Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager).
Would you happen to have the links to all the docs? I feel like there might be done value at re-disseminating it, even if I am guessing most things are common sense, sometimes seeing things written down help to stop, reflect, and do better.
IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable.
To me, that means
1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).
The system in this case for me is usually building a stronger backbone or improving communication and elevating constraints to highly our strengths/weaknesses and capabilities to actually achieve the desired outcome.
I view it as more a single system of constant improvement and understanding ability to execute in the environment. Nothing hurts credibility more than late commms, and missed deadlines due to over commitments.
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again
In addition to what you said overall, I think bad managers can have all sorts of qualities, but imo the worst ones correct for mistakes to protect themselves or people's impressions of them, leaning highly neurotic, and can't deal with conflict well, so they put in arbitrary systems in order to indirectly deal with any one-off grievance or mistake. Bad managers won't evaluate or re-evaluate the systems they put in place because they put them there to protect their ego.
"Surely this employee is underperforming because I don't like how they're performing and we have a system for that!"
They struggle to adapt to their new job because to delegate sufficiently they need to be able to trust, and let that manifest as other people doing the tasks they might have once done without their hands in the pie directly. They might assume that part of the reason they got the job was because they're great communicators, and never consider that actually that it's just that nobody ever told them they have some growing to do.
I haven't seen it. What I have seen is the folks who lie and steal get promoted -- they all seem to be in a big club together. Blatant stealing, too.
Here's an example: my team created a new product to address a time-constrained market opportunity. We basically did 99% of the work that two teams would normally do. A VP for those two teams then gets on stage and gives an award to his two teams for doing 100% of the work. My team is given no credit or mention.
Another VP gave an award to one of his teams for implementing a company-wide system. His team was actually one of the last adopters of the system that my team identified, implemented, refined, and delivered.
Anyways, they are running two different companies now.
My experience is that managers who acknowledge their mistakes are worse at office politics, so they will reach their peak sooner and lower than those that do not admit fault.
It hasn't unlocked a magical promotion track for me, but it has engendered support and respect from my teams that has allowed us to produce delivery exceeding what we thought we could because there was true buy in from the business around the definition of exceptional circumstances.
I'm not personally engineering my career in leadership around moving up, but building teams of people that can do exceptional things tends to be the driving factor that allows me to continue up the track.
The thing that makes someone trustworthy is taking accountability for your own self and actions, but having boundaries such that you don’t take accountability for the selves and actions of others. That’s basically all I want to see from a manager, a direct report, or a peer.
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Also called wishful thinking... Often such measures do definitely not work. There is even an internet law named for this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
This is why you have to have skin in the game, and a backbone to say no to executives when it compromises delivery if there isn't escalated mediation.
Said another way, I don't say no a lot, I put prioritization up front and tell them that we are sacrificing other deliver items.
That is a decision that an exec can work with, mediate between teams, and builds mutual respect for senior leadership as you don't break promises you've already made, unless there is mutual agreement from the business.
A chief source of management missteps I've seen is not talking to people and just making consequential decisions because they think a jira board gives them insight.
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.
We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.
I willingly say it and tbh if you wont hire me for saying I dont remember or am drawing a blank I am glad, I dodged a bullet. Obviously I dont purposely say it but sometimes you get so nervous it escapes you.
Yea, this is a great one. I've had a lot of success in the past using the backpack problem / box packing as an interview question for problem solving / pair programming parts of the interview. It has "I don't know" built right in. It also has "I don't know, I'm going to make this decision for now but I expect it's wrong" built in.
Every time someone mentions a good idea for interviews, I imagine the interview prep people adding it to the standard performance ritual. Then the signal is lost for the needle in a haystack who actually embodies what you sought to find.
With how ridiculously performative and disingenuous the techbro interviews have become, if we don't want to play that game, we have to keep some signal unspoken.
Well said - most people don’t realize there is a lot of overlap between good management skills and good senior engineering skills.
Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…
Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.
I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.
There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs.
In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.
Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers.
I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work."
I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair.
Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager.
This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
* And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.
The language around emotion often obscures the underlying reality that needs to be addressed. Emotions are the physiological manifestations of expectations and desires. (Emotion is etymologically related to motive.)
The person your responding to clearly has a desire to do productive work with minimal roadblocks. In one person the roadblock to that desire/expectation might manifest physiologically as depression, in another person as anger, and in another as detachment. Getting rid of the roadblock is what needs to happen regardless of how the emotion manifests.
This does not mean that emotions are not addressed, but that they are addressed primarily as signifiers of a mismatch between the world and one's underlying desires/expectations, not the thing itself.
Sometimes, the desire/expectation of an individual is counter to the good of the overall system and group of people. In this case, a good manager might start by explaining the larger situation so that an individual can update their desires and expectations through the additional knowledge. Then new thinking/perception shifts the physiological experience of those desires (i.e., emotions).
In other cases, the gap between desires/expectations and reality is too big to bridge, which means emotions cannot be resolved in the current context.
> Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work
I am not. I enjoy doing great work and take pride in it.
> that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships.
They are. And I get along with some people, and not as great with other people. But the people I get along with I go out usually, outside of work, whereas the ones I don't particularly vibe with are just colleagues.
> For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
I'm... usually in a pretty good human relationship with my peers, whether code monkeys or managers. So if you chose to keep everything about the work itself, we'd lose a part of our connection. But I wouldn't mind, I'd adapt.
Your last paragraph is a lot to unpack, especially trying to view myself objectively. But I will say that while I consider myself a person that is not afraid of their feelings; if I would come to you to address some aspect of the work to be done ("When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it.") I wouldn't put a lot of emotional investment into this. This is what happened. I believe this would impact our whatever. Feel free to do with this information as you wish. At the end of the day I'm rowing in the boat as per the captain's indication.
I wonder though why you wouldn't believe that I get my emotional needs met from places outside of my direct contact with my manager. I have a great relationship with my family, with my friends, most of the times with my peers. I'm just not looking for emotional support in a manager and I'd like to think I've never been 'erratic' in the workplace.
> I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
But this is part of the point, while for you that might not matter, your manager cannot assume this. Other people DO care.
One of the ways your manager can mess us is by assuming you don't care about that...
In my stints in managerial roles, I was mostly focused on the work to be done. I haven't gotten bad reviews, on the contrary. So I'm making the mistake of assuming that focus on work to be done is more relevant than focus on how to approach each individual.
I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut.
He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.
The worst mistakes to acknowledge and remedy for me have always been bad hiring. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘I can make this person work well’ but I’ve found myself questioning this approach. As my team has grown, bad fits are taxing. And it also is on other team members. I’ve shifted from doing ‘the right thing’ by giving people many chances before escalating to PIP, decided that I am just making it tough on myself and the rest of the team and to be quicker to start the process. But still, for me, it’s so much easier to acknowledge tech mistakes than dealing with employees not up to it for whatever reason, especially when they are good people. It becomes easier when they turn out to be difficult people though for me, it’s still hard.
I also used to think that you can coach people into becoming good performers. But experience has taught me that teams are more productive by magnitudes if everybody gets along and trusts each other. Even one bad performer can have a huge negative impact.
This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better.
Such a manager is extremely rare.
Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings.
I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders.
I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager.
But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
Readit News
Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0...
And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780
It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible.
EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...
To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).
I view it as more a single system of constant improvement and understanding ability to execute in the environment. Nothing hurts credibility more than late commms, and missed deadlines due to over commitments.
In addition to what you said overall, I think bad managers can have all sorts of qualities, but imo the worst ones correct for mistakes to protect themselves or people's impressions of them, leaning highly neurotic, and can't deal with conflict well, so they put in arbitrary systems in order to indirectly deal with any one-off grievance or mistake. Bad managers won't evaluate or re-evaluate the systems they put in place because they put them there to protect their ego.
"Surely this employee is underperforming because I don't like how they're performing and we have a system for that!"
They struggle to adapt to their new job because to delegate sufficiently they need to be able to trust, and let that manifest as other people doing the tasks they might have once done without their hands in the pie directly. They might assume that part of the reason they got the job was because they're great communicators, and never consider that actually that it's just that nobody ever told them they have some growing to do.
I’d say, stick to your guns and find a job that supports your morales, not the other way around.
Another VP gave an award to one of his teams for implementing a company-wide system. His team was actually one of the last adopters of the system that my team identified, implemented, refined, and delivered.
Anyways, they are running two different companies now.
but that's anectdata, so grain of salt and all.
I'm not personally engineering my career in leadership around moving up, but building teams of people that can do exceptional things tends to be the driving factor that allows me to continue up the track.
The neurology often results in good systems thinking.
The diversity results in lifelong disciplined improvement of social interactions.
Also called wishful thinking... Often such measures do definitely not work. There is even an internet law named for this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
Said another way, I don't say no a lot, I put prioritization up front and tell them that we are sacrificing other deliver items.
That is a decision that an exec can work with, mediate between teams, and builds mutual respect for senior leadership as you don't break promises you've already made, unless there is mutual agreement from the business.
We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
With how ridiculously performative and disingenuous the techbro interviews have become, if we don't want to play that game, we have to keep some signal unspoken.
Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…
Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.
I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.
There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.
It's also true for all humans.
You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.
I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work."
I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager.
This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
* And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.
The person your responding to clearly has a desire to do productive work with minimal roadblocks. In one person the roadblock to that desire/expectation might manifest physiologically as depression, in another person as anger, and in another as detachment. Getting rid of the roadblock is what needs to happen regardless of how the emotion manifests.
This does not mean that emotions are not addressed, but that they are addressed primarily as signifiers of a mismatch between the world and one's underlying desires/expectations, not the thing itself.
Sometimes, the desire/expectation of an individual is counter to the good of the overall system and group of people. In this case, a good manager might start by explaining the larger situation so that an individual can update their desires and expectations through the additional knowledge. Then new thinking/perception shifts the physiological experience of those desires (i.e., emotions).
In other cases, the gap between desires/expectations and reality is too big to bridge, which means emotions cannot be resolved in the current context.
I am not. I enjoy doing great work and take pride in it.
> that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships.
They are. And I get along with some people, and not as great with other people. But the people I get along with I go out usually, outside of work, whereas the ones I don't particularly vibe with are just colleagues.
> For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
I'm... usually in a pretty good human relationship with my peers, whether code monkeys or managers. So if you chose to keep everything about the work itself, we'd lose a part of our connection. But I wouldn't mind, I'd adapt.
Your last paragraph is a lot to unpack, especially trying to view myself objectively. But I will say that while I consider myself a person that is not afraid of their feelings; if I would come to you to address some aspect of the work to be done ("When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it.") I wouldn't put a lot of emotional investment into this. This is what happened. I believe this would impact our whatever. Feel free to do with this information as you wish. At the end of the day I'm rowing in the boat as per the captain's indication.
I wonder though why you wouldn't believe that I get my emotional needs met from places outside of my direct contact with my manager. I have a great relationship with my family, with my friends, most of the times with my peers. I'm just not looking for emotional support in a manager and I'd like to think I've never been 'erratic' in the workplace.
But this is part of the point, while for you that might not matter, your manager cannot assume this. Other people DO care.
One of the ways your manager can mess us is by assuming you don't care about that...
In my stints in managerial roles, I was mostly focused on the work to be done. I haven't gotten bad reviews, on the contrary. So I'm making the mistake of assuming that focus on work to be done is more relevant than focus on how to approach each individual.
Deleted Comment
He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.
Such a manager is extremely rare.
Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings.
I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders.
I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager.
But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
Agree but nothing easy about that.