Why are there so many bad bosses?
freakonomics.comThe idea of management being the only road for advancement has always seemed extremely self-destructive to me. I recently quit my job as a senior developer at a company because they wouldn't even pay me one of the upper pay scales for developers, because a requirement for that was that I'd have to take some sort of organisational responsibility outside my team. The fact that I did a lot of organisation and steering inside my team, which was considered one of the best performing teams there, didn't matter.
My dad has also always refused managerial responsibilities, but he was very much appreciated at his company. He said he had nobody below him and only one person above him, and he made more money than his boss (until his boss was replaced and the new boss gave himself a raise so he made more). My dad did get responsibility for all sorts of projects, just not for the people on those projects. And he has always remained very hands-on, sometimes replacing an entire team on his own.
It's basically what I want, but a lot of companies are apparently structured too rigidly to allow this.
I'm in a similar situation and it's really frustrating. As an individual contributor, the more senior and skilled that I become, the less of a chance I have to actually use my expertise and skills to lead projects or deliver features that make an impact and create value. I'm constantly steered towards absolute time-wasting activities. Recently my company has become convinced Kafka is going to solve all our problems, and executives have OKR's related to the number of queues teams implement and it's impossible to launch anything now without a queue. My boss is making me join this cross-team initiative to gratuitously add queues to services that receive a dozen requests per minute at PEAK throughput. Also, there's no functional benefit to adding queues to these services, if anything it only makes them more difficult to administer.
Sorry, I just needed to vent.
It’s unfortunate, but I’ve found that the people who end up running companies are the ones who do well with the hierarchical structure, so they end up biasing the company towards that model. Anyone who wants to “move up” or contribute in a more meaningful way is measured against this ideal. It’s definitely frustrating to see that you are having clear impact on the success and operation of a team but not be recognized for it.
At my company we have recently rolled out a new framework where the IC track has rungs that run parallel to middle management roles.
we're calling it "advanced professional", and has 3 levels, the highest being equivalent to the leader of a function, if you're familiar with the domain / function / specialty paradigm. This is essentially a director level individual contributor which I think is a pretty cool.
We're just a medium sized services company (localization, AI training data production, digital marketing). so if we're doing this I expect a lot of people will be soon enough.
Did he work for Koch? They’re fairly famous for disconnecting compensation from supervision/leadership - I.e. individual contributors earning more than their bosses.
No, General Electric Information Services.
I hate to be that guy, but I believe that many line managers & middle managers aren't honestly needed in knowledge work at a certain level of self-managing ICs with a common vision. It's increasingly rare to find "good" managers among the bad. The good ones tend to find new jobs or get promoted and continue to climb the ladder. The bad ones? They also get promotions to take over the good ones jobs and they stay around forever.
They get in the way majority of the time. They try to make decisions for their own self interests rather than empowering their teams to make the best ones possible. They don't say no to things, but rather use it as yet another opportunity for a "quick win". They get offended easily and have fragile egos with blunt feedback. Literally the opposite of every characteristics of a "good manager".
Many people in these roles are classic examples of narcissism and nepotism. Nobody has ever humbled them before or questioned their confidence that can easily be seen as an authority figure in most developer teams. I'm sad to be saying this, but I don't think many developers stand their own ground against these types of people and they should. Teams should be able to vote out their bad managers because it is so apparent on certain teams that there's a bad manager.
Even with decent managers on a team, you still hardly get anything meaningful done. You can spend years on things that have little to no impact externally, but will be praised internally because of the "hard work" done even at the cost of morale and questioning ICs saying "why are we still doing this?". Good managers should see through this bullshit and get the team to self-direct course by talking to everyone and getting a sentiment for a new common vision.
Bonus: Steve Jobs thinking most managers are bozos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo
I have a generally darker outlook. Based on my experience, I don't share the notion that being 'good' in any meaningfully productive sense (technical, personal, organizational) leads to better career odds.
In my experience, a lack of spine, a sturdy gaslight, a talent for office politics, and and utter lack of care of the people beneath you is what's conducive to a successful career in management. The majority of managers I encountered had these attributes, and built successful careers on them, while ignoring real world concerns and frustrations to the point they literally had no idea what the people under them did exactly.
Conversely, the people that did care, that pushed back against unfair expectations, that did champion meaningful change were not as apt at playing office politics and often drew the short straw when a shakeup happened.
I could list numerous horrible archetypes, but the most common one I encountered was the Yes Man - when upper management comes up with a new idea, he nods eagerly and pushes it down the throats of the team members, ignoring their protests, and when the idea inevitably fails, he blames the team for not being enthusiastic enough. When his bosses move the deadline forward, he gives the thumbs up, then tells the team that they are going to have to work just that much harder.
His bosses love him since they feel that this guy 'gets' it, it's a joy to work with him, when other middle managers grumble at their ideas, he just jumps into action, this guy is a real go-getter, clearly has potential.
Do we work at the same company? This feels too real.
Totally agree.
There are also these ridiculous dynamics to the system that a new incompetent manager can burn a department to the ground and then get another promotion for rebuilding the department to 25% of what it was before they burned it down.
What is missing is a type of null hypothesis to judge the manager against. Would the department actually be better off if we paid them to watch Netflix?
This is probably something deep in human nature though when it comes to money and business because it is almost the definition of Keynes animal spirits. A spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction. We just don't like the idea of inaction when it comes to business and money.
You're describing the Dilbert principle. A joke on the Peter Principle and yet serves very true in my experience as to "put people in places where they cause the least amount of damage".
This hits close to home:
> JOHNSON: For me, this is where the idea of splitting out those levels of seniority — so maybe you don’t become the manager, but you become a technical expert and you are paid and rewarded for that — is something that helps with the incentives. What I would say on that, though, is often we have this dual-career track of, “Okay, you can be a manager, or you can be a technical specialist.” But even though you might get a quote-unquote promotion and be paid more, the technical specialists still might be excluded from high-level conversations. [...]
Being an IC, I usually find out about a technical direction that arose out of management discussions and by the time I hear about it it's usually too far along to change course of, and have to watch it play out. At best it's a learning experience, that can refine the next attempt. Other times it's a rabbit-hole with no light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately this usually happens on other projects, but sometimes I join a project mid-way and there's redesign that happens along the way, or banked for v2. This is a symptom of a top-down style of company management. A more technically managed company with former engineers all the way to the CEO are less likely to be this way. Unfortunately as even those companies grow, and more layers of management are added, not every link in the chains can be so-minded and there's a disconnect.
> But even though you might get a quote-unquote promotion and be paid more, the technical specialists still might be excluded from high-level conversations. [...]
I hear you. Not only that. In our case - even if by regulation expert track and managerial track should be seen and compensated the same I know that lots of managers not only are compensated in the upper quartiles of the distribution, while experts overwhelmingly are compensated in the lower rungs. No managers also are fast tracked more easily for promotions making the factual gap even wider.
I know of executives that ensure, that experts are always one level below respective managers, even if they should be on the same hierarchical level.
Its because all you hear are the negative stories. As an EM my job is to shield the team from BS, give them what they need to get work done, stay out of their way and not to complain to them either about the BS that is circulating.
To an employee, a good manager kinda makes it feel like everything would be fine with the manager not there. And a good team could probably operate without a manager for a while. Until it comes time to write reviews or do other HR related things like filtering resumes, etc.
If it were for that a team should be able to see this by themselves.
To me a bad manager is one that actually makes things more complicated. Once you have some experience under your belt you tend to see managers that add friction, unnecessary process and are more in it to feel the power and control. While others are adding lube to the system and making problems/friction disappear.
I agree that there are teams that miss the experience to see when crap is being shoveled out of their way by their manager. And I envy them, as they never had to endure a shitty one.
But from experience I would say that doesn't last long. Sadly.
think for a minute: great engineers - i mean really great engineers - how many do you know? it's pretty rare right? it's an awesome thing and a scarce resource. think about how many you can mention. if you've been around it's not zero or one (yes of course you), but a handful. in my case 20-30. i feel lucky to say that.
now - how many great engineering managers have you come across? i mean really great, not just OK. not just barely acceptable. great - you'd want to work for. you'd quit if they left level great. in my case 2-3.
you think engineering is hard? engineering management is the rarest skill there is
Wrong question. How many BAD engineers do you know? I've known a few great engineers and lots of good or ok ones, but few who are actually bad. They tend to not make it into the field, or else not to stay in it. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places?
This. There are a few great and lots of ok engineers. But when it comes to managers, the scale is reverse. there are a lot of bad mangers and a few ok ones. yet to meet a great manager personally. May be its because the managers skill set is hard to measure?
And you train quite a bit to be an engineer before you start making money on it. Math starts in kindergarten sometimes (not necessarily good, but still), science in early grades. Orchestrating groups, recognizing performance, mentoring, environmental politics? Maybe you have a truly elite family to train you on that, but it’s mostly just kids sorting by bullying and popularity. (This is where the power tripping jerks learn some of the skills that serve them well.) Then by the time you have some of it informally figured out, boom you’ve graduated (college, this is engineering) and no more practice rounds.
I’d look to the armed forces for an alternative set of models.
i love that. same idea in reverse and it works for me as well. i definitely know a few bad engineers, not rare for sure - but several metric fucktons of bad managers - and that's just the ones i've evaded this morning.
The best engineering managers I've had trusted their engineers. I think that's the most important part, and that's the part that some managers are bad at.
So if you really want to promote an engineer to management, don't promote the engineers who knows everything and does everything, because they're going to micromanage everybody. Promote the engineer that asks a lot and listens a lot.
>The best engineering managers I've had trusted their engineers. I think that's the most important part, and that's the part that some managers are bad at.
Very Very True. This is the main thing that matters, everything else is secondary. "Trust" implies that you "Respect and Recognize" them as "Intelligent Decision-making Individuals" and that's what one's ego needs to do their best.
problem is that only a small percentage of good engineers make good managers. a few bad engineers also make good managers. it's extremely rare but a few non-engineers make ok managers. but almost all of the very worst managers have been non-technical (e.g. BMA).
Managers of technical teams should be required to demonstrate a good understanding of what the team does and a good understanding of how similar teams are managed as a matter of best practice. You can't do it your own way or according to your fragile personality.
Above all else, they must be nice and demonstrate a large capacity for empathy.
At the end of the day, their job is to get their team to efficiently get work done. Regardless of method used, fear,micromanagement and threats as a proverbial stick with your salary serving as the carrot, that never works.
Anyone can manage, but a good manager must be a leader. They must have the capacity to inspire their workers to want to excel in their work. For certain team types (like retail, manual labor, call centers,etc...) you can get away with a nasty task master yelling "the beatings will continue until morale improves" because your workers perform repetitive and simple tasks with critical thinking and creativity not being part of the job.
Lastly, I hope everyone tries to introspect and find out who you are and if you would make a good manager/leader. I have, and I am confident I will make a terrible manager (one of the many reasons being I would simply hate it!). I can't help thinking with the bad managers I have had to work with: Do they really lack self-awareness that much? Is their management not able to see their mess?
A theory I have is: There are two types of manangers, the first type will make excellent top or bottom level management, the second kind are great middle managers. I can't help wonder if some of the bad managers I have run into would make good middle managers and they're put there until a position opens up or something.
Since I became an engineering manager myself, I find myself looking back with more sympathy to my past managers. Engineers are difficult people to manage.
Out of curiosity, how would you rank these?
Other than putting promotion/compensation as high as it should go, was there any discomfort/doubt in trying to be honest with any of the items?- approval of your manager - approval of your engineers - approval of your customers on things your team has delivered - correcting course set by upper-management - communicating high-level directions to engineers - communicating and getting action on issues raised by engineers to higher-ups - levelling up your engineers and team - likeliness of promotion in title or compensation - anything else important that I didn't list> Engineers are difficult people to manage.
My experience is different: engineers are quite comfortable to manage. What makes management hard is the whole (office) politics with respect to your management career and the managers above you.
This is absolute bullshit. After being an IC, a tech lead and an engineering manager I can tell you that the one thing is engineers mainly want to be left alone to do their jobs. The job as manager is to stop the pressure from everyone in the company demanding they do everything more quickly to meet some arbitrary bullshit deadline. This attitude infuriates me. Its weak managers who dont know what they are doing that end up blaming their subordinates. So sick of this attitude.
> This is absolute bullshit.
I’ve managed teams where the devs just wanted to be left alone to build things and they were skilled enough to manage their own career growth, which made my job as a manager very easy.
I’ve also managed teams where, before I took over, the devs had consistently been lied to by the organization leadership, hadn’t been given the work that would grow their skills and confidence, and needed constant coaching and a platform to vent. This team didn’t want to “be left alone to do their job”. This was a very hard management job.
Your comment suggests that you’ve only experienced the first case of being a manager, which may be why you strongly disagree with the other comment.
The comment he/she was replying to said;
>Engineers are difficult people to manage.
This is an atrocious blanket judgement if i ever saw one. And was quite rightly called out for it. I too have argued elsewhere that most Managers are only too eager to blame the Engineers when they themselves are clueless/incompetent.
All the negative tropes like a) Engineers are socially inept b) Engineers are difficult c) Engineers do not understand Business etc. etc. need to die. For too long has "Management" ascribed to themselves all the virtues/wisdom of Business and treated "Engineering" as "Simple Workers" who need to be "Managed".
Maybe I should have clarified. Engineers are difficult to manage (in my experience) because they're smart and have leverage in their role; it's not a simple manager -> worker-bee relationship. It's nothing negative.
Missing that point that it's not a simple worker-bee relationship and doing it is the job of the manager, not a fact about engineers.
What the manager should be doing is aligning the direction of higher-ups and developers. This takes being able to clearly understand and communicate interests and needs two-ways.
As an IC I've always been vocal about the technical needs of product or platform development as it grows and expands capabilities. There's no chance higher-ups would know these things without being exposed to situations as they develop. At the same time I have to learn about the longer-term product direction and how to sequence development, and in particular research that can uncover the unknown unknowns heading in that direction. I'm lucky to have access to information and background that lets me make good guesses. This is the kind of process that the manager should be creating and refining.
The problem is that too many 'technical' managers behave as middle managers, merely allocating developers to teams by skillset (or worse title Sr/Jr Frontend/Backend) to projects picked by product managers and let project managers try to make it work. Instead of remembering all those times as an engineer that a timely refactor would have saved the company so much money and pain and getting key ones 'in the books', they take the easy route agreeing with the hand that feeds and only aim to satisfy one side's requirements without trying to fully understand the other's.
Right; more akin to "Herding Cats" :-). But that's what allows each of them to display their aptitude and brilliance their own way. A light touch is the magic recipe. If you look at exceptional Engineers, almost always they were not obedient/yes-men but their own masters and their Managers had the good sense to allow them the freedom to do their own thing within very loose bounds.
When the cats are truly technically qualified and naturally self-productive, the only way to herd them is by a leader whom is more so.
Otherwise the team will never come close to benefitting from very much of the whole members' combined abilities.
Outstanding qualifications and productivity will find a way to be successful even with a bozo executive, and it will be OK for shareholders, some may even think it's the best thing they've ever seen.
Little did they know the possibilities that could have been if there was a leader who could have actually herded the valued cats into the happy pastures where they could really spread out.
Well, that does make engineers difficult to manage. But more importantly, engineers don't need that much management. They need managers to take all the organisational stuff out of the way, and make the way clear for engineers to do their thing. Make sure they have access to the requirements, feedback from users, and whatever else the engineers say they need. Do check if things are running smoothly and in the right direction, but if something is broken, give the engineers the tools to fix it, because that's what they do.
> engineers mainly want to be left alone to do their jobs
Sounds like a happy path but what happens when things go wrong?
If all engineers needed to do their jobs was for someone to leave them alone and let them do what they wanted there wouldn't really be a need for managers.
That is precisely the point. Leave them alone to do their job but with an eye on the progress/results and if they seem to be straying, nudge them back onto the path. Do not micromanage; any exceptions have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
Delegate responsibility, Clarify deliverables, Request regular progress reports but at the same time give them the Freedom and Autonomy to do their job their own way.
Relevant Reading:
1) A radical article from HBR, First, Let’s Fire All the Managers : https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers
2) Speech by Dave Packard to HP Managers (1960) - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-... (this is one of my favourites)
3) Also see the book Why we do what we do: Understanding Self-motivation by Edward Deci for insights.
>This is absolute bullshit.
>So sick of this attitude.
I think you are proving his point.
Society is still grappling with this new world where being technical and good at it matters as much as, and in many cases, more than knowing people (business) or rules (law).
I.e. business/law/finance used to run the world for centuries, suddenly technology talent is valued, but the old power structure doesn’t know how to keep these people a peg below where they ‘belong’. Spending more money, and being the ‘boss’ of people will be ‘valued’ by the ōld-ˈɡärd more than technology chops for many years to come.
Forcing people who want to have more of an impact and be paid more into ‘boss’ like rolls is a causality of this old power structure being challenged.
> Society is still grappling with this new world where being technical and good at it matters as much as, and in many cases, more than knowing people (business) or rules (law).
Programming is also about knowing rules; just different kinds of rules.
Maybe the right question is: how do you become a great boss?
Getting promoted to an EM position is one thing. Getting good at it is... very hard, and requires new skills. There's very little in your day to day job as an engineer that prepares you to become a good EM.
One can both be a bad EM and become a good one.
The key questions are:
- Does the person have a growth mindset?
- Is the environment helping the new EM grow?
You're asking the wrong question. You should be asking why do I think so many bosses are bad and who are the people who agree or disagree with that assessment. What's a bad boss for you might be the perfect boss for someone else and that someone else is probably the person in charge who hired them.
It's like a prisoner asking, "Why are there so many bad prison guards?. They tell me where to go and what to do. If I get out of line they use increasingly coercive tactics to bring me back into line and if it gets too bad they ostracize me and put me into a box."
That prison guard is probably going to get an award for prison guard of the month and a small bonus. Bad for you, good for someone else.
Because the feedback loops are broken, is probably part of the answer.
A bad engineer simply does not deliver. In a way, the product provides feedback to the engineer by not working.
But providing feedback to a bad manager from below rarely ends well. So people work around them.
Because stepping on others to climb the corporate ladder is encouraged in most of the companies. People like that are seen as ambitious, competitive while people who display empathy are seen as weak and unreliable. So at every level the filtering happens to pass up the least empathetic candidate possible. This eventually results in mostly soulless middle management and leadership who continue to hold the same culture together.
Power tripping money grabbers like... power and money. Bosses have those.
Jerks are motivated to climb the ranks and willing to climb over you.
The Army and Navy also realized specialized, highly-skilled, and educated soldiers were needed. Not to command troops but to fly very expensive machines. They are the Warrant Officers (CO1 -> CW5) and get paid well and the respect of those that command without the burden of commanding large amounts of troops.
Getting a 502 here. HN hug-of-death?
>502 Bad Gateway
I'm originally from the Detroit area. Naturally you have lots of factory mentality. Wherein workers will not work unless you're standing behind them whipping them. Largely speaking unions got very strong because these middle managers live and die by metrics they themselves dont control and can become brutal to their workers. Like for a long time you couldn't go to the washroom while at work. So what would people do? They took a dump right there on the job.
Somehow this is how managers are trained; and this is how you're expected to operate as a manager. Doesnt matter if you're white collar or any other collar. Your manager is expected and actively trained to micromanage you as often as possible. Your manager will come by hourly or so and look at or ask you what you're working on. They'll often input how you're doing it wrong... even if they have absolutely no chance of knowing how to do it properly. The bikeshedding becomes extreme. It mostly demotivates people to be responsible for everything and often 1 person ends up responsible for everything and that person takes all the heat from the manager.