
Dick is a bad manager - ia
http://ieatpaste.com/2010/09/dick-is-a-bad-manager/
======
edw519
_He’ll assign a task, tell you exactly how you should do it, and then "stop
by" repeatedly to check on progress._

Let's not forget the rest of the story: Dick is not a dick by accident. He
chooses this management style to keep his people on edge. Do you recognize any
of these other things...

1\. Dick will omit one or two critical considerations about the task that you
have no way of knowing. You're expected to gain this knowledge by osmosis or
through the ether. It's your fault, not his, if you don't.

2\. Dick assigns no priorities to any of the tasks he assigns. Since by
definition, there will always be _something_ not done, he will choose that
thing to delve into. You can't win.

3\. Dick waits until 4:55 to start a conversation. Once is an instance. Twice
is a coincidence. After that, it's a pattern.

4\. Dick only uses first names. If you don't know who he's talking about,
you're the idiot.

5\. Dick will pull his people off partially finished projects all the time for
the emergency du jour. Then he will act as if he never did this when the
bumped project is not done. Again it's always your fault, not his.

6\. Dick will always find some outlying case no one has ever thought about and
drill down 8 levels deep until he's the only one who knows what he's talking
about. Everyone else is an idiot.

7\. If Dick wants something, he yells. If he doesn't get it, he yells louder.
If he still doesn't get it, he cusses.

8\. When you least expect it, Dick is manic. The greatest guy in the world, as
happy as can be, and everyone's buddy. Don't worry, things will be back to
normal tomorrow.

9\. Dick never uses formal functional specifications and rarely commits to
anything in email. That way, when things are not built exactly the way they
are needed, he can't be pinned down. It's always someone else's fault.

10\. People come and people go, but Dick is still a dick and always will be.

~~~
duck
11\. You keep Outlook calendar up to date with all your meetings, but Dick
will schedule his own (useless) meetings over them because he thinks he is
that important. Dick will never keep his Outlook calendar up to date as that
would allow you to know where he will be.

~~~
protomyth
11b) Dick likes to show his supervisors how much work he does so he schedules
meetings with his "team" at 7:30AM and 5:00PM, then takes a long lunch.

------
jakevoytko
A Dick-style manager is a sign that you've already hired some B and C quality
employees. Theoretically the only bad hire could be the manager, but I've
never seen a company with just one sub-par employee. If people don't get work
done, bad managers overreact. Terrible managers will also take the opportunity
to overreact when everything is going smoothly. They check on tasks
constantly. They run extra meetings so that you need to have something new to
report within a 5 hour timespan. They play "Gotcha!" style games. They create
a butts-in-seats environment of fear to keep employees working at all times.

In some environments, a close eye is required on an employee or two. Never
everybody. When Dick appears, he is a sign that a company is already trending
downhill.

~~~
martincmartin
I once worked at a company whose culture slogan was "by hackers, for hackers."
They're renouned for hiring top-notch programmers, and they really do.
Ironically, since hackers don't understand management, they tended to evaluate
managers only on their technical skills, not (much) on their people or
organizational skills. As an added bonus, the company was in a protected
industry and their first product (created in startup mode when they were
really small) was a game-changer, so they were wildly successful. So they
basically had the attitude "we're really successful, therefore we don't have
any big problems or need to make any big changes."

Their second product was a much larger engineering effort than the first,
probably 4x as many engineers working on it. I had friends working on it, they
had lots of stories about poor management. In the end, it was many years late
and over budget, and a year or two after the financial crisis hit, the launch
partner pulled out, and the company now had a reputation of not delivering, so
nobody else would touch them. (Protected industries are generally
conservative, they were lucky to find one customer willing to take a chance.)

tl;dr: good hackers don't know much about management, so when left to choose
managers, they're likely to choose bad ones.

~~~
billswift
This sounds a lot like a concentrated, high-speed version of what I read
happened with Sun. I have only read articles here and there about it though;
anybody know a good analysis of Sun's problems?

~~~
auxbuss
It's not really like Sun. Sun couldn't accept that it had lost the hardware
game a decade before its demise. It had great kit, it was just the market was
so vanishingly small that it was never going to support the mothership. It had
also lost the will to give "mavericks" the freedom to do their thing. It was
firing them a decade out.

"Management" at Sun was pretty tight. It's just that it didn't require that
sort of management.

------
jpablo
Dick is not a bad manager, he is a manager for a different kind of employee. I
agree that Dick hurts the productivity of the Creative employee than loves his
job. But on the other hand there's lot of employees that if not for Dick,
would be all day slacking around doing nothing.

You can say that firing the Slacker is the solution. Unfortunately it's hard
to find the Creative and most of the time that person will ask for more money
than the Slacker. Plus the Slacker is able to do the job just fine with just a
little bit of pushing.

If a Creative is working for Dick it's only natural for him to realize that he
is not a right fit for the organization and leave. Eventually leaving only
Slackers in the organization, the way it should be.

The problem comes when Dick is a manager in an organization that _requieres_
creativity, then you are doomed.

------
unexpected
This is a related tangent that I'd like some input on:

One of the characteristics of "bad management" that's shown here is Dick
constantly hovering. At my company, we've arranged the cubicles so that they
still offer privacy (walls are about 6 feet high), but that anyone walking by
can see what's on the computer screen.

Would you qualify this as hovering? We generally have no issues with casual
gchatting, facebooking, stock picking, and have never really reprimanded
anyone for that. We also don't do any sort of Internet monitoring.

Two of our employees, however, have taken it upon themselves to re-arrange
their desks so that no one can see their monitor. One of them flipped their
whole desk setup around (probably spent a good morning working on it), and
another employee has turned his monitor 45 degrees - to compensate he has to
crane his body at such an odd angle for 8 hours a day that I wonder if I'm
going to get a workman's comp claim soon.

Is it bad management if I insist that they go back to their original
configuration? I wonder if they think they're trying to pull a fast one over
me - do they think I'm an idiot and do not realize what they're doing? Am I a
"Dick" manager for wanting to know what they're up to whenever I walk through
the room?

~~~
tsuraan
I'm not sure about that 45 degree guy, but for turning your cube so that you
face out, that's sort of natural. For some people (me...) sitting with your
back to a door or an area where people are generally walking is really
uncomfortable. I don't like having people behind me without knowing they're
there. It's not about slacking, it's just about comfort.

~~~
lovskogen
I think it's a natural instinct even.

~~~
imp
To protect against marauders ;)

~~~
billswift
Not necessarily. All it requires is that people simply don't like being
startled, nothing more is required than that.

~~~
mfukar
I think he was making a reference to a certain Big Bang Theory character..

~~~
imp
Bazinga!

------
ryoshu
Dick is insecure in his own abilities and has probably hit the wall per the
Peter Principle. Good managers get out of the way of their developers; Dicks
micromanage and hamper the creativity and growth of their developers because
they fear that one day a developer may make them irrelevant. Nobody likes to
work for a Dick.

~~~
lovskogen
Yes. A Dick has probably risen to his level of incompetence. Or, might just be
incompetant, not knowing that the hell those developers are doing all the
time.

------
x0t
From the comments:

"There is a third kind of manager, who is typically a ‘nice guy’ who doesn’t
have a problem with chicken suits or a bit of browsing or working time as long
as the job gets done _but_ micro-manages the crap out you stopping by every 15
minutes to see ‘how you’re getting on’, just like Dick. Micro-management sucks
ass"

I think the third kind of manager is almost worse than Dick. Micromanagement
makes getting anything done near impossible. I've taken to wearing headphones
at the office and generally ignoring my manager due to him falling into the
third category. The phrase "How are you doing over there?" makes my eye twitch
these days.

It would be easier to stand up against Dick, assuming you have nothing to lose
by losing the job. Usually the third category is the type to have his/her
feelings hurt and resort to personal attacks should you question their
management style.

Just my personal experience, I realize that's probably a sweeping
generalization.

~~~
TheSOB88
Man up and talk to him about it if it's interrupting your productivity. I'm
sure he cares about your productivity.

~~~
x0t
Well said.

------
devmonk
Good post.

The manager doesn't always have to fit that description totally to be a bad
manager. As the post suggests, if people are saying "You should check with
____ before doing that," that probably indicates some micromanagement
tendencies, which are just as demoralizing and counterproductive, even if the
manager is otherwise well-loved as a person by some/all members of the team.

Also, if a team member tells you: "If you want to make that change, just do
it, because if you check with ____, it'll take a while or might never happen,"
that is a sign of an overly-political manager.

Finally, I'd like to add the "smiley"/"fake" manager attitude. It's one thing
to have a fun manager, but at some point you expect that your manager is
trying to get work done. If they seem always happy and poking fun at things,
it can be really annoying and make you second guess why they are trying to
make everything seem so fun (probably because it sucks).

~~~
heathlilley
Also beware the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" types who always view system
design and framework suggestions as general programmer whining and thus not
worth investing any time. A lot of times this is true but prolonged adherence
to this will leave you with a fairly antiquated technology stack.

~~~
Tamerlin
These tend to be the same folks who deny that it's broken, leading to piles
and piles of steaming code that make adding new features and fixing problems
exceedingly difficult. They routinely turn simple, six-week projects into six-
month death march projects.

------
endtime
I'm not Dick. But I've occasionally had employees who would have done better
if I were.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to manage a team where some employees need
me to be Dick and some don't? The obvious solution is to replace the employees
who need Dick's management, but that's not always feasible.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Seriously no-one needs Dick management.

Some may need more support, more monitoring and so on but no-one needs to be
spied on.

Give them the freedom but have five minute chats with each one each morning so
you can see if they're making progress. These aren't heavy things, they're
quick informal updates, what are the problems, what's done that wasn't, can I
see a quick demo and so on. Outside of that you leave them alone.

If you can't do this yourself because you don't have time then get each of
your seniors to do a couple of the more junior guys.

If they're not making progress then they have a case to answer and ultimately
moving towards a position where if they don't improve you are looking at
getting rid of them (legally, even in the UK this is possible if you show they
aren't performing given reasonable chances).

Monitoring progress is fine, that's management. Insisting on watching what
someone is doing all the time is something else.

~~~
endtime
Thanks, that's helpful. I think I was a little vague/hand-wavy in my use of
"Dick" - I agree that no one needs me peeking over his shoulder. I guess I
just feel like I can either trust someone to be diligent and focused or I
can't, and if I'm not trusting someone then I'm sort of being Dick. But I
suppose there are open ways of monitoring people as well as sneaky ways, as
you suggest.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
* slightly harsher hat on *

The other advantage of it being open is if they are messing about it's a very
honest warning shot across the bows if they are being supported but are not
delivering.

The drive for trust should confuse the fact that people are there to deliver
software.

------
roedog
Managing like Dick is a easy trap to fall into for middle managers. They are
given responsibility for delivering something, yet have limited authority. For
example they need higher level authorization for their budget.

Also, they are dependent of their workers to make them look good. Usually they
rose to a manager by doing a good job as an individual contributor, where
their work was completely under their control. As a manager they need their
team to get the work done. They can't do it alone anymore. It is not a simple
thing to learn to give up that control, and convince others to work as hard as
you had. Someone who has poor leadership skills and abilities is likely to
compensate by micromanaging.

------
nlavezzo
I agree that micromanagement (especially of employees whose job is creating
things) is a really bad idea. If it's necessary, then you made a bad hiring
choice and need to start looking again.

However, if a developer came in "high and wearing a chicken suit" I wouldn't
care how much he got done. The chicken suit might be passable if it were
casual Friday, but high - not acceptable. There should still be an element of
professionalism and respect when you're working with other people, getting
paid well, and clients are depending on you.

~~~
jrockway
"casual Friday" is the worst idea ever. Is working somehow less important on
Friday? No? Then why not make every day casual Friday.

(I am personally not bitter about this. I wear whatever I want to work, and if
someone has a problem, I'll just go work for the competition instead. Needless
to say, nobody has a problem :)

------
dkarl
_Some personality types mesh perfectly well with Dick’s Machiavellian
management style. Specifically, it seems to work on people who don’t feel very
attached to their jobs. They have separate, thriving lives outside of work,
and are fully able to leave all baggage at their desks before they go home._

\- meshing with the Dick style of management

\- being attached to your job

\- having a thriving life outside of work

\- being able to leave work baggage at work

I admit these aren't entirely unrelated. Being able to leave baggage at your
desk mitigates the damage done by Dick. Having a thriving life outside of work
helps you leave your baggage at work. If you don't have a thriving life
outside work, you are more likely to be attached to your job.

However, in general these four things can vary independently. For example, I
once had a Dick manager I hated, was apathetic about my job, was unable to
leave work baggage at work, and had a personal life that varied from thriving
to nonexistent during the time I worked for that manager.

------
dmuth
Heh. This article reminds me of a book I read awhile back, called "The
Management Secrets of T. John Dick":

[http://www.amazon.com/Management-Secrets-T-John-
Dick/dp/0970...](http://www.amazon.com/Management-Secrets-T-John-
Dick/dp/0970874693)

The book is fiction, and written from the point of view of the manager in
question, but if you enjoy reading Dilbert, this book is a pretty good read.

------
ryanwaggoner
_Specifically, it seems to work on people who don’t feel very attached to
their jobs. They have separate, thriving lives outside of work, and are fully
able to leave all baggage at their desks before they go home._

Is this a bad thing somehow? Shouldn't we all strive to have separate thriving
lives outside of work and to leave the company baggage behind when we go home?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
It's poorly phrased, but I think he means to make a distinction between people
who enjoy their work and get into it, and people who view work just as a way
to pay the bills. The latter may need more direct and focused supervision than
the former, who just needs guidance.

~~~
ia
Exactly. I see it as the difference between "It's a job" and "It's my job".

------
stuff4ben
I think that's why a lot of people here have gone on to do their own thing
rather than working for another Dick. Although I have to say, being your own
boss can sometimes be worse than working for a Dick.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apples_and_oranges>

I think apples should _lead_ apples and oranges should _lead_ oranges.

