[chunkyfunky]

I can't say I disagree with many of the points made in the article, but I am getting just a little tired of what I perceive to be the current trend of generalised manager-bashing these days...I transitioned from dev to manager a few years back and whilst I'm definitely not the greatest leader ever, I am also definitely not anything like the tired stereotypes portrayed in the article (case in point: when a dev tells me "two weeks" I smile and say "I believe you meant SIX weeks, right?". And then it takes 4, but everyone's happy cos the stakeholders got it 2 weeks "early" and the dev can sleep at night knowing the code is rock solid. etc.

This "Us vs Them" thing is bollox - we're all on the same team as far as I am concerned!

And, even though I have a good 20+ years of development behind me, I can honestly say that the two BEST engineering managers I ever had were people that could not have written a line of code to save their lives...they were just brilliant leaders and motivators who focused on me as an individual and trusted me enough to have the technical chops to get the job done whilst they meat-shielded us against waves of shite from the C-suite.

Well anyway, what would I know, I'm just a dumb-ass manager :)

[abc_lisper]

> I can honestly say that the two BEST engineering managers I ever had were people that could not have written a line of code to save their lives

This is some truth to this. On the other hand, there are a lot of dumb-ass power wielding managers who think technical chops are low level stuff and look down on the engineers. The second group outweighs the first by a factor of 3 at least

[existencebox]

> when a dev tells me "two weeks" I smile and say "I believe you meant SIX weeks, right?"

Wanted to chime in and say _thank you_ for giving me the prompt that this is an "OK" thing to do. (as a technique for trying to encourage/help devs build in good buffer)

As another dev-converted-to-manger, who was also somewhat taken back by that same perception of the malicious manager (I certainly had that perception from time to time as an eng, so it's not entirely foreign although I am surprised by how widespread it seems to have become) what you've written really resonates with me; One consequence is that I've become way more forgiving (in terms of trying to proactively improve it) for what I used to perceive as "bad management" as I struggle to improve my own techniques :P

> This "Us vs Them" thing is bollox - we're all on the same team as far as I am concerned!

I swear I want to scream this from the rooftops in many of the ragging-on-management threads I see but I know it's not the dev's fault for feeling miffed, a bad manager can _wreck_ your life, but I wish I had a magic password I could tell devs to let them know "I'm here to make you/your work successful, not the other way around, and if I'm ever failing at that I _want to fix it_."

(As sister responses point out, this is something earned, and fully agree, it can just often be an uphill battle, potentially rationally from what devs have experienced prior; again just trying to give everyone in the picture the benefit of the doubt as I'd hope they would me.)

> what would I know, I'm just a dumb-ass manager

You're in good company :)

[routerl]

> we're all on the same team as far as I am concerned

Your peers have burned through all the believability of this line, by using it when it is a lie.

[AnimalMuppet]

The manager who actually believes it, and lives it, will eventually be believed. The managers who parrot it will be ignored.

[tcbawo]

This reminds me of something that came up a while ago here, Lou Holtz's three questions asked of a leader: Can I trust you? Are you committed? Do you care about me?