[JamesHinnek]

Just a reminder that lazy managers are the source of burnout for those who are under them. As a manager I can say, there is no easier job than just forwarding requests from directors directly to developers, not planning, and promising crazy deadlines to avoid conflict with higher management.

If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more, I have seen so many people becoming managers just to actually avoid work, or thinking that tech is too hard and too much to study. So they instead go to a whole different area where most of your previous knowledge won't be required anymore, and they don't think that they are starting from zero, so they just don't study and read 2 blog articles and think that they got how is to work with people.

[RankingMember]

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more

In my experience, pay rarely has any kind of correlation to the amount of work being done. I see it merely as a pay for responsibility for the work of those under you or, more succinctly, "being paid to throw yourself under the bus in lieu of anyone you're managing".

[wahnfrieden]

Managers usually fire team members rather than take the fall for the team.

[ryoshu]

Bad managers do that. Good managers accept accountability for the failures of their teams. Delegation makes a leader more accountable, not less.

[codesnik]

I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

[Clubber]

>I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

I think that's the point, you wouldn't see it. If a good manager gets unreasonably or unfairly reamed by his boss, he's probably not gonna tell his team about it, because it would be a blow to morale. If it was indeed the team's dysfunction, he'd try to improve it.

[kevinventullo]

Next time there’s a re-org, look around for managers who net lost reports, or even “decided to move on”.

[cratermoon]

When I "decided to move on", that included deciding that management was likely not in the cards for me again. Companies that have IC staff+ roles are what attract me now.

[lupire]

And go work for them because they were busy working instead of backstabbing politics?

Meanwhile the most useless people are failing upward into CEO.

[arbitrage]

I've seen it before. After that manager stepped in to help me, I would've stepped in front of a bus for him. That is the one time I had a manager like that in my entire career.

It's rare, but it does happen.

[11101010001100]

If you need your job to live, and taking accountability means any non-zero probability of losing your job, would you take accountability? Of course it is easy to answer an hypothetical.

[RankingMember]

I certainly wouldn't dispute the existence of those managers- I'm thankful to have had some good managers who go to bat for their direct reports.

[wahnfrieden]

You had managers who "took the fall" for the team? The thread is about accepting blame and sacrifice, not about advocating for people under you

[RankingMember]

> You had managers who "took the fall" for the team?

Correct. In addition, sometimes advocating for those under you is a sacrificial act, because you're putting your reputation on the line.

[wahnfrieden]

Sounds performative rather than anything real at stake. Managers are expected to lay down rhetoric about accountability and contextualizing their team's failure.

[dustingetz]

pay is directly correlated with how much money your boss has. ice cream shops don’t pay $100k salaries. you want to double your salary, brand yourself a “consultant” and sell directly to executives, middle management needs 10 approvals to do anything.

[golergka]

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more

No, they should deliver more value.

Best managers I had didn't have that much tasks scheduled. They:

1. Made important decisions right.

2. Processed all incoming requests, both from their reports and from outside, swiftly and with full attention.

3. Had enough psychological stamina to say "no" when it's necessary and defend their team from pressure and anxiety.

None of these things require working a lot of hours. Actually, lazy people are better suited to do it properly.

[trgn]

> lazy people are better suited to do it properly.

ha, have you heard of this quote from an officer from the german military? https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/

[TeMPOraL]

Who hasn't? The real question is, is there a single historical figure who hasn't had this quote attributed to them at some point?

[rmilejczz]

I think all industries in general fall victim to this sort of fallacy, and I advocate for a stronger push towards goal driven work. Not how much did you work but how much did you accomplish. In some fields these are closer to a 1:1 relationship but definitely not in development.

[sanp]

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more Why? Companies don’t pay more for more work. They will try to get away with the least they can pay. Workers should do the same.

[eganist]

Pay is generally correlated with accountability, not so much work.

To your point: lazy managers would suffer an accountability hit if something goes wrong with their teams (burnout etc), so that's the incentive for them to manage their teams properly.

[danaris]

Unfortunately, the belief of many is that if you are paid more, you are a more valuable person, and thus get to look down on those who make less than you.

This very frequently manifests in believing that it is the Lower People who have to do actual work, while your job as a Higher Person is just to make sure they are doing their work (in the simplest way possible—butt in seat == working), and not doing things above their station. Like thinking, or trying to understand why it is that their job, which can be done entirely on any computer with an internet connection, must be done in the office, or questioning why, when the business loses money, the execs still get fat bonuses.

[lupire]

It's simpler then that. Who fights for outsizedly high paying jobs relative to peers of the same talent? Greedy, selfish people who have no respect for others. They act as expected in the job.

[antipaul]

"Management" definitely seems easier, than having to do technical work, without proper accountability.

But it seems it's hard to hold management accountable.

For an IC such as an engineer, if you don't deliver code for the deadline or check-in, it's clear you haven't delivered.

But how do you judge the performance of managers? Oh, right, by the size of the "empire"...

[policepost]

As a former engineer and now manager, it's not easier. It's different.

Like, yes I write much less code, but I also have to show much more empathy and be able to communicate with different people differently. Helping every engineer on the team advance their careers is tough, because everyone heard feedback differently.

Combine that with the one on ones where someone tells you about how shitty their life has been recently and how that's impacting their work. It's tough to go from roadmap planning to someone crying at you over a medical diagnosis to jumping directly to status updates to telling your boss no. It's an emotional whiplash not present in the engineer world.

Like I said, not harder or easier. Different.

[fmc30]

Thanks for your comment. I'm pretty sick of the low effort takes on this site (read: internet in general). Every role is different. Each has its own challenges and anybody can be good or bad in a given role. Too many people trying to blame upper management, blame L1 managers, blame developers, without understanding, or even attempting to understand, the challenges they face. It doesn't just work like that. I'm 9 years into my career and became a manager 2.5 years ago. I agree entirely with you, it's just different, not better or worse. As a manager you are constantly dealing with a number of situations more varied than what you face weekly as a developer. The challenges are different. You can work harder, or work less hard, smarter or dumber...it's all up to the person and how their organization operates.

[yunohn]

Personally, I think ICs complaining about bad Managers is acceptable. The latter have actual power and direct control over the individual’s career and life. It can be a tough job that comes with a lot of responsibility, but lots of us have faced the worst sides of this.

[lupire]

And if your reports hate you, you are failing at that hard job, your job.

[chasd00]

I’m glad you made this comment. I’ve had multiple people lay out very personal and severe problems to me during one-on-ones. I’m in no way qualified nor did I sign up to have someone’s life literally in my hands (suicidal people). It’s disturbing.

[lupire]

Managers who manage like you describe devs should be tested are bad managers.

Size of the empire isn't something a manager does, it's a reward senior management gives. This is true unless the company has open allocation, as Google did before it started eating its own corpse.

[screye]

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more

Given the number of new grads out of college working 60+ hr weeks, I am not sure there is much leeway left for managers to 'work more'.

With a manager's job, time invested and outcome is even less correlated than a code-monkey (no offense, I am one too) who at least has a slightly-less-than-linear relationship with work/time.

Find yourself a good manager. Don't think too much about how long the manager (or any other coworker) chooses to work. A good manager will find a way to accommodate different lifestyles without disrupting the unity or drive of the individual members of the team.

[spacemadness]

Working more because you’re paid more is a dumb metric and sounds like a puritan minded threat. It’s working effectively using the skills you are paid to use to help your project/team do well at whatever it is you’re targeting.

[pc86]

Not sure I'd consider someone not pulling their weight on a team a "different lifestyle." I've worked for taskmasters before and it's not fun but if everyone on the team is working a full 40 hour week, and one person is working 25 or 30, it will become apparent over time and should be handled quickly.

[screye]

Different people have different priorities and bring different things to the team.

Someone who does not want to be promoted, and is happy with average rewards will put in different efforts than someone who puts in a lot more and wants to rise up the ranks quickly. Differences in effort and outcome need to be differently rewarded. Not everyone wants to rise up an infinite corporate ladder.

Someone who knows the product inside out and has a great rapport with the team, is worth keeping around. Just don't reward them disproportionally for their contributions.

Somehow, Tech people find a way to be the most stressed out people on a job, while simultaneously working on the least significant part of human lives. No one cares if social media, ads or TV streaming have an incident that last a few extra hours. No one cares if your feature that makes streaming/ads/social-media 5% better releases 2 weeks late.

Legally, your colleague does not have a direct relationship with you. Both you and your colleague have a relationship with the company through your manager, and that's it. If your colleague has a hand-shake agreement for working 30 hours a week for average returns, and you have negotiated a promotion in return for a feature.......then the colleague does not owe you extra work so you get promoted. If your career progression needs others to work more than they've signed up for, then that's the fault of your manager for misallocating funding.

It's at will employment. If your the company doesn't like them, they fire them. The American employment agreement is deeply transactional. You owe only as much to your company as won't get you fired.

[jonfw]

Why would a different number of hours constitute a problem which needs to be solved?

It could obviously lead to a problem, if that person is under performing as a result, but it's not obvious that there is a linear relationship between hours worked and performance.

[11101010001100]

Work more means what?

It's about efficiency in terms of performance metrics.

[ntfAX]

It might be a combination of efficiency and generating value. If you're efficient enough to generate $1000/hr but the org has no opportunity or product for you that can generate this, efficiency in performance metrics alone doesn't move the company's bottom line.

[JamesHinnek]

Exactly, the word work was used as a simplification of the overall output expected. You also need to account for the hard parts to calculate, human burnout, turnover rate, time to deliver a product to the market, amount of rework, tech debt added, etc... Someone who can deliver a fancy project, full of tech debt, will require 5x more effort on rework than was to do it, and the team gets burned out severely after the project. Would it be worth it? In the short term senior management will see it as a good idea. But most managers and senior managers are too naive to account for these hidden variables, or in most cases, not interested to take these metrics into account