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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

Being a manager in modern day means you have to accept being a devious person to a certain degree. You are in the middle of managing two conflicting goals of company and the employee. Each wants to extract as much as possible from the other.

Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly. Yea there are career ladders and stuff but those are totally ignored for all practical purposes. As a manager you have to make up BS on the fly when an employee asks you why they were not promoted despite doing everything you asked them to do. Pomotions aren't really in your control as a low lever manager.

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There is a lot to unpack in this comment, but in general the situation described here is specific to certain kinds of organizations, with lamentably poor leadership and management cultures. If management views the employer-employee relationship as some sort of zero-sum game - they have already lost that game.

In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structures, the criteria for promotion are not nebulous. I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals.

In general, I would encourage anyone who is in a working situation described above to look for another job - and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! As interviewers, we are comfortable asking hard questions, I don't see why being a candidate should be any different. Is there a structured feedback system in your company? What is it, and how closely does your team follow it? When was the last person in your team promoted, and how long were they in their previous role? etc.

> and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview!

In theory, I agree. The reality is these orgs are crap for a reason...they drink too much of their own Kool Aid, they don't realize they have blindspots, etc.

The point being, good luck getting a transparent and honest answer as that's the antithesis of their philosophy.

True - this is why it's important to structure your questions in a way that makes it harder to BS - same as when interviewing someone, ask about specific instances of things.

It's been a while since I've been a candidate, so I kinda winged it in the above comment, but if you want to be balsy (and why not!) you can ask something like "Can you tell me about the last time you had to give negative performance feedback?" You might want to preface such a question a bit to qualify your reasons for asking it, but that sort of thing is not easy to BS.

Understood. It doesn't hurt to ask. I do agree. I'm just suspect of honest replies. They might not BS in the true sense. They just don't know what transparency and honesty is.

Full disclosure: I just left a marketing agency that wasn't 25% of what they said it was. I had asked questions and the answers didn't match what was actually happening. Nice people. I don't think it was intentional per se. But they were so not self-aware that they had little idea how far off they were.

> and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview!

Is this really useful though. They will always tell you what you want to hear, just like you say what they want to hear.

> I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals.

Because low level managers don't really have the power to grant that promotion and are not in position to properly explain why they lost out the promotion to a peer from another team. There are a whole of unspoken things that factor into a promotion like gaining favor by pumping your manager/VP by giving them credit publicly, thanking them for their support ect.

> Is this really useful though. They will always tell you what you want to hear, just like you say what they want to hear.

100% it's useful.

First, not everyone is going to just tell you what you want to hear. I for one am entirely transparent in interviews, often criticizing the org. Hiring someone who doesn't like the culture is an absolute disaster.

Second, you should ask the same question to every person that interviews you. If you get a bunch of different answers you're probably getting bullshitted, or they just don't have a consistent answer across the org for what you are asking. That's valuable info either way.

Third, ask questions that don't have a "right" answer. If you ask "do people who work here care about the mission?" you're going to get a yes every time. If you ask "what would you say is the biggest source of motivation for you and your team?" you'll get lots of varied answers. I know because I've asked that question and gotten countless different ones.

For the leadership/management question they have no way to know what answer you are looking for when you ask about the management philosophy. If they give a nothing answer like "we try not to micromanage" then you push. You'll either find out what it is or you'll find out that the people you are asking don't know, which suggests that there isn't one.

A lot of orgs don't control their promotion cycle.

Imagine a local unit with the budget given for promotions from global is announced after the yearly promotion discussions of all team leaders happened.

So they had to come up with some form of ranking so that the cut off can be made based on the available budget.

So even if 15 people had done all that their team leads said would be necessary for a promotion the decision hinges on some internal ranking as well as a globally decided budget.

This sounds like a good example of the "lamentably poor leadership and management culture" we are talking about.

> Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly.

The way this actually looks, from the management side, is that people by and large do mediocre work, and fail to ever increase the scope or quality of the work they deliver.

The manager has visibility into the work of many engineers, and can see how one person implements major features quickly, cranks out design documents, fixes a ton of bugs, helps to organize the work of their teammates, brings people together from different teams to make technical decisions... meanwhile almost everyone else takes at least two weeks for even the smallest change, can't answer simple questions about the work they're doing, they don't help their teammates in any significant way, and so on. And those people are bewildered and frustrated that they're not getting promoted.

> implements major features quickly, cranks out design documents, fixes a ton of bugs, helps to organize the work of their teammates, brings people together from different teams to make technical decisions

This is almost superhuman. Basically combines everything from a entry level all the way to staff engineer. tons of , quickly, cranks out, helps, brings together. Sounds like a parody.

Yea if this is what is required to get a promotion with 2% increase in pay, no surprise most ppl aren't motivated to step up. And managers are bewildered and frustrated why people take 2 weeks to implement a feature when they should be "cranking out" code.

> And those people are bewildered and frustrated that they're not getting promoted.

They shouldn't be if these superhuman requirements are clearly understood by everyone. Example of previous promotions where people achieved this and concrete examples of what you mean by "fixes tons of bugs". Not something secret in your head. What does "ton" mean to you as a manager. You should have no problem saying, You didn't get promotion because you didn't fix "tons of bugs" , end of discussion. Expecting people to read your mind and wondering why are 'bewildered' is total failure of management.

>people by and large do mediocre work, and fail to ever increase the scope or quality of the work they deliver.

Your explanation for why people arent performing to your expectations seems to be that they are lazy or stupid or both. I really pray i don't work for someone like this.

> This is almost superhuman

And yet as I wrote this, I had several specific people in mind, who do literally all the things I listed: they design, they code, they help organize the project, they reach out to other teams, etc. I didn't say they do all those things every day! :-) Their productivity stands out clearly above that of most of their peers. It's not just me that notices -- I've get slacks from other people on how these folks kick ass. And I've seen this at every company I've worked at. There are the top engineers who deliver the most features and functionality, at the highest quality standards, and done quickly... and then the rest of the team.

> Expecting people to read your mind and wondering why are 'bewildered' is total failure of management.

Of course. Goes without saying. Helping people increase their productivity --through clear communication-- is one of the main jobs of an eng manager.

> Your explanation for why people arent performing to your expectations seems to be that they are lazy or stupid or both. I really pray i don't work for someone like this.

I know my statement may offend egos, but again: any manager will tell you that the productivity of engineers --by any metric-- is very unevenly distributed. It's not because of laziness or stupidity. Talent and skills are simply not evenly distributed. Sucks, but that's just how it is.

And then during performance-review season, promotions will go to those engineers who are performing clearly better than their job-level peers.

> Of course. Goes without saying. Helping people increase their productivity --through clear communication-- is one of the main jobs of an eng manager.

Curious why people are 'bewildered' on your team when you have to clearly pointed out the to get promotion you have crank out maximum number of features than anyone else ( for example). There was also failure to 'increase their productivity' if they are taking 2 weeks to deliver basic stuff.

I might be wrong here but sounds like management style is that of a passive observer that rewards 'top N' , punishes 'bottom N' and lets everyone else just stagnate.

> I know my statement may offend egos

It has nothing do with ego, you are obviously right, people are different. I just dislike 'fixed mindset' managers. Managers who have absolved themselves of any responsibility to improve or elevate their teams by proclaiming things like

> people by and large do mediocre work

> Talent and skills are simply not evenly distributed. Sucks, but that's just how it is.

There is just no benefit to me working for someone who holds these attitudes about me and my 'talent and skills'. I simply have nothing to gain.

Over the years, it’s really only been a small number of people who constantly push for promotion without stepping up their own game. Their failures are often an inability to finish tasks. Or they ask for more challenging work (e.g., singing up to kick off and lead a new project we all want to see happen) and then they just fizzle out.

Their frustration (and “bewilderment”) stems from the gap in what they want to accomplish versus what they’re able to accomplish at this point in their career. They reject the feedback that they're not performing at the next career level, because from their POV, they're working hard and feel that their own results and deliverables are the max a person can achieve.

While this certainly could be attributed to a communication failure on the manager's part, my experience (and my POV as manager) is that it rather reflects on the individual engineers themselves -- some just naturally get a ton of shit done, some are able to push themselves and grow, and others struggle to grow despite the effort they put in and despite my attempts to coach them.

> Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly.

I think you’ve worked at some very toxic work environments, but it’s a mistake to suggest that your experience is the norm.

It’s funny to read HN comments about how all managers are terrible, devious people who are only out to abuse employees. Most of us managers started out as ICs. Do you really think we surrender our humanity and adopt evilness as our SOP on the day they give us our manager title? No, most of us enter management because we really like working with people and like helping people succeed. This idea that we only exist to spite employees is very childish.

He didn't say that, he just said it's antagonistic by nature, nothing like what "you" accuse him of saying. That's fine, you know chess is like that, in fact any game where the goals are diametrically opposite. And they aren't completely diametrical, they ways in which they are not diametrical are just boring, nobody cares, yeah work hard yadda yadda, yeah be polite and show up on time, nobody cares. But like don't stop there! Work like fuck! Be gentlemanly or an assertive woman, or some analog that suits you! And show up on time like the bill from the cemetery! I did these things and didn't get promoted, but well no one time I was promoted actually, looking back...well but you gotta do it without counting the cost, real enthusiasm, a real work ethic! And knowing full well your employer might equally be, as an employee is out to leech, out to leech his employees.

> No, most of us enter management because we really like working with people and like helping people succeed.

A lot of people who go into management are just ladder climbers at companies where management means more money, status, and power. They aren't particularly interested in or good at the actual job.

yes you are right. For most of us that's the only career path out of daily drudgery of coding and learning a million js frameworks on the weekends.

Its just the unfortunate reality that people are put into this desperate position. And desperate people do desperate things. For many people Being a sycophant yesman beats having to code another crud app millionth time being bossed around by someone who is a decade younger than them. I don't blame people choosing the way out.

'helping people' :)

I absolutely do not blame you. But I sure as heck am not drinking the "managers are passionate about helping people" Kool aid.

As a first-level manager you're not in control of compensation policies but you can certainly impact promotions in many ways. I have had many managers who were honest about the lack of promotion or a bigger bonus.

This is oddly specific. Perhaps to your company or industry.

But is in no way a standard across companies.

Sounds horrific to be honest. Having to BS employees on the fly?

This article explains it pretty well: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-....

You're spot on. The only way to "win" as a manager is by being a sycophant to the director or VP above you. Loyalty is how you get promoted. So your job is to make sure your boss or their boss is never wrong, even when they really, really are.

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