How To Know If Your Manager Is Trustworthy

Trusting people is getting tougher than ever these days, and nobody seems to have a harder time than programmers and managers. In this episode, I'll teach you how to get some hard evidence to determine whether your manager is trustworthy or not. The goal is for you to find out YES and just have a healthy relationship with your manager.
But if there are trust issues, you'll have some tough decisions to make about your software development career. This episode can help anyone who has a boss on a software project (programmer, QA, DevOps, etc.), but since there are some unique ways programmers can have their trust broken by managers - I'll focus on that.
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CHAPTER MARKERS
0:00 Introduction
2:36 1 WHY DON'T PROGRAMMERS TRUST MANAGERS?
2:48 1.1 Manager Can't Do What Programmers Can
4:17 1.2 Limited Visibility in Command and Control
6:35 1.3 Hearsay
8:06 1.4 Power Dynamics of Reporting to Someone
9:43 2 WHY DON'T MANAGERS TRUST PROGRAMMERS?
9:55 2.1 Can't Comprehend All of Their Work
11:01 2.2 Past Bad Experiences
12:26 2.3 Remote Visibility Problems
13:36 2.4 Assumptions of Immaturity
15:30 2.5 Anxiety Due to High Cost
17:26 3 HOW TO LEARN IF YOUR MANAGER IS TRUSTWORTHY
17:41 3.1 Micro-Commitments
19:49 3.2 Corroborate With Coworkers
22:14 3.3 Corroborate With "Skip Level" Boss
24:55 3.4 Set and Track Measurable Objectives
27:48 Episode Groove
#programming #softwaredeveloper #softwareengineer

[@HealthyDev]

Do you know if your manager is trustworthy? I hope this episode helps you avoid going off gut feelings and instead have some hard evidence. CHAPTER MARKERS 0:00 Introduction 2:36 1 WHY DON'T PROGRAMMERS TRUST MANAGERS? 2:48 1.1 Manager Can't Do What Programmers Can 4:17 1.2 Limited Visibility in Command and Control 6:35 1.3 Hearsay 8:06 1.4 Power Dynamics of Reporting to Someone 9:43 2 WHY DON'T MANAGERS TRUST PROGRAMMERS? 9:55 2.1 Can't Comprehend All of Their Work 11:01 2.2 Past Bad Experiences 12:26 2.3 Remote Visibility Problems 13:36 2.4 Assumptions of Immaturity 15:30 2.5 Anxiety Due to High Cost 17:26 3 HOW TO LEARN IF YOUR MANAGER IS TRUSTWORTHY 17:41 3.1 Micro-Commitments 19:49 3.2 Corroborate With Coworkers 22:14 3.3 Corroborate With "Skip Level" Boss 24:55 3.4 Set and Track Measurable Objectives 27:48 Episode Groove

[@HealthyDev]

‪Based on KZbin analytics, this video can be triggering for some people. A lot of sad stories of broken trust in the comments. If you watch to the end, the purpose is to help you hopefully find that your manager IS trustworthy. Hope this helps.‬

[@davidcrawford9026]

I know other dev arent. No solidarity among that work force y'all are back stabbers, and after everyone else has unionized you'll still be clinging to your little libertarian wank dream

[@eranjeneabeysinghe8100]

As a tech lead in the software industry, I must say that your channel is like sweet music to the ear. Hardly anybody explains the subtle working nature of software industry as much as you do. Keep up this good work. Love this channel

[@Zeioth]

A friend of mine, after 10 years working for her company, left suicidal, with depression and anxiety. The new manager wanted to prove himself: So he had the brilliant idea of pushing people over their limit, by setting unattainable goals. If he knows the project is 3 weeks, he would tell you 2 weeks, and gaslight you into impostor syndrome. The metrics of the company improved. And the manager showed them to his superiors as proof of his performance. At expense of everyone else.

[@HealthyDev]

Man, what a sad story. I feel for your friend. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. My sincere hope is that she’s able to heal from that, and it wouldn’t taint her ability to trust managers forever. I sure wouldn’t blame her if it did. But at the same time it would be a shame to lose another great engineer in our industry.

[@phonyalias7574]

I had this happen to me too with a manager. But it wouldn't just be 2 weeks, he would also include a feature that wasn't promised, asked for, or discussed. That way he could over deliver and at lower time than claimed. It resulted in overtime, burnout, distrust of management, and to be honest... sabotage of projects, as all estimates were no longer given in good faith, and things were built without maintainability or performance in mind. The manager got his metrics briefly, but then the entire department got laid off, including the manager.

[@rollthers3157]

My sincere hope is that she's able to heal and that the manager gets undermined by his team.

[@YourNickIsTaken]

My manager said "this is a safe space" share your feelings and experience. Then I got blamed for my feelings and experiences. Then they asked if I trust them. Well, after this would I? Should I? This is a job, you are not my buddy, you are my boss. I don't trust you, I don't respect you, I Fear you. We have programmers promoted to managers. They have 0 people skills, none, nada, nothing. They are eager-beavers who work more than 10 hours a day and they expect the same result from us in 8 hours and are not open to ideas and playing blaming-games. ps: I loved the guitar. I've got triggered by the topic, because it hurts, but the music helped me calm down. Thanks.

[@go_better]

Exactly. Everyone's voice is appreciated, speak honestly yeah - and then those who criticize are to blame, and always-happy-with-everything ones are to be promoted. Happened to me, happened to others.

[@nickvledder]

@@go_better Those always-happy-with-everything ones are the Elise in Wonderlands. They never deliver.

[@YourNickIsTaken]

@@luke5100 thanks for the extra thoughs. Lack of EQ and people skill makes you a bad leader. Lack of technical knowledge makes you ask for solutions that have no connection with the reality. Both are issues that should be handled and the team and the manager should grow from that situation. Lack of technical knowledge could be handled by trusting the team with the technical skills. Lack of people skill is a bigger problem, because tech team also lacks of people skill. I this case external help could help. Keeping my mouth shut has also different layers. Mind my own business approach can be caused by wisdom and by burnout and by lack of knowledge as well. The wisdom part is when you raise your voice in only those issues what you want to handle by yourself and you can handle by yourself. For that there are 4 questions to which you answer 4 yeses, you should speak up, otherwise you should turn to stess handling practices. The 4 questions are: Is the issue important enough? Are my feelings reasonable? Could this be solved so it will make thing better? Is it worth it to me to solve it? (this is translated from my language and I could not found the original in English. This is part of Marshall Rosenberg's assertive communication teachings.) If I don't want to deal with an issue and don't want to ask for extra time and resource to deal with it, I don't tell that it is an issue. So I will not be blamed and I will not hold responsibility for it. Even if I see that will cause issue in the project. I don't need the drama that comes with being called "you are so negative" when my approach is more the "play safe" / "prevent extra work" type. One more tought that is kinda trolling and kinda true... When others fail, it will not be my failure. (I learned how not to care about others only with my.) And when there are more failures, three are more work to do, there are more money. When there are issues prevented, it is only a small issue, it worth not that much on the market. When there is a big issue and you work on it and fix it, that is rewarded more. So why would you prevent big issues?

[@chaoscarl8414]

Virtually all bosses/managers I've worked with have outright lied to me on various occasions. They promise pay rises that they know will never happen... They promise promotions they know won't happen any time soon... They tell you how great you are and how happy they are to have you in the company, then fire you the next day because they don't feel you provide enough value for the company... That being said though, it's not all of them I blame for it. Some of them are caught up in the same hierarchy that I am, being beholden to their own manager further up the chain of command. And if they've been told to keep their mouth shut about what's really going on in the company... Well... What can they do? So it's not just a problems with managers, it's a problem with company culture in general.

[@THEROOT1111]

There is a general rule, and there are the exceptions, which is which is clear with experience, trust nobody, there is a reason why big corporations work within a zero trust system, whenever hard choices have to be made because some department fucked up and it reflected upon the numbers then it comes handy. In companies like Amazon, they overplayed their hand for example, and yet they can buy out companies to compensate for their bad behavior internally, like electronic arts and so many other bad seriously bad companies. It is what it is i guess.

[@majorhumbert676]

This is my experience working with companies outside my home country.

[@ElMarcoh]

In 15 years of career I only trusted a manager once. I regret it to this very day.

[@j.j.oliphant9794]

I do think it would have been smart to talk about how there are different levels of trust. There are things I would never trust a manager with. With some managers I would be happy trusting them with the fact that I'm finding something difficult or struggling to get something finished without asking for help. There are different levels of "trust" for sure

[@YourNickIsTaken]

Can you tell use more about this, what was the trigger?

[@go_better]

Yeah, I also would like to know more of a backstory

[@luckerooni1153]

@@j.j.oliphant9794 That alone might get you fired.

[@vamastah1737]

More and more companies have incompetent managers who have no CS background. Trusting people with zero knowledge and boosted ego is never a good idea.

[@simonegiuliani4913]

Been a developer and worked in management. I'd say the only managers that you may trust are generally the more experienced job hopping kind of managers. Everyone else is pretty much playing the corporate long game. "Mid-level manager" is a fake role whose main goal is to squeeze out productivity out of developers. The moment a developer productivity slows down it's when the manager's intention goes under test. Try to slow down your productivity a little bit on purpose and check how they react. That's a good test and I guarantee you will be surprised... :)

[@MJ-xl5jz]

Interesting comment. What do you think makes people playing the "corporate long game" different and untrustworthy? Also, I'm curious about your experience with mid-managers.

[@simonegiuliani4913]

@@MJ-xl5jz mid managers are not evil but that's a role which is mainly designed to be toxic. It serves the more executive personnel to create a layer between them and the people with real competence. The main purpose of mid-managers is to pass information up in the hierarchy and the more ruthless they are, the better is for the executives. They are a shield to the "real managers", the ones setting the strategy. The mid-managers playing the corporate game generally offer a largely suboptimal umbrella under which operating as a developer. Think about it and wear the mid manager shoes for a sec. In a tech environment the less technical your role becomes, the less you can learn from it. And the less you know, the less you are worth in the broad market where you operate. Mid-managerial roles are degrading in value pretty quick and that must be offsetted it in some way. To offset the lose in value mid-managers must get to executive level asap and to do that they must impress the execs. Generally mid-managers try to impress the exec by squeezing productivity out of the developer force. That's what execs want because they get more on the table and the manager will get the blame when the real workforce leaves, as it's a zero sum game and can't last very long. When the workforce leaves the manager will get the blame, he won't be promoted, he will get new workforce allowance from the execs and the cycle starts again. 99% of managers playing the corp game will be stuck as productivity squeezer forever and never make to exec level because they fail to understand the most important thing: to make it to the exec level you gotta know the business and definitely not running the cerimonies. Job hopping managers (hired many times as external consultsnts and the like...) represents unicorns for developers. They are selfishly more interested in the business background to absorb from the teams and don't have time to get dirty with the political stuff, so they are generally the ones to lookup to and to learn from.They are the next CEOs and CTOs of companies they will eventually co-found.

[@BillClinton228]

Yeah, I worked for a manager that would constantly berate and undermine you... even send passive agressive emails to the whole team hinting at your poor performance. But when I asked him if there were problems he would say im the best and there is nothing wrong. Fellow c9workers would pick up on it and they would do distance themselves. Toxic work places become that way from the top

[@ianhamilton7908]

I've mostly had managers that I trust. To me, consistency, fairness, and credibility = trust. Lose just 1 of those and game over. Some of my managers were able to do that.

[@YourNickIsTaken]

So it does matter what I call trust. For me: - can I tell that a process is not working (#failfast) - may I have suggestions - will they do what they stated? - can I say I'm in trouble with the task and I need help? - when I'm going through a difficult personal issue, will they force me to go unpaied until it is done or they let me work on 70% for 2 weeks? - if I need learn something new, they let me learn during the work time, or they force me to have learn on the weekends as well? (I took one day to learn about something that was related to work in the first half of the year and I got almost fired). - am I allowed to ask for brainstorming? - when I fail, will be exaggerated, or will be turned to a learning opportunity? - when a task is changing a lot during the delivery, will it be my fault that I did not delivered what is requested, but was requested... What are the things I can trust my boss / my manager?

[@neilclay5835]

It's not just the tech industry. I work in non-tech as a manager, and tech as a developer. Trust is at zero all round. I'm the nicest guy as well, really. I go out of my way to be honest and do what I say I will. And I can say that that is not the easiest path. Lack of trust is often due to managers not having the bandwidth / not wanting to introduce the extra load of acting ethically.

[@HealthyDev]

It definitely isn’t the easiest path. But the only way things get better in the industry as a whole is when we choose to be ethical - even when those around us aren’t.

[@dnserror89]

I work as a front-end dev. I don't trust the project/product managers we generally work with, they also lack fundamental knowledge. One of them literally asked who Jason was when we were discussing a .json file. Luckily we have a very skilled software architect that I enjoy working with and I often see him as my go-to 'manager'. PMs just keep pushing unrealistic deadlines (that are already sold to the client, before discussing with us - the devs) and then get mad at us when we can't deliver in time.

[@metasavagex]

You nailed it right on the head, completely described my experience.

[@j.j.oliphant9794]

When I say that I trust a manager that means I have a high enough level of trust to let them know I might need some help or will likely be behind on things. It does not mean I trust them with things like the fact I'm open to work somewhere else or considering moving out of state. There are different levels of trust and I think you should probably mention that.

[@HealthyDev]

Those are valid topics. The point of this one was primary to offer some basic tools for determining if you can trust a manager. Your suggestion is a good one for a future video!

[@wertigon]

As a "Scrum Master" (really tech lead) in an industry R&D team working with embedded operating systems, I find this video very informative. In our company we work very much with high-trust and develop first, ask questions later mentality. Workers are trusted to perform their duties and when they are not, we try to talk to this person and help them perform better. There is almost always a good reason for productivity falls, and sometimes it is management and sometimes it is just life dealing a specifically nasty shit sandwich. This has lead to a highly efficient team that delivers a lot of good value to the company - but getting there sure took a while.

[@justsomeguy-yf2zq]

if I think about it, about 50% of my managers have been trustworthy and have had my back. The ones that haven't have been either non-technical people or semi-paranoid newbies. The worst ones have been in sales companies masquerading as engineering shops. I guess the common thing with the bad ones is that they managed us as if we were 16 year olds working at Wendy's -- not that there is anything wrong with working for Wendy's, but we are often treated like glorified line workers than professionals. But honestly, the good managers I've had have been absolutely amazing and have helped me grow as an engineer.

[@HealthyDev]

I agree with the Wendy’s comment. The degree to which I’m managed like a line worker and not a knowledge worker usually has a direct correlation to how micromanaged I am.

[@olafbaeyens8955]

Age gap is not an excuse for a manager to not trust their developers. I am 58 with 33 years full time professional developers experience and they still don't trust you. Pushing the back to office to be in a noisy environment is killing your developers team. Three year of covid years has changed my brain. My brain is optimized for homeworking in a silent place with comfort. And I am not the only one, the obsession to come to the office will actually push developers in a burn out. * The good ones leave for companies that let you work 4 days per week. * The bad ones will stay but burned out because the commute, micromanagement, noisy environment causes lots of stresses. * You cannot attract new people because they know that the forced work in the office is going to cause misery in your life. Companies that fail, managers that fail, want to go back the old ways of doing, however software development is everything about new ways of doing, new ways of development, new technology. Developer that cannot adapt to new technology goes down the way of the dinosaur. Managers that cannot adapt to the new way of working goes down the way of the dinosaur. If as a developer you want to have a long career, then stay away from dinosaur companies.

[@HealthyDev]

I didn’t intend with the examples of why managers can distrust programmers (and vice versa) to say these were valid “excuses” or not. Just to bring them up as common reasons it happens. Hope that helps.

[@absurd0000]

Came for the tech talk, stayed for the sweet guitar playing

[@Rcls01]

Having worked in multiple different projects, with different organizations, as the employee or as a consultant, I can say that my preference is to have an engineering manager in the team who has development experience under their belt. It is a completely different mindset having someone who understands the work, and can even get their hands dirty to help out, to manage the team and it's work. When you just have a Jira monkey leading the team it takes a lot longer to build trust that they will leave you to do the job without hovering over you and asking you to keep some project management system up to date every day. One bad experience I had with managers were ones who had very little developer experience and actually trusted developers with less technical experience, but more time on the company, over more technically knowledgeable people when it came to selecting technology choices for future projects. When you're a software architect in a that situation and it's your job to provide options that work in a bigger scale, it feels really disrespectful having a manager come into the room saying we've already done something else because the developer in their team said it would work and didn't bother to listen to the options.

[@go_better]

True. When decision is done without gathering opinions and data points first - it most often ends badly. And yea, couldn't agree more - managers with past tech experience have much more understanding of what they are doing.

[@kenito2050]

Thanks again Jayme - I have had managers that were NOT trustworthy AT ALL. For example, this one manager came from a large software company in the north west U.S. Said manager was not from the U.S. so there definitely was a culture clash. Anyway, first day on the job, said manager tells me that I "must trust him". That set off red flags for me. Trust, in my opinion, is NOT given but earned. Moreover, I felt that this manager HAD NOT yet earned my trust. Anyway, the situation got worse but eventually, other team members did not want to work with him. Finally, when a senior employee left because of this manager, the company finally let this toxic manager go. Anyway, turns out I was right about NOT trusting this incoming manager. Thanks again.

[@akauppi2]

A hint to grow one’s understanding: to read about projects in books. Yes, there are stories written down, with enough details to know what actually “was cooking”. Currently reading one about NASA projects in the 1960’s. These things stay fresh - if it’s new technology being demonstrated..

[@HealthyDev]

Good suggestion!

[@GnomeEU]

There was only one company that told me I don't put in enough effort. Where I didn't even knew what I could do better. I had not enough responsibility to do anything more than I was told.

[@jamesclark2663]

It's not just tech. All jobs have become troubled like this. My last job was distribution at a production facility ( though I did end up writing a lot of our software, but that's another story). At one point we had about thirty people working inside of a barn barely able to contain the stock let alone the production line. I kept asking why the parent company didn't seem interested in investing more into setting up a better situation. Every six months or so the CEO would fly over from France to tell us how great we are doing and how a new contract was in the final stages. That story was told for over two years straight. Now most everyone has been laid off or fired and they only have seven people finishing up the same contract from three years previous. Four work in the office, two in production. One in distribution. They are still told that new contract is just a couple months away.

[@iM4d0t]

Thanks for the informative video! In retrospect most of the managers I've had have been reasonably trustworthy, only a couple of them so far have been outright harmful people. But overall the more stressful issue for me these days has been trusting our executive leadership: one day they say everything is fine, the next they lay off 10% of the workforce and replace another 10% with contractors in cheaper markets. It's miserable, I'm so burnt out from this stress that I'd trust my manager more than I trust myself now.

[@HealthyDev]

I can relate. Unfortunately depending on the layers of middle management, we usually only have significant influence with our immediate supervisor or perhaps theirs. I’ve had to accept that at the executive level (unless I’m working directly for them as a consultant) there’s many things outside my control that I can’t really worry too much about.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Never... they might not try to lied to you, but they could be forced by the upper echelons. Just work your wage a little above of the 50%ers and give nothing more.

[@asafnisan]

the episode groove is great.

[@lbs9841]

No.

[@istovall2624]

beat me to it.

[@heatherlawler7]

Ty Ty Ty for making videos again. Your content is so helpful. The manager trust issue related to their development experience is very real.

[@sergiocarmona6567]

I just became engineering manager always supporting developers. Some times coding with them, coaching or one to one. I was data engineer i know how complex it gets. There is a delicate balance between supporting and micromanaging.

[@rmbl349]

welcome back! missed your videos!

[@EschinTenebrous]

I have a manager, a scrum master, a product manager, and senior devs I report to -.- It's great. Think 'Office Space', 4 different managers.

[@HealthyDev]

Ouch! I had 3 managers for one consulting project. Not good… Luckily it was only 9 months.

[@icaromendes1250]

I just love your videos! please dont stop making them! ❤

[@DannyMcPfister]

I have had overwhelmingly positive experiences with management so far in my career. However I have spent most of my career working as a DoD contractor for small companies, so kinda different dynamics at play. My only poor experience was with a private sector job and during a review was told that I got complaints about my role on a project because I ‘Never use my camera in meetings’. I practically spat my drink out laughing because NOBODY used their camera during calls. Getting complained at for something totally bogus made me completely lose faith in that guy and project and I left a month later. If you’re going to lie about something at least make it believable 😂

[@javierespinoza7075]

this is very useful. thanks a lot! 😁

[@marna_li]

I have a history of bad relationships with my managers. It may stem from my fear and submissive nature to authority. It all started with my first one, who was an ambitious jerk, who fired med for "labor shortages". He had introduced routines that would produced numbers to show the company leaders. Non-agile way of working that I didn't manage. After leaving that job I have had a hard time with my managers - although occasionally good people, but some bad. I always worry about my performance around the men who seemingly take on stuff like it is a factory line. I have learned the hard way to stand by myself.

[@TheThundertrey]

Glad to see you back at it man! I've been following your journey for a while. Always have good insights.

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for your support! 🙏

[@akauppi2]

Gold nuggets ☄️ + the guitar play always relaxes nicely

[@go_better]

Thank you for the video. I like that you deliver some triggering statements softly, with some calming additions. It's easier to listen that way. I also like that you try to stop the viewer from overgeneralizing. Also, nice smooth guitar play. I like it. It's really calming. (Long text next) My personal problem is I usually trusted managers. I've been proactive and compliant on sprint reviews, I did what was told. And I completely understand the urgency of business. They are under pressure, and they have tons of responsibility. I get it that sometimes the extra mile and corner-cutting happens. Sure. And it always ended up badly. Colleagues and people who don't make decisions are calm, understanding, and reliable. But managers - they just do corporate stuff - squeeze more work, and find a reason to pay less. Let alone "get back to the office" BS is there because of tax optimization, not because of "lack of contact and productivity" or something. They have ticket tracking systems for that, they have KPI and release cycles, and QA reports. Lots of metrics are there. At least they could count the time to travel to the office as working hours, but of course, they won't do it. And the baseline I derive from my experience is - it's a one-way street with them. There are tons of posts about how developers should practice their soft skills, how they should understand business, and how they should learn communication and presentation. And no posts, let alone no practice, are about how managers should improve their hard skills. How they should get at least a little idea of what they manage. They don't understand why anything except business code should be done. Docker, shmoker, kubernetes, shmubernetes, I don't know, I don't care, we don't have time and money for this. Upgrading our stack? Why? It's already working, and changing it is a RISK. They often use a trick called "let's add a technical debt item". And then, after a decade, everyone who wrote this legacy dump changed their workplace, and it's not documented, and next devs have to support it. And company crushes under the amount of work that needs to be done. Of course, they don't have a 5% of sprint time for product health routines. Gosh, 30 minutes per week. They don't care about providing some job security, so information and docs are being shared safely. And DevOps guys don't have to reduce uptime sometimes, so managers don't layoff them (Just in case, I completely understand - you go, guys!). They don't understand that when they create countless meetings and invite half of the company and webcams "should be" on - people can't do their work - they have to silently watch and listen to some chit-chat of 2-3 people. And it's not managers to blame when work is not done on time. And so on, and they don't even try. They don't have the stimulus to change. It's like a businessman who manages a hospital and knows nothing about healthcare, just trying to increase quarter income. And boy I don't start about the job market these days. They destroyed it. So I gave up on them. I want to escape corporate hell so bad. I hope to shift towards smaller companies and startups - because fewer middle managers are there, and CEOs actually want a result. I dream of becoming a freelancer one day, but it's a difficult task. Let alone toxic people are in the mentioned areas as well. So, yeah, that's a wrap-up of my experience/rant. Thanks for your attention, internet strangers!

[@MJ-xl5jz]

So, a problem appears to be non-technical people working as managers.

[@go_better]

​​@@MJ-xl5jzyeah, basically. They don't have to be coders, but to educate themselves of how software development works. And their idea of management is to ping about estimates and spam meetings.

[@arugulatarsus]

As a manager, I'm adding this video to the suggested watch list. Everyone on my teams acts like they trust me implicitly, and I trust them. It helps that I wrote a large chunk of the code. But I assume they will not just have coder/managers in their careers. Thanks!

[@chrisivens3413]

I’ve been a developer for over 20 years and only recently taken the management route. Not sure why it took so long except that I feel that if you spend over a decade honing your craft, it doesn’t guarantee the same level of success in another craft. However, I’ve found many aspects of this video to be perfect talking points for me and my team which has unfortunately lost a lot of knowledge due to people leaving. That in itself is a major talking point. I like to think of myself on a level playing field as direct reports but my dev-friend delights in reminding me that this will never be the case, especially with the cultural differences of some of my team. I am fallible and I do rely on my team and although I’m not worried about feeling vulnerable in front of my team, I don’t know how to frame a failure well enough to feel real. I know it’s not a stage show but the words I chose to use have a huge impact on how I convey myself. I guess it’s work in progress and lead from failure. Not such a bad thing

[@HealthyDev]

Some people just won't ever give trust unless you "know" everything they do. It really does a disservice to relationships and is incredibly divisive. It sounds like you're doing all the right things, some people just need to move on (you or them) if trust can't be established and that's making work too hard to be productive.

[@slowjocrow6451]

Anxiety Due to High Cost... I struggle with this as a Dev, not a manager. I think dang I'm getting charged out at $xxx per hour and I'm stuck on this problem for a while so it cost the client so much money. I stress out and try rush the project or want to sweep the hours under a rug etc. Seems like I always stress about being slow

[@HealthyDev]

I get that a lot from coaching clients. It’s a pretty reasonable way to feel. I try to help them understand the company has a higher return on investment for their work than what they’re paying them.

[@rollthers3157]

As long as the company isn't having issues, as a manager it should be easy to earn your team's trust. Most managers, unfortunately, are only concerned about how they look to their bosses.

[@rutkowk]

This is a great video, and I think it's great how you explain the different perspectives people have. One additional thing I'll mention is that it helps if managers communicate the objective of the work and the programming team keep in mind the objective when doing the work. There can and should be discussions, of course. The issue that I have in mind is that some developers have a goal of creating a perfect software development process or creating perfect software, and they get frustrated when managers won't implement their recommendations. These developers, in my opinion, sometimes forget the goal of the company investment in developing software. Companies do not have a goal of creating a perfect software process or perfect software. They have a goal of producing software that does the job needed for a reasonable cost. If a current process is working well enough, it's not reasonable to expect a huge investment in a change unless you can truly show a relatively fast return on investment. In addition, I've worked with developers who see their methods as the one true way to create software. Sometimes, it almost seems like the developer sees the methodology as a religion. Ultimately, developers need to understand that there are many ways to successfully deliver software, every method will have issues, each industry and company could benefit from different methodologies, and a company does not have a goal of perfect processes or perfect software.

[@HealthyDev]

Great observations. Yep, developers can be a perfectionist bunch and sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees!

[@spirits_]

Work on maximizing your salary and skills. If the manager can't help you with those two things. Leave. Simple as.

[@marksechter9377]

What if you can't find another job

[@rjfink]

@@marksechter9377you can

[@volgodon3]

Awesome talk. Respect

[@jeromenelson4093]

Damn it :-D ...I handed in my notice with a big part being this, but I couldn't articulate it very well. Thanks for the experienced view on this

[@mocoroco6028]

I like how well thought and anchored in reality your presentations are... and I can relate to a lot of what you are discussing. I work as a consultant, and in the last project I had a manager that was telling me one thing, and literally an hour later would say the opposite in the team meetings... repeatedly. And there were other more toxic aspects I'm not going to mention. But as trust is the basis of any business relationship, I went to the next level up to discuss the issue. Unfortunately the organization was not receptive to my initiative, and this is a systemic problem that is going to further degrade the corporate environment.

[@HealthyDev]

Man, I'm sorry. At least you've got hard data that it's not just a suspicion. I guess now you need to decide whether you can still get what you need done despite it.

[@CorckSnipe]

I'm seeing my team manager slowly turning from someone who used to program next to me and mentor me, into a manager. It's scary, he's starting to wear polo shirts and tuck them in. He's also starting to mess up every - single - time estimate he makes. - "This will take 2 hours" nuh uh, not if you want this thing to work in conjunction with this thing, then it's going to take twice the time. - "Hey can you do this task that's going to take half your day right now ?" " sure, what do you want me to drop from my schedule ?" "...nothing ?" "OF COURSE ! let me bend space and time real quick..."

[@HealthyDev]

I have a pretty strict rule. If any estimates are going to be made, they’ll be made by the developer who will implement them. And they cannot be challenged by management. If those things aren’t accepted by the team then I don’t work on the project.

[@y.shrestha6936]

Great video as always

[@sebastianwagner5843]

Once had a sub who gave me bad feeding cause I communicated about changes that were not finally decided yet. They preferred to get more consistent information, interested of being informed early on. Communicating well is not easy.

[@HenrikForsberg]

My manager is 100% a psychopath.

[@michaelmemory6938]

As an absolute newbie in this field, a lot of these lessons I’m only learning now (often the hard way). My first manager was good, or at the very least, easier to talk to. My new one is very much someone who talks a big game but can’t follow through for multiple people he’s overseeing. Even when I try and sympathize, I’ve come to hear most of my team agrees. Hoping I can rotate to a new one knowing these tips for a fresh start.

[@HealthyDev]

Not to make excuses for them, but many managers in our field aren’t given the support and training they need to be effective. They often have to learn by trial and error. It’s a serious problem.

[@mathewkloepfer664]

@@HealthyDev That's definitely something we can remedy, but that begs the question: Who are the managers there for - the company or the people? If your manager's job is solely company timelines and project planning then managing people shouldn't be part of their job. This supervisor vs. project manager division needs to be more concrete.

[@HealthyDev]

@@mathewkloepfer664 In principal a project manager is typically there more for the project deadlines and delivery. An engineering manager is more there for the people. But most managers need both a concern for their people, and the services or products being delivered. They tend to have a hard time finding that balance, but the best ones figure it out.

[@yaanno]

In my experience sometimes its not just non-dev managers are not really "trustworthy". Several occasions CTOs and VPs of engineering failed to be emphatic and understanding, and just pulled the top down military style card by passing down my (and others') concerns to the PO or BO and let them deal with the issues (even minor ones) without context, and of course they panicked. At the edge of being burned out for several reasons this pushed me to "okay then whatever, guy, not gonna say nothing about anything to you personally" and eventually they put me on a PIP (meaning: start looking for a new job) because I lost trust in these guys and did not care about projects anymore (from senior dev to code monkey path, haha). I might have violated the chain of command by "reporting" to the wrong person but I felt I could talk to someone I thought to be a fellow dev and someone who actually could do something about the issue (allocating some extra resources to finish up a big project I had to do almost on my own and was tired as hell at the finish line). On the other hand I had absolutely great managers who did not know anything about code but they were honest and took the risk to trust devs they going to do their job properly. Thanks for your enlightening videos!

[@HA-it3hf]

This is great! I'm going through this now 😅

[@coderider3022]

No. Can’t trust a manager. Different objectives/motivations. 19years experience in various dev, dev manager etc roles in different industries.

[@kylekeenan3485]

A lot of managers set out with good intentions, and they are trustworthy, but then their management come down on them with things which gradually make things worse and create a seperation between your manager and the team. This is often managers who are weak and worried about their own role and who don't stick up for their team. A good manager will work on behalf of the team not the idiot above them. However this does require both the team and manager to be competent. They often aren't and this leads to a need for videos like this.

[@MrSurfsAlot]

Could not have come at a better time for me.

[@miguelcaballero3288]

Thank you for your videos! I got my audio engineering degree and never used it, now am a software development tech lead. It's so important to me to get to know everyone on the team on a personal level. P.S. You do a really good job with your audio set up! love it!

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks! Most people say it sounds good, but I've had a few people tell me it's too sibilant. I use a de-esser plugin before compression and it seems like it's enough, but not sure.

[@1234caba]

Well I think you’re dialed in nicely! Don’t listen to them 😂 trust your gut! 😊

[@HealthyDev]

@@1234cabathanks for the feedback, appreciate it!

[@cthree87]

If you want a friend at work take your dog. Your manager is the guy/gal who's going to tell you to work overtime and fire you when they don't want you anymore for whatever reason.

[@olafbaeyens8955]

As a developer I work at max speed if you let me work at home and not micromanage me. I work at max speed when you do not see me because after the office hours I develop things till deep in the night on home projects. When you see me and wants hourly status updates and put me in a noisy office with 3 hour commute then I lose productivity. Your projects fail because you prevent me to do my work.

[@ararabarara]

We all need to be aware that everyone lies if they have an interest in it...

[@bernhardkrickl5197]

These guitar pieces have quite the Opeth vibe about them. I'm thinking "Benighted" or "Face of Melinda".

[@handlechar568]

Was thinking the exact same thing XD

[@josegazo]

It sounds like something I heard in Chrono Trigger

[@rickyisajedi]

I started to do running in the middle of my day to get away from the computer. I mark it as “busy” on my calendar.

[@gammalgris2497]

To be a bit empathetic towards your direct manager is a good advice. They have to cope with the pressure from above and malcontent from below. Most important is if they let you do your work. Trust is a bit difficult when neither you or your manager can change decisions by the organization/ top brass.

[@YourNickIsTaken]

What is with PIP? (those have the "you will be fired" vibe causing anxiety leads to suicidal thoughts)

[@renegadeprime3871]

The issue with your pizza analogy is that the nature of the pizza does not change often, the development industry changes rapidly especially open-source so even if your manager does know how to code, majority of managers will have their skills obsolete at a fast pace since their time is occupied elsewhere like meetings. From an experience standpoint, I would not trust any managers at all, does not mean you can't get along and work collaboratively but keep them honest and at arms length for your own sake.

[@HealthyDev]

I mentioned in the video (maybe you didn’t get a chance to watch all the way through yet) that developers would prefer a manager who actually works on the same code base. But that’s often not a luxury we have. So we have to first determine whether they’re trustworthy (the focus of this video) and then, if they aren’t working on the same code base (or not a developer), teach them why decisions they may propose aren’t best for their project if that happens. That’s really the best we can do at this point. I’m trying to be pragmatic since there’s no perfect solution. I guess my bigger concern is that you automatically don’t trust managers at all. I’m trying to show you some reasons that might be the case, that may be based on things that aren’t really valid reasons to distrust them. Of course I don’t know your specific situation so you could have very good reasons not to trust any of them. I provided some ways to try and help you know for sure at the end of the video. But these aren’t gross generalizations. They need to be applied on a manager by manager basis to each one individually.

[@renegadeprime3871]

@@HealthyDev Yes, you are correct and have very salient points in your video, I did not mean to overly generalize, as I may not have given enough context. However, when I mentioned that I do not trust them, it does not mean that I will not work with them and collaborate with them. I've been burned too many times overly committing to a manager due to inexperience that by default the "judge people by their actions instead of their words" works best.

[@HealthyDev]

@@renegadeprime3871i understand. We all react to situations differently. Were I in yours, I might feel the same way.

[@ozzyaararon]

Skip level can be key if the people above them have made a mistake in hiring. Its happened to me where a poor choice was made for our CTO. Even if he was decent at the task he was a poor cultural fit for the people as well as the stage of the product. Eventually high performers left and it triggered the CEO to fire him. The CEO was actually a good leader but had made a bad hire. He put the job of defining the CTO role and picking the CTO in the hands of the lead team we had on the engineering side and a fantastic CTO fit was found. Not only did the new CTO make the engineering side hum the process completely healed the trust issue/s that may have existed had the CEO just picked another CTO without consultation. The CEO also learned what a good CTO really looks like.

[@jtmuzix]

Hello good sir. Are you familar with C++ and if so, how comfortable are you with utilizing the languages pros such as inheritence, encapsulation, and polymorphism?

[@HealthyDev]

Hey Jason. I haven’t done much C++ since the early 2000s. I’m very familiar with those basic OO patterns but primarily used them with Java and C#.

[@oliverrivera-pessi]

Managers unfortunately have different targets which are not always aligning with the different people they are working with. In my company the managers just want to show off to the top management, how good they are, how well they can push their teams. All due to egos, KPIs etc. Some of them believe more in their own advantage while being incompetent. I am a PO and I cant count the situations where my managers are uselessly intervening into things he/she doesnt understand without even asking the people who really understand. But that is probably a topic for "Fake Agile" projects, too. I am definitely against prejudice against anyone, but you need to earn trust, too and unfortunately trust can break easily.

[@olafbaeyens8955]

Manager under financial is also not an excuse for the manager not to trusty his team. Distrust cripple productivity and the nature of good developers is always go for quality and delivering on time with the lowest cost. However only when it is humanely possible. When it is not human possible then we expect the manager to fight for us like we fight to get his deadline done. We expect the manager to fight for us because we lack social skills like he has. In return we fight the code for the manager because he lacks the coding skills. Distrust cause lots of stress in the team and the he is fighting his team. And don't turn developers into people that are happy with social skills. Don't turn them into fake people. Developers pretend to be social in a happy company that looks like a kindergarten will destroy your company and destroy your team.

[@sbqp3]

Programmers, and especially junior ones, tend to overestimate the value of improvement work and can spend and exorbitant amount of time on rewrites, new libraries, refactoring etc. Managers are usually the opposite, they don't value it enough. But the fact that programmers can act like they have no interest in actually producing customer value when left to their own devices can lead to a loss of trust between management and programmers.

[@HealthyDev]

Great observation. I’ve often wondered if the assumption managers can sometimes have that developers don’t care much about customer value is due to assumptions of immaturity (one of the reasons I gave for why managers can distrust programmers in the video).

[@sbqp3]

@@HealthyDev Good point. I think the immaturity situation it's a two-way street though. Because we have so many sattelite roles around developers, they do tend to lose connection to the business and customers. And if you sprinkle in a bit of micro-management, you easily end up with devs who have very little autonomy. And those will seem immature. In order for devs to become more mature, you have to give them more autonomy. I always thought that the idea of agile was to give the dev team autonomy within a delivery period, such as a sprint. But in reality, most often you get some half-external staff organizing meetings, process and so forth. And so the devs never reach the level of autonomy where they could be trusted to execute a plan without supervision. The overvaluation of tech excellence or intellectual stimulation over business value is something that I see quite often from devs themselves though. In my opinion you need really senior devs to see past that.

[@HealthyDev]

@@sbqp3couldn't agree more. I did a video several years back called "Why Do Managers Treat Programmers Like Children?" that comes to some of the same conclusions, although approached from a bit different angle than you have here. It's really hard for management to trust developers more when they know some mistakes will be made while they learn. But it's the only way to avoid micromanagement and really get the most out of people!

[@jaaguitar]

In large companies, managers have no desire to go against corporate policy. In my experience who the manager is has made no difference.

[@programthis3805]

HES BACCCCK!!!!

[@PhilDev-kz3ub]

What are people making in software that's making money?

[@josiah5776]

A lying manager? Imagine that! You'd be hard pressed to find an truthful manager in the tech field. The phrase "lying manager" is redundant.

[@twocsies]

The newbie manager who thinks that everyone's skills are interchangeable and all code is just the same, just trust whichever Dev has capacity to push to production without letting the senior Dev know what's happening.

[@austin.valentine]

The problem with number is that a manager’s job in managing high-skill workers is knowing how to assess their capabilities in entirety, which includes whatever impact “immaturity” has on performance or value contribution to the company. Older people are supposed to be wiser, not just an different but equal demographic. They are the ones who should understand the younger, not the latter. Also, you know what they say about assumptions… I would never give myself these kind of pitiful excuses if I was in a managerial role. And much management academic ink has been spilled on these topics to say it is simply a managerial competence issue, and not much else.

[@Entropy67]

I think we should move towards educating management that manage developers to the degree that they too understand the product they produce. Once they understand the product, problem solved. Developers can trust the management, and the management can actually manage the *project* not just the *people*. Management should have an understanding of the architecture & code base so that they can actually understand what they are supposed to be doing, and so that they can contribute to the overall success of the project.

[@HealthyDev]

I totally agree that this is a good idea. In my experience it’s just been unachievable. Managers are too busy with other responsibilities to keep up to date on the details of the architecture as it evolves. I’m not saying it isn’t possible. Only that at the global scale across all projects it seems more practical for developers to learn to educate management better on just enough detail to make decisions. I only say this since the trend (in my experience) is for managers to have less coding experience. That’s not necessarily true in FAANGS but that’s a very small percentage of the number of companies building software.

[@mistertoups]

6:37 I've experienced this exact situation at multiple jobs and the person is always a woman. I don't think that's a coincidence. good on you for not buying it.

[@kuakilyissombroguwi]

In my honest opinion, there are some potentially dangerous and misleading logical fallacies in this video. Starting with the the idea that an Engineering Manager is not to be trusted if they can't also "make the pizza". That's not at the core of the skills that make an effective Engineering Manager, like, at all. Having worked at companies like Google in the past, I've had the opportunity to collaborate with amazing EMs who had no technical background. And when I say no technical background, I don't mean self-taught, I mean no previous jobs in tech. One of the most amazing ones came from the military. I think it's really important for you to have healthy boundaries, as a human moving through life, and definitely at work. Don't put up with abusive situations. Know your worth. Also, understand that work does not equal family, does not have to define your self worth. At the end of the day you're being hired by a company to deliver value leveraging your awesome skills as a developer. Keep the focus there and you'll be fine.

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately I don’t think you’re listening closely enough to the video, or perhaps you didn’t watch the whole thing. I gave common reasons developers distrust managers and vice versa, yes. But I never said these are reasons someone shouldn’t trust the other person. In fact, especially in the section where I give reasons managers can distrust programmers, I explicitly encouraged programmers to have empathy for managers and try to see their point of view. Hope this helps.

[@kuakilyissombroguwi]

@@HealthyDev Regardless of intent this is what's stated in the video, so I wanted to call it out and provide my perspective as well, mostly due to your reach. Some of the folks listening to this might end up joining my company one day. 🙂

[@Gabriel-um9hm]

The worst is when you're lied to during the hiring process or when a manager tells you not to tell someone else about a change in direction because of a power struggle...

[@HealthyDev]

Absolutely no excuse for either one!

[@whatwhat9519]

I trust everybody... to fuck everything up

[@dipereira0123]

Let's be clear about one thing here: The only aceeptable level of thrust is ZERO! its either on the paper and will be evaluated/paid/delivered according. anything else is on you. you need to follow orders? ok thats my hourly rate you need the dev to produce? here is the documentation stating what should be done, how it should will be tested and how it will be accepted

[@aaronbono4688]

Do not ever go to your direct manager's manager about a problem with your direct manager without a plan on your next job because you can easily be fired immediately. It happened to me. I'm not saying don't approach your managers manager I'm saying be prepared in case they come down hard on you.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there. Can you share a little context around why you sought out the skip level boss, and how you approached it? I think that will really help us explore the possibilities for people who may be helped by you sharing your experience.

[@transfixit]

This is a really helpful video, but this assumes the Manager has never been in an engineering position which has become quiet uncommon these days.

[@MJ-xl5jz]

Are you sure it has become uncommon?

[@transfixit]

@@MJ-xl5jz I havent't seen the opposite in the last years. Talking about tech companies obviously. Now obviously, this is just observation, I haven't looked at numbers if they exist.

[@HealthyDev]

@transfixit I referred to managers not knowing how to code as a reason developers can distrust management. However the video doesn’t assume this is true of all managers. Not sure if maybe you just hadn’t watched it all the way through when you left this comment?

[@transfixit]

@@HealthyDev no I'm saying it has become uncommon for managers in the tech industry not to have a technical background.

[@HealthyDev]

I’m curious, what are you basing this assessment that it’s become uncommon on?

[@TON-vz3pe]

The reason I don't trust the Manager is the same reason I don't trust a developer. Ultimately both kinds are human and humans are flawed. There are the eccentric kind, the exotic kind, the mysterious kind, the unexplainable kind, the wierd kind, the psychotic kind, the humble kind, the desparate for attention kind and hundred more kinds. Pack all of this and thats what you get with any average human. In my career, I have rarely seen unbaised, rational and calm minded, talented fellow. Infact, your manager could be a pedo or a criminal, or a fraud. Who knows? So, the golden rule in life in general is to not trust everyone we interact with and only trust those who display they can be trusted.

[@imqqmi]

I trust in my managers ignorance and stupidity, other than that, I've got burned so many times I lost count. I'm not a distrustful person and every new manager starts with a clean slate. I setup a small little test, a trap if you will. I show them something vulnerable and if they eploit it it's game over.

[@thechessmaster9291]

Please share!!!!

[@burrrrrrrrrrrrrrp]

Not as far as you can throw them

[@seesharp81321]

You manage things not people. Investing in managers is a waste of time and money for companies, unless it's about things. Every time it ends up in a numbers game I tend to morph into Greg House... 😜

[@andrewbrown8463]

The only way to get true trust from your manager is to hack their computer and download as much dirt on them as positive

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

If these are your problems, you are not doing programming. You are doing something else. I've never in my career seen a company that is solving hard engineering problems have organizational problems of this kind. What i have seen is companies that do useless web stuff have these kinds of issues because their goal is not to program and solve problems. Their goal is to create bureaucracy.

[@go_better]

Good point

[@HealthyDev]

No offense, but that sounds a bit elitist. You do know the majority of programming is done on projects that are not terribly innovative, but they do offer value to their customers?

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

@@HealthyDev I didn't say people are not or can't be good programmers. I just said, it seems people aren't doing it much, it seems. And it's not necessarily their fault. It's the corporate culture made up by stupid people on top who have no idea what they are doing. I was in the same boat for years. Since I've been working on a compiler, I've not had any organizational issues. The web really is a plague upon programming. It's the dark ages of our industry. Never again agile, scrum, useless meetings, useless managers.

[@HealthyDev]

@@user-ov5nd1fb7sthanks for the additional context. So if I’m understanding correctly, your experience is that companies building web applications have something about using that technology in their product that causes them to use development processes you really don’t like?

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

@@HealthyDev Yes. The illusion of higher level languages that hide immediate complexity gives people time to think about other things, which have nothing to do with getting the job done. Although, this always comes back to bite people at some point. This is why you have chat applications and web pages that use several gigabytes of ram for drawing text on the screen. The web languages and the whole stack sucks. This is why people can't get anything done. Big companies that have a single website like Twitter and Facebook have tens of thousands of engineers. For what? Well, mostly doing nothing because they are paralyzed by this horrible environment. This is in many ways unfair comparison but Ken Thompson wrote the first Unix version in assembly, for 3 weeks. Although unfair, it tells you something when these days people need 3 weeks to add a web form on a page. Something is obviously wrong here. I am never again touching the web, even with a ten foot pole. But the people who plan to work on it should get their act together and come up with a whole different way and attitude of working in that domain. There is entirely too many people working on the web that don't even consider the fact that you can have memory leaks in Javascript, for example. The Garbage Collector does not prevent memory leaks. You might not consider it as such but if you keep a reference that you don't use anymore, it cannot be collected and you effectively have a leak. This is one of the perils of higher level languages. People forget or don't learn in the first place how programming works. And working in those don't even make people more productive. So the whole performance and type safety penalty is for absolutely no gain.

[@alexbarker4832]

I wont trust anyone I work with period, full stop.

[@HealthyDev]

How do you collaborate with anyone?

[@alexbarker4832]

@@HealthyDev Honestly, I don't. My job is increasingly isolating and for better or worse, being an I.C. pretty much means I just do the work in front of me. If someone wants my opinion they will ask, but that's pretty rare these days.

[@miettoisdev]

can we PLEASE also talk about straight up prejudice against remote workers from "less developed" countries? or am I tripping balls here?

[@HealthyDev]

You can absolutely talk about it all you want. I'm not up on that, so I don't feel qualified to have an informed discussion.

[@brianfabrizio4676]

You seem like a smart guy and I would like to hear more about your positive experience / thoughts, but dam you carry around a lot of negativity. If all you focus on is negativity, that is all you will experience.

[@HealthyDev]

Part of the human experience is negative. I don't pretend it doesn't exist. If this is the only video you've watched of mine, I could see how you'd come to that conclusion! Most of them start by defining a problem, then offering solutions. This is no different, but it's a solution to the problem of knowing whether a manager is trustworthy. So I guess I could see that as negative ;). Thanks for the feeback.

[@CreativPret]

Don’t waste your time. Get a therapy and move on.

[@ordinarygg]

I have better question, can programmers ever really trust their KZbinrs xD

[@HealthyDev]

Haha! That one is a personal decision and depends on how well you do your research into each one. 😉

[@hopeseekr]

This entire video is really depressing.

[@HealthyDev]

Unfortunately there are unethical people in the world and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help anyone! I definitely didn’t set out to trigger anyone but I expected there would be some feelings around it. Hopefully at least a few of the tips I provided at the end can prevent more depressing episodes - like being taken advantage of by a misleading manager. I would of course prefer that you never run into any of this!

[@Lothrean]

2:40 maybe you should inform yourself first before you put a video out like this? It's not a managers job to do your job better than you or to do your job at all. You can be a great manager without knowing anything about the stuff the devs do. Even worse: Managers that are developers are more likely very bad managers. No wonder that you think like this, cosiddering you obviously have no idea what a manager even does. Edit: You worked with terrible managers - thats all that is behind this (it seems).

[@dekippiesip]

I'd say there is a vast difference between a manager that comes out of the senior among the seniors, so to speak, and one that just finished some management studies course and gets inserted as manager in an industry that person has no experience in or affinity with. It's not so much that a manager should be able to literally do my job. I have several co workers doing different things, having different skills and working with different tools all under the same manager. No human can be better at all those things. If a manager has done operational work in roughly the same area it simply increases relatability and it does actually lead to better decision making.

[@PuppetDev]

Maybe you should actually learn how to listen? It's the single best skill to have, especially for managers.

[@NormalPerson229]

With an attitude like yours, I hope that you aren't a manager.

[@Lothrean]

​@@NormalPerson229 What exactly is this attitude you were able to so confidently distill from my 6 sentences?

[@Lothrean]

@@dekippiesip a good manager just listens to the needs of the team, sets goals and works out solutions to problems that hinder the team to acchive their goals. You don't need much knowledge about the actual work the people do. You just need to understand the working conditions and how to change them to benefit the team the most.

[@marketsmoto3180]

I had a dishonest manager and it was funny watching him squirm when I wouldn't just accept bullshit answers. The unfunny part was he was the real life personification of Bill Lumberg. I quit my job a month ago

[@marketsmoto3180]

holy shit, paused at 5:52..... I literally told my boss that i did not have the available information in order to give him my honest feedback because i can see there is need to know type information existing here