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Comment by ta998877 | Hacker News Reader

wow, cynical much?

sometimes you manager is actually trying to help you, sure it's not purely altruistic but is anything? you own the burden of responsibility for achieving your dreams, your manager is merely a facilitator that can sometimes help you achieve that. when you delegate your future, it's your fault.

"I want to learn more about forecasting models". Understand that your manager has many contradicting tensions and they are trying to balance them all. Is this delivering business value or aligned with company goals? It's ok if not, but expect other things to keep being prioritised over it. How many growth opportunities did you find that were denied, or did you not find any?

Take responsibility for yourself.

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>Take responsibility for yourself.

My last statement basically said just that. I am taking responsibility for my own growth rather than rely on management. My manager even asking me these questions is really a silly exercise so when reviews come around we can say that managers are interested in our career growth. The reality is that there are tasks and projects to get done and those with business value, rather than personal growth value, get prioritized. Discussing where I want to go is a fruitless exercise.

> Discussing where I want to go is a fruitless exercise.

In my experience, it's neither silly nor fruitless, but you can't expect solid results either, your interests are not the only factor at play.

As a manager, I'm genuinely interested in my team's personal growth, but that needs to be balanced with business needs. I'll always try to match business needs with each team member's personal interests and not just skills, because that'll render a much more motivated (thus productive) work environment, but sometimes it's just not possible, and uninteresting work will just have to be dealt with to keep the paychecks coming until something more interesting shows up.

Maybe you are an exception but from my experience most people in management don't have the depth to really help their people. They are too busy surviving themselves. In addition most companies have no interest in developing their workers' careers. They want them to perform better within their little box but that's it.

It's not cynical to learn from repeated experience and to correctly understand your work environment. As you yourself point out.

Where that work environment is misrepresented by a manager, that isn't balance. It's a manager costing the company money.

They need to take responsibility for that. Doing so will probably require a difficult conversation with their manager.

the real problem with your manager is that they are not holding you accountable to your commitments. it's not their job to "do your growth", that's your job. it IS their job to know what your growth strategy is and to keep you accountable to it.

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