Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.
> Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up
There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.
And I quote from [1].
"""
And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for
them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing
and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves
out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being
ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must
be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear
of punishment.
And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed
dishonourable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the
idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves,
but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task
of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
"""
Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.
The main reason I took my first management position was after I remembered the pain of refusing a previous offer and getting an awful manager to lead the team.
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
Great comment. I was reading a book about Lincoln recently and this exact sense of being compelled was upon him. Him as a politician had him saying things he morally didn’t agree with. Once he won the game, he was able to instill the spirit of his philosophy and do something above society’s morals which we look back upon making him one of the best presidents to date.
This passage is discussing the idea that good people do not want to hold public office because they do not want to be seen as hirelings who are only interested in payment, or as thieves who are secretly enriching themselves at the expense of the public. The author argues that good people are not ambitious and do not care about honor, so they must be forced to serve out of fear of punishment. The worst punishment, according to the author, is the fear of being ruled by someone who is worse than oneself. This fear is what ultimately compels good people to take office, even though they do not want to and do not expect to benefit from it. The author suggests that good people take office out of a sense of necessity, because they are not able to entrust the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves.
I never wanted to be a manager until I experienced one of the worst managers I had ever run across and decided maybe I should revise that particular opinion.
I'm now a VP and I make it my goal not to be that kind of a manager. I do still sometimes wish I were just a regular coder though. There is a lot of stuff about being a manager I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on:
(1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow
(2) coaching individual team members to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses
(3) improving our corporate processes, tools and culture to systematically make it easier for the team to do the high value stuff we need from them
(4) recruiting excellent people who bring new perspectives and experiences to broaden our horizons… ideally coachable people ready to participate enthusiastically in #2
(5) crafting a team strategy that guides individual team members to work that utilizes their skills while combining with their colleagues to deliver more than we could individually… all in line with the overall corporate direction and communicated in a way that is congruent with the current political winds.
I agree with every word of this. I would also add that there's a third category, or maybe a 2.b: individual contributors in their 30s and 40s who look ahead to their future and say "well, I guess I better become a manager at some point" without having any particular aptitude or even an intrinsic desire.
Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewhat mitigates this effect. However, in the past, this was a widespread phenomenon, and it's still out there to some extent. You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.
I think this kind of thinking highly depends on what field you are in.
My father worked in a technical role all his live in a automotive plant. (Eventually being technically responsible for overall design and implementation of all production lines).
A lot of his former collegues moved into management during the early 2000's. Most got fired after the great recession because being a manager is considered a non skill compared to actually contributing to the actual core bussiness.
I would argue being responsible for a major operational part of the business is far more prestigious then being a manager.
it is a very real fear. When you look around and realize everyone that works at a company that is over 60 is in upper management it becomes clear that you either move up or out. I have also noticed it is sometimes hard to keep up with certain types of work after a certain age. The strength you retain as you get older is wisdom of experience.
They're not the worst, they're just a waste of money, they could just not exist and probably everyone else would be better off. They're a -2.
That said, there are plenty of managers who put in a lot of effort into ruining everyone else life to satisfy their ego or what their understanding of the job is. They're -100000.
> Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
Pretty much this, but I want to refine the statement: "the worst managers are those who _want_ to manage."
Yup, the best manager I ever had (by far) did not want to be manager. But she was made manager when half our team was laid off (including our manager) and she was the most senior of the bunch left. She was amazing because she was good at telling higher up's "no" when they would try to take advantage of our team.
The worst manager I ever had desperately wanted to become manager from a group of IC's and brown-nosed his way into the job. His first day as manager he says "I was promoted to manager because I can do all of your jobs better than you can". He could not. He was horrible (and was eventually fired).
There is how you become a manager as you call out, but what happens after? How to stay an excellent IC as you spend more time in management and become a manager of managers? Picking up a small enhancement it big once in a while can be helpful for you, but also really interruptive for the team. You can code on your own time, but that only goes so far. What are strategies to keep these qualities a manager brings who also is a top IC even after years managing and managing managers?
Why do you need to be a top IC after years managing managers? Some of the worst managers I've seen tried to cling too much to the technical details, which is smothering to the actual ICs.
I struggle a lot with this, I’m trying todo some side projects to keep up but man it’s hard. I think the only way is to on a high level keep up with new technologies and best practices.
I have a not-so-small network of people I unofficially mentor, but on the org chart I’m an IC. I’m happy with the situation, but dread the day I need to manage somebody to get things done.
Reminds me of my favourite quote by Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord:
"I distinguish four types [of officers]. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
Hardworking and stupid make great employees though. The problem is for doing such a great job as cogs in the machine they get promoted into positions of authority and then it is hard to fault them too much because at least they are hardworking.
They would be terrible employees. Making mistakes and doubling down, too stupid to learn from them, and with the energy to follow any inane goose chase. Being stubborn is good only if you are right.
But they would make fantastic career politicians. You need a certain type of person to work hard to get yourself voted by telling whatever stories your voters care about, but also capable of believing your own lies and fighting for them till the bitter end.
I guess I'm too lazy to admire any of these personalities.
I think that here, lazy means "do as little as possible" and hardworking means "always do something", it doesn't mean people do or don't do as they are told.
Lazy stupid is fine because these people will execute the order to the letter and then slack off. If the order is clear, there is not much damage they can do. Hardworking stupid will try to do more and mess things up.
So if the order is to clean the toilets and the guy notices a leak.
The lazy stupid will clean the toilets
The hardworking stupid will clean the toilets and then attempts to fix the leak, mess things up and cause a flood
The hardworking clever will clean the toilets inspect the leak, try to do something, realize there is nothing he can do it and call the plumber
The lazy clever will take a look at the leak and call the plumber. He will not clean the toilets because he knows the repair will make a mess and it is therefore useless.
Lazy stupid was useless in that situation but didn't make things worse like hardworking stupid. Both clevers did the right thing, the difference is that hardworking wasted time but he executed the order, a reliable worker. Lazy may not be as reliable as a worker because he didn't execute the order, but he is the better decision maker.
More details, from the people behind Apple’s internal leadership training:
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics:
1. deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions
2. immersion in the details of those functions;
3. and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
A special kind of disaster happens when a manager thinks they have deep expertise but they don’t. I have to be actively vigilant of what this manager is doing because one statement could lead to hours wasted. Just the other day they were about to launch a whole S3 tangent involving two teams because some report came back saying a few EBS volumes were not encrypted.
But that runs counter to all the arguments professional scrum masters and agile evangelists make. "All you need to do know is agile/scrum/fad du jour". /s
I think the article, and many of the comments here, miss the point badly. No manager of a team doing technically complex and creative work can for very long remain capable of doing all the work themselves. Modern projects and processes simply require too much specialized knowledge to function for that to work. What managers need that (probably) comes from having been a strong individual contributor is sufficient knowledge of the fields involved in what they're managing to be able to understand the critical elements in the project or process in the context of the overall goal, and to be able to evaluate well the value of ideas for improvement or problem solution that come out of their team. But they also need leadership and management skills. The latter are not the same as, and are not developed by, stellar individual contributor skills. Furthermore, it's important to understand that management and leadership are not the same thing.
My personal experience has been that I was a very able individual contributor, and that I was able to learn leadership skills (that is, how to inspire people; how to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and assign work that played to the former, and created opportunities to ameliorate the latter; how to point individuals and teams in fruitful directions without having (or often being able to) do all the hard work of pushing in that direction myself) by diligent study of people and myself. But I was never able to become more than a barely competent manager - I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me from individual contributor to team lead, to product line lead, to CTO of highly successful $10B billion medical and technology organization in 20 years.
>The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers
Duh.
For a technical business to have the most unfair advantage (well above patents, etc.) there has got to be the most technical competence/productivity at the very top.
There's still an unfair advantage if there's as much competence at the top, but when it's the most that's when it's really the most unfair.
Jobs was an outstanding visionary, salesman, task-oriented and goal oriented manager, but without Woz at the top along with him Apple would have been greatly limited.
Once things took off they could build some bigger teams, on paper it looked like they could afford anything. It was expected to require more than one engineer to design as salable a product as Woz could do single-handedly.
By 1985 Jobs was reminiscing about being burned:
>We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.
>They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.
As this took place it required more & more personnel, as well as these non-domain managers to go with them, in order to accomplish less than Woz and a small team. It was a no brainer.
What a person can do single handedly turns out to be the best indication of how much more they can do with a proper high leadership position (if they are willing), especially when compared to "professional managers" without the domain expertise to hold their own when there's no technical team backing them up.
Not how many people the impressive manager has managed before, even if there was legitimate positive financial outcome in their background.
Once there was a competent all-technical team, if less wizardly than Woz himself, Jobs could sell that just as well, Woz was well set, and he was out of there with his shares in Apple wisely held.
If Apple had not recognized this as early as they did, there would be no way Apple could have gotten as big as they are now.
>I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me
Woz could legitimately say this about Jobs which is a true measure of whether there was adequate technical leadership at the very top during his time.
Reading the article, according to Steve Jobs, the best managers are the people who are so good that they realise that they must do it themselves, even if they don't want to. The title of the article thus has only a necessary but not sufficient condition according to what Steve originally meant. In other words: Clickbait.
It appears that outside our bubble software-work enjoys such a low status that management does not possess, or admits to possessing, any technical competence. This is in stark contrast to engineering or manufacturing companies, where engineers make up the highest levels of management and also adjacent areas like running the factories, and generally management prides itself with being hands-on, dropping knowledge and walking through the shop floor frequently.
In an agile environment (the most common structure in software development) the professional class of scrum masters and analysts are often non-technical, and management is sparse and hands-off (teams are "self-organized"). Key technical decisions are relegated to senior individual contributors, allowing for CV driven development, cargo culting, and bad habits. Stories of a Microsoft VP who files a bug report and points out the line of code where the error occured could never have happened anywhere where I worked.
I think modern software companies moves to remove roles like scrum masters, testers and analysts. My theory here is that e.g scrum masters wants to scrum, it’s their job. Much better to have the team take turn being the scrum master. They own the process and the pain.
"And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable. Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself. And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves,
but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
For there is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of good men, then to avoid office would be as much an object of contention
as to obtain office is at present; then we should have plain proof that the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest,
but that of his subjects; and every one who knew this would choose rather to receive a benefit from another than to have the trouble of conferring one."
Readit News
Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.
There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.
And I quote from [1].
""" And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment.
And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office, not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. """
Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.
[1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.mb.txt
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
This passage is discussing the idea that good people do not want to hold public office because they do not want to be seen as hirelings who are only interested in payment, or as thieves who are secretly enriching themselves at the expense of the public. The author argues that good people are not ambitious and do not care about honor, so they must be forced to serve out of fear of punishment. The worst punishment, according to the author, is the fear of being ruled by someone who is worse than oneself. This fear is what ultimately compels good people to take office, even though they do not want to and do not expect to benefit from it. The author suggests that good people take office out of a sense of necessity, because they are not able to entrust the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves.
I'm now a VP and I make it my goal not to be that kind of a manager. I do still sometimes wish I were just a regular coder though. There is a lot of stuff about being a manager I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on:
(1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow
(2) coaching individual team members to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses
(3) improving our corporate processes, tools and culture to systematically make it easier for the team to do the high value stuff we need from them
(4) recruiting excellent people who bring new perspectives and experiences to broaden our horizons… ideally coachable people ready to participate enthusiastically in #2
(5) crafting a team strategy that guides individual team members to work that utilizes their skills while combining with their colleagues to deliver more than we could individually… all in line with the overall corporate direction and communicated in a way that is congruent with the current political winds.
It is so. Much. Harder!
Could you expand?
Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewhat mitigates this effect. However, in the past, this was a widespread phenomenon, and it's still out there to some extent. You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.
My father worked in a technical role all his live in a automotive plant. (Eventually being technically responsible for overall design and implementation of all production lines).
A lot of his former collegues moved into management during the early 2000's. Most got fired after the great recession because being a manager is considered a non skill compared to actually contributing to the actual core bussiness.
I would argue being responsible for a major operational part of the business is far more prestigious then being a manager.
Then there are those who go into product management for all these reasons.
Basically every German company ever. ICs be dammed.
That said, there are plenty of managers who put in a lot of effort into ruining everyone else life to satisfy their ego or what their understanding of the job is. They're -100000.
Pretty much this, but I want to refine the statement: "the worst managers are those who _want_ to manage."
The worst manager I ever had desperately wanted to become manager from a group of IC's and brown-nosed his way into the job. His first day as manager he says "I was promoted to manager because I can do all of your jobs better than you can". He could not. He was horrible (and was eventually fired).
Key point. People are political creatures, and in a workplace this is very often dominant.
"I distinguish four types [of officers]. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
But they would make fantastic career politicians. You need a certain type of person to work hard to get yourself voted by telling whatever stories your voters care about, but also capable of believing your own lies and fighting for them till the bitter end.
I guess I'm too lazy to admire any of these personalities.
Lazy stupid is fine because these people will execute the order to the letter and then slack off. If the order is clear, there is not much damage they can do. Hardworking stupid will try to do more and mess things up.
So if the order is to clean the toilets and the guy notices a leak.
The lazy stupid will clean the toilets
The hardworking stupid will clean the toilets and then attempts to fix the leak, mess things up and cause a flood
The hardworking clever will clean the toilets inspect the leak, try to do something, realize there is nothing he can do it and call the plumber
The lazy clever will take a look at the leak and call the plumber. He will not clean the toilets because he knows the repair will make a mess and it is therefore useless.
Lazy stupid was useless in that situation but didn't make things worse like hardworking stupid. Both clevers did the right thing, the difference is that hardworking wasted time but he executed the order, a reliable worker. Lazy may not be as reliable as a worker because he didn't execute the order, but he is the better decision maker.
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics:
1. deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions
2. immersion in the details of those functions;
3. and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
Article: https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...
My personal experience has been that I was a very able individual contributor, and that I was able to learn leadership skills (that is, how to inspire people; how to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and assign work that played to the former, and created opportunities to ameliorate the latter; how to point individuals and teams in fruitful directions without having (or often being able to) do all the hard work of pushing in that direction myself) by diligent study of people and myself. But I was never able to become more than a barely competent manager - I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me from individual contributor to team lead, to product line lead, to CTO of highly successful $10B billion medical and technology organization in 20 years.
Duh.
For a technical business to have the most unfair advantage (well above patents, etc.) there has got to be the most technical competence/productivity at the very top.
There's still an unfair advantage if there's as much competence at the top, but when it's the most that's when it's really the most unfair.
Jobs was an outstanding visionary, salesman, task-oriented and goal oriented manager, but without Woz at the top along with him Apple would have been greatly limited.
Once things took off they could build some bigger teams, on paper it looked like they could afford anything. It was expected to require more than one engineer to design as salable a product as Woz could do single-handedly.
By 1985 Jobs was reminiscing about being burned:
>We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.
>They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.
As this took place it required more & more personnel, as well as these non-domain managers to go with them, in order to accomplish less than Woz and a small team. It was a no brainer.
What a person can do single handedly turns out to be the best indication of how much more they can do with a proper high leadership position (if they are willing), especially when compared to "professional managers" without the domain expertise to hold their own when there's no technical team backing them up.
Not how many people the impressive manager has managed before, even if there was legitimate positive financial outcome in their background.
Once there was a competent all-technical team, if less wizardly than Woz himself, Jobs could sell that just as well, Woz was well set, and he was out of there with his shares in Apple wisely held.
If Apple had not recognized this as early as they did, there would be no way Apple could have gotten as big as they are now.
>I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me
Woz could legitimately say this about Jobs which is a true measure of whether there was adequate technical leadership at the very top during his time.
In an agile environment (the most common structure in software development) the professional class of scrum masters and analysts are often non-technical, and management is sparse and hands-off (teams are "self-organized"). Key technical decisions are relegated to senior individual contributors, allowing for CV driven development, cargo culting, and bad habits. Stories of a Microsoft VP who files a bug report and points out the line of code where the error occured could never have happened anywhere where I worked.
Plato, The Republic
Great kings know it is effective to disguise their desire for the role.