
Google spent ten years researching what makes the 'perfect' manager - truth_seeker
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-bosses-do-these-things-according-to-google-2019-6
======
wjossey
Original content: [https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/the-evolution-of-
project-...](https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/the-evolution-of-project-
oxygen/)

Project Oxygen is a really great resource for any of you out there looking for
more information on this stuff.

One thing I’ll call out from this particular summary: > "I love to be
micromanaged," said no employee, ever.

One thing to think about is how to junior / in training mode your current team
member is. Your level of management involvement scales (micro to macro) as
your team member becomes more senior, and you’re able to trust their work, and
they’re able to trust your direction. I’ve made this mistake where I had a
junior employee, gave them tons of autonomy and freedom, and they floundered
and felt “unmanaged”. To me, I was just “not micro-managing” them. To them, I
just wasn’t managing at all. Management isn’t one size fits all, and the
techniques we use has to vary based on each person on our team. There is no
“One True Way”.

Coaching is an interesting topic for a lot of people, as I see this as a gap
for a lot of the managers I work with through my mentoring program. We teach
coaching during our leadership cohort program (
[https://connect.eagerlabs.com](https://connect.eagerlabs.com) ) for this very
reason, and I’ll be curious how many of our graduates actually look to start
taking ICF workshops or certifications coming out of it (or some other
coaching certification network).

~~~
Aromasin
To add anecdata to further your point, I wasn't sure engineering was for me
until I found a manager who could guide me as a junior. I was fully prepared
to quit and change careers, as I felt completely out of my depth and
questioned my own competency. Luckily, I decided to try one more work-place
and ended up with the fantastic boss I have now.

I'm sure for Google, who generally hire incredibly talented engineers right
off the bat, a 'no-micromanagement' policy works well; but for a fresh-faced
undergraduate straight out of a second-rate university, micro-management and
mentorship is crucial. Something that might take a junior hours to do can be
solved in minutes with a bit of guidance. I think sometimes the senior
engineers I work with underestimate how much knowledge they have to share, and
overestimate how much knowledge a 20-something year old engineer with one
internship under their belt has.

~~~
devnullbyte
It sounds like you're lucky enough to have not experienced micro management,
but instead close support.

Micromanagement plays out as a constant barrage of needing to be updated on
every single detail that you work on. It's immensely tiring, and essentially
comes from the manager not really trusting you and exercising too much
control. They need to know about every action you take and how long is it
taking (and why is it taking X long). It's horrible and drives people to look
elsewhere. Project managers also fail badly at this. They badly manage the
customer and try always be a 'yes' man to every whim they have, and end up
driving the engineers crazy by wanting constant updates hour by hour.

~~~
Aromasin
I'd say it's very much more close to a scale than a binary "good/bad" when it
comes to micro-management. Sure, I don't want to have to explain myself every
hour as to how things are going, but I likewise I don't want to have to track
down my manager _to get managed_.

With my new manager, by him checking in with me more frequently to see how
things are going I can gauge my performance better from his reaction, pick up
on errors I've done early on in the process that I wouldn't have spotted
myself, and build a better dialogue with him. Frankly, if this comes from the
manager not trusting me then I don't blame him; he shouldn't - I'm an idiotic
20-something year old. I haven't built that framework of expertise where I can
do a job without error or guidance.

Conversely, a 'hands-off' boss for me meant that I'd be working all day, only
to hand in the work and find out I'd done something completely wrong and
needed to re-do things from scratch. I might be doing a job as I've read in
the spec, but it turns out there's some common practice way of completing it
that I'm just expected to know right off the bat. I wouldn't know what the
intended outcome of a project was, because I had never completed a project
before.

Micro-management is like captaining a boat. If the skipper constantly corrects
the course, he'll exhaust the crew - but if he doesn't correct enough, the
boat can veer off rapidly with no one at the helm.

------
stirfrykitty
One thing I took away from growing up a military brat and then being an NCO
myself in the military:

You lead people, you manage things. People are not managed, they are either
led well or poorly. Good leaders lead from the front, right alongside their
charges. This is one thing I miss from my military time. Leaders should be
working, not sitting in an office breathing rarefied air and distant from
their charges.

I'm thankful my current "boss" is happy to simply let me and my one colleague
run with it. Should we need something, we ask, but otherwise we know what to
do and the road map is clear. We work with a sense of urgency, get things done
and keep the boss happy. He looks good, we look good. Another thing that is
detestable is too many meetings for the sake of meetings. Have a purpose for
the meeting. Allow feedback, take constructive criticism (leaders, I'm looking
at you), and actually lead with your troops, not away from them. My sole
colleague and I get more done in one day than I did in a week at my previous
position because the bureaucracy would not get out of the way.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

~~~
bespoke_engnr
This is so true. Another thing I've seen great NCOs do:

When someone has to do something boring/dirty/ugly, never let them do it
alone. Sometimes having a buddy help you with shit work can actually turn it
into something fun.

~~~
stirfrykitty
So true. When I served, the occasional crap job would come around and everyone
was expected to chip in.

We had to field day the barracks every Thursday night. There was no liberty
until it was done and inspection complete. As an NCO, I made sure that myself
and other NCOs took turns on the buffers, mops/buckets right alongside the
Privates and Lance Corporals. There is no "I" in team. This is one thing about
the Marine Corps I miss. A very few people could move mountains. The Corps is
able to do so much with very little.

------
arkitaip
Skip the blog spam and go directly to Google re:Work where they publish tons
of useful research about office work, recruiting and management:

[https://rework.withgoogle.com/](https://rework.withgoogle.com/)

------
sunstone
Having identified the characteristics I would be interested to know how
successful they were in training new managers to be like this who didn't have
a lot of these traits to begin with. My guess is, not very successful.

------
chid
Is there a paper or presentation (with methods/data) on this? I've been
looking but I haven't found much.

------
simonswords82
All this article tells me is that good managers manage their staff well.

This is clearly more of the usual click-bait nonsense from Business Insider.

------
tshanmu
will downvote this if I can :) not good enough to be on HN frontpage...

~~~
dontbenebby
I don't think you can downvote front page articles, just comments. I seem to
have hit the threshold to vote on individual posts, not sure if there is a
higher threshold for articles.

Edit: and speaking of voting, since this got downvoted: I wasn't the person
who downvoted you. I felt bad you got marked down and wanted to let you know
since sometimes on HN people can be weird about "HN is not Reddit" :)

~~~
nvrspyx
Posts use “flags” instead of downvotes. There’s no threshold to flag a post
either.

~~~
dontbenebby
I thought flags are for TOS violations, not pure disagreement. Or should I go
back and flag all those who emacs users who besmirch Vi? ;)

~~~
nvrspyx
You're correct. I can no longer edit my post, but I should have specified.
There's no true "equivalent" of downvoting posts, just the flag system which
downweights posts like downvotes do comments. After it reaches a threshold,
the post becomes hidden.

It is supposed to be used strictly for posts that violate the guidelines (i.e.
off-topic, reposts, incorrect titling, etc). If a user keeps flagging content
inappropriately, action may be taken against the user instead.

