Comment by talkingtab
9 hours ago
Enough already. The way to determine what kind of manager a person is, is to listen for the context they use. For an extreme hypothetical example, if you hear a manager talk about locking their team in their cells every night, you will know something about their context.
If the manager says "They look to you for leadership and clarity", you know something.
It they quote Jeff Bezo, that provides more definition.
The lesson to learn from this article is not the words, but the context. What is the context you find in this article? How does this person talk about other people? What assumptions are inherent in this article? If you find this normal, what does this say about your assumptions?
What I have learned from my years of being an engineering manager is that the corporate model of software development is fubar.
> How does this person talk about other people?
I find myself referring to my contractors as: Workers.
What does that mean about me?
I can't call them employees. I read the communist stuff a while ago and decided I didn't want to be exploited, so I thought this was just the proper terminology.
But people on the internet loath being called a worker and have called me out on this.
Meanwhile I yoyo between to nice and too hard... I think I'm naturally too nice to the point of failure. I seem to only be 'too hard' for a few months before I go back.
Thank god my industry is high demand, I think even with bad management we will survive. (I got a masters in Engineering Management + read 10 books, but management/supervision orthodoxy is diverse and contradictory.)