Most People Don't Need Managers

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all right folks it is Monday January 13th I'm just heading home from the office um we're going to do a mini rant I guess uh sorry I just got a message for one of the engineers on brand ghost um we're going to do a mini rant from something from LinkedIn this morning that I mentioned on one of the previous videos just brought it up briefly uh um I think that'll be kind of fun I got to be careful when I rant though because I don't like to get mean um I still want it's like a I have to catch myself from ranting or else I get very mean and I don't like to do that so we will we'll keep it positive um but I'd like to get a point across so we're going to talk about uh whether or not you need managers or

not um spoiler alert I'm a manager so uh I have a bit of a bias here but we'll chat through that uh I am sort of trying to get home pretty quick because I just finished a status update meeting that goes uh sort of after normal hours to to accommodate different geographies and different teams and stuff but I have a live stream at 7M so in uh just under an hour um on my main Channel called Dev leader that's where I every Monday at 700 P p.m. pafic specific I do a live stream on topics like we we go over on this channel in general um but because it's live there is the chat to be able to use uh and I I really like just spending more time answering questions in chat but um if you're curious about the topics that I go over on that live stream uh generally like 95% of the time they are the same topics as the newsletter content that I have which is at weekly.

D.C if you do not like newsletters that are emailed to you and you think it's dumb don't worry I'm not suggesting you have to go sign up or anything like that um if you just want to read what the topic is going to be it goes out every Saturday and you can just go to weekly. deev L.C and and read through it um and to see if you're curious about joining the stream to to ask questions about it or just anything you want really so um with that said let's dive into things so um the context here is that I post content on line as a content creator uh sort of on the side cuz I like to be able to try and help share experiences with software Engineers or aspiring software Engineers it's probably how you ended up here because either you've watched some

other videos or the algorithm on whatever platform you're watching most likely YouTube has kind of directed you over here um because that's the kind of stuff I talk about so um I post on like every every single platform though uh so like obviously if you're watching a YouTube video here um I'm not just like a a video creator um it's just one of the things I do but I you know post on LinkedIn Twitter threads Blue Sky uh Facebook Instagram Tik Tok I post everywhere um but obviously platforms like LinkedIn and stuff I have a lot more written content I haven't written blog articles in a while um because I've been building brand ghost that helps me post this stuff everywhere so um on LinkedIn and wherever you can read sort of like written format posts I generally have stuff about CP and.net or uh

more generally just like software engineering like career stuff or in my opinion like how to how to be a better software engineer so one of the posts that I had was around um managers and like sort of basically this idea that like if you have a manager and you'll hear me talk about this a lot on this channel you'll hear me say like hey that's probably something you should get aligned with your manager on like have a conversation with your manager and people probably get sick of hearing me say this but I have to keep saying it because the number of people that I talk to that don't use that as like a as a step in their troubleshooting is wild so don't get me wrong when I say this I love that people are are leaving questions and comments or uh they'll send me

messages and say like hey I have a a situation how would I navigate this and the first thing that comes into my mind is like and obviously my bias as an engineering manager is to be like man like why AR you talking about this with your engineering manager um and it's just like it's a common theme right so um part of me you know like I like to talk about things from different angles I think that you know many people either uh are new and you know haven't really kind of built up a a working relationship with their manager maybe that seems weird it's intimidating um you know that's my manager like they're they're my boss how am I supposed to talk to them about whatever topic um they might be fearful maybe they have a shitty manager I like I can't rule that out

it's uh uh I like to think that how I lead teams how I manage teams is sort of not the the crappy way to do it um but everyone's going to their own different style um but you know um you'll hear me talk about how I lead and how I manage and I wouldn't be doing it if I thought it was crappy right but my experience as an engineering manager has led me to believe and lean into the fact that I want to have uh like basically a high trust high respect High transparency working relationship with the people that I manage and that means that it makes it easy for me to give feedback or easier if I have to give critical feedback they know it's coming from a good place like I'm trying to help them and it should also mean that ideally they

feel comfortable giving me feedback right it goes both ways so for example if someone was like on my team and they felt that they weren't understanding their career progression um like hey I'm trying to work to be uh you know I'm a level 61 at Microsoft I want to be a level 62 software engineer like I don't really know if I'm on track um sorry we had to get past some people that can't go the speed limit um then like that's feedback for me right like everyone's going to have a different level of you know information that they're looking for or uh how much they want updates on uh sort of their work progress or uh some people for example really need to hear frequently like if they're doing good work other people are like they don't want to be recognized that way everyone's different

and It's tricky because I might not know this certain detail about someone on my team and it's really important for me as a manager to be able to get feedback right and that doesn't necessarily mean someone's giving me feedback and saying hey Nick I think in General you're a crappy manager like therefore go do this it could be very specific to their needs and other times it might be more General like saying hey Nick when you do this as a manager like this is sort of the the effect it has and I think that it would be nice if you could approach things a certain way like I want that feedback because I can't be a better manager unless I get feedback just like it's really difficult for anyone to improve if they don't have a feedback mechanism okay so what I did was I

wrote a post essentially talking about this because I think that many people very quickly go to like uh whatever they're not getting information from their manager or um they don't they don't have alignment with their manager or whatever um they feel like their manager is not paying attention and the first thing they do instead of trying to have a conversation about it is they go well that's like it's like something that's unsolvable therefore I either just remain unhappy and frustrated in this position I.E not give them feedback or they go screw it like my manager obviously sucks there's no way to make this situation better I'm just going to go find another opportunity again no feedback mechanism I mean that's a little bit of an implicit feedback mechanism of an engineering man constantly has people trying to leave probably means you got to do better

right maybe not always there might be external factors but I think you get the idea now what I'm not saying is that every single manager is going to be the most open to feedback and as long as you just talk to them they're going to be awesome and it's everything's going to change like I can't make that claim that would be kind of ridiculous because I know that crappy managers exist there are there are managers that would never want to hear feedback and that are micromanagers and want things a certain way and don't want to hear anything you have to say and actually don't really care about you they just care about themselves like people like this do exist my meta point with a post around this like you should try to find Opportunities to work with your manager to build that relationship up to

to be able to give them feedback is essentially too many people just don't focus on this at all they don't even give it an opportunity and then I go on to say like if you never have this opportunity for feedback how would you ever expect that these people get better and I'm not saying it's like solely your responsibility to give the feedback to your manager so they can do better in their career but like if you it's like if you want someone to do better and you don't give them feedback like do you just magically expect that it happens like just reverse it right like as an engineering manager if I was like oh this person's underperforming and I just sat back and never said anything to them why would I be surprised if they just kept doing what they're doing and then I was

like oh they're so bad oh I'm so frustrated like that doesn't make any sense so I wrote this post to try and highlight this and saying like in my opinion you should try and find ways to improve the working relationship such that you can give feedback to your manager and try to improve things before you know just kind of giving up on the fact that a situation can be improved basically if you invest a little bit of energy into this you may have better success than just avoiding it all together and uh these people really need to speed up because we got to merge and you can't merge if you're going below the speed limit okay we just got to get over one more Lane here two more Lanes excellent okay um maybe we'll actually get home in a good time so what happens is

obviously it's LinkedIn you're going to have the uh the AI comments that are like superb like thoughtful post you're going to have the people that basically vigorously agree with anything you have to say uh you're going to have people that disagree which is totally fine like I had some people saying like uh you know my experience has been that my managers aren't open to feedback which is to it's totally valid right that's why I was trying to say like I'm not telling you that this just works with every manager I just think that it's something that you need to be open to if you want to try and improve a situation um so totally valid right you know and then someone just said um comment this morning was most most people don't need to be managed which I thought was interesting because um most people

don't need to be managed I think basically most people don't need to be micromanaged but it sounds like I hear that maybe it's just me misinterpreting what this person's saying is that basically we don't need the role of a manager because why would we need that if most people don't need to be managed right um oh man there's a bus we got to get around the bus bus is driving in the fast lane and not going the speed limit is like got to be one of the most aggravating things ever um prob like I think they were going like 45 in the fast lane at least it's two lanes here uh cuz up ahead it goes down to one and I have absolutely been stuck in traffic only to get stuck behind a slow bus in the fast lane where you're literally paying money to

drive to go slow um so you know I don't really take well to the idea as an engineering manager where I've spent most of my career trying to do this that we just don't need the role of an engineering manager so um disclaimer spoiler alert um I went and checked this person's profile uh and they're a contract worker which is interesting because I think that probably in this person's experiences like I didn't I didn't really have a productive conversation with them but I suspect that um you know their style of working is that they're they don't enjoy being integrated in teams they're not interested in anything to do with like career progression and in the sort of traditional sense um but their claim is that most people don't need to be managed and my exact opposite experience is that if we just had the engineers

because before Microsoft I worked simultaneously as an engineer ER and an engineering manager so was a hybrid technical manager role um I know what it was like to have like non-technical managers or to have bad managers or to have uh absent managers as an engineering manager now I know what it's like to have you know absent managers or to have bad managers I know what that's like so I can totally agree with like most people don't need to be micromanaged by the way some people do sounds kind of crazy I know uh but I've actually had like interns or Junior developers that actually do need to be micromanaged and actually perform better and actually are happier in some instances where they are being micromanaged and it's because they haven't yet figured out how much time they should spend on stuff and they really need that

guidance and they have told me that when I start giving more guidance around timelines check in with them more that they're like this feels better thank you I realize that sounds totally ass backwards because it's not how I would ever expect anyone to operate but I've had situations like that and they like it and then we kind of build up their sort of momentum where they can understand this stuff better buddy if you're going to merge in you got to commit to it you can't be trying to merge in going slower than me it's not going to work too well um so you know I don't think most people need to be micromanaged I think that does actually not work well but to say most people don't need to be managed I think is inaccurate because I cannot imagine any place I've ever worked just

not having management now I think and maybe this person you know I I cannot speak on their behalf I don't know and this is where I'm trying not to be rude or mean right maybe from there experience they don't really understand how much happens behind the scenes on engineering teams because isn't it just code and Building Things and writing tests and poll requests and builds I mean yeah it's a lot of it but I don't think people really realize how much happens that you're not seeing that's just code and uh I've made videos about this before when people transition into engineering manager roles one of the things that they don't realize is how much time gets spent on people at least if you want to do it effectively cuz you can absolutely be an engineering manager and neglect people altogether and guess what's going to

happen you're probably not going to have a team that wants to stick around for very long so this person I I had explained to them I gave them a list of things I said and maybe it's my fault maybe I was a little bit too sarcastic with them because of how they post to their comment um so I will take some blame there but um basically said oh sure like I haven't seen people and then listed a whole bunch of things that I do as an engineering manager that I believe help people for example helping people get unblocked from the work they're doing helping people navigate when they're having difficulties outside of work and how that's affecting their work that they're doing um having conversations with people about interpersonal conflicts at work having conversations with people about not being able to get buying from other

teams uh I've had conversations with people where they're uncomfortable speaking English I have many conversations with people that often have nothing to do specifically with code I also have plenty of conversations with people about their code um the point is that I was trying to give a bunch of examples of like as an engineering manager here are the things that I do on a regular basis to help people and um the the response I can't I the response was great um and basically they wanted to say along the lines of I disagree with you and they use the phrase and like something like in all of the other things you spewed from your managerial pules is what they said to me um and then they said at the end of it like looks like I'm right so they the most nonsensical I've ever seen someone

try to like use as a claim as evidence to being right was like I don't like what you said I'm going to insult you and then like QED therefore I'm right um I think all that that really proved is like this person doesn't really have much for interpersonal skills maybe um so I said yes looks like you're right and then uh after that they deleted their comment which is very fascinating to me so I had to ask I said why did you delete the comment about my managerial puls and then I think they tried to make a statement like oh maybe I was not overreacting but maybe I don't know I was like leaning into it too hard and then they said then they had to like double post and they were like but I'll I'll let you get back to like helping your teams

like kind of uh sarcastically and it's like I don't know man um just like sure um I don't have any idea what I'm talking about um is what I learned today which is pretty cool um you know no one needs career guidance no one needs any sort of assistance they can figure it out on their own which is great I mean that means I can retire or go to move on to do other things which is super awesome um but I thought it was kind of funny um like I said I think one of the things that's going on here is the the nature of the work that this person's done for their entire career like they're Their Own Boss they're a contract worker right so they have chosen a path that's likely very much the case where they don't have a direct manager they

have someone who might be a stakeholder uh for the work that they're doing but they don't have like a manager that's going to be guiding them at all and perhaps for that person it works very well that's why they're doing it this way so what you didn't hear me say is that there are zero people in the world that do not need managers I didn't say that um but the claim was that most people don't need managers and um I don't know if most people are contract software developers or if most people work at an engineering organization in teams um so maybe someone has some data around that and maybe statistically I am actually Incorrect and that most people are contract workers that don't need managers or their solo devs I don't have the data so if I'm wrong that's cool I learned something today

um but I think that I needed to be able to at least explain what the benefit of a manager is to someone who uh I guess refuses to acknowledge that such a thing is helpful and this is I made videos on this before too but um when people go to argue things on the Internet it's really funny um because instead of engaging in like a what could be like a thoughtful exchange to just be like I won't even entertain your perspective go into some type of insult and then just like dismiss and sort of restate your claim to me I'm like why are we doing this right this is such a a moronic thing to do like you're literally wasting both of our times um instead what's really cool actually is let's take person this is why like sometimes you'll hear me talk about things

and I actually try to explain other perspectives that I may not agree with and I'm going to do it right here right so what would have been really cool is if this person leaned into the fact that they were like hey like I am a contract developer or hey I am a solo Dev and um I actually I actually enjoy the fact that I don't have a manager and then said like and here are some of the reasons why like I like that Freedom flexibility or um how it's help me sort of learn my own way and how to be effective and uh so you know I find that maybe this advice doesn't align with me because I wouldn't want to find myself in those situations or something like where I I need to sort of lean on someone for that type of assistance like

that would be like an insightful thing for me to learn about how they navigate their software development right I'd be totally open to hearing that that's cool um I think one thing they said too and I I omitted this um was they said something along the lines of like there's nothing I would want less than to like share my uh than to have to share anything personal with someone that's only aligned to like what what a corporation wants like I don't know where this person thought I said like you must share personal stories with me I don't know um kind of weird I think maybe they they're trying to make a weird argument around the fact that I said you know if people have challenges outside of work and they want like some help with that then that's something that you know say they can't

get their work done because they have a sick family member like I don't know you don't have to tell me you have a sick family member but if you can't get your work done we're having a conversation about it right so I need to understand what's going on I don't need the details if you don't want to tell me that that's totally cool I don't need the details but if you said hey I have some like personal things going on outside of work and they're causing me to not be able to focus and I would need some extra time is it okay like that's totally fine like I just want to know that you're okay because if I start to see your performance dip and I don't know what's going on in my opinion as a good manager I want to look into that and

try to make sure that I can help support you so no I don't need the details about your personal life if you want to share them with me because you're comfortable that's totally fine right if you said you know I have uh some challenges outside of work and you want to leave it like that and say they're distracting and uh causing you to maybe lose focus at work or you know you can't stay late or whatever right that's fine leave it there but if you said like hey um you know my my partner's been sick recently and we've been going to the doctors a lot like if you like I'm not forcing you to share anything you don't want to share so I don't know kind of like a ridiculous way to look at it so I don't know man people on the internet are

funny but I think uh come on let's keep going here that is a green light you are allowed to drive um you know I I look at my role as an engineering managers as as a support role um I have talked to Engineers on teams that have absent managers um the re here's here's a bit of a litmus test for uh like for me feeling like the work I do adds value okay and aside from just like my manager saying good work Nick um which is nice to hear but aside from that one of the things that tells me that I'm having a positive impact um maybe in like the most meaningful way is that I have had people in my career that will follow up with me whether it's months years later after working together and say hey do you have openings on your

team because I would really like to be able to work with you um where people are kind of seeking that out because they've had an experience with me where they said hey like I do want to be supported in that way I've seen how you lead teams I would like that like or you know I have I have uh you know reported to you before and I would like to be able to do that again in the future um like to me that's a that's like one of the best Mar markers I could have that's like um that I'm doing or sort of that I'm supporting my teams right so that's a Feelgood kind of thing but if I you know if I had never heard that or I had people that were constantly leaving my teams maybe I would feel the other way like

maybe the work I'm doing is not helpful um so yeah I don't know I think this person's wrong but like I said maybe statistically it doesn't work that way but anyway um I think that's all for that topic just a little rant um I don't know be interested to hear from people if you're open to having a positive constructive conversation in the comments um you know like what kinds of managers have you had and how has that impacted you and if you're the if you are the kind of person that's a solo Dev um contract worker or maybe maybe you've only worked in teams and you're like I actually don't want to have a manager I can navigate my career totally fine I never get blocked on stuff like and I'm not trying to be fous here like I would actually be genuinely curious if

you've been able to sort of navigate working at a company as a software engineer and you know managers have only made things difficult for you because I would love to understand is it like because the manager was bad and what and what made them bad in your working Rel relationship or is it just that you've never had a manager provide some type of support that um that you thought was helpful Andor perhaps the opposite only made things more challenging that road is terrible so yeah if you're you know a person that has experiences they want to share I'd love to hear in the comments um cuz like I said like I'm open to different perspectives I'm not open to when people are trying to be a piece of to me um don't really stand for much of that but I try to make sure I'm

not being too mean anymore um I don't like doing that like I feel I feel bad about it after maybe like when that person deleted their managerial puls can you can you like imagine writing that to a stranger it just makes me really like I to give you an example I feel like everything that I've said to this camera in this conversation I'd be totally fine to have a conversation with this person their face about it because I don't feel like I was mean and I feel like anything I said I was even take trying to take on some of their perspective and navigate it like why like what would I have to be worried about to to talk through this right but for them like would you literally having never spoken to me before and I said these are things that I do as

a manager that I think are helpful and then you go on to say something about my managerial puses like would you would you actually say that to me that's that's weird it's a super weird thing to say to someone so um anyway I do hope uh that this person's able to kind of continue on successfully in their career if they're doing contract work um or independent software development they don't need a manager excellent and again I'm not being factious I want people to succeed um and I I hope too that they can work on some of their their interpersonal skills because I don't think that's any way you talk to anyone really seems kind of bizarre but uh maybe they're in a bad mood I don't know maybe they've had really bad experiences with managers often I find um and I've actually had some interesting

troll comments turn around um I do find that when people take really aggressive stances on things and they become mean so like you make a post about something or a video and someone comments back and they're just like ripping into you for something um and just being mean right instead of like talking about what's going on I often find that these individuals have had a really bad experience and what they're doing is like having almost like an emotional response to what they read or watched and instead of going into like a let me share some different perspective with you on this instead it's almost like they they take out I don't want to say trauma that's maybe too extreme but they take out their negative emotional response on you instead um one example of this I can't remember it was on Blue Sky I can't

remember what the actual conversation was about and this person responded to a post I made and they were just being mean and I I remember cuz I remember this conversation because I not the details unfortunately but I was driving with my wife and she doesn't like what I mean to people on the internet which is fair um so I said hey like this person's you know being a bit of an and she's kind of like sitting there like like don't don't do this like you know whatever and I said no like I I said I'm actually going to say to them like it sounds like you've had a bad experience with this do you want to you want to talk about it and they actually turned their sort of like troll rant into into something that was like yes I have had a bad experience

with this and uh and we talked about it and then we left that conversation being like cool like thank you for sharing your perspective um so yeah usually when I see people that are just being a piece of it's like um I think think it's because they had a bad experience and they don't really know how to um I guess like share share things effectively or at least in like a constructive way right because like I said I'd be happy to talk about that stuff but I got a live stream to do it's in 20 minutes I made it home on time I can even eat dinner this is great um if you want to join the live stream if you're watching this you've already missed this week's live stream on dev leader so on my main Channel Dev leader next week Monday 700 p.m.

Pacific join me it'll be on software engineering discussions maybe a little bit less ranty than this one um but please come with your questions career related technology related happy to try and answer them um the topics are from my Dev leader Weekly Newsletter at weekly. deev L.C if you just want to show up and ask questions that's totally cool too so hope to see you there and I'll see you next time take care