[squadleader]

Just a meta-comment - if you're new to all this, it's good to know that management != leadership. If you're starting out, you'll want to learn both, and you'll need both.

More practically, here's a fun blog where you can ask specific questions: https://www.askamanager.org/

[davidg109]

^ THIS. Where I’ve worked, there has been a severe degradation over time of actual leaders, and an increase in managers who have no clue how to lead or inspire.

One thing I have oriented myself to doing is being a servant leader. As I told one team I led, “I’m your bitch. Tell me where your rocks are and I’ll move them out of the way so you can get your work done.” And then I do exactly that. I’ve had to work miracles sometimes but I can usually clear the path.

I detest micro management in every conceivable way, but I do believe in accountability and ensuring the work is done on time by the team with no surprises. This has worked well for me.

Been some time since I read about this stuff but Five Dysfunctions of a Team I recall being descent. Summary article here: https://www.runn.io/blog/5-dysfunctions-of-a-team-summary

[jackblemming]

>As I told one team I led, “I’m your bitch. Tell me where your rocks are and I’ll move them out of the way so you can get your work done.”

Great mindset and thoughts, but I hope this isn't what you actually said. I'd also like to point out serving someone or some thing doesn't make you a bitch.

[tptacek]

If this is your whole mindset, in what sense are you a leader? The person who moves rocks out of the way of the path for the army to march on generally isn't the leader; the leader is the guy (it's always a guy) telling people which rocks to move.

I'm not dunking on you; maybe you aren't a servant-leader, but rather just a servant. That's a great way to be: a servant of "the mission" (replace with whatever term keeps the contents of your stomach down).

[fifilura]

My experience regarding the servant manager is that it is really important that you also figure out what is in it for you.

There is a big risk that your career stops at that - being a servant.

[tptacek]

At the risk of sounding glib, in "startup world" (the sector of the tech industry characterized mostly by companies between 100-1000 people large) there are two career tracks:

(1) The track you get on by demonstrating viability in roles of escalating seniority, such as by leaving a Sr. Manager job for a Director job.

(2) The track you get on by having an easily observable or articulable track record of getting important (or at least interesting) things done.

Ruthlessly working "track 1" may rule out "serving" a team (and at the same time rationalizing that by avoiding that "trap" you're "serving" the broader company mission), but that mindset practically rules out progression on "track 2".

[mft_]

The best managers/leaders I've had in this vein are sufficiently recognised for their part in the performance of their team.

Wouldn't it be a small red flag about an organisation if this wasn't the case?

[fifilura]

Will your next workplace value all the effort you spent that way?

Are the servant tasks even what you want to spend your time with?

I am not suggesting that the answer to those questions has to be "no". But good to think about it.

[mft_]

Interesting questions.

> Will your next workplace value all the effort you spent that way?

I'd hope so - as it's reasonable to assume that a next role for someone already managing/leading would involve more management/leadership. So yes, skills/achievements/examples in that area should be valued.

> Are the servant tasks even what you want to spend your time with?

It's probably not for everyone; but if someone doesn't want to perform the tasks that (many would say) are necessary to be a good manager/leader, maybe they shouldn't be in a manager/leader position in the first place?

[dasil003]

This is a strange comment. Everyone in a corporate structure is a servant. How you advance is by demonstrating that you are helping solve the problems deemed important by your chain of command. Theoretically this should be aligned from top to bottom; in practice competing priorities, communication overhead, and incompetence in the wrong places can greatly distort things. This reality leads a lot of folks into learned helplessness, and social climbers gaming the chaos to gain power they are not equipped to handle.

The mentality "what's in it for me" is toxic and shows one is not ready for higher level management in a large org where cooperation is necessary to do anything interesting. Better questions are "is my team working on the right thing?", "does my team have the right skills to deliver on that thing?", "what relationships do we need to succeed?", and last but definitely not least "is my manager competent enough to provide the support I need for my team to be successful?". The last question is the key one: you won't grow if you are reporting to a muppet.

[fifilura]

Your answer is reasonable but I don't agree that it is a "strange comment" as you say.

Is it not possible to see yourself as having thought too much about maximizing your companys success without thinking about your own needs?

I wouldnt qualify this as toxic. And they can go alongside if you make it clear for yourself and your manager.

[dasil003]

Thanks for your measured response. You're right that it's not inherently toxic to think of yourself. The reason I reacted that way is because that mentality (whether explicit or not) is what leads to operating in a very transactional way or empire-building fashion that works against good outcomes in the long-term.

I honestly don't think being too selfless is an adequate explanation for career stagnation though. Selfless behavior will generally help you get ahead in life and in your career, because good relationships matter a lot. However you won't get promoted just because you help everyone. What if you are just servicing the squeaky wheels rather than solving the biggest problem on your plate? A good manager will only look to promote you because you have demonstrated you are capable of solving larger problems. There are other things too: like the business actually has the need for a higher level role. If that's the case, then your behavior is irrelevant—you just need to leave to someplace that does have the growth opportunity.

Overall the reason I said your comment was strange is because it clearly comes from some personal experience you had, but it lacks enough context to be actionable to anyone who reads it. I can think of a dozen different ways I've seen a "servant leader" mentality succeed or fail, but it all depends very much on context. Ultimately if you want to succeed you need to understand what game is being played and not fallback to abstract platitudes.

[fifilura]

Yeah maybe management path was not for me, but after a while I couldn't shake the feeling of having "santas little helper" on my business card. When the people I managed were the people that were valued in the organization, and having all the job opportunities. (I am out of that now after cleaning my CV with a few years of IC and managing a smaller team)

But of course YMMV and all that. I am not saying don't, I am saying do - think about it first.

[tptacek]

Leadership is a seductive concept, but in the main, leadership = management - work. In a healthy engineering culture, a management goal should be enabling the maximum number of people to exercise their own leadership. Even the newfangled concept of "servant leadership" is premised on a separation of agency between those who "serve/lead" and those who "are served/led".

Effective management --- do not groan before I finish this sentence --- tends to look a lot more like adminship on Wikipedia than it does, like, war leadership. It's about picking up a mop and a bucket and making the way clear for people to do their best work. And, in our field, doing one's best work often means making and communicating big decisions, which is what leadership is.

There's also a distinction between the kind of leadership the whole company needs --- hard decisions about where to allocate resources and what bets to make --- and the day-to-day "leadership" involved in getting things done as a team. I term I hear a lot is "vibes based management", which is a recognition that somebody (probably not engineering management!) is making these kinds of decisions and communicating them just well enough for line engineers to make good choices.

If you're looking for management advice because you're running a whole company, that kind of leadership is in scope! But if you're looking to learn how to be a good engineering manager, I'm not sure how much "leadership" has to do with doing a good job.

[dasil003]

> But if you're looking to learn how to be a good engineering manager, I'm not sure how much "leadership" has to do with doing a good job.

Your whole comment is spot on, but I think there's a trap here. Yes, an EM should be empowering as many IC leaders as possible, but that can't be done if the EM does not recognize true leadership. While it's theoretically possible to succeed as a manager leveraging others without having your own true tech lead chops, the majority of managers like this end up either putting too much trust in the wrong ICs or (worse) devolve into cover-your-ass "agile" process bullshit.

[voakbasda]

Not everyone can be effective at both. I learned that I can be a great leader, but I do not have the patience required to manage people. I have had managers that were terrible leaders. Definitely different skills, and you need both to climb the ladder into the C-suite.

[trescenzi]

You definitively don’t need either to make it to C-suite. To get there you need political skills. To be effective there you absolutely need both though.

[avgcorrection]

In corporate rhetoric, all management is becoming leadership. Turning from the concrete X, Y, and Z of managing to the abstract ball of feels that is “leadership”.