
How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team - voska
https://getweeklyupdate.com/manager-guide
======
bb88
A better title would be "How Management Works in 2018."

Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great
product. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being
consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors.

Both of those topics have been left out of this piece.

~~~
darkerside
I tend to agree. This piece reads more like, how to be a director or VP.
Setting the culture is not a front line manager's job any moreso than
individual contributors. A manager just needs to keep his folks productive in
a way that's aligned with the company goals.

~~~
gowld
Why?

ICs don't pay so much attention to the CEO of the company. An IC is CEO of
themself. A manager is CEO of the team.

> needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company
> goals

How is that different from "Setting the culture" ?

~~~
krolley
Because you don't set the values of the company, you just align your team to
the goals of your larger organization / company.

~~~
lostcolony
Yes and no.

My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they
do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with
subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear
disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and
view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable.

As a manager I could take that value, consensus > correctness...but I choose
not to. Instead, I create an environment where my team instead chooses
correctness > consensus, hashing it out internally, hidden from the rest of
the company (thereby specifically eschewing 'transparency' as a value, even
though it is both one we value internally, and one the business claims is a
corporate value), reaching out for more information as needed but not
venturing or asking an opinion until we come up with the 'one true decision'
that we will pitch to them, saying it has everyone on the team's backing. At
that point, the pressure to achieve consensus usually leads to all the
stakeholders agreeing, too.

This is, obviously, not ideal (to where I'm looking for a job elsewhere), but
it's the best I could come up with given the realities of the values the
business has taken hold of. But my team's values, both their declaration and
their interpretation, are not the company's values.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Stated values are usually bullshit. If you want to understand a culture's real
values, see which behaviours and traits are rewarded and which are punished.
(Also applies to individuals.)

Real values are often unconscious, generated by the unconscious goals of the
leaders.

This is not always a bad thing. Someone who has their shit together as a
person can be a very effective and inspiring leader, and can even minimise the
effects of dysfunction elsewhere in an org.

But any suggestion that you can have a "My/Our values are..." meeting or
brainstorming session, and make it happen just by stating it and/or writing it
down, is wildly naive and unrealistic.

~~~
lostcolony
Real values are often unconscious. Agreed. Good or bad.

Consciously deciding on values gives you something to point to, however. You
say it's wildly naive and unrealistic, and if you mean the act of writing them
down is sufficient I agree; the point being made is that defining a team's
goals is -necessary- (but not in and of itself sufficient).

Without making it a point to say "This is what we want to achieve", you arm
yourself, your team, etc, with nothing to actually bring about the values you
want to see upheld. Sure, you can just try to do them yourselves, but is the
team in alignment? Do they agree with them? When you deviate, will they call
you out on it? When they deviate, will you have the rest of the team's backing
to bring things back into line?

The answer is no, if you haven't stated them explicitly and gotten buy in. The
answer is possibly yes if you have. It still takes effort, mindfulness, etc,
but it moves from the impossible to the possible by taking the time to define
them with your team.

Sure, it's possible you hire so well, so perfectly, based on unstated values,
that everyone is in alignment, all the time, 100%. My experience hasn't been
that. I doubt most people's has.

To break into heavy metaphor, it's important to define your 'guiding star', as
it were, so you can reorient the ship when someone points out you're adrift.
Because without it, you not only can't tell you're adrift, you also have no
idea what to reorient yourself to.

------
thebooglebooski
Fan of the Marine Corps model:

[http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/leadership.htm](http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/leadership.htm)

Some of them are painfully obvious, but these are sometimes absent when they
shouldn't be.

(I also suspect this is what Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr either draw from,
or coincide with.)

~~~
w_t_payne
Following the links, I stumbled upon this amazing seeming resource:

[http://leadership.au.af.mil/sls-skil.htm](http://leadership.au.af.mil/sls-
skil.htm)

The military are really very very good at man-management ...

~~~
drblast
This seems to be the impression in the business world, which has what I can
only describe as a fetish for stories about the military, but Marines in
particular have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the
military.

It's fun to think of our businesses as just like a Seal team and try to glean
lessons from stories of heroism, but the reality is if the military were in
the business of making a profit, retaining employees, or pleasing customers,
it would fail miserably.

The reality of the U.S military is far different than the impression that the
leadership papers give you.

~~~
Hannan
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you here (nor have I ever been military
in any remote respect), but there are some overlapping truths in that page,
e.g. "Employ your command in accordance with its capabilities", under
"Develop", points 1, 3, & 4.

I've resigned over unrealistic expectations from leadership about deadlines,
and what was to be asked of my team to complete said deadlines. I would do it
again. I'm sure I've had many many many failings as a manager, but I will not
death-march any team under me with zero chance of success. There are several
others in the GP's post. You are correct, they don't all apply and many may be
harmful in a corporate environment, but that's why you get paid to separate
the wheat from the chaff, right? :)

~~~
catach
Do you know what the outcome was for a team you resigned from?

~~~
Hannan
The project went several months over the proposed "schedule", which was
inevitable, and I had told them as much.

The team was not asked to pull any overtime to complete it in the proposed
time frame.

I took a 6 month sabbatical and then was asked to contract for them remotely
as a developer (instead of manager) which I did for several years after that.

So, wins all around, I suppose.

------
marcus_holmes
Great for building a brand new team. Not so great for assuming leadership of
an existing team/business.

Also, very American. I just stopped being CEO of a SE Asian business, and this
just doesn't apply globally. There are culture differences that make enormous
differences in leadership styles and outcomes.

~~~
piyh
What were a few differences you ran into?

~~~
marcus_holmes
Asians have massive respect for authority. This, in effect, mean that they
won't ever say no to, or disagree with, their boss. I had to learn to ask open
questions, because if they could say yes they would. They would still guess at
what I wanted to hear and tell me that. I got told different things than other
members of the management team, not because anyone was trying to deceive, but
purely as a show of respect.

My favoured leadership style is servant leadership, that my job is to enable
everyone else to do their jobs properly. That didn't work. I had to teach
myself how to do authoritarian leadership, which I hate with a passion, but
it's the only style that works.

The language barrier is a huge thing. I would give an instruction, something
else would happen, and the reason would be "I didn't understand you". They
wouldn't ask for clarification, because of the respect thing. After training
myself for years to not send emails, I had to get used to sending lots of
emails again, because if it was written in plain English it had more chance of
being understood and followed.

There's a ton of other, more subtle, stuff. I've been comparing notes with
other western leaders here and it's a shared experience. Except for the douche
bosses who are naturally authoritarian - they love it here.

~~~
hanniabu
Curious why the servant leadership style didn't work for you and why you think
that is because this is the approach I prefer as well but I'm young in my
career.

~~~
spyckie2
It doesn't work in Asia because of cultural reasons.

Independent thinking and enabling others is a very American way of thinking.
People don't realize how much culture is derived off of core principles within
major founding documents (declaration of independence, constitution).

In Asia, Confucian philosophy dominates the cultural landscape in terms of
what values they have. One of the big principles of it is how to maintain
order in society. A "perfectly ordered" society is one where the hierarchy is
maintained and everyone functions in their proper place.

If it sounds like dystopia to you I'd encourage you to read more about it to
understand what about it makes sense and what tradeoffs you get from a society
like that.

Long story short, your leadership style needs to fit the people you're
leading, not yourself. You can be the best servant leader but if everyone
wants to be your servant, you're going to have a bad time.

~~~
marcus_holmes
This, exactly. It was a huge surprise to find that asian people do not think
of themselves as equals. Incidentally this is also one of the reasons
democracy is struggling here, in my opinion.

~~~
spyckie2
Don't think it is an equality thing.

If I were to distill it into one central theme, it would be centered on how
each culture views and values conflict.

The principles of the US has themes of "cooperation by conflict". Voting is
the entire population fighting each other in a controlled setting. The 3 body
system of checks and balances uses conflict as the central mean to prevent
power accumulation.

Rationalism is the underlying reason for this acceptance of conflict. A
dictionary definition: "Rationalism is the practice or principle of basing
opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief
or emotional response."

From an emotional perspective, conflict is seen as detrimental, tearing down
relationships, creating unresolvable discord and enmity, and the possibility
to lose control over territory, position and power. However, from a rational
perspective, conflict is positive. It puts the most logical, structural, or
prevailing idea to the top.

The American revolutionists had gone through a lot. The history of western
Europe was one where your lives were in the hands of emotional kings who could
reward you one day and behead you the next without rhyme or reason. They were
under the excessive, unchecked power of Britain, exhibited time and again
through taxation without representation. They saw how much control the Bank of
England had over the commonwealth. It was a time of rampant monopolies, major
powers that had consolidated all control, and where conflict was an affront to
power.

Because of all this, they baked conflict into the system.

~~~
marcus_holmes
As a narrative about how the US works, that's a great story.

As an east vs west philosophy debate, it completely fails to recognise that
European cultures have also "baked conflict into the system".

It also fails to recognise that SE Asian cultures were also colonised by
European powers.

A better explanation is that the American values were straight-up inherited
from European ones because America (and Australia similarly) was wiped clean
of indigenous culture during colonisation, while SE Asian countries were not.
Better because it explains why all "western" cultures share these values, and
why SE Asian cultures do not.

~~~
spyckie2
not sure how Europe got in this, was comparing American values versus Asian
values. Conflict is the center of attention in American values (you could say
western values, I don't know enough about modern European sentiment to say
that). Conflict is indirect in Asian values.

Do you mean that American values aren't so anti-European that I depicted, or
rather are derived from European values? I think I allude to it with
rationalism, which originates from Europe. The history of European
civilization is the foundation and backdrop for American ideals.

As much as America has tried to lay a foundation for a better western
civilization, I think a mature modern America still has the problems that they
were running away from in 18th century Europe - power eventually gets
consolidated and individualism is compromised despite the checks and balances
against it.

~~~
marcus_holmes
This: "The American revolutionists had gone through a lot. The history of
western Europe was one where your lives were in the hands of emotional kings
who could reward you one day and behead you the next without rhyme or reason.
They were under the excessive, unchecked power of Britain, exhibited time and
again through taxation without representation. They saw how much control the
Bank of England had over the commonwealth. It was a time of rampant
monopolies, major powers that had consolidated all control, and where conflict
was an affront to power."

this ignores the fact that Britain has also "baked conflict into the system",
and that Britain shares an idealogical framework with Europe, that America
inherited, but SE Asia did not.

------
crsv
This isn't a guide on how to be a leader, this is a guide for building version
0 of a team and trivializes a great deal of the complexity that goes in to
being an effective leader.

It's a great content marketing piece though, and at first glance, far
outstrips the value of the tool they're marketing to - but this is still meant
to drive people to a SaaS product.

~~~
ucaetano
Being a leader and being a (people) manager are very, very different things.
So, of course this isn't a guide on how to be a leader.

~~~
mnctvanj
A good manager is absolutely a good leader, and v/v. In my experience, there
is no role that, if done properly, isn't equal measure both. They are sub-set
skills of any position to which people report. Be it middle manager (important
to execute, important to give meaning and direction within that area) or
C-level (CEO can't afford to be a non-manager).

~~~
laythea
I would disagree here. In my opinion, a good leader has to be a good people
person (and ergo likely a good manager - not always though), by definition. A
good manager, or people person does not always make a good leader though. In
my limited experience, I would think that a leader would demonstrate an
ability to expand boundaries more so. My use of good can be substituted with
effective.

~~~
mnctvanj
I see what you are saying - and maybe someone can get by in either job without
being strong in both skills, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that
all people-management roles ideally have both things happening. So to actually
be good/great at roles that people assume are exclusive either to leadership
(e.g., CEO) or to management (e.g., good ol' middle manager), both skills are
necessary. And the big difference between the above examples is scope/scale,
not how much leadership vs management is necessary.

~~~
ucaetano
People management is very, very different than leadership.

Take Steve Jobs, for example. A complete asshole if not a full-blown
sociopath, but an impressive leader capable of creating a cult-like following.

Leadership is about inspiring and driving people towards a goal. People
management is about recognizing the strengths and shortcomings of individuals
and helping each one of them to improve and achieve their best, as well as
selecting and assembling the right team where members complement each other.

Often enough, the two roles are at odds with each other.

------
lostphilosopher
(New-ish manager here.)

_Peopleware_ by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is the best management resource
I've encountered.

[https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-
De...](https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-
DeMarco/dp/0932633439)

It also helped to keep careful track of things I really valued (and hated)
about people I've worked for.

Just one example:

Depending on team size and culture it can concerning if your manager schedules
a 1:1 meeting with you out of the blue and outside of your normal cadence. I
had a manager that did this, on a Friday, with the meeting scheduled for
Monday. Worrying about it would have bugged me over the weekend. Not a ton,
but some. He followed the invite up with a Slack (team chat app) message
explaining what the meeting was and what he wanted to talk about, turns out it
was nothing to worry about. Him taking the time to clarify made a difference
in my morale and it stuck with me.

Super small thing, but it matters.

~~~
lostphilosopher
While I'm at it, 2nd best: _Managing Humans_ by Michael Lopp (aka Rands).

[https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-
Eng...](https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-
Engineering/dp/1484221575/)

------
klenwell
I also recommend this Ask HN thread:

    
    
      Ask HN: I just got my first team lead. What should I do?
      89 points by endymi0n on Dec 30, 2011 | 50 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407643)

Hmmm. Older than I remembered. But a few of the recommendations in it have
stuck with me and it's been as helpful as anything I've read on the topic.

~~~
adamdrake
Teammate to Team Lead is a topic that I run into a lot with the companies I
advise. I have a small post on the topic, which I'm planning to expand:

[https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-
lead.html](https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html)

There are quite a few things, some of them subtle, that really change once
you're in a leadership role. The frequent example I see is that people don't
realize that if they are in a leadership role, then there will be decisions
they make which people on their team do not like. That's ok. It's not the job
of the leader to win a popularity contest, but rather to try to do the best
thing for the individual team members, the team, and the company itself. A lot
of people have a tough time with the fact that others won't like their
decisions, but that's a critical thing to digest for those who are going to be
effective leaders.

------
im_down_w_otp
Having read through the piece, I'm a little confused about why "leader" and
"manager" are being conflated. They're very different roles. The former is a
navigational role and the latter is a facilitating role.

Given the differing dominant archetypal personality traits required for those
distinct modalities, it's unlikely they'd be strongly expressed in a singular
person, and there's some reason to think they may be necessarily orthogonal.
As their motivational biases are likely to be largely unrelated to each other.

~~~
nomel
I’m a bit guilty of confusing the two, as well.

Could you describe the differences in personality?

~~~
ramses0
Leadership is outward facing, attracting followers by sharing a vision,
inspiration, goal and working with the team to achieve that goal.

Management is inward facing, paying attention to the people you are
responsible for, and knowing the right thing that's needed at the right time.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't
assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
immensity of the sea." \- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Leadership is building the boat, management is making sure the boat gets
built, on time, on budget, with the proper permits and inspections, training
and safety gear, along with bi-weekly status reports to customers.

Some people confuse one with the other, but to me they're distinct and this is
a rough sketch of how I see them as different.

~~~
scruple
This is an interesting idea and it certainly seems to make sense to me to see
it described this way. I am curious, though, can leader be a manager, and vice
versa? Or, are these roles so distinct from each other that they should be
separate? Maybe these roles can't co-exist at that level because it's exactly
the problem that leads to so many of the problems we discuss on this site?

~~~
ramses0
I think that leadership skills naturally require a sharper focus than
management skills (not to downplay the value of either).

There reaches a point where leadership requires you to take the manager gloves
off and get your hands dirty. For small teams or small problems, a good
leader/manager can be both one and the same.

However as the size of the team or problems grows, it becomes more difficult
(think n^2) to tackle both issues at the same time with the same person.

Management issues (firing, hiring, expenses, budgets) and Leadership issues
(decisions, progress, advocacy, examples) on a team of 5 may be doable by one
person, but may be stretched with one person servicing a team of 15 or 150.

Or if there is a ton more problems in one area vs. others, the challenge of
dealing with that problematic area can leave a gap on the "less problematic"
areas, which eventually turn them into actual problems. That's my guess as to
what people complain about the most.

------
jph
Great article IMHO especially suitable for new teams, new managers, and top
down understanding. Kudos!

For people who are stepping into existing teams, I suggest writing ground
rules.

Ground rules are clear explanations of team expectations. Ground rules can be
simple, bottom up, and help improve teamwork:

[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ground_rules](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ground_rules)

I agree fully with the author about writing objectives.

Objectives can be sophisticated, top down, and help improve planning. I
suggest knowing "Objectives and Key Results" (OKRs) as at Google and Intel:

[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/objectives_and_key_re...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/objectives_and_key_results)

~~~
LgWoodenBadger
Core-hours are 9am-5pm? Aren't those just the normal busines hours for white-
collar work?

~~~
kolpa
Wow. "core hours" is full time, but there's also mandatory overtime. Anyone
not in the boss's timezone has to to work weird hours to satisfy the
micromanager's desire for fiefdom face-time. Work starts _before_ 9am every
day, to prep for a 9am dressing-down.

This is not a place where anyone with a choice would want to work.

> * Each workday has a team standup meeting. We choose 9 a.m., because it sets
> the tone for the day.

> * The workday has core hours when we expect people to be together. We choose
> core hours 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in our team's main time zone, because these are
> typical business hours for typical offices.

> * Beyond the workday core hours, we expect people to do their own schedule

~~~
jph
You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of
the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to
show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries.

Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear?
Thank you!

For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has
tellers, call center operators, and an IT staff that needs to be onsite and
available for helping with physical hardware. Again, the point of the ground
rules isn't the hours per se; the point is that the team writes its
expectations so everyone has a good understanding.

~~~
humbleMouse
9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of
time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across
time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally
insane.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not to mention you can’t adjust your hours at all to avoid rush hour or
cooperate with a spouse in day care management. 9-5 is necessary for banks,
but not for software developers. Having a few core hours is necessary, but if
it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core”.

~~~
dahart
> if it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core”

You are lucky if you think 10-12 hour work days don't exist in software
development. You might also be forgetting about flex schedules, core hours may
include the entire working day and may be a signal that substituting 9-10am
for 5-6pm is not acceptable because you were hired to do a job that depends on
your presence when others are also there. There are multiple legitimate
reasons that core hours exist in 8 hour blocks in some places.

And that's all moot since the specific hours in this discussion are unrelated
to the point @jph was making, which he already stated kindly and clearly.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
No, they really can't do that, at least they can't document it, unless the
employees are non-exempt or they wish for the employees to be paid overtime.
Even having core time at all sounds like a non-exempt requirement, let alone
the whole day.

Many managers are completely oblivious to federal labor laws, unfortunately.

~~~
dahart
It would help to have more specifics about who & what you're talking about,
I'm not sure what you mean when you say they can't do that.

But, I worked in a very well known Hollywood film studio that had mandatory 10
hour work days with an 8 hour core window, not including crunch times. They
factored overtime pay into the schedule. This meant that all employees were
being paid some 1.5 time, that double-time would hit sooner than you'd think,
but also be a lower rate than what you might expect. It was all documented and
reported on my tax forms, and within the bounds of California law AFAIK.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You weren’t exempt since you were getting paid overtime.

Exempt and non exempt status are very clearly defined. One gets paid hourly,
the other a salary. If you are on any kind of schedule, you are usually non
exempt unless really a manager.

~~~
dahart
Yes, that's correct. Where are you going with this? Both exempt and non-exempt
employees there, including all the software devs, had an 8 hour core window
that was called "core hours", and everyone worked at least 10 hour days.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
In order to be exempt, your hours can’t be fixed. You can go over or under
them as part of your duties, but as soon as the boss says you will work XXX
hours, then your exempt status disappears

That this law is broken often is in no doubt, but all it takes is one
complaint to the DOL to set things straight quickly. At the very least, if the
core hours are documented, it should be fairly easy to make a case for
whatever overtime was worked.

~~~
dahart
> In order to be exempt, your hours can’t be fixed.

I don't think this is true. And it's irrelevant to my point that there are
legit reasons for 8 hour "core hours" windows. That discussion was already
irrelevant to the point @jph was making: that communicating team expectations
by writing them down, making them explicit, and communicating them is a good
idea.

Anyway, I just looked up exemption status, and here's what some lawyers have
to say about it. I'm certain that the studio I was working for was not
breaking any laws by having 10 hour work days with core hours. The way they
accounted for it was a tad surprising / misleading to me, but it was in no way
illegal.

'An exempt employee has virtually "no rights at all" under the FLSA overtime
rules. About all an exempt employee is entitled to under the FLSA is to
receive the full amount of the base salary in any work period during which
s/he performs any work (less any permissible deductions). Nothing in the FLSA
prohibits an employer from requiring exempt employees to "punch a clock," or
work a particular schedule, or "make up" time lost due to absences. Nor does
the FLSA limit the amount of work time an employer may require or expect from
any employee, on any schedule. ("Mandatory overtime" is not restricted by the
FLSA.)'

[http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html](http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html)

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17c_administrative.pdf](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17c_administrative.pdf)

------
wiz21c
First :

>>> People are not stagnant; instead, they are constantly learning and
evolving.

There's adifference between evolving naturally and evolving because you're
pushed to do so by the company. I work with people who _don 't_ want to
evolve. They seek a peaceful, comfortable environment. They do their job quite
well, nothing more. I understand that.

Second, values... Should people be hired because of their skill or because of
their values ? What if their political views conflic with your values ? Isn't
it the moment when discrimination comes in ? Say you work for Google because
you love the AI stuff, then Google starts selling weapons. Should they fire
people who don't share those values anymore ?

~~~
drodgers
> Say you work for Google because you love the AI stuff, then Google starts
> selling weapons. Should they fire people who don't share those values
> anymore ?

Values apply pressure in both directions.

If you have a culture like Google, and you _need_ to pivot a significant
fraction of your business to building weapons, then you will — sooner or later
— need to replace a lot of employees (and manage that process, deal with the
resulting morale problems etc). That's really expensive, but it might be worth
it (depending on the business).

If you're actually like Google though — in that your real business isn't
building weapons — then you just drop the weapons project. Dropping it will
make the rest of your business more effective, which is way more important
than some experimental side-hustle with the military. Ideally, you'd see in-
advance that those kinds of projects would clash with your values and cause
problems, but we all make mistakes.

------
blowski
A useful set of tips, but when I first became a manager, my biggest problem
was thinking there was some magic formula to get the best out of my team. I
was looking for a YAML config script, but human beings don’t work that way.

Now, with a bit more experience, I spend more time listening to people and
working out how I can help them with their specific need.

As a sidenote, I hate the euphemisms “release” and “let go”. You’re firing
them. Pretending that you’re doing it for their sake doesn’t make it easier
for them. So just cut the bullshit. You can be honest and compassionate.

~~~
sanbor
I'm glad of hearing that. I was always surprised by the "let go" expression.
It would be interesting what would happen in a conversation like "We have to
let you go. – No need. I don't have to go anywhere".

In Spanish the term is "despedido". "despedir" is the action of saying good
bye. The literal translation could be something like "good-bye'd".

------
dotBen
Going beyond an article, 'Peopleware' is a fantastic book for engineering
folks transitioning to management - it's not new but the fundamentals stand
the test of time.

It's the book I started out with 15 years ago and I have suggested to many
others.

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition)
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321934113/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_j-...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321934113/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_j-
UfBbWAB5NZV)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Agreed. I can’t recommend Peopleware enough. It is common sense, humane
reasoning applied to software teams.

Sadly, I read Peopleware long before I ever became a manager, and it made me
very attuned to being treated badly and being given ineffective tools or
support (e.g. crappy open plan seating arrangements instead of private
offices).

Peopleware will open your mind to the obviousness of productivity-first
thinking and accomodating basic, inescapable human needs. Which can make you
reflexively sad when you see how much of our industry steamrolls these ideas
in favor of idiotic open plan disasters, hazing-focused interview barriers to
entry, unrealistic mandates for Agile-style estimation and work tracking, etc.

------
gregskloot
Thanks for sharing! I wrote this and would definitely appreciate everyone's
feedback.

~~~
solarkraft
Medially great. Good information. Nice to read. Except for the in-page popup
(reported to Mozilla).

~~~
gregskloot
Got it, glad you overall liked the information and thanks for the UI feedback!

------
unabst
"People. The hardest part of building a business."

If you're going to work and are having the hardest time with people, you
should question the team. Anyone expressing an inkling of toxic, negative, or
unprofessional attitude needs to be removed. Some people go bad, but it's just
them telling you they want to go. Be graceful, but fire them.

Whatever you do, don't try to fix attitude. Everyone is entitled to their
attitude in America, and it's the wrong battle. Let them have it.

They are not, however, entitled to contaminate your work culture, which must
be upheld as sacrosanct. And, if it's you, then you've already burnt out.

A lot of old school management involves whips and dangling carrots. Managers
are supervisors, and workers are presumed to misbehave without supervision.
They are motivated with rewards, and put in check with punishment. Workers
hate managers, and managers hate their job which would not exist if the
workers would just behave. Good workers question their environment, their pay,
then leave.

In reality, most ambitious professionals will behave when they take ownership
of their responsibilities and opportunities, and will seek to build trust with
others that do also. When handed, responsibilities and opportunities can
quickly turn into dreadful obligations, so people must want them, and they
will when they are aligned with their professional ambitions.

Once you have a team of such individuals, a manager is relinquished from
behavior management. This holds true even at the lowest paying jobs.

Having this as the premise of your corporate culture will allow you to focus
on managing work, not workers. And will allow your workers to focus on their
work, and not each other. Trust will also naturally build among those showing
responsible behavior. All this without "managing people". All this without "a
leader".

Everyone leads themselves towards a common goal, empowered by a common
philosophy, from the comfort of a common, sacred, positive workplace.

This formula took me five years, and it wasn't just the hardest part of
building my business. It was five years of not being able to build my
business. Today, I can say without reservation:

People are the best part of building a business.

And I am grateful to everyone, including those whom I fired, for teaching me
this lesson.

------
monkeytree
Great write up! I like that it starts with Culture and People to create a
strong foundation. As you say, People are the hardest part. Having a good
structure, routine and communication help make it manageable. I think this
provides a nice framework to build around. I'm a co-founder of a company makes
tools to help manage a lot of those processes you discuss so this resonated
with me. We built our platform based on many lessons learned managing previous
start-ups, and converged on a very similar approach.

If you're into this sort of management style, here's our platform which aligns
well with what's described in the article. It supports flexible one page plans
for a concise way to document your strategy, functional accountability charts,
priority and metrics tracking as well as a meeting space to set a consistent
rhythm - also performance reviews to tie it all together.

[https://metronomegrowthsystems.com](https://metronomegrowthsystems.com)

------
mi100hael
One thing this is missing that I think too many managers forget about is
CELEBRATION. When your team wins, you need to make a big deal of it. Bring in
lunch or something and take a moment to say thanks on a regular basis. I think
one of the biggest contributing factors to burn-out is feeling like your
achievements have gone unrecognized and unappreciated.

------
prabhatjha
I would also recommend Camille Fournier's The Managers Path book for folks in
tech. You will be able to relate to this book whether you are an individual
contributor or seasoned manager.

------
alexbecker
I find the animations and numerous different interspersed formats (text,
square card thingies, profiles, three boxes side by side, one box in the
middle, etc.) very distracting from the content.

------
internetman55
Indeed, the way mgmt seems willing to capriciously fire people for "values"
conflict or getting caught in the middle of some mess management created is
one of the reasons I don't really see the point of investing much in a single
job. I can still get fired or laid off at random if I worked two hours extra a
day or something (has happened to me). If I spend those two hours making
myself marketable and networking it won't matter if you fire me because I'll
just bounce to something else. I wish some managers would just learn to
interact like humans instead of being insecure tough guys and "playing
hardball" with everyone. I've seen that tank projects and set back careers (IC
and mgmt).

------
SonicSoul
How many popups do I need to swat away in first minute of reading this post.
Second one doesn’t even have a close button it just hovers over text on the
bottom. How about letting users read the article before forcing them take make
a decision to subscribe

------
lifeisstillgood
The first part was good, then it kind of fell apart when it hit management by
objectives, and the "fill in a email we send you with 'achievements this
week', 'plans for next week'"

That's kind of nice, but really this should be auto generated - we should be
building systems that pop out "Bob closed two sales this week, and needs one
more to hit quota" \- this is just a sales funnel so it's not hard - it may
get fuzzier with "alice wrote the monthly report or alice completed the
redesign of the home page" are just formatted git comments ?

------
reureu
Thanks for sharing! This seems like a good general guide on how to manage :)

I would just provide a quick caution against over-indexing on culture. There
are two issues that can come up: implicit bias, and conflicting values.

Implicit bias exists when you're not explicitly biased against a (typically
protected) population. You don't _hate_ women or gays or people with
disabilities, but your culture values things that make the environment
uncomfortable for those populations. One common example that shows up in
gender discrimination lawsuits is that women tend to get worse reviews for
being too moody or angry or confrontational, whereas men presenting the same
behavior get lauded for being decisive and direct. Even if you disagree with
this, that won't stop it from becoming the subject of a lawsuit. The example
given regarding Beth and Tom actually fits nicely with this issue, since
discrimination claims are often that women are unfriendly. (you might consider
switching the personas to avoid this perception)

Another common example that shows up is "would you have a beer with the
candidate" type tests. I didn't see this in your guide, but I've heard this a
lot over the years. People notoriously prefer having beers with people that
are very similar to themselves. That's often not germane to the job
requirements, and is an easy way for bias to sneak into your hiring process.

In the same vein, I once heard the founder of a well-known startup in the Bay
Area give a talk about forming teams. He said, explicitly, that he looks for
signs of anxiety among potential hires (like biting their nails, or too weak
of a handshake, or how they talk) and won't hire someone who is overly
anxious. If someone with diagnosed anxiety were to apply for that job, get
rejected, and hear that talk, they'd have the good start of a lawsuit for
disability discrimination. That founder was just talking about what he values
in the company, but he's actually admitting to discrimination.

The second issue is conflicting values. The companies I've seen who preach
their values the loudest have tended to be the ones which are least likely to
exemplify their values in their behaviors. Imagine a company which has values
of "integrity" and "we're a team." If an employee were to point out behavior
that they don't think exemplifies integrity, will they instantly be met with
accusations that they're not playing for the same team? I know of at least one
company who painted "Be a team player" on their walls, but when they were
acquired, their executive team took multi-million dollar parachutes while
everyone in the company got paid around a penny per share. Is that consistent
with being team players?

Sorry to be negative here. Things like "culture fit" and "corporate values"
can be important, but they can also be yielded as weapons if they're being
relied on to fix a fundamentally broken workplace. They're also things that I
increasingly hear my employment lawyer friends talk about - so watch out. It
seems like the right approach is to demonstrate what your culture is through
your actions and not through explicit definition. Your product and team will
also likely be more productive and build a better product if it's not a bunch
of clones :)

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
If you're unwilling to ever say what your cultural values are, then your only
cultural value is "do what thou wilt". Anything anybody does is automatically
your culture, if it's defined in actions only. Somebody brings their dog into
the office, your culture is now dog-friendly. And for anybody who hasn't seen
your history of actions – like new hires – your culture doesn't exist at all.

The benefit of defining your values is not descriptive, but aspirational. Your
values are not "here is how all of us will infallably behave at all times";
it's "here's how we want to be, even when it's hard, because we think it's
right and because we need to rely on each other to keep ourselves honest about
them."

Shitty people will still manipulate or ignore those values at their
convenience, but if you're working with shitty people it'll never matter what
systems or values or rules you have.

~~~
reureu
I think this idea of explicitly stating corporate values is relatively new,
but maybe there's a longer history there than I'm giving credit. I definitely
hear you that a company can have implicit values, and that's going to happen
regardless of if you make them explicit or not, so you might as well make
aspirational, explicit values.

I disagree that lacking stated values creates a Wild West environment: if your
office building doesn't allow dogs, then it's not a dog friendly environment
even if someone brings their dog to work (i.e., bad or improper behavior will
be rectified).

The example of a candidate or new hires is a good one. Having aspirational
values feels like it could be misleading to the new or potential employee.
What happens if they come in to an environment that has stated values of
"radical transparency", but finds the realized values are "passive
aggressiveness" and "backstabbing"?

I don't mean to come off so cynical, but I think as well intentioned as stated
corporate values are, they can very quickly become traps or weapons. This is
particularly true in silicon valley, where a growing number of people have
figured out that hip values can be used to manipulate employees.

------
riphay
Great article, bookmarked for future reference!

I work for a small consulting firm focused on improving productivity and
building innovation systems within small-medium sized businesses. And having
strategic plans, vision, values is hugely important in building a focused
innovation program. It's become routine in my engagements to spend significant
time defining goals and values where the companies had none previously! This
sort of exercise is valuable for firms at any stage and size in my opinion.

~~~
gregskloot
Totally agreed! If you put in the time to define it upfront, it makes so many
other tactical things (like hiring, goal setting etc) much easier down the
road.

------
ingmarheinrich
If you change from being e. g. a developer to being a manager, then this
shouldn't be regarded as a promotion. It's a different career path.

------
Bizarro
I just don't see the point of those bullet point transitions in the article.
It just doesn't bring any value and is distracting.

------
lucisferre
For those interested in learning management skills I've found
[https://www.manager-tools.com/](https://www.manager-tools.com/) and their
podcasts and resources invaluable.

Also the best book I've read so far on management is the excellent High Output
Management by Andy Grove. Still incredibly relevant.

------
outcoldman
It changed my opinion about what is the quality of good manager when I have
heard a dialog:

\- Are you a _boss_ of team X?

\- No, I _support_ team X.

~~~
gowld
"servant-leadership" for the win.

------
binarnosp
I always found the "company culture" as a limiting factor: at the end, it
tends to build a sect of developers close to any suggestion that doesn't self-
enforce the culture that produces them.

"Culture" kind of wants to produce a "family", but a family is not what I'm
looking for when I look for a job.

------
smilebot
Great post! - I noticed a typo in the "Customs" section. ...bakery comes in
early, then (not than). Cheers!

~~~
gregskloot
Thank you! Just fixed it.

------
smnscu
Also see Lauri Apple's "Awesome Leading and Managing"
[https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-
managing](https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing)

------
funwie
Good leadership ideas. I think defining relationships and respecting the
boundaries is also important.

Make sure all employees understand relationship types and know which there
have with one another.

Are we colleagues, friends, etc?

This will lead to smooth interactions.

~~~
adamdrake
Absolutely. People often don't appreciate or feel comfortable with the fact
that when in a leadership role, the relationship changes. New leaders often
focus too much on being liked, or having their decisions liked, over doing
what is best for the team and its members. Being a popular and well-respected
leader is the outcome of good decisions, support, and relationships, not a
consequence of trying to do the popular thing.

It's especially tough for people who are transitioning from being part of a
team to leading that same team. I elaborate a bit here:

[https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-
lead.html](https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html)

------
ryanmarsh
The only thing I would add is, culture can be taught. You can take someone who
isn’t a culture fit and make them a culture fit in 8 weeks or less.

------
geekrax
I really wish they went easy on the animations.

------
sidcool
This is a nice article. I am surprised to see a 'management' article to
receive so many votes on HN.

------
leeale10
This is an pretty great article.

Wish I would've read it years ago... thanks for the share

~~~
gregskloot
I said the same thing to myself when I wrote it... I was thinking back a few
companies ago and wishing I understood this stuff. Glad you liked it!

------
ljw1001
unless this post is a thousand pages long, the title is a bit over-the-top. I
look forward to the "How to be a particle physicist" installment.

------
skoocda
Taking up way too much space on mobile with the distracting CTA. Stopped
reading when I couldn't close the popup on my phone.

Might try again later on my desktop, if you promise to remove that at some
point :)

------
simonjgreen
This feels like someone has read one of the EOS books and rewritten it with
different terminology to avoid copyright infringement.

I guess it's also spun around a new startup rather than fixing an already
operating business.

If you like what you read here then look up Traction and Get A Grip.

------
rk1987
Wish I could take print out of this. But the site is not printer friendly.

~~~
gregskloot
Good catch! I'll work on fixing this, thanks for pointing it out.

------
megaman22
Judging by my experience over a number of years in industry, the most
important aspect is to understand the cultural expectations of the people you
are working with.

Working with a north-east US team can be wildly different than a Southeast US
team, or a west coast US team. Let alone a Toronto CA team, vs Quebec, CA, or
UK or Australia, or Germans, or Dutch or Poles, or Indians from New Delhi vs
folks from Bangalore.

People work differently, and culture and communication is wildly different.

~~~
theossuary
This is really interesting to me, do you have any examples you can think of to
illustrate this? Definitely something where I don't even know what I don't
know, but it seems so important especially in recent times.

~~~
megaman22
I mean, it's stereotypical, but if an Indian colleague drops a "kindly do the
needful" on most Americans, that will be met with consternation and confusion.

The other big issue I've seen is around scheduling meetings with inappropriate
lead times. I've come in too many times on monday mornings at 9 AM to see
angry emails about not attending a meeting at 8 AM, when the meeting
invitation was sent 2AM.

------
auslander
Why so many points? Hackers now love Vision and Strategic Focus stuff ?

------
paulmooreparks
This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Rather, it's a call to action
to stop something I really, really hate about the web these days: popups over
content, begging me to sign up for an email subscription. Whenever I'm reading
a web page and one of these rude popups appears, I immediately close the
browser tab and move on. If the authors are rude enough to interrupt me with
an invitation to clutter my inbox, then they must not want me to read their
content.

Please, let's end this scourge by closing more tabs and not driving more
traffic to these sites.

~~~
partiallypro
It's because analytics say this gets more lead captures, but they rarely
measure if the leads are fake just to make the things go away. In the end they
are just looking at "conversion" metrics and the cost it took to drive that
traffic. Longer term effects are hard to measure, and ad agencies and internal
ad teams are measured for this month, not the future.

~~~
quantsNightmare
I work at a place where I am a fly on the wall, listening to these ad teams,
and let me tell you, they honestly believe this kind of bullshit honestly
works and matters.

They hotly debate the virtues of deceptive dark patterns, and, man, are they
assholes to boot. They also blow cash on retarded shit like juiceros, and bro-
compare their juicero-type schlock and tchotchke collections unironically, and
sometimes with transparent envy of one another. It's as bad as you might
imagine.

After lunch, when they really get going, with their mind-blowingly vapid
conversations, I have to blast my eardrums with tinnitus inducing audio, in
order to quarantine my mind from their stunting world views.

When Douglas Adams imagined the Golgafrinchans, I have to believe that he was
in the presence of the these sorts of people, when he dreamt up that little
tidbit.

It is my ardent belief that the only way to divest society of such parasitic
blooms of "humanity" really is to blast them into outer space, but in order to
do so, we have to learn to be really careful about how we sanitize our
telephones first.

~~~
hazz99
Gonna state a counterpoint, saying that most marketers & advertisers I've
spoken with have been pretty on the ball. They understand that people don't
"like" adverts and try to get leads through different ways.

People who embrace these irritating practices are not necessarily the
minority, but I wouldn't say they're the majority either. It's definitely not
an accepted best practice.

Marketing extends much further than just annoying popups and advertising, and
is an extremely important field -- something I feel us engineers sometimes
forget about, because the benefits aren't immediately measurable.

------
joeleesays
Awesome! Simple and practical.

------
CrypticOne274
Great post. Upvoted.

~~~
gregskloot
Thanks!

------
goofballlogic
Being "a Manager" is the wrong first step to leading a team. Management is an
activity we should all be undertaking, not a role.

~~~
nukemandan
I agree that a more flat landscape in teams is best. I like "Why good leaders
make you feel safe | Simon Sinek" :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyZMtPVodo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyZMtPVodo)

Good management is really about good leadership - and that does have a point
person to look to. they inspire and motivate everyone else on the team. This
is a much more bottom up / equitable than most mainstream practices promote.

------
gerdesj
Nice presentation - very pretty. This is the takeaway:

 _We’ve reached the end of the Formula, covering everything from culture to
process. You now understand the basics of leading a new team.

Management and leadership are acquired skills, and they take practice. This
guide is a framework for you to build upon, make your own and be the best
manager._

... and this is how I think of my staff:

 _Some people might be incredible salesmen, while others can bake cookies or
build a computer with their eyes closed (that would be super impressive!)_

Fuck off.

