Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

by Michael Lopp

My definition of a great manager is someone with whom you can make a connection no matter where you sit in the organization chart.

I ask the same question in every interview I have: “Where do you need help?” Whether it’s an individual contributor, a manager, or my new boss, I’m always curious where people see their weaknesses. A flippant “I’m solid across the board” response is a terrifying red flag. I’m a fan of pride; I want you to sell yourself in a interview. But if you suggest that you’re flawless, all I’m thinking is that your flaws are so big that you can’t talk about them or you have no clue what they are.

A manager’s job is to take what skills they have, the ones that got them promoted, and figure out how to make them scale. They do this by building a team that accentuates their strengths and, more importantly, reinforces where they are weak.

My first piece of advice to all new managers is: “Schedule one-on-ones with direct reports, keep them on the same day and time, and never cancel them.” With this in mind, some of the trickiest transitions for me during the day are when these one-on-ones show up. I’m deep in some problem, writing a specification, answering a critical e-mail, and this person walks in my office and they want to talk about I don’t know what . . . I’m working in the zone here, people. In the brief second I try to figure out some way to reschedule this meeting, I remind myself of a simple rule, “You will always learn something in your one-on-one.”

Managers who don’t have a plan to talk to everyone on their team regularly are deluded. They believe they are going to learn what is going on in their group through some magical organizational osmosis and they won’t. Ideas will not be discovered, talent will be ignored, and the team will slowly begin to believe what they think does not matter, and the team is the company.

Real work is visible action managers take to support their particular vision for their organization. The question you need to answer for your manager is simple: does he do what he says he’s going to do? Does he make something happen?

Stables are engineers who: Happily work with direction and appreciate that there appears to be a plan, as well as the calm predictability of a well-defined schedule. Play nicely with others because they value an efficiently run team. Calmly assess risk and carefully work to mitigate failure, however distant or improbable it might be. Tend to generate a lot of process because they know process creates predictably and measurability. Are known for their calm reliability.

Volatiles are the engineers who: Prefer to define strategy rather than follow it. Have issues with authority and often have legitimate arguments for anarchy. Can’t conceive of failing, and seek a thrill in risk. See working with others as a time-consuming and onerous task, prefer to work in small, autonomous groups, and don’t give a shit how you feel. Often don’t build particularly beautiful or stable things, but they sure do build a lot. Are only reliable if it’s in their best interest. Leave a trail of disruption in their wake.

The Rands Test: 11 Possible Points Let’s start with bare-bones versions of the questions, and then I’ll explain each one. Do you have a one-on-one? Do you have a team meeting? Do you have status reports? Can you say “no” to your boss? Can you explain the strategy of the company to a stranger? Can you explain the current health of business? Does the guy/gal in charge regularly stand up in front of everyone and tell you what he/she is thinking? Are you buying it? Do you know what you want to do next? Does your boss? Do you have time to be strategic? Are you actively killing the Grapevine?

The status information is out there. In what managerial textbook does it say it’s a good idea to distribute the task of figuring out what is going on to the people who are performing the work? That’s, like, your job.

I bag on meetings because, like any nerd, I expect the universe to be efficient and orderly, and there is no more vile a violation of this sense of orderliness than a room full of people randomly bumping into shit and calling it a meeting.

There are two useful types of meetings: alignment meetings and creation meetings

A meeting has two critical components : an agenda and a referee

There are lots of exits from a meeting that look nothing like a door.

Meetings must exist, but meetings cannot be seen as the only solution for making progress. If you must meet, start the meeting by remembering that the definition of a successful meeting is that when the meeting is done, it need never occur again.

As a manager, you manage both yourself and your team, and the simple fact is there will always be more of them than of you.

I’m talking about engineers here: a class of human being that derives professional joy from the building of things—specific things. Things they can sit back and stare at—look there!—I built that thing.

The building of things scratches an essential itch for engineers. It’s why they became engineers in the first place.

the joy of creation and the satisfaction of learning while gaining experience, perfecting the craft. Engineers are wired to learn how to build stuff well.

Management is a total career restart. One of the first lessons a new manager discovers, either through trial and error or instruction, is that the approaches they used for building products aren’t going to work when it comes to people.

A Twinge is your experience speaking to you in an unexpected and possibly unstructured way,

Having a meaningful conversation with anyone takes time. As you’ll see in a moment, you start with an opener where you figure out where everyone is mentally, which builds momentum into having a conversation of consequence.

A productive one-on-one is one where we talk strategically about how we do stuff, but more importantly, how we might do this stuff better.

When the Vent begins, you might confuse this for a conversation. It’s not. It’s a mental release valve, and your job is to listen for as long as it takes. Don’t problem solve. Don’t redirect. Don’t comfort. Yet. Your employee is doing mental house cleaning, and interrupting this cleaning is missing the point. They don’t want a solution; they want to be heard.

The Vent that wants no help is a rant. The ranter somehow believes that the endless restatement of their opinion is the solution. Perhaps they have no clue what a solution might be or how to find it, or perhaps they’ve been stewing on the topic so long that they’ve lost all sight of logic.

A Disaster is the end result of poor management. When your employee believes totally losing their shit is a productive strategy, it’s because they believe it’s the only option left for making anything change.

The cliché is, “People are your most valuable resource.” I would argue that they are your only resource. Computers, desks, buildings, data centers . . . whatever. All of those other tools only support your one and only resource: your people.

The sound that surrounds a successful regimen of one-on-ones is silence. All of the listening, questioning, and discussion that happens during a one-on-one is managerial preventative maintenance

Your reward for a culture of healthy one-on-ones is a distinct lack of drama.

Being emotionally invested in what you are doing is an absolute requirement for caring about your job. What I hear when you walk into my office and freak out is “I’m caring about my job here, Rands, please listen.” It’s taken years of weathering these explosions to hear this and not to take it personally, but I’ve come to expect that freakouts are a normal event in passionate engineering teams. It’s still a management failure. It’s great that your freak has chosen to freak out. The alternative is that they’re not saying a thing and have decided to leave the company. The fact that your particular Dingfelder is screaming at you in your office is a good sign that he’s not leaving because he clearly, loudly cares. But you screwed up. Someone is screaming in your office, and once you successfully defuse the situation, you know two things. First, there is a problem that needs to be solved. Second, and more importantly, someone believes the best way to get your attention is by freaking out.

when communications are down, listen hard, repeat everything, and assume nothing.

The first step in getting out of a meeting is to identify what kind of meeting it is. A meeting agenda would help, but as most meetings proceed without one, you’re on your own. Chances are you’re either in an informational meeting or a conflict resolution meeting.

The goal of the Deliver phase is straightforward. You need to explain to the team that a decision has been made. Sounds easy, right? Well, this is where junior managers blow it. They do a good job of explaining the decision, but they fail convey that this is the decision and further debate is not necessary. A good sign of poor mandate delivery is when the delivery degrades into another debate of the issues. Delivering a mandate takes moxie. The team has got to leave the room knowing the decision has been made. They don’t have to like it, they may hate it, but they can’t leave the room thinking there’s wiggle room in what you decided.

One of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job.

in the absence of information, people will create their own.

the biggest loss of essential information is when managers rely on their brains as to-do lists. This is a common mistake made by green managers who haven’t figured out their conduit gig yet.

Subtlety starts with humility. Exhibiting your power and knowledge as a manager isn’t always the best method of communicating. Sometimes your approach needs to start small, humble, and in a place in which you admit that you don’t have all the answers. I know it feels great to make that snap decision and show the team you’re the guy in charge, but was it the right decision or was it ego? Subtlety finishes with elegance. It’s not just successfully solving whatever hard problem you’re staring at, it’s that you solve it in an ingenious, novel way that builds and refines your management aptitude.

Good time to point out how enthusiasm reduces all engineering estimates by a third.

One of my favorite books on software construction is Steve McConnell’s Code Complete . In the second chapter, McConnell describes the richness of language around computer science: “Computer Science has some of the most colorful language of any field. In what other field can you walk into a sterile room, carefully controlled at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and find viruses, Trojan horses, worms, bugs, bombs, crashes, flames, twisted sex changers, and fatal errors?”

As a manager, your job is that of a bullshit umbrella. You need to decide what crap your team needs to deal with and what crap can be ignored.

each time your company doubles in size, it needs to reinvent how it communicates, and each subsequent transformation is increasingly radical and foreign.

A clever way to manage one person is a disaster when applied to another.

Lead or manager, whatever you call it, the question is the same: is it a job or a title? A job is a well-defined thing that has a clear and easy-to-understand set of responsibilities.

Titles place an absolute professional value on individuals, while the reality is that you are a collection of skills of varying ability. Some are your super power, some are your Achilles’ heels, and none are clearly defined by a title.

Managers don’t start crazy. It’s a learned trait,

Your team is collectively smarter than you simply because there are more of them. More importantly, by including them in the decision process and creating a team where they feel they can say no, you’re creating trust.

Engineers don’t hate process. They hate process that can’t defend itself.

Process is being created not as means of control; it’s being built as documentation of culture and values.

Process should be written by those who are not only intimately experiencing the pain of a lack of process, but who are also experts in the culture.