When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? 426
jammag writes "A veteran developer looks back — in irritation — at those times he had to work late and his unskilled manager stayed too, just to look over his shoulder and add worry and fret to the process. Now, that same developer is a manager himself — and recently stayed late to ride herd over late-working developers. 'And guess what? Yep, I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.' Yet now he understood: his own butt was on the line, so he was staying put. Still, does it really help developers to have management hovering on a late evening, even if the boss handles pizza delivery?"
As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... STFU, keeps the hell out of the way, and does nothing other than bring pizza (and a few beers later on towards the end of the shift), that's ok.
Anything else is NOT HELPING!
It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm in the shit, I want you in the shit with me. Though, being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role. What do they need to get the job done? What can you do to remove obstacles from their way? Food? Drinks? Problems come up. What can you as a manager do to resolve that problem?
depends (Score:5, Insightful)
If the developers are staying late because the manager messed up, it doesn't hurt to stay late (but stay out of the way and order them food)
If the developers are staying late because they come in late or they messed up, no, the manager doesn't need to stay.
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes -- and pizza is all the better. It's great to know that the challenge is being shared, IF it's a healthy, collaborative effort.
OTOH, if it's an over-the-shoulder kind of assistance, that's rather frustrating. Not so generative, and it's simple enough to know the difference...
Just make sure everyone knows the situation (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if the manager asked for extra work (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many years ago a colleague told me a tale (with misty eyes) of a former boss who'd done exactly that - when everyone had to work through a weekend he came in first, left last and appointed himself as chief coffee maker and senior takeout waiter.
Only if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if the manager stays late to 1) eliminate external distractions, 2) order meals, 3) test, or 4) write macros, scripts or other shippable elements, if the product supports such features.
Hanging around just to make sure developers stays put or focused implies the developers aren't professionals or the manager isn't doing his job (item 1 above). If true, then it's the manager's fault for hiring or keeping the developer around and no amount of babysitting is going to deliver quality code. If not true, then an insulting hindrance and is quite likely to hinder or prevent delivery of quality code.
Lastly, there's always the question "Why are developers staying late anyway?" and whose fault is it. If it's the manager's fault, and it always is unless we're talking about developers who work night shifts, then hanging around to make sure developers get work done the manager caused or should have prevented is likely to cause resentment. Tread lightly and focus on items 1 - 4 above.
Re:Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
It's sad how expensive bad pizza is, too. For only a dollar or two more, you can get a "local" pizza. Managers seem to love Pizza Hut and Domino's for some reason. At least in my experience.
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't develop. I sysadmin. Recently I was asked to build out 15 new servers. At 5:30pm. It was an emergency and had to be done ASAP, oddly enough because the coders wrote a crappy code release that required a threefold increase in horsepower just to handle the normal load and the companies QA process never picked up on this highly important fact and the code was pushed to production where it ground things to a standstill. I know the company isn't going to do squat for me. I don't get overtime. I won't get a bonus. I won't get comp time.
For my managers manager to stay the night was a show of solidarity. He doesn't know how to build the systems, but at least he was there. Now the important thing is that he wasn't watching over my shoulder every step of the way. He'd ask for updates every couple of hours and he went out and brought me dinner so I could stay working, but otherwise stayed out of the way and let me do the work.
Psychologically it helped to know that he also missed playing with his kids and putting them to bed that night. Sometimes inspiring your employees is as simple as demonstrating that you share their pain, even if you can't share the workload.
Now if this behavior becomes the norm, it doesn't matter what management does. People will soon be burnt out and will leave.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
How about nobody works late and stick toghether as human beings ?
I've worked 4 years in the game industry and this is just making me sick. The company makes millions and millions and makes programmers work late without any compensation. They even break the law doing so (at least were I used to work) and don't care about it at all.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me second this. Managers should add to the efficiency of a team. Make it clear that you're staying to support them, not harass them. Stay out of sight, but make it clear that they can call on you for communication with the rest of the team, as well as keeping people refreshed. Something that may be effective is for them to reason through a problem with you. You may not be able to code in their language, but often times, if they talk through the problem with you, they themselves will have an epiphany. If they're staying late, they're obviously already dedicated to seeing the task through to completion, there's no need to ride them.
And while you're sitting there, unable to help, I'd pick up a book on the programming language they're using to code. Even if you never put your fingers to the keyboard, it will gain you credibility, which will make you, as a manager, a thousand times more effective.
Re:It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I was taught as a naval officer. If I asked my men to stay late because the regular duty section couldn't get it the work done, I stayed. And, if it were left to the duty section and I wasn't on duty, my men always knew how to get in touch with me.
It isn't about helping them do the work (we're not necessarily the technical experts-although at times I was)- it's not about moral support - it's about making sure they have what they need to get the job done - and, when the work's done, it's about making sure they, not I, get the credit for a job well done.
As a manager today, I still think this is the way it should be done.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
Totally agree. The manager's job is to make the team productive. Part of this job is sitting between the programmers and senior management and making sure that both parties get what they need from the other, and solving any communication problems. Part of it is making sure that members of the team are communicating with each other effectively, and making sure that they can work together. And part of it is staying out of the way when your presence won't help. By all means stay and order food. Depending on the team, you may want to be there anyway - if their evening is ruined by having to stay and work late, then knowing that your evening is also suffering the same fate, even if you don't achieve much as a result, can help them as a team, but don't get under their feet.
Leadership is often like dancing tango: the trick is knowing when to do nothing.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the manager should be staying late as well to handle everything that is not development. Make coffee, order pizza, shoo the cleaning staff away, even call people for the developers if desired.
If they're looking over shoulders, making people nervous pacing and repeatedly asking "are we there yet" like a 5 year old on a trip, they really should NEVER be there, that is, they shouldn't BE the manager.
A helpful manager after hours builds team cohesion and inspires the team to follow them. They prove themselves worthy of being followed.Since nobody wants to stay late because they have to, the manager who stays proves that he's not just giving the shirt off of other people's backs.
A manager who could be helpful but instead goes home sends the entirely the wrong message. He proves that he thinks himself better and that he expects to simply crack the whip from on high and have the peons grovel in response. He will easily over-promise to the team's detriment since he won't himself ever suffer for it.
All of this presumes it's really an all hands on crunch. OTOH, some developers just like to stay late for some focused work when everything is quiet. Where there is flexibility, they may do that for a few days then take a day off or they may work late and come in late where permitted during normal times. There is no need for the manager to stay in those cases. A good manager will know when that's the case.
Re:It's called a team (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the editor is reviewing a photo which contains a DC-providing high air flow cable managing server cabinet.
Or the editor works for a tabloid and you're suggesting the words they should use for the headline they're working on.
It's always about context. =)
In the real world though, there are many seemingly innocent things which can be considered harassment if there is a historical reason it might be. For example, if there was an office rumor about someone having had intercourse on a pool table, asking them if they'd like to play a round of billiards with you can still be harassment. Intent is a very big part of the consideration.
Re:depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the obvious solution would be to actually talk about this with the developer, "buddy-buddy" or not.
I'm a bit amazed no one mentioned this before. From TFA:
I said, “You know, I think I got this. You don’t have to stay.”
Sounds like he expressed this to his manager, though not as clearly as he could've been -- "I think it would be easier to do this alone." But what makes this especially annoying is the manager's response:
“Sure I do!” he said with sincere enthusiasm.
Basically discarding what the developer wants or feels might be most useful.
So when it's his turn, he makes no mention of actually discussing it with the developer in question. Instead, he asks the entire fucking Internet for advice, instead of the one person he should have asked.
The same goes for a parent. Trying to decide whether to get chocolate or vanilla ice cream for your kid's birthday? Ask them!
Re:It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no different with management - as a manager of a staff of 11, my job is to keep them working as best they can but STAY OUT OF THEIR WAY. I don't have to know the absolute minute details of how/why their doing something, as long as the project stays on track. If it means making sure a delivery of materials is ready so they can start the project on time, it means that. If it means making sure we have proper drawings/documentation before we start the project, it means that. If it means running out to a vendor to resupply something when the shit hits the fan, it means that. If it means buying pizza because we had to work late, it means that. Keep them working and focused on the task, not the support needs. But it does NOT mean I get in their way and hover over them, constantly checking their work. Most managers that I've met who know every specific detail about how to do the job their employees are doing aren't actually good "people" managers - they're micromanagers who usually suffer from a variety of social disorders, shall we say, and couldn't "manage" their way out of a paper bag.
Good management is as much about knowing what NOT to do as knowing what TO do.
Obviously, if your team actually ARE a bunch of idiots, you have to change your tactics a bit, but in this economy, why do you have idiots working for you?
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit it on the head. The management style matters, but also the willingness to share the pain but stay out of the way. Don't distract, but don't be completely invisible, either. Management makes a difference. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. For me, the definition of a good employee is one who knows when to get in the way of things (because they are being done poorly and it needs to change) and when to get out of the way (because they would only be a hindrance), and that is regardless of position, experience, or type of work being performed. So far I haven't worked anywhere that had more than half of the positions filled by good employees, but my happiness was directly proportional to the percentage of good employees.
Re:It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always something you can do, whether it's streamlining HR administrivia for people, hunting down the latest versions of SDKs and stuff, or whatever. When there was nothing I could do on the project (not testing or feedback or whatever), I just focused on quality of life issues. My big tip: buy a barbeque grill and cook for your team. Not only is it cheaper than any pre-cooked alternative, it tastes better and people seem to really like the fact that the producer is personally cooking for them. You can buy steaks and potatoes for less than the cost of pizza, and burgers and stuff trend towards less than $3 a person (versus ~$8 for pizza or ~$20 for Indian). A 10pm or 11pm run for ice cream, slim jims, fresh coffee, and cigarettes is also usually appreciated!
Bottom line, if you can't change the schedule so people can live normal lives, my feeling is you have a firm responsibility to share the pain and enable people to get the task at hand done as easily as possible. But, don't get in the way, don't micromanage, and DO NOT CHAT. If there are two producers there, bored, chewing the fat while they are "there with the team" they may as well go home. Everyone else is concentrating. Pretend you are too! And don't chat with the people doing the heavy lifting unless they are clearly in break mode! You cannot be a tool of procrastination!
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck pizza! There is little worse than pizza if you need to work hard. It makes you tired and sweaty, you suddenly wonder why you have to read things twice, slowly, before you understand them, and your cardiovascular system is basically “sparks and explosions”.
The best thing to make your brain work? Sleep, air, sleep, water, healthy food and sleep!
Taking pride in lack of sleep is like taking pride in hitting yourself with a hammer.
Taking pride in living on coffee, mountain dew and pizza, is like taking pride in drinking a shot glass of poison once a day.
It is not cool, it is not “manly”, it is not hackerish, is is not geeky.
It”s Joe-Lower-Class-level retard-“coolness”.
Real hackers know that the body is the most impressive machine known to man. And that the only thing cooler than having a well set-up, impressive, high-performance computer do what you want, is having a well set-up, impressive, high-performance body/brain do what you want.
Healthy food is part of a healthy, collaborative effort.
P.S.: And I don’t mean hippie food that tastes like crap, either. :) I mean a large perfectly slow-oven-cooked steak, some good salad, tasty potatoes with some spring onions and parsley. That’s healthy *and* incredibly tasty. :)
Why is everyone staying late? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of posts here simplify the situation. People are staying late because of the Manager, or people staying late because of crappy code.
In my experience, people always seem to stay late when there's a deadline. It's just the way it works. Because no matter how reasonable the deadline or how awesome the code, there's always more that can be squeezed in or improved at the 11th hour.
In practice, deadlines are always unreasonable and code is often crappy (or can be improved). If we waited until things were perfect, nothing would ever go out.
So as far as the Management issue goes, do whatever it takes to make your team happy and productive. Stay late for whatever reason so long as that reason is helpful to your team. Be ready to advocate that developers be compensated for putting in extra effort.
All in all, reading through these responses, it's clear who the biggest beneficiary is. Pizza companies.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
... being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role.
Absolutely. There's the very basic support, like ordering the food and making sure the cleaning people don't turn off all the lights, which is very useful. But more importantly, being available when something comes up that the developer needs help with. Question about requirements comes up? The manager can call the functional guy and ask. Problem with access? The manager can call up the sysadmins and get the ball moving. It's pretty rare that something is so completely cut-and-dried that the developer can work late hours with no outside support to get it done. When that outside support is needed, having the manager right there to get the help that is needed can be a great help.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
Though, being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role. What do they need to get the job done? What can you do to remove obstacles from their way?
That sounds to me like what a manager should be doing anyway, even if no one is staying late. At least, if you assume for the sake of argument that you have a good team made of people who understand their jobs, then riding them to make sure they do their job shouldn't be something you have to do too much of. A manager's job should generally be more about removing obstacles that aren't part of the workers' jobs so that the workers can focus on doing their jobs.
But to the question at hand, I say yes, stay late with your workers. As a manager, I pretty well try to be the first one in and the last one to leave. I figure it's good for morale. I don't like to ask people to do things that I'm not willing to do myself. If someone asked me to put in some hard work late into the night, I wouldn't appreciate that person immediately going home to their own soft bed.
That doesn't mean you're going to do much. It might just mean that you make it clear that you're there in case anyone needs anything, and then you go and sit at your desk and kill time. You're there to help, not to keep them on task. In fact, you may want to work on lightening the mood, keeping people relaxed, and making sure they feel appreciated for their extra work.
Re:depends (Score:4, Insightful)
If the developers are staying late because the manager messed up, it doesn't hurt to stay late (but stay out of the way and order them food)
If the developers are staying late because they come in late or they messed up, no, the manager doesn't need to stay.
The reasons developers *must* stay late vary widely, depending on context, scheduling, external pressures (.ie. new requirements due to a merge that must be implemented immediately to avoid bleeding tens of $Ks/hour.) That is, they don't fit *at all* in that *he screwed up/they screwed up* dichotomy (which isn't even mutually exclusive to begin with.)
It is obvious that you do not have management/team lead experience. This is because, if I'm a manager and my guys screwed up and must stay late to fix it, I might need to stay with them to make sure they get it done. After all, the sign of a good manager is that he takes responsibility for the performance of the professionals under his watch, in particular if the thing to get done is critical, independently of who screws up.
Which leads to the following: the sign of a professional is that he does what needs to be done to get the job done and to conduct his job for the benefit of the business. BTW, if anyone has a problem with that statement, they should quit their jobs. It is dishonest to accept a check for a job function that is not being completed under that premise.
I might not be responsible for the screw up of someone else, but if called to step in, I would (if it is feasible for me to do so.) Within reason, professionals step up to the plate. Prima Donas and sensitive bitches with vaginal silicosis (who are a dime a dozen in the software world) do not, opting instead for trying to explain every single scheduling or work problem in terms of "who else other than me fucked up."
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah this was my reaction as well and I was really suprised by the actual question. I thought the question was going to be. "Will my employees think I'm a jerk for making them work late and then punching out at 6pm even if I'm not technically qualified to work on the project myself?"
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:depends (Score:3, Insightful)
The most common example at my work is a sudden critical-situation customer issue. Hardware fails or your product crashes (or is misconfigured, or a user error causes something vital to get deleted, or... there are a million ways things can go bad quickly). The customer is losing money every minute the system is down. In critsit cases like this, we stay until they're fixed - whether that takes 20 minutes or 20 hours. In cases like that, there's NOTHING the manager did wrong. There may be nothing ANY of us (including the customer) did wrong - but that doesn't matter to the customer. He's losing money & desperate to get it fixed. Therefore, it doesn't matter to us either. We're desperate to get it fixed to and do everything possible to make that happen.
It still may make sense for a manager to stay, especially in cases like this where it's vital that we get the proper expertise on the job in the quickest time possible. Sometimes the proper person is in a totally different department - we as developers may not even know who the right person is! In those cases, the manager can very quickly contact that department's manager and determine who the expert is.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. There are a lot of jobs where you have to work overtime one week to get a job done, and then directly after that you have weeks with not much work.
I used to even have a job where I basically had a 80-hour week followed by 0-hour week pairs for a few months during a big project. And on most of those jobs it was pretty impossible to split the work over more people. Plus, if a job needs to be done in one week you can't bring in a new guy which would need at least 2-3 month to get up to speed with the project.
It's true however, when you are in a company where you are expected to work overtime ALL the time, then I would definitely also quit after 8 hours each day to force them to hire additional people.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a leader, not a manager.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a solution for low skill factory jobs, where there is little communication needed, and the work can be efficiently divided amongst many workers with little overhead. Programming is not such a job. Adding more workers to a late project usually only makes it later, since the new workers have to be trained in and the need of coordinating amongst more people adds overhead and slows development more.
Fred Brooks elucidates this concept with much more detail in The Mythical Man Month.
how did we get here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apart from agreeing with other replies about supporting the team and staying our of their way, the manager should also be pondering how they got to this mess in the first place. Having to work late is a screw-up, somewhere. Sometimes its because of things outside of the team's control but most of the time it isn't. If it happens regularly then there is definitely a systemic problem with the process that needs to be sorted out.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I though the same thing for a while. But then after spending almost 3 years with little to no hiring in my team I realized that having 3 slow months because of new hires is really worth it. If you're always in crunch mode and never have time to hire someone else, then you need to bite the bullet and hire someone already. What ended up happening is that resignations happened more often than new hires, putting more strain on the remaining employees.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too. I don't see it as "macho" at all, though. I am responsible for the output of this team to those above me, and at the same time, I see it as very much part of my job to make my team look great--for all of us. Part of my job is clearing the BS that I have to deal with from my directs' path so that they can do their best work. I feel equal loyalty to those above as to those below. We are a team and we all have roles--mine is to steer and keep the thing running smoothly.
What the OP might have had when he was a developer was just a crappy manager. A lot of the job of managing people is just sussing out what kind of manager they want/need. Some people want or need constant intervention--they get lonely or they aren't, um, quite competent. Some people lose heart if you don't come by and cheer them up a little with some encouragement. Most people, though, really just want you out of their hair, especially with the kind of work and the kind of personalities that end up in software development (or in my case test development). That's when knowing what everyone's Starbucks order is comes in handy.
I've had great bosses and I've had terrible bosses. I try to copy the great ones--being positive without being fake, being both familiar and worthy of respect (by being accountable), and staying out of the way when unnecessary and/or unwanted. Bosses that have hovered over me have gotten an earful at some point. I'm happy to say I never have.
Seriously, I think the key to being a good manager/teacher/whatever is to think of the bad ones you've had, figure out what made them bad, and never do those things, while thinking of the good ones you've had, what made them good, and trying to do those things all the time.
40 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
In this country, our work-week is 40 hours. Our ancestors fought hard and made great sacrifices to win this right and pass it down to us, and I'll be damned if I'll see it steadily erode. Routine unpaid overtime is harmful not only to ourselves individually, but to the entire social contract we've managed to hammer out between capital and labor.
Respect yourself. Do not work more than 40 hours without getting the same time and a half premium someone in any other field would earn. If a project is late, that's not your fault. It's management's, and management ought to pay for the mistake.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, go home already! Give your guys a chance to goof off for a few minutes without their boss around!
A good boss understands that goofing off a little, especially when working extended hours, is pretty much a requirement to relieving stress and enhances productivity.
Methodology Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, the manager must tell the developers to return to their home, and take a good night sleep.
A few years ago (when I worked as a game programmer), it was common to do some all-nighters, since everybody was doing it.
There were some problems, though:
- the code tends to be crappier, since we are tired
- jetlag: if you are alone, this is not a problem, but it's difficult to live as a couple
- burnout: you'll pay your night of work
- you can be very productive the first night, but not for an extended period
Also, when the project finishes, all the tensions disappears, and everybody is completely demotivated, resulting in their resignation in 30% of the cases.
It's not reasonable to work like a crazy when you approach the deadline.
Now, I much prefer the agile approach:
instead of trying to put all you want in the product, just try to put what can fit within the given amount of time.
There are some interesting techniques that you may apply:
- YAGNI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_ain't_gonna_need_it [wikipedia.org] instead of implementing a ton of things, implement the simplest set of what is needed
- BDD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_Driven_Development [wikipedia.org] instead of coding without a goal (except to finish the product), ask your manager to write executable specifications. This includes also to concentrate on finishing the features one after another (and not keeping them half-finished, due to lack of time).
And the most important thing:
if you cannot add a feature in your program, because you lack of time, DON'T ADD IT !
For support, mostly. (Score:2, Insightful)
Brew fresh coffee. Take care of the food orders (and maybe go for special pick-up as a treat). Make sure anything that hinders their smooth progress is handled by you. Noise? Go deal with it. Something not where it should be and makes their life harder? Chase it like a rabbid dog and solve it. The best way to ensure their success (and thus cover your ass, if that's your persuasion) is to, precisely, do whatever you can to remove the obstacles to that success.
But heed the warning: if you're staying just so you can keep an eye on them, you're making a huge mistake. If you don't trust them in overtime, then you have no reason to trust them in normal work hours, and your problem is something much bigger and uglier.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
The videogame industry is pretty notorious for this, and with fairly good reason. Unfortunately, with unemployment rising and the economy faltering, companies feel a bit more free to demand mandatory overtime from game devs. There is also much less resistance to overtime from young, single programmers with no real family commitments. Most people in the game industry love what they do, so for some, it's not a horrible hardship to work longer hours.
Honestly, I'd start planning an exit strategy. It's always a bit scary to switch jobs, but an employer's attitude toward mandatory overtime is a pretty huge issue for me. On the plus side, you're reaching a threshold of experience which will make it much easier to switch jobs if needed. Believe it or not, there are a few companies out there who don't believe your weekends and evenings automatically belong to the company. It takes a while to ferret them out, though.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If every manager were like this, there'd be no animosity towards them.
In my experience only about 30% of managers are useful like this, 50% are the "puppeteer" type that range between those who are high up making holistic decisions to the manipulative middle manager type and the remaining 20% are a waste of good oxygen.
Also I've found that managers in small businesses tend to be like this as they have more at stake and cant afford to hire others to do everything for them. When a manager gets high enough to beleive they're entitled to a "Personal Assistant" they generally become more sociopathic.
a good quality any boss should possess (Score:1, Insightful)
In my opinion, I believe this is a good quality any boss should possess.
I used to work in an IT service company with a group of engineers. Every morning, Senior Engineer (my boss) briefs and delegate tasks. Then he visits every work site and check whether we have issues and our well-being. If it is a grave yard-shift, at least he will spend the first hour with us. If he is not around, he will take calls at any time and give any support he could. Essentially what he does is, kick start the work and empower us to finish it.
What I feel is, if someone is breaking sweat for me, it is my duty to support them. At least stay connected through IM, email or mobile. After all, without co-workers, we are nothing!
Re:depends (Score:4, Insightful)
It is obvious that you do not have management/team lead experience. This is because, if I'm a manager and my guys screwed up and must stay late to fix it, I might need to stay with them to make sure they get it done. After all, the sign of a good manager is that he takes responsibility for the performance of the professionals under his watch, in particular if the thing to get done is critical, independently of who screws up. Which leads to the following: the sign of a professional is that he does what needs to be done to get the job done and to conduct his job for the benefit of the business. BTW, if anyone has a problem with that statement, they should quit their jobs. It is dishonest to accept a check for a job function that is not being completed under that premise.
I might regret saying this but the "which leads to the following" isn't entirely true. As a manager of staff, I do have responsibility and visibility across the whole project. But my staff don't. They don't have the time to each know every last detail about what everybody else is doing and how they are performing; that's my job -- they are trusting me to manage the project to a successful result. If Fred drops the ball, then sure enough I need to find a way to get it picked up. But your last line isn't a very helpful way of approaching that. If you insist to Joe-down-the-corridor that "he should quit" / "is being dishonest" if he isn't happy about missing his son's birthday to pick up Fred's mess at the last minute "because that's what's needed to get the job done" -- that sounds like passing the buck on your responsibility for the project, and unless you are in a very high-paying environment (money covers many sins), it isn't helpful. The way you've phrased it really does sound like you are saying "As manager I have a special responsibility for the whole project; but you work for me so that means YOU have a special responsibility for the whole project, SUCKER!" No, if I need Joe to pick up Fred's mess, and don't want him to hand his notice in the next day, I need to show him the respect of recognising that what I'm asking him to do really is a great effort and will be appreciated -- not "it's just part of your job, what are you complaining about, jump to it". Especially as, let's face it, you usually go to a staff-member you trust to pick up the ball at the last minute -- a person you definitely don't want quitting because they feel they've been ill-treated by their manager.
Tea lady and red tape cutter (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from the tea lady role, the other good thing about having management around is that when the shit is hitting the fan, at some point you are often going to need to do some rather unconventional and similarly scary things to fix it.
Having the manager a "Hey boss" yell away means you can at least get "approval" for whatever it is straight away. Now the plebs can't be scapegoated or blamed for solving it by doing something against policy. Granted, it would be nice if that wasn't needed, but the fact you CAN get approval for crazy things quickly means the people fixing the problem are less likely to hesitate due to fear for their own skin.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care how much he works. I care how much he does for the company.
I had a boss who literally spent half his "work hours" playing golf. This ensured a lot of very interesting, very well paying contracts simply because other managers do the same. He was no programmer (rather, he once, long, long time ago, was one, but lost the train to .net and pretty much everything that was developed within the last decade). I can neither use him to hold my hand nor as a programmer. And I'm well capable to get my own coffee.
In a nutshell, I'd rather have him at the golf court getting us another contract that ensures me working full time than him sitting in his office reading newspapers because there's little else he could do for us.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The smaller the business the more weight every person has to pull. And in turn, an oxygen thief gets exposed very, very quickly.
I've had my share of big and small companies, and my personal theory is that the only reason small companies can compete with big ones is that smaller businesses run more efficiently. Not on the large scale, because the often praised synergy effects work only for huge companies who have comparably little overhead (the accounting department of a huge company is comparably small to one of a small company, when you compare the percentage of total cost), but on the small scale. You have a lot less dead weight and a lot fewer utterly useless people. They don't survive for long. They get exposed quickly because those in power have a vested interest to get them removed fast, simply because pulling one dead body along is hard to do if you have a team of 50 people compared to a team of 5000.
It's also a matter of caring, I think. When I worked for a large corporation, I didn't mind so much if someone was sitting around all day goofing off. Hell, I was anything but running at 100% efficiency simply because ... well, why should I if nobody else does? It's a totally different mindset when you pretty much know everyone else in the company.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Insightful)
The same problem applies: Too many managers are far too concerned with involving themselves in a process that they cannot do their actual job: Supervision, streamlining and organsation.
It's not your job as an officer to stand in the mud and hold an anchor for the bridge. It's your job to make sure your people can do that. It's your job to tackle the logistics to get the materials here (rather, it's your job to give someone the authority to get them here). It's your job to get someone who knows a bit of static to examine the terrain for the most suitable position of your bridge (again, that's most likely not you). It's your job to get a building expert that has experience with it, it's your job to give him the authority over a group of people that do the actual work. We're already here at two layers of delegation. I have seen managers that are unable to stomach a single one.
Management is a form of leadership. Leadership does not mean ordering people around. That's only needed in some cases, and few "leaders" ever managed to wrap their brains around that. Leadership is giving your people direction and the means to complete their tasks.
Re:It's called a team (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but where's my benefit? Worse, where is his "punishment"? If you have a boss who plays WoW and a firewall that doesn't filter this, sitting him in his office with an internet connection is no "punishment"...
I wouldn't mind him being on the golf court with his manager buddies. Chances are this lands us another fat contract meaning I still have a job in a few months. What I'd want if I am asked to stay late is something in return. If it happens once or twice, a little thank you present would be nice. If it happens all the time, I'd expect a few days time off (paid of course) when the crunch is over. If the crunch is never over, I'd expect a new coworker to materialize soon next to me.
I don't want to "punish" him. I want to reward me!