Maybe there’s a two dimensional chart here, but my best managers have been leaders, in which case they became mentors, or they’ve been service oriented, in which case I and my peers were up-managing them. The ones who are trying to herd cats come off as shrill, and nobody respects them. Fears them maybe, but no respect.

Problem is that if you’re up-managing your boss, they aren’t up-managing their boss. I’m sure there’s a Law in there somewhere. The leader types tend to know what’s what and shield the team from bullshit so they can get busy making the boss look competent in every other area. You can talk your way out of a lot of stuff when people are happy with the rest of your results. Delay tactics if nothing else. Sorry we can’t work on bullshit #372 right now because we’re busy being awesome on feature #784. Come back in a month or two (then cross your fingers to see if they still remember or are focused on bullshit #381).

What do you mean by "service oriented" and "up-managing"?

Service-oriented would be when they make themselves available as a service to "customers" (direct reports, other teams). Think of helpdesk/customer service, where there's docs on how to communicate/collaborate/find needed info, times to schedule meetings/office hours, etc. Focusing more on the experience and needs of the people who might need the manager for something.

Up-managing is basically supporting your boss. Help them with their goals, find ways to unblock them, ask them how they're doing/let them vent, make them look good to others.

Personally I disagree with the whole "making someone else look good" management philosophy (including "only complain up"). I think it's dishonest and counter-productive. Sure it reduces friction, but it doesn't help crappy things be less crappy. It does prevent people from having hard conversations which might change things for the better. We need to take the ego and resistance to change out of work/management.

It doesn’t just have to be helping your boss. From your reports’ point of view, it’s a matter of spending less time telling us how to do our jobs and spending more helping the boss figure out how to do theirs.

Because often the people doing the thing have a pretty good idea what’s possible and what’s not, and when the management wants unicorns they will be unhappy with everyone because all they are getting from them is ponies. Someone has to tell them that’s because unicorns don’t exist and they’re being not just unreasonable but unhinged.

Can you share tips about ensuring you get a good (enough) funnel of (remote) candidates and hires?

I hire relatively entry level folks for advanced product technical support so my funnel is naturally large since they aren’t specialists and I can teach/train the stuff to anyone who is a technical hobbyist or enthusiast. This has been my best way to keep top of the funnel high, over the years I also got more and more comfortable hiring folks with less and less technical/startup background but mostly my advice isn’t helpful for roles that require a lot of specialization. At that point it’s good to have a solid network, a good reputation, and a successful company. That’s another thing that’s kept me from having to expand my funnel much - my company has been doing really well for eight years and is only becoming more well known and mostly we get a lot of inbound. Besides that, hire good recruiters, sourcers, and recruiting coordinators. They know their shit.

> I think they mean micromanagers

I’ve never in 20+ years seen a micromanager in the wild. I’m not sure they really exist.

You're incredibly lucky if that's the case.

I've had a mix of both. The times that I had I micromanager were the most soul-sucking experiences of my career.

They're definitely out there.

From demanding all computer screens face them to micromanaging time that required logging every minute in 15 minute intervals. I've seen it. From email snooping to timestamp logging to phone call recording tracking micromanagers are alive and well .

When I've seen 15 min time logging it's always been when time is billable. Have you seen cases outside of this?

We were using it internally pretending we were billing each other. Total employees under 5 people. Monthly an accountant would email and say you are not billing enough hours. This was full time.. weird, horrible experience I can bring with me.

They exist, and it seems silly to suggest that they don't with n=1

It seems silly to suggest n=1, unless you somehow assumed I've only encountered one manager in 20 years.

N is the number of managers I've personally reported to (directly and indirectly), other managers I've had direct experience with at my various workplaces, the managers of my peers at these workplaces, and the managers my friends at other companies have told me about.

I've seen many bad managers, but their flaws have been: political shenanigans, technological ignorance, lack of involvement, or just general cluelessness. The one thing I've never actually seen yet is a manager who is trying to do too much in the details.

You are the n=1 because you related this phenomenon to your own personal experience. Number of managers you've had is irrelevant.

I appreciate your commitment on this issue.

I had a CTO who would often send erratas with corrections in documentation written by and for ICs.

He would also _frequently_ request that PMs would send him draft emails before they send those to third party suppliers.

Note that all of these edits were not about content or data sensitivity or anything technical. It was purely grammar or just zero value adding re-wording.

It was definitely the shortest position in my career, i got out as quick as I gracefully could.

So yeah micro-managers do definitely exist.

Ha, I send corrections (including minor grammar/spelling) to ICs under me. But I use it explicitly as a "teaching moment", and explain to them:

* They should be mindful of all aspects of their work, including docs.

* If I come across code that woefully misformatted, and comments are all over the place, with random whitespace, and zero effort on spelling (in comments or function/variable names), it causes me to think they don't pay attention to details -- that they don't care about their code. I find badly formatted code to be especially jarring with UI engineers, who should have some knack for visual quality.

* I warn them that when /others/ in the company see our code and docs, if we look sloppy, they will implicitly form a judgement of us as a sloppy team.

On the other hand, if the single contribution I ever provided for my team was spell-check... then yeah, I should leave.

> If I come across code that woefully misformatted, and comments are all over the place, with random whitespace, and zero effort on spelling (in comments or function/variable names), it causes me to think they don't pay attention to details -- that they don't care about their code. I find badly formatted code to be especially jarring with UI engineers, who should have some knack for visual quality.

This is a tooling problem, not a people problem. There's not a language I know that doesn't have at least a tolerably decent formatter and linter out there, and a delightful side benefit of having those in your build chain is the end of style bikeshedding. I find "well, if it means that much to you, you can always open a PR on the style rules," and the knowledge that they'll need to justify their preference - and own all the whitespace PRs, and at least half the merge conflicts, if they wish not to be thought a jerk - quells most folks' desire to fight about their preferred number of spaces or what-have-you.

Without any sort of reliable tooling support for a standard house style, I believe I might well come to regard the kind of insistence you describe as a demand to waste time on pointless busywork. Doubly so, if the person doing the insisting had made no evident effort to find and put into practice such tooling support.

They do; I went to a lot of effort a few years back, teaching one how not to be. We both learned a lot: I learned how to avoid a significant failure mode in my own career, and he learned he was happier in an IC role.