[crjohns648]

> A good manager is more like a transparent umbrella. They protect the team from unnecessary stress and pressure, but don’t hide reality from them.

I'm absolutely going to steal this metaphor going forward.

Being a "transparent umbrella" does require knowing the personalities of your reports, some people do get distracted when they think higher-up decisions or unhappiness are going to affect their team. Most people, however, really appreciate the transparency. It helps them feel more in control when they know what is happening around them, and when things do change they can tie it back to something that was said previously.

[Scubabear68]

> They protect the team from unnecessary stress and pressure, but don’t hide reality from them.

I was going to highlight this as well, but it is also one of the trickiest parts of the equation, because by definition this inevitably involves a lot of politics and social implications.

What I have learned over the years: let the overall direction, and also the overall competitive pressures, filter down through your umbrella. But shield them from the details and your specific efforts here, unless it is relevant.

Maybe even more important, though - recognize inflection points in your company and your group. How you manage during routine times and during stressful times may well be very different. If they're not, then you have a serious problem.

[ghaff]

I agree with that. It's useful for (most) people to understand the overall environment the company is operating in. Probably less every top-down decision the company is making.

[zerkten]

>> Being a "transparent umbrella" does require knowing the personalities of your reports, some people do get distracted when they think higher-up decisions or unhappiness are going to affect their team.

There is the expectation that the manager knows who will be distracted. This is a basic part of knowing your people. I know which of my colleagues is going to get distracted without having the level of communication that my manager has. On one extreme, they just forward information knowing a report can work with it. One the other, the manager has to translate and communicate every element.

Ideally, the manager is already working on a way to ensure their report can handle transparency because that means they can work autonomously. You can't have individual contributors lead, if they are going to run into issues as soon as they discover what is going on overhead. They may not understand it yet, but they should have coping and mitigation strategies.

Engineers can be the worst group you could deal with when it comes to overhead conversations when they expect things to be orderly. Your organization is failing when everything has to go through managers and people can't operate independently.

[randoglando]

That's true for a junior engineer, but the more senior engineers should be given a view into the organization's priorities and business challenges.

[Shalomboy]

My favorite manager told me a similar analogy before I left, but with a caveat; a good manager has to provide cover for the team, but it's up to the team to hold the manager up - just like an umbrella.

[gramie]

I recall hearing that Google had a term similar to this:

A "shit umbrella" was a manager who protected the development team from all the politics, blame, and mismanagement coming from above.

A "shit funnel" was a manager who directed all the shit coming down, directly onto the team.

[BerislavLopac]

Yeah, I've been using "shit umbrella" for a long time. But the "transparent shit umbrella" is an even more powerful, albeit more disturbing, metaphor.

[tharkun__]

I wouldn't say more disturbing, really. But more "enlightening".

A shit umbrella is great to have if the alternative is a shit funnel. But how are you gonna appreciate the shit umbrella if it's pitch black, blocks everything at all times?

You're not gonna appreciate it. In fact, you might think some of the things your manager does are the "bad things", when in fact, it's just the umbrella bowing under all the shitload.

If the umbrella is (somewhat) transparent, you, as the manager, gain some legitimacy through transparency. You're no longer the manager that "sits around on his ass all day doing nothing". You're actually doing something for the team and they can "see" it, even though it doesn't affect them.

[mikestew]

Not that it originated with me, but I was using that metaphor long before Google showed up.

[evilduck]

You forgot "shit spewer". One who creates the shit that someone else has to then deal with (usually organizational peers or the team beneath them).

[_whiteCaps_]

I've always called those folks seagulls - fly in, shit on everything, and take off again without having to deal with the consequences.

[jamesfinlayson]

> require knowing the personalities of your reports

I think this an underrated quality.

[gambutin]

Honestly, I’m not sure.

If I know what was going on transparently I am stressed. As an ordinary employee, I don’t need to know everything and therefore don’t need to worry about it.

[_blk]

As a leader, it's important to provide not just the meat but also the veggies. What people end up eating is up to them, but serve the full course! If as a ME, I start deciding who needs to know what, information will be perceived as incomplete because people always talk and engineer are often smart enough to read between the lines. So the transparent umbrella is a great analogy. Communicate bad news as fast and coherently as possible - group meeting with open questions works well for me but be ready to address the potential fears: "In my current assessment, that's not going to be a problem, I'll let you know if that changes." and of course "Thanks for asking, I didn't consider that and I don't know yet. I'll clarify" is a valid answer, if you do indeed clarify.

If you're genuinely stressed with that, talk to your lead about it and they'll find a way to filter a little more while not giving you the feeling of being left out.

[DrBazza]

Knowing more about your company and how well your employer is doing allows you to plan your exit strategy.

If you get stressed about that, imagine finding yourself redundant by close of business today, and job hunting from tomorrow.

[gambutin]

I humbly disagree.

I want to be aware of enough to be productive, yes, but not so much that I get bogged down in the minutiae of corporate politics and can’t focus on my daily work.

[DrBazza]

Yes. I don't want to know the politics either, but on at least one occasion, for me, it gave me a very good and correct indicator of when to jump ship and saved me a lot of uncertainty (i.e. unemployment).

[jamesfinlayson]

Very much this - often the signs are there but I'd always be grateful for a heads-up.

[madeofpalk]

You're right, probably not everything! It's a managers job to understand what you don't need to know or worry about. But I find it very useful to understand why something is happening, or what else is happening out there that might have an impact on us and we should worry about.

[fidansin]

Kinda like; You got to do, what you got to do.

[ghaff]

The basic question is how much context do you actually want if you can't really affect it and it's therefore more of a distraction than useful input. Some is almost certainly useful but it probably varies by individual and situation.