
Ask HN: How to manage a team of clowns when you are a young 19yo manager? - clownjuggler
I am working at a huge corporation. I just turned 19. I am part of a small team working on mobile applications (about 40~ people total). I was hired at the highest pay grade right out of college after 1 year and given a team because I impressed execs.<p>Since I&#x27;m 19, people disregard me. I&#x27;m the office &quot;wonderkid&quot; and people frown upon anything I say on account of being a smartass, however hard I try to come across as genuine. I am not taken seriously, however, nobody can deny the work I do is great and beneficial. I&#x27;ve upgraded out tech stack, introduced new methodologies, new tactics, that have increased our efficiency near ten-fold. However, there are a plethora of teams under my project, and they only want paychecks, they don&#x27;t care, they just need to support their family. And I get that. I do, but if you&#x27;re put on such a high profile project, you need the best. There are better departments suited for their mentality.<p>If I&#x27;m to speak frankly, 80% of this team could be let go and we&#x27;d be much more efficient, things would run a lot smoother. These teams are bogging us down by not meeting deadlines and producing shit work. They don&#x27;t interact with the rest of the team. Nobody cares, just want to get paid.<p>I can&#x27;t attach my name to something I feel doesn&#x27;t encompass every fiber of my talent and skill, and it&#x27;s making me angry.<p>I literally created a working demo of our app with over 120+ screens in three days. Asked my manager if I could work from home. Didn&#x27;t sleep, created it, pitched it to all managers and everyone. They genuinely loved it.<p>But at the end of the day, it can&#x27;t pass because it&#x27;d put 80% of our team out of their jobs. And that&#x27;s the problem. There is no passion in our team, deadlines and shit members are destroying this project and thus, morale is down and I&#x27;m not remotely motivated anymore to make this the best I can make it.<p>What do I do?
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vitovito
1\. You don't have enough life experience to relate to anyone working for you,
let alone to have them imagine they could relate to you in response. Respect
and trust is something you have to earn; it doesn't just come from the title.
You're currently lacking in about ten years of empathy and "soft skills."
Management should be 100% about people skills and 0% about getting your name
on something. Maybe you weren't given this team because you're awesome; maybe
you were given it because it would knock the chip off your shoulder and take
you down a peg.

2\. Go pick up rands' book, Managing Humans. Read it. Try to understand your
actual purpose in running that team. Then, either:

3a. Quit. Go work somewhere where you'll be mentored and taught all of the
things you never learned in school. Relationship-building. Being nice and
personable. Negotiation. Communication. You'll learn amazing things.

3b. Fire people. If you're really a manager, you have hire/fire power. Fire
the 80% you think suck. Push your project live. Become a terrible, powerful
figure. Set fire to everything in your path. You'll learn amazing things that
way, too.

~~~
clownjuggler
1\. I was given this team right off the bat, I've been here for a few months
now. It's not to take me down a peg. I had a great portfolio and track record
in this industry, however young, and they believed I can do it. I didn't get
here without being a people person ;)

I am so uncomfortable with 3b, but if that's what needs to be done..

What if they can't find a job? What if they lose their houses/apartments? It
can seriously screw some people and I can't have someones life situation
resting on my shoulders because they failed to do a great job.

~~~
vitovito
Hi, sorry, I think this is really jumping the gun, and this is going to sound
like a personal attack, but I'm not sure there's another way to phrase any of
this.

The way you've described the problem, the way you've classified your
coworkers, the things you called out to comment on in this reply, these are
all giant red flags of immaturity to me.

I ran companies and teams of half a dozen to three dozen people when I was
your age (and younger, and older), and I hired people, and I fired people, and
you sound like me, and I was grossly immature.

If you've only been there a few months, it takes 3-4 months just to get a feel
for the job. If you haven't been networking and talking with everyone above
and below you, and instead your head has been down grinding on some possibly
pointless deliverables, you don't know _anything_ about your role or your
company yet.

You don't know why your coworkers are the way they are. You don't know why you
were hired. You don't know the real expectations for you _from your
employees_. And you don't know what kind of a manager you are, because you
have no experience being managed.

You need to read rands' book, and then quit, and go work for a less immature
company until you yourself are less immature. Management is a skill you don't
have yet, and can't possibly get without making a lot of terrible errors in
your current role.

~~~
clownjuggler
You are making an incredible amount of assumptions.

We were all hired at the same time. Everybody is new, but not new to the
field, we got to work from day 1. We are hired for very specific tasks, we get
in, we get out, and right now we're not getting in fast enough. Make sense?

I know the way they are, I know why they were hired. It doesn't matter what
their expectations are from me, because it's below what I'm capable of getting
accomplished and that's not the game I play. Don't get me wrong, we're all
friends. It's not me vs. my employees. It's an internal struggle of mine to
get my teammates to properly match my level of expectations, not just make
something passable that hapazardly works.

We are a team of contractors here to get a job done, and it's not being done
as best can be.

I work for one of the biggest companies in the US. There's a high probability
you use one of our applications.

We all work in a common space. When one co worker is on the phone with their
tenant and divorce lawyer on and off all the time, then complaining about
hitting deadlines and not meeting them, we have a big fucking problem.

I know what I'm dealing with, thank you for your input. What I'm having a hard
time with is determining the route to solve this problem without ruining
lives.

~~~
vitovito
Oh, okay, cool. In that case...

Just kidding, that doesn't change my core premise, that it's an immature
organization and you're dealing with the problem in an immature fashion.

 _" It's an internal struggle of mine to get my teammates to properly match my
level of expectations, not just make something passable that hapazardly
works."_

That's the problem, right there. Your expectations are yours and yours alone.
Everyone under you is a person, a human being, with thoughts and feelings and
goals and, rightfully, they don't give two shits about what you think they
should be doing. Real life is not a meritocracy and everyone is not a highly
disciplined type A producer. Your expectations are your problem, not theirs,
and holding other people up to them is the express route to
disappointmenttown, population: a bad version of you.

You need to understand what it means to be a manager, and an empathetic human
being.

Pro tip: those are mostly the same thing.

Maybe you will need to separate the wheat from the chaff one day, but that day
is after you understand exactly what it is all those people do, and why they
do it, and how they do it, and what their goals are, and what their
motivations are, not as employees, not as cogs in your great machine, but as
_human beings._

That day is not today. You don't know enough, and it's not possible for you
know enough yet. You haven't been doing the job long enough, you don't know
the people well enough, and you don't have enough life experience.

~~~
clownjuggler
Did you read my other responses? You are here at this company and are being
paid exorbitant amounts for the 7 hours you are here every day. That time is
not to goof off and take two hour lunches, then complain about missing
deadlines _that I didn 't set_.

If you want to say something, then say something instead of spouting bullshit.
I'm dealing with a tough fucking situation and I didn't come here to get
shitted on by a 1 upping random (really, you were younger than 19 working at a
fortune 500 managing 40 people, okay kid).

Really, if you want to offer proper advice other than "you're a piece of shit"
(to summarize) then fuck off. I came to ask HN because it's a professional
community with people that have a diverse range of skills in these very
environments I'm struggling with.

Stop replying, you are stressing me the fuck out, thank you.

------
NicoJuicy
If you're going to get people fired and don't meet the deadlines. You're going
to get screwed either way.

Try to get the worst 20% off and give the top 5% a payraise, use gamification
techniques. I don't know if something like that exists.

But their's a reward for doing good and a punishment for doing this bad. Most
people will understand, except the once who get fired.

Slow people bring you down, good people bring you up. Motivate them, so you'll
get motivated to.

PS. 120+ screens is really impressive!

~~~
clownjuggler
Thank you.

It's less impressive when you realize that it's just designing a handful of
reusable styled html assets, arranging them per page, then linking them to
another page.

------
lmg643
I can certainly identify with being a younger guy in a large corporation and
never getting taken seriously. That dynamic is the root of startup culture,
typified by ycombinator - since young people frequently are talented enough to
run a company, they might as make the opportunities for themselves. I think
the choice is to leave or to make the most of it - and if you have the
authority to reshape your team, you should do it.

------
icedchai
you should quit and go work at a smaller company.

