-- I’ve never had a manager help my team work better. Have you? Is it rare? Or have I just been unlucky?
(you've been warned, the old grey beard is going to blather about back in my day)
I think you have been unlucky, but mostly with timing. Sorry you have not experience the magic of excellent leadership, enabling team members, removing obstacles, and keeping things moving smoothly for the business.
My experience pre Web 2.0 was very much manager helping the team work better, but more than that, the manager assembling a team to so that it setup for success. The interview process was a short, less than one full day affair. Question less adversarial, and more of "Is this the sort of thing that would interest you?" and "When are you available to start?" Part of the reasons being the manager, and team, expect ongoing training to be part of the team process.
I accept that Waterfall really does exist as a design process, but in my experience, in the 80s and 90s, it was not a followed process. Sort of feel, in my limited experience, it was a strawman to define the not-waterfall catchall of Agile. I remember some tenure faculty member, a decade removed from industry, teaching Software Engineering, and all of us in the class, with professional experience (yes even in the defense industry) doing our best to stifle laughter in class. And having giggle filled conversations outside of class, like anyone was still doing waterfall. Sure my first department of defense funded job, on my first day after introduction and the HR stuff before lunch, getting some overly formal assignment writing up a function, with a due date in three weeks in the future. Coded it up that afternoon, spend the next morning testing it, after wondering for a half hour or so what I was suppose to do, I went to see my manager. Since I had never programmed in Jovial before, I had been been given plenty of time and was expected that I was going to have to seek out help from other team members to complete the task. So more a way to setup for success, than, inflexible procedure of rules never to be broken. That was the last I ever saw of a deadline or a formal assignment writeup. Withing the week, I was given my own office, I was pointed to the manual for the CWIC compiler writing language and the Jovial language spec, and told that I needed to produced a parser.
After that job, and more school, In the 90s, I had the most wonderful manager, that had hand assembled a truly fantastic group of programmers. We were told business objectives, the manager saw his job, to make sure we had the resources we needed, and let us know his job was to run interference with the powers that be within the company to prevent them from getting in our way.
I followed him to another job. (Had one of my favorite job interviews of all time with the CEO, who had just been brought in to head the company towards taking the company public. I was scheduled to chat with him for 20 or so minutes. After introductions, he got a phone call, said he needed to take it. I sat quietly for the rest of my allocated time, while he picked colors for the planters of the new office plants. Not six rounds, no fizz buzz, no leet coding). When hired, my manager told me the business objectives and told me to make it so. The first week, he sensed that one of the people I was going to interface with wasn't up to the job, so my manager pro-actively approached me, and we discussed whether someone else we both knew would function well in the position, and the next day the problem person was fired). Years later have had conversations with other former folks who worked for the manager, all had stories of how he had set them up for success and protected them from the company politics and bureaucracy
I guess perhaps is was some form of Shape-Up or Programmer Anarchy without some formal name. Guess if I had to market it, I would have tried to come up with some name orchestra metaphor. The manager really was a conductor. He was empowered to hire and fire people. He found folks that complemented each other strengths and weaknesses. He trusted the folks he managed with the implementation details. Got new hires to fill positions when areas expanded in scope. Got business folks to acquire resources the programmers had run into roadblock with vendors.
I don't know what happened to the field by the time Web 2.0 rolled around. Certainly not even saying there is any cause and effect. Just a change in landscape. Sure there were some changes to economic of processor power, cost of hiring, availability of talent, etc. that led to the current situation
Thank you for such a thought provoking article! I think you're right. It's hard to get around the need for good leadership. Some things are just fundamental.
-- I’ve never had a manager help my team work better. Have you? Is it rare? Or have I just been unlucky?
(you've been warned, the old grey beard is going to blather about back in my day)
I think you have been unlucky, but mostly with timing. Sorry you have not experience the magic of excellent leadership, enabling team members, removing obstacles, and keeping things moving smoothly for the business.
My experience pre Web 2.0 was very much manager helping the team work better, but more than that, the manager assembling a team to so that it setup for success. The interview process was a short, less than one full day affair. Question less adversarial, and more of "Is this the sort of thing that would interest you?" and "When are you available to start?" Part of the reasons being the manager, and team, expect ongoing training to be part of the team process.
I accept that Waterfall really does exist as a design process, but in my experience, in the 80s and 90s, it was not a followed process. Sort of feel, in my limited experience, it was a strawman to define the not-waterfall catchall of Agile. I remember some tenure faculty member, a decade removed from industry, teaching Software Engineering, and all of us in the class, with professional experience (yes even in the defense industry) doing our best to stifle laughter in class. And having giggle filled conversations outside of class, like anyone was still doing waterfall. Sure my first department of defense funded job, on my first day after introduction and the HR stuff before lunch, getting some overly formal assignment writing up a function, with a due date in three weeks in the future. Coded it up that afternoon, spend the next morning testing it, after wondering for a half hour or so what I was suppose to do, I went to see my manager. Since I had never programmed in Jovial before, I had been been given plenty of time and was expected that I was going to have to seek out help from other team members to complete the task. So more a way to setup for success, than, inflexible procedure of rules never to be broken. That was the last I ever saw of a deadline or a formal assignment writeup. Withing the week, I was given my own office, I was pointed to the manual for the CWIC compiler writing language and the Jovial language spec, and told that I needed to produced a parser.
After that job, and more school, In the 90s, I had the most wonderful manager, that had hand assembled a truly fantastic group of programmers. We were told business objectives, the manager saw his job, to make sure we had the resources we needed, and let us know his job was to run interference with the powers that be within the company to prevent them from getting in our way.
I followed him to another job. (Had one of my favorite job interviews of all time with the CEO, who had just been brought in to head the company towards taking the company public. I was scheduled to chat with him for 20 or so minutes. After introductions, he got a phone call, said he needed to take it. I sat quietly for the rest of my allocated time, while he picked colors for the planters of the new office plants. Not six rounds, no fizz buzz, no leet coding). When hired, my manager told me the business objectives and told me to make it so. The first week, he sensed that one of the people I was going to interface with wasn't up to the job, so my manager pro-actively approached me, and we discussed whether someone else we both knew would function well in the position, and the next day the problem person was fired). Years later have had conversations with other former folks who worked for the manager, all had stories of how he had set them up for success and protected them from the company politics and bureaucracy
I guess perhaps is was some form of Shape-Up or Programmer Anarchy without some formal name. Guess if I had to market it, I would have tried to come up with some name orchestra metaphor. The manager really was a conductor. He was empowered to hire and fire people. He found folks that complemented each other strengths and weaknesses. He trusted the folks he managed with the implementation details. Got new hires to fill positions when areas expanded in scope. Got business folks to acquire resources the programmers had run into roadblock with vendors.
I don't know what happened to the field by the time Web 2.0 rolled around. Certainly not even saying there is any cause and effect. Just a change in landscape. Sure there were some changes to economic of processor power, cost of hiring, availability of talent, etc. that led to the current situation
Thank you for such a thought provoking article! I think you're right. It's hard to get around the need for good leadership. Some things are just fundamental.