| I do not have a place to read about management technique. I'm not a manager outside of the companies I start myself and when I hire, I really only hire specialists who know very well what they're doing. What you describe sounds like you don't really have people who are sufficiently senior to work like I do. Manage them more closely. If you had to replace any one person on your team, would you be able to outperform them in terms of technical skill? If yes, just have them walk you through all the steps they need to go through to finish the task and then discuss things that they might have missed. If not, I can't really help you. I don't know what to do in a situation where both the manager and the engineer don't really understand the engineers job. Never been in the situation. But if you think that managing time helps with anything, think about what your own KPIs are. What do your superiors want you to do? Deliver results or appear busy? If its the second, my high level advice would be to find a better job, because your environment is going to become very toxic. Beyond that, if they want you to appear busy, just make your engineers appear busy while looking for a new job. As far as how I want to be managed, you already know everything. Tell me what needs to be done and leave me alone. I'll talk to you when I need something. You talk to me when your priorities change or when you need something special. Beyond that, if theres any kind of meeting or something else that needs to go in my calendar, I want it in electronic text form. If you "tell" me about it, I'll have to write it down myself anyway. ^ This sounds antisocial af but I don't have an aversion to face to face conversations. Its just that whatever youre going to tell me is either irrelevant or it needs to be written down anyway. So why not just write it down. Since this does not seem to be the case with your employees - if you tell me to do something, I will come back with a deadline and I will not miss that deadline ever. If the task is bullshit and cant be done, either in principle or because your deadline expectations are unrealistic, I'll tell you about that up front. I'll still work on it if thats what you want but I'm not going to work 12 hour days just because my manager is a clown. I'll send you an e-mail for my own documentation that whatever you want me to do is ridiculous and if you decide that you want to crash and burn over that, be my guest. Does this sound like an unrealistic manager/employee relationship? May be. I honestly don't know. I've never been an employee. |