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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

> updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone's going roughly in the same direction… have you thought about who is filling this role on your team?

I thought that's what various kinds of "managers" were for.

Granted, only once, for one year before she left, have I actually experienced a manager doing that. I was like, geez, a manager actually doing their job really amazingly improves our stress levels, job satisfaction, and the quality of our product.

It does not seem to be what managers are actually trained, selected, or rewarded/recognized for at many places, it is true.

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That's management's job, yes, but it turns out that managers get overloaded in tasks and some just drop on the floor.

1/3rd of it is providing your boss the information he needs to get his job done. (Staffing plans, status reports, distillation of technical issues and tradeoffs, etc.) 1/3rd of it is working with the rest of your team to run the department. (cross-team coordination, escalation, department initiatives, surfacing issues and solving problems.) The last third focuses on the team. Now, depending on the time of year and the composition of each team (new boss, new managers, new team members), the composition of the work can vary, but they each take up some time.

Sometimes, things just devolve into status reports and firefighting. If your manager was able to do that work, it means that the entire department was functional.

I try to do all of that. Some of it, I have to delegate.

Sounds like a dysfunctional organization where managers routinely do not have the capacity to do their jobs. But yeah, in my experience dysfunctional organizations are definitely the norm.

(There's a reason why the great manager left...)

Right, but then what's the right manager:IC ratio? Think of it more as a tradeoff and a design decision. How many managers do you want in an organization? (Assume managers make 5% more than your senior engineers.) Too many and your organization gets top heavy.

Now, I think one right solution might be to have non-technical administrative assistants for the department. My organization has three, and we still have work for more.

Finally, there's always more work to be done for any organization.

Well, if there's nobody with the responsibility/authority and sufficient time to do the kind of work we're talking about (and who is evaluated and promoted based on doing it well), it sounds like the tradeoff was not the right one if the goal is producing a good product. Because that work needs to be done, to produce a quality product (whatever you are producing).

Over my career, I have increasingly tended to believe that at the majority of organizations the goals decision-makers are acting upon are not in fact about producing a good product, for whatever that product is. That is certainly one explanation. It's not that they are obtuse about what it takes to create a good product, they just have other priorities.

> I thought that's what various kinds of "managers" were for.

Product managers yes, people managers no

I'd argue it's part of everyone's job on the team (including the manager).

Management is a specialist job. Just as software development is.

(For me managers are about two things; people leadership [inspiring the best in people, leading their personal growth] and communication [between team and others]).

What you describe sounds like a scrum master/project management role.

Ultimately if the team are not engaged in the direction then no amount of manager-direction will help.

Except a large part of the OP was about someone _informally_ taking on a _specialist job_, even though it's not specially in their job description, and then getting penalized for it career-wise.

It was a specialist job. It apparently wasn't one anyone else was doing. It was a job that someone(s) _did_ have to do to make the work go right.

Shouldn't someone have that, indeed, specialist job, and do it? Whether you call them a "project manager" (that's got "manager" in it), a "scrum master", or some other kind of "manager" -- why are these crucial _coordination_ tasks being left to whatever developer happens to step up to do them, at cost to their career?

I've always thought it was the manager's job to do things like, especially, "updating the roadmap, talking to the [stakeholders], noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone's going roughly in the same direction."

Many of those things can be categorized as either removing barriers to implementers getting work done, or making sure the implementers are getting the right work done. Isn't that what (various kinds, including "project") managers are for? Indeed it is a specialist job.

If they aren't doing that -- what are they doing?

I just struggle to see how a team in which everyone is not on the ball over e.g "noticing the things that might have been dropped" can ever be high performing.

Its a managers job to train and build their teams skills in these areas, not to be the grunt...

(agreed on the project managers; but it wasnt clear if thats what you meant in your initial post)

Is it "grunt work", or is it a "specialist job"?

I don't think it's grunt work. I think it's work that requires skill, professional judgement, finesse, continual learning, consistent attention over time, is crucially important, and can be very rewarding.

To bring it back to the OP, disrespecting it as "grunt work" is what gave the hypothetical character portrayed in the OP a career dead-end as a reward for performing vitally important skilled work well, and on their own initiative since the organization hadn't provided for it.

This is weird thought where your solution to the problem is just "have the people on the team be better."

The entire phenomena exists because people that see how important these things are end up on teams led by and staffed by people who either don't see how important they are, or aren't competent enough to do the glue work.

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