In other large orgs, the managers are in a parallel universe playing status games while the devs self-organize to get anything done. The soft skills involved in doing that wind up being completely invisible to the status universe.
Both, actually, but in the case I'm thinking of the devs with the strongest leadership skills in terms of organizing their peers to make things happen were completely invisible to management who were playing a different game. Just like their game was invisible to the devs shipping product, who didn't understand the implications on their careers. Saw a couple of great unofficial leaders get fired and a bunch more leave due to the disconnect. It caught up to the managers later, turned out their people skills weren't good enough after execution ground to a halt.
(Not all managers, this was a special degenerate case, but it's worth considering that different people have different goals/incentives/values. It's not always a straight line to "delivering customer value" that is only held up by a lack of people skills.)
I was trying to subtly point out that the information asymmetry goes both ways: most devs aren't aware of what their managers are doing for the team either. More transparency in both directions is healthy (and skip-level meetings, for god's sake).
Yeah, I hear you and I also added a parenthetical that the incentives aren't always the same.
In an organization of high-minded individuals, the information asymmetry goes both ways, I've been a manager and a dev and I tried to be high-minded and do my best to smooth that assymetry for the greater good in both roles.
But sometimes, especially the last 3-4 years since it got tough, there's a lot of people trying to hold on by any means necessary. Information asymmetry isn't the problem there, it's incentive assymetry. What if you're just not that good at tech and got promoted to 1st, maybe 2nd level manager in the good years? What's your incentive?
Absolutely! The "How does a bad manager with a good team ever get identified/fired?" problem is something more companies should have an answer to.
That's why I think skip-levels check-ins and direct reports regularly anonymously rating their manager (via HR) should be the starting place at all companies.
Otherwise, toxic (or just underperforming) managers stay in their positions longer than is good for the company.
Most employees are incapable of rating their manager. They can complain or praise, but they're not competent to judge whether the manager is competent.
There's an interesting parallel to the advice often given for "lean" startups, of never taking seriously the customers' feature requests, only their complaints. Most customers know their own pain points but aren't capable of suggesting good general solutions that can be incorporated into a product.
> Most employees are incapable of rating their manager. They can complain or praise, but they're not competent to judge whether the manager is competent.
Disagree. I think most employees are qualified to judge whether their manager facilitates or hinders their team's work.
Servant-leader is one (among many competing) valuable manager traits because it does press managers to align part of their focus on enabling their team to get work done, instead of simply taking credit for work their team does without manager involvement.
Sure, you're going to get volatility in direct reports' rankings of their manager (versus an objective truth), but...
(a) You get that with manager rankings of their direct reports too
(b) Individual rankings aren't the signal: the signal is median ratings. If managers have entire teams that universally hate them, that's not noise
