Best bosses: Usually self-describe themselves as "meat shields" for their troops. Ask "How can I help you do your job?" instead of "Why isn't that done yet?" Understands the creative process.
Worst bosses: Ditherers, or opaque and random ciphers. Never present. Jerk you from one task to another. Surprise you with bad reviews. Unwilling to pay for good tools ("What's wrong with Notepad?") Sees you as a fungible cog or chess piece to be moved around. Often non-technical, or "used to be technical" in an ossified region of the industry (e.g., large aerospace firm). Uses Scrum as a platform for micromanaging.
[I made a decision 25 years ago never to be a manager. I recently had the opportunity to try it out again for a summer, and it sucked just as hard as I remembered. I am an engineer, and I work with people in a far different way than good managers do.]
A manager where I once worked demanded that we continue to use (the unpaid for shareware version of) WinZip on one computer that was dedicated to sending data off to clients. After WinZip added the 1 second wait for every file ever processed, he implemented a 'wait and come back rule'.
The count reached over 3000 at one point!
I would just use 7-zip or zip it in Cygwin. But it became so that when I wasn't around clients would have to wait an extra hour to get their files. He sometimes would just sit there and wait for the count to complete. A single license was maybe $25 at the time?
I've been at more than my fair share of establishments. The boss that stands out as the worst, hands down, had two traits that stood out:
1. An alpha personality that could admit no wrong.
2. A failure to leverage his senior people for their abilities, everyone was treated as a contractor and told what/how to do it.
This was a startup and the behavior basically resulted in a couple of us leaving. There were other bits of the startup that were chaotic (and could be attributed to a fast/changing environment), but this individuals behavior sealed the deal for a couple of us.
Personally, I've had to manage a bit here and there. When it is a small company/team, I really prefer to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Cater to the strengths, learn where I can, and try and fill in the weaknesses with other's strengths. Even with many years of experience, there is still something I can learn from most people (rockstar, average, etc.)
I've had a number of horrible bosses over the years (if you are reading this and we still talk, i'm not referring to you!) and for me it falls into two categories: trust and authoritarianism.
Trust is critical. If you hire an engineer you should trust that they can do their job. If you don't think you can ever do that, don't hire them! It is incredibly demoralising, and a sure sign you should plan an exit when your boss tells you that he doesn't trust your code, especially when they write poorly thought out, untested, spaghetti...
Authoritarianism is also a deal breaker, especially when it is applied simply to assert dominance. A new alpha male manager coming in and declaring a new company order without even trying to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of his team is fatal. I've seen teams fall apart because of this.
I would probably suck at both of these things. I probably shouldn't be a manager.
Be patronizing I left a high-paying job after upper management installed a smug, platitudinous director over my group. I disagree that people become what you expect of them. I would not become an imbecile because my boss believed that everyone else was an imbecile. There's no reason to lose one's dignity.
Worth pointing out that even if you personally did not become what the director expected of you, by leaving you likel brought the remaining team's average closer to the expectation.
On a tangent, I've noticed an interesting correlation between a high number of bad bosses and a companies policy of frequently moving managers into new positions to give them experience with all parts of the company. I think it has something to do with reducing people to cogs.
My most recent problem : think you are like Steve Jobs. Seriously, this disease seems rampant amongst manager recently. Is it anecdotal evidence or has someone else observed that too ?
For these articles, it would be good to consider the other side:
Talk a lot, do not listen much - people need to know what's going on. A good boss has to keep everyone informed of the stuff that matters.
Be patronizing - you need to ensure all the right checklists are followed (security, stability, etc).
Be as cryptic as possible, never direct - don't micromanage.
Encourage bureaucracy, and demand visibility into everything - documentation and process is really important.
Show them who's boss - you have to make sure everyone is co-operating, and that silos are broken down.
These "problems" can be strengths, or necessary evils. It's more a question of when the behavior is a problem, rather than which behavior is always best.
Being a horrible boss and being a successful executive are different things. Steve Jobs was a horrible boss by all accounts. The first chapter of Managing Humans addresses exactly this point.
He calls out 'weekly status meetings' as one of the things a manager should not do, but depending on how they are handled I think it could be a good thing.
A place I worked at used to do a '5 minute meeting', every day, right after lunch. Of course, it ended up being longer than 15 minutes, but in a varied team where many times other people have no idea what you are working on, it can actually be somewhat 'motivational'.
Agreed. My (small) team does a 15-ish minute standup every morning where everyone gives a status on what they're working on. I think it's nice to be able to see the status of how everything is going instead of just sitting down in front of my computer in the morning and leaving, never knowing what several other guys are doing.
A little compassion on both sides would go a long way towards making 'horrible' bosses better and employees function better as a team. I find a lot of employees these days, especially younger ones are too entitled and self important to appreciate the more subtle sides of compromise. Especially if you're not constantly telling them how wonderful they are (when they barely understand their own job) and expect the same trophies for participation that they've received all their privileged, sheltered lives. Nor do they understand how a manager, especially a new, perhaps inexperienced manager might not have the bureaucratic pull to obtain the best tools for everyone and must operate within certain budgets. Trust me, your boss, no matter how horrible, wants you to succeed. They might not always take the best approach, but they went from being great at a task to being in charge of seeing to it the task they love gets done better than they could do it by others who don't necessarily know how, or want to put in the time it takes to make it great. This article is typical of the whining and entitled little d-bags around the entire working world who think they could manage better than their current boss, often having no idea what that takes, or simply believing in their heart of naive hearts that if they are simply everyone's buddy their team will succeed beyond all their wildest dreams. Ha. Good luck! I hope they get promoted soon. Then revisit this ridiculous article and see how many of the things 'horrible bosses' do are symptoms of a larger machine at work than just their function and their subordinates role within it. And don't even get me started on micromanaging. Most employees I know can barely organize their own projects, believing it their god given liberal arts education to 'think in piles rather than folders.' but what they fail to understand is that their manager is responsible for picking up all their shitty, entitled little pieces and presenting them cohesively to THEIR superiors. So, yeah, fuckhead...they do need to know what you're doing.
My job as a technical manager is to serve the people I am responsible for. Simple as that. Transparency, direct feedback and appreciation are some of the tools. In the end, my job is to make sure everyone on the team has what they need to meet our goals.
The interesting thing is determining where, and successfully managing, the point in one's career where the "people you're responsible" for inflects to become closer to shareholders than employees.
How to be a "good" boss very much depends on the people and the circumstances. There's really only one constant: clarity.
Even if the boss's style is authoritarian micromanagement, which most people on HN won't feel comfortable with, if said boss provides clarity and consistency certain types of people will be happy to work for them.
Knowing what is expected of you is the most important part of being comfortable in the role of employee. The rest is more a matter of personal preference.
'First, Break All the Rules' is a great read. For new managers, I highly reccomend 'The First 90 Days'
Remember not to just accept everything in these books. They should be read with the expectation that you will have to pull out the useful pieces that are relevant to you.
Peopleware and Slack by Tom DeMarco are must-reads. I re-read Peopleware once every few years. I also liked Delivering Happiness (by @zappos) and Tribal Leadership, although they are more about organizations than management per se.
I do see problem with trust, not many would do that unless you are already proven before you join a work place. Moreover if you are a talented programmer, some see you as a threat.
Read a critical mass of business books - and then make your own mind up. Their advice is somewhat confused and conflicted, but in the middle of it all are the basics.
When my wife was at a very large company, her good managers [0] did these things:
-- make sure the programming team understands the customer's priorities, goals, timelines, etc.
-- pay attention to the task breakdown, making sure that all of the programmers know what pieces to work on, and making sure that important pieces don't get overlooked
-- make sure the programming team has the resources they need. Fight with upper management, procurement, HR, or whoever else in order to get the necessary equipment and personnel.
[0] This is not always a single person with the "manager" title. Sometimes it's a "team lead", or multiple people with multiple titles.
Although i agree with most points made in this article, I think, having been a manager/teamlead of many programming teams, i think i might write an article on "how to be a horrible employee"...
[+] [-] kabdib|14 years ago|reply
Worst bosses: Ditherers, or opaque and random ciphers. Never present. Jerk you from one task to another. Surprise you with bad reviews. Unwilling to pay for good tools ("What's wrong with Notepad?") Sees you as a fungible cog or chess piece to be moved around. Often non-technical, or "used to be technical" in an ossified region of the industry (e.g., large aerospace firm). Uses Scrum as a platform for micromanaging.
[I made a decision 25 years ago never to be a manager. I recently had the opportunity to try it out again for a summer, and it sucked just as hard as I remembered. I am an engineer, and I work with people in a far different way than good managers do.]
[+] [-] orbitingpluto|14 years ago|reply
A manager where I once worked demanded that we continue to use (the unpaid for shareware version of) WinZip on one computer that was dedicated to sending data off to clients. After WinZip added the 1 second wait for every file ever processed, he implemented a 'wait and come back rule'.
The count reached over 3000 at one point!
I would just use 7-zip or zip it in Cygwin. But it became so that when I wasn't around clients would have to wait an extra hour to get their files. He sometimes would just sit there and wait for the count to complete. A single license was maybe $25 at the time?
[+] [-] derleth|14 years ago|reply
You don't even need to pay for good tools, but that doesn't mean the bad boss will allow you to use them.
There's a point at which idiocy turns into a personality disorder all its own.
[+] [-] jmspring|14 years ago|reply
1. An alpha personality that could admit no wrong. 2. A failure to leverage his senior people for their abilities, everyone was treated as a contractor and told what/how to do it.
This was a startup and the behavior basically resulted in a couple of us leaving. There were other bits of the startup that were chaotic (and could be attributed to a fast/changing environment), but this individuals behavior sealed the deal for a couple of us.
Personally, I've had to manage a bit here and there. When it is a small company/team, I really prefer to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Cater to the strengths, learn where I can, and try and fill in the weaknesses with other's strengths. Even with many years of experience, there is still something I can learn from most people (rockstar, average, etc.)
[+] [-] heretohelp|14 years ago|reply
So you were at my last company? ;)
[+] [-] emmapersky|14 years ago|reply
Trust is critical. If you hire an engineer you should trust that they can do their job. If you don't think you can ever do that, don't hire them! It is incredibly demoralising, and a sure sign you should plan an exit when your boss tells you that he doesn't trust your code, especially when they write poorly thought out, untested, spaghetti...
Authoritarianism is also a deal breaker, especially when it is applied simply to assert dominance. A new alpha male manager coming in and declaring a new company order without even trying to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of his team is fatal. I've seen teams fall apart because of this.
I would probably suck at both of these things. I probably shouldn't be a manager.
[+] [-] ChristianMarks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stavrianos|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Iv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
Talk a lot, do not listen much - people need to know what's going on. A good boss has to keep everyone informed of the stuff that matters.
Be patronizing - you need to ensure all the right checklists are followed (security, stability, etc).
Be as cryptic as possible, never direct - don't micromanage.
Encourage bureaucracy, and demand visibility into everything - documentation and process is really important.
Show them who's boss - you have to make sure everyone is co-operating, and that silos are broken down.
These "problems" can be strengths, or necessary evils. It's more a question of when the behavior is a problem, rather than which behavior is always best.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnx123-up|14 years ago|reply
Edit: So, it is the results that speak for you.
[+] [-] diego|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jswanson|14 years ago|reply
A place I worked at used to do a '5 minute meeting', every day, right after lunch. Of course, it ended up being longer than 15 minutes, but in a varied team where many times other people have no idea what you are working on, it can actually be somewhat 'motivational'.
[+] [-] prophetjohn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kc87750|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgrote|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eitally|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
Even if the boss's style is authoritarian micromanagement, which most people on HN won't feel comfortable with, if said boss provides clarity and consistency certain types of people will be happy to work for them.
Knowing what is expected of you is the most important part of being comfortable in the role of employee. The rest is more a matter of personal preference.
[+] [-] kabuks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arupchak|14 years ago|reply
Remember not to just accept everything in these books. They should be read with the expectation that you will have to pull out the useful pieces that are relevant to you.
[+] [-] diego|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhughes|14 years ago|reply
And how many people have been poisoned in a bad office atmosphere spending their career there thinking that's just the way it is.
[+] [-] _rj|14 years ago|reply
I do see problem with trust, not many would do that unless you are already proven before you join a work place. Moreover if you are a talented programmer, some see you as a threat.
[+] [-] troels|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steilpass|14 years ago|reply
So how am I going to learn about management? What are good classes? What are good websites to ask these questions?
[+] [-] MDCore|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lancewiggs|14 years ago|reply
A good dollop of common sense never goes amiss.
[+] [-] Ziomislaw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tomis02|14 years ago|reply
I wonder what that says about the daily Agile stand-up-s.
[+] [-] MaxGabriel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotharbot|14 years ago|reply
-- make sure the programming team understands the customer's priorities, goals, timelines, etc.
-- pay attention to the task breakdown, making sure that all of the programmers know what pieces to work on, and making sure that important pieces don't get overlooked
-- make sure the programming team has the resources they need. Fight with upper management, procurement, HR, or whoever else in order to get the necessary equipment and personnel.
[0] This is not always a single person with the "manager" title. Sometimes it's a "team lead", or multiple people with multiple titles.
[+] [-] hboon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diedsj|14 years ago|reply