[alphazard]

This is a little too rose tinted for my tastes.

In a high-performing small company, managers aren't necessary. Someone has to be responsible for hiring and firing people, but you can't afford people that don't get what the company's trying to do. If someone has to be managed, they aren't a good fit. If you've never worked at a place like this, or don't believe me, I'd recommend giving it a try.

In a large company, management is essential to the adversarial system. Workers can and should take advantage of the company's inability to tell who is contributing. Here management is essential to creating stress and getting any sort of productive output.

The idea that most managers have something to teach you, are good judges of your flaws, or can give better advice than you would get from a senior peer is ridiculous. These are great traits that you should seek out in a mentor, but to claim the median manager anywhere has them is insane. In practice managers you encounter in the wild offer none of those things.

Promotions, raises, growth, performance reviews etc. is all a psyop to get you to stay for longer and do more work. It's about what you can negotiate, what that promotion would signal to your peers, how much of a flight risk you are. It's never to incentivize good choices concerning how to hone your craft, get rich, or do work you consider meaningful.

[ZephyrBlu]

> The idea that most managers have something to teach you, are good judges of your flaws, or can give better advice than you would get from a senior peer is ridiculous. These are great traits that you should seek out in a mentor, but to claim the median manager anywhere has them is insane. In practice managers you encounter in the wild offer none of those things

Have you ever had a good manager?

Assuming equally competent people, feedback from a senior peer is likely to not be as good as someone who's full-time job is to be a people manager. Good managers are very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of people in the team. Senior peers do not have to be aware of this and as a result, don't tend to be able to articulate these kind of things. They may be able to give good task-specific feedback, but holistic and personal feedback is difficult.

The median senior is just as poor at giving feedback as the median manager, and management in large companies isn't inherently adversarial. It's very environment dependent.

[alphazard]

> Have you ever had a good manager?

Yes, I have had managers that I consider to be good. But my definition of good is closer to "the person responsible for hiring and firing me, but otherwise leaves me alone" than the definition provided in the OP.

I have had managers who match the definition of good provided. It's clear these guys had read too many books and listened to too much Tony Robins. Being a dummy for their management-fu is draining, and every interaction gives NPC vibes.

The former got literally 10x more out of me than the later.

There is this bad meme going around that because managers are often technically incompetent, they must make up for it in some other way. There's no law of nature that says that must be the case. You can be lacking in many skills, and slip through the hiring process and into a manager role.

> The median senior is just as poor at giving feedback as the median manager

I didn't say feedback, I said advice. The advice I'm looking for might be how to understand a technology or technique, or how to negotiate a raise. Why would I seek either from someone technically incompetent who has to negotiate against me?

[ZephyrBlu]

The way you describe managers makes it abundantly clear you have never worked with one that is good, or great [0]. It seems like you think they are actively harmful.

> There is this bad meme going around that because managers are often technically incompetent, they must make up for it in some other way. There's no law of nature that says that must be the case. You can be lacking in many skills, and slip through the hiring process and into a manager role.

I'm not sure why you are so focused on people who are clearly terrible. If they're technically incompetent, managerially incompetent and "slipping through" the hiring process they are obviously not good.

My managers have all been technically competent and brought enormous amounts of value to their teams. Providing structure, facilitating the creation of team processes and rituals, correctly dosing chaos and scope for each team member, shielding the team's focus, etc. They also all encouraged me to look around for other jobs and see what I am worth.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/24/you-havent-seen-greatness/

[alphazard]

I'm familiar with the ideas in that article (more in the context of Product Management though). You seem to be focused on proving that great people exist, which is obviously true.

I'm more concerned with the average case because that reflects how an organization should be structured. It doesn't matter if there is theoretically a great manager out there, what matters is the distribution seen at the bottom of the hiring funnel.

This is trading one set of problems for another. You want a manager to make one set go away, but now you have to set up a process that identifies good (or great) managers. And unless you can do that, hiring a manager isn't likely to solve your initial problems, or it creates different problems that are worse than the initial set.

If it's true that great managers are huge multipliers, but they are so apparently rare that I've never encountered one (as you suggest), then companies should still avoid hiring for all the roles in that article "* managers" unless they know of a great one through a referral.

[ZephyrBlu]

> You seem to be focused on proving that great people exist, which is obviously true

I would not know it from the way you talk!

> I'm more concerned with the average case because that reflects how an organization should be structured

Average in an org is very different from population average. The average professional is bad at their job. The average employee in a company can be pretty good.

My perception is that maybe only 20% of people are somewhat competent at their job, and maybe only 1-5% are very competent. Assuming managers are default bad is correct, but also useless because people in every role are default bad.

If you are competent and you care, the solution is to find a company which values that.

Problems that companies in the bottom 80% deal and the associated problems they deal with are utterly uninteresting, because it's like talking about how water is wet.

Yes, hiring people who are incompetent creates issues. Especially in managerial roles. Yes, hiring good people is difficult and creates another problem for the org. Most companies never get past dealing with these problems and they don't really give a shit about them, which is why it's so boring to discuss.

For an individual, the first step towards having a better manager is joining a better company. After you've done that is when the conversation becomes more interesting, because even at better companies not all managers are good or great.

---

To me this whole thing very much sounds like the situation described in this article:

"Over just the past two weeks alone, I have talked with several people at different pure feature team companies that have told me, in so many words, that the empowered product teams I describe sound like some mythical and utopian world, which can’t possibly exist in reality.

Yet in these same two weeks, I’ve also spoken to people at strong product companies working in empowered product teams, that have asked me why in the world I would spend so much energy talking about these feature team companies, that they have never seen, and can’t imagine why anyone would want to run their company that way, and further, why anyone would want to work there? When I tell them that not only do they exist, they’re clearly the majority, they think I’m exaggerating."

https://www.svpg.com/best-vs-rest/

[bitwize]

The fictional company Initech from Office Space is depicted as a blandly oppressive corporate hellscape -- but it's fundamentally more honest than most corporations in the real world, do you know why? Because there's a big banner hanging over the offices that reads "Is this good for the COMPANY?" It's the question that all employees should be asking themselves at all times.

Being able to engage in personal feedback that cultivates fruitful relationships with their reports that make them happier and more productive is a nice-to-have. But ultimately a manager's responsibility is to the business, not their reports -- and sometimes what they need to do is implement whatever measures of process, control, or guidance the business demands and just cull the ones who don't get on board.

[082349872349872]

> If you've never worked at a place like this, or don't believe me, I'd recommend giving it a try.

+1

> Here management is essential to creating stress and getting any sort of productive output.

I had friends whose company went from "high-performing small" to "large", and the way they described the transition was "we thought adding management was going to be like adding an internal skeleton, a structure that'd help get all the functional parts of the company pulling in the same direction. Instead it turned out to be like an exoskeleton, a carapace that served mostly to constrain and put hard limits on the functional parts of the company."

[szundi]

Like flowing into all direction would be good?

[082349872349872]

Another analogy, from the book Blackhawk Down: the Regular Army units ("large company") required full military discipline (TPR reports, planning poker, etc.) just to survive in position. The Special Forces ("high-performing small company") unit didn't bother with hair length or reciprocal salutes, but instead of using the apparatus of the Army Way, they knew how to do things the right way, and so rapidly established a pattern of fire and movement enabling the RA units to break out and rendezvous with the UN rescue team.

Obviously any organisation, at some point during growth (at least under the traditional VC model), has to convert from "high-performing small" to "large". My view of the goal of founders and early employees is to (a) spot when this transition occurs, and (b) have arranged to already be liquid. When the settlers outnumber the pioneers and the range is fenced in, it's time to ride off into the sunset.

[icedchai]

100%. The best software company I've worked for had no real managers. You did technically have a "manager" but all they did was gather feedback and give you reviews once a year. Otherwise, they were senior+ engineers that worked on projects just like you did.

On the other hand, I've been at small 20 to 30 person companies with several layers of management. Infact, at one, there were actually more "managers" than individual contributors. It's a big WTF.

[gremlinunderway]

There are a lot of business roles where the "manager" is in fact the main "worker" (as in, they have to be involved in EVERYTHING. CC'd on every email. Approval for anything, etc) and they're just given varying groups of personal interns who aren't actually lead or organized into any projects, processes or initiatives but instead just exist to be at the beck and call of the manager.

[RamblingCTO]

I'll say it, even tho I'll drown in down votes: Your attitude gives me "walking red flag" vibes. It sounds paranoid and hostile. Why would I want someone with that attitude in my team or as a colleague?

A good manager supports your development, keeps an eye on the big picture (which is quite hard if you're working on the smallest unit of the company, e.g. code), and would also send you home if you work too much. Because time != productivity in general.

A promotion means flight risk? What?

Just a thought: If everyone else sucks, it can be time to look inward.

[alphazard]

I don't mind if you think I'm hostile. My understanding of management and it's role in organizations makes me a threat to many people's livelihoods. Maybe yours included. I would oppose hiring new managers, encourage people to choose companies with less management, dispel bad memes and conventional wisdom about what value, if any, management adds. I'm absolutely bad news.

Contrary to your insinuation, everyone does not suck. I've been fortunate enough to work with talented engineers, sales people, VPs, CTOs, CEOs, and founders. I have never come across a talented person who was brought on as a manager. And not one of these talented individuals needed to be managed.

[RamblingCTO]

> VPs, CTOs, CEOs, and founders

but aren't these also managers?

> Maybe yours included Not really, no. I'm a startup CTO and co-founder and don't consider myself a traditional manager. And, of course, my livelihood isn't endangered by a stranger on the internet ;)

It's not that I disagree, you know. It's the black-and-white smell the comment had. And at least for me it's not much about managing someone, but enabling someone. People are no machines. And most people aren't very good with the long term view in my experience. Be it less interest in what happens in the long run or just an attitude, that's what I noticed.

[alphazard]

> but aren't these also managers?

No, they were spread way too thin to possibly do anything in the featured article. They hired me and could have fired me though. If that's all a manager is, then yes--box checked.