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I cannot tell if blog post is this a theory or 15-page commercial for one man's opinions. The title claims it turns engineers into remarkable managers, yet provides no evidence. I see a lot of bold claims (e.g. "As with any new job, the most important task you should be doing at any given time will definitely be uncomfortable. It should be") but this piece lacks the reflection and perspective of a PG think-piece or any sort of evidence to justify its numerous opinions.

A more accurate title: "Some guy has opinions on what managers should do so we typed those opinions up."

My other big objection is that the pieces of advice (e.g. "manage up") seem stock and not actionable. Merely telling one to "manage up," (i.e. make your boss happy) is a new phrase for something entirely obvious. Nobody would disagree with "Make your boss happy," but somehow you spin the phrase in a new way and make a new lexicon around it and you have a facade of content.

2 comments

Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.

No mention of firing offenses... Perhaps you're misremembering Steve's description of project management mistakes, one of which is to "place politics over substance" [1], where the project manager tries to convince stakeholders that the project is progressing well, when the data says otherwise.

[1] "Classic Mistakes Enumerated" http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm

What? Why? That's insane.

Most overt and intentional "managing up" is a waste of time at best and often runs counter to the organization's goals.

By this, I mean when you decide on your drive into work "Today, I'm going to manage up" or block it on your calendar. I don't mean doing a naturally good job and keeping your boss informed of what's going on, figuring out how to best help the company achieve its goals, etc. That's the productive version, but it's 1% of the usage of that phrase IME.

Most of "managing up" ranges from pure politics to useless paperwork to ass-kissing.

What gets measured gets done. If higher levels of management measure politics and ass-kissing and useless paperwork then that's what goes down when "managing up." And of course there are plenty of organizations where that's a big chunk of what gets measured. People who value those things tend to strive for management positions.

There are some where it isn't. In those "managing up" can mean something else and management tracks can attract and keep people interested in creating that other meaning.

Ill have to reread my copy of rapid software devlopment but i think it was the toxic effect on the team.

His point was: be aware that to be a good manager you need to be effective in all three directions. From my experience, engineers stepping into the manager's role will primarily want to make their team happy and productive. But if that becomes all they concern themselves with, they will tend to land their team in the soup! Call it what you will, I think steering managers away from this is sound advice.

Interestingly, in my office's parlance, "manage down" is "make the boss happy (by making the team do what the boss wants)"...