Comment by _blk

Did I miss the article mentioning to ask the eng staff how they actually like to work? I get corporate culture and all but engineers like having their subculture and that's fine. As a manager, it's my job to make sure my ppl feel equipped (schedule included) and to keep upper mgmt happy and convinced that it works even if work hours don't match other jobs. So I don't thinly it's ever too soon to hire a manager, as long as he thinks of himself as part of the eng team. Concerning motivation, you can absolutely motivate people by explaining why their work matters and by helping them with the corp paperwork. Example: engineers don't like SAP, I don't like it either, but the project we're working on is so cool that it's worth the 30min hassle per week and I'll sit with them until they get it.