

A career mistake that capable people make - anthonyb
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121206081322-8353952-the-1-career-mistake-capable-people-make

======
polskibus
The article stresses some good points, most of them showing up in HBR every
now and then. However, the environment (esp. of a "freshly" promoted manager)
can also be at fault of the underutilization and overwork.

I found One Minute Manager to be a good book on the topic, illustrating the
problem very well : [http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Minute-Manager-Ken-
Blanchard/dp/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Minute-Manager-Ken-
Blanchard/dp/0062122606/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355125128&sr=1-4).

Coworkers and subordinates quickly spot other employees that are the "go to"
people. What you need to be able to do, is to say "NO, do it yourself" in all
but the most important cases. Give directions not solutions, delegate.

------
lifeisstillgood
I am more and more convinced that a model similar to Github is the correct one
for (software) companies at least - undirected development.

I don't mean chaos, but I do mean employees simply doing what they view as the
next most important thing. As a manager and a developer I know that managers
often focus on their priority list at the expense of sensible decisions by
those closer to the metal

The managerial decisions should be code quality (reviews) - and here need to
be violently strict for great ideas badly implemented - and general vision

Can it work - it's easier if we see work less as a centralised dictatorship
and more as a distributed collaboration.

~~~
X-Istence
The company I currently work for using KanBan, and while we have a general
sense of direction in that we have a list of things that need to get done
before a release we don't really have much of a list of things that have to be
done in a certain order (other than normal dependencies). This allows us
developers to look at the KanBan board, pick the next task and start working
on it.

If for example right now I am not too interested in solving a scalability
issue because it was only seen this one time and we can throw CPU power at it
for now, I can move on to working on the logging/metrics stuff that interests
me instead which will help us get a better insight into the system as a whole,
and maybe that scalability issue will be solved differently because of more
information.

Yes, we have a set direction (government contractors generally do), but I have
a lot of leeway in that I can choose what I want to work on.

The same can be said for every other team in the company. It has allowed us to
work together very well and yet at the same time makes it possible for all of
us to work on things we thoroughly enjoy, AND time to switch off from one part
of the project to another and solve another problem. Keep things mixed up and
interesting.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But do you pick the job or can you say "there is no logging story - we mus do
one therefore I am working on it"

~~~
X-Istence
I can, and my team can come to me and ask me for stuff like that, but it
depends on what kind of time mode we are in.

If we have a deliverable due and it is coming down the wire, wants get thrown
out for needs. So I guess my work is a little bit of column A (set by manager)
and a little bit of column B (free choice).

