Comment by friendzis
1 day ago
> A good manager understands this, and motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company
Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates". That's not motivation, that's merely absence of active demotivation. A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the success of the unit and the whole are absolute basics and if a person is not aware of those either their manager is incompetent as hell or actively hostile.
Reminds me of those job ads where "benefits" section contains gems like "salary paid on time". That is not a benefit, that is such a basic that even mentioning it puts into question everything about such company.
Disagree. This is explicitly active: "helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team". It could include building out a team dashboard that tracks the consequences of bugfixes, for example.
Sorry, I do not understand which part do you disagree with.
> This is explicitly active
Is merely being active (hopefully towards eventual success) automatically places a manager among "good managers"? What defines an "average manager" then?
I have explored this in more detail in a reply to a sibling. I see "helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team" as a critical work of any manager, therefore I find it strange when such duties are attributed to "good" management.
It is critical. Done well, it motivates people. Some managers are better at it than others; some are great at it. Such managers are actually motivating rather employees rather than avoiding demotivation.
Not really? At a small startup, sure, this should be obvious, but a manager who is able to articulate how my work bubbles up to company success at a 1000 eng company, in a way that makes sense, is a pretty rare breed.
> Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates".
This is not even remotely what that person said. They said "motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company". That is not nearly "does not actively sabotage".
> A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the success of the unit and the whole are absolute basics
Oh please. If you reject every single thing good managers do to motivate people as "does not count" then of course you will end up with nothing. It is super easy to not see how this or that contributes to the success of a thing. It is also possible to be in position where you are in fact not contributing to the success - while you created an illusion in your head about how important you are.
> They said "<...>". That is not nearly "does not actively sabotage".
We seem to be misaligned on some fundamental level here. We are in a thread countering the notion that motivation is primarily intrinsic. My stance is that understanding the impact of individual contributions is crucial to net positive contribution towards overall success and is a tool in IC toolbox. Therefore, I value lack of such alignment as demotivating and alignment being present as motivation-neutral. In my book this is one of the core duties of a manager.
> Oh please. If you reject every single thing good managers do to motivate people as "does not count" then of course you will end up with nothing.
If you include every single thing managers do then you will simply end up shifting the definition so that every manager is "good". What's so suddenly wrong with being everyday average Joe? I do dismiss some things that not being done would reduce motivation below baseline. If a developer is expected to build a notoriously slow to compile template-heavy, multi-million sloc c++ codebase multiple times a day, a latest and greatest workstation managing the build in reasonable times is just a tool, not some motivational perk. On the other hand, a potato running the build for 4 hours would be demotivating.
So yes, I do reject alignment on things critical to overall success from things good managers do as that is something everyday regular normal manager should be doing anyway.
Different IC define useful differently and the same discussion with two of them will lead to different understanding of whether they do useful work. Not every IC is motivated just or primary by that either. Many are more of about social recognition, validation, proving themselves on something they perceive as difficult.
Obviously useful teams with obviously useful members who fully understand they are useful frequently end up demotivated because they lack what they actually need to be motivated and perceive it unfair considering they are useful.
> If you include every single thing managers do then you will simply end up shifting the definition so that every manager is "good". What's so suddenly wrong with being everyday average Joe?
Why cant average Joe manager be a good manager? Or a good programmer or what have you? In well run organizations, they are. I have worked in teams where everyone or nearly everyone was good programmer and manager was good.
Also, in most companies, the quality of hardware is not on lower lever manager. These budget decisions are made closer to CEO levels.