It is similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33675112 but about being a team leader, operations manager, or project manager.<p>Currently, I am moving from being an individual contributor to a management position. And I constantly have this thought in the back of my mind that at some point I'll do something dumb and let down people that I am responsible for. It's illogical because through the last couple of years I have substituded the manager for weeks without any issues. But I understand that this is a normal reaction for anyone who is facing something new<p>So I thought that the HN community with all its experience has something to share on such topic<p>Thanks in advance
Never managed, but I strongly recommend reading <i>Extreme ownership</i>. It's a very good book.<p>As someone who's been through a few managers. Please <i>please</i> give feedback, and not that yearly review stuff. Managers have a very hard time doing that, especially when it's needed. If you don't give people feedback, then they can't push back on the feedback (tell you things you don't know or don't know you don't know) or address it. The end result is a loop where they are stressed which harms their ability to work, and then you treat them with increasingly lower levels of respect, which stresses them out more, which makes them less able to function until you get into a situation where you soft fire them (move them to an unimportant team or project) or PIP them.<p>Also for the love of god, don't talk shit about any employees on any team. It will immediately be assumed that behavior is pervasive which will make a person question who is shit talking about them or if management respects them at all.
My biggest regret by far is managing a (formerly extremely productive) remote team that developed incredibly toxic indirect communication spirals which just got worse and worse and worse.<p>I also deeply regret ever being a middle manager when it is not my area of strength or interest and don’t plan on doing it again. Ever. If I can avoid it.<p>I learned that middle management is the worst place to be in any corporate environment. Especially in this environment of contraction.<p>You can “get it” from below (your direct reports rebel and try to undermine you). You can get it from sideways: Your peers trying to take you out. You can get it from above, your management changing to people who don’t get along with you or feeling threatened and trying to get you.<p>And you can get it from <i>combinations</i> of those things: Your direct reports and your managers teaming up on you. Your peers and your direct reports teaming up on you. Etc.<p>How did I find this out?<p>Because every combination of this happened to me. My management started fighting with each other and then it started trickling down to me directly.<p>I tried to ignore it but my manager wasn’t covering me so I tried to cover myself. That triggered more fighting and less trust and more politics.<p>And my direct reports were angry at me because they didn’t know what was going on and neither did I.<p>It just got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Like a fractal of awful.<p>To this day I do not know what I could have done better or how to fix it. I tried to stay out of it, but it was like this awful toxic stench that stuck to everything and everyone.<p>Everyone absolutely hated each other and it was so rotten and no one could get out and no one could leave.<p>There were multiple factions competing with each other and no one trusted each other and everyone was sneaking around trying to cover their tracks.<p>In retrospect I should have quit and joined a startup.<p>My advice?<p>Don’t be a middle manager.
Avoiding difficult conversations and waiting too long to deal with a people-problem. People-problems are the biggest drain on my energy and enthusiasm for work.<p>The first time I dealt with one, it was awful. I was close to quitting myself. But once I got through it, it was like night and day how much better things were immediately. Now having been through it more than once, I know what it’s like and how to deal with it and how to get through it and move on to the next thing.
A few years ago, as fresh IC/Manager hybrid with a couple juniors, I found myself with a junior who wasn't growing well relative to other hires (same team, different team, hires from colleges mostly, some bootcamps too). The two of us didn't talk about performance or contributing or engagement enough. I raised some alarms with my management peers and my manager, but I think it was too late. We transferred them to another team, hoping another team (less independent, more team based), environment, industrial vertical, new manager would foster some growth. A few months later the company let them go.<p>About a year later, they asked me for a recommendation and I said sure, I will do my best. A recruiter called me, I tried responding via voicemail but no follow up ever came around.<p>I really struggled to identify weak performance back then. I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. I also kept the topic at bay for too long. My regrets include my slow response, but my regrets extend to the unknown, if I helped ruin this kids career.<p>You really do need to ask how they're doing, how they think they're doing, and if you have any concerns, air them early so there's time to change.
I’m only 3 months into the same journey but having difficult conversations up front I’ve already learnt is really important. There’s also a way of framing it. For e.g. “I need you to” rather than “you are not doing this and it’s a problem”<p>For e.g. there’s a developer on my team who my boss managed previously and gave the impression that being a senior dev was not a huge amount of work and he could reach that milestone by Christmas. My boss was very hands off because he had something like 20 reports plus a full time software engineering manager job and contract shit to deal with.<p>I took over the team started managing him and it became very obvious very quickly that he wasn’t at the same standard as our other senior devs. So I had to make it clear very quickly that for e.g. this is a rough skills matrix of what we expect for each level and you can do the coding OK, but you don’t seem able to write tests for your language of choice, and you often start randomly working on things that we’ve not agreed in the sprint, etc. etc.
Not sure if relevant to you, but I came to tech from manual labor in the midwest, so my work ethic was probably skewed. I found my team incredibly whiny and rather lazy. I fired the laziest one after catching him sleeping for the however many'th time.<p>Not long after, I realized I was setting expectations way too high and had the 'time to lean time to clean' mindset too fresh in my head. I regret being such a brainwashed hardass, and firing that guy, and hope he landed on his feet elsewhere.
I took on 2 teams.<p>I had formed, recruited and managed a very successful team for a year or so, we worked great together, like clockwork. Nothing is perfect but it's the tightest team I've ever worked on to date. Another team was constantly causing issues for us and other teams, they were a problem. They let the manager of that team go (unsurprisingly) and so I offered to take over that team while they found a full-time replacement.<p>My thought was to make things <i>better</i> for my team and others by putting this team on the right path but it wasn't to be. The team needed to have some people replaced, but I was hesitant to do so right away as I was learning about their domain. Overall this just took time away from my main team. I eventually got completely burned out and was very stressed. So much so that I eventually decided to go back to being an individual contributor. Looking back, my greatest accomplishment of my career thus far has been forming that first team and leading it, we did some amazing high impact things.<p>So I guess, morale of the story is to not take on too much. Or think that you can always replicate success with a different group of folks.
Question to folks who respond and experienced managers: how do you deal with peer managers who're not as supportive and out to get you?<p>Context: I joined a startup and I'm leading a new function for this org.
While I have decent relationship with all others, one of my peers is far less supportive, demonstrates his value/("we made this call before you joined") at every opportunity, and even wanted to push through some of the tasks/projects on me/my team where we need not be owner but partners.<p>Management is supportive of me as well but said peer has a stronger rapport and I don't want to be finicky about this to the management.<p>How do you rightfully pushback in this scenario then?
When I was a new manager, I had a problem employee. He was very bright, but very lazy. He wasn't self-motivated and was always doing everything in a mediocre way.<p>I ignored the problem for a long time, which caused friction within my team.<p>I eventually had to fire him when the situation got very severe.<p>The mistake I made was not addressing it right away.<p>I think that now, how to fire (or better stated, "manage up or out") your first employee as a new manager is one of the most important things you have to figure out how to do right.<p>The next time I had a problem employee, I got on it right as soon as the problem was clear. Saved me and everyone around me lots of grief.
I didn't trust my instinct and hired a guy that was a pathological liar. Almost ruined the whole company. This was during the dotcom bubble and programmers where hard to come by. My company didn't pay as well as the (soon to be bankrupt) flashy dotcom firms. I really needed people and I let myself think "OK, he is odd, but maybe it's just my bias".<p>His office soon turned into a dump, he didn't show up to important customer demos ("Oh, I told you I was going to visit my sister", "I got a bad allergy after vaccination, I'm in the hospital."). He could spend weeks not producing anything, and have very elaborate excuses. Some periods in the beginning he did really good work. So I had to weigh the pros and the cons of keeping him. And maybe I wanted to avoid a conflict. I was young and had never met a person that could lie and cheat without feeling bad.<p>The worst was that he blamed his co-workers for everything. People wanted to leave. And I, as the middle manager, was caught between caring for the team, getting the work done and be accountable for the managers above me.<p>I should have ended his employment after a week. There where enough bad signs.<p>One day he just disappeared. We were worried and went to his house. It was empty. Never heard from him again. After a month his office phone rang. It was his mother. I had to tell her that he was missing. "Oh, not again", was her reply.<p>When recruiting, listen to your instincts. And be proactive when a team member is not functioning. One person could ruin a team.
Team leader. I was too happy to hire a person who, in retrospect, has resonated with me personally more than was the best person for the job. I wish we interviewed more. It wasn't a big issue - the hire was still ok, but the realisation still haunts me.