[omouse]

Surprise surprise, managers behave badly and it doesn't matter what their background is.

Usually engineers have to go through rigorous interviews; maybe it's time that was stepped up for managers with better behavioural questions.

[whatever_dude]

Unfortunately managers also tend to be a product of their environment. I've seen female managers/leads take extremely male-centric sexist positions on issues just because it's the way they've learned. In other words, they had become "one of the boys" and were expecting other women under them to do the same. I've come to assume it's especially true of Women on their 40s or so who have been in the tech industry for a while; a generational problem if you will.

[endymi0n]

This. If you look how Uber HR "handled" all these problems by completely ignoring them, it's a large part of the problem.

[apercu]

HR only exists to keep the company free from liability.

[MBCook]

Part of keeping the company free from liability is not enabling massive sexual harassment problems that end up causing multi-million (or billion) dollar (possibly class-action) lawsuits.

Even an ultra-strict "HR only does what's good for the company" should lead to them preventing sexual harassment issues due to legal landscape.

[btilly]

HR has to operate within the constraints of the larger organization.

Under normal circumstances, HR tries to get the organization to behave reasonably, and employees to not get too upset about it, during or after their period of employment. The actions of both are actually out of their control, but they push both ways. It is a classic case of responsibility without authority.

If the organization refuses to take HR concerns seriously, then you get the result you see at Uber. The only thing that HR can do is try to get employees to toe the company line. Good HR people will leave. But there is always someone left to do the job. (It is just like death marches in software development. Which also seems to be a problem at Uber.)

[lafar6502]

so this time they failed - is throwing mud on the Internet the only way of settling this? Or just most convenient and with best chance of payout? Something smells fishy here - many many people see the big pile of money at Uber and get some ideas

[arcticbull]

What money? They've got a -140% profit margin. Any money is already pre-committed to be paid out to the people using the system.

[watwut]

That does not excuse them just as it would not excuse males. It is important to hold women to the same standard even in this area. Moreover, some women are abusive even without males teaching them that.

Out of curiosity, what did you meant by male centric position?

[whatever_dude]

I meant a sexist position that benefits men. Like someone being told that "girl, I never had any respect from men in my career, so don't expect any either" (this was not said from a manager to me, it was part of a conversation a woman I know had with her boss).

[bgun]

Or stop promoting engineers to management roles they aren't educated for or socially prepared for.

[kchoudhu]

But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders::

It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.

[voidlogic]

>It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.

This isn't really an issue if you promote an engineer to mgmt when they have demonstrated that can manage people, rather than before and assume they can grow.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

There's an alternative: put them in management and enforce mandatory management training.

A former employer of mine had a rule that anyone at a "management level" (including engineers of a certain rank, even if they weren't actually managing anyone) had to complete a set of training courses within a certain period of being promoted. As an engineer entering management, I found the courses to be surprisingly useful in terms of understanding and managing people and so did others. Classes like communication, negotiation, basic finance, employment law, etc.

Then HR decided they were useless and stopped offering them. And they went back to the state the GP is complaining about...

[omouse]

I would highly recommend this. I didn't understand why a WBS made sense to do or how to keep a list of risks, but after attending a project management class it made sense. Not only that, but as we worked through a project in the class, it enforced how tasks and communication work properly for projects.

Basic finance and negotation are a must.

It's amazing how many people don't have much training in these skills.

[voidlogic]

>There's an alternative: put them in management and enforce mandatory management training.

IMHO, I think your faulty assumption here is every good engineer can be trained into a good manager, and I think thats just not realistic...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I'm not assuming anything: I'm saying that there's an answer to the question of how you put an untrained person into an unfamiliar environment: train them.

Whether or not a good/bad X can be retrained into a bad/good Y is a wholly different question.

[Tenhundfeld]

That's a fair point, but I think that clean idea can be messy in practice.

For one, engineers rarely manage people before they are managers. They might lead a team or be a product manager, etc., but those have different (albeit overlapping) challenges from managing people.

Another important factor is that in small or fast-growing companies, there's often not a formal promotion to manager. One day, you're the solo dev or maybe the you're senior dev of some secondary system. That system gets unexpected popularity/traction, and your manager starts throwing resumes or new recruits in front of you. And before you know it, you're managing a team, still trying to lead code reviews but also dealing with personnel issues, manage timelines, etc. You weren't really promoted. You were just the person in charge of this thing, and the thing grew underneath you. I'm not saying that's ideal, but it's something I've seen fairly often.

[kchoudhu]

You've got a chicken and egg problem here. The only way to train an engineer in this scheme is to have him manage people without having a clue, which necessarily implies breakage for the people working under him: definitionally a new person entering a specialized role has no idea how to carry out said role.

The only thing that fixes this is extensive training before promotion -- but this is anathema in modern corporations.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[voidlogic]

>You've got a chicken and egg problem here.

Not really, say you are a manager and you want to groom a good engineer to become a manager as well. Step one is, can they manage their own projects, step 2 is can they manage a project with 1 other, step 3, several others. Once they can do that and display moral and technical leadership, they are ready to be a manager.

>The only thing that fixes this is extensive training before promotion

When it comes to leadership and people skills, training can increase chances of success, but does not guarantee it by far.

[mizzao]

Another way to learn is to work for a great manager and pay attention, or work for a crappy manager and see the consequences of mistakes. The latter is painful, but also more instructive than the former.

[kchoudhu]

Life is way too short to spend time working for the abusive and the incompetent.

I prefer to mark the organization as broken and move on to greener pastures.

[mg03pa]

It'd be great if you were right, and it was that easy. But you're wrong, and it's not.

[kchoudhu]

I appreciate the appeal of Starship Troopers style leadership: "everybody drops, everybody fights" is wonderful for morale, but everyone needs to go read the book to see what needs to happen before it is organizationally feasible.

In the Troopers universe, promoted troopers are sent to a grueling OCS course that trains them to understand the ins and outs of leadership. NO technology organization I have been exposed to has had a similar training course for new promotes; leadership skills are assumed to blossom overnight upon promotion.

[thehardsphere]

Well, you can test an engineer to see if they understand red-black trees fairly easily.

How do you test if a manager is a narcissist or a psycopath? And is it even legal to do so?

[stagbeetle]

You're asking the wrong questions/ missing the bigger picture. Plus personality disorders are not always negative[0].

The underlying condition is "culture." Companies higher people with similar values that'll fit right in and "go with the flow." Now, how do we make it so the culture of fledgling companies does not turn into a frat house?

Restricting the freedoms of these types to start business will not work.

[0]https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-type-of-narcissist-that-can-make...

[ucaetano]

Why not both?

Get your engineers who want to go into management to get a MBA (regular, part time, or executive). Eng background with a MBA is IMHO one of the best combinations around.

Managing people & businesses isn't something you're born with, it's something you learn and train. Just like coding, but sometimes way harder.

Full disclaimer: I have a computer engineering undergrad and a MBA, so take my opinion with a lot of salt :)

[kchoudhu]

That means investing in your employees, which is, if possible, even worse than MBA culture.

[vkou]

If comments on any thread that mentions whiteboard interviewing are anything to go by, many engineers refuse to drill incessantly on red-black trees, too.

[watwut]

There are plenty of engineers who ended up as a good managers. The problem is that management roles attracts people who seek control and power over others and can not get it otherwise. Some companies see the above as leadership material, promote them and crrate hell for everyone else.

[ar15saveslives]

What exactly do you mean by "socially prepared for"?

[stagbeetle]

A lot of engineers have never held a position of leadership in any respect. As well, they're stereotypically tech-focused, rather than people-focused.

This makes them less prepared for the stress and less in-tune with the emotions of others, i.e socially unprepared to be leaders.

[kchoudhu]

Acculturation takes time, which HR and upper management is pyschopathically unwilling to provide. They're too busy moving fast and breaking shit.

[stagbeetle]

Is complete acculturation practically possible?

It seems that all cultures have foundations that never go away.

How about partial acculturation? Has it successfully been done before? Has a company ever managed to completely change their inner workings without becoming something unrecognizable?

[kchoudhu]

I'm not asking for Borg-style assimilation: I'm asking for basic management standards followed by all managers.

Upper management's pervasive refusal to pay anything more than token lip service to this standardization makes 99% of technology organizations a political hell to work in.

[js8]

What if it's the opposite? What if they see, much more clearly, that leading other than by doing is a load of BS?

Look up the recent interview with Linus Torvalds.

[david-cako]

Is 2017 the year of the managerial whiteboard interview?

[kchoudhu]

It may be the year of taking "fit" interviews seriously.