| I usually think of the managerial responsibilities to be in this order: - Company, because without it there's no employees
- The team you're managing, because teams are more than just a single person
- The individuals in the team, since they're the one's that can make a team better It seriously sucks to have to think of things in that order sometimes. I've never been involved in firing a person I didn't like. Though, when it comes down to it it's not fair for the team to suffer because of an individual, no matter how much they are liked, and it's not fair for all of the teams to suffer because one of them can't cut it. That's not to say there's no wiggle room though. I'll fight tooth and nail for an employee or team if I think it's a management fault that they've not performed (especially if I'm the manager screwing up) and will try to take a long term view of their value, not just the next quarter. Of course, all of this could be making me a bad manager. I've been put into managing people by virtue of being technically strong, not being a great people herder. I really do wish companies would spend as much time mentoring and helping managers get better at hands on managing as they do other tasks. |