is fine, but don’t expect much stratification in the roles. They’re basically splitting the work but one person is also representing/responsible for the department to the rest of the company.
Accounting is an easy example, because it's pretty clearly an isolated discipline. It's also possible that there is specialization that needs a 1-over-1 managerial relationship elsewhere in org chart. But it runs more risk of being a ladder-climber taking their first step and cocking it up by acting like there is a non-trivial amount of stratification between them and their report.
[+] [-] higeorge13|3 years ago|reply
Personal anecdote: I have done it twice as a manager and had great experience and collaboration both of the times (at least this is my take in both of them). The key is to not see yourself as a manager but more like a mentor and equal contributor to the projects. It also requires great communication skills and openness, as well as taking as many opportunities for new projects and cross team collaborations as possible, in order to not alienate the team as well as make the direct report feel that he can grow with you. Of course it happened that no bad experiences or bad hires happened in both my cases, but tbh i suspect the consequences would be small as small team usually means small projects. I have seen worse cases from bad hires, or bad collaborators in larger teams and way larger projects, which can also deteriorate the morale in more people and teams.
[+] [-] eweise|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etempleton|3 years ago|reply
The truth becomes more clear in later in both individuals professional journey. I can look back early in my career and realize I had a terrible 1:1 manager, but thought it was me. I can also look back on a time I managed an employee 1:1 and recognize where I could have been better.
[+] [-] einpoklum|3 years ago|reply