So called Manager role
What’s the need of a Manager? (in a software engineering job). They don’t code, they don’t resolve bugs, they don’t contribute technically. All they do is ask status from you, judge you with their own bias, attend pointless meeting & so on.
I'm a manager, I have manager too. So let me try to explain my purpose and my manager's purpose. My manager is a C suite. She knows business. She doesn't know coding, she doesn't contribute technically. What she tells me - hey this is our target, this is our goal, tell me how to achieve them. I read the goals and design the steps that are needed to achieve those goals. I myself is a good programmer, PhD in statistics from a prominent place, so I got what it takes to deliver & I can deliver what she needs if I work 1000 hours a week. Oh! Here comes the problem! A week doesn't have 1000 hours, so I need people who can help me out. My job is to identify skills among people - find a match between what they like & what company needs. This is a difficult job & I won't say I always do great job. There are managers who do this well, they are the good managers. Anyway, now I need to delicate works to different people and find out how they are progressing. Often, I may need to put a few seniors in my team as lead role so that they can drive some projects. I don't write much codes, even if I want to, that's not my job. Rather I read up on recent developments on say AI that's relevant to our work. 90% of the time, they are useless. 10% of the time, they bring hell lot of values. A good manager reduces this 90:10 ratio. Im good at it as I'm more from technical background. Lastly, once the project is complete, I need to sell it - to upper management, to client. If your product is worth $2, you can sell it at $3 or $1.5 - depends how much you can convince! Dollar values are just figurative, don't take them literally. A manager with business background does this much better than I do. Crux is, good managers are critical for team's success. Bad managers are just a big budget hires.
No offense to people working as Managers! Whilst I’ve been critical about this role, I believe the one who knows the art of “bringing work to people” rather than “bringing people to work” justifies his/her role better as Manager.
Thanks @user123 great comment - I tried to make a similar point in my comment. not as detailed as yours but in 100% agreement
Managers are absolutely important to bring order to the chaos. Thinking they're not needed is immaturity.
For small startups you can say this - but as things scale - a manager led model is the only one that works.
A solid team doesn't need a manager. It needs a team lead especially to guide juniors.
WITCH folks might need a manager, get the wind?
Even in WITCH companies , you can minimise the number if the teams are small/organised.
A solid team might not require manager but who would work if there is no one to ask. Who would resolve conflicts in the team and who will identify talent and give them tasks. None of this is technical but you need a person to get all these things done
Are you a fresher? If not I don't know why you haven't figured it out yourself till now.
Not sure if he is a fresher but i am sure u are the manager he is talking about
If he is not a fresher , how does he not know what a manager does? Are you a fresher too ?
So will you be taking the decisions alone? Let's say you want to move from monolithic to microservices.
Will you take the call? If yes, you're taking on the managerial role. Let's say if you take the decision as a team. The move failed. Who will be accountable? The team will definitely break, since at least one of them would have agreed because they didn't want to argue.
If you did something, and broke the production, costing $10M in revenue, you don't have to talk to the C suite regarding the same.
Except for the decision making shareholders, everyone else is just employees, with tasks delegated to them, and being paid for it.
So, there should be someone to look after that as well. If it was not for that Manager's decision to delegate the task, you wouldn't be working as well 💁🏻♂️
In my life Mostly I saw Awesome managers and yeah My First Manager was Awesome, Second was Pathetic he try to Destroy me but Management fired him to immediately
Manager role is to Cordinate between the team, And he is accountable for
Most Imp is understand you and Giving your rating for appraisal
Any delay in development
New releases
To make sure projects running on time
Product vision & refinements
Identify showbreaker
And Contribute each mamber learninng
Understand team pain points
List is too big but these are the important point as per my Observations throughout my career
@Coolgoose Hope your manager not destroying your wlb, If yes better to sit and get rid out of it
How? I didn't understand your last point, better to sit?
Better to sit with Manager, Ask him what problem you are having from me and try to resolve if it is out of the scope while joining the company and its not as per the Job Description than include HR Department and explain them the whole scenario in written
Managers won't get paid for their work, they get paid for responsibility and commitment towards a project from planning to completion. When the team contains good and hard working people, manager might seem useless but this will not be the case always.
How many managers assume responsibility? I have seen a very few genuine people like that.
You are a nice question. But your question, hurt me.
