I know an amazing IC at a software company I once worked at that I still keep in touch with. He has extremely deep technical knowledge, which you can simply deduct from basically everyone in the company (even from other teams) coming to him for advice. He's been at the company for >10 years.
He has strong opinions on current processes and just getting things done.
This post resonated deeply with me, since I've discussed before with him his role and how it could evolve. I know for a fact that he dislikes lots of meeting and really likes working on the core product, and so far hasn't really jumped on the opportunity to go into management - he doesn't really want to be manager. So he is kind of exactly the guy the post is describing. The company is growing though and he is very slowly getting pushed by the head of development into a more managerial role..
Let's see how it works out. I believe he is going to be a great manager though.
Some of the best I've seen are highly technical people who moved into management and then realized they can actually do more by leveraging their people. It's not the same hands-on, but they enjoy working with others to get things done.
Agree that great managers are sometimes individual contributors who take on the job because they believe doing so is the only way to ensure effectiveness. But it's important to filter for ego-as-motivation, which can make for a terrible manager....
There's another type of great manager, too, whose best quality is their ability to defend the team from b.s. and politics originating elsewhere in the organization. This is especially valuable in large, established companies.
Reading the article, according to Steve Jobs, the best managers are the people who are so good that they realise that they must do it themselves, even if they don't want to. The title of the article thus has only a necessary but not sufficient condition according to what Steve originally meant. In other words: Clickbait.
Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.
And you get promoted until what you do changes so much that you’re not good at it anymore, so you can’t justify another promotion and you remain a middle manager.
They're not the worst, they're just a waste of money, they could just not exist and probably everyone else would be better off. They're a -2.
That said, there are plenty of managers who put in a lot of effort into ruining everyone else life to satisfy their ego or what their understanding of the job is. They're -100000.
> Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
Pretty much this, but I want to refine the statement: "the worst managers are those who _want_ to manage."
Yup, the best manager I ever had (by far) did not want to be manager. But she was made manager when half our team was laid off (including our manager) and she was the most senior of the bunch left. She was amazing because she was good at telling higher up's "no" when they would try to take advantage of our team.
The worst manager I ever had desperately wanted to become manager from a group of IC's and brown-nosed his way into the job. His first day as manager he says "I was promoted to manager because I can do all of your jobs better than you can". He could not. He was horrible (and was eventually fired).
Did that company have more systemic problems whereby that person wasn't identified as a complete c** and therefore inappropriate for any remotely leadership position?
The "eventually" in your last sentence makes me think all must not have been well elsewhere.
I agree with every word of this. I would also add that there's a third category, or maybe a 2.b: individual contributors in their 30s and 40s who look ahead to their future and say "well, I guess I better become a manager at some point" without having any particular aptitude or even an intrinsic desire.
Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewhat mitigates this effect. However, in the past, this was a widespread phenomenon, and it's still out there to some extent. You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.
To have a large impact in most orgs, one often needs to directly influence how other people work. In software, the leverage might come from technical output instead.
This might be a deeper reason why moving into management is often necessary for most orgs. Exceptions include software-focused organizations where code can be one's channel for impact.
it is a very real fear. When you look around and realize everyone that works at a company that is over 60 is in upper management it becomes clear that you either move up or out. I have also noticed it is sometimes hard to keep up with certain types of work after a certain age. The strength you retain as you get older is wisdom of experience.
I think this kind of thinking highly depends on what field you are in.
My father worked in a technical role all his live in a automotive plant. (Eventually being technically responsible for overall design and implementation of all production lines).
A lot of his former collegues moved into management during the early 2000's. Most got fired after the great recession because being a manager is considered a non skill compared to actually contributing to the actual core bussiness.
I would argue being responsible for a major operational part of the business is far more prestigious then being a manager.
I have a startup of 3 growing up to 15, and I have this awesome
opportunity of hiring a career manager who’s sensible and everything. But he can’t code.
I’ve erred for a month, but I just told him no. I still wonder whether I’m in the “worst managers reject good managers” category or in the “you gotta belong to the people you manage” category. But being able to do is very high on my list.
I never wanted to be a manager until I experienced one of the worst managers I had ever run across and decided maybe I should revise that particular opinion.
I'm now a VP and I make it my goal not to be that kind of a manager. I do still sometimes wish I were just a regular coder though. There is a lot of stuff about being a manager I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on:
(1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow
(2) coaching individual team members to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses
(3) improving our corporate processes, tools and culture to systematically make it easier for the team to do the high value stuff we need from them
(4) recruiting excellent people who bring new perspectives and experiences to broaden our horizons… ideally coachable people ready to participate enthusiastically in #2
(5) crafting a team strategy that guides individual team members to work that utilizes their skills while combining with their colleagues to deliver more than we could individually… all in line with the overall corporate direction and communicated in a way that is congruent with the current political winds.
ICs can gain high levels of leadership leverage, not via teams and people (thought possible), but via the technical projects/designs/paradigms they implement.
Not the above commenter, but these were things I experienced as a middle manager that really sucked:
- Having to always sell the company message. No promotion because the system is fucked? Sorry, you gotta say “better luck next time”. No raises because the company is being cheap? Sorry, gotta say “the cost of labor has not gone up even though inflation is through the roof”. Say what the company tells you, not what’s personally right.
- Certain kinds of politics where you have to screw over other teams or people in order for your team or reports to not get screwed over. Many companies are very dog eat dog.
- Layoffs and firing people. It’s not as bad as getting laid off/fired but firing someone or trying to keep the rest of your team focused when a team member got laid off is not fun at all.
- Overall, managers almost never get credit when something goes well but are always blamed when something goes wrong. It’s a really thankless job.
There is how you become a manager as you call out, but what happens after? How to stay an excellent IC as you spend more time in management and become a manager of managers? Picking up a small enhancement it big once in a while can be helpful for you, but also really interruptive for the team. You can code on your own time, but that only goes so far. What are strategies to keep these qualities a manager brings who also is a top IC even after years managing and managing managers?
I struggle a lot with this, I’m trying todo some side projects to keep up but man it’s hard. I think the only way is to on a high level keep up with new technologies and best practices.
Why do you need to be a top IC after years managing managers? Some of the worst managers I've seen tried to cling too much to the technical details, which is smothering to the actual ICs.
> Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up
There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.
And I quote from [1].
"""
And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for
them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing
and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves
out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being
ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must
be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear
of punishment.
And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed
dishonourable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the
idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves,
but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task
of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
"""
Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.
The main reason I took my first management position was after I remembered the pain of refusing a previous offer and getting an awful manager to lead the team.
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
In my experience, leadership and management are pretty disjoint. You can be good at one and not good at the other. Although, FWIW, I suspect that your introspection about whether or not you're a good manager means you're a lot better than you're giving yourself credit for.
Agree, they are different. Middle managers particularly don't have to be leaders, and in many cases shouldn't be. But for things to work well, they do need to be good at management with all of the people skills, cat herding, and organizing that go along with it. In my experiences, the best managers were the ones who protected their teams from the whims of the 'leaders' at the higher levels. The worst ones were the ones who carried out their every wish without a second thought.
This passage is discussing the idea that good people do not want to hold public office because they do not want to be seen as hirelings who are only interested in payment, or as thieves who are secretly enriching themselves at the expense of the public. The author argues that good people are not ambitious and do not care about honor, so they must be forced to serve out of fear of punishment. The worst punishment, according to the author, is the fear of being ruled by someone who is worse than oneself. This fear is what ultimately compels good people to take office, even though they do not want to and do not expect to benefit from it. The author suggests that good people take office out of a sense of necessity, because they are not able to entrust the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves.
Really excellent job illustrating chatgpt obliterates nuance, perfect for those unwilling to read beyond a paragraph and contemplate their lingering thoughts and questions.
Great comment. I was reading a book about Lincoln recently and this exact sense of being compelled was upon him. Him as a politician had him saying things he morally didn’t agree with. Once he won the game, he was able to instill the spirit of his philosophy and do something above society’s morals which we look back upon making him one of the best presidents to date.
I have a not-so-small network of people I unofficially mentor, but on the org chart I’m an IC. I’m happy with the situation, but dread the day I need to manage somebody to get things done.
A lot of people don't want to have kids, because they see how other people's kids behave. You can do the right things and raise incredible children.
A lot of people don't want to be a manager, because they see how other people behave as managers. You can do the right things and be an incredible manager.
Unfortunately, my impression is that there are more bad examples than good ones. I have some notion of what I'd want my managers (or I if I became one) not do, but I don't know what is necessary to be a good manager.
I think you have a very skewed view on why people aren’t having kids. Many people want kids but choose not to have them because they can’t afford enough space for them or don’t want to raise them while living with their parents. The number of people scared off by watching a few bad apples misbehave is a negligible fraction.
But in many countries this view is even directly written into the law.
In my country for example, employer must know at all times where the employee is, because they are responsible for any accidents that happen to them during the work hours. And to avoid those accidents you have to provide them with stupid things like instruction manuals for microwave, or electric kettle usage, because apparently employee cannot be trusted with operating those devices safely. You, the employer are also responsible for doing their taxes for them (i.e. paying monthly deductions), as well as sending them to the doctor every once in the while for routine check-ups.
One of the reasons that I work as freelancer is to avoid such bullshit.
On the plus side, your liability, as an employee, for any damages caused is limited to 3 monthly salaries, because, being just a kid, you cannot be held fully responsible for your own mistakes.
"And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable. Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself. And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves,
but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
For there is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of good men, then to avoid office would be as much an object of contention
as to obtain office is at present; then we should have plain proof that the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest,
but that of his subjects; and every one who knew this would choose rather to receive a benefit from another than to have the trouble of conferring one."
Empirically speaking 90% of the managers out there became so because they were intentional in becoming managers. The reasons are myriad. Most want the power so they can hire or fire. Others with reaching the job safety inherently built into the role.
A lot of IC historically become managers not because they particularly care about doing performance reviews but because they want more influence and to work at a larger scale. This leads to a situation of people managers who care less about managing people than managing delivery and technology strategy. The best of those also have a lot of empathy and inadvertently are good at people management.
Another reason, often related in my experience, is a lot of companies careers plateau for ICs pretty early on. Your comp stops growing beyond COLA, titles exhaust, and despite being young you’re at a terminal career velocity. The only thing way to break up is to become management. This isn’t surprising - who controls promotion and comp other than managers, and why on earth wouldn’t they structure things to reward themselves and people like them? There are many companies that have recognized this and created IC paths parallel to management, at least up to the C level. However the relative difficulty in achieving them is disproportionately weighted against the IC vs manager. At Amazon there’s a crap ton of VP and Director managers. But it’s absurdly hard to get senior principal or distinguished engineer. The rationale is they want to keep the prestige of the level high for IC. But that’s weird - the prestige of the same level in management must therefore be low and why is the bar different for the same level if you’re managing vs building?
I am so tired of the competitiveness in engineering to make the next pay band.
You cant rely on a portion if teammates because they are jockeying for position and in other situations your opinion isnt valued because you are not high enough on the engineering ladder.
This was a disgusting revelation to me once when I heard someone openly say, “I didn’t know he was a Pay Band X! I need to start listening to him.” And then when he was found out to not actually be in that pay band, they reverted back to dismissing his ideas.
Leadership is the art of getting people to do what they don't want to and keeping morale up.
Way too many people end up in decision making who have no business being there - as strategists/tacticians - only thanks to their presence (mostly sales).
That is a different technical skill.
I'm not sure Steve Jobs is someone you should be taking management advice from.
The truth is that it boils down to the best person for the role to be filled rather than blanket statements based on anecdotes from a notoriously bad manager.
>I just think the tone of way the comment was mean spirited and inappropriate.
Making a factual assertions about the behavior of a public figure is neither mean spirited nor inappropriate, especially if the intent is to avoid others coming into harm.
You should discuss your feelings with a therapist rather than engage in what I like to term "emotional terrorism" -- silencing others if they stray from your preferred narrative.
Or, if you like, you can take a look at my comment and tell me how you'd prefer it be phrased, if the core message of "Steve Jobs abused his family and his workers, why should we listen to his views on management?"
(Maybe Steve Wozniak would be someone better suited to speak on management styles... I have never, in my life heard anyone say that Woz was rude to them on purpose... and I've heard a lot of stories about the early days at Apple in the hall at Defcon or whatever.)
A great IC with the right skill sets and inclinations to be a manager will be the best manager compared to a mediocre IC or someone out of field. Most ICs don’t have the right skill sets or inclinations for management and end up being a disaster of a manager.
Agreed. You can be a decent manager with mediocre tech skills provided you work really hard on the soft-skills part, but greatness only comes from excellence in both soft & 'hard' skills.
I wonder what kind of people are these Steve Jobs cultists...
Most of the "wisdom" of all "Steve Jobs said..." is just subjective interpretation of vague and ambiguous statements.
Truth, the guy had a lot of successes. But if you look at them most were just accidental and he only recognized them as success when they hit him in the face.
* Apple didn't "invent" the Mac, all of it's technologies were copied straight out of Xerox's Palo Alto research center. He found them in a demo.
* Jobs didn't "invent" Pixar. George Lucas and Ed Catmull did it. His project was to create an hardware company (the only thing he knew to do) and to sell it. But Pixar "accidentally" found success creating animated intros for commercials and television shows and Jobs did nothing to discover this early market.
* Jobs didn't invent the iPhone. He was scared of dealing in an area where Apple didn't have expertise and tought it would be dangerous (a call to 911 failing because the phone could be stuck in a processing task). It took years of internal pressure by Apple engineers and management and a personal fiasco on a Nokia phone with iTunes for him to accept the iPhone.
* Jobs didn't invent the AppStore. For the first 6 months the iPhone didn't had an AppStore because he tought it would relinquish control of the platform to others. He only accepted it because in these first 6 months the iPhone sales were a disaster. He accepted the AppStore because the customers were screamming for it. It was the AppStore that saved the iPhone.
* Jobs didn't invent the Apple I, Wozniak did it. And the idea to turn the kit into a functional computer was not Jobs'. It was a precondition imposed by a RadioShack manager.
* NEXT wasn't a commercial success. An expensive computer for college students with a black and white monitor was not selling enough to sustain the company. He was basically lucky that at the same time, Apple under Sculley, was a much bigger failure and the management board called him back.
"Reality distortion field" and "stealing" other people's ideas were Jobs' greatest talents. But then, these are the talents of most cult founders from Jim Jones to Donald Trump.
I'm predisposed to dislike Steve Jobs (I'm predisposed to dislike anyone who exploits other people tbh, so virtually all high-profile CEO).
But there's already 5 pretty big successes in your list. At which point it stops being statically improbable he isn't exceptionally talented by some kind of metric?
The Newton, Pippin and Copland were done before and without Jobs. And Lisa wasn't his thing (the Mac was, he was remove from being involved with Lisa).
As for the G4 cube, it is just a failed model, not some huge company bet - every company has some models that don't sell well. Apple's laptops and iMacs still sold greatly from Jobs new iMac to this day - if a particular model didn't do well that's not exactly a big deal. In fact it's an expected part of doing business. Apple had several other such products on its way to becoming the #1 valued company on earth.
Also, what Nokia-iTunes fiasco? Nokia folded, and iTunes became the biggest music store, and then an app store and a streaming service.
The point being that this is irrelevant. Do you think Bezos invented Cloud services or coded AWS himself? Did Musk invent the electric car? Did Ford invent the regular car?
It's about leading and putting things to market and succeding there, not about inventing stuff. They're not in the inventing or research business, they are in the selling commercial products business.
He didn't have the ideas, but he was a core part building the organizations. So you shouldn't listen to him when it comes to computer engineering, but you probably should listen to his thoughts on leadership and organizations.
That's a distorted view of what business is. You don't need to invent anything to be a great business or a great business leader: just to do it in a form that the market appreciates.
In fact the invention is mostly irrelevant to the business part. Ford didn't invent the car either, IKEA didn't invent the furniture (not even the self-assembly furniture), and Walmart etc. didn't invent the supermarket.
Find a large multi-national company that isn’t in tech, get a job in IT or doing software of some kind and move up into management. You really want to be in a cost center and get into middle management, I still can’t fathom what those people did for the company, complete waste of space. So go do that, LOL. Or do the opposite of all that and feel connected to and enjoy your work by seeing that it has an impact on your customers.
As a manager, I want to see myself in what he said because I really enjoy writing code and engineering solutions. But honestly , I don’t think the “want to” matters all that much when it comes to management.
I do think many good managers are problem solvers. They are often hands-on, in the thick of ideation and problem-solving.
They have the knowledge necessary to evaluate the competence and solutions submitted by the people being managed. And that knowledge and skill also helps them understand what their reports need to succeed.
I think the solution is to hire both, because there is also the Peter principle: "promoted to incompetence".
The professional managers should be in a deputy position to the promoted ICs. This way they can bring their skills and expertise in management and empower the promoted ICs who understand the business or problems deeply.
The professional managers can be pretty useful if they don't have people reporting to them and help with processes, compliance, planning, making presentations and excel tables and yet the capacity for damage will be limited as the promoted ICs will need approve anything.
DEC apparently had "administration" instead of management, implying it didn't rule but rather assist, but I don't know the exact details.
The person responsible for paperwork is called an accountant, a secretary or officer, not a manager.
A person handling presentations is usually a salesperson.
The person with deep knowledge about how a particular business runs and steps required to do so is called a business analyst.
Many so-called professional managers are actually salespeople who have leveraged themselves - sold themselves as managers regardless of how good they are at actually managing. The closest equivalent is politicians.
Sometimes an owner is actually forced to take on multiple such roles at the same time, especially in a small company or a startup. Then they tend to fail thanks to their shortcomings unless they get or hire help.
For example Jobs was not particularly any good manager. He was a salesman and a designer. He hired good managers.
When he managed directly he got abject failures, that only his skill in sales partly covered.
The article described a case where someone hired a manager to actually do the job of a process quality engineer/quality officer.
Leaders who don't want to be leaders are bad leaders.
I lead a guild once, because I wanted to decide how my time was spent and didn't want other people to decide for me.
I didn't want to be a leader. I don't want to tell people what to do. I don't want to give orders everyone else has to follow. I like the team approach.
But people are conditioned to follow.
Except they aren't following... when you apply too much pressure.
I set up a website to plan raids. Paid for a domain. Went through the hassle to configure it and a discord server and a bridge between those and all I wanted was that people fucking sign up or off from raids.
I asked them when they're available and made a plan most people are comfortable with.
Only 5 out of 30 people did even register on the site.
They joined the guild because it was advertised as a raid guild with social spots but raid being the main theme. A RAID GUILD.
After 2 months I was so stressed out that I simply abandoned the guild and left the game.
I can't do everything alone. When I said that I never felt so stressed out in all my life 2 people offered to help with leading raids but at that point it was too late. Some players joined from other guilds, got spell upgrades for free, then left the guild. Some people joined from other guilds to cause drama and distress.
This is of course not real life. But it's close. You don't pay your members money for work and can't expect they follow guidelines. But holy crap, can you at least expect some interest in the main theme of the guild and them to sign up on the site and sign on and off of raids?
I never wanted to be leader. I feel well in the role of an advisor, someone who helps lead. But not the sole person responsible for everything. I'm not perfect. No one is. I was overwhelmed because every piece of the hierarchy in the end asked me what to do. And if I postponed answering things would get worse.
In software development I can be agile and change things around, but people demand stability. They want a bed already made but are not willing to do the effort to build that bed.
In retrospect I should've continued and "fired" 90% of the members even if that meant the end of independent raiding. But I was too stressed out and losing key people, because that game was designed around key roles being present in a raid.
I didn't make the necessary decisions because I didn't want to lose anyone and not piss anyone of. But in the end key people left regardless.
So lesson learned if you do something, focus on just doing that one thing and don't get ballast on board in the first place. It's better to have a small, dedicated group, seeing eye to eye, than a large group where the majority doesn't care about success.
Anyhow, see I wasn't a good manager, despite me not wanting to be a manager.
There are different flavors of not wanting to be a manager.
The good kind Jobs refers to are people who see the necessity and that no one is doing it (or doing it well). They aren't the kind of people who don't understand people and fall into the trap of simply controlling and micro-managing people.
Let me give you an example of the bad kind. Google's SWE ladder goes all the say from L3 (new grad) to L9 (ignoring exceptions like Google Fellow and execs). There is an expectation of growth from L3 to L5 (Senior SWE). There is a lot of reward if you can get promoted to L6 (Staff SWE) but it is incredibly difficult. It requires a lot of luck (eg being on the right project that doesn't get cancelled). Getting to L6 now is much harder than it was 10-15 years ago.
One of the things Ruth Porat did when she came in was to control costs by reducing the promotion target percentage because it wasn't visible to people (there was a leaked memo). All promo candidates go to committee and effectively get stack ranked across committees. There is a quota ("target percentage") of who gets promoted. This creates a backlog and raises the bar for getting promoted. It gives more time for your impact to dissipate or your project to get cancelled (which was your promotion case).
Compare this to getting promoted as a manager. Your manager level (M0 to M2, which is the same level as L5 to L7) is effectively a function of your head count with the added requirement that M2 requires you to have managers as reports. So if you're an M0 (which is rare), getting to M1 is typically as easy as getting to 10-15 reports (as long as you don't screw up so badly).
So there is a breed of SWEs that bridge these worlds. They're half an IC and half an EM in the hopes that this gets them over the line.
In my experience, these managers were generally the absolute worst. They had no interest in ever being a amanager and were just ticking a box for an L6 promotion case. Career development tended to be zero. Everything was seen through the lens of what helped them get promoted. If that means throwing someone under the bus, so be it.
I think one of the best things Facebook did was they effectively didn't allow this. Having reports as an IC generally wasn't allowed. Being an L5 with reports was mostly not allowed. I mean there were some exceptions in some orgs and for some people but it was exceedingly rare. You'd see people ask "why can't I be a manager at L5?" and you heavily suspected the main motivator for this question was an inability to get promoted to L6 as a SWE.
More details, from the people behind Apple’s internal leadership training:
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics:
1. deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions
2. immersion in the details of those functions;
3. and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
A special kind of disaster happens when a manager thinks they have deep expertise but they don’t. I have to be actively vigilant of what this manager is doing because one statement could lead to hours wasted. Just the other day they were about to launch a whole S3 tangent involving two teams because some report came back saying a few EBS volumes were not encrypted.
But that runs counter to all the arguments professional scrum masters and agile evangelists make. "All you need to do know is agile/scrum/fad du jour". /s
Manager wannabes should be screened for narcissism and sociopathy and rejected if exhibiting these or similar traits. Unfortunately, recruiters are often already screening for these traits for the top management candidates and reject anyone who doesn't exhibit them.
It's also really hard to parse that stuff out until you see people in action.
Any self-aggrandizing jackass can talk a good game about servant leadership or supporting the team as a whole in an interview, and then go on to make himself the main character. Some of the worst of them are really, really good at telling you whatever you want to hear, and will gladly perform humility.
I don't have an answer for this besides hope there's someone above them who will observe this behavior and nip it in the bud.
Real leaders understand the burden of command and take it seriously and the stress is not sustainable for nearly anyone for the long term, so experienced leaders don’t want to do it unless it’s absolutely essential.
Reminds me of my favourite quote by Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord:
"I distinguish four types [of officers]. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
Hardworking and stupid make great employees though. The problem is for doing such a great job as cogs in the machine they get promoted into positions of authority and then it is hard to fault them too much because at least they are hardworking.
They would be terrible employees. Making mistakes and doubling down, too stupid to learn from them, and with the energy to follow any inane goose chase. Being stubborn is good only if you are right.
But they would make fantastic career politicians. You need a certain type of person to work hard to get yourself voted by telling whatever stories your voters care about, but also capable of believing your own lies and fighting for them till the bitter end.
I guess I'm too lazy to admire any of these personalities.
Then there is a special category of people being just smart enough to get themselves into a situation they cannot handle. They tend to be hardworking but average or below average talented, not outright stupid.
These people tend to cause debt to accumulate, orders to get blocked or stonewalled, infinite delays, legal costs etc.
A stupid person generally will fail early and obviously, an average person, especially in skill or experience, will get themselves beyond what they can handle before they recognize being insufficient.
Yeah that’s more what I mean - the ones that take a shovel and dig a big hole in the wrong place. Then you have to fill in that hole AND dig the original one, and now you’re behind schedule.
I think that here, lazy means "do as little as possible" and hardworking means "always do something", it doesn't mean people do or don't do as they are told.
Lazy stupid is fine because these people will execute the order to the letter and then slack off. If the order is clear, there is not much damage they can do. Hardworking stupid will try to do more and mess things up.
So if the order is to clean the toilets and the guy notices a leak.
The lazy stupid will clean the toilets
The hardworking stupid will clean the toilets and then attempts to fix the leak, mess things up and cause a flood
The hardworking clever will clean the toilets inspect the leak, try to do something, realize there is nothing he can do it and call the plumber
The lazy clever will take a look at the leak and call the plumber. He will not clean the toilets because he knows the repair will make a mess and it is therefore useless.
Lazy stupid was useless in that situation but didn't make things worse like hardworking stupid. Both clevers did the right thing, the difference is that hardworking wasted time but he executed the order, a reliable worker. Lazy may not be as reliable as a worker because he didn't execute the order, but he is the better decision maker.
You do understand that cleaning a damaged toilet is an invitation to a flood of excrement? Sometimes just touching a leak is enough to get the thing to explode.
So anyone not calling the plumber (or skilled at being one) who tries to clean it may end up in the dumps.
An actual plumber will clean it after fixing or during fixing.
I completely agree with this. The best leaders are those who have proven themselves to be great individual contributors before moving into a management role. This gives them a deep understanding and appreciation for the work that their team members do, which is crucial for effective leadership. Professional managers, on the other hand, may not have the same level of experience and can sometimes struggle to effectively support and lead their team.
Yes, but, the problem with ic becoming managers is that they are too involved with eng work. Often dictating how things should be done. Also, they have hard time letting their beloved legacy code go.
Best managers are IC who have the ability to trust their eng to do the work. Their main role should be “advice”, provide context and connections within the company.
165 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 282 ms ] threadHe has strong opinions on current processes and just getting things done.
This post resonated deeply with me, since I've discussed before with him his role and how it could evolve. I know for a fact that he dislikes lots of meeting and really likes working on the core product, and so far hasn't really jumped on the opportunity to go into management - he doesn't really want to be manager. So he is kind of exactly the guy the post is describing. The company is growing though and he is very slowly getting pushed by the head of development into a more managerial role..
Let's see how it works out. I believe he is going to be a great manager though.
There's another type of great manager, too, whose best quality is their ability to defend the team from b.s. and politics originating elsewhere in the organization. This is especially valuable in large, established companies.
Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers.
Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management.
I make this distinction because even group 1 managers usually have to raise their hand and say something like “can we please stop messing this up. I can help.”
Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up.
In an environment where management is good, there’s a longer cycle of development, mentorship, and nudging of high potential people into management. But if you’re not in that environment, you probably need to ask to help make it better. It won’t happen magically.
Basically every German company ever. ICs be dammed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
That said, there are plenty of managers who put in a lot of effort into ruining everyone else life to satisfy their ego or what their understanding of the job is. They're -100000.
Pretty much this, but I want to refine the statement: "the worst managers are those who _want_ to manage."
The worst manager I ever had desperately wanted to become manager from a group of IC's and brown-nosed his way into the job. His first day as manager he says "I was promoted to manager because I can do all of your jobs better than you can". He could not. He was horrible (and was eventually fired).
The "eventually" in your last sentence makes me think all must not have been well elsewhere.
Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewhat mitigates this effect. However, in the past, this was a widespread phenomenon, and it's still out there to some extent. You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.
This might be a deeper reason why moving into management is often necessary for most orgs. Exceptions include software-focused organizations where code can be one's channel for impact.
My father worked in a technical role all his live in a automotive plant. (Eventually being technically responsible for overall design and implementation of all production lines).
A lot of his former collegues moved into management during the early 2000's. Most got fired after the great recession because being a manager is considered a non skill compared to actually contributing to the actual core bussiness.
I would argue being responsible for a major operational part of the business is far more prestigious then being a manager.
I’ve erred for a month, but I just told him no. I still wonder whether I’m in the “worst managers reject good managers” category or in the “you gotta belong to the people you manage” category. But being able to do is very high on my list.
Then there are those who go into product management for all these reasons.
I'm now a VP and I make it my goal not to be that kind of a manager. I do still sometimes wish I were just a regular coder though. There is a lot of stuff about being a manager I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on:
(1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow
(2) coaching individual team members to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses
(3) improving our corporate processes, tools and culture to systematically make it easier for the team to do the high value stuff we need from them
(4) recruiting excellent people who bring new perspectives and experiences to broaden our horizons… ideally coachable people ready to participate enthusiastically in #2
(5) crafting a team strategy that guides individual team members to work that utilizes their skills while combining with their colleagues to deliver more than we could individually… all in line with the overall corporate direction and communicated in a way that is congruent with the current political winds.
It is so. Much. Harder!
Could you expand?
- Having to always sell the company message. No promotion because the system is fucked? Sorry, you gotta say “better luck next time”. No raises because the company is being cheap? Sorry, gotta say “the cost of labor has not gone up even though inflation is through the roof”. Say what the company tells you, not what’s personally right.
- Certain kinds of politics where you have to screw over other teams or people in order for your team or reports to not get screwed over. Many companies are very dog eat dog.
- Layoffs and firing people. It’s not as bad as getting laid off/fired but firing someone or trying to keep the rest of your team focused when a team member got laid off is not fun at all.
- Overall, managers almost never get credit when something goes well but are always blamed when something goes wrong. It’s a really thankless job.
There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.
And I quote from [1].
""" And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment.
And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office, not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. """
Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.
[1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.mb.txt
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
This passage is discussing the idea that good people do not want to hold public office because they do not want to be seen as hirelings who are only interested in payment, or as thieves who are secretly enriching themselves at the expense of the public. The author argues that good people are not ambitious and do not care about honor, so they must be forced to serve out of fear of punishment. The worst punishment, according to the author, is the fear of being ruled by someone who is worse than oneself. This fear is what ultimately compels good people to take office, even though they do not want to and do not expect to benefit from it. The author suggests that good people take office out of a sense of necessity, because they are not able to entrust the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves.
Key point. People are political creatures, and in a workplace this is very often dominant.
A lot of people don't want to have kids, because they see how other people's kids behave. You can do the right things and raise incredible children.
A lot of people don't want to be a manager, because they see how other people behave as managers. You can do the right things and be an incredible manager.
In my country for example, employer must know at all times where the employee is, because they are responsible for any accidents that happen to them during the work hours. And to avoid those accidents you have to provide them with stupid things like instruction manuals for microwave, or electric kettle usage, because apparently employee cannot be trusted with operating those devices safely. You, the employer are also responsible for doing their taxes for them (i.e. paying monthly deductions), as well as sending them to the doctor every once in the while for routine check-ups.
One of the reasons that I work as freelancer is to avoid such bullshit.
On the plus side, your liability, as an employee, for any damages caused is limited to 3 monthly salaries, because, being just a kid, you cannot be held fully responsible for your own mistakes.
Plato, The Republic
Another reason, often related in my experience, is a lot of companies careers plateau for ICs pretty early on. Your comp stops growing beyond COLA, titles exhaust, and despite being young you’re at a terminal career velocity. The only thing way to break up is to become management. This isn’t surprising - who controls promotion and comp other than managers, and why on earth wouldn’t they structure things to reward themselves and people like them? There are many companies that have recognized this and created IC paths parallel to management, at least up to the C level. However the relative difficulty in achieving them is disproportionately weighted against the IC vs manager. At Amazon there’s a crap ton of VP and Director managers. But it’s absurdly hard to get senior principal or distinguished engineer. The rationale is they want to keep the prestige of the level high for IC. But that’s weird - the prestige of the same level in management must therefore be low and why is the bar different for the same level if you’re managing vs building?
I am so tired of the competitiveness in engineering to make the next pay band.
You cant rely on a portion if teammates because they are jockeying for position and in other situations your opinion isnt valued because you are not high enough on the engineering ladder.
Way too many people end up in decision making who have no business being there - as strategists/tacticians - only thanks to their presence (mostly sales). That is a different technical skill.
The truth is that it boils down to the best person for the role to be filled rather than blanket statements based on anecdotes from a notoriously bad manager.
I just think the tone of way the comment was mean spirited and inappropriate. I think it's important to call out bad behavior in the HN community.
Making a factual assertions about the behavior of a public figure is neither mean spirited nor inappropriate, especially if the intent is to avoid others coming into harm.
You should discuss your feelings with a therapist rather than engage in what I like to term "emotional terrorism" -- silencing others if they stray from your preferred narrative.
Or, if you like, you can take a look at my comment and tell me how you'd prefer it be phrased, if the core message of "Steve Jobs abused his family and his workers, why should we listen to his views on management?"
(Maybe Steve Wozniak would be someone better suited to speak on management styles... I have never, in my life heard anyone say that Woz was rude to them on purpose... and I've heard a lot of stories about the early days at Apple in the hall at Defcon or whatever.)
Great kings know it is effective to disguise their desire for the role.
Most of the "wisdom" of all "Steve Jobs said..." is just subjective interpretation of vague and ambiguous statements.
Truth, the guy had a lot of successes. But if you look at them most were just accidental and he only recognized them as success when they hit him in the face.
* Apple didn't "invent" the Mac, all of it's technologies were copied straight out of Xerox's Palo Alto research center. He found them in a demo.
* Jobs didn't "invent" Pixar. George Lucas and Ed Catmull did it. His project was to create an hardware company (the only thing he knew to do) and to sell it. But Pixar "accidentally" found success creating animated intros for commercials and television shows and Jobs did nothing to discover this early market.
* Jobs didn't invent the iPhone. He was scared of dealing in an area where Apple didn't have expertise and tought it would be dangerous (a call to 911 failing because the phone could be stuck in a processing task). It took years of internal pressure by Apple engineers and management and a personal fiasco on a Nokia phone with iTunes for him to accept the iPhone.
* Jobs didn't invent the AppStore. For the first 6 months the iPhone didn't had an AppStore because he tought it would relinquish control of the platform to others. He only accepted it because in these first 6 months the iPhone sales were a disaster. He accepted the AppStore because the customers were screamming for it. It was the AppStore that saved the iPhone.
* Jobs didn't invent the Apple I, Wozniak did it. And the idea to turn the kit into a functional computer was not Jobs'. It was a precondition imposed by a RadioShack manager.
* NEXT wasn't a commercial success. An expensive computer for college students with a black and white monitor was not selling enough to sustain the company. He was basically lucky that at the same time, Apple under Sculley, was a much bigger failure and the management board called him back.
"Reality distortion field" and "stealing" other people's ideas were Jobs' greatest talents. But then, these are the talents of most cult founders from Jim Jones to Donald Trump.
But there's already 5 pretty big successes in your list. At which point it stops being statically improbable he isn't exceptionally talented by some kind of metric?
As for the G4 cube, it is just a failed model, not some huge company bet - every company has some models that don't sell well. Apple's laptops and iMacs still sold greatly from Jobs new iMac to this day - if a particular model didn't do well that's not exactly a big deal. In fact it's an expected part of doing business. Apple had several other such products on its way to becoming the #1 valued company on earth.
Also, what Nokia-iTunes fiasco? Nokia folded, and iTunes became the biggest music store, and then an app store and a streaming service.
It's about leading and putting things to market and succeding there, not about inventing stuff. They're not in the inventing or research business, they are in the selling commercial products business.
Not sure copied is the right word, Xerox bought shares of Apple and in return Apple got to use Xerox's tech.
Xerox' acceptance to be copied doesn't change the fact that the whole concept of GUIs and LANs were alien to Apple.
Please note that I used the term "copied", not "stealed".
But Apple knew the potential because of Jobs.
“Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”
https://youtu.be/-9ZQVlgfEAc
In fact the invention is mostly irrelevant to the business part. Ford didn't invent the car either, IKEA didn't invent the furniture (not even the self-assembly furniture), and Walmart etc. didn't invent the supermarket.
Does that make me a good manager
I do think many good managers are problem solvers. They are often hands-on, in the thick of ideation and problem-solving.
They have the knowledge necessary to evaluate the competence and solutions submitted by the people being managed. And that knowledge and skill also helps them understand what their reports need to succeed.
It’s a somewhat tricky balance between “micromanagement” and problem-solving, but then problem solving is a bit of a discipline after all.
The professional managers should be in a deputy position to the promoted ICs. This way they can bring their skills and expertise in management and empower the promoted ICs who understand the business or problems deeply.
The professional managers can be pretty useful if they don't have people reporting to them and help with processes, compliance, planning, making presentations and excel tables and yet the capacity for damage will be limited as the promoted ICs will need approve anything.
DEC apparently had "administration" instead of management, implying it didn't rule but rather assist, but I don't know the exact details.
Many so-called professional managers are actually salespeople who have leveraged themselves - sold themselves as managers regardless of how good they are at actually managing. The closest equivalent is politicians.
Sometimes an owner is actually forced to take on multiple such roles at the same time, especially in a small company or a startup. Then they tend to fail thanks to their shortcomings unless they get or hire help.
For example Jobs was not particularly any good manager. He was a salesman and a designer. He hired good managers. When he managed directly he got abject failures, that only his skill in sales partly covered.
The article described a case where someone hired a manager to actually do the job of a process quality engineer/quality officer.
Leaders who don't want to be leaders are bad leaders.
I lead a guild once, because I wanted to decide how my time was spent and didn't want other people to decide for me. I didn't want to be a leader. I don't want to tell people what to do. I don't want to give orders everyone else has to follow. I like the team approach. But people are conditioned to follow. Except they aren't following... when you apply too much pressure.
I set up a website to plan raids. Paid for a domain. Went through the hassle to configure it and a discord server and a bridge between those and all I wanted was that people fucking sign up or off from raids. I asked them when they're available and made a plan most people are comfortable with. Only 5 out of 30 people did even register on the site. They joined the guild because it was advertised as a raid guild with social spots but raid being the main theme. A RAID GUILD. After 2 months I was so stressed out that I simply abandoned the guild and left the game.
I can't do everything alone. When I said that I never felt so stressed out in all my life 2 people offered to help with leading raids but at that point it was too late. Some players joined from other guilds, got spell upgrades for free, then left the guild. Some people joined from other guilds to cause drama and distress.
This is of course not real life. But it's close. You don't pay your members money for work and can't expect they follow guidelines. But holy crap, can you at least expect some interest in the main theme of the guild and them to sign up on the site and sign on and off of raids?
I never wanted to be leader. I feel well in the role of an advisor, someone who helps lead. But not the sole person responsible for everything. I'm not perfect. No one is. I was overwhelmed because every piece of the hierarchy in the end asked me what to do. And if I postponed answering things would get worse.
In software development I can be agile and change things around, but people demand stability. They want a bed already made but are not willing to do the effort to build that bed.
In retrospect I should've continued and "fired" 90% of the members even if that meant the end of independent raiding. But I was too stressed out and losing key people, because that game was designed around key roles being present in a raid. I didn't make the necessary decisions because I didn't want to lose anyone and not piss anyone of. But in the end key people left regardless. So lesson learned if you do something, focus on just doing that one thing and don't get ballast on board in the first place. It's better to have a small, dedicated group, seeing eye to eye, than a large group where the majority doesn't care about success.
Anyhow, see I wasn't a good manager, despite me not wanting to be a manager.
The good kind Jobs refers to are people who see the necessity and that no one is doing it (or doing it well). They aren't the kind of people who don't understand people and fall into the trap of simply controlling and micro-managing people.
Let me give you an example of the bad kind. Google's SWE ladder goes all the say from L3 (new grad) to L9 (ignoring exceptions like Google Fellow and execs). There is an expectation of growth from L3 to L5 (Senior SWE). There is a lot of reward if you can get promoted to L6 (Staff SWE) but it is incredibly difficult. It requires a lot of luck (eg being on the right project that doesn't get cancelled). Getting to L6 now is much harder than it was 10-15 years ago.
One of the things Ruth Porat did when she came in was to control costs by reducing the promotion target percentage because it wasn't visible to people (there was a leaked memo). All promo candidates go to committee and effectively get stack ranked across committees. There is a quota ("target percentage") of who gets promoted. This creates a backlog and raises the bar for getting promoted. It gives more time for your impact to dissipate or your project to get cancelled (which was your promotion case).
Compare this to getting promoted as a manager. Your manager level (M0 to M2, which is the same level as L5 to L7) is effectively a function of your head count with the added requirement that M2 requires you to have managers as reports. So if you're an M0 (which is rare), getting to M1 is typically as easy as getting to 10-15 reports (as long as you don't screw up so badly).
So there is a breed of SWEs that bridge these worlds. They're half an IC and half an EM in the hopes that this gets them over the line.
In my experience, these managers were generally the absolute worst. They had no interest in ever being a amanager and were just ticking a box for an L6 promotion case. Career development tended to be zero. Everything was seen through the lens of what helped them get promoted. If that means throwing someone under the bus, so be it.
I think one of the best things Facebook did was they effectively didn't allow this. Having reports as an IC generally wasn't allowed. Being an L5 with reports was mostly not allowed. I mean there were some exceptions in some orgs and for some people but it was exceedingly rare. You'd see people ask "why can't I be a manager at L5?" and you heavily suspected the main motivator for this question was an inability to get promoted to L6 as a SWE.
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from senior vice president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics:
1. deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions
2. immersion in the details of those functions;
3. and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them.
Article: https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...
Any self-aggrandizing jackass can talk a good game about servant leadership or supporting the team as a whole in an interview, and then go on to make himself the main character. Some of the worst of them are really, really good at telling you whatever you want to hear, and will gladly perform humility.
I don't have an answer for this besides hope there's someone above them who will observe this behavior and nip it in the bud.
Real leaders understand the burden of command and take it seriously and the stress is not sustainable for nearly anyone for the long term, so experienced leaders don’t want to do it unless it’s absolutely essential.
"I distinguish four types [of officers]. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
But they would make fantastic career politicians. You need a certain type of person to work hard to get yourself voted by telling whatever stories your voters care about, but also capable of believing your own lies and fighting for them till the bitter end.
I guess I'm too lazy to admire any of these personalities.
These people tend to cause debt to accumulate, orders to get blocked or stonewalled, infinite delays, legal costs etc.
A stupid person generally will fail early and obviously, an average person, especially in skill or experience, will get themselves beyond what they can handle before they recognize being insufficient.
Lazy stupid is fine because these people will execute the order to the letter and then slack off. If the order is clear, there is not much damage they can do. Hardworking stupid will try to do more and mess things up.
So if the order is to clean the toilets and the guy notices a leak.
The lazy stupid will clean the toilets
The hardworking stupid will clean the toilets and then attempts to fix the leak, mess things up and cause a flood
The hardworking clever will clean the toilets inspect the leak, try to do something, realize there is nothing he can do it and call the plumber
The lazy clever will take a look at the leak and call the plumber. He will not clean the toilets because he knows the repair will make a mess and it is therefore useless.
Lazy stupid was useless in that situation but didn't make things worse like hardworking stupid. Both clevers did the right thing, the difference is that hardworking wasted time but he executed the order, a reliable worker. Lazy may not be as reliable as a worker because he didn't execute the order, but he is the better decision maker.
So anyone not calling the plumber (or skilled at being one) who tries to clean it may end up in the dumps. An actual plumber will clean it after fixing or during fixing.
Best managers are IC who have the ability to trust their eng to do the work. Their main role should be “advice”, provide context and connections within the company.