October 27, 2014 at 7:15 am
There is good and bad in all positions. In MY case our Manager is great. A go getter that doesn't take BS from the apps folks and rationalizes everything we do. He is in all the meetings about anything that requires a database and brings sanity to the table. He stops a LOT of crap before it gets a chance to get started. Our server team had a very poor manager... great Storage guy but not good at managing the server team. That team fell into no one talks to each other and the server team gets taken advantage of and the team has no idea what new stuff is coming until someone comes to them and says we need a new server... um... by tomorrow. Our boss has taken over that team and is setting up standards, a work flowthrough, in all meeting that require servers and bring sanity to it all. No more we need a server last minute.. and no more... we need one but we didn't budget money for it...
The DBA team is known here as the best team in IT. Granted we have a great group, but, it also is because of the Manager. He brings a sense of here is what is coming, get ready, who does this, who doest that and coordinates all major projects from a database side.
October 27, 2014 at 7:40 am
I think the problem with management in relation to technical teams is often one of authority.
The members of the team have natural authority, in the sense that they are specialists and so the authorities in their area. The manager has given authority derived from the hierarchy, but once you get beyond the immediate team leader level generally doesn't know enough to make a decision without reference to the natural authority of those below him. If they fail to do that often enough then the hierarchical authority will be resented, not respected.
Most technical teams largely self-manage. They have to do, as that is where the depth of knowledge exists to make reasoned decisions. Rather than management, in the old production-line, hierarchical mode, they need administrative support - to deal with holiday rotas and HR bureaucracy and between teams there needs to be a co-ordination function to smooth workflow across teams.
Good managers recognize this and I have been lucky enough to work *with* one or two. However I have also had to work *for* a number who had the production line "I'm the boss" attitude that has no place in an environment of specialists.
Most managers should be renamed 'co-ordinators' to reinforce that aspect of the role.
October 27, 2014 at 9:22 am
To be honest, I've never had a very good manager, especially not one that helped me grow technically or as a contributing team member. All too often, I get reviewed and they tell me that I am doing a great job but when they offer criticism, I wonder what alternate reality they exist in. Criticism has to be constructive, not something that you conjure up at the last moment and cannot defend, let alone discuss. Not only that, if I have some shortcomings, telling me about them once or twice a year isn't very helpful: I need immediate feedback so I can make the necessary adjustments.
My first manager said that his job was to make sure that our work environment was optimal and to remove any hurdles that stood in the way of the team. Managers should be masters of the development process and should always be helping the team work and flourish within that process and yet I rarely see that. What most of them do is wring their hands all too often, call too many meetings and then fail to lead those meetings properly (no clear agenda, no time management, poor capture of topics and their resolution, etc.) and offer too much unfounded and useless criticism (i.e. managers struggling with their fears when they realize that they didn't listen well enough to the team when we identified technical risk or felt that estimates were too low-- this is why 'follow up' emails on your part is the right thing to do).
Another problem with management is that they never allow us to criticize them, so that they improve and become more helpful. It is always the same command and control scenario: you do as I say or else.
The shame is that most people in management are intelligent but they don't have the proper perspective and let their egos flush teams and projects down the drain. A good (but not infallible) litmus test for a well run company is how many layers of management they have: the flatter the organization, the better the company.
October 27, 2014 at 9:59 am
The really good managers that I've had were masterful at handling different personalities on the team and kept the necessary corporate red tape from slowing down actual work. I've left jobs to follow good managers and I've left jobs to avoid bad ones. Hopefully, BAE took all employee retention into consideration and just didn't do a balance sheet adjustment.
Aigle de Guerre!
October 27, 2014 at 10:24 am
I agree with j_e_o's point regarding worthless meetings. The number of pointless, badly managed, non-minuted, no agenda meetings I have had to attend in my working life is almost too large to comprehend.
October 27, 2014 at 10:25 am
PatrickIndex (10/27/2014)
I agree with j_e_o's point regarding worthless meetings. The number of pointless, badly managed, non-minuted, no agenda meetings I have had to attend in my working life is almost too large to comprehend.
Too difficult to count with all those missing minutes 😉
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
October 27, 2014 at 6:06 pm
Matt Miller (#4) (10/26/2014)
Managers should and can be a HELP not a hindrance: mine routinely plays the role of "left tackle" to keep my way clear to get things done.
I agree with Matt here.
While I understand there ends up with bloat in the middle tiers, there's expectations, responsibilities, authority and understanding the fallouts, prioritization concerns, etc.
Managers deal with the politics while we get our crap done. While maybe there's too many managers causing too many politics, that's a bloat problem, not the problem of having management.
I need my managers, and they need me. I need them to deal with all the politics and responsibilities I don't want to deal with nor have the authority (sometimes due to SOX or other regulatory bodies) to handle. I want them in the 50 setup meetings before they give me the breakout I need when I come in for the last five of them to nail down the details and clarify anything I don't understand.
The approach of this article bugs me. It's a straw character without balancing details.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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October 28, 2014 at 5:08 am
I have to say I found the article to be overly simplistic. It essentially says:-
Some managers are bad => all managers are bad
Some companies have too many managers => all management is bad
I think good managers actually fulfill a number of different useful roles. Dealing with the politics, removing the obstacles and setting the goals/direction. I don't think anyone's mentioned that last one yet but it's important. I've worked in teams where the leadership failed and, while we were all happily beavering away on the narowly focused objectives we were setting ourselves, we really weren't producing much that would truly be useful in the end.
October 28, 2014 at 5:57 am
FunkyDexter (10/28/2014)
I have to say I found the article to be overly simplistic. It essentially says:-Some managers are bad => all managers are bad
Some companies have too many managers => all management is bad
I think good managers actually fulfill a number of different useful roles. Dealing with the politics, removing the obstacles and setting the goals/direction. I don't think anyone's mentioned that last one yet but it's important. I've worked in teams where the leadership failed and, while we were all happily beavering away on the narowly focused objectives we were setting ourselves, we really weren't producing much that would truly be useful in the end.
I think that the editorial was deliberately overly simplistic to encourage a debate.
The reason I responded though was that you highlighted, perhaps, the most important role of management: Leadership!!!
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
October 28, 2014 at 7:06 am
Don't managers create the politics in the first place? So if you didn't have managers then there would be no politics to deal with. Allowing managers to deal with the politics that they themselves have created sounds a bit like job creation to me.
October 28, 2014 at 7:29 am
PatrickIndex (10/28/2014)
Don't managers create the politics in the first place?
No. Everyone creates politics
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
October 28, 2014 at 7:41 am
GilaMonster (10/28/2014)
PatrickIndex (10/28/2014)
Don't managers create the politics in the first place?No. Everyone creates politics
They do, but there's a big difference between the politics of negotiation and consensus reaching between a couple of groups of techies trying to achieve a concrete aim, and the politics of perception involved in middle-management jostling for recognition for their supposed influence in other people achieving those concrete aims.
October 28, 2014 at 8:01 am
RP1966 (10/28/2014)
GilaMonster (10/28/2014)
PatrickIndex (10/28/2014)
Don't managers create the politics in the first place?No. Everyone creates politics
They do, but there's a big difference between the politics of negotiation and consensus reaching between a couple of groups of techies trying to achieve a concrete aim, and the politics of perception involved in middle-management jostling for recognition for their supposed influence in other people achieving those concrete aims.
You've never had a 'team mate' backstabbing the team for his own gain? Never had two teams sabotaging each other because they think the other is going to steal all recognition?
Yes, we like to think that techies work together for the greater good, but that's not always reality.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
October 28, 2014 at 8:16 am
GilaMonster (10/28/2014)
RP1966 (10/28/2014)
GilaMonster (10/28/2014)
PatrickIndex (10/28/2014)
Don't managers create the politics in the first place?No. Everyone creates politics
They do, but there's a big difference between the politics of negotiation and consensus reaching between a couple of groups of techies trying to achieve a concrete aim, and the politics of perception involved in middle-management jostling for recognition for their supposed influence in other people achieving those concrete aims.
You've never had a 'team mate' backstabbing the team for his own gain? Never had two teams sabotaging each other because they think the other is going to steal all recognition?
Yes, we like to think that techies work together for the greater good, but that's not always reality.
A team-mate? No, never, and I've been working for over 20 years.
Team rivalries - sometimes. Normally that's driven by well-established conflicts at the managerial level though. If there isn't a glory-seeking mentality at management level it rarely manifests at team level, as those in the team with over-sized egos get kept in check.
I've also been in those situations where the techies have had to work around the managers to get a good outcome despite the toxic management. Most of the techie vs techie arguments have tended to be over the approach to a problem, rather than about credit-taking afterwards.
October 28, 2014 at 9:24 am
I think that the editorial was deliberately overly simplistic to encourage a debate
Yeah, I know. I didn't mean that to sound like as much of a bite as it might have.:rolleyes:
the most important role of management: Leadership!!!
+100%. A techy's job is to deal with the detail. A managers job is to make sure the particular detail the techy's dealing with right now is the right one. There was a great quote on another forum I use this week (the debate was actually about Agile but the quote's still apt): "It doesn't matter how good a carpenter you are you still can't build a house, for that you'll need a team and it'd better include an architect and a project manager" (I've paraphrased).
A team-mate?
Heck, I have! I think this sort of behaviour exists at all levels roughly equally. It's rare (most folks are pretty professional at all levels in my experience) but it happens.
And who says it's just about techies dealing with other techies. As often as not you're dealing with the call centre, the marketting department or HR. Heaven save me from having to extract a set of user requirements from every individual on the factory floor.
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