Hacker News Reader

Comment by fatdog | Hacker News Reader

What are the attributes of a crappy manager? A lot of people say what they hate, but there is a theme I have seen in tech.

When you think of these managers, you need to ask, who are they? Where are they from? How did they get the job? What did they do before (large/small org)? What is their social background? What is their style?

At the root, I suspect it's shitty leadership at the top. The Valley execs I have met, let's just say they are not the sort of guys you would willingly go into battle for. Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect.

I have also yet to see a non-white person quit over company culture issues. Thar be some elephants in thar rooms.

View on HN

>What are the attributes of a crappy manager?

The director in charge of Fire TV was part of a sex trafficking ring that victimized Korean slaves in Bellevue, WA. This person is under indictment in King County courts. The women were slaves who were forced into prostitution to pay off debts to organized crime bosses in Asia. No doubt this person still has lots of friends that are still in management at Amazon.

So, for context of "how bad can it really be?" read the above and let that sink in a little bit. This is not being forced to work on the weekend kind of shit. No woman should be setting foot on Amazon campus for their own personal safety.

The fundamental difference between good and bad managers is usually how they deal with "shit". Bad managers are shit funnels, good managers are shit umbrellas.

I think there is more to it then that. All my managers have been shit umbrellas, but still some of them were not worth the investment of my time.

Once my management was split over several people and that was an issue as well as one could set incentives and then the other would obstruct because they didn't share the incentives and didn't care about the outcome. Not having shared incentives and outcomes has been the most common problem across my entire career.

Managers can set up goals and incentives and then change them at the last minute without telling you and claim you failed. Not maliciously in my case, but the effect is the same.

I'm sure the ways in which a manager can be bad is quite diverse.

Certainly there's more, the shit umbrella/funnel factor is just the first order approximation of goodness.

>Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect.

This is spot on. Most of the currently big tech companies were founded by people who got where they are by means of their technical skill. The general disdain for "old order" businesses carries over into a disdain for management practices that were developed and refined at those "old" businesses, sometimes to the point that such things don't matter at all.

So big companies end up being run by goofballs who live out some juvenile fantasy by appearing in Star Trek. Makes Richard Branson look like Thomas Watson in comparison.

>>Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect.

That generally happens when people luck out, ride a once in a lifetime wave and land at the top. And now think it was all due to their hard work. While it was luck all along.

I've had mentors whom I would follow anywhere. But I also have had people I wouldn't like to see their face again.

There are a plenty of career managers in Tech, whose solve purpose to work for their won existence.

Who was it who said the culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate? Bad behavior always comes from (or is enabled by) the top.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com