On Managing Developers

An anonymous reader writes: A columnist at TechCrunch takes a crack at advice on how to manage developers. He has some decent starting points. For example, "Basically a manager's job is to make other people more productive. What's one really good way to do that? Do the work that is getting in their way. Which means: find out what kind of important work your developers dislike the most, and do it for them." Also: "[D]on't bull$%^& anyone, ever. ... Speak the truth as you see it. Speak it diplomatically, don't get me wrong; but be trustworthy. Only then will you be able to trust others." But some of his statements are open enough to be nearly devoid of meaning: "Any particular process artifact is probably irrelevant. The finest tech team I ever worked on began every day with a daily standup; so did one of the worst, most dysfunctional teams I ever encountered. ... [T]he systems and processes you choose for any given project should be fluid, and flexible, and depend in large part on the team and the context." If you are or have been a developer, what qualities have made your managers good or poor? If you've been in position to do the managing, does you experience jive with this guy's?

Comments

If it were easy

[Crashmarik]

Everyone would be great at it. Anyone that thinks you can find the secrets to being a good anything in a couple of paragraphs, just doesn't know very much about the topic.

Re:If it were easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this.

I've been a first-line development manager for twenty years (one of the reasons I am still "first line," is because I have zero desire to lose my tech edge, which would be a requirement for moving up the food chain. I loves coding).

In that time, I've learned a lot; much of it by screwing up.

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

Honesty is a biggie. That's probably one thing that makes the difference. I'm dead solid honest with my team; including up front about how my first duty is to the corporation, but part of my duty to that corporation is to maintain a cohesive, productive team. That sometimes means that I'm honest to my supervisors when they make dumbass decisions or impose bad process.

That also means courage, personal integrity and a good self-knowledge. Insecure managers are a blight.

We need to manage ourselves first. An unpopular opinion that doesn't sell many books.

Re:If it were easy

[Ol Olsoc]

Honesty is a biggie.

And once you can fake that, you got it made.

Re:If it were easy

[Livius]

But very few people can fake that for their entire career.

Actually being honest is less work. It just takes a minimum of courage.

Re:If it were easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I have to disagree with that position. My experience has been that being a good manager is much like being a good parent. The manager's role is to guide and mentor their reports, not coddle them and do their job for them. Treat the employees as adults and help them understand what their jobs are and how to do them effectively. That means a combination of facilitating them and educating them. Try to setup the employee for success, but ensure that they realize they have a responsibility to fulfill as well. An employee who never learns that working at a company inherently involves not always getting your way is not going to be effective and eventually the employee will fail which does not work to anyone's benefit. Let the employee know what is going on in the company so that they can understand why they are being asked to perform certain tasks or do things in a certain way. Simply understanding how what they are doing fits into the big picture empowers them to make better decisions and understand the trade-offs which is a huge part of both being successful at work and making peace with the inevitable trade offs that have to be made.

Bottom line, the employee needs to be an adult who understands the concept of responsibility and the manager needs to encourage, mentor and reward adult behavior and provide the resources, information, etc that the employee needs to be effective.

Re:If it were easy

[Kjella]

Everyone would be great at it. Anyone that thinks you can find the secrets to being a good anything in a couple of paragraphs, just doesn't know very much about the topic.

I don't think you can learn the how in a few paragraphs, but sometimes you can learn about what developers expect from a manager. Let's face it, a lot of managers just ended up there by being put in charge and is learning by doing whatever they think a manager should be doing. And sometimes not even that because they're still techs at heart and want to dive into problems, not manage them. Others have just gone the management 101 school and don't have anything but generic theory.

In particular, there's a massive difference between production work and creative work when it comes to estimates. If I need to get my car repaired or order catering, I expect a rather good time and cost estimate because it's standardized inputs and known quantities of work, at least for the most part. And you can fairly easily scale production with overtime, extra shifts, rush orders etc. to meet deadlines. And if a part is not in stock or you burn the cake there's a fairly standard and known fix.

Most time I've wasted with management is discussing timelines or estimates that are as good as it gets and they're not going to get better by repeating the question. In the end you just fudge it up by a factor of x you hope is big enough and give them a number, because that's what they wanted. This is particularly true when there's bugs or problems that I really don't know where is, what the root cause is, how long it'll take to fix or even if I can fix it since it's in third party code/systems/tools.

The best managers understand enough about computers to know this variation is natural and are pragmatic about working with it and working around issues when they arise. Those who come from a production industry seem to think you can beat a square peg into a round hole and act like I'm in the one being intentionally obtuse. "Can you do it man, yes or no?" which makes sense if you got a painter with three walls left to paint. It does fuck all when you got a developer who has no idea what to fix, but it's probably a one-liner when he finds it.

Furthermore, those who don't understand that you want me out of that meeting and working on plan A - getting it done - while you work on a plan B, what to do if it doesn't get done on time or fixed in a reasonable time. I've had to sit through rescheduling sessions which were almost as pointless as the original scheduling sessions, the problem is that you don't have good data on how long it'll take. And rather than accept that you just double down on the developers and their poor estimating ability and demand that this time, you need correct estimates. In their eyes, we're the hopeless ones...

Re:If it were easy

[Bengie]

The way my manager described himself is the company pays him to make us better. We are his first duty.

Re:If it were easy

[Ol Olsoc]

Actually being honest is less work. It just takes a minimum of courage.

Very true, But I have found that probably 99 percent of humans lie very easily in self interest. That led me to be a very meticulous documenter. Which was also what taught people that lying to me was not even remotely in their self interest.

Re:If it were easy

[plopez]

All you have to do is fake it long enough to move up the ladder before it catches up with you or better yet move on to another sucker. The basic 'short con' approach.

How is this devoid of meaning?

[drinkypoo]

"But some of his statements are open enough to be nearly devoid of meaning: "Any particular process artifact is probably irrelevant. The finest tech team I ever worked on began every day with a daily standup; so did one of the worst, most dysfunctional teams I ever encountered. ... [T]he systems and processes you choose for any given project should be fluid, and flexible, and depend in large part on the team and the context."

Uh, what? Devoid of meaning? Maybe you should learn to read at a Junior High school level. What that sentence would tell you, could you read English, is that the religion of a specific process and procedure is not sufficient to guarantee success. A process which works correctly in one environment will result in doom in another. Nobody should have to spell this out for you; in the quote above, the text which precedes the ellipsis is sufficient to deliver this information. If you can't read and comprehend the above, perhaps you are not cut out to be an Editor (or story submitter?)

My approach

[CaptainJeff]

Here is my approach to managing engineers.

1. Get the right people.
2. Get the right work.
3. Get obstacles out of the people's way.
4. Get myself our of the people's way.

Re:My approach

[AchilleTalon]

The problem with your method is you have to know, find and get the right people. What is right and what isn't? Just this simple thing is not that simple for any manager to tackle with. The right people mixed with some other right people may lead to a wrong as well. Then, the same reasoning apply to your point number 2. This is always easy to come with such a list: Do the right thing, that's it! You see, mine is even better than yours, but it is totally helpless and pointless.

Fast, cheap, flexible - choose one

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the "Fast, cheap, flexible - choose one"-idiom.

You can be a great developer, a shitty manager and a good spouse.
You can be a good developer, good manager and a shitty spouse.
Or you can be a shitty developer, great manager and a good spouse.
(Forget about being a great spouse if your mission in life is to please a company!)

One of the best managers I've had have been technical, and got the boring parts done.
One of the best managers I''ve had have not been technical at all, but championed our services well and established a good network of connections throughout the organization that made the processes actually work.

It's all trade-offs. This also goes for "agile", which is just a choice for some trade-offs over another set of trade-offs.
The main problem is when people don't work together to find the best solutions, together.
Often, new hyped-up processes and tools become yet another excuse for people to NOT work together!
This even escalates the bigger the company gets.
Oh, and you should compensate work well done.

BS from managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if I'm left alone (no bullshit), it doesn't bother me to work extra time to get something done well. As soon as I have to deal with bullshit from a manager, I move into my 8 hour mode. That means I come in and do 8 hours a day as per my contract and don't give a shit.

Re:BS from managers

[ArcadeMan]

If you're only getting paid 8 hours per day, you shouldn't do more than 8 hours per day.

Unless you work for a non-profit or something and you want to give them your time.

I'd make at least one change

[Registered Coward v2]

I would disagree with "Which means: find out what kind of important work your developers dislike the most, and do it for them." I would say:

"Find out what non-essential stuff is interfering with real work and protect them from it."

There often is work that is important that must be done but is not exactly fun, such as documenting code, helping tech writers prepare user manuals, listening to users and getting feedback on the UI, etc. Developers may dislike that work but they are the ones that need to be involved with it or do it. Sometimes it's the manager's job to point out stuff that needs to be done and find a way to get it done; even if it isn't what they want to do.

My best manager

[Lorens]

told me that his job was only partially to tell me what to do (because I should know most of it) and mostly to shield me from the bureaucrap so that I could concentrate on doing it. I try to emulate that.

Two other nuggets I aim for:

- a good manager tells his people what *his* objectives are, and explains to them how that translates into the objectives he's giving them.

- there are different kinds of management for different people, and a good manager must adapt. A newbie or an incompetent *needs* micromanaging (but beware of giving the impression of thinking either one is incompetent). As they get older/wiser/more experienced the manager can go more and more hands-off, until with a senior engineer/whatever the manager should be able to just discuss strategy and budget and priorities and such.

"What's ONE really good way to do that?"

[turkeydance]

superior compensation. period.

...and SHOW GRATITUDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't stress this enough. Few developers respond well when they're treated like machines, even if they get external rewards like bonuses. Showing how valuable a part of the team they are makes a big difference in developers' morale in my experience.

Re:...and SHOW GRATITUDE!

[jblues]

Reminds me of the time years ago, I wound up in a bank. We got this company-wide email from someone in senior management, I don't remember who. Maybe the CEO or CTO. I read something like: "We've had a management consultancy in this week, and and their advice was that productivity could improve if staff were recognized and shown gratitude for their contributions. So thankyou!". . . . And that was the end of that.

Not specific to Software Devs...

[asylumx]

Learning how to manage software developers is exactly the same as learning to be a good manager in general. I manage software developers. I'm not perfect, I wouldn't even rate myself very high, but many of my employees have told me fairly often they appreciate what I do for them. They things they seem to appreciate are: being as transparent as possible, being interested in their personal interests and development, going to bat for them when they need something (new PC, training, etc), giving them honest and quick feedback both good and bad, and not being willing to place blame but instead just looking for solutions. None of those behaviors are specific to managing software developers, but instead are some things good managers do in general.

I was a software developer before this so while I'm not up to date on the tech they are currently using, I understand the types of struggles they face. That helps, although I'm fairly sure if I went tomorrow to manage a team of mechanical engineers that I could become effective fairly quickly in that role, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm don't think I'm a great manager, but I have had one or two great managers and I'm trying to borrow the things I thought they did well and my employees seem to respond to that.

Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Two of the SDEs I manage told me in their last review I was the best boss they've ever had. Here is my advice:

1) Do not judge anyone on anything except on whether they get their job done. If someone quickly does a good job, I don't give a shit whether they take the rest of the day off.
2) Lead by example. Do the things you want your guys to do. That means the hard things.
3) Imagine your team as a machine. You're the oil. Be where there is the most friction and smooth it out.
4) Sacrifice yourself for your team. If you can't get a reward from the company for someone who deserves it, buy it yourself.
5) Understand the perspective of your boss's boss, and explain it often to the team.
6) Say you don't know when you don't know.
7) Fight for raises and bonuses.
8) Don't talk as a boss most of the time, but when you do, have a good reason to.

These guys worked on the project that won us a nomination by a government agency for Small Business of the Year. The morale earned from being a good boss repays itself in improved productivity and reduced turnover. Plus you make friends for life. It pays to be a good boss.

Let go and let them

[Spinlock_1977]

Until last month, I managed the 12 devs I had hired (I have 30+ years of dev experience). On my way out the door, 3 of them gave me a 'best manager I've ever had'. No one gave me a thumbs down, at least to my knowledge. My 'secret'? Honesty, kindness, and this one very important thing: I never imposed a decision unless they couldn't come to one themselves, or were going off the rails. Despite my sizable ego, I've found 'letting go' of control, and focusing on guiding the team, rather than telling them what to do, produces one very happy, productive team. And they' introduced ideas and solutions that never would have crossed my mind!

I left after a painful year of my naive boss and certain of his colleagues on the leadership team knocking us off course with their sophomoric meddling. Note to senior leaders: When you have a competent person running your dev team, let him/her do it. Just because you can spell Agile doesn't mean you know what it looks like.

Re:same as maanaging any other productive group

[ranton]

from a distance. Say "Make this do this" and stand back, let the kids do their magic (hell, being a manager doesn't require technical knowledge) and look forward to the result. Micromanaging is for kindergarten teachers. You have a team of devs because they know how to code and you probably don't, keep thy nose in thine own trough.

While I like the overall message here of not micromanaging, I think an important distinction needs to be made between telling developers how to do their work and constantly validating that developers are doing their work. The latter is counterproductive but the former is absolutely necessary. Junior level employees often don't understand one of the major differences between managers and non-managers: in the eyes of executives your managers are ultimately responsible for the project's success or failure, regardless of who actually messed up. So they absolutely cannot just sit back and wait for developers to be done with their work and hope for the best.

While I agree with this article's advice that a good manager will find ways to take grunt work away from developers, that is such a minor part of their role as manager. The most important, and most difficult, part of being a manager is finding a way of constantly validating the project's progress without being a major hindrance to the developers. There is no easy answer to this that I can give in a Slashdot post, but it is vital to the success of any project.

As a senior level developer, one task I take upon myself is ensuring that our non-technical personnel have a method of validating our work throughout the project. I prefer having these milestones at least every other week. This doesn't have to mean you create a releasable product every other week like some Agile methodologies suggest, but you should at least find a way that your project / product managers, business analysts, and other key stakeholders can validate the project is on track.

When I join a new company (like I just did four months ago) I am very clear with my managers that I will take on this responsibility, but it means they are expected to trust me to do my job as long as they are happy with these validations. So far it has been working well for both me and my employers over the years, although that only comes from experience with two employers since I became a senior level resource.

Re:Basically a manager's job is to make other peop

[ranton]

...He has some decent starting points. For example, Basically a manager's job is to make other people more productive...

Well, if the summary starts off on such a wrong assumption, it can only get worse from there.

imo, one of a software development manager's jobs is to create an environment that allows the software developers to do their jobs. If the manager has to "make" them do their jobs or be more productive, then the wrong people are in the software developer jobs.

I agree the article starts off with a very poor assertion about the most important role of a manager, but I don't necessarily agree with your either. I like your change to what the article says, but I still don't think it is the most important part of a manager's job.

IMHO, a manager's job is to ensure their projects are a success. Regardless of which developer or business analysts messes up, the ultimate responsibility always lies on the manager. Many employees don't realize this because they never witness their boss getting yelled at by his boss, but when projects miss their due dates the developers are not the only ones in trouble. Developers probably have a more silo-ed view of the whole project so they can legitimately blame failures on factors outside of their control, but a manager can rarely do that. The buck stops with him.

Bad managers micromanage because they are afraid the job won't be done right and they know their ass in on the line. Good managers find a way of trusting but validating their senior level resources.

Managers need to know how to code

[Karmashock]

Or whatever your people are doing. You need to be able to understand what your people are doing so you can know if they're doing a good job or not.

The whole TPS report thing from office space was a consequence of someone that doesn't know how to code or understand the product trying to keep tabs on people that were creating that product or service.

So they create artificial benchmarks and paper work and then judge the employees by how well they comply with the paperwork.

The problem is that the paperwork is not actually anything the customer cares about. It has nothing to do with the product or service. It is an arbitrary management mechanism. And it is FINE if the manager doesn't need it. If the manager can judge your work without it, than the paperwork might make his job easier.

However, if he can't judge your work without that paperwork than he literally can't do his job at all. He can at best APPEAR to be able to do his job. And the only people that would make that mistake would other people that also don't know how any of this shit works.

How is a non-doctor going to judge the quality of a doctors work? You can't.

Same thing. Managers have to have experience in CS if we're talking about developers... ideally they should be programmers themselves.

Again, if you don't have enough programmers with management experience, then it is easier to give programmers management training than it is to give managers programming training. So do that.

Re:Bad managers poop in your coffee mug.

[davester666]

Obviously, you need them to all work together, so you need to promote immediate communication between all developers.

I suggest one large open room, with several rows of folding tables. Then place the developers along the tables, alternating sides to make best use of the space, as well as making sure they talk to the two developers facing them. Also, disallow headphones or anyone to play music. Maybe also march up and down the aisles every once in awhile and encourage them.

Re:same as maanaging any other productive group

[St.Creed]

Amen to that. I once had someone removed from a project I worked on, because even after a week of explaining WHAT I wanted, it wasn't getting anywhere. I later worked on another project where they brought in a new programmer - lo and behold, the person I managed to get fired walked in. As it turned out, when given explicit instructions and a template, we got passable code. It just took a bit of time to set things up at first.

Personally, I'd not have hired that person in the first place, but when you lead a team that's been selected for you, you have to play the hand you're dealt.

No assholes

[sehryan]

Don't hire assholes.

If you have them on your team, replace them as soon as you can with people who are not assholes. Take your time during the hiring process to ensure you are not hiring them. Doesn't matter how great the talent is, don't let it tempt you in to hiring an asshole. No matter what you think, you cannot manage an asshole to not be an asshole.

I guarantee that if you look at all of the dysfunctional teams that have ever existed in software development, there was at least one asshole on that team. So if you want to be a better software development manager, get rid of the assholes.

Re:Don't

[Murdoch5]

in 90% of projects I've ever been on, that have released late, it's the marketing teams fault that the project released late and under developed, all because they didn't think to ask the developer first, how long they need to deliver the product.