> We should micromanage as much as possible without making somebody feel like we are reducing their agency. In my experience, the best way to avoid this is to treat them like an apprentice: > > 1. Demarcate the areas where they have agency. > 2. Give feedback without killing their agency. > 3. Graduate them out of apprenticeship when they are ready.
People call "good micromanagement" just "management"
But those preconditions of competence are not always in plentiful supply.
Some team members must be empowered, be given a target to go after, be given a domain of responsibility, and then let loose, with little interference except to assist in politicking or obtaining organizational resources.
There are others, however, where this will be disastrous. Frequent errors, stopping progress without raising a flag, inability to adjust course and learn, inability to be resourceful, lack of agency, inability to map objectives to tasks required. Experienced managers have all had this kind of team member, and recognize after many attempts that "be a better leader" often doesn't fix it.
The easy answer is to say, "well, simply don't hire this latter group of people, or PIP them if you do." But they exist, and they will wind up working somewhere, even if perhaps they are not working at a large, extremely well-paying tech company that typically will have plenty of applicants for their RSU-laden opportunities.
So, yes, those classic leadership qualities are great when the team member will thrive with them. In those cases the leader must provide the target, the support, and 'get out of the way.' But it is the rather ugly reality that this is not always the case. And in those, the leader must adapt their approach.
> If you think about it, we should all love micromanagers: they are helping us do our job! By making decisions for us, checking our work, and giving us constant feedback, micromanagers are making our jobs easier, not harder. But despite this, nobody likes micromanagers. Why?
Absolutely no. There is no form of micromanagement that is acceptable and it always represents an ethical failure. Full stop. Micromanagement is all about undermining the technical authority and agency of an IC whose job it is to have those things. It's really a form of paranoia and secondarily a desire for control to appease that paranoia at the end of the day.
If you want more awareness in your team and you want to be kept more up to date then you need to foster an environment where everyone knows exactly what their role is and isn't. Next, you need foster an environment where people can admit mistakes, laugh about them, and learn with a sense of urgency to rectify them when appropriate. People need to be confident of their agency, and it needs to be put on display at times. Managers should not be "visible" or working leaders, that's what engineers do, and certainly not part of a managers skillset. If you're going to directly engage with your reports based on progress, or want to challenge technical merits you need to have the technical relativity to do so. If you don't, then you need to stick to talking about goals and outcomes and how they align to higher goals and outcomes. Lastly, you need to be building trust constantly. You need to be willing to spend political capital on your team, and not just when it's advantageous to you.
This post then goes on to mix the roles of EM and Senior engineer. As a senior engineer, I'd probably lose my mind working for anyone that did this.