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0 pointsZephyrBlu2y ago0 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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alphazard2y ago

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

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

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

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

ZephyrBluOP2y ago

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

I would not know it from the way you talk!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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