[shoto_io]

Ok, I am going to be brutally honest here. Some may not like it.

Micromanaging is complicated. When I was in a leadership position I was the happiest boss when I could let people just do their thing and come back with great results and we'd be all happy. And that's how I loved working with my bosses before as well.

But then again, I had some employees I had to micromanage. I really, really abhorred it. But there was just no other way to achieve results. The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead. But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.

What I am trying to say is: As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one. Maybe your work is the reason for him/her to be micromanaging you.

[petee]

I read a good book about management recently that pretty much defined the need for micromanagement as either lack of training, and/or lack of clear expectations and appropriate resolution when those expectations are broken.

The sum of it is an employee that knows the right way, and is given the freedom to do that will make the correct choices, if they fail occasionally that's ok. If they can't be trained, or refused to follow the expectations, then they need another job.

Micromanagement will just repress those employees further where they'll be too afraid to make their own decisions.

Humorously, the book is called "It's your Ship", by a navy captain who turned the worst ship in the navy into the top ship

[hinkley]

Making all of the decisions is just another variant on the "don't accept responsibility for things you have no control over". Your boss is taking the power to make the decision. Your boss is not taking responsibility for cleaning up the mess if that decision turns out to be just as stupid as all of the developers predicted.

[dcolkitt]

I mostly agree with you. But there are many many reasons why these constraints may still apply, at least in the short term. Ideally you want everyone to be competent enough at their role to need minimal management. But the reality is that often times you'll find yourself in a situation where that's not true. And it's pretty rare when you just have the freedom to bring everything to a halt to start from scratch.

[petee]

This is true, I didn't mean to suggest there weren't good exceptions. Although instead of starting from scratch sometimes reassigning crew will uncover unknown strengths and weaknesses.

Personal example of this, an old foreman I knew on a job, had a boss who didn't understand that people had strengths, so as an example he would routinely swap people into tasks that emphasized their weakness to prove it.

Additionally, this allowed people who didnt do X job because they didn't have the confidence or skill, to actually get a little extra experience as well

[amrox]

I think the book is called "Turn the Ship Around"

[milesvp]

I was only familiar with "Turn the Ship Around", so I just looked it up. Apparently there are 2 books on this topic from different captains.

"It's Your Ship", Captain D. Michael Abrashoff "Turn the Ship Around", (Captain) L. David Marquet

I'd actually be curious how much the advice overlaps.

[tome]

Side note: Turn the Ship Around is about a submarine and It's Your Ship is about a surface vessel.

[tpoacher]

Thank you for the book recommendation :)

[Mc91]

On the other hand, I have been in positions where I and the team delivered spectacular results year after year, and I am not micro-managed, and then my excellent boss leaves for greener pastures, and suddenly a new much worse boss comes in and begins micromanaging me.

Fellow workers, the boss and management is not looking out for your interest, the default is they're looking out for their interest. Your best hope is once in a while to find a "good" boss who is not 100% on board with the investors and is willing to split the difference. If you're on the top half of people in your position in terms of skills, if you're willing to do what reasonably needs to be done within 40 hours a week, then the boss is who needs to be questioned, not yourself - you are the one who is doing the work and creating the wealth for the company.

[treeman79]

Have walked into roles where managers were used to dealing with nothing but jr developers.

Some have backed off when they realized I know what I’m doing. We have a good working relationship.

Others double down hard, and take it as personal insult that I’m not going to be micromanaged. These cases end badly.

Others give try to micromanage, I let them know I’m not going to follow their rules. They don’t actually care what I do. But they keep trying. Basically pretending they are managing me. These situations are depressing and sad.

To contrast.

Then there are the ones that just point a general direction and encourage good team dynamics. I love these ones

[gregmac]

> Your best hope is once in a while to find a "good" boss who is not 100% on board with the investors and is willing to split the difference.

Investors care about results; they don't care about the style middle management uses. This is a false dichotomy.

If the company is focused on short-term wins to the detriment of long-term viability, that's a separate issue (and really has nothing to do with management style).

> ..then my excellent boss leaves for greener pastures, and suddenly a new much worse boss comes in and begins micromanaging...

> ..then the boss is who needs to be questioned

If this means results suffer (probably), then it's pretty obvious the cause in this case, right?

[dfsegoat]

> I was the happiest boss when I could let people just do their thing and come back with great results

This is decentralized command, and really the best place to be. That's why I believe being a leader in software dev. is really about serving the ppl under you - not the opposite.

I think it's about balance:

I will micromanage new hires initially, so that I can ensure they are sticking to SOPs, code standards etc. and developing the habits we need to be successful.

After awhile, the training wheels can come off and you can give them ownership of larger and larger stakes in projects. They'll stumble once in awhile, but chances are that goes back to something you (leader) left as ambiguous - or that they genuinely didn't know.

[chriskanan]

This is the same way I treat PhD students. A lot of micromanagement early on, and then I progressively try to step back. That said, it is always a big concern if they stumble for a considerable amount of time (a year) or are not capable of being independent as they approach graduation, even if they can deliver very effectively when being micromanaged.

[brailsafe]

Do you find you get a lot of negative feedback or churn during that period? Seems like it would be an awful first impression, but maybe not if you communicate things well.

[dfsegoat]

You mean during the intro / "more hands on period"?

I've not heard any negative feedback, but I think it requires a 'fine touch' - or you risk drowning people in information / tedium. If they get things the first time, I won't be prone to checking up on them as much.

[brailsafe]

Ya, that's what I meant. If I started at a company and my manager micromanaged me—especially with no clear reason why—I'd feel like this company isn't for me. No negative feedback isn't terribly surprising given that I don't know anyone besides myself inclined to actually say anything about an issue. Out of curiosity though, have you ever received negative feedback about anything, or given it yourself explicity before being more "hands-on"?

[dfsegoat]

I totally get where you are coming from. I should clarify that historically, all of my new hires were pretty much fresh out of school, or transitioning to software dev from other roles.

If I hired a dev with significant experience, I don't think I would use the same process, aside from knowledge gaps.

I definitely have received negative feedback on processes that are in place, and I welcome that, because if something can be done better, or more efficiently - then we should change it. Flexibility is key.

[marcinzm]

>But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.

I disagree. It's like parents who spend all their time on the problem child, and then the children who are doing well become bitter and resentful. You're neglecting the rest of the team for one individual, who they all probably see is problematic, which is not a good way to run a team.

[toast0]

Work is not family. At work, I thrive on benign neglect.

While I would love for my boss to purposefully ignore me; it's ok if my boss is only ignoring me because there's no time for me after tending to the other employees. I will not be sad or resentful if my 1:1 had to be canceled because my boss had something else to do.

[marcinzm]

Your boss spending all their time on a trouble employee means they're also not doing the fifty other things they could to help the team other than bothering you. Yes, managers do have things to do other than bothering their reports. At least good ones do.

[rantwasp]

so fire the underperforming kids? got it

[hinkley]

As a peer and/or lead I've found a process that should help with this. Unfortunately you rarely get a boss who will fire someone (layoffs are another story) and so the most you can do is slowly take away their responsibilities and give them to someone else. Effectively, ghosting them.

Essentially you build tools that help avoid some of the problems you're seeing, and slowly ratchet up from beta test to mandatory as the tool becomes more reliable. At the end if the problem person refuses to use the tool, then you have a clear HR problem.

The people who make mistakes aren't your enemy. The people who make mistakes and insist they don't need help are the enemy.

[JustSomeNobody]

> The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead.

Absolutely. A manager should regularly have conversations with everyone on their team. During reviews, absolutely nobody should be surprised by their review. If a manager has to fire someone, that person should not be surprised by this. Constant communication is not micromanagement, it is an absolute requirement of management. It is not one way, either; it is an open conversation.

> As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one.

Yes and no. A manager cannot push their responsibility of open communication onto the employee by expecting them to just know what their performance is. That being said, upon proper feedback, yes, an employee should ingest that and reflect upon that feedback.

[plausibledeny]

I agree 100%, reviews should never be a surprise. But it's amazing how people have selection attention. I've told people that they were headed for a below average rating and found them to be surprised when they received that. It's tricky when you have an employee with performance issues, because you want to focus on the parts they're doing right but at the same time you need to give them honest feedback and it can get confusing. "But you said I was doing better."

[ljm]

> The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead.

Did you take the micromanaging approach because you didn't open a channel for feedback between you and the team?

Micromanagement is one thing: a lack of trust. You micromanage because you don't trust, or maybe they don't trust either. So, what do you do to build up trust? You talk.

Note that this is different to accountability. You can hold people to account without micromanaging them.

[majormajor]

> So, what do you do to build up trust? You talk.

What do you do when talking leads to them saying "I understand, next time I'll either get it done faster, or let you know when I realize it's gonna slip" but then what actually happens is that it slips without them giving you any updates again after all? Repeatedly? Talking doesn't build trust when the actions don't match the talk.

[mixedCase]

It depends on whether your demands are reasonable or not if it's going to work, but:

If there's a persistent lack of communication when it should've been known that a deadline is not going to be met or is at least going to be close, set-up a PIP where you lay down a checklist to follow at the start/end of the day of behaviors you expect regarding communication.

If that doesn't help, then yes, firing is the correct response, not permanent micromanagement.

This is all under the generous assumption that your deadlines are actually very important in the business and plans will have to be shifted if they're not met because of a harsh business reality. Otherwise it's your fault for allowing the cost of deadlines to be incurred in a team where all they will do is hinder morale, add bureaucracy and reduce productivity.

[majormajor]

> This is all under the generous assumption that your deadlines are actually very important in the business and plans will have to be shifted if they're not met because of a harsh business reality. Otherwise it's your fault for allowing the cost of deadlines to be incurred in a team where all they will do is hinder morale, add bureaucracy and reduce productivity.

As far as most dev teams are concerned, timelines are less important for the business than they are to each other.

People don't like it when they are constantly waiting on person X to finish their part of the work. (That's a good way to know you've really dropped the ball as manager: the other team members start asking YOU what's going on with the other person.)

[halfmatthalfcat]

PIPs are a waste of time imo. Usually if you're at the PIP stage, you're going to end up firing them anyway. I've only heard a handful of cases where PIPs actually *worked*. The rest of the time they were a waste of everyone's time.

[zentiggr]

That's why there are usually progressive disciplinary steps. I've been on the receiving end of that in a couple of situations (which I'll admit after the faact, were due to my own issues). It's not pleasant but it was necessary, because I wasn't going to give up trying, but I was in no shape to actually succeed. Better to cut the cord - I wound up in better situations after each occasion, mostly because I wasn't bailing water anymore and had energy to do well.

[ljm]

I worded this badly, but this is the accountability piece.

You say that you want X. X has to be reasonably achievable. You don't tell them how to do X, though.

That introduces another set of problems. You have to do X within Y.

Suddenly you know more of Y than X. So then you turn towards Z and you have to do XY within Z, but Y is more important than X.

[treebog]

It could be that the IC is just very bad at estimating schedules, so much so that they don’t realize they are falling behind. If that’s the case, some training on software estimation and how to set good milestones could pay large dividends.

Another possibility is that the environment is one in which it’s not okay to admit that schedules are slipping, despite the manager’s insistence to the contrary.

There are many more possibilities of course. Does the employee have any insights into why they failed to take the action they promised?

[clint]

You fire them. What's so difficult about that?

[haswell]

A lack of trust and/or misalignment on goals doesn’t automatically mean the employee is a poor performer. If your first resort is to fire them, there is no reason to believe the same problem won’t happen with the next employee.

[skrebbel]

I think you're oversimplifying. I bet that what you're saying may work fine in a factory line, but when we're talking creative work such as programming, holding people to account without zooming in deep sometimes is impossible.

If a designer makes an unresponsive site, the manager can just say "hey do a responsive design tutorial". But if the designer gets all kinds of patterns or structures or the company design language just wrong, it's very hard to discuss that without making the designer feel like you're micromanaging them.

[ljm]

Micromanaging is no different than telling someone what to do, at an extreme level.

All of your examples can be handled with good communication. If a designer makes an unresponsive site but the site should be responsive, then the communication failed and the requirements were wrong.

If you're a manager or a leader then, ultimately, you are responsible for the failures you presided over. You can't sit back and observe the chaos.

[lazide]

Sometimes you end up with someone who can’t do the job that they were hired for, or won’t, without constant direction. Sometimes they come into the job this way, sometimes factors outside of your control put them here.

Sometimes you can have a Frank discussion about it, or regular ‘adult’ type discussion, and there is something that can be done that fixes it, and it can be fixed. That is not always the case. Sometimes the person is fundamentally incapable of doing the work (rare), or in a place they can’t care about or don’t want to do it - but won’t or can’t acknowledge it.

Re:accountability - there are many different definitions one can use for what this really means. The clearest I am familiar with is ‘if you can’t or won’t do the job to standard, and there is no special circumstance like a leave that should be applied, you don’t have that job anymore’.

That is easier said than done in many business environments.

I’ve worked in places where someone literally not doing any useful work was going on a year+ of dragging on with the team, constantly changing reasons for why they couldn’t do the job, and killing the teams morale. Literally 4 layers of management involved in HR processes trying to drive this to a useful conclusion, but new buttons being pushed every month by the employee and a highly risk adverse HR/Corp culture meant the situation couldn’t be resolved. All this on top of 6 months of coaching and attempting to help this individual be a productive member of the team.

These environments all require micromanagement of low performers as part of the performance management process - it’s the way things have to be to get the documentation and proof of coaching for CYA.

[ljm]

Your last example sounds like a complete failure of leadership. And the accountability buck stops with them for enabling that situation.

Accountability isn't easier said than done; it exists everywhere, but you choose how to apply it and when and you use your bias to decide how hard to apply the discipline.

If you feel you need to micromanage someone, then you've lost your leadership too.

[lazide]

Easy to say, but pretty useless on the ground. Which leadership is failing? Who holds whom accountable?

If you, as a leader, will get fired for holding someone accountable to the job (and firing them) and stopping a toxic environment from happening on the team, what then? What if the reason for that is some meta PR corporate reason that makes sense for corporate maybe but not for you and your team?

What if your job includes not causing those larger corporate issues and following the rules of the larger org?

It’s a failure of a large organization, and part of that failure is often making sure there is no one to actually hold accountable in a real way. It sucks. It happens.

[antonzabirko]

Why did you have to micromanage those employees?

[barbazoo]

> But then again, I had some employees I had to micromanage. I really, really abhorred it. But there was just no other way to achieve results.

[castlecrasher2]

Some people don't have their own drive and rely entirely on expectations set by leaders. Specifically, they will say they're working on something and might even get it done but they could have gotten it done faster and possibly better with at worst micromanagement and at best genuine coaching.

[wayoutthere]

Not OP, but generally because they aren’t doing the work I need them to. In my experience some folks literally don’t know what they’re supposed to do to get started or get stuck on small tasks. Micromanaging is a way to get past those blocks. That said, I absolutely hate doing it and it runs counter to my entire people leadership philosophy (it’s a waste of time for me and condescending to the employee). But at some point you have to get work done, and if that takes micromanagement, so be it.

[greatpatton]

Not the OP, but the one time I had to micromanage someone was because the engineer was unable to focus on the important tasks and would deliver nice things but totally unrelated to the end goal...

[vikiomega9]

> As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one. Maybe your work is the reason for him/her to be micromanaging

This is great advice about being reflective, however most humans don't like such conversations (for example like most friend groups). Do you have advice on how to approach such conversations?

[908B64B197]

> But then again, I had some employees I had to micromanage. I really, really abhorred it. But there was just no other way to achieve results.

Micro-Managing underperformers doesn't scale; better to raise more money and raise the hiring bar.

[goodpoint]

> I had to micromanage

And yet...

> The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead.

There you go. Very often employees are unproductive because they are unhappy.

> As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one

It's the people-manager job to understand people. It's not the employee's job or skillset.

[halfmatthalfcat]

No, it’s a shared responsibility. It’s the managers job to set up someone for success not to make them successful. If a report is not responding to that, then it’s the report’s fault for either not applying themselves or just not a good culture fit for the org. Nothing wrong with the latter either, mind you. Some people just don’t work in the existing system.

[jbverschoor]

> But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.

It's the right thing to fire them. For you and for them. Wrong match, end of story.

Could be they lack experience or something else, but it might just as well be you lacking clear goals etc. Either way, wrong match, end of story.

[sgt101]

True iff there are people to hire who are better, cost of hire is low && latency of hire is low.

In many situations none of those things hold. In some of these situations investing in the failing team is far better than checking them out and then repeating the disaster.

And, remember others are watching. If you have a rep as an axeman a lot of people won't work for you - no ifs, no buts, no amount of comp will make a difference. You can end up with the B team - a B team who won't look you in the eye and produces 70 pages of evidence at every evaluation.

Good luck with your management career!

[lazide]

FYI - The official line for several FAANG’s is that the week/day level of micromanagement done as part of typical performance management for underperformers is referred to as investment. And it kinda is - about 25% of the people I’ve had to do it for did well (4 if I remember correctly). Another 25% needed a clear ‘you need to improve or you’re out’ message that merely saying it to them did not provide. They needed the paperwork. They reset and got their act together right away, and the ‘micromanagement’ consisted of checking in with them for a few weeks or a month until it was clear that their trajectory was changed. Roughly another 25% had mis-fitting roles or expectations (one was a CS major, and despite interviewing for and taking a coding job, realized they hated coding about 2 kmonths in).

The remaining 25% approx. fought the whole way, refused to take any ownership of their issues, and were a huge relief for the team when they were gone - and in the environment I dealt with most of these cases? It was incredibly, incredibly hard to get rid of them. 3+ months of constant work, mandatory weekly check-ins and micromanagement, you name it.

I don’t like firing people, but I hate toxic team environments, and recognize it helps no one for someone to stay in a culture/org/team that clearly doesn’t work. I personally always put the work in, because I knew how important it was. I’ve seen many managers not do that.

I agree with you that it’s better to fire a not fit. I’ve also seen many (50%ish) turn it around after or shortly after other companies would have summarily fired them.

Big Corp, especially big tech Corp, has a giant target on it’s back and is very risk adverse to firing (justifiably so) in many cases, even if it hurts the team or the individual.

[ex_amazon_sde]

> Big Corp, especially big tech Corp, has a giant target on it’s back and is very risk adverse to firing (justifiably so)

Ex-Amazon here. Most FAANGs are known for their aggressive stack-ranking and high attrition rate. Amazon has the highest attrition rate.

[logicslave]

Amazon manager spotted

[lazide]

Nope. Amazon would be the least prone to these scenarios - they fire fast compared to literally all the rest.

[halfmatthalfcat]

“Hire slow, fire fast”

[throwaway8581]

Some people are not self-driven but can still do good work if subjected to stronger authority. It's ultimately a business decision as to whether it's worth providing that kind of authority.

But note that to the extent that someone suffers from ADHD and just needs a stronger hand from their manager as an accommodation in order to be productive, you might be legally required to give it to them.

[garciasn]

I believe what you're saying amounts of effective leadership.

I feel there's a very LARGE and DISTINCT difference between effective management and micromanagement. The article's points show that when dealing with a micromanager, you're dealing with a narcissist. Nothing the employee does is right; the manager's path forward is likely not even possible; and, most importantly, only the manager feels they themselves can do it correctly.

When a team is underperforming, there are ways to help out which do not amount to nitpicks and providing poor direction. Offering very direct support and feedback is NOT micromanagement.

[lazide]

If you’re having to go through item by item to give direct support, and explicit feedback for literally everything the person is doing - I’d consider that micromanagement if done to me, no matter who was doing it or why.

I think most people would consider that the case. There is also the trope of the ‘micromanager’ who is the insecure ‘I asked 5 minutes ago, why isn’t it done exactly right already’ type. They might be narcissists, but I’ve seen plenty who weren’t - insecurity always plays a huge part, and seems correlated with workaholism too. They micromanage everyone.

It’s entirely possible to be micromanaged by someone due to something you’re doing, and by someone who isn’t a micromanager or prone to micromanaging. They’ll hate it, but they have reasons why specifically they are doing it with you that may suck to hear, but probably have some grounding in reality. I’ve been on both sides of this and it sucks on both sides.

It’s also possible to work for someone that micromanages everyone because that’s who they are.