Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager).
Would you happen to have the links to all the docs? I feel like there might be done value at re-disseminating it, even if I am guessing most things are common sense, sometimes seeing things written down help to stop, reflect, and do better.
IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable.
To me, that means
1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).
The system in this case for me is usually building a stronger backbone or improving communication and elevating constraints to highly our strengths/weaknesses and capabilities to actually achieve the desired outcome.
I view it as more a single system of constant improvement and understanding ability to execute in the environment. Nothing hurts credibility more than late commms, and missed deadlines due to over commitments.
Mere "box-ticking" in the form of checklists have been shown to greatly cut deaths in clinical/hospital settings. This may or may not apply to your systems.
According to Atul Gawande that‘s not strictly true as stated. It‘s not the box-ticking itself, it‘s several factors including the decisions about what the list should contain and adjusting the dynamics of the operating team to actually see results.
The right boxes to check are good. However you have to be careful. A doctor who spends 15 minutes checking boxes before treating a heart attack just killed someone... That doesn't mean the doctor cannot check boxes, just that they need to be break early to treat things. (even here checkboxes will be good - there are things with the same symptoms as a heart attack where heart attack treatment is the worst thing possible - those have a high death rate because they are so rare doctors don't check for them until too late to treat correctly)
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again
In addition to what you said overall, I think bad managers can have all sorts of qualities, but imo the worst ones correct for mistakes to protect themselves or people's impressions of them, leaning highly neurotic, and can't deal with conflict well, so they put in arbitrary systems in order to indirectly deal with any one-off grievance or mistake. Bad managers won't evaluate or re-evaluate the systems they put in place because they put them there to protect their ego.
"Surely this employee is underperforming because I don't like how they're performing and we have a system for that!"
They struggle to adapt to their new job because to delegate sufficiently they need to be able to trust, and let that manifest as other people doing the tasks they might have once done without their hands in the pie directly. They might assume that part of the reason they got the job was because they're great communicators, and never consider that actually that it's just that nobody ever told them they have some growing to do.
My experience is that managers who acknowledge their mistakes are worse at office politics, so they will reach their peak sooner and lower than those that do not admit fault.
It hasn't unlocked a magical promotion track for me, but it has engendered support and respect from my teams that has allowed us to produce delivery exceeding what we thought we could because there was true buy in from the business around the definition of exceptional circumstances.
I'm not personally engineering my career in leadership around moving up, but building teams of people that can do exceptional things tends to be the driving factor that allows me to continue up the track.
True, in traditional corporate structures. I'm interested in how accountability flows in cooperative structures like Mondragon. (Accountability still flows down through those at the top, as far as I can tell, but there is an aspect of bottom up accountability too.)
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Also called wishful thinking... Often such measures do definitely not work. There is even an internet law named for this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
This is why you have to have skin in the game, and a backbone to say no to executives when it compromises delivery if there isn't escalated mediation.
Said another way, I don't say no a lot, I put prioritization up front and tell them that we are sacrificing other deliver items.
That is a decision that an exec can work with, mediate between teams, and builds mutual respect for senior leadership as you don't break promises you've already made, unless there is mutual agreement from the business.
The thing that makes someone trustworthy is taking accountability for your own self and actions, but having boundaries such that you don’t take accountability for the selves and actions of others. That’s basically all I want to see from a manager, a direct report, or a peer.
A chief source of management missteps I've seen is not talking to people and just making consequential decisions because they think a jira board gives them insight.
As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs.
In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.
The worst mistakes to acknowledge and remedy for me have always been bad hiring. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘I can make this person work well’ but I’ve found myself questioning this approach. As my team has grown, bad fits are taxing. And it also is on other team members. I’ve shifted from doing ‘the right thing’ by giving people many chances before escalating to PIP, decided that I am just making it tough on myself and the rest of the team and to be quicker to start the process. But still, for me, it’s so much easier to acknowledge tech mistakes than dealing with employees not up to it for whatever reason, especially when they are good people. It becomes easier when they turn out to be difficult people though for me, it’s still hard.
I also used to think that you can coach people into becoming good performers. But experience has taught me that teams are more productive by magnitudes if everybody gets along and trusts each other. Even one bad performer can have a huge negative impact.
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.
We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.
Yea, this is a great one. I've had a lot of success in the past using the backpack problem / box packing as an interview question for problem solving / pair programming parts of the interview. It has "I don't know" built right in. It also has "I don't know, I'm going to make this decision for now but I expect it's wrong" built in.
Every time someone mentions a good idea for interviews, I imagine the interview prep people adding it to the standard performance ritual. Then the signal is lost for the needle in a haystack who actually embodies what you sought to find.
With how ridiculously performative and disingenuous the techbro interviews have become, if we don't want to play that game, we have to keep some signal unspoken.
Well said - most people don’t realize there is a lot of overlap between good management skills and good senior engineering skills.
Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…
Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.
I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.
There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers.
I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work."
I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair.
Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager.
This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
* And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.
Or, dont recognize own emotions. It is one of the symptomps of being on the spectrum - although the person have emotiona and their behaviour is affected, they cant name or recognize them.
The language around emotion often obscures the underlying reality that needs to be addressed. Emotions are the physiological manifestations of expectations and desires. (Emotion is etymologically related to motive.)
The person your responding to clearly has a desire to do productive work with minimal roadblocks. In one person the roadblock to that desire/expectation might manifest physiologically as depression, in another person as anger, and in another as detachment. Getting rid of the roadblock is what needs to happen regardless of how the emotion manifests.
This does not mean that emotions are not addressed, but that they are addressed primarily as signifiers of a mismatch between the world and one's underlying desires/expectations, not the thing itself.
Sometimes, the desire/expectation of an individual is counter to the good of the overall system and group of people. In this case, a good manager might start by explaining the larger situation so that an individual can update their desires and expectations through the additional knowledge. Then new thinking/perception shifts the physiological experience of those desires (i.e., emotions).
In other cases, the gap between desires/expectations and reality is too big to bridge, which means emotions cannot be resolved in the current context.
> Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work
I am not. I enjoy doing great work and take pride in it.
> that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships.
They are. And I get along with some people, and not as great with other people. But the people I get along with I go out usually, outside of work, whereas the ones I don't particularly vibe with are just colleagues.
> For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
I'm... usually in a pretty good human relationship with my peers, whether code monkeys or managers. So if you chose to keep everything about the work itself, we'd lose a part of our connection. But I wouldn't mind, I'd adapt.
Your last paragraph is a lot to unpack, especially trying to view myself objectively. But I will say that while I consider myself a person that is not afraid of their feelings; if I would come to you to address some aspect of the work to be done ("When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it.") I wouldn't put a lot of emotional investment into this. This is what happened. I believe this would impact our whatever. Feel free to do with this information as you wish. At the end of the day I'm rowing in the boat as per the captain's indication.
I wonder though why you wouldn't believe that I get my emotional needs met from places outside of my direct contact with my manager. I have a great relationship with my family, with my friends, most of the times with my peers. I'm just not looking for emotional support in a manager and I'd like to think I've never been 'erratic' in the workplace.
I obviously don't know you, so take my last paragraph with a grain of salt. All I can do is relate what you wrote and my interpretation of it with my knowledge and experience.
Although, I don't make comment about whether you're getting your emotional needs met outside of work. I'm glad that you do - a lot of people out there aren't, and they are feeling really lonely.
> I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
But this is part of the point, while for you that might not matter, your manager cannot assume this. Other people DO care.
One of the ways your manager can mess us is by assuming you don't care about that...
In my stints in managerial roles, I was mostly focused on the work to be done. I haven't gotten bad reviews, on the contrary. So I'm making the mistake of assuming that focus on work to be done is more relevant than focus on how to approach each individual.
This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better.
Such a manager is extremely rare.
Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings.
I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders.
I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager.
But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut.
He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.
I think perhaps the largest change in American culture that I’ve seen over the last 50 years is that there’s nothing worse than being wrong. See it played out consistently in the public site and in the corporate world. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not allowing people to say I’m sorry and make amends and not holding those won’t say it accountable have been major pillars in a lot of our societal ills.
The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one.
I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome".
I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality but when things _matter_ (e.g. livelihood, etc.), then the incentive seems paramount for most people.
I had one that fired everyone he hired, I was the last one and one other guy, I got the can for sticking up for the other guy, and the other guy got a demotion. Eventually when things at the company were bad enough the manager got the can with a ton of other managers.
My friend who is still there says this is his last ever programming job, after that manager he wants nothing to do with this industry, and that is a shame.
True. Also paradoxically, managers are the most likely to have negative value for the company, running entire departments or projects into the ground. Yet you rarely see this being reflected.
I've tried do this a couple of times in the last year, but it always seems to backfire, specifically with Gen Z. After I apologize, they seem to think of it as an opening to continue to shit on me and bring up more of my shortcomings -- which is just bizarre to me. Because of this, it's made me really second guess acknowledging when I think I've made a mistake.
After reading just the title I was going to make a crack that the skills of parents and managers largely overlaps.[1] Turns out the author did also make that connection, and that's what spawned the article!
Absolutely, EVERYONE needs to figure out how to benefit from their mistakes rather than try to sweep them under the rug. This is one recurring theme I bring up with my kids: If you don't learn from your mistakes, you've made two mistakes. It is really hard to say "I messed up", but you can't live your life acting like you don't make mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, and then move on.
> I recently read “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting book that completely changed how I think about this. She talks about how the most important parenting skill isn’t being perfect — it’s repair.
Love this book! Just read it. Must read for parents, IMO.
People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.
Good advice. The same thing applies to parents - they make mistakes, but owning up to them is what makes a good parent. Same with peer relationships as well (but there is no power dynamic).
The worst managers leave an endless trail of new process, approvals, and checklists for anything that has ever gone wrong since they joined the company.
Getting on with people long term is often about making them feeling acknowledged and being clear about what makes them valued.
The real trick to 'repair' is not to make hollow promises. Managers can be perceived as failing when an external event happens and they haven't planned for it, or they bet against it happening. This can kick off a whole chain of events, including pushing team members into crunch time or 'impossible positions'. Its rare that you can stop the external event or a similar one from happening, so promising it won't is hollow.
The next hollow promise commonly made is 'when it happens I won't let X happen [to you]'. The problem here is often that you probably will. In two ways: either X happening is clear in hindsight but not with foresight, so you'll probably make similar decisions again; or, the team member ending up in an unhappy situation is the best of a bad bunch of options.
I've had to place people in positions where they had insufficient support and excessive demands. Sometimes I knew this going in, and sometimes I did not.
You also have to be careful about passing the buck - if you're the manager you need to be clear with yourself about what your job is and whose issue any given problem actually is. Do you help your team interact with third parties, or do third parties interact with your team through you? How much are you supposed to represent your teams needs to management (e.g. pushback) vs how much are you supposed to represent your management's desires to the team (e.g. pushdown).
If you are caught passing the buck to shirk responsibility by your reports or by management you will lose a lot of trust and respect very quickly. You can always pushback or pushdown harder to appear 'good' to one party, but at some extreme that is going to lose you your job. Its your choice how to play this - so own the choice.
The best managers I ever had were the ones they flat out said "I'm not an expert, what do you think?" or akin to. Being humble is such a skill. Those managers ended up building huge, amazingly successful teams. The managers that did it their way ended up failing up but at the expense of the team. Everyone who works with them is let go or fired or jumps ship.
Great managers are able to touch on our humanity, which should inspire us all to rise up to meet them.
Your question is massively generalized. A little bit in every bucket, but obviously I think I'm aiming for better.
One of my newish mantras is: "Apologizing is what we expect of 9-year-olds. Older children are expected to make compensations or repairs. Adults are expected to modify their own behavior in the future."
Edit: Perhaps it's the native danish that tricks me, but by "inclusion" I refer to the practice of forcing and keeping people together - no matter their behaviour. Especially in public schools. Consequences of bad behaviour is not felt on the person doing it, but the ones around having to accept it.
And then get skewered for their mistakes by others and get level capped in a competitive work environment. Lose lose situation. You can come out looking better and sometimes that works, and sometimes people lose faith in you.
The article talks a lot about appropriate management behaviors that come from humility, but I don't think humility is a skill. The skill is having an accurate and effective self-awareness. If you are (accurately) self-aware then humility (and confidence, where appropriate) is an inevitable side-effect. And that means stuff like...
Acknowledging what happened, taking responsibility, and reconnecting.
I wrote a list of dangerous things to look out for in toxic colleagues, trying to be objective, so as not to think anyone I'm annoyed by is "toxic"
Inability to apologize / repair was near the top of the list. Everyone makes a lot of interpersonal mistakes. Most people can apologize.
Another big one was "norms for thee, but not for me". As in the rules we create as a team don't apply to me. But apply to everyone else. The toxic person gets to use them as a cudgel, but they don't seem to be bound by them.
Another one is being very thin-skinned. Easily jumping into a kind of victim mentality (surprisingly common even in leaders) where they are the ones being put upon. Being a victim, they are justified in doing whatever it takes to correct the situation
Related to that last one, many of these folks feel like they're taking on more than their share and have to carry the team. They may have a narrative they are the brilliant person on the team that has to fix everyone else's screwups. Or the team can't live without their unique skills. Therefore they're "special" and get to act outside the rules / norms. And other leaders can feed into this when they think the special person is indispensable, turning a blind eye to their bad behavior.
Before my first job, I read many of these types of texts. When I entered the job market, I saw that the truth was very different. This is pure nonsense.
In my 26 years of experience, I see managers and HR professionals as company advocates, with a single mission: to protect the company's interests.
Whether managers admit mistakes or not is irrelevant; what matters is that they defend the company's interests, no matter the cost.
Mistakes are passed on to the people who can do the heavy lifting, and they respond with dismissal or legal retaliation (when possible).
Your HR exit interview is designed to find out if you harbor resentment toward the company and if there's a chance the company will be sued.
I've tried every imaginable technique I've read in modern books. Politics are more important than anything, and nothing works.
Nah, obviously good managers don't need to repair because they don't make mistakes in the first place. And if they are really really good at not making mistakes they become executives, which are the closest we have to human perfection.
My first boss told me that it's the primary role of a good manager to keep bullshit away from your most competent staff and 'manage' everyone else. I've worked for a number of organizations with different ideas of management since then, but that has been my guiding principle.
This meshes nicely with another comment that resonated with me about how it’s seniors that need to act like what the article talks about.
The senior ICs are the squad leaders on the frontline with the rest of the team, knee deep in the same shit they are. It’s really THOSE people doing the constant day-to-day trust building, team leveling, shit getting done-ing, repairing…
And so yeah, a good manager lets those seniors just go be good at that, not bogging them down with work that is a complete waste of their potential. It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship really, because a manager with no such seniors on the team won’t have the firepower to crush goals, and a senior without a good manager will never be allowed to excel.
Oh no. Not another LinkedIn insight from a new dad about how managing humans in corp is just like parenting. Just fucking enjoy being a parent and don't apply your obvious empathy epiphanies to your career out loud.
Wowee! What an unpleasant response. As both a parent and an employee, I found the article extremely useful and shared it internally at my org. Maybe step back from the computer a bit.
That sounds more like a daycare skill, not a management skill. Good managers don't get distracted by "favors" for other departments or navel gaze after making mistakes. They have a clear vision of what needs to be done and execute on it aggressively, and aren't afraid to make mistakes when pursuing a goal. Good team members love this, and the rest fail out.
Admitting mistakes isn’t navel gazing, it’s basic humility, and it’s valuable and underrated in many social situations. You have a good point about the rest, but it’s orthogonal to this article so there’s no need to crap on it. Strong vision and aggressive pursuit of goals can indeed sometimes be motivating, but it also takes humility or it can become overbearing. Lack of vision is certainly a common failing of many managers.
Likewise. This sort of manager would immediately trigger my instinct to "manage up" and start documenting every scrap of communication as they're likely to have an unrealistic understanding of current capabilities and will over-promise deliverables.
Sounds like the typical know it all, drives the thing into the ground while not re questioning either the why or the how, then attempts to scapegoat the team and try to save their own skin.
Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager).
Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0...
And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780
It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible.
EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...
Would you happen to have the links to all the docs? I feel like there might be done value at re-disseminating it, even if I am guessing most things are common sense, sometimes seeing things written down help to stop, reflect, and do better.
Of course! I've added an edit at the bottom of that comment.
IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable.
To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).
Mostly I agree with 2, but be careful not to get so many systems that nothing can get done anymore. Finding that balance is hard.
The system in this case for me is usually building a stronger backbone or improving communication and elevating constraints to highly our strengths/weaknesses and capabilities to actually achieve the desired outcome.
I view it as more a single system of constant improvement and understanding ability to execute in the environment. Nothing hurts credibility more than late commms, and missed deadlines due to over commitments.
That, and be careful to avoid a "box-ticking" culture where people rely on systems over independent thought. Also a hard balance.
Mere "box-ticking" in the form of checklists have been shown to greatly cut deaths in clinical/hospital settings. This may or may not apply to your systems.
According to Atul Gawande that‘s not strictly true as stated. It‘s not the box-ticking itself, it‘s several factors including the decisions about what the list should contain and adjusting the dynamics of the operating team to actually see results.
The right boxes to check are good. However you have to be careful. A doctor who spends 15 minutes checking boxes before treating a heart attack just killed someone... That doesn't mean the doctor cannot check boxes, just that they need to be break early to treat things. (even here checkboxes will be good - there are things with the same symptoms as a heart attack where heart attack treatment is the worst thing possible - those have a high death rate because they are so rare doctors don't check for them until too late to treat correctly)
I'm not against ticking boxes, but a culture that relies on it overly much.
Doctors would implement self-healing and abolish checklists if they could! Be glad if you don't need a checklist.
Same with pilots.
Checklists are the only reason I ever feel safe to takeoff
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again
In addition to what you said overall, I think bad managers can have all sorts of qualities, but imo the worst ones correct for mistakes to protect themselves or people's impressions of them, leaning highly neurotic, and can't deal with conflict well, so they put in arbitrary systems in order to indirectly deal with any one-off grievance or mistake. Bad managers won't evaluate or re-evaluate the systems they put in place because they put them there to protect their ego.
"Surely this employee is underperforming because I don't like how they're performing and we have a system for that!"
They struggle to adapt to their new job because to delegate sufficiently they need to be able to trust, and let that manifest as other people doing the tasks they might have once done without their hands in the pie directly. They might assume that part of the reason they got the job was because they're great communicators, and never consider that actually that it's just that nobody ever told them they have some growing to do.
Good systems thinking combined with an actual desire/incentive to continuously improve is a combo that results in good management.
Also why neurodiverse people often make exceptional managers.
The neurology often results in good systems thinking.
The diversity results in lifelong disciplined improvement of social interactions.
Neurodiverse can mean a lot of things. And many of these things are probably detrimental to the manager role.
Will a manager that acknowledges his/her/their mistakes get promoted as frequently, as if when downplaying them?
There is unfortunately no formula for it, apart from, play the game that senior management wants to be played.
I’d say, stick to your guns and find a job that supports your morales, not the other way around.
My experience is that managers who acknowledge their mistakes are worse at office politics, so they will reach their peak sooner and lower than those that do not admit fault.
but that's anectdata, so grain of salt and all.
It hasn't unlocked a magical promotion track for me, but it has engendered support and respect from my teams that has allowed us to produce delivery exceeding what we thought we could because there was true buy in from the business around the definition of exceptional circumstances.
I'm not personally engineering my career in leadership around moving up, but building teams of people that can do exceptional things tends to be the driving factor that allows me to continue up the track.
Depends on if the managers above them are accountable or not. Accountability is the opposite of corruption and both need to come from the top.
True, in traditional corporate structures. I'm interested in how accountability flows in cooperative structures like Mondragon. (Accountability still flows down through those at the top, as far as I can tell, but there is an aspect of bottom up accountability too.)
Probably not, but some games it is better to lose.
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.
Also called wishful thinking... Often such measures do definitely not work. There is even an internet law named for this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
This is why you have to have skin in the game, and a backbone to say no to executives when it compromises delivery if there isn't escalated mediation.
Said another way, I don't say no a lot, I put prioritization up front and tell them that we are sacrificing other deliver items.
That is a decision that an exec can work with, mediate between teams, and builds mutual respect for senior leadership as you don't break promises you've already made, unless there is mutual agreement from the business.
Putting systems in place is organizational scar tissue. Be very, very careful with scar tissue.
The thing that makes someone trustworthy is taking accountability for your own self and actions, but having boundaries such that you don’t take accountability for the selves and actions of others. That’s basically all I want to see from a manager, a direct report, or a peer.
A chief source of management missteps I've seen is not talking to people and just making consequential decisions because they think a jira board gives them insight.
As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs.
In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.
The worst mistakes to acknowledge and remedy for me have always been bad hiring. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘I can make this person work well’ but I’ve found myself questioning this approach. As my team has grown, bad fits are taxing. And it also is on other team members. I’ve shifted from doing ‘the right thing’ by giving people many chances before escalating to PIP, decided that I am just making it tough on myself and the rest of the team and to be quicker to start the process. But still, for me, it’s so much easier to acknowledge tech mistakes than dealing with employees not up to it for whatever reason, especially when they are good people. It becomes easier when they turn out to be difficult people though for me, it’s still hard.
I also used to think that you can coach people into becoming good performers. But experience has taught me that teams are more productive by magnitudes if everybody gets along and trusts each other. Even one bad performer can have a huge negative impact.
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.
We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.
Yea, this is a great one. I've had a lot of success in the past using the backpack problem / box packing as an interview question for problem solving / pair programming parts of the interview. It has "I don't know" built right in. It also has "I don't know, I'm going to make this decision for now but I expect it's wrong" built in.
Every time someone mentions a good idea for interviews, I imagine the interview prep people adding it to the standard performance ritual. Then the signal is lost for the needle in a haystack who actually embodies what you sought to find.
With how ridiculously performative and disingenuous the techbro interviews have become, if we don't want to play that game, we have to keep some signal unspoken.
Well said - most people don’t realize there is a lot of overlap between good management skills and good senior engineering skills.
Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…
Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.
I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.
There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.
So far, we have "it's also true for teachers!", "it's also true for parents!", and "it's also true for engineers!".
It's also true for all humans.
> Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers.
I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work."
I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair.
Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager.
This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
* And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.
Yeah IME "unemotional" people tend to just be people who don't view anger or rage or irritation as "emotions" even though they very much are.
Or, dont recognize own emotions. It is one of the symptomps of being on the spectrum - although the person have emotiona and their behaviour is affected, they cant name or recognize them.
The language around emotion often obscures the underlying reality that needs to be addressed. Emotions are the physiological manifestations of expectations and desires. (Emotion is etymologically related to motive.)
The person your responding to clearly has a desire to do productive work with minimal roadblocks. In one person the roadblock to that desire/expectation might manifest physiologically as depression, in another person as anger, and in another as detachment. Getting rid of the roadblock is what needs to happen regardless of how the emotion manifests.
This does not mean that emotions are not addressed, but that they are addressed primarily as signifiers of a mismatch between the world and one's underlying desires/expectations, not the thing itself.
Sometimes, the desire/expectation of an individual is counter to the good of the overall system and group of people. In this case, a good manager might start by explaining the larger situation so that an individual can update their desires and expectations through the additional knowledge. Then new thinking/perception shifts the physiological experience of those desires (i.e., emotions).
In other cases, the gap between desires/expectations and reality is too big to bridge, which means emotions cannot be resolved in the current context.
Im curious, mostly for the sake of conversation, what emotional resolution looks like for you?
> Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work
I am not. I enjoy doing great work and take pride in it.
> that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships.
They are. And I get along with some people, and not as great with other people. But the people I get along with I go out usually, outside of work, whereas the ones I don't particularly vibe with are just colleagues.
> For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself.
I'm... usually in a pretty good human relationship with my peers, whether code monkeys or managers. So if you chose to keep everything about the work itself, we'd lose a part of our connection. But I wouldn't mind, I'd adapt.
Your last paragraph is a lot to unpack, especially trying to view myself objectively. But I will say that while I consider myself a person that is not afraid of their feelings; if I would come to you to address some aspect of the work to be done ("When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it.") I wouldn't put a lot of emotional investment into this. This is what happened. I believe this would impact our whatever. Feel free to do with this information as you wish. At the end of the day I'm rowing in the boat as per the captain's indication.
I wonder though why you wouldn't believe that I get my emotional needs met from places outside of my direct contact with my manager. I have a great relationship with my family, with my friends, most of the times with my peers. I'm just not looking for emotional support in a manager and I'd like to think I've never been 'erratic' in the workplace.
I obviously don't know you, so take my last paragraph with a grain of salt. All I can do is relate what you wrote and my interpretation of it with my knowledge and experience.
Although, I don't make comment about whether you're getting your emotional needs met outside of work. I'm glad that you do - a lot of people out there aren't, and they are feeling really lonely.
> I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
But this is part of the point, while for you that might not matter, your manager cannot assume this. Other people DO care.
One of the ways your manager can mess us is by assuming you don't care about that...
I guess that could be the case.
In my stints in managerial roles, I was mostly focused on the work to be done. I haven't gotten bad reviews, on the contrary. So I'm making the mistake of assuming that focus on work to be done is more relevant than focus on how to approach each individual.
This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better.
Such a manager is extremely rare.
Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings.
I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders.
I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager.
But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
> But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
Agree but nothing easy about that.
I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut.
He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.
I think perhaps the largest change in American culture that I’ve seen over the last 50 years is that there’s nothing worse than being wrong. See it played out consistently in the public site and in the corporate world. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not allowing people to say I’m sorry and make amends and not holding those won’t say it accountable have been major pillars in a lot of our societal ills.
I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.
The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one.
I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome".
I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality but when things _matter_ (e.g. livelihood, etc.), then the incentive seems paramount for most people.
Bad management trickles down from the top usually.
Also known as ‘a fish rots from the head’
I had one that fired everyone he hired, I was the last one and one other guy, I got the can for sticking up for the other guy, and the other guy got a demotion. Eventually when things at the company were bad enough the manager got the can with a ton of other managers.
My friend who is still there says this is his last ever programming job, after that manager he wants nothing to do with this industry, and that is a shame.
despite talk of "great flattening" I've found that management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs.
enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like.
True. Also paradoxically, managers are the most likely to have negative value for the company, running entire departments or projects into the ground. Yet you rarely see this being reflected.
> management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs.
This is super common and a very bad sign. As an employee, you are disposable in this type of culture, though it should go without saying.
> enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like.
Bc more warm bodies in your org looks better on the resume. Managing 200 people on paper is more impressive than managing 20.
I've tried do this a couple of times in the last year, but it always seems to backfire, specifically with Gen Z. After I apologize, they seem to think of it as an opening to continue to shit on me and bring up more of my shortcomings -- which is just bizarre to me. Because of this, it's made me really second guess acknowledging when I think I've made a mistake.
You will have to lead.
The alternative is a race to the bottom.
After reading just the title I was going to make a crack that the skills of parents and managers largely overlaps.[1] Turns out the author did also make that connection, and that's what spawned the article!
[1]: I even have a draft article on similarly transferred learning: https://entropicthoughts.com/transparent-leadership-beats-se...
This is not just about management but life overall. You will mess up with the people you love -- and repair is the way to go there as well.
Absolutely, EVERYONE needs to figure out how to benefit from their mistakes rather than try to sweep them under the rug. This is one recurring theme I bring up with my kids: If you don't learn from your mistakes, you've made two mistakes. It is really hard to say "I messed up", but you can't live your life acting like you don't make mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, and then move on.
Not so sure. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, failed to sweep him under a rug, and now I've got the Folsom Prison blues.
On the up side, your musical career just got a boost!
> I recently read “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting book that completely changed how I think about this. She talks about how the most important parenting skill isn’t being perfect — it’s repair.
Love this book! Just read it. Must read for parents, IMO.
The title is misleading.
It's not about management skills.
It's also impolite to use "nobody" in it.
Agreed. Cliff's Notes version: "Apologize when you make mistakes."
People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.
I have lived a life where I have to constantly be taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it.
I think that helped make me a decent manager. At least, my employees seemed to think so.
But I could be wrong.
I’d rate this comment a “10”, ha. Good stuff, I’m with you on that road.
I especially like OP’s point #1. “I know I did x, sorry about that” is so much more powerful than “Sorry you let yourself get upset that I did x”.
"I'm sorry you feel that way." is also another non-apology.
Another important aspect is the context. A lot of people are good at public excoriation, and private apology.
If I show my ass in front of a bunch of people, the apology is not an apology, unless it's made in front of the same people.
Good advice. The same thing applies to parents - they make mistakes, but owning up to them is what makes a good parent. Same with peer relationships as well (but there is no power dynamic).
The worst managers leave an endless trail of new process, approvals, and checklists for anything that has ever gone wrong since they joined the company.
Two things I learned. As you move up the management ladder, the problems get harder. If they were easy, they would be solved already.
Second, when things go poorly, accept responsibility. When things go well, give credit to the team.
> The ~~Management~~ Skill Nobody Talks About.
Getting on with people long term is often about making them feeling acknowledged and being clear about what makes them valued.
The real trick to 'repair' is not to make hollow promises. Managers can be perceived as failing when an external event happens and they haven't planned for it, or they bet against it happening. This can kick off a whole chain of events, including pushing team members into crunch time or 'impossible positions'. Its rare that you can stop the external event or a similar one from happening, so promising it won't is hollow.
The next hollow promise commonly made is 'when it happens I won't let X happen [to you]'. The problem here is often that you probably will. In two ways: either X happening is clear in hindsight but not with foresight, so you'll probably make similar decisions again; or, the team member ending up in an unhappy situation is the best of a bad bunch of options.
I've had to place people in positions where they had insufficient support and excessive demands. Sometimes I knew this going in, and sometimes I did not.
You also have to be careful about passing the buck - if you're the manager you need to be clear with yourself about what your job is and whose issue any given problem actually is. Do you help your team interact with third parties, or do third parties interact with your team through you? How much are you supposed to represent your teams needs to management (e.g. pushback) vs how much are you supposed to represent your management's desires to the team (e.g. pushdown).
If you are caught passing the buck to shirk responsibility by your reports or by management you will lose a lot of trust and respect very quickly. You can always pushback or pushdown harder to appear 'good' to one party, but at some extreme that is going to lose you your job. Its your choice how to play this - so own the choice.
As a manager, my first priority was to project/protect the corporation interests.
I always made that clear to my employees, but after that, my employees' interests generally came second (over my own).
It seemed to work. I was a manager at the same company for over 25 years, and my bosses were really tough (but fair).
The best managers I ever had were the ones they flat out said "I'm not an expert, what do you think?" or akin to. Being humble is such a skill. Those managers ended up building huge, amazingly successful teams. The managers that did it their way ended up failing up but at the expense of the team. Everyone who works with them is let go or fired or jumps ship.
Great managers are able to touch on our humanity, which should inspire us all to rise up to meet them.
I must be missing something - didn’t we all learn how to apologize and take responsibility in kindergarten? Granted, easier said than done.
You move in better circles than I do.
I find most people struggle to do this, and the rest don't even try.
Do you follow their lead, or do you try to set a better example? Does it become harder to do what you know is best?
Your question is massively generalized. A little bit in every bucket, but obviously I think I'm aiming for better.
One of my newish mantras is: "Apologizing is what we expect of 9-year-olds. Older children are expected to make compensations or repairs. Adults are expected to modify their own behavior in the future."
I like that.
Nope - it disappeared at the cost of "inclusion".
So... was it the blacks, the Jews, or the trans people who ruined it all? Just curious.
Sad if you think so, but no - democracy perhaps.
Edit: Perhaps it's the native danish that tricks me, but by "inclusion" I refer to the practice of forcing and keeping people together - no matter their behaviour. Especially in public schools. Consequences of bad behaviour is not felt on the person doing it, but the ones around having to accept it.
Don't be racist, please.
In Deming's Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, leadership often leaves off Study and Act of which "acknowledge" and "repair" are part of.
And then get skewered for their mistakes by others and get level capped in a competitive work environment. Lose lose situation. You can come out looking better and sometimes that works, and sometimes people lose faith in you.
Based on this description I've never experienced a good manager, not even once.
My mantras in management:
Love Your Errors
It's not a failure, it's an opportunity for improvement
No shame, no blame
The article talks a lot about appropriate management behaviors that come from humility, but I don't think humility is a skill. The skill is having an accurate and effective self-awareness. If you are (accurately) self-aware then humility (and confidence, where appropriate) is an inevitable side-effect. And that means stuff like...
Acknowledging what happened, taking responsibility, and reconnecting.
...is a reflex, not a tactic.
Very seldom a German manager would ever do this.
I wrote a list of dangerous things to look out for in toxic colleagues, trying to be objective, so as not to think anyone I'm annoyed by is "toxic"
Inability to apologize / repair was near the top of the list. Everyone makes a lot of interpersonal mistakes. Most people can apologize.
Another big one was "norms for thee, but not for me". As in the rules we create as a team don't apply to me. But apply to everyone else. The toxic person gets to use them as a cudgel, but they don't seem to be bound by them.
Another one is being very thin-skinned. Easily jumping into a kind of victim mentality (surprisingly common even in leaders) where they are the ones being put upon. Being a victim, they are justified in doing whatever it takes to correct the situation
Related to that last one, many of these folks feel like they're taking on more than their share and have to carry the team. They may have a narrative they are the brilliant person on the team that has to fix everyone else's screwups. Or the team can't live without their unique skills. Therefore they're "special" and get to act outside the rules / norms. And other leaders can feed into this when they think the special person is indispensable, turning a blind eye to their bad behavior.
I think this is a basic “being an adult” skill to be honest.
We all know those friends that you can’t criticize because they’ll take it poorly.
Before my first job, I read many of these types of texts. When I entered the job market, I saw that the truth was very different. This is pure nonsense.
In my 26 years of experience, I see managers and HR professionals as company advocates, with a single mission: to protect the company's interests.
Whether managers admit mistakes or not is irrelevant; what matters is that they defend the company's interests, no matter the cost.
Mistakes are passed on to the people who can do the heavy lifting, and they respond with dismissal or legal retaliation (when possible).
Your HR exit interview is designed to find out if you harbor resentment toward the company and if there's a chance the company will be sued.
I've tried every imaginable technique I've read in modern books. Politics are more important than anything, and nothing works.
Reading comments. It seems like there are a lot of bad managers.
Nah, obviously good managers don't need to repair because they don't make mistakes in the first place. And if they are really really good at not making mistakes they become executives, which are the closest we have to human perfection.
My first boss told me that it's the primary role of a good manager to keep bullshit away from your most competent staff and 'manage' everyone else. I've worked for a number of organizations with different ideas of management since then, but that has been my guiding principle.
This meshes nicely with another comment that resonated with me about how it’s seniors that need to act like what the article talks about.
The senior ICs are the squad leaders on the frontline with the rest of the team, knee deep in the same shit they are. It’s really THOSE people doing the constant day-to-day trust building, team leveling, shit getting done-ing, repairing…
And so yeah, a good manager lets those seniors just go be good at that, not bogging them down with work that is a complete waste of their potential. It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship really, because a manager with no such seniors on the team won’t have the firepower to crush goals, and a senior without a good manager will never be allowed to excel.
Great points, taken to heart thanks.
s/managers/humans/g
Oh no. Not another LinkedIn insight from a new dad about how managing humans in corp is just like parenting. Just fucking enjoy being a parent and don't apply your obvious empathy epiphanies to your career out loud.
The hostility of your reply seemed much more Facebook than OP’s post seemed LinkedIn.
Wowee! What an unpleasant response. As both a parent and an employee, I found the article extremely useful and shared it internally at my org. Maybe step back from the computer a bit.
That sounds more like a daycare skill, not a management skill. Good managers don't get distracted by "favors" for other departments or navel gaze after making mistakes. They have a clear vision of what needs to be done and execute on it aggressively, and aren't afraid to make mistakes when pursuing a goal. Good team members love this, and the rest fail out.
Admitting mistakes isn’t navel gazing, it’s basic humility, and it’s valuable and underrated in many social situations. You have a good point about the rest, but it’s orthogonal to this article so there’s no need to crap on it. Strong vision and aggressive pursuit of goals can indeed sometimes be motivating, but it also takes humility or it can become overbearing. Lack of vision is certainly a common failing of many managers.
Disagree. This sounds like a manager that would drive me absolutely insane.
Likewise. This sort of manager would immediately trigger my instinct to "manage up" and start documenting every scrap of communication as they're likely to have an unrealistic understanding of current capabilities and will over-promise deliverables.
Sounds like the typical know it all, drives the thing into the ground while not re questioning either the why or the how, then attempts to scapegoat the team and try to save their own skin.