Slashdot Mirror
Interviewing Your Future Boss?
crimethinker asks: "I am an embedded systems engineer for a small division of a large company. Up to now, we have managed to get by with little more than a 'team lead' position, but as our division grows, they are looking to hire a full-on engineering manager. I was one of the candidates, with my current boss's favorable recommendation, but I withdrew my resume when they told me the job was all paper and schedules; I'd never touch code or hardware again. Now the VP has a 'short list' of candidates, and has invited me to be one of the interviewers. Yes, you read that correctly: I will be interviewing the person who will become my boss. So, I put the question to you, Slashdot: what questions should I ask my prospective boss?"
If I hired you, would you agree not to fire me?
Can I have next week off?
Naptime?"
"Will you give me hell about reading Slashdot all day?"
I'd ask him what sort of ideas he'd have to improving employee morale/productivity. If all he can come up with is "Casual Friday" or other similarly benighted schemes, give 'im the boot.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
"Is your daughter hot and available?"
You should ask your prospective boss about things that will affect your happiness with their "boss-ing."
Since you were a candidate yourself and withdrew, you have probably already figured out that your new boss is unlikely to be your equal in engineering.
But that's not her job anyway.
You should ask things about leadership philosophy, their personal goals in management, their ideas about telecommuting,
about how they balance their work and "real" lives.
Remember that if you are a good engineer, your boss works for you as much as the other way around (unless your boss is the Big Boss of course).
Try to figure out how much you would enjoy having this person around, and how helpful they are likely to be in clearing the way
for you to do your best work.
Use no buzzwords.
Thats my style, and it's worked well so far. I've interviewed about half my bosses and haven't had a bad one in 8 years.
This Like That - fun with words!
What are my career prospects under you?
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
How much of a pay raise would you give me latet for a favorable reccomendation now?
Seriously, see what he/she likes to do outside of work. You don't want someone who is a total workaholic who will expect you to put in 80+ hrs/wk if that's not your bag.
The correct answer here is to give me a raise.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Ask about the shows he/she likes, what he/she reads, what they like to do. Try to find the person you get along the best with. If you 2 are friends it feels less akward to have a boss which you hired because you will have mutual respect for one another. Also, friends don't fire friends ;). If they are uptight and have no social skills I would stear clear.
Slashdot: what questions should I ask my prospective boss?
"Do you have any issues with sleeping your way to the middle?"
I would start looking for a new job. You can only move up or out they say.
Also there is probably going to be some resentment when the boss realizes that you were the first choice (if they do not already).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
if he has a favorable view of internet porn. If he does, then you won't have to worry about covering up your screen when he comes by!
Pantless mondays?
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
- be "involved" (meddle in my projects)?
- contribute to the team (if at all)
- give me raises?
- let me sleep and/or play videgames on company time?
"How much homework will there be?" "When's recess?" Male candidate: "Is your wife hot?" Female candidate: "Are you hot?"
Would you be planning to give me a raise? ::wink:: ::wink::
Esoteric reference.
If you were considered for the position, you know what oure doing. the org chart on paper never matches the one in real life. The guy may be your boss on paper, but it will take a LONG time before he is REALLY your boss.
VBJonC
Are you an Engineer who wants to be a Manager or a Manager?
Are you going to try your hardest to push our well deserved raise? Otherwise forget 'em. :)
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -- Unknown
Look around. The company let the last secretary for your engineering group retire 5 years ago. You have been doing all the ordering and tracking. A manager of a development group attends all the planning meetings but he or she must also be the clerk and secretary for the group. You do not need to know how the company has changed the PO approval process. Leave that up to the manager.
It's fairly clear that the reason you've been invited to take part in the interview is because you "know your stuff" inside out, more so than anybody who is two levels above you. Therefore, your portion of the interview competition should be to judge how much the candidates know about the exact technologies you're working with.
I'd come up with a list of 10 to 20 buzzwords that you use in your everyday conversations and e-mails, but keep that list secret from the candidates. See how many of those words each canadidate mentions in proper context as they talk with you and the other interviewers.
The point of this exercise isn't so much as to hire the high-scorer like it's a video game, but so that you can have a reason to veto somebody who is talking in generalizations but can't come up with the terms for what you actually do. Basically, your whole point is to eliminate anybody who is likely to become a PHB character if given the job because they don't know what you do.
"How far will raw sex appeal get me? To what extent can I count on this sweet ass to do my job for me?"
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Keeping this strictly from what I know as fact, rather than inject my own opinions on what to ask. The MOST reliable indicator of how a person will perform in a job is their intelligence. Don't assume they are smart based on their resume, usually standard tests should suffice, or ask him to write some code for you on the machines you work on. I think it should be necessary that your boss is capable of doing your job, if not as well as you can.
"What is your position on the free coffee and donuts issue?"
On the other hand, if you want to ask *good* questions, think about what topics you and your current boss deal with, and ask about those questions. If it's a management job, then think about what managers can be bad at. Ask about their previous management history (are they a good leader?), ask about how well they understand the technology (are they the quentessential pointy hair?), and ask about how they view the postion from the point of view of being the interface between the techs and the upper management (are they there to keep you down, or to make things go smoothly?).
Also, think about what might happen a year or five down the line that will piss you off, and ask questions relating to that.
Narrative
Number one way to motivate an unproductive employee.
How well can you estimate time and set project schedules. (You know this can't be done exactly... if he doesn't know, you don't want him)
Why did he lose (or leave) his or her last job? (Double check on this one... it's IMPORTANT)
How many of their former employees will want to follow them to this job?
Annual reviews? Good or bad? How are they done? A form or "free form"?
Do hours worked matter or is getting the job done more important?
Comp time or bonuses (or anything) to make up for overtime needed at deadlines?
Agile Artisans
Do you read Dilbert?
Did you like Office Space?
Oh yeah, have you read The Mythical Man Month?
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Kick Backs are always appreciated.
You ask this person the same things as anyone else:
-Ask them if they understand the nature/scope of the job
-Ask them to describe relevant experience (professional, not futzing around on their own time)
-Ask them to describe any characteristics/attributes that make them a good choice for this job
-Ask them how they would handle any particular circumstances you either expect your operation to encounter, or some that you have encountered in the past that could have used some good leadership
-Etc.
Basicallly, when interviewing, you really only need to concern yourself with KSAs - knowledge, skills and abilities. Note that interpersonal communication and team skills are VERY critical KSAs. I value them more than actual technical or academic skills - those can be taught. The former, not as easily.
I sat on the committee that hired my current supervisor. She turned out to be one of the better administrator's we've had...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
If they answer 42, that is really the wrong answer to a different question.
You, no doubt, have an idea what constitutes a good manager. If you don't, here's my opinion:
A good manager:
1. Fights for her people with upper mgmt.
2. Gets her people the resources they need to do their job.
3. Gets the hell out of the way.
Put another way:
1. You know he will be there when you need something.
2. Otherwise, you'd never know he was there.
These are the traits you're looking for.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
buzz word bingo for applicants.. hmmm..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
but it sounds like the perfect opportunity to find a boss who works for you, not the other way around.
What I mean is, the Engineering Manager, say, is there to make sure the department is doing what the company needs.. but equally, there to make sure the company is providing the engineers with the resources and environment needed to do their jobs. Disciplinary action aside, a good manager in a position like that should almost NEVER have to exert authority over his staff, becuase the staff already do their job properly.. he's just there to deal with situations where a tiebreaker is needed, and to keep an extra focus on where the company really wants to go. Most of his work should be the other way around... going up the chain of command to get the staff what they need, and properly communicate how things are going to the rest of management.
Find out if they read this article on /.
This is not a technical interview if it is a VP job - make sure they know they business.
Why should we hire you in the first place?
(this is not a troll! it's an honest question!)
main(0)
Consider questions like:
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully reformed a poor-performing subordinate
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully communicated expectations with staff
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully motivated staff using incentives/rewards
Your goal is to try to get an idea of what it would be like to work for this person under good and bad circumstances.
questions:
1. what education do you have?
2. what other companies have you worked for?
3. do you have any hot daughters that are 18+?
4. do you have any hot daughters that are under 18?
5. when will they be 18?
6. social security number?
7. credit card numbers?
8. bank account numbers?
9. is it ok if i empty all your accounts and move to the cayman islands?
no? that'll be all
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I would definately want to know what is the boss's stile of management.
...
... a hands-on type of coach who wants to know day-to-day what you are working on and when are you going to have it completed.
... the hands-off type who enables you to guide your projects and assign completion dates, etc. while always being available for manegement-specific questions.
... a good team-lead?
... going to take the team out for lunch once or twice a year to bond?
Is he/she
A good manager IMHO lets their employees guide their own careers while providing targeted guidance.
When I become an Evil Overlord: My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
Also, how's his communication skills? And does he worry about getting fired? Because that stuff may trickle down and in my experience it was never too pleasant. If the job title is more of a formality, and he doesn't micromanage, look for the smoothest talker with the highest education, that is jealous of what you do, but doesn't mind dealing with paper all day.
The best experience I've had in the working environment is when the whole team worrys about their work more than them worrying about their job. Quick, efficient, and the core energies are synergized!
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
It's important that you try to find someone you relate to. They don't necessarily need to have the same interests you do, but should have a similar lifestyle. For example, if many of your team members have a wife and kids at home, try to find someone in the same situation. He'll understand the value of sticking to a focused 8-5 schedule and will better understand your needs to stay at home with the kids when they are sick, to have your weekends free to spend time with your family, etc.
On the other hand, if you guys are all workaholics who spend every daylight minute at the office and you hire a guy that prefers a tight, 8-5 schedule you'll naturally have some tension and frustration when it gets crunch time and he chooses to go home at 5 every day. He may get twice as much work done as everyone else in a shorter period of time but that doesn't seem to matter at midnight to a grouchy, sleep-deprived developer.
You probably already realize this but make sure this guy understands computers. Ask him general questions to make sure he understands the general technology behind the projects (make sure he has a little geek in him). But most importantly make sure to ask him questions that you claim are easy and he should know but are anything but, see how he handles these situations. If he's starts trying to BS that's definate bad news, you want a boss who will admit when he's outside of his experience and is willing to listen to the advice of his subordinates.
I stole this Sig
hire the one with the biggest tits and hottest ass.
Tech will be -part- of this person's job, but only part, since they will be managing the business side of things.
Probably more important is the question "can us engineers work with this person?"
That might strike some people as ironic or too bold, but it's actually an excellent question.
Remember, the Prospective Boss is in the management business and not in the geek business.
The person seeking advice here seems to have already decided against a career in the management business.
It is in the manager's interest for that tech person to go as far as possible - as long as it's not into management over his/her head.
I once had a boss who would waffle endlessly on that subject because she really needed me working for her. The best she could honestly offer was "if I climb high enough you can come with me."
Then I got another boss who realized that my success would reflect well on him, and he was extremely supportive. I eventually moved on, and he moved up, and indeed my success did reflect well on him, just as his did on me.
A good Prospective Boss will have a thorough and thoughful answer ready for the question you propose.
This Like That - fun with words!
I've worked for a series of companies owned by a single individual, the founder. This is neither good nor bad in itself, but does mean that the company's culture bears the imprint of the boss' personality.
I like to ask candidates, at any level, if they've ever worked for a company owned by a single individual. This question is mostly for their own benefit, to gauge how they might fit in.
This point can be generalized to any kind of organizational culture: have they every worked in one like ours? Or will this be a new experience for them?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
maybe you shouldn't be interviewing your future boss?
did you forget to take your meds?
Have you now or ever in the past had pointy hair?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
..about 6 months ago. My current boss just wasn't working out. CTO asks if I want the job. I say "Hell no". He says OK... go find one then. I searched through monster, and agents and came up nill. I then remember that the best boss I ever had in my career was looking for a position. He was in fact the one who had layed me off not two years prior. Why was he the best boss I had? It wasn't so much his excellent technical know how. It was that he had the same work ethic as I did. Don't ask too much technical questions... find out if a potential candidate has the same work ethic as you do. Because believe me... when crunch time comes along it don't matter how much he knows it's how well he handles the pressure. And it's that which really makes a work environment one you feel like going to every morning.
Peace
I think one of the most important properties of a boss is Trust. Trust is at least two dimensional. To trust a boss they must be competent in their roll and they must have your best interests in mind. I think any questions about their experince and skills for the tasks they must perform are important. Secondly, you have to figure out if they care about you and your success.
I would suggest the book Topgrading by Bradford Smart as a good reference for asking the right questions and asking them in several ways to correlate results. Interviewing should be a lot like taking a survey. Best to ask the same thing several times for verification.
I see that you know something important, without having had to suffer to find it out. I've steadfastly resisted attempts to make me into management over the years, and have hired, or been involved in selecting, my own boss multiple times. Management is rewarding for those that like it, but a pit of misery if you really prefer doing the technical stuff.
There are a couple of questions you need to ask yourself, before going into this:
You will also want answers to general things (some of which you may have already thought of):
If I'd had more coffee, I'd have probably had more to say. Congratulations on making the right decision, and on having a management structure that supports your decision.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
Do you know WTF your doing?
to this:
Let's pretend. You're the Department of Transportation, and you discover that our company intentionally did nothing about leather seats cured in third world countries with chemicals we know cause birth defects? Brake linings that fail after a thousand miles. Fuel injectors that burn people alive.
What about this? Keep me on payroll as an outside consultant. In exchange for my salary, I'll keep my mouth shut. I won't need to come to the office. I can do this job from home.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
It may be that you are being asked to interview him just to see if the team likes him. I'd say you should ask your management team what they want to get out of you for this interview. :)
If you want to be more than just a corporate tool, just find out what is important to you. I would recommend that you try to stay away from the "what will you do for me" questions.
And some questions are just plain dumb. "If my kid is sick, can I leave early?" Yeah, stay away from those, they have only one answer and he'll give it, and you run the risk of wasting everyone's time. And then only you look silly. Don't look silly interviewing your new boss.
Can i have a raise... No? ok, this interview is over.
"If you offshore us, do we have your permission to go postal?"
Table-ized A.I.
What's my kickback if you get the job based on my recommendation?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Back before I was running my own company I was working for a company where I was given the same opportunity. I didn't ask any direct questions because the I clubbed together with the other staff of my level and we organised a group Q and A session. Afterwards the interviewee spent 10 to 15 minutes with each relevant member of the development team (small company and we were interviewing for a Project Manager) to get to know the potential boss. Each member of the team had received the resume of each candidate in advance as well. After all that, we voted on who we liked best (subject to final approval of the more senior PHBs). And it worked really well as we got a really good project manager for our troubles.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Is your hair liable to become pointy at any time in the near future?
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
As flattering as that sounds, the real reason you are getting to interview the boss is so the boss can see what the real lay of the land is on your organization...and not visa versa.
Even if you do not like him, keep it to yourself. If he gets hired and you did not recommend him, life will be bad for you.
Will you have any significant vote in the decision? In a similar situation a coworker asked some fairly tough questions. And none of them mattered, as a manager ended up picking someone that no one on the interview board (but her) liked.
Asking really tough questions could make an enemy for you, an enemy that will be your boss. I do not envy your position.
Also note that you will probably have to work with those that do not get the position. And one of those individuals may someday rise to a psotion of power, since they have already proven they have ambition.
Walk on egg shells!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
1. are they real?
2. can i see them?
3. if you wpuld work here, would you mind the AC being on high?
As one of the short listed candidates I would like to thank all those who submitted questions. I now feel very confident I can blitz this interview. Thanks again.
PS crimethinker, prepare to be sacked for lack of imagination.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
how many sugars does he take?
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
This is a very common practice, especially in software development where the manager will be working very closely with everyone. You also see the same thing in higher education quite frequently.
What?
Hey,
I went through this a year and a half ago. It worked out really well. The CEO came to us with a short list and set up interviews. Everyone had been prescreened and so forth.
The CEO wanted us to ask technical questions. That's silly -- a manager doesn't do technical things. We drilled the candidates on various hypothetical/real situations that have come up. Things like "The marketing team wants more features to make the product more sellable. What do you do?"
You really need to go by track records and references. You want someone who has gotten the job done and stood up for the technical team in the past.
We were lucky. Our top choice matched the executives. I don't know what we would have done if it didn't..
Hope that helps some.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
I would want to see if they understand what you do to help the company. If they don't understand or don't know how you contribute, even if you explain it to them, then they will place unrealistic goals on you. ...ask them for their definition of Spyware too.
- Describe a situation recently where you delegated responsibility completely and were happy with the result. Why?
- Describe a situation recently where you delegated responsibility unsucessfully and were unhappy with the result. Why?
- In your last management position, how many people did you start with in your department? How many did you have at the end? Those that moved on, why?
- Describe a situation where you've saved the day.
- Describe a situation where someone working for you saved the day, and where you were barking up the wrong tree.
- What was your favourite "employee" moment before you were a boss?
- What's your favourite "boss" moment so far in your career?
It's all about if you could work happily with this person. If you find yourself enjoying their accounts of the above, chances are you'll enjoy working with them.If they are the hero of every story, watch out.
If they "can't think of any screwups" and that bothers you, then you might want to think of not working at the Whitehouse. ;)
The last company I was at, I arrived only shortly after the VP of IT. (The company had maybe 20 people.) I liked him. His basic attitude was that he was the representative of the IT team to the CEO, and his job was to work with us to see that stuff got done and to keep the CEO away from us. He had his problems, like having a new great idea for where that stupid bug I was trying to track down might be every frickin' day, but I respected him for his "bottom up" style. He was our representative and leader, not our "boss".
Of course, the CEO didn't like that, which is, I believe, why he was fired about a month and a half after I got there. The CEO wanted a yes-man mouth piece who would see to it that we were broken into generating the response numbers he wanted, not tell him what the rest of us knew full well, that his interpretation of the numbers was asinine and counter-productive.
(I lasted about another month after that before I was canned as well. Wheee!)
Before you interview ANYONE, speak to your upper management and make sure you and they are on the same page about what you're looking for. What you want is someone who will go to bat for you and keep upper management and customers out of your way. The CEO may want the same, or he may be looking for someone he can give a directive to who will then crack the whip on the rest of you to do it. If you don't figure that out now, you're going to only scare away potential good managers and the person you get will be so torn and confused that they won't be able to do a good job for anyone.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Make sure you couch the questions to draw out his experience. So, do ask "suppose X happened, what would you do?", ask "when X has happened in your previous jobs, what did you do?". If he's making it up, it should become obvious. Make sure to give him time to come up with an answer. A full minute of silence isn't too much. Good "X" values: - late on schedule - over budget - have taken major wrong turn in design - customer is asking for impossible - employee is not performing If you don't personally like him by the end of the interview, forget it, no matter how exceptional he is on all other fronts. I don't think its crucial that he is 100% on all the techno-babble. He should have come up through the ranks, i.e. been 100% on some techno-babble at one time in his career. You don't want someone who took an MBA because they couldn't code.
Ask about their previous management history (are they a good leader?), ask about how well they understand the technology (are they the quentessential pointy hair?)
Management and leadership are two entirely different things. Perhaps the OP would do well to decide if the boss position in question will need to be one or the other, or both. Ask questions that give clues to his personality type. Look into the Myers-Brigg typology, if you aren't already familiar with it.
Mozilla
If I were to interview my own manager I would come up with half a dozen realistic scenarios (some of them are modified versions of scenarios described in The Mythical Man Month) and see if the guy finds a sensible way out.
Like for example, you see that your project runs right over its due date, what do you do:
1. Hire more people
2. Cut non-critical features
3. Argue with your boss to extend the deadline
4. Ask the team to pull together and work overtime for a little while
Order the answers by priority, if you think any of the answers are unacceptable, remove them. If the guy doesn't remove 1 (which means that he doesn't know what the heck he's doing) or does remove 4 (which means he's a hypocrite and doesn't have confidence in his own leadership), the decision is "no hire".
See what I mean?
What process would you want to put into place that has minimal engineer impact, but be a good documentation procedure?
Your company is growing, you must have documentation of what you do, and did, but not have to spend too much time on the documentation. be reasonable, if you don't want to get bit in the ass later, you have to document now. rule of thumeb, 10% of the time you will be working on the project will be spent documentation.
What would you do to facilitate communication between engineers and upper managment? engineers and the customer?
You will have conerns about project, and sometime the best and quikest way to get them addressed is to tlak to the person the project is for, but you want to be sure they go through your manager to get to you, most of the time.
What will you be doing to help me do my job?
This one is, of course, totally your judgement. Ideally they should say something like, take care of scheduling and managment meeting, so you don't have to worry about them. Or to keep you productive while they handle all the day to day details.
Hre is a question for his boss:
How empowered is the new manager going to be? is he going to be able to make decsicions and go with it, or will he have to constently have to go up the chain for answers? If he has to go up the chain for everything, he will be a waste of time, a burden on your work(it will be an etra step), and the company will gain nothing.
Finally, I would like to address a myth:
You do not have to be knowledgable in the industry to manage it well'. You do have to come up to speed on the terms, and expected time it takes to do a project. His job is the 'people' side. he must know how to allow you to work.
One of the best managers I ever worked for came from a completly different industry. The worse manager I ever worked for was a former engineer.
BTW, I am available for this position.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... ask for references? I.e. people both who he as worked for, as well as people who have worked for him?
If he's not willing to give such references, especially of the second kind, that's an answer as well.
Stupidity is mis-underestimated.
I get the impression you've never held the title of manager, possibly never conducted (or participated) from the hiring side of an interview. (Apologies if I've misinterpreted.) Remember, the candidate with whom you speak wants a job that consists of zero coding and lots of paper pushing. Already you can't relate to him or her on that level. Further, it sounds like this person is going to have hiring/firing/raise authority over you. With these things in mind I think it would be best to have you sit in on the interviews but not conduct them. Leave that to HR or to the hiring manager. Your presence will allow you to provide excellent information to the candidate: how the department is currently run, what your department needs to grow, how a manager might provide for those things. Really, just use the time to ensure he or she is not a PHB.
What project management methodologies are you familiar with (e.g. Prince)?
Describe the software lifecycle?
1) If a project is behind schedule or over budget, who's fault is it?
If they answer anything but their own fault, show them the door.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Most managers tend to think that they are most important, and that just by being there they somehow take credit for the actions carried out by others. One of that type who meets this question will waffle, because they have never seriously considered how they COULD add value. If you find one that can answer that question sensibly, you will have found a manager worth employing.
I've used that question when I interview people, and it's illuminating to hear the responses. This gives you a bit of insight to their personality and interests, and if you have them tell you about that book and what they liked about it you begin to get more insight. Remember, the key to having a good boss is finding someone you will get along well with. To do that, you need to know their personality. Besides, it's always interesting to throw an off-the-wall question at someone and see how they respond. In my experience, the best interviews become more like long conversations on a wide-ranging number of subjects. When it ceases to be question-answer and more like story-anecdote, you have a great interview going on. That's when you get the measure of the person and their personality.
You don't have a manager now.
So how would this person justify his wages? What value would he/she add to the process that they will manage? How will they tell if in fact they are not simply another expense, but rather an asset?
If they can't answer that, they won't have a clue what their job is.
Derek
Tell him you just can't feel comfortable in an office environment in which drug or alcohol use is winked at. (Mylanta, Scope, Viagra may *sound* like silly street names, but they're a very really threat to the American way of life, as well as to germs, impotence, and acid reflux disease.)
Also, point out that as part of the terms of your employment, you'll be be able to quit at will, and will be periodically inspecting his desk drawers and email. For safety, etc.
Being that the only real job of middle management in this situation is translating geek into money-guy; you need to see how well they can relate employee ideas into marketing manna. Make up a silly idea relating to working conditions (like all employees need an x-box for relaxation) ask them to pitch the idea to your management counterpart. Silly ideas are best, as the answer will be No. hey will have to translate that no into something that still allows you to be happy, even though you didn't get your way.
- Do they understand what the job is?
- Do they have the ability to do it well?
- Will they be happy and successful doing it?
You can't actually ask these questions, because they are questions about the uncertain future, but you can choose questions that might shed light on them. If you can find out what they do when things get difficult, that would also be good to know. Good bosses take responsibility, bad ones blame others (usually those weaker than themselves).Do you ever press charges?
The jobs of a technical supervisor are pretty simple. They need to:
*keep the existing drones happy
*make sure they have enough to eat
*get them whatever resources they need
*get more projects for the hive
*get more drones for the hive
similarly, they need to be able to:
*resolve conflicts between drones (usually by telling them what to do, even if it is the wrong thing to do).
*cull the weak or unproductive
*either take responsibility for when the drone makes mistakes or fire them right then, depending on the anger of the higher-ups and the perceived value of the drone (not who is responsible or how big of a mistake it was)
*set deadlines and resolve interdependencies in larger projects
*occasionally (if needed or not) crack the whip
*stand up to higher ups, when necessary, and stand behind drones who stand up to higher ups (but then chew them out behind closed doors).
Your boss doesn't need to be good at what you do. You don't need to be good at what they do. It helps that they understand what you do, but at the same time, it helps that you understand what they do.
It was a mistake to walk away from the job.
good luck
work with the larger business picture
work with other VP's to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of your division
work with upper management to make sure your reward system for your division is fair and just
work with upper management to be aware of future negative impacts and to minimize the effect on your area
Bring strong performers in your area to the attention of upper management
Begin projects that will help to increase the efficiency of your area (or reduce the number of bottlenecks, however you want to look at it
Organize your previous peers according to their strengths and increase the flow of information internally
To name a few...
The downside is, if you choose not to take the position, you have to do all of the above anyway (where do you think the new VP is going to get all of his information?) and you don't get the added benefit of being able to intercept and try to minimize negative events as they come down the chain (or being recognized for your efforts). Even layoffs can be minimized by giving people opportunities to transfer internally or get additional training (and these can be done without telling them layoffs are coming and violating corporate policy on such things).
Go for it, take the responsiblity, take on the challenge of learning new sets of skills and turn your engineering skills into your hobby.
Just a thought..
Best of luck.
Ask as many questions as you want, on any subject, but pay attention to the body language, the movements of the eyes, the look, the apparent ease or unease of the person, the gesture of the hands, the positions of the legs, etc. Is the person looking at you in the eyes or avoiding eye contact? How are the legs crossed if they are? From my experience in interviewing people, I found out that the actual answers of the candidate were less revealing (unless of course the candidate was a complete bozo, faking answers and lying like a politician), so the answers were less revealing than the tone, the body language, the general feeling of the interview. You can somewhat "feel" if a person is lying, nervous, answering what you wanna hear, etc. It could of course be dangerous to only rely on feelings as it is a highly subjective thing, but I suggest you read on the subject of body language and non-verbal communication.
The wrong answer is 'swear at all the peons until the work gets done'
About where he started in his career. If he comes from the very bottom and understands the job of his direct and indirect reports a little bit he will not drive you guys crazy with unreasonable expectations.
Also, ask about his education. It is my firm belief that non-technical people simply can't effectively manage technical people, and the best managers grow from the very bottom.
If he STARTED as a manager and/or he does NOT have technical education at all, the decision is "no hire".
Not sure what the answer to it is, but i'll gladly read the responses.
Mainly, I'm just glad to see an "ask slashdot" that can't be solved by either going to google or a psychiatrist.
1: What's most important: Your people or bottom line?
2: On meeting expectations: Promise the moon and stars and ride everyone to deliver or underpromise and over-deliver?
3: Overtime: Will you be forcing people to work 60 hours a week or will you get more help when it is needed?
4: Are you a Yes-man or realist?
5: Is the customer always right?
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
You should ask him how he feels about institutional memory.
I'm not sure how old you are, but if you're approaching 50, you should be worried about being shitcanned and replaced by 2 jr. engineers fresh out of school, each making half your salary.
Whether such a replacement is a good idea or not is dependent upon the circumstances, but repeated purging of senior engineers for junior ones leads to engineering departments that repeatedly blunder into the mistakes of the past.
Ironically, if you're in that 45+ age range, you've probably just given up your best chance both to save your paycheck and to propagate institutional memory. Once you pass 50, you'll probably never get another engineering job should you lose your current one - you'll be too expensive to hire compared to someone a few years out of school (not to mention less attractive - physical appearance has been shown to be a major factor in hiring decisions).
The sad truth about engineering is that you can't do it forever. At some point, you have to step up to management or else you'll find yourself jettisoned at some point with no hope of finding another good-paying job. I've watched my father's career arc and seen a lot of his colleagues fall by the wayside (and through the cracks) because they didn't understand this reality. He's now on the cusp of retirement and is one of the last survivors from his generation of engineers at his company because he was willing to make that move to management.
Having removed yourself from consideration for this managerial role, it's in your interest for whoever's coming in to have an understanding of the importance of striking a balance between cost efficiency in terms of dollars-per-head and the importance of retaining experienced people (e.g. you) who are capable of larnin' them youngsters who will be coming in as your division grows.
Just my $0.02
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
If the company functions by cascading metrics and reports up the management chain and then decisions are made near the top, then I would try to seek a candidate has very strong political and social skils. They will likely make a better advocate for you needs.
If the company functions by management only defining the org structure and letting decisions be made by the people closest to the problem, then I would try to seek someone who has come up the ranks, understands the technology and has been in your shoes. They will more likely take on the role of an enabler.
One of the worst situtations is when your manager's style conflicts with that of the company, because it almost always affects the ability of the worker bees to function.
Also, I personally would avoid someone who previously had an upper management position (even with a smaller company). In my experience, I have never seen a manager who previously had big picture responsibilities adjust very well to refocusing on enabling operational needs.
Interview his old subordinates. Seriously. You could get a nice guy who answered all the questions well, who ends up riding your ass later. Ask for references and then ask to speak to old subordinates. If they love him, you know he's golden.
Find out what he knows? Maybe he comes from a development backgorund, maybe from test.
What you don't want is a boss who says: "Mr A And Mr B came in and worked the weekends and sorted over 200 hundred bugs - I notice you went home at 4 p.m. on Friday and had sorted only 3 - and they earned themselves some healthy overtime payments. I just don't think you are pulling your weight here.".
THATS BECAUSE MR A AND MR FUCKING B HAD OVER 200 BUGS RAISED IN THEIR FUCKING NAME, YOU FUCKING HOWLING HALFWIT!!!!
Make sure the new boss knows he difference between good and bad coders.
My favorite question is "what's your definition of a team player?"
If they say someone who has lunch and dinner with the team and attends all the meetings, blah blah blah, they're out.
If they say someone who doesn't point fingers, fixes problems and moves on, they're in.
-hadohk
If you're in a car travelling at the speed of light and then turn on the lights, what happens?
It would be hilarious if he did :-)
Jilles
For me, the managers I worked the best for and enjoyed working with...
One would listen to my ideas, let me do what I want, and generally protected myself and the group from the higher up political infighting. Let us do get our job done, understood that nobody else was going to do but us. He didn't have much experience with the products we were directly working on but did have a lot of managing experience and was fairly intelligent. I would say the fastest way to find out if the person has gone through the ropes and knows what the hell their doing, is finding out about their previous managing experiences, how long was he doing it, how many people, ask what he has learned about it. He also didn't have an incredibily large ego and was more than willing to pass on the credit for good work as much as possible. While this worked great for the group, didn't work so well for him, he got canned after about two years on the job.
This versus another manager I had that while he had a few years managing experience, had an ego that didn't quite match the mush in his head. So, because I kept on wanting to do whatever I thought was best, but since it wasn't his idea, he would always, always, have a problem with it. He had no balls to take on anyone outside the group, always assumed that people outside the group were right and we were wrong, and had absolutely no real understanding of technology, or worse yet, desire to learn about. Took credit for the groups work, rewarded the stupid idiot yes men regardless of any real accomplishments. Well the smart ones soon started leaving, I left within a year, but because he was always looking out for himself and taking all of this credit, got praised by his managers and got some employee award of the year. This didn't last though and I found later he got moved over to one of those small time positions with little responsibility and generally out of the picture.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever had a consistent manager for longer than two years or so. If I were you I would look for qualities that just show experience and at least a strong interest in the technology so at least they will be able to somewhat comprehend what you spend all your time on.
While the naptime comment is funny, there is some validity in asking similar questions.
Breakthroughs in better ways to do things often present themselves during what is often considered "unproductive" uses of time like coffee breaks, a short walk across the company campus or even a brief nap. If those types of activities help you work better it's definitely worth asking about.
You should also ask the candidates to describe their leadership styles and management styles, and to provide concrete examples of how they have applied them in the past.
Ask how they deal with problems with personnel and projects. There is no such thing as a project or company without problems.
ask them to show you a picture of spouse and family. if-
#1: they are average looking or above and their spouse looks bloody awful (was nice once but having kids/stress/drinking beer has killed their looks) or has 6 kids who look like little shits
or
#2: they are average looking and the spouse is fantastic looking (for male candidates - the wife is a 'trophy wife')
steer clear. workaholic alert. in #1 they want to stay as far away from them as possible. in #2 they need to continue to bring home the big bucks to fund the lifestyle to keep the spouse interested.
awful to say but this is true, it took me years to understand this. find somebody with a balanced home life so they don't want to be at work 24x7
he/she needs to knwo how to allow you to do your job.
he/she needs to trust your experience
he/she needs to knwo how to address issues with upper managent, perferable without you knowing there ever were issues.
he/she needs to be able to learn the industry relationship with vendors.
If you say "I need part xys234", they ned to get you that part quickly, and as inexoensively as possible. That do not need to know what how it works. By the time they aroder, they should now what it does, but not in a technical way.
You do not want someone who is going to try and use there technical expertise to 'get you something better'. which happens very often when geek move into managment.
he/she should care about you getting done what and when you say something will be done.
Thay do HAVE to trust your experience.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I use the same thinking interviewing bosses as well as co-workers and employees: will I be able to work with this person? No assholes and no stupid people. Additionally with a manager I want to know if the person will be a good advocate for the team. A manager's primary responsibility is to stop any shit coming down from above.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
...is always "I don't know" (with the usually unsaid corollary of "I'll find out") rather than making up bullshit.
What you want is a new boss at least as good as your old boss, right?
Describe some past scenarios where your current boss had to make difficult decisions; names filed off to protect the guilty, of course. If the current boss is there in the room, only stick to decisions with positive outcomes; no sense bringing up old muck.
Otherwise, also use scenarios where you think the current boss didn't do so hot.
I'd just like to also attach my approval to your statements. A boss that's more technically oriented than management oriented 1) isn't going to be so great on the management side of things (he's got to be good with upper management and clients as well), and 2) I find that managers with some technical experience try to steer the project according to their opinion. This second point is really important, especially when the boss doesn't have enough knowledge of your team's constraints, and makes things go haywire by trying to micromanage your team, or by changing specifications on the fly. Likewise, if he's overly technical in a good way (to you or your team), he may not connect well with the Big Cs or the clients; Also a very bad situation.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Here are some thoughts about what I would ask in your position. IMO the primary task of a manager is to manage the production and productivity of a team, i.e. ensure that the team has an optimal amount of the right resources and otherwise good environment and conditions for the work at hand.
Therefore, I would ask the candidate to describe how he/she has acted to achieve that. After the interview, try to find out if the stories told during the interview can be verified. It is not uncommon that people lie during job interviews.
In addition to asking your prepared questions, listen carefully and observe the interviewee's behavior in general. Build an explicit impression of the candidate in your mind during the interview, and formulate a smart question or two based on this. These improvised questions might turn out to be the ones leading to the most revealing responses.
In general, carefully observe the behavior and responses throughout the interview. Does the interveiwee indicate any kinds of character weaknesses? E.g. people who feel threatened and unsecure generally make bad managers.
Good luck with the interviews!
Stefan2100 (http://knowledgebusinessreview.net/)
All of the above questions are useful, and will help weed out the inexperienced and inept. However, what you really want to know is, 'is this a person I can work with'. The only way to find that out is to ASK PEOPLE WHO HAVE WORKED WITH THEM IN THE PAST.
Ask for references. You'll get a list of their best buddies at old companies. Then ask for references from those references. Iterate again and you should find some people who are fairly objective.
Now ask them tough questions--what personality conflicts have they seen with this person? What are the 'hidden motives' they bring to work everyday?
Everyone has agendas--methodologies they prefer, ways they like their employees to operate, etc--find out what this person's agenda is, and find it out fast, so that you can be sure it is compatible with yours.
Why on God's earth does he deserve more money and authority than you when his major skill is stroking his boss's ego (for lack of a more polite term) and there are literally thousands of other brown nosed sycophants out there who have been unemployed or underemployed since the poorly run companies who first gave the suckasses their "management experience" went under.
Your employer knows you are valuable. That's why they are trying to discourage you from wanting the position which they had no intention of giving you anyway. 'Paper and schedules' my ass. If it were paper and schedules, they would hire an administrative assistant to assist and report to you.
"People persons" are a dime a dozen. They certainly don't deserve higher pay than the valuable employees who report to them. There are exceptions but since you said yours is a large company I feel pretty sure that the corporate culture has already become bureaucratized long ago.
So enjoy the rest of your professional life as a low level schmuck. My advice is to look for a way to divert all those fractions of a cent that the paycheck computer ususally discards into a secret bank account. Then do just enough to not get fired, relax and enjoy the ride while the place slowly goes to hell in a handbasket.
"No."
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Smith. Don't call us, we'll call you."
This brings back memories. The last boss I interviewed wanted to express her superiority over me (nice grandmotherly type while we interviewed her), and it ended with HR wanting to send me to a class to learn how to deal with her personality type. Dilbert in action... I'd stick with "Do you prefer yes (sir or ma'am) or do you like to be called (mr. or ms.) last name?"
Many people believe that a good manager need not know the nuts and bolts of what the subordinates do. After all, a manager is hired to manage, not code or administer systems. Plus a manager that is very technical will have that urge to jump in himself (or herself). On the other hand, we are all familiar with the clueless manager that sets impossible deadlines or purchases technology based upon some salesman's pitch. So a technically clueless manager can be as bad. Ask the candidate what they think of this. How much should a technical manager know about the technology?
Hard-core geeky types are often introverted and not what most managers are accustomed to see. Some are arrogant prima-donnas, some self-effacing, some look and smell like long-haul truckers. Many are violently independent. How will the candidate deal with this motley group and get them to work together?
Two competing vendors are trying to sell you a product. How do you choose between them? This question can help answer who the candidate trusts. Does he/she speak to his group first, soliciting their opinions or does he exclude his team from the process.
Whose job is more important, the manager's or the employee's? If he says the employees he's very likely pandering for acceptance. If he says the manager's then he may quickly drop useful members of the team.
What is a TPS report? The bigger question is how pedantic is the manager? Can he bend the rules or break them in order to get something accomplished. Does he understand the reasons for a paperwork process but is willing to forego them based on his judgment.
The building is on fire! What do you do? Start timing him immediately and look at a stopwatch as you ask. This can show how well he performs under the slight pressure of a fake emergency. Does he wilt? Does he get the employees to safety first or is his first reaction to grab the backup tapes? Which one is more important to you?
I learned a method called targeted selection. While the full process does not apply to what you're doing, the types of questions asked are. Typical questions are phrased in the form, "tell me about a time when...". Encourage the candidate to tell you about one of their experiences and how they approached/solved it. For example, "In this job you will encounter problems that require cooperation from multiple departments. Tell me about a time when you were presented with such a problem and how you approached solving it." Listen to the answer closely. What you are looking for is not a right/wrong answer. What you are listening for are things like, how did he communicate? did he tell people how to solve it or did he build consensus? how did he delegate? etc. If you build a list of 5 or 6 of these questions and listen, document, and review the answers, you will get a feel for the type of person they are and how they will respond.
search on targeted selection and see what you can find out.
Or how many they don't use.
Seriously.
I had to get my milk and cookies to settle down and write this.
'Grunts' and IT staff in particular seem to hold one of two differing views on what a good manager should be.
The first school of thought holds that any good manager needs to be able to completely understand every minute aspect of a job in their area. On top of that they must be able to do the rest of their 'management' work.
The second school of thought views managers and their job as being fundamentally different from being technical. Thus a good manager needs skills that have little bearing on their ability to follow the finer points of a technical discussion. These management skills often are based on being good in dealing with people and time.
Looking over the questions posed here reveals this distinction rather well. They range from focusing solely on the manager being able to do your job, through a spectrum, to the manager having no clue about your job.
Depending on your view of management will colour which questions you choose. However, in my experience, someone who is sharp enough to be a good manager has the people and time skills to be a good manager, can pick up the technical side of things. A technical person without good people and time skills seems to have more trouble picking up the people and time skills.
Ultimately it boils down to who you think would make the better manager: the person getting high-score in Quake, or the person getting high-score in StarCraft.
1. Admit when he doesn't know something 2. Restate what he is told without distorting it too much.
technical questions are the way to go, from an engineer's perspective the best bosses are engineers.
LOL!!1!11
I've been in your position before and having survived a few suggestions.
- Ensure you know what the hiring (one-over) manager is looking for. Is the priority training? Project management? Team development? Process improvement? I'm sure you have things you want in your manager, but make sure you know what The Company is looking for.
- As with any interview, ensure that you have the candidate provide you with concrete examples given for your questions. Bad question: Tell me about your management philosophy. Good question: Give me an example of a time when The Company's needs and the employee's needs were at odds and how you handled it. (For example an employee wants vacation but their project was late.)
- Be ready to have a manager that your feedback was "no" on become your manager. It happened to me.
- Pretty obvious: Make a good impression! This person may soon be your boss!
Paul Barth
The one consistent thing I have observed in all my bosses who were good to work for, and all those who were dreadful, was that the good ones had children.
This means that they:
1. Have a life outside of work, and will understand that you do to.
2. They are used to dealing with illogical childish tantrums, and so will be well able to deal with upper management and the marketing department without it affecting you - and they will resist behaving that way themselves.
3. Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
How soon will you outsource our jobs? Can you promise three weeks notice? (Of course, the answers will be lies, but you will have the small satisfaction of having not seemed a total fucking fool when you look back on all this.)
You were the favoured candidate for the job but you decided against it. Now they want you to interview the guy who will be getting the job? I wouldn't do it. You have nothing to gain from this and the damage has already been done by you refusing to apply for the job yourself.
If you persist in this I'm going to guess you'll have some serious issues with this person in about a year...and probably you will lose out.
Sorry if this is rather dull advice (certainly there are fun questions one can ask of a future boss) I think you need to steer clear of this situation altogether.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Inquire about his level of interaction with the engineers....
if he is one who wants to dictate exacting ways the staff should solve a problem, and wants his fingers in every piece of code... boot him.
if he is the type to tell the staff the problem and let them figure it out with no interaction in the code, boot him...
BUT, if he says he is willing to state the problem, provide working constraints, and allow the engineers to work within those constraints... then thats a keeper...
Too much control leads to lots of reworks.
Too little control leads to sloppy work.
Just the right amount of guidance leads to a productive staff and projects that finish on time.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
Ask him/her views on outsourcing
So the questions I would ask would focus on male-female brain balance. One of my own favorite interview questions is this. Modify as required.
"I was once approached by one of my engineers who, in a discussion, suddenly turned on me and said 'I've spent more years in college than you have, and I know this subject better than you do. You have no business arguing with me. In fact, I'm better qualified than you are and I should be the boss.' This guy was technically essential to the team but was so introverted that he was unpromotable. How would you deal with this situation?"
I think this question might help because
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
How do you prefer to receive feedback from your employees?
Interestingly enough, I just did this about three months ago. My company does product development specifically with embedded systems. A few years back we started a new division that has been growing pretty well. Originally, the head of the division served as engineering manager, product manager, business development coordinator, etc. We finally outgrew that mode and decided to hire on a full-time engineering manager. Since I run the software team, the person we hired would become my direct boss and I got to look through resumes, sit in on all of the interviews, etc.
One point I'd like to make is that this is generally a great thing. My work life has become a hundred times more enjoyable now that I have a boss whose sole job is managing our various engineering teams.
Coordination between hardware design, layout, software, manufacturing, and all of the other teams is paramount to being successful. Nothing sucks more than having a newly designed board land on my desk and finding out that I don't have enough time to validate it before we need to go to manufacturing. So for me, one of my big things was finding a boss that had experience managing this type of communication and scheduling. I was _really_ glad to here my future boss talk about the importance of staying in a beta cycle until everyone on the engineering team signed off on the design. Someone who understands that no matter how desperatly you want to release a product, if you ship with bugs or you ship too soon, you are just asking to eat up your development resources for the next year debugging units in the field instead of at your desk. This is ultimately more expensive for the company as well as a serious moral killer.
Another thing that I really value is the wall that my new boss erects between me and marketing, sales, etc. It's nice to be able to give an honest schedule estimate and not see the whince-face. So I had a ton of questions during the interview process about his ability to handle schedule pressure coming from above (marketing) and below (engineering). I knew that I wasn't interested in hearing any "we are hear to sell product, so what marketing wants, marketing gets" type speeches. Therefore, I was impressed with the thoughtful response given along the lines of; "marketing needs to drive product strategy, but engineering needs to drive product schedules."
Finally, I really wanted someone with experience in our field. I know people will say things like "projects are projects, doesn't matter what the industry a successful manager can handle anything." This may be true in some fields, but embedded development is tough. I needed someone who understands that I'm not dancing when I say that a given task should take about two weeks, but if the CPLD hasn't been verified yet, it might take six weeks instead. Someone who understands that when the scopes and logic analyzers start coming out, he better expect the schedule to start slipping as well. I can't tell you how many due dates I've blown by thinking I had a bug in my code only to find some sort of timing issue on a board, or a bug in the silicon. Yes, those of us who do embedded development often do find bugs in the silicon we work with. Especially when we start working with new processors.
Anyway, my advice is to look at this as a good thing. Then think about the parts of your job that are painful and concentrate your questions there. For me, those questions mainly centered around his or her ability to communicate scheduling and efforts between several different teams and prior experience in my field.
Best of Luck,
--Greazy
It wasn't easy being Greazy
I manage a group of 11 engineers with varying projects in a medium size company.
Managing schedules and pushing papers and pencils, yes, this is a lot of the manager's job. But there's also strategy, technical direction, mentorship, hiring (and eventually firing), and more influence at the higher levels as the company grows.
That might not be what they tell you, but that's what it inevitably becomes if you're a manager that has any influence at all -- and being promoted internally, that's most likely what you'll get.
Having experience with all of those things and being accountable for them rather than being a guy who merely chimes in, hey that really rounds out your resume. Building software and product isn't all about writing code; here's your opportunity to find out about how the rest of it happens.
In the worst case, you decide you don't like it. Big deal. No one said you had to do the same job forever.
The great thing is that since you'd be the manager and hence, ultimately be in charge of the schedule, you can schedule yourself to contribute some code here and some code there. That's exactly what I do:
1. Give myself interesting things to do.
2. Keep the sub-project limited in scope.
3. Try and stay off the critical path.
Being a manager doesn't mean you can't be technical; it just means that your primary responsibility is to your people and not to the code.
Knowledge of the technology and problem area you're working in is probably a good thing. But someone with the wrong degree of understanding, or knowledge that is only tangential, can be given to pushing the team in technical directions that aren't quite appropriate to what you're trying to accomplish. Been there, done that...
My biggest frustration with my current managers is that they don't have the slightest clue what my work entails, from a technical perspective. While I do appreciate the need for people to shift papers around, keep clients off your back, etc. etc., it does not help if you have to cope with unrealistic expectations and don't get equipped (hardware, training,...) to properly cope with ever-changing job demands. My ideal boss would be one who moved up from a similar position than what I'm doing now.
But then again, as you yourself pointed out, not everybody wants to move from coding to admin - and I'd definitely also ask why he made the move. Might be interesting....
Yeah, I've got a couple of questions ready about my prospective bossed if (when - probably sooner than later) I ever sit in a job interview again and they get to the "you got any questions?" point.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Seriously - when was the last time a footballer got promoted from the team to do the paperwork, how many CEO's secretaries outrank the CEO.
If you are the natural team leader then its unlikely the team will listen ot the manager anyway, they'll listen to you. So don't hire yourself a manager, hire yourself an assistant. Someone who goes to meetings for you, plans schedules for you and lets you get on with the real job. That doesn't have to be someone who is in charge of or controlling what you do but someone who enjoys doing the bits you don't and you can work alongside.
So many IT companies seem to screw this up. Good project managers are great people to have but they don't have to be in charge.
So be careful. The guy who seems fine during the interview may turn out to have serious flaws as a manager. Unless you do your homework, you'll never have the opportunity to spot these flaws until they manifest themselves on the job -- at your company.
The only people who have first-hand, long-term knowledge about the candidate's on-the-job performance are the people he has worked with before. Talk to them! Ask your candidate if you may speak with his references. If you get a No response, that ought to be a warning sign. If he doesn't trust his own references, why should you trust him?
But don't stop there. Say that you would like to, if at all possible, speak with the people he has managed on previous jobs. Say that you would also like to speak with the people who managed him. Ask if he can arrange it. Even if he can't because it might jeopardize his current position, the way the candidate responds can tell you a lot.
Good managers are worth their weight in gold. Bad managers can destroy projects and drive away your most talented employees. Thus when hiring managers, be discriminating. Do your homework. Check the references.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 00:20:46 -0400
From: Brian Bartholomew
Subject: Questions for prospective employers
In a healthy job interview, information flows both ways. Some employers have written tests for interviewees. Candidates may get the same win even if they don't present an actual list of test questions on paper. These are blunt questions at any time, as they directly question management's competence. They are incredibly rude at a job interview because you flaunt the respect you should be showing to a potential new employer. Nevertheless you will be much happier finding out these answers before you are on the payroll. And remember, twenty minutes logged into the potential employer's system reveals more truth than an arbitrary amount of interviewing. Ask your interviewer to sit down with you in front of a machine and go through their new-user information together with you. You drive and ask questions.
How will you evaluate my job performance?
Exactly how many people have the root password?
I feel I've hit a technical glass ceiling where any further growth will occur due to political skill, not engineering skill. Introduce me to computing employees who are paid to remain technical.
What is the name of the person with budgetary authority who will approve my purchase recommendations? What is their spending limit?
Are you paying me to treat symptoms or to avoid problems?
Who were the previous System Administrators? May I speak with them?
Approximately what percentage of the total cost of software ownership do you spend in the initial purchase?
When the computers are working, they make us ___ $/hr.
When the computers are broken, they cost us ___ $/hr.
We spend a grand total of ___ $/hr in computer support.
What percentage of your programmers use revision control software?
What level are you at in the SEI Process Maturity Model?
How many interfaces do you have on your IP network?
How many interfaces do you have on your non-IP network?
Our computer equipment cost us $___ new, and we could sell it today for $___.
We have ___ UNIX users and ___ UNIX System Administrators.
How many boxes will I have authority over?
What is the median number of 3 hour uninterrupted blocks of total single-task concentration that your SAs get each week?
When a user requests a feature that isn't in the budget, what is the name of the person who tells them "no"?
How many SAs do you send to the USENIX ___, LISA ___, and InterOp ___ conferences each year?
When a disk fills up, do you usually buy another disk or delete something? How many partitions do you have which are at this moment more than 90% full?
What percentage of your hosts are configured as testbeds on separate networks so that you can routinely experiment and regression test new system software?
What is the throughput in bytes per second of your direct Internet connection? Describe your firewall.
What percentage of your help desk people use a trouble ticket system?
Is quality the top priority in your company? If so, describe several instances when schedules slipped because someone felt the quality was too low.
Summarize your written computing growth plans and their budgets for the next few years.
One was great, one was a disaster. Make sure you go out to lunch or something of the sort. See what kind of a guy or girl the candidate is and if you'd want to have lunch with that person. By that, you'll discover how you get along and how you can work together separating the BS from the actual productive work.
The bad experience, I didn't approve. However, he was hired on due to politics and recommendations from the CTO at the time. The personality conflicts became brutal and almost ended up in a bloody mess - literally.
That said, I cannot state questions for you to ask. But I will let you know, you canNOT ask personal questions regarding their family, etc.
You should of taken the job and then hired someone todo the paper pushing while you do what you enjoy. You get the raise and you get the power without all the BS.
God, root, what is the difference?
A simple example: "Suppose your team has been given a task that cannot be achieved by the given date with the available manpower. Staffing cannot be changed. How would you handle such a situation?" (But it is better that you choose something you have direct experience of yourself.)
Note, that this is sensitive. Unless you are careful you could give the idea that you are a trouble maker, and that's not the impression you want to give a boss even before s/he has started. Especially as you're not the only one s/he will speak with.
1. have you read "Peopleware"?
2. What do you think about it?
If the answer to 1 is "no", don't bother.
Listen well to the answer to 2. That's all you need to know.
Gilad
Gilad.
Just check the hair... if it's pointy, you know what to do...
how long until
In a leadership position one often has to react to a changing situation. This could be political, it could be product related or it could be a personal crisis for team members. All the decisions must in the end accomplish the groups goals and ensure the welfare of the members.
So instead of rote questions about their past employment and other resume related details, I suggest something like the voit-comp test in Blade Runner. Present scenarios to the candidate that have no 100% correct solution; that have somebody losing or getting shafted either way. Have them get halfway through their spiel on how they'd work on a given situation, then change it up on them (deadline got bumped up, funding cut, lead developer has to tend to family emergency) and see how they react to the change.
Most of all, design the scenarios to subtly expose their motivations. Are they going to lead and protect their team or are they gonna be a "Lumberg" (office space)?
As a side benefit, this technique should keep those pesky Nexus 6 replicants out of the office.
I spent 5 years working as a network security architect at Exodus Communications, in the heydey before they grew themselves into bankruptcy. I had the pleasure of getting my own boss hired twice.
The first time, when there were problems with one manager, I proposed that my department (network security) be managed by the guy who ran NetEng, who was a friend and an all around great guy. I just said: who has a light-handed management style, who has the credibility to back me if management is thinking of doing something stupid, and can be a technical resource?
I used those same criteria to select my next boss. I was given only two candidates for a Directory of Network Security position. One was a fairly laid back, older gentlemen with an easygoing attitude, some technical aptitude (although he couldn't do the engineering work, but he had clearly done things in the arena in the past), and a clear idea of challenges we faced. The other candidate was ex-law enforcement, and his answer to most technical questions was, "I like to surround myself with good people so I have resources to tap for questions like that". He was stiff, formal, and projected a great deal of confidence... that didn't seem justified. He showed competence only with physical security issues (cameras, guards, etc), which was part of the job but not the important part to me (since I only did the network side).
The first guy had *real world* experience. He'd founded and flopped a security company that sold an evaluated hardened multi-level secure firewall... one that cost in the 6 figures to get and get installed and was generally only bought by a few governments.
I pulled heavily for the first guy, and he was the best boss I've had -- the best I can imagine. He was respectful, tried to shield us from management making illogical or impossible demands, and after several years, quit the company rather than allow bad management to wreck our group. (well, they still wrecked us, but he left rather than be party to it)
Based on this experience, I'd recommend you look for:
* Someone who was once technical. No matter that they aren't, but they should show the sort of aptitude and experience that indicates they did what you do or something equivalent
* Someone who is laid back and 'real'. If they say anything about Moving Your Cheese, about management synergy, about "marketing the group", about "having a first-rate team" or other management-isms that you cringe to hear, then RUN don't walk from that candidate.
* Someone who is not afraid of their management. One reason I liked our boss was he was on the tail end of his career -- he was in his 50s, and instead of being desperately clingy, he was ready to take a bullet for the team. He never really had to; he was so well thought of that even when they said our team was being taken from him because he wouldn't budge, they offered him another job (which goes to show how stalwart he was; he quit just as a disincentive for them to go through with it). Maybe he was just a strong person and it had nothing to do with age.
* Someone you actually get along with. 50% or more of an interview is checking that a candidate fits the corporate culture. Having a manager who buys into your group's culture is key; this guy never batted an eye when we stuck a couch and a playstation in one room for chill out breaks.
Good luck.
I've had upwards of 10 different managers (yes I changed jobs a lot) both male and female. My experience shows that sex has nothing to do with it. Some male managers are bad, some good, some female managers are bad, some good.
As long as you keep stereotyping people based on sex, race, hair color etc, you're doing nothing but shooting yourself in the foot. People are good or bad at whatever because of their unique personalities, nothing more.
-hadohk
This is a trick question. It doesn't matter what you ask him, because in the end, they probably won't pay much attention to your opinion anyway, and will hire some guy who doesn't know a keyboard from a surfboard. Mainly try not to piss any of the candidates off so that after one of them gets the job, you won't already be screwed.
Shawn Asmussen
When you interview the person, be sure to think about the person prior experiences. The worst managers I have ever had were MBAs - no personality or appreciation for what it takes to make a good system. Idealistic fools at best.
What you need a manager who has taken their hands off the keyboard to be a manager, but has at least once done a job like yours. At least a few years earlier but still can appreciate the efforts good code takes. These types make good managers because they can be supportive, know when they are getting a line and can be realstic in their demands of a programmer or software design team.
One pitfall many with prior development experience can make is they didn't let go of the keyboard. They spend too much time "mothering" the staff and not enough time with management supporting the group.
The best part of a mothering manager is they don't last as long as MBAs. So if you make an error, make sure they are at least one with the team and not an advisarial Macavelian big shot.
I've worked for quite a few different people over the last 20+ years. Based on how their career went, some were good at management; some were not. One reason I got out of a management career track was I realized that the perception of how well these folks were doing was more important than to their career than their actual results. I found that I could get along with most people as long as they perceived me as contributing to their success.
The one thing I absolutely could not and still cannot stand in a manager is if they try to tell me how to do my job. I expect my manager to give me tasks to do and its up to me to figure out how to perform them. I don't expect them to set up my daily calendar. Unfortunately, some people want to manage at too low a level. This has applied as much to some of the managers I otherwise got along with as to some that I thought were absolute jerks. Be wary of any candidate you talk to who is too much into the details of how you do what you caurrentyly do. You don't want someone critiquing you on your mouse click technique.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Ask if they know of any non-profit foundations for software development.
Ask what are FSF, RMS, GNU, and of course what does 10 equal.
Ask how does a distributed collaborative consensus community work on technology projects.
Ask what is the largest (market share) web-server software globally.
____ These may be overly simple for the /. community; However, an
engineering/project manager may have little or no programming
experience, but still have current knowledge and experience on
bringing to gather diverse resources and promoting a performance
environment. If the person will be an OSD team-leader, then I would expect them to have considerable experience and knowledge in at least two programming languages and at least positive results from one original software development (OSD) project in their resume.
____ There is nothing worse than bosses that live by supporting career management by suck-up-move-up, fuck-up-for-big-bucks, give-head-to-get-ahead, finger-points-of-trust, powerpoint-engineering, me-look-good-is-good, steal-the-fame-&-smear-the-blame, ... anyway you get the point.
Bosses that maintain a pet-rock garden for image and support.
____ If they know nothing about the features and functions GPL, open standards, open source software, open content, and the people and international foundations that manage these project then they will I suspect know only how to be a stove-pipe dictator with little valuable people and projects management skills.
Reality is a self-induced hallucination. -- OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
1. Inspire growth.
2. Firewall politics.
3. Negotiate resources.
4. Advertise results.
.... supersoakers loaded with grapejuice when they get used in the bimonthly "soak the PHB" days we run around here?
Depends on whether you want continuous low-power output or periodic high-power output separated by recovery intervals. With the right duty cycle, you can pump amps of current through an LED that would otherwise fry instantly. Chances are good that an offshore worker can underprice your low-power role.
Managers have a simply defined job.
They will allocate resources to the team. Determine priorities. Provide the direction to the team. Be your defender/face to other departments.
If they don't understand the technical details they might not allocate resources well, be it money, headcout etc.
If they don't know what you are doing, when people complain they will not be able to defend you, and might take on the view that you are not doing your job.
Myself I like the technical stuff, but as I work, I do more directing and discussing and liason work. I'm realizing this is very important than the technical work I was doing before. I might have been very strong at it, but I'm adding more value at the more managerial side.
I understand people think managers don't do anything, but wouldn't your group and the company be in general better off having a capable manager? If that just happens to be me, so be it.
Are you Gay
If you are the natural team leader then its unlikely the team will listen ot the manager anyway, they'll listen to you. So don't hire yourself a manager, hire yourself an assistant. Someone who goes to meetings for you, plans schedules for you and lets you get on with the real job. That doesn't have to be someone who is in charge of or controlling what you do but someone who enjoys doing the bits you don't and you can work alongside.
I lived this experience.
I was the "lead developer" for many projects at a consulting company. We had several customers that required much personal attention that had no impact on the projects, so I asked my boss (the VP) to hire someone to take the phone calls, make appearances at "strategic" meetings, and handle the paperwork I hated. We gave this person the title "Project Manager" (PM), but the development team still expected my leadership.
We introduced the PM to our customers. He said some silly buzzword filled comments ("Joint Application Development") that added even more meetings, but that was fine as long as none of the techies (including me) had to go to them.
Everything was great until we started a new project. Everybody had the same titles, but the PM decided that as "manager", he should be the top of the chain-of-command. The first time he tried to give me orders, I explained his purpose. The second time, I had the VP explain his purpose. The third time, we transferred him to the Microsoft group.
I have had several great managers (and just hired one of them to work for my new company.) A great manager acts as a filter between the techies and the customers. He protects the time of the techies. He stays out of design and development, but can offer a non-techie perspective when asked.
This only applies if you have a great lead developer. I know of one group that fires programmers with leadership skills. The manager is a non-techie, but knows how to coordinate development with mediocre developers. Adding a hotshot guru programmer would disrupt his system. (He works for a large bureaucratic company where speed is not a priority.)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
This, of course, is a knock-out question. :-)
...and now have a terrible boss. So of course I have to take some of the blame, because I (along with most of my department) thought this guy would be pretty good. It's a good lesson in how difficult it can be to gauge somebody in a short period of time. He seemed like a nice guy, and cracked a few jokes...but now we find out he has zero attention span, takes credit for success and passes on blame for failure, fails to follow up on projects, etc.
At this point I would go out on a limb and say it's a bad idea for upper management to do this kind of group interview. Rather, they should talk with the employees directly, maybe one-on-one, to find out what kinds of questions they would want answered, and then pass those questions on in their own way.
Pete Forsyth
"Are you just a Slashdot trend follower, or someone unique?"
And if he looks anything like this:
http://www.troymelquistsucks.com
dont hire him...
Do you feel that the idea of being interviewed by your potential employees is a positive or negative experience. And, of course, why?
... than one of us who have been working here for a while who might otherwise be promoted?
Openly or covertly, the boss will eventually have to answer this question to people potentially bitter that they have been unfairly denied the opportunity for promotion.
Start Running Better Polls
Remember, they may be having you interview simply so you feel involved and part of the decision process, when in reality, the decision may have already been made. That said, ask good, tough questions, but beware that this person may become your boss regardless of your opinion so don't say anything that you would not say if this was your first meeting with you new boss (post hire) since that may be what it is.
If you just assume this person is going to become your boss, then you can use your questions to position you, your projects, etc. in such a ways as he/she will become your biggest supporter once they come aboard or they will show themselves to be a liar. Always good to know.
"How do you see your role in the work process?" is another good one. The worst boss I ever had didn't think anyone was working unless they were on a brand new assignment that he'd just thought of. If this meant yesterday's new number one priority wasn't going to get done, that's your problem.
On the other hand, the best boss I ever had was hired two weeks before a release. To his credit, he holed up in his cube learning about the product and our internal procedures, emerging only to ask questions (about 1 a day per employee). He recognized that he couldn't help us get the release done on time because he wasn't up to speed yet and that trying to make a big splash up front would only hinder us. He hung back and watched us work for two weeks, then when the pressure was off, he went into boss mode.
I think it's valuable to throw one or two curveballs at a potential new hire, something that's not covered in books on interviewing and isn't directly about the job. It can reveal how they think on their feet, and because there's no "right" answer, they have to be creative. This can be revealing. "What's your superpower?" is a good question. If the answer is "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound..." they aren't very creative. If it's "able to see through bullshit at a single bound", you may have a winner. If the answer is I am Sancho, hire him on the spot.
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
Dick Cheney's job was to find Bush a VP originally. After interviewing several, he presented his name as the winner.
What happens when the tech lead and the engineering manager disagree on the direction of the group?
But on the other side of the fence, as a prospective manager interviewed by a future employee. I did not get the job, but I don't know if that was because I flunked the employee interview...
In another case, I had to interview my successor in a management position. He had all the relevant experience and seemed a good fit, so I gave my approval, but I found out later he was a control freak and managed to alienate most of the highly qualified staff we had. So take my interviewing record with a grain of salt.
First of all, for a managerial position, technical skills are almost irrelevant, hard as it may be to admit for an engineer. Management is all about people skills, attention to detail, and integrity.
There is no easy test to find out in a short interview how well someone has these skills (apart from obvious klutzes), and the wrong people you want to ward against are sometimes the most skilled at faking during an interview. You won't find an easy way to spot micromanagers, control freaks, liars, wafflers or managers who won't stand up for their staff. Worse, if you grill the prospect too hard, he may remember it and some can be vindictive.
I hate to break it to you, but you are pretty much in a no-win situation, unless you are lucky enough to find one of the 5% of easily detected psychopaths. You might want to pass on the interviewing responsibility to a colleague you trust, but who isn't a future subordinate of the manager.
As an evidence datum to the fact there are no good tests for managerial capacity, let me point to the method used by the Sandhurst military academy in the UK to identify cadets with leadership potential - they put all the cadets together and assign them a difficult objective in a stressful environment, and watch the group self-assemble and let the leaders "bubble up". Short of doing a month-old simulation of "The Apprentice", this method won't be practicable for you.
can be difficult, I'm a software developer, and my former employer is an Electrical engineer. We spoke two completely different languages, untill we both realized that we needed to find the common ground. If someone understands even some basics about the technology you're working with it will help. Without some understanding, if the budget gets tight (s)he'll just cut from the most expensive part of the project, not realizing that particular action may ruin the project.
That said... that common ground can be found as long as the person is willing to learn a little bit of the technology.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
And see if he/she has a sense of humor - that's always an asset.
You know about the evening nap time, right?
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
Over the past 20 years I have had the chance to interview my prospective bosses a number of times.
Without exception, there was always a consensus among the engineers about who the best candidtae was. Also without exception, whomever the engineers considered best was not hired!
When are you gonna learn that the higher ups are not concerened with any kind of quality? When are you gonna learn that any skills in handling people, creating realistic schedules or anything at all to do with the technical aspects of the job have no interest to the higher-ups? The only thing they care about is the ability to "crack the whip", shorten schedules and deny raises!
The manager of an engineering team has two jobs:
So you want to understand how good he is going to be at these things. Sound him out on the organisation by asking some open ended questions about how to manage projects. Like,
Finally, some general advice on interviewing. Remember that you are there to listen and evaluate. The candidate should be doing most of the talking. I've been in "interviews" which mostly consisted of a lecture by the interviewer. Avoid steering the candidate towards the right answer. Your purpose is not to get them to agree with you, its to find out what they know. Do challenge their views (even when you agree with them) to understand their depth of knowledge. If they start to flounder, just let them. Look for enough technical knowledge to hold an intelligent conversation with you, but then concentrate on people skills.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
A boss that has actually come up through the ranks and successfully performed with all the tasks required IS someone you can go to with a problem or advice and who might listen to you. Conversely, I have had (thankfully not too many) bosses who were just college degreed "managers" and who were pretty lame and dismal, it's like they just hallucinate reality and you are supposed to reproduce it some magical way. nuts.. Now I am coming from a blue collar background, but I bet the same general rules apply in IT. Frankly, I never could understand how someone who has no clue about the actual work being done could be in any way qualified to be a "boss" of said work. In fact, they're oughta be a law you can't be a boss without doing the job first and proving competency, and for a long time, to boot.
what do you think about niggers?
Personal attacks based on no evidence are great. Another symptom of your stupidity.
Who is your favorite explorer and why? What was the last thing that you did that made you sit back and think "That was cool!"? What was the last book you read? Find out what kind of person they are. Since theya re going to be your manager, you're going to have to get along with them. If you just hire a bureaucrat with no depth you'll regrat it.
or (un, refer to bill hicks for my view on men who want children)lucky
i wonder if this is a discrimination suit waiting to happen
"i told the interviewer i didn't have kids and he told me they'd let me know right there"
somewhere a lawyer has a hard-on
... why you got a troll modifier. Looks like a simple legit question to me.
Full moon maybe...
If he say's "What's Slashdot?", he's out.
If he says he only lurks, or posts AC, he still could be worth hiring.
If he gives you a user ID, great! Now go find out if he's cool, a 1337 h4x0r, or a troll.
But why is the rum gone?
The previous post makes me sick to my stomach and reinforces my belief that corporate software development is a miserable way to spend your life.
Try to get a feel for the management style of this person. My biggest beef with my boss at the moment is he is a complete micro-manager. I can't have a conversation with anyone in the office without him showing up at the door and needing to provide his input. I was talking to the project manager the other day, asking his opinion on a GUI I had designed, and my boss appeared and tried taking over the discussion on my behalf. Despite the fact that he had absolutely nothing to do with the design and had only seen it himself for the first time 15 minutes before, he felt the need to explain to the PM some of the design decisions I had made, and some of the other ideas I had tried. Useless.
YES!
...and how helpful they are likely
Thank you.
I think that is the essential question:
"What hope, if any, would you
have of clearing the way for us to
do our best work? Explain."
>
> to be in clearing the way
> for you to do your best work.
If you are sure they plan to take your opinion into serious consideration, then put your resume into circulation as soon as possible - you're "dead techie walking".
I was involved in interviewing a prospective engineer a few years ago.
It was only after they hired him (based partly on my recommendation) that they announced he would actually be my boss.
If you really have the offer I think you should take it. It is easy for a technically competent person to be a hands-on manager. You will learn managerial skills and accumulate managerial experience points. You could also have a little side project where you can contribute technically. Maybe you will have to put a few extra hours but that should be fine for someone wanting to move ahead in life.
Managerial skills (including paper pushing) are not very hard and tedious. Like everything there is good and bad. You made a decision by extrapolating the bad. Perhaps your company baited you and told you it's all boring stuff you wouldn't like. If that is the case you were never a contender to begin with.
I would say, if possible take the job. Become the boss but make sure you retain your technical skills (i.e., make sure your resume will show that you haven't lost it technically).
Often times comfort does not lead to improvement. We grow by doing things we are not comfortable with.
Just my 2c. Wish you the best and success either way.
Pardonne
You are being asked to interview the prospective boss, and you may have some input into the hiring process, but you're sure not the hiring manager here. You're going to want to ask questions that are relevant to the people hiring your new boss. If you fuck around with it, you'll never be asked again ... and possibly not be given a lot of responsibility after. Nobody gets a check for showing up anymore, keep that in mind.
Well done. It is amazing how many technical people think their boss needs to be a technical expert. As your list demonstrates, he/she/it does not have to be able to do your or my job at all.
The way I usually say it is that my manager is my interface to the rest of the company, who gets me the resources I need to do my job while moderating the demands on my time.
You should be looking for someone whose view of management is not only compatible with your own desires of being managed, but who also will be a successful manager in the eyes of upper management. They must be sufficiently aware of the dual role they perform, and have rational views of how to perform that role. Most importantly, they should be honest with you about what they intend to do - if they spin you in the interview, they will spin you down the road.
One good question for assessing this:
- What do you see as the role for an IT manager?
Wrong Answer 1: To tell the IT employees what upper management has told me needs to be done, when to do it, how to do it, and the amount of time in which it needs to be done. (the wrongness of this should be self evident)
Wrong Answer 2: To tell upper management what my employees have told me can be done, when it will get done, how it will be done, and how long it will take. (this may sound right at first, but they are either lying to you to kiss your ass, or they do not understand management)
Correct Answer: An IT manager acts as an intermediary between upper management and the IT labour force. He or she should, when talking with upper management, promote the technical solutions presented by the technical experts on the team. He or she should also, when working with the team, promote the value of satisfying the customer by striving to acheive the goals set by upper management. (honest, rational, and compatible with any dedicated employee)
On the compatibility front, one note in response to some of the other postings: You shouldn't see it as a requirement for your manager to have an outside life and understand that you have one also. In this you should seek compatibility with your view of the world. If you like working 80 hour weeks, you should seek a manager who will work 80 hour weeks. There's nothing wrong with being a workaholic, if that's your thing. If that is your thing, you'll want to look for a manager who appreciates workaholism. I say this because I am presently a bachelor workaholic who is working at a company where workaholism is significantly undervalued. In the future I will settle down and start a family, but for now I would be happier working somewhere where 80 hour weeks beget large raises. It is good to be a dedicated family man. It is also good to be a career focused soldier. Each is good in the right context.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
... would be the ones that show how you and your prospective new manager will be interacting. For example, if you are a "hands-off" type person, find out if the interviewee is a micromanager. Ask leading questions, but lead them in the opposite direction that you want to hear, and see if the candidate follows you. If he does, he's either not being honest, or intends to go that way, and in either event it's a Bad Thing(tm) for you. Don't lead/push too hard though, or you might make a favorable candidate wonder if this is the right job to accept. Give them an opportunity to show their position in the 'favorable' direction.
One thing I look for in a manager is a backbone. Some managers cower in the corner when corporate eyes your department for a budget cut. Others will actively fight for their staff, sometimes at significant risk to their own position. They're not common at all, but worth looking for. Try to find a manager with some backbone, so you don't get walked on by the higher-ups.
The hardest quality to find is confidence. Managers that want to meddel in everything are ultimately disruptful to the entire process. If the candidate isn't comfortable with allowing the people whose jobs it is to tighten the bolts to handle the wrench by themselves, life's going to be rough. Of course the opposite of that is the manager who doesn't care, but at least in my experience, they are much less common than the micromanagers. At least that variety can (usually) safely be ignored.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
1. Think about what you consider important skills or characteristics for this person to have to do well in the position. 2. For each of the post important things from #1, ask the candidate to tell you a specific story about how they did that item. Important: Do not let them get away with a hypothetical about how they would do it, or how it should be done. You need a specify story of how they really did it in the past. 3. For the most important thing or things from #2, ask them if they would give you a reference to discuss the story. The reference would be anyone that can first hand verify the story, anyone that was involved. That could be a boss, co-worker, direct report employee, vendor, or customer. You'll be amazed at how few people you interview can actually tell you stories as described in #2. It's truly an amazing way to separate the men from the boys. Before I started using this technique, I found myself liking most people I met. After using the technique, it totally changed my perspective on interviewing. I started disapproving of a lot more candidates than I did before. And I was surprised by how well some people did compared to how I expected them to do based on my first impression.
if your prospective new boss is of the oposite gender and kinda cute you could always ask for an opinion on "dinner with benefits"...
you may be helping out also because once they are in a position of influence and responsibility over you they may not be able to ask you themselves...
and if they aren't hired well... now you have a good reason to stop working all that overtime and actually live a life.
I had two teachers in college.
One teacher was the ultimate hippy.
He was easy going and gave little homework.
The other was a military spit and polish guy
who wore a tie. He laid down the law the first
day of class and gave us tons of homework.
I found out the hippie gave grades based on
how much he liked you, not what you did. The
other guy told you exactly what was expected of
you. If you did what he told you your grade was
assured.
The moral of this story is your boss should know
exactly what he expects from you, and be able
to communicate that clearly to you. If he can't
your performance is subjective and you're twisting
in the wind. Ask your boss to tell you his rules.
If he doesn't know what they are, RUN!
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
the BOFH and his method of problem solving? Would an employee that provides creative solutions to everyday problems annoy you?
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
- Represents the team to upper management.
- Shields team members from politics.
- Does not micromanage.
- Trusts members of the team to get their job done. (this may be the most important one)
- Provides advice when asked.
- Works with teammembers to help them achieve their personal goals.
- Does not request long hours unless the team suggests it.
- Understands group dynamics, who can work best with whome.
- Understands (of course) the project.
- Defines realistic goals and deadlines (after conferring with the teammembers)
- Does not work on technical issues, unless asked by team.
- Knows how to motivate different types of people.
- Knows when to delegate.
I'm architect in my team and always interview new candidates for the manager positions (my bosses).It does not matter if you are interviewing a prospective colleague, subordinate, or superior; the objective is the same. Will this person add, or subtract, from this company. The best candidate adds the most.
The best interviews, as far as I am concerned, do not follow a strict Q&A format, but flow, and develop, as a natural conversation would. In essence, the interview should feel natural, not forced.
Should you proceed with you own application? This is tricky and depends so much on your organisation and their ethos. How hurt would you feel if your organisation chooses an outsider instead of you? If you would feel terribly hurt then perhaps not applying is the best option. If, however, you trust your employer to find a good candidate for the position then perhaps you should still apply. You may not get the job but, because you trust your employer to get a good person, you should not feel too disappointed if another candidate is hired since, by definition, you trust your employer to do the right thing.
Note that by better I only mean better in the current set of circumstances. You may not be the best person for the job right now. You may be too focussed on the technical details; you may lack an interest in the big picture; you may prefer to hone your technical skills before moving into a management speciality. However, none of this precludes your from being the ideal candidate several months (or years) down the road. As we develop, our interests and focus change. You may be technically focussed now but may be looking for a big picture position later on.
In my case, I rose to the grand title of Technical Manager because, in part, I wanted to have more influence in the products' direction and be able to present my ideas at a higher level in the company. I have to admit that the team management aspects were not top-most in my mind. My team knew what it had to do, and how to do it. It did not need me to direct them on a day-to-day basis. It did, however, need an advocate for ideas on how to improve our products (we were an RTOS & development tools company) and how to reduce the complaints from the field.
The question you should ask youself is; why do you want to be the engineering manager? There is nothing wrong in saying that you want more money, no matter what others might say. There is nothing wrong in saying that the job title means a lot to you. There is nothing wrong in saying that you want to make sure senior management doesn't screw things up when they add an engineering manager. But, there is a lot wrong with not being honest in why you want the position; both with yourself, and others. Know thyself
I have hired my boss, so to speak, a few times. The biggest thing i keep in mind is that I am >nothandle engineers.
As far as interviewing techniques, the 'behavioral interview' has alway been good for me - it gives me a good feel on how people react to unconventional situations.
Boxers or Breifs?
Thanks. In the twelve years I've been consulting since 3yEE/1yCS sans degree, I've had nine managers. Most were good. Two were not. The first was the best, at that time the youngest-ever manager at IBM Toronto Manufacturing, BH.
Once when I was complaining to anyone who would listen, about the moral injustice of known-but-unacknowledged shortcomings in an internal tool, BH gave me a coupon for a free pastry+coffee at the IBM cafeteria, noting how hard I had worked on the particular project. No one else saw the coupon, he only spent about 2 mins. The moral injustice was not righted, yet I worked twice as hard after that and never forgot the gesture.
The way I usually say it is that my manager is my interface to the rest of the company, who gets me the resources I need to do my job while moderating the demands on my time.
Yes. When a manager does this with backbone, the loyalty engendered is priceless.
You seem suprised that you are interviewing your management candidates. This should be standard practice at any company that cares about its employees. Every employee that will be directly reporting to this person should interview him and give there opinion.
The correct answer being "whats that?"
Little Rubber Feet.
Asked that a few times... if anyone starts BS'ing you with some story, they are done. If they ask 'whats that', you know they aren't full of sh*t.
The all important thing will always be your significant other. Um, yeah, that's it. G
The real information that you need is, "Can this person lead our team effectively?", not "Am I going to be a happy little camper?".
Leadership means promoting stars, firing incompetents, backing the right technical strategies, ensuring that Marketing and Sales are kept honest and under control, taking responsibility for mistakes, shielding the team from political wars, and so on.
It also means producing good products that work and that succeed in the marketplace, whilst doing all of the above.
A lot of the interview is instinct. Some of it is references (get some). Most of it is track record.
In my opinion, the person should know A LOT about technology. You should be able to explain to him/her what you do. S/he should be able to understand it, perhaps not in gory detail, but well enough to comprehend the basic principles of what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you hope to achieve, what the obstacles are, and where you think you are on the timeline.
Very little will be accomplished by asking artificial or general questions or proposing test scenarios. I wouldn't ask any of the above questions, for example.
Just my opinion. I've been a software manager for 21 years.
As the team lead, I too was called to interview potential managers all the time.
Shocking as it may be, the people I recommend are still there and the people hired against my recommendation were let go or quit within a month.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Your interview should be entirely scenario based. For example, "You have a project which is in its second version. The first version was not very clean, but it gets the job done. One of the programmers has gone back and cleaned up a substantial portion of this software, and it now performs much better, is much smaller, and easier to maintain. He ran this past the other team members, and they gave their tacit approval, but he didn't run it past you. Unfortunately, he was also responsible for one of the critical features, which now looks to be late enough that you may have to delay delivery a few weeks on an 18-month project. What do you do?"
This relates to communication, and discipline vs. personal initiative. You want to run these questions past someone else, whose job is to try to tell you what you want to hear. Your goal, after reviewing these questions, is to ensure that someone cannot determine what you want as the answer.
"You have a project where one of the developers is the primary contributor, outperforming other people in terms of the volume and quality of his work, but personally, he's insufferable to the other team members, but defers to you. He's arrogant and condescending, and has a chip on his shoulder. Every conversation seems to be a challenge to this guy. Team members have come to you complaining about him, and at least one is near quitting. This guy's work is essential to this project, and he can't be replaced in short order (although anyone can be replaced eventually)".
Run these questions past a friend who doesn't know a lot about your company. He doesn't have to be technical. What I've found during these interviews is that these power-craving-psychopath managers tell you exactly what you want to hear when asking straight questions, but they start to grow horns when they start answering questions about a real scenario.
I'm an engineer outside the IT industry, so I hope this applies.
There is no "boss." There's only someone who allows you to do your job, and sometimes directs you as to what your job is. A micromanager, for example, isn't your boss -- that's someone who's doing you job, which isn't his job. A good boss is an enabler. He may download porno all day. Or he may go to meetings that aren't worth your time (he'll be able to tell you in five minutes that which took two hours to discuss).
A boss isn't a co-worker nor a friend. He's a partner.
--Jim (me)
I once had a boss (the worst of many engineering managers) that refered to herself in the third person. "Jeannie doesn't like it when you do that!" was the most memorable misuse of pefectly good words. You can imagine my reply to her, verbal and non-verbal.
I also worked in an office with someone referred to as Mis(s) Managing-The-[insert company]-Way for her toeing of the company line when it made the least sense, like rearranging the engineering offices to suit her, but in a fashion which slowed the pace of work by 1/3.
Then there was the manager that just sat at his desk and worried 'til his lips turned blue from anxiety.
And the guy that spent thousands of dollars to change the partitions in the sales and manufacturing engineering offices from 5 feet tall to about 3 feet... so he could see all of his minions from his desk. Never mind that they now had no way of talking on the telephone with customers if anyone else was trying to do the same.
Then there were the ones that attempted to file false governmental reports, but wanted me to sign same.
And the ones fired for the prostitution ring involving managers and supervisors, "visiting" hourly employees in the parking lot..set up by the hourly guy that was pimping.
Good luck.
--
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Example - freshly employed manager of a non-destructive testing section, coming in so the head technician can go out more and make money for the company. He was unfortunately full of bullshit, full of politics (wanted to become my boss in another section as well) and not willing to learn about the basics required to arrange schedules (actually put it as an advantage that he was no "pedjudiced" by knowing anything about the industry - this is after four months in the job). A big project came up due to the companies reputation - the client was willing to pay almost whatever was asked. Large amounts of radiography where carried out, which has to be done when no-one is about to absorb the (in this case) gamma radiation - so it had to be done at night when not much was happening on site and people could stay out of the area without slowing down the project too much.
This wasn't taking into account, the guy paniced and tried to get everyone to work at reduced rates (he had to put on more people) and without overtime despite the fact that he was employing everyone available in the geogrphical area that had the qualifications and couldn't afford to piss them off too much (so intervention had to come in from above to stop everyone quitting). He also turned away other work in a contemptous way to long standing clients during the duration, even when the schedule had people available (eg. we don't need work from your company, we've got a big project from company X). Needless to say, the big project ran at a huge loss, the other clients never came back so there was no work, a lot of staff were laid off, and eventually the useless manager and his boss were sacked. The head technician (after he was re-hired) got as many clients back and staff back as he could, and other portions of the company kept things afloat. A few questions would have saved jobs, and would have given that manager a chance to work in that industry a bit longer.
The manager has to know enough about a technical disipline to allow those who work for him to function. They need to know that without software component X no work can get out the door, or that the accountants 3GHz machine is too much and the 166MHz machine used to do the builds is not enough. They also need to act as a bridge between the farmer mentality (technical skills -eg. times to plant or specific coding algorithms) and the barbarian mentalily (just buy or steal things as a solution to every problem), and fend off barbarians so their farmers can produce stuff for the company.
but that would probably get you into trouble.
This is my sig.
Is this person going to be a project manager, functional manager or both? This is an important question.
In my experience the chemistry between the PM and the tech lead is absolutely critical to the success of a given project. You have to have a good understanding of your needs, your role, their needs, and their role. The boundaries between tech lead and PM are really fluid.
You might find yourself making the first cut of a schedule because your manager doesn't know enough about the various tasks to do it themselves. It will be their job to maintain it, and communicate it to the customer(s) (internal or external).
I generally expect the PM to handle communications with the customer, review the specs, and soothe ruffled feathers when things go wrong.
Communications are a key skill. You should feel comfortable talking to this person about almost anything professional, and maybe some personal stuff too.
That probably means getting into stuff outside of work. (be very careful here!) If you're gay and your boss thinks you're a pervert, you need to move on to another candidate.
Good luck,
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
1. Sell the project he's already been told will grow his stock options the fastest.
2. Obfuscate political factors that would inspire you to get a better job with better pay elsewhere.
3. Badger, wheedle, cajole, or guilt you into overcommitting yourself because that looks so much better on his Gantt charts.
4. Praise his own accomplishments while belittling the misguided, lame efforts of his competitors.
Thankfully it's been a long time since I've been around of those managers, but they do leave an impression on you.
1. Growth of employee.
2. Firewalls filter (not stop) overt politics, not employee grapevines.
3. Negotiate resources for employees to do their job, sustainably.
4. Advertise employee success.
Sorry my good managers reminded you of bad ones.
You couldn't have asked this question at a better time! I just spent a whole week interviewing potential candidates to be my new boss. The position was for an IT director of a specific college at a state university with a staff of 7 technicians and about 500 users. We were instructed to create a list of questions that we would ask during every interview to be fair. I'm not going to list all 20 questions but I will say we broke it up into two categories: technical questions and management questions. Two of the toughest questions for any of the candidates to answer were:
What is your definition of integrity and how does it apply to being an IT manager?
Name one of your most successful projects and describe how you went about completing it.
followed by:
Name one of your most unsuccessful projects and explain why it failed.
It was an interesting week and it will be a pretty hard decision to make. Many of the candidates gave the same canned-answers so we were left to decide based on their personalities and how comfortable we felt around them. Good luck!
At least in America, interviewing your future boss is the way it's done. In a rapidly growing company you'll interview at least 1 new boss every year.
Contrary to what you may have conjured up in your mind, the interview with your future boss is more for them to find out about you than it is for you to find out about them.
No-one's going to care about what you think about your future boss. They usually take what they learn from interviewing you and decide who to keep and who to replace with their own team. Yes, most of your current team will be let go in each management changeover.
Rest assured, companies are intensely discriminating in hiring managers. You're going to spend a long, long, really long time interviewing before they take anyone.
For managers, unlike programmers, they spend months and years looking for the absolute best they can find and spend whatever it takes to get them.
You've turned down the position because you wouldn't ever get to write code and tinker with the nuts&bolts again. And maybe lurking in there is your own suspicion that you wouldn't be good at the job of supervising folks like yourself. But you need to know if the prospective candidate is any good at doing the tasks he/she will be supervising. If not, can he/she supervise you and your cohorts? The answer is maybe, if he/she at least understands and appreciates the process. But, if there's no real understanding of the process, or, worse, no appreciation of what it takes, then the candidate isn't right for the job. So, ask questions designed to uncover what the candidate knows about what you have to do to get your job done, and whether or not the candidate appreciates the type of people who do it well.
The situation sounds weird because you're an idiot.
Instead of becoming the next boss, which you were given the option of doing, you will be interviewing your next boss.
You are an idiot. Take the job.
Only if you have been working on the same technology for the last 20yrs would you have this problem and even then there are still plenty of well paid jobs around for cobol hacks. I am "in that 45+ age range" and have only ever worked as a contractor. The longest I have stayed at one place was 7 years and even that project changed the outsourcer half way through. If you or your company have a policy that senior developers can be replaced by a couple of collage grads (and a thousand typewritters) then your project/company is already heading for the scrap heap. Meanwhile the ugly old-farts will just shake thier heads and move on to the next project/company since they have seen it all before. PS: I am the youngest of 4 senior developers where I currently work and no we don't program in cobol.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Casual Monday-Friday?
Is the new prospective boss a female?
If so, is she hot?
If so, is she married?
If so, is she faithful?
Could this person do your job?
It pisses me off to no end when I have a boss who can't do my job try to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing.
Will this person allow you do get your job done withough assigning you extra bullshit work?
I could keep going, but I'd run out of room.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
In my experience (which is, certainly bitter) the outright fabricators tend to have issues with, well, truth. Never a straight answer - always in the grey area. Since most of IT is based on literal binary truth (1 or 0, true or false, that's it - fuzzy logic cleverness aside). These are pretty incompatible viewpoints, which make understanding and trust pretty difficuly.
A true example:
Me:Yeah, the database is all set up, but we can't really get any good metrics until all the data is in.
An Outright Fabricator:Can't we just throw in some fake data?
M:Well, not, becase then we'd have no way of telling the good data apart from the made-up stuff, and all the information we get from the system will be completely meaningless!
OF:No, no. Something's always better than nothing
This went on for about 10 minutes before we 'agreed to disagree'. Or, he had a nic-fit. Or I stabbed him. Something like that.
The point is, don't work for someone you don't trust. That's the number one thing.
Number two: Make damn sure his/her spouse is uglier than yours - in the long run, you'll understand.
But seriously, number two would probably be communication skills - is this the kind of person whom you 'just don't get', or do you immediately understand what they're talking about? Your professional relationship will mostly consist of this person passing information along to you (and vice versa) - the easier the flow of ideas and information between you, the better.
It also don't hurt to have a friend throw a fake hand grenade through the window of the interview room. I'll work for the person who jumps on it for me.
BTW, my answer was "Never present an unbuffered microprocessor port to the outside world", given with no hesitation whatever. (and no, I haven't made that same mistake again)
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Do you have any dirty secrets I can use to ensure pay rise / un-fire-ability?
Many moons ago, I was (quite willingly) in this same situation (NB: not current employer).
The one thing I learnt in hindsight was that someone way up the ladder had created an advertisment that misrepresented one very difficult and troublesome aspect of the job. I really wish I'd read that in advance, and chucked in a question to see how they'd feel if, *hypothetically* (cough, cough) this difficult situation were to arise.
As it was we hired a fantastic guy who coped well, but it could have gone the other way.
At the best job I ever had - only left to emigrate :) - I ended up interviewing the candidates for the role of my boss.
It was a telephone interview as I was working from home a couple of days a week. I concentrated on building raport, checking personality & general comprehension of the technology we used.
He ended up working out very well.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
First of all you need to find out if the candidate has a backbone. Does the candidate bend in the wind like a cattail? Is the candidate more susceptable by manipulation from a few within the group? If so DON'T CONSIDER THAT CANDIDATE. You want someone with a good head on their shoulders that can think for themselves and see if someone is bullshiting them and trying to manipulate their ofice views. You don't need that kind of shit. You also need a boss that while go to bat for your dept with his bosses, the big wigs. A backbone helps makes him a respectable person.
Does the candidate have a background in the trenches of IT? The best supervisors and bosses I've had are ones that came up from the trenches through the ranks to be my boss. They've done the same things I'm doing and know how difficult it can be. While you don't have to be a former-grunt to be a good boss, it sure helps. It also helps them know when someone is bullshiting them.
Ask what they did at their previous jobs to build office comradery, relieve stress, and make the office a better place to work in general. If they've never been in management (yikes!) ask what they'd see as good in their eyes for things to do here. While you want someone with a backbone you also don't want a hardass slave driver.
During the last search I participated in I asked the 3 candidates on the short list what words, phrases, or main points would their department mission statement contain. Ie, I was looking for them to say something with the users in mind. 2 actually did that. The other started rambling. It's not a question they'd normally expect but it's not that hard if they have a good (honest) head on their shoulders and are quick on their feet. Good qualities for a person in management (or at least the type of person we'd like to see in management). Best of luck.
Call them admin assistants or office managers or whatever, but I believe every engineering or programming group should have a "detail person" (what the Army calls a "company clerk") to handle things like expense reports, travel reservations, filling out purchase orders, and the 200,000 other items that need to be done but take away from productive time.
Look at the original post - the guy doesn't want to be management because he'd become a full-time paper-pusher.
What if his company hired a department administrator to handle the paperwork, and made him boss tech? I suspect this would be a far better use of resources, especially since the administrator would not get paid anywhere near as much as a programmer or engineer.
At one point I told my wife she'd be the perfect "office mom" for a tech company. She would, too. She's good at handling admin details and remembering things like birthdays, knows how to shop for things like hotel and airline deals and is good at setting up events, and would never let the place run out of vital supplies or let the timesheets get behind. Not only that, but from hanging around with my friends, she's used to dealing with what we might politely call "unusual people."
A group of engineers or programmers with an "office mom" like Debbie around -- and she's old enough to be mother to the typical under-30 programmer -- would certainly be enough more productive with her there to justify a secretary-level salary.
Debbie's not looking, but there are plenty of women (and men) who don't mind handling paperwork and making others' jobs easier, and are happy to work for a modest wage as long as they are treated with a little respect.
Too often, bosses end up buried in paperwork and don't have time for strategic planning or doing their other *real* work. No wonder so many tear at their hair until it has points!
I suspect that bringing back secretaries instead of trying to automate the visible parts of their jobs would be a good move for many companies, although I doubt that many are likely to take this wise step.
I actually was in the same situation a few years back- I was originally offered a "management" job at an ISP, which would have been all paperwork and dealing with vendors- I told them no, but if they had a high-level system/network admin job I would take it in a heartbeat... so they created one for me, and then wanted me to help interview people for the original management job.
The one question that I always made sure to ask when interviewing somebody, usually late in the interview, was "Why is the sky blue?"
Not so much because I wanted to know if they knew the answer (if they said the word "nitrogen" anywhere in their answer I gave them credit for it) but because I wanted to watch their face and see how they reacted to a totally unexpected question which is probably the furthest thing from their mind at the time.
This is important in the ISP industry, because you'll get into a rut of constantly being bombarded with the same things over and over, and then out of nowhere comes a totally unexpected situation and you have to know how to handle it without going "huh?" in front of a customer.
With respect to Interview Questions, ask about their own professional development. What professional subscriptions do they subscribe? What professional societies do they belong? Do they read the trade journals?
I just spent 10 minutes looking for an article I recently read, but can't find it.. it had some interesting things that some people to when checking out job candidates... simple things like being 45 minutes late to interview them (to see how they handle change) and dropping a pen to see if they pick it up, to more extreme measures like calling them pretending to be a telemarketer, to see if their rude or not. I think the link was on Fark, but I can't find it.
If you're really interested, reply to this message and I'll look at work on monday... I either have a hardcopy of it with the address or it's in my sent mail.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
"To whom do all your base belong?"
If he answers improperly, beat him with his Apple notebook until he makes time.
I would suggest that you come up with several scenarios which your new manager may encounter, and ask how s/he would resolve them. For example:
- How would you attempt to resolve complaints from the team that the budget was set far too low to complete a project?
- A new article comes out, stating that using RFID tags to track employee movements within the building can improve efficiency. Your team is strongly opposed to this, because they feel as long as they finish their work on time, they shouldn't have someone second-guessing how often they go to the bathroom. How do you handle this situation?
- The team lead comes to you for your professional opinion. Two members of the team develop bitterness for one another and refuse to work together. This is hurting productivity, but the project already has too few people on it to remove either of them. What do you tell him/her?
I'd suggest you flesh out the questions if you've had similar issues come up, or think of tough problems that your department had to deal with in the past. Don't play softball with the people you interview; make them show you what you can really expect to see from them. At the same time, remember these are just scenarios. They don't have to know the best answer, they need to show you they know how to find the best answer.As an ex-technical person who is now a project manager, in a different techncial area, I recommend asking for details of how the prospective boss about details of relations with previous techncial leads. Ask what has gone well, what didn't go so well and how he or she likes the relationship to work.
You're dead. Give it up.
Your head's over there.
Good managers know how to build shedules based on empirical evidence. I'd ask them what methods they use to create the work calendar. Also, I'd ask them how they would respond to higher Mgt. requests for schedule changes. Basically, there are three variables: Cost, Time, and Quality. They've got to have a grasp on just how far those values can stretch, and be able to explain to upper Mgt. what their options are. If they cannot do that, they cannot advocate for their subordinates, no matter how well meaning they might be.
Just because my eyes are shut doesn't mean my brain isn't working. Plenty of times I've been staring too long at a screen, and I will either:
a) Take a short walk outside around the building to get fresh air
b) Put my head down and rest my brain/eyes
You'd be amazed at how many times one of these will either have the solution pop into my head whilst I'm resting, or come to me shortly afterwards. Banging you head against the wall for a solution is often much less productive than taking a break and hitting it after your brain has spun down.
I would never claim to be an expert on gender differences/stereotypes in the workplace, but I can offer what I've seen over the last 15yrs...
Is it chauvinistic to assert that women and men think differently? Of course there will always be exceptions. I'm not even talking about intelligence, or problem-solving capacity; I haven't seen any evidence that there's a gender difference in these regards. I'm speaking to the way people communicate, and read each other. Interpersonal relations, if you will.
Nor am I attempting to make a qualitative assessment of either gender's capacity in relating to those around them. I'm just saying, men and women's brains are wired differently, and when a man says or does something, it has a high potential to be misinterpreted by a woman. Likewise, a woman will often do or say something that has an intended meaning, which in turn is completely missed by the man.
This necessarily impacts the workplace when men and women work together; more so when one is a subordinate.
When you interview your next boss, ask yourself a question: "How well do I communicate with members of the opposite sex? Will my future boss' gender have a net positive or negative effect on my day to day work?"
If your experience is similar to mine, you will come to the conclusion that it is often more efficient to work with people who you understand best, and who best understand you. In my case, members of the opposite sex are at a definite disadvantage in this regard.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
I have a couple of books I bought last year on interviewing. They have some very useful tips. I don't recall the titles. I think one was called "Survival Guide for Bosses" or something like that. The other one I bought was specifically about interviewing, and had an excellent procedure to go through including planning for the questions you want to ask, organized for different types of jobs.
:O)
Learning what you should ask the prospective boss will be largely learning what capability the job will require, which will [un]fortunately make you even more qualified.
You might consider taking the job anyway. Think of it as programming a network of asynchronous parallel neural network processors with dynamically shifting processing goals and performance!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
1. Think about your own work experiences and the situations that you felt were handle particularly poorly or particularly well and develop scenario questions.
The "answer" is not as important as HOW the potential candidate answers. Confident? Defensive? Inappropriate for you & your collegue's work group culture? Answers too quickly without thinking or asking for further clarification? Cliche answers?
2. Ask what opportunities and challenges the potential applicant sees with the company, product, division and their pespectivive on the work group's efforts, productivity, morale, retention, etc?
Again, pay attention to HOW the candidate answers as well as understanding of the company's business and the role of the employees.
3. As the "subordinate" interviewing the boss, ask how the candidate feels about this.
Look for signs of future competition or conflicts between you personally and the new boss. Will the candidate be a "facilitator" manager helping the team move forward or become more concerned about their "power" to direct the team.
4. Ask the candidate what is the most difficult personnel issue, resource problem, technical issue, the candidate has dealt with in a supervisory and nonsupervisory position. Ask what they would have done differently?
The key here is to gain insight about their problem-solving style and ability to coordinate and work with others. The second part of the questions addresses a candidates ability for self-reflection and learning from successess and mistakes.
5. Ask what are the top ten challenges of managing a highly technical and educated work group.
The intent is to separate those who are promoted for their technical expertise but cannot make or will not learn to make the transition from subject-matter expert/techie to supervisor/manager.
6. Ask how will or does the candidate reconcile knowledge and skill differences between being a manager versus those of the technical workforce. How will the evaluate the compentence of the team as well as the individual contribution to the team effort.
This should provide some insight into how much "creative control" the candidate will give the team and individuals of the work group. It should also provide insight about how the manager will keep "technically abreast" while performing the administrative and supervisory functions of the position.