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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2909 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 7, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What advice does The Motte have for someone who has never managed people before?

I'm starting a new manager role. I will have 4 reports who are customer facing engineers.

Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path is a good book.

Some tips from me:

  • learn to delegate. "I want to do it" or "I can do it" should no longer be valid reasons for you to do something yourself instead of delegating. Even "I am the best one to do this" is no longer a slam dunk

  • learn what makes your subordinates tick and what deflates them, what they like and hate, when their birthdays are and the names of their kids. Write it down if you're not good with this

  • one-on-ones are important. They are a pain to schedule, but necessary

  • communicating the deadlines is not you shifting the responsibility or playing forwardball. Your subordinates can't meet the date you haven't given them and they can't challenge it either. Your stakeholders can't adjust their plans and expectations if you don't tell them about delays in advance.

  • give feedback and solicit feedback. Both are fucking uncomfortable, but you will feel better after you're done

Thanks, this is helpful.

Delegation is almost done, I think. I'll be fully out of IC tasks by next week, and from then on I'll only be working on low-priority tech work to keep my skills sharp (my boss encourages this).

I'm taking copious notes during 1:1 because I am indeed bad with kids' names and birthdays. But more importantly I want to be able get into their heads as you describe and motivate them by findng cool career building opportunities and stimulating work for them.

What's your strategy for feedback? I'm thinking of asking for written feedback quarterly in the vein of "What are two things I could be doing differently to better serve you and the team?" but also asking for opinions on individual during our weekly 1:1s.

Direct communication of deadlines and task assignments is something I'm not too worried about since I've never really felt guilty or awkward about it. I've personally always liked terse, direct managers because it keeps the interaction short so that I can go back to what I was doing. I think it also helps to know your people so that you can triage work to people who will enjoy it and anticipate pushback from people who might not. Any potential pitfalls I might be missing due to my inexperience, though?

I'm taking copious notes during 1:1 because I am indeed bad with kids' names and birthdays. But more importantly I want to be able get into their heads as you describe and motivate them by findng cool career building opportunities and stimulating work for them.

Some of the most pleasant surprises in my career happened when I was overworked, reached out to one of my ICs and said, "sorry, I know it's not really your area of expertise, but my hands are full and you told me you had some unused capacity this week. Could you help me and give it a go?"

What's your strategy for feedback? I'm thinking of asking for written feedback quarterly in the vein of "What are two things I could be doing differently to better serve you and the team?" but also asking for opinions on individual during our weekly 1:1s.

I don't like written feedback. F2F feedback is easier, because you can modulate it on the go. I try and give examples of things I myself wasn't happy with and proud of and ask if they have some different events in mind that they think beat my own self-evaluation.

Direct communication of deadlines and task assignments is something I'm not too worried about since I've never really felt guilty or awkward about it. I've personally always liked terse, direct managers because it keeps the interaction short so that I can go back to what I was doing. I think it also helps to know your people so that you can triage work to people who will enjoy it and anticipate pushback from people who might not. Any potential pitfalls I might be missing due to my inexperience, though?

Pushback is great. An IC that tells you, "fuck you, I won't do this task" is much better than one that doesn't do it silently, East Asian style.

Oh, one theory I quite enjoy using is situational leadership. Basically, as people mature as ICs, they go through four stages, each of which requires different leadership approach. This ladder is more dependent on the specific task than the specific person, if it's something new, you go back to the beginning, except you can run through it faster with more experienced ICs.

  • when they are super green, you provide direct instruction. Just break the task down into specific steps and feed it to them

  • when they have tasted success, you teach, adding "why" to "how" and praising their results

  • when they have learned from you, you push them out of the nest, no further instruction necessary, just moral support

  • when they are confident with the task, they already know they are good, no need to praise them for succeeding at specific tasks

when they have tasted success, you teach, adding "why" to "how" and praising their results

Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean that instead of "Please do task X which includes items A, B, C, and D" you say something like "Please do task X so that we can accelerate our progress on task Y?"

No, it's more like:

  • stage 1: "when you receive an incident about no access, it should contain the number of the access request ticket. If it doesn't, click this button and ask the user for it. Copy the number and open it in the the incident management system. The bot should have written the list of groups in this field. If the names of the groups don't immediately tell you which one is responsible for the access, open the document at that link and find the description of the groups there. Open AD, get the CN of the user from that field, put it in like this and look at the groups they are a member of. If they are a member..."

  • stage 2: "as you've noticed, we use AD membership for both authN and authZ. There are a few issues with the pipeline. First, the author of the access control document can make a mistake when filling in the request ticket template. Then, the ticket software itself is still barely out of the MVP stage and has some integration errors with the incident management system. Finally, our authZ backend has terrible UX for the access admins. Now you can see why there is a constant trickle of tickets 2LS can't handle and why we handle it the way it is. We have a meeting with the head of 2LS later today, here's what I'm going to ask from them to minimize the flow, do you have any suggestions?"

  • stage 3: "I really like your idea about automatically validating our access control document against AD and turning it into the ticket template and I want to ask you to drive it forward. If you want, I can sit with you on the first few meetings to demonstrate my support, but I am completely sure you can handle everything else. You know what to do when they invariably ask for money, we've handled this together when we restructured our authZ backend"

  • stage 4: "Any new issues with authZ? Great, let me know if you can be done with it by the next Thursday, I've emailed you the new idea our infosec came up with"

What do you do if you're managing incompetents and you know that if you let them do something, they're going to screw it up and that you'll have to clean up the mess?

Recommend them for promotion or to another position

Open a new tab and go to LinkedIn. Either I am managing incompetents or I am an incompetent manager myself, in both cases we will be happier apart.

You need to bear as much of the communication brunt as possible. Let the engineers focus on their jobs and protect them from whimsical business needs shifts, and protect the business from misguided but well-intentioned engineers.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Inspire your reports to do their best work.

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