
Employees leave managers, not companies - kirkus
http://www.alaisterlow.com/employees-leave-managers-not-companies/
======
cletus
The problem here is that the modern company embodies a lot of the principles
of medieval serfdom.

Serfs occupied a portion of land and owed a portion of their crops to the lord
of the manor or their feudal lord. It was slavery in all but name.

The modern company is a kingdom. Managers are feudal lords. Managers can
decide to hire (and fire) employees such that the employee is essentially
beholden to that manager. Employment status is analagous to the land serfs
worked.

The problem is that most companies have little internal mobility. If you don't
get on with your manager the best thing for you and the company is to work for
a different manager yet most companies make this exceedingly difficult.

At Google, individual engineers are far more empowered than that. There is a
strong internal process for simply changing projects.

Also, most companies have performance feedback come solely from managers.
Managers are an important source at Google but peer feedback carries a huge
amount of weight.

So in many companies employees leave because they can't escape their feudal
lord. I get it. The problem here is corporate feudalism.

Companies need to stop making it easier to move to a better team or getting a
pay raise by leaving the company rather than moving within the company.

~~~
VexXtreme
The biggest irony lies in the fact that in most traditional companies managers
(people who manage developers) are usually the people who were never smart
enough to make it as developers in the first place.

My company does this all the time. Didn't do well enough at the job interview
or you're a total bozo and poor at understanding technical concepts/writing
code? No problem! They'll appoint you as a project manager and you will get a
team of developers to manage. At the same time, the brightest and the best
engineers rarely get promoted because they are keeping their heads down and
actually getting shit done. And there is little incentive for the company to
promote such people because they lose a skilled and productive programmer if
they do that (they don't care about anything except for how fast you can crank
out code - one of the typical ailments of consulting companies).

It's a very sad state of affairs. Makes me want to quit really.

~~~
benihana
Speaking as a developer I have to say the arrogance in this post is very
disturbing. It reeks of someone who has no idea what they're talking about and
can't understand the challenges people other than developers face. To think
that managers are people who aren't as smart as you are, or are people who
couldn't hack it as a developer is ridiculous and naive and arrogant.

If your job is that shitty, and you're that smart and good, quit and find a
better job.

~~~
bad_user
And in fact the amount of shit that corporate developers are protected from is
phenomenal. Getting shit out of the way of developers is the job of these
managers.

Now of course, some companies are better or worse than others, some managers
are better or worse than others and so on.

Personally I don't see myself a manager because I lack the social skills. In
some days I barely remember to do minor things like sending out an email to my
team at the end of the day or ask about the status of some roadblock.

~~~
codeonfire
Developers are supposed to be grateful that managers protect them from shit
from even dumber and insane managers above them? Nope. Why not just fire those
insane managers slinging shit everwhere.

~~~
sokoloff
It's not that black and white.

Ofttimes, what looks like meaningless corporate bullshit to a developer looks
like valuable fertilizer to some other part of the organization, or to a
regulatory body, or to something else that makes the company go. "looks like"
phrasing was intentional here.

I was a damned good developer back in the day, and am working on being a good
manager (of managers at this point). There is an insane amount of red tape
that sprouts up over time in any large assembly of people. Some of it has some
positive purpose somewhere; some of it has no evident purpose.

The best managers seek to protect their teams from unnecessary BS, but that
doesn't necessarily mean eradicating it from the company. Shielding can be
just as effective locally, at a tiny fraction of the cost.

~~~
codeonfire
Maybe we are talking about two different things. There's no qualms with stupid
requirements, red tape, or regulations. The bullshit that I am talking about
are the ethical lapses, the lying, the backstabbing, the disrespect, and the
threats. There's no situation where that is legitimately valuable to some
other part of the org. Anyone out there who thinks this is necessary or just
part of the game needs to do an ethics check.

------
bobsy
I am considering leaving my job for this precise reason. I feel if I worked
under anyone else I would enjoy what I am doing but currently it is
impossible.

The problem is the guy has no managerial skills. Employee moral across the
company is rock bottom. We get tasks day-to-day because he cannot plan ahead.
We often drop projects to work on something else, only to drop them and work
on what we was originally. Manager never sends final designs or when he does
they later change anyway. (These are not tweaks, tweaks are understandable.
This is the entire page layout) I could go on...

Why haven't I quit already? I am currently indispensable to the company I work
for. I need to support my family. Not sure if I want to risk it on a new job
in the current climate. The short term plan is to continue being miserable.

NOTE: I would go around my manager if I could. Unfortunately it is a team of 7
and its this guys company.

~~~
jtreminio
I've heard that line of being indispensable to a company so many times. Turns
out that it's not true. They'll find someone to replace you.

~~~
bobsy
I think in many cases people over-estimate their worth. Where I work I am the
only real developer. I wrote and maintain all the products.

This makes me pretty indispensable. It also helps that before I arrived the
guy in charge of the company had a bad time with at least 3 developers. If
there is something I cannot do he tasks me to find someone and manage them so
you know...

Obviously, guy could find someone else. Someone else could take the reigns of
what I am doing. However transition time and the guys past experience with
developers makes this very unlikely.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Please do not believe he is unaware of this situation and is not made nervous
by it. Unless he is a fool - which he cannot be so much because he trusts you
to get the job done :-)

He operates in a market for lemons, but one day it may be more comfortable for
him to risk getting a Lemon Consulting firm than live with the stress of one
guy who might leave and take the whole thing down with him.

~~~
pyre
Plenty of companies have a keystone developer that they don't
replace/duplicate.

------
acslater00
Anecdotally, I spent 2 years at Microsoft (MSN division). I loved my manager
to death, and telling him I was leaving felt kind of like breaking up with a
long-term girlfriend. But MSN was a supremely depressing place to work because
there was a palpable sense that nothing we did mattered, and Microsoft was
simply running out the clock on those [hundreds of millions] of people who
haven't figured out how to change their browser homepage away from msn.com. I
left the company, not the person.

So while the lesson of this post -- that managing is important and a good
manager can greatly increase employee retention -- is well taken, the headline
is certainly overstated.

~~~
monk_e_boy
I think you are a lucky outlier. I've left all my jobs due to poor managers.
If my manager doesn't even have the basic 'shit sandwhich' approach to telling
me that I suck, then I tend to start looking for another job.

Also, broken promises in interviews - yeah, monk.e.boy, work here for a year
and you'll be the head of your very own dev team. I've fallen for that one
about 4 times. Then I leave and they ask 'Why-oh-why?' And I say 'Remember in
my interview that you said X Y and Z and none of them happened?'

~~~
jsolson
I think he may not be an outlier for Microsoft.

I've worked with a few people from Redmond who left not because of a crappy
manager or an unpleasant team, but because their projects kept getting
cancelled. It's hard to feel like you're working on something important if all
of it gets scrapped before shipping two or three times in a row. Especially if
this happens not due to any issue with the project, but due to political
happenings miles above your head.

At least, this is what I've been told. I've never worked for them myself.

------
binarymax
I spent 5 years as a full time consultant building 'Human Capital Management'
software for enterprise companies. I learned many things about enterprise
dynamics in those 5 years, but my biggest takeaway analytically is that
performance management is backwards. The people actually doing the work are
graded by their managers, and in very few cases are managers formally reviewed
by their employees. I can't speak for small companies, but enterprises would
do much better if the employees had a formal process to get a manager on some
sort of performance track - without the fear of going above their head in an
informal process.

~~~
kirkus
I like the concept of putting managers on some sort of performance track. That
is an interesting idea. I wonder what organizations would look like if this
was allowed to happen.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
The reality is that managers are performance managed, just what their teams
think isn't normally one of the metrics because many organisations by and
large don't care that much.

Speaking as a manager you'd be surprised (actually scrub that, you wouldn't)
how often when I raise concerns the team has the instruction comes back "screw
what the team thinks or wants, just do X" (where X flies in the face of what
the team want and best practice but supports what the screaming customer and
short term revenue demands).

Organisations that genuinely care about the staff I don't think would change
much, those who don't won't ever do it so it's kind of moot.

------
josephlord
I've left two organisations (BBC and Sony) and neither time did I have any
problem with my direct manager in fact in both cases I liked them although I
did have a lack of faith the top management and the direction of at least my
area of the organisation.

In the BBC case (amongst other issues) my department was earmarked to be moved
to Manchester (about 200 miles away) in about 4 years. I was clear (for family
reasons) that I wouldn't be moving so staying would have felt like a personal
dead end to me (although later the BBC's plan changed and much of the
department moved into London instead which might have been OK but the lack of
thought through initial decision was a really bad sign about the senior
management).

At Sony it was a general lack of faith that the management had enough
capability that Sony could become a profitable, viable, mass market
electronics company again. That made me happy to leave to see what I could do
on my own and be home to take and collect my son from school.

~~~
mgkimsal
Odd... I've never even worked at any one company for 2 years, so... making
work plans based on what someone decides will probably happen in _4 years_ is
simply incomprehensible to me.

The few companies I've worked at have taught me that for the most part,
companies can't do much real planning beyond 6 mos to a year at most - the
stuff we considered important in 2006 was often irrelevant by 2007 because of
changes in the market conditions, competition, etc. Planning out moves that
far ahead is probably necessary in some situations, but I've seen enough of
those 'long term plans' have to change anyway that I don't actually believe
many of them.

~~~
gawker
Agreed. I feel like it's more of an exercise to have some sort of vision but
in reality, it's really difficult to predict what the environment will be like
in 4 years.

Looking at what I have learnt just 2 years ago, some of it is already starting
to get irrelevant!

------
speeder
I agree that employees might leave managers.

But I disagree that people don't leave companies.

First, there are some companies that kinda act on their own, they are very
old, and people just obey tradition and old rules and policies. This sometimes
the managers can fight hard against, and several will fail anyway.

Sometimes, the company is in a field that make the employee leave, I know for
example many IT people that after they realised how banks operate, they felt
bad about it and quit.

Sometimes the company itself is having problems, like being sued, or going
bankrupt...

So no, sometimes the fault is of the company.

But sometimes.

Asshat managers can make people go away too.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Very good managers might shine in a bad environment and very bad ones disrupt
a good environment. Most though just reflect the organisational culture.

~~~
speeder
Exactly, and it is very hard sometimes to deviate from that culture, it
requires exceptional individuals.

Unfortunately it is seemly easier to be excepcional toward the bad than toward
the good.

------
robotmay
When my dad left one of his previous jobs, in which he was a manager of about
10-15 people; 3 of his team quit within the week. One of them told him that he
was the best manager he'd ever worked under, and that he couldn't face working
in that company with anyone else.

If I ever end up in a management position, that's the sort of manager I want
to be.

~~~
kirkus
Wow...what aspect of your dad's management attributed to this?

~~~
robotmay
As far as I know he's very fair; he shared work out between himself and others
evenly, trusted them to do the work, and made sure everyone was doing their
share. He always tried to shield his team from the managerial crap from above.
He also never got involved in office politics, and is generally quiet and
softly spoken (I differ a little from him there).

I think a lot of people resent managers because they seem to do less of the
actual work than those they manage. My dad always works hard at whatever he
does, and he expected the same of his team. Now he's retired, part of me
really wants to try doing some projects with him. He has a real interest in
building web apps that I'd love to collaborate on.

------
erikj54
This article unfortunately resonates on a personal level. This is why I
believe I enjoy consulting so much. On a short term basis I can put up with
ignorance, credit taking, silent treatment etc (All the qualities respondents
mentioned in the survey). For a long term career I'm not sure I could last.

I'm curious if anyone has any stories of how they overcame a Manager that was
not their _Champion_? I have been thinking about this a lot. In my short time
at large corporations it seems you really need someone on your side to move up
the ladder a bit.

------
gadders
Yeah, but companies pay mortgages, not managers.

In other words, I could be working for the most awesome, charismatic manager
in the world but if I'm being paid significantly below Market Rate, I'd still
leave.

------
darkspaten
I offer a corollary, "Employees follow leaders, not managers."

At one time I considered leaving a company I believed strongly in, due to an
immediate manager with which I didn't work well. However, I looked higher in
the organization to the leader(ship) I believed in and decided to stay. I'm
glad I did, because the management problem rectified itself soon enough and
now I follow good leaders and learn from a great mentor.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think there is a tidal change in software at the moment - imagine the Venn
diagram of remote working technologies, continuous integration technologies
and a willingness to shed middle manager white collar jobs like never before.

As we can enable people to work from home, because we can see the code they
wrote today up and working on the CI server, we can do away with needing a
boss to telll them what to do and watch if they do it - in fact we can pass
the autonomy many bosses have down the line - and I hope see a world where the
developer says - I have done this cool thing and it has improved our bottom
line because I measured this change.

A culture of Continuous Integration, testing changes for business KPIs allows
us to let go of the middle rank of supervision, and allows us to change the
working conditions now the supervision is unnecessary

------
lifeisstillgood
For me the best solution is to stay small - keep the organisation under the
dunbar number. That way a competant CEO can manage the politics personally,
and guide the culture effectively.

But if you are going to grow, you need one of these proxy solutions.

To me there are two outstanding solutions:

1\. Free Labour Market 2\. "add or out"

1\. Google-like - have projects and allow engineers to move around to join
different projects, and adjust via funding. THis is trying to create an
internal job market, and may or may not be effective but its a response to
Dunbars number problem.

2\. "add or out" - add measurable value, or the worst performing 10% leave.
This _forces_ a culture of testing and measuring value, and whilst it is
subject to being gamed, it might be workable.

~~~
erichocean
The world would be a very different place if the government did not provide
corporate protection to any organization with more than 150 employees (Dunbar
number).

------
PonyGumbo
I've had fantastic managers at terrible companies. In each case, I left
because of the company, not because of the manager.

~~~
kirkus
Yeh this doesn't apply to all situations. What made the company terrible?

~~~
PonyGumbo
Really ineffective performance measurement standards and incentives. When
there is no reward for going above and beyond or penalty for simply coasting
by, you're essentially creating a haven for shitty employees.

------
seivan
Best way to handle this? Get rid of management. Flat hierarchy. Just to make
sure to hire really smart engineers. Code it, test it, ship it. If two forces
opposite each other, put it in a hackathon and gain votes.

~~~
peteretep
Do you think there might be practical issues that you're not considering, or
don't have exposure to, which might explain why such a vanishing percentage of
companies work the way you're saying is obvious? Is it because no-one else is
smart enough to have thought of this?

~~~
tomjen3
Holy fuck that is an arrogant comment.

Yeah, non-tech companies who produce actual products/services can't really do
that, but then they are also not really that relevant since nobody here works
for them (outside of IT departments, which could be run as suggested).

No the real reason for almost any stupid thing done in corporate environments
is politics. Everybody is a peer and results only environments threaten those
who have accumulated power under the old system and who couldn't cut in the
new system -- which is basically all managers.

So of course this only happens when somebody with enough political capital to
institute it does so -- typically the owner.

Add to that that it is extremely unorthodox and that very few people have
previous exposure to systems like that.

And you get the few companies that do this, and do well by it.

~~~
seivan
Well thank you good sir!

------
16s
If the manager does not provide direction, ask for it. If they still do not
provide direction, set your own. The grass always looks greener on the other
side. Sometimes, you are the problem, not the manager.

Reminds me of the story about the traveler and the new city. He left because
he thought the people there were horrible. Upon arriving at the gate of the
new city, he asked a man sitting by the gate, "How are the people here in this
city?" To which the sitting man replied, "How were they in the city you came
from?" "Oh... they were horrible, mean people."

"You'll find them the same here."

------
talmand
On the day I put in my notice for my last job I found out that my immediate
manager had put in his notice as well the day before, much for the same
reasons I did. I liked working for the guy so quitting felt bad. Basically
choices made by upper management made the working environment not so good and
we had decided to move on. Turns out we weren't the only ones, within three
weeks five out of six of the web team left and gutted the department.

------
jkeel
Nice to see this discussion on HN. Back in early 2000, when I worked at
Walmart's home office in Bentonville, we had a speaker come and talk to ISD
about this exact topic. That was the main line that stuck with me, "Employees
leave managers, not companies". It's probably not the case 100% of the time
for causing the loss of an employee, but having a good manager makes all the
world of a difference in an employee's happiness.

------
breckenedge
I had an MBA roommate once and frequently read her books on management
culture. I've never actually seen what was used in those books put into
practice, but my experience is relatively small (once a manager).

The books talked about the Organizational Cultural Assessment Index (OCAI) and
a manager capabilities assessment test (cannot remember the name). Anyone out
there used these?

These seemed like reasonable, standard approaches to improving the workplace.

~~~
RyanZAG
Things like OCAI really don't work that well in practice. The main benefit you
get from them is actually asking the questions, not in the results of the
'test' or anything like that. People (and organizational culture) is too
diverse and complex to understand with a few simple charts. Beware snake oil
salesmen trying to sell you quick and easy 'fixes' for people or culture.
Always.

Culture is incredibly hard to change once it is engrained, and is going to
take real work and real sacrifice, not simple questionnaires. You should look
at changing company culture in the same way as looking as getting a smoker to
stop smoking. It's not as easy as 'presenting an argument'.

~~~
breckenedge
Yes, culture change is hard.

The OCAI is a tool, like the Myers-Briggs. The book I read [1] treated it as a
start for diagnosing your organizational culture, then provided a framework
for accomplishing cultural change. I believe it's extraordinarily dangerous to
approach (organizational) change without treating it as a process with defined
goals.

BTW, I am a former smoker, and quitting was pretty hard. I'd chalk that up to
changing my environment (I stopped hanging out with smokers).

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Diagnosing-Changing-Organizational-
Cul...](http://www.amazon.com/Diagnosing-Changing-Organizational-Culture-
Competing/dp/0470650265)

------
stoodder
I've never left a company because of my managers, in fact my managers were
almost always one of the reasons that I stayed as long as I did. The true
reasons, at least in my case, for leaving was always the lack of freedom to
make my own decisions and the companies' support for "non project related"
work. In fact, my manager did as much as he could to support my endeavors,
everything within his realm of power at least.

------
dylangs1030
This issue stems, in my experience, from the top of an individual department
or location (if it's a franchise). The top level management in large companies
couldn't possibly supervise all their department managers at the same time. So
things fly by under the radar that shouldn't because they don't have stringent
enough criteria for employee satisfaction and manager competency.

I recall this happening when I used to work at P.F. Chang's (the restaurant
chain).

We had a general manager who was absolutely loathsome to work with. We
frequently ran out of the kinds of food you'd be embarrassed to lack at a
Chinese restaurant (read: white and brown rice, lettuce, etc). However, he had
a stellar reputation and history with "corporate" and had even won awards
within the company.

The reasons this happened were twofold: 1. he was the general manager, and in
the eyes of corporate he was just saving money (they never saw the restaurant
descend into chaos and dysfunction due to lack of ingredients), and 2. he was
honestly kind of a dick. Unless you were above him on the pay scale he would
respond to suggestions with, "I'll take that under advisement."

------
wolframarnold
There was a book in the late 1990's, "First Break All the Rules: What the
world's greatest managers do differently" which was the write-up of a Gallup
study about manager effectiveness. One of its conclusions is the point made in
this article almost verbatim, that people leave their managers not their jobs
or companies. One of the most powerful sections for the book for me was the
opening chapter where they explain their assessment methodology. They compiled
it down to a catalog of 12 questions and they found that if these questions
were answered positively it correlated with high employee performance, good
financial results, good retention, etc. The rest of the book dives into more
detail on the reasons for this, one being that each employee's talent is
different and managers should try to align talents with business need,
focusing on employee strengths rather than weaknesses.

Here's the Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-
Differently/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-
Differently/dp/0684852861)

------
martindelemotte
According to this meta-analysis, employees dont leave managers nor do they
leave companies.

They leave (maybe) because of the job.

Estimated true score correlation Job Fit - Tenure: 0.18 Company Fit - Tenure:
0.03 Group Fit - Tenure: 0.06 Supervisor Fit - Tenure: 0.09

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00672.x/full)

------
jmspring
Seems like there are a lot of war stories on this thread. I disagree with the
article based on my personal statistics. When I have decided to move on, in
all but one case it has been that either we weren't shipping or the overall
product path got stale (beyond the control of day to day engineers).

I like working on things and I like working on things people use. If we aren't
shipping, I have to ask why. Periods of development are certainly reasonable
but at the end of the day you have to ship.

Where I have moved on due to management? An alpha presence who treated
everyone under him as a contractor, yet we weren't hourly, and we weren't
compensated for following up on inane decisions. I ended up stepping up,
guiding two mis-managed resources, and pushing back on some very dumb
decisions (a few were backed by the CTO). However, at the end of the day, when
I stepped back anded look at the energy I put in and what I was getting out,
it was time to leave.

Decisions to leave are complex.

------
qrybam
Very timely read for me. I work in a successful company with lots of
challenges and room for expansion, I am a key member of the team and work very
long hours (which would be better spent on my own side project).

My current manager has done all of the listed reasons-for-leaving in the
article at one point or another - I'm not the only one this happens to; it
happens to all who work with him, however I'm the only one who has to report
directly to him.

It's a sad situation because the guy is a good guy, he's just difficult to
work with and as a result I'm currently looking at my options - if I can help
it, I would prefer to stay at the company.

I understand it can be difficult for a manager to be direct with their team,
but it's something I know a lot of good people appreciate - honest, direct
feedback. You don't want to feel like you're being "handled" or used as a
crutch for the manager's own self-actualisation. It's the whole golden-goose
scenario - you don't want to kill it.

edit: typos :)

------
Whitespace
I would not wish a petty/spiteful manager on anyone. I was in a similar
situation in my last company: personal problems between my manager and I
forced my departure.

In my situation the terrible fact was that my manager's inability to separate
his personal and professional life caused the top four of my hierarchy of
needs to be threatened (it's hard to be creative and solve problems when
you're in a very shitty situation).

At the very end of my tenure, instead of talking about and trying to resolve
our personal differences, he chose to go hyper-managerial on me (in manner and
communication), making it clear that this was how my day-to-day was going to
be from then on.

I loved working with my coworkers and almost everything else about working
there, but I found it no longer mattered when I sat next to someone who will
only communicate with me in writing with HR cc'd.

------
11Blade
There is one thing that is overlooked here. There is as much pathology at the
managerial level as is at the subordinate level. We can all say we have shitty
bosses. Lets face it, there are shitty workers among us too.

It is easy to complain about managers, but "craving credit" and "silent
treatment" happen asymmetrically because the average worker is an order of
magnitude different than his cube mate.

Going from a concrete project/goal focused position with expectations to
managing those people is a much harder proposition.

I hated managing people. As a manager, you expect the same things from your
crew as you would yourself. Instead you hear every excuse, tragedy and jealous
rant for attention, rather than just getting the work done.

You try to "nurture" and "empathize" but in the end, workers run the whole
gamut from narcissist to kaamchor to subservient drone.

------
stonemetal
How far up the chain do you have to go before managers become come companies?
At a certain point a company is defined by its management, just as to
consumers a company is defined by its products. Anecdotally I have never quit
a job primarily because of my direct manager.

------
MrMcDowall
This has been true of almost every single company I've ever worked for. It's
also worth noting that Companies are reflective of the management constituency
because they control the levers; bad managers usually mean bad companies.

------
AmandaPanda
When your company is small, your manager practically is your company. I'm a
junior developer at a rather dysfunctional small company with really shoddy
engineering standards. Here, due to the small number of employees, the manager
and senior engineer practically are the company. Our senior dev has a cracker
jack box cs degree, and has been stuck in his own bubble for the past decade
writing horrible code. I also found out my company was sued by a customer 10
years ago because they thought our products and services suck. Good times.

------
ChristianMarks
At my former place of employment -- I won't bore you with the "consolidation"
memo and the unannounced reshuffling of titles and the change to generic job
descriptions in the name of "flexibility." After the reorganization, I had to
work for a smug, platitudinous, self-important, patronizing, repulsive know-
nothing. I left within a couple months of the reorganization. In just about
every case I've left jobs because I detested my boss. I tend to dislike bosses
in general, unless they are exceptionally intelligent.

------
ownagefool
From the article:-

"The key to being able to keep the good employees is not so much the salary
you offer them or even the actual work, it is more about how you manage them
and how they feel working under you as their manager. "

Personally I don't think there is a key, instead it's a case of all of the
above. You can't keep an underpaid employee happy. You can't keep a bored
employee happy. You can't keep an employee happy when you don't treat them
well. I've left companies for all 3 of these reasons, it only takes one
reason.

------
epo
I had exactly this issue at a well known British telecommunications company, I
had a personality clash with my (newly promoted) manager and leaving was
impossible because the manager did not want to see a diminished headcount. I
manouevered myself out by working almost all of my time on some other
manager's project and it got to the point where the argument that I may as
well report to, and be appraised by this other manager was unarguable.

------
toddnessa
Personally, I have observed this becoming more of an issue related to the
times that we live in. Let's face it, America has been so ingrained with the
survival of the fittest mentality for so long that finally it is sinking in.

Until people start valuing others more in society I do not feel that this will
change. Behaviors flow out of beliefs. When the beliefs change then people
change. Loving our neighbor as ourself is not a cherished value right now.

------
kylered
This article sounds like a recap of Hertzberg's Two-Factor theory which is
basically the application of Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the corporate
world.

See: <http://www.businessballs.com/herzbergmotivationdiagram.pdf> See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory>

------
jrarredondo
That was a great article. One issue that came to mind is how to interview for
these skills when hiring managers. The more I think about this, the more I
realize this is not something you can truly screen for during an interview.
Reference checks are important, but they will have to be more comprehensive
and less "self-selected" referrals (which would almost be very positive about
a given candidate).

------
Symmetry
I'm sure that this happens a lot, but it isn't my experience.

I lost my first job when 2/3 of the company way laid off.

I left my second job for manangerial reasons, but that was more that my
position was an experiment and when the manager who'd created it left the
person who took over didn't know how to manage me.

The company after that I left because we were bought out and I wouldn't sign
the new, draconian NDA.

------
hcayless
A (good) manager's primary tasks are: 1) Make sure your team knows what to do
and has what they need to do it. 2) Be a buffer between them and anything that
distracts them from #1. 3) Be a resource to help them develop. All 3 require
good communication.

Every job I've quit has ultimately been because of a deficiency in one of
those 3 things that led to conflict.

------
ashcairo
I'm sure this is true, but I believe that the root cause of the management
practices that result in this situation is the byproduct of company direction
and culture. As an example, if the direction of the company is primarily to
maintain a headcount, then there is only so many mental games a manager can
play to retain it's ambitious employees.

------
nanidin
I'm coming a bit late, so don't expect many to see this... but I worked at a
company and had several friends leave for other jobs, but they were sad to
part with their managers. They left mostly because the direction of the
company as a whole wasn't satisfying them, which is a function of management,
but usually not your immediate manager.

------
Shivetya
Which is why employee satisfaction surveys rarely ask the right questions or
if they do they are interpreted in such a way that the managers who are the
problem are not declared as such. I learned real quick to not be amazed at how
such a survey can be turned upside down to blame the employees or a select
group of them.

------
protomyth
I have often thought that tech companies should pay more attention to how
movies / tv series are managed then MBA programs. I get the feeling the
Producer / Director / Show Runner model might work better for software.
Support might complicate things though.

------
hippich
I would not down-play salary that much. I am not sure if it applies to all
sectors, but at least in my limited experience more you ask for - better you
are treated and better technology you work with. Because otherwise it will be
to expensive to keep you.

------
stcredzero
I suspect Valve has a good way of dealing with this. There, manager is a role,
and people can decide if you are good enough at that role to merit working
with you in that capacity, or not. They get to vote with their feet, without
leaving the company.

------
simplyinfinity
Even without reading the article i couldn't agree more. Currently i'm in the
position where i like my colleagues and the company, but the management is BAD
( i could write 3 pages long explanation but i won't ). Well sorry , iQuit.

~~~
kirkus
What in this instance defines bad management?

------
scorcher
Perhaps its unusual but every company I have worked for this could be sorted
out with a quiet word with upper management or HR. A little disruption moving
people between teams is well worth averting a potential clashes

------
pknerd
We usually don't like our managers for one reason or another unless we
ourselves become one and someone else replace us. This has been happening for
centuries. Point is why don't we learn lessons from past mistakes?

------
riazrizvi
Either the boss is incompetent and so that boss makes work intolerable for the
employee, or the employee is incompetent and the boss makes work intolerable
for the employee. It's often hard to tell.

------
mjheil
you developers have no idea how good you have it.

Choose your boss? yes, by accepting a job offer. Move to a different team?
Again, by choosing a company.

Move internally? Yes, if you don't mind a firestorm that burns bridges, and
moving to a job that won't use the skills I was hired for.

I'm the only one -- or at best, one of a handful of people -- who can do my
job at my nonprofit. Does that give me more power? Heck no. Best I can do is
threaten to quit, and if the boss and I don't get along, then they probably
are just aching to hire in someone else.

------
gr3yh47
I love working for my supervisor, manager, and director.

My company sucks, pay is sub par, benefits suck, policy sucks, forced overtime
sucks....

If I leave I'll be leaving my company, not my manager. and the company is HUGE

------
seivan
This is so true, so so true. Not neessarly "managers" per say, but people
involved in "decision" making that affects you.

For me; the people doing the UX, the people doing product, and etc.

------
kenjagi
A bad manager is going to hire a bad manager, and if you follow the
organization chart to the top it stops being a bad manager, it becomes the
company mantra.

------
PeterisP
That is a well known (decades+) fact - employees join companies based on their
global reputation but leave mostly based on their direct supervisor quality.

------
greendot
I've left because of managers. I've left because of the company.

When a company cuts my salary by 30% while jacking up my benefits payments by
300%, it's usually time to leave.

But, on to the article at hand.

As a manager now, those statistics at the end really kind of tick me off. It
feels very one-sided and the following text is just me rambling on... somewhat
trolling.

39%: Their supervisor failed to keep promises

How many of these employees fail to keep theirs? How many of these broken
promises were based on things promised to the manager? How much of it was in
their control? When kept at this simplistic level, this one seems like a
third-grade problem.

37%: Their supervisor failed to give credit when due

This perception of credit and recognition is one sticking point in our team
right now, especially with the people born after 1980. They want credit and
recognition for every single thing they do. If they manage to successfully eat
a meal without choking on a bone, they want public recognition for it. The
older guys on the team, we sit down and do the work because it is our job.
That's what we're here to do. The old guys can sit around and come up with
ideas and realize that together as a team we designed something. The team gets
credit. No one person gets the credit. The kids, if they have one key idea at
any point in a process, they want to be held up high. Oh and damn if their
idea comes early in the discussion and is never used directly but expanded
upon and changed, hell they think they were the sole party responsible for all
ideas and all further ideas were stolen.

31%: Their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.

Yes, I do this. I usually do this when I am trying to decide what to do with
spoiled or "entitled" employees. If I have asked somebody to quit looking at
StupidVideos.com for 3 hours a day and they persist while their projects back
up, I'm going to be silent for a while while I try and come up with a plan.
I'm not going to sit and try to motivate them. Motivating geeks is a pain-in-
the-ass. I'm not allowed to fire anybody or put them on disciplinary action
w/out months of paperwork, especially when they know how to talk to HR and
convince them that they are doing the best that they can.

27%: Their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or
managers.

Agreed, this one is bad no matter how you slice it.

24%: Their supervisor invaded their privacy.

Again, if you're looking at Facebook and not getting your work done, you need
to get over it.

23%: Their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or minimize
embarrassment.

Yeah, this happens. Sucks. Lucky for my team, when I lie my eye twitches so
there is a built-in lie detector. :-)

------
known
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking with which we created them." --Einstein

------
sc0rb
I'm about to leave my company and it has nothing to do with the manager. I
actually feel bad that I'm leaving him.

------
j_s
Employees also leave other employees, especially when they are the manager's
favorites.

------
Shivetya
FWIW - I cannot view this site as I get malware alerts, is anyone else seeing
that?

------
zwischenzug
...and managers are bad because of companies.

A crass generalisation, but no more than the title is.

------
michaelochurch
Companies are still fighting yesterday's war.

Traditional industrial labor has a concave relationship between input (effort,
skill) and output (diminishing returns) where the difference between
mediocrity and excellence is minimal to zero. Modern technological work has a
convex curve (accelerating returns) where the difference between mediocrity
and failure is minimal while that between mediocrity and excellence is
massive.

When the work is concave, you want to minimize variance, which means you
eliminate individuality and manage toward mediocrity. Control-freak managers
and petty tyrants are good at that, because you can trust them to tighten down
bolts and yell at people. ("Ahem! There's SAND in my boots!" -- Kefka.) You
build out a hierarchy, give managers total control over their reports, and
even though there's a lot of loss in the form of attrition (good people fired
by bad bosses) and squandered capability (strong people doing mediocre tasks)
that's treated as a rounding error. People are fungible and, if they're not,
then something is wrong with your process. Your goal isn't excellence. It's
repeatable mediocrity.

Convex work is an entirely different game. It's much more like R&D. The
problems being solved are a lot harder, although the upside of a success is
much greater. Technological work is becoming increasingly convex with time.

When you have concave work, your management strategy is to beat up on the
slackers. If the best people are 1.5 times as productive as the average, then
one slacker cancels out 2 excellent people, so rooting them out and
disciplining them is the right strategy.

With convex work, the danger isn't having a few slackers. It's that you don't
have _any_ excellent people, or that the excellent people you do have are
unmotivated and underperforming. The best way to "manage" convex work is to
hire the best people and get out of their way.

Managerial extortion (i.e. the manager's use of his unilateral ability to
damage an employee's career to put the employee toward his career goals,
rather than company goals or individual growth) is ruinous when one is
attempting convex work, but large companies don't see it that way. Their
processes are oriented completely toward concave, commodity labor.

So, "employees leave managers" is only half the story. Managers go bad because
companies allow them to do so. A company that doesn't want managerial
extortion can implement Valve-style open allocation, but few do. Companies
allow them to do so because they're fighting the last century's war. They're
industrial machines, and anachronistic in a technological era.

~~~
tokenizer
So how would you recommend fixing this? You mentioned hiring excellent workers
and getting out of their way, but I'm hoping you could elaborate.

~~~
michaelochurch
It's hard. Startups begin in a state of constrained open allocation. It's not
"work on whatever you want" because the company needs laser focus, but it's
also not big enough for managerial extortion/closed allocation to set in,
because the nominal social distance between any two people is still 1 edge.
Small startups can have problems, but the loss-of-culture usually happens when
companies get larger.

Around 15 people, that one-edge factor becomes less true and if you don't
explicitly manage the culture, you'll start having political problems. People
won't turn malevolent right away, but your process becomes biased in favor of
losing good people and attracting bad ones, especially as the TechCrunch
coverage mounts and you become attractive to narcissists who want to be your
next generation of transplant executives. You have to be an exceptional judge
of character to avoid hiring bad executives (remember: many of these people
lie and schmooze for a living) and judgment-of-character does not scale.

Most companies lose startup culture rapidly (like, before they get to 50) in
the process of hiring executives, because traditional dinosaur managers assess
their self-worth based on metrics like "number of reports" and want to be
handed control of other people. Also, once you have a world in which engineers
are getting 0.08% and VPs get 0.5%, the "Uncle Tom Engineer" effect sets in
and you lose your engineer-centric culture.

Valve did a couple things differently. First of all, my understanding is that
they use profit sharing instead of equity. There are advantages and drawbacks
of that model, but at the sub-0.5% order or magnitude, "ownership" is
meaningless and a more generous profit-sharing system is going to be a lot
better for most employees than a meager equity/stock-option system. Second,
they made open allocation a cultural pillar that no would-be executive can
challenge.

Valve trusts before it hires, and that's different from these get-big-or-die
VC-istan companies that hire people in bulk but don't implicitly trust most of
them with their own time.

