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Comment by noisy_boy | Hacker News Reader

I have had two managers that stood out among many others due to one main quality (they had many other qualities): they were umbrellas, not funnels. They basically tended to the team like a gardener, handling each plant differently in a way that makes it most productive, shielded them from external pressures (though not to the point of mollycoddling), exposed the good work done via publicity and once all that was necessary was done, stepped back to let the plants be fruitful instead of blocking the growth by micromanaging.

It is a very rare quality and few can pull it off - if you find a boss like that, consider yourself lucky.

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My best managers have been umbrellas, but with transparency. If something was happening in the company we would be informed, but could rest assured that our manager would do their best to work the issue for us while keeping us informed.

The worst managers I’ve had were umbrellas, but to such an extreme that they kept us in an isolated island separate from the rest of the company. We didn’t know what was going on in the company and had no chance to integrate that content into our work. It felt good at first, but over time I realized that the umbrella manager was trying to keep us in the dark so they could keep exclusive control over our work and neutralize any possibility of us competing with them among management. The last manager I had like this went so far they they would praise us for our work and give nothing but positive feedback, right up until he cut people for low performance. It felt like everything he did was for equal parts performance (looking like the ideal, happy, positive manager) and control (keeping us isolated from the rest of the company so he was always in full control).

Ironically, that manager now posts frequent leadership thoughts on LinkedIn and has a newsletter.

> Ironically, that manager now posts frequent leadership thoughts on LinkedIn and has a newsletter.

Interesting. It may be very possible the best management types work on refining their management skills -- not by writing blogs about it.

I'm curious if he ever mentions that rule number one for managers should be "to be humble."

I think it's a really hard balance to strike. There's so much company politics/etc that isn't beneficial for a team to experience, but equally, without being exposed to that noise you won't develop an intuition that helps you navigate the organisation.

Whatever the situation I think it's crucial you can trust your manager to be straight with you and give their unvarnished opinion of things if you ask them directly. That helps you trust they're communicating things accurately to you, which makes you feel more comfortable relying on them to provide you with the information instead of trying to seek it out some other way.

My current boss is this way and it’s almost certainly to prevent competition/control the narrative to upper management and other teams/save his own ass. As a result, I usually don’t know who I’m building software for or how they’re going to use the software. He’s a real detriment to the company and I hope he gets the ax.

I’d be more surprised if they didn’t make low effort feel-good posts on LinkedIn

About 15 years ago I found myself in charge of building/growing/running a team in response to a product that was growing insanely. That growth went on for a decade.

I did the gardener thing, handling "each plant" differently, shielded them from external pressures, adjusted the level of management individually and let those that demonstrated the capability to make sane design decisions solve large problem areas on their own, etc.

I did not expose good work via publicity. I did express it to them personally and via salary increases etc. It was kind of made clear via osmosis in the team, but not outside of it. There was never that kind of culture in that company. It was also in egalitarian northern Europe.

Your comment made me think about whether I should have attempted to introduce it or not. I think I really should have. Sudden big regret.

You did the best that you knew how to at the time, and what you've described sounds like a great experience for your team; don't give yourself a hard time if you think you'd now do something differently. Getting better at something, or changing the way we want to do it, doesn't mean our past efforts were failures.

Thanks, and yeah, we had fun!

I mentioned publicity as a dimension of what made them excellent but it's not the only thing. Direct appreciation combined with salary increments are an excellent reward. You have nothing to regret and should be proud of your efforts.

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