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by titzer 3068 days ago
> A good manager will either recognize that you're delivering or not.

And a great manager will evaluate the wider effects of your behavior on the whole team and over a long timescale. If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same, and if your manager cuts you slack because you are a "high performer" then social dynamics come into play that must be...well...managed! Performance also slips over time. People get spoiled, sometimes depressed, sometimes lazy.

Managers look at whole teams and long-term trends. Stop focusing on yourself and the immediate moment. Success is a marathon, not a sprint, and requires careful, regular progress.

2 comments

> If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same

You're missing the point entirely: Who cares if they're also late?

Short of them being late to something important like a meeting, it seriously couldn't matter less than any of the thousand other things you should focus on as a manager.

Unless you work in something with external time pressures (e.g. I used to work in equities and US market hours dictated our need to be available) there's no reason it should matter whether someone shows up at 9 or 9:45. If you're really worried about people missing each other, set core hours (11-3 say) where everyone's expected to be available.

You're missing his point. Being late could (hypothetically) have side effects that affect the morale of other team members.
>If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same

If they also are producing and not causing other people problems then I see no problem.

However, if they are not producing then that is a problem. However, if they are coming in on time and not producing that is exactly the same problem.

The point is that one problem is unrelated to the other.

>social dynamics come into play

Social dynamics always come into play but in this instance, they really don't matter. If a manager knows how well everybody is performing and is communicating that then these other intra-team dynamics you are talking about simply don't happen.

It seems to me that you're coming at this from the perspective of a manager who fundamentally does not understand what they are managing and isn't cognizant of who is performing and obviously isn't communicating that because they don't know.

Because that's exactly when you would see the intra-team dynamics which you're describing will happen. That is what happens on most software teams, sadly :(

>Success is a marathon, not a sprint

I never said or implied that it was anything else.

>Stop focusing on yourself and the immediate moment.

I am focusing on neither.

I am beginning to suspect that you are exactly the kind of manager I'm talking about here. Hi.