Why Managers Are So Bad So Often
If you’re lucky enough to have a good manager, count your blessings and enjoy the situation. Working for a good manager is easy. You don’t need a book to give you advice on how to work for a good manager, because if you make mistakes or are unsure of what to do, they’ll tell you. Good managers believe part of their job is to show you what practices have worked for them over the years and explain why they feel a particular way. Good managers provide space for you to focus, get you resources you need based on reasonable requests, and help when political issues arise within the organization.
The problem is, we rarely get to work for good managers. In fact, the reputation of managers, especially in the IT world, is pretty horrible. One reason for this is that technical professionals are not in the managerial chain of command, and therefore, technical people report to the lowest level of management. That means the most common situation is that technical people have to deal with managers who are:
- the least experienced, and/or
- the least proficient
at their jobs. Managers who are good at their jobs either move up the hierarchy, or they find other opportunities that give them greater responsibilities or different experiences with the company. Great managers rarely stay in one place for very long.
It’s no wonder professionals get a bad impression of managers. The managers they deal with are either rookies who don’t know what they’re doing yet, or older managers who were never good enough to move up to higher levels. A special category includes former technical performers who moved into management without any formal preparation for the new job other than a few friendly pep talks and maybe a quick training course.
If you are a successful technical person, the situation is made worse in other ways. A lot of technical people find it frustrating that decisions that affect them are being made by someone who knows less than they do. “Why should nontechnical people,” the thinking goes, “be telling the technical experts what to do?”
This attitude comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between a technical job and a managerial one, and is summarized by the expression, professionals advise; managers decide.
That phrase will come up again. Working professionals understand the problems and presumably know how to implement solutions. A manager needs to weigh competing solutions and decide which course of action to take, relying on their employees to carry it out.
The problem is, how can managers make decisions when they don’t have your skills and experience? For one thing, they have you. Good managers know that you’re the actual expert, so they ask for your opinion. On the other hand, they don’t feel obligated to follow your recommendations. They collect information from a variety of sources, both technical and other, including financial considerations, political concerns, the career goals of the team, and more. They have to balance a conflicting set of goals in order to produce what the company wants and needs, both in the short run and hopefully in the long run as well.
Professionals Advise; Managers Decide | |
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Don’t make decisions for your manager. Nothing angers a manager more than trying to usurp their authority. Most employees who violate this do so by accident, forgetting that a manager’s job is to make decisions and set priorities for the group, and theirs is only to influence those decisions. As a technical professional, present your manager with alternatives and let them pick one. Because you’re the expert, you have the freedom to show alternatives any way you want, keeping in mind that the manager will probably want to verify them. Let them choose which alternative to take, and then do your best to carry it out. |
Making decisions is one of the perks of being a manager, but it’s also one of the drawbacks. One problem is that rarely do managers have all the information required to make good decisions. This situation will be re-examined in Chapter 3, Creating Constructive Loyalty.
Another complicating factor is that managers have to act like they know what they’re doing even when they don’t. They can’t be too obvious in expressing their own insecurities in a business environment, or no one will follow them. Being able to fake it until you make it, as the saying goes, is a survival skill at work, and especially for managers because they have to persuade technical employees to follow the decisions that nontechnical managers make. A manager, even a low-level one, has to act like they know what they are doing, especially when they have no idea what the right decision might be and they are terrified they’re making a mistake.
That’s a more extreme statement than intended. Managers live with risk as part of their jobs. Good managers accept that and find ways to handle it. Bad managers often let the fear manipulate them, sometimes by delaying decisions, or deflecting blame, or appealing to others to decide for them. Regardless of whether they are bad or good, however, they have to hide the resulting fear and indecisiveness in order to preserve any credibility.
I had a manager once who hadn’t done technical work in years. During a progress report with the team, we tried to explain why we were having trouble deciding among a complicated series of trade-offs.
The manager thought for a moment and then said, "Why don’t you try X?"
We looked at each other, surprised. The suggestion was simple, but actually made sense. When we told him that, he laughed. He had only read one review article, so he only knew one option, and that turned out to be a good compromise. As “experts” we knew too many possibilities—and were paralyzed as a result.
It helped that this was an established relationship. We knew the boss was bright, even if nontechnical, and had a history of listening to his team and only offering insights afterwards.
The inexperience of most managers handling technical people, combined with the fact they need to project confidence even when they don’t feel it, often gives working professionals a low regard for management in general. Still, it is the manager’s job to make decisions that affect your career. From the employee perspective, the best you can hope for is that your needs and desires are an important consideration when those decisions are made.