Re:The unspoken truth about managing geeks (2009)
by perl4ever on Monday March 02, 2020 @06:51PM
(#22470406)
"I am deeply, profoundly sympathetic if you've worked most of your career in a place that built that kind of cynicism"
My post wasn't really prompted by my past employment nearly as much as my interviews and phone screens in the past couple of years. I'm inferring what the norm is based on what people seem to be looking for. Specifically, an interest in technology for its own sake.
I spend inordinate amount of time trying to instill business sense into my team members; help them be aware of how their actions contribute to the good/bad/ugly outcomes; encourage both a sense of pride and responsibility; awareness of client priorities and position; etc.
At the end of the day, I'm responsible for achieving business objectives. If all my team is aware of them, then all my team can strive towards them individually and collectively - without constant micromanaging from myself or anybody else.
Now, different places work differently; but I've hated being treated as an "exchangeable resource" when I was a techie; I hate treating people as "exchangeable resources" now (or even calling them "resources":); and have explicitly taught project management intro class that in our culture we believe motivated, aware team members in good morale are for more productive.
>> best suited to being plugged in to a position is someone who will work tirelessly on whatever you give them without caring one way or the other about the big picture
Such a person would have to be monitored every second of their work to ensure they "work tirelessly" to something valuable and productive. Which means we now have 2+ people accomplishing the work of one - the "person working tirelessly" and the person "monitoring tirelessly".
I am deeply, profoundly sympathetic if you've worked most of your career in a place that built that kind of cynicism. Certainly, I've built my own share of cynicism - I've worked at large enterprises 90% of my career and it's fascinating at times to witness the startup-oriented zeitgeist of HN. But never quite at the level where I believe it's actually better that my colleagues or team members don't have / don't care about business outcomes, or that my management is seeking such employees :<