People leave managers, not companies

https://blog.intercom.com/people-leave-managers-not-companies/

by theyeti • 8 years ago

528 179 8 years ago

blog.intercom.com

Likewise, there probably isn't such a thing as a 10X developer, but I totally believe 10X managers exist (they provide cover, they have empathy, they are able to lead people who otherwise aren't very manageable). I've only met very few of them in my career, most managers are 1X or even negative.

jclarkcom• 8 years ago

10x developers definitely exist, quite amazing to work with them.

mianos• 8 years ago

But 0.1X managers are always telling us they are a myth. Do the math. :)

hailk• 8 years ago

What traits did you find in them. How do those traits convert with experience. Say, for example what would, according to you, make a 3-5 year experienced web developer 10x?

sifoo2• 8 years ago

It's not magic; it's vast amounts of experience; writing more code than, and twisting brains in ways that, normal people can't even imagine; and sticking with it for decades. I have no idea if I'm 5x or 10x or whatever, what I do know is that it's extremely rare to come across people who are more dedicated to the craft and/or have invested more in their skills.

BuckRogers• 8 years ago

That's because management is one of those fields that most people think they're qualified for. If you got arms, legs and are literate, many think they're cut out for it.

Same goes for teaching or education in general. So many wannabe educators writing or producing programming lessons that clearly have never studied education theory. A notorious one or two out there as well. Art or professional grade creative endeavors are probably the same way for the vast majority.

Unless you're some sort of savant, no one gets away with shortcutting the learning involved with anything. It's just kind of blissful ignorance.

You don't know what you don't know and it becomes a strength since most are too unmotivated to ever do things the right way, in a well-informed, disciplined manner regardless. To those who are in those fields though, it's painfully obvious.

bradknowles• 8 years ago

With respect, no -- not everyone thinks that. I would be a horrible manager. And I know plenty of people who feel the same way about themselves.

I am totally happy leaving that job to someone who is better suited for it.

JdeBP• 8 years ago

On the contrary: One of the long-standing problems in engineering, technology, and indeed many other businesses (from nursing to Nickelodeon) has been what to do, when the traditional career progression was seen to be "next, you are promoted into management", with the large number of people who did not want to go into management.

Lots of people have been considering themselves unsuitable for management for decades. This is a problem that people were talking about in the "systems" world back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that is neither the only area that it was a problem in nor the earliest time that it was mentioned. Have a snippet from the Journal of Systems Management from 1980:

The systems professional who wants to remain within his job, i.e., does not care if he is promoted, is one who sees his main purpose as contributing to the profession. But many professionals and many organizations feel that one must get promoted to a management position, for if one does not want to be a manager he is not ambitious. This reflects itself in many organizations when the annual review time rolls round, or when one wants to change jobs.

If your company today has an organization structure where entering management is not the only promotion path, decades of mulling and lots of people not seeing themselves as management is the cause.

glangdale2• 8 years ago

I agree with you that 10X managers exist, but it's utter nonsense to claim that 10X developers don't exist. I've met people who are possibly at the 100X level; it's worth remembering that some tasks cannot be done by an average developer with any amount of time.

I imagine that there are probably tasks that don't allow the 10X or 100X to show through; anything basic and repetitive enough (or so heavily specified that the developer's job is essentially "typing").

ionforce3• 8 years ago

What's an example of 100X behavior?

yarg2• 8 years ago

I really don't like the concept of a 10X developer - it implies linear scaling.

If you keep writing very similar implementations of very similar things (without actively damaging the code-base) you may very well be an O(n) developer. You keep working at the same pace regardless.

If you are a developer of some calibar, the work that you've already done will feed back into the work that you're doing - making you an O(log(n)) developer, until the work levels out and you slip back toward o(n).

Then there's the other end of the stick, the idiot who has no business writing code, but who management keeps around because he's cheap in the short term. Everything he touches turn to shit, each change corrupts the code base just a little more, and each change to the corrupted code takes an amount of time proportional to the level of corruption. This is the O(k^n) developer, and he needs to be stopped.

thrwwyquest123• 8 years ago

How do I know if I am an O(k^n) developer? My first "software engineer" job I did absolutely nothing but write update scripts, incredibly minute fixes to 10k+ line stored procedures and then helped watch deployments. I left that one for a new one, and I feel very slow compared to my coworker and I know that most of the time my designs for new features are extremely lacking. Should I leave my position since I fear I am impacting his ability to have high quality code?

Humdeee• 8 years ago

the idiot who has no business writing code
Everything he touches turn to shit
he needs to be stopped.

You'll never take me alive.

_pmf_• 8 years ago

Agreed completely. I've had a manager who was able to really leverage persons to create whole new verticals (that were actually profitable), but they hinged on single person's continued interest and commitment. He was borderline psychopathic (in the sense of being extremely manipulative on a personal level), though, and while the work I've done has been the most interesting in my career, the atmosphere was emotionally draining on a very personal level for most of us who worked for him.

However, I'm not sure that there exist 10x managers that are not manipulators / psychological exploiters.

quickthrower2• 8 years ago

You don't just leave a bad manager. You escape! Emotionally it is deflating, defeating, a real grind that affects your whole life if your work situation sucks.

lovich• 8 years ago

I've definitely left companies and not managers before. To be fair it's usually because my manager's manager's manager was an asshole who thought 1% and an attaboy would be enough to keep people when our rent had gone up 7% and neighboring companies we're offering 50% more. Also to be fair, my managers were good enough that I stayed 6 months longer than I would have with even a neutral manager

a13n• 8 years ago

I had a great manager at my last job but left because the role wasn't the right risk/reward profile I was looking for.

everdev2• 8 years ago

I've left a good manager for a higher salary.

justboxing• 8 years ago

Congrats! How is the new manager at the higher salary? Equally good? or Bad?

everdev2• 8 years ago

It was years ago, but everything worked out :)

praneshp• 8 years ago

I left my first job because the company(Yahoo) was burning. My manager was great, I'd love to work for her again. I left a few months earlier than I needed to though, because her new manager was an asshole.

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

It's probably easier for managers to overrate their skills and performance because the problems they cause are often not overt; if parts of their team are underperforming, the knee-jerk assessment is that "there's something wrong with Joe" rather than "there's something wrong with our process" or "there's something wrong with what I'm doing."

Some of my worst experiences with management involved cases of serious micromanagement. I'd say if you're micromanaging, there's a 99.9 percent chance that you're a bozo and you don't belong in the position you're in even if you had initially earned it. You have trust issues with your employees and you've failed to build a team and environment that allows people to effectively manage themselves.

The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves.

I'd argue that people usually leave both managers and companies because companies too often fail to recognize the broken patterns of managers. This is anecdotal, but I worked at one place where more than half of the development team(those with the most talent) quit within a span of 2 weeks, and somehow upper management decided it was not the fault of our tyrannical manager and instead replaced those positions with junior developers they could underpay and abuse. It's all the more insulting when you can point out the problems and provide actual solutions, and the aloof men in suits on Mount Olympus allow the problem to fester. I might have stayed for another year had they booted out our manager.

The fact that most people have stories of terrible management is astounding, and it doesn't say very much for whatever training managers receive(if any?).

Greed2• 8 years ago

The trust and minimal involvement are really key here, the best managers I've ever worked with have been enablers rather than taskmasters. Managers that remove roadblocks, provide you with exactly the tools you need, insulate you from unnecessary cross-chatter, and just let you kill it with as few distractions as possible.

Those sorts of enablers are how you not only maintain, but increase the output of your developers.

lars512• 8 years ago

The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves.

In those cases, did you feel you shared values with those managers? Or were they indifferent to your values, and just left you alone?

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

I've experienced both kinds of low involvement, but I was definitely referring to cases where we shared values.

A case of indifference is still preferable to tyranny, though it obviously comes with its own set of problems. The biggest issue I have with uninvolved managers is the conflict between knowing what's expected versus the level of autonomy I should have. This problem is not isolated, of course. But an uninvolved manager may grant a lot of autonomy while failing to make it clear to their employees what sort of decisions they cannot male autonomously. As an employee, I will only ask so many questions before deciding the system is ridiculous and then overriding it. That's just my nature. If something is so important to a process, like communicating with a bunch of anonymous suits on Mount Olympus before a major release of one particular product, that information should be handed down to me. I shouldn't have to pry every detail out of management to get my job done, and occasionally they'll be punished when I make an arbitrary decision.

A good manager should be able to provide relevant information and facilitate the product process while staying out of the way. If they're always too busy attending meetings outside the team, then they'll reap what they sow and have no one to blame but themselves.

By the way, I do not make character judgments on most managers. Most of the people who've managed me are great people outside the office setting.

pqh• 8 years ago

I'd agree that micromanaging is a bad sign. Too often I get micromanaging about style critiques like "turn this into one if statement instead of nested ones and it's more clear", but absolutely no comments on the meat of a significant refactor. To be clear, I think style rules are important, but this is the same guy who writes 150+ character lines with ternaries like they're going out of style.

corpMaverick2• 8 years ago

You often have micromanagement and abandonment at the same time. They are so busy micromanagement their people while they neglect making the decisions that they need to make. If somebody steps up, they push back. Everybody avoids moving and are just waiting until the micromanager has time.

pan69• 8 years ago

The best software teams I've worked on didn't have managers, they had facilitators.

sloxy2• 8 years ago

bingo.

people who have natural leadership qualities can facilitate without thinking it harms their worth. too often, unsuitable people will be thrust into a management/leadership type role just because there is a (sudden, genuine) void that needs feeling(sudden growth /sudden departure).

balls1872• 8 years ago

For self organizing teams, and teams with motivated people, servitude leadership style works really well. Ensure the teams goals and direction is clearly set, and just remove roadblocks as needed.

But there are other types of teams, and other situations where other styles are more effective.

mychael• 8 years ago

There is an important distinction that hasn't been discussed much:

- The reason people decide to resign.

- The reason people begin to consider resigning.

In my experience, bad management is what usually kicks off the whole thought process, but other factors are what cement the decision (like an offer with higher pay, better title, higher prestige company etc.)

k__2• 8 years ago

Problem is, managers shape companies.

Last company I left went bankrupt and got bought by a VC who replaced the whole management.

The new managers were running around telling people how to do things because of the "company spirit".

A few people, including me, were in the company for over 7 years and we knew the company spirit, because well, we lived and formed it.

Now some newly hired MBAs try to tell me that I'm wrong?

The bankruptcy lead many people to leave. The rest left because of the new management. Now the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained.

Clubber2• 8 years ago

Yes, that's a phenomenon I've experienced twice now. Great small company getting acquired by large company. Managers / execs of large company commence dismantling whatever made the small company efficient / competent.

I have some theories as to why this pattern occurs. Perhaps it's because the managers get paid a lot and feel the need to do something to prove they're worth it. Maybe managers are trying to cut costs, product be damned, to get bonuses. It could be because big companies typically have a lower grade of developers on average than small companies that are good enough to get acquired, and lower grade developers need to be babysat more. I dunno. It sucks though.

maxxxxx2• 8 years ago

"ow the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained."

That's probably by design.

k__2• 8 years ago

Don't you say?

Just because people do things intentionally doesn't make it any better...

Greed2• 8 years ago

One of the issues I've had that isn't mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager <-> managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee.

I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit.

I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you're the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard / paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust.

Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!

crdoconnor8• 8 years ago

IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you.

A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am"?

Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing.

Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice.

You have performance metrics for a reason!

As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.

subsubsub4• 8 years ago

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?

To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional.

As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted.

Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

lazy_lanius• 8 years ago

An old co-worker of mine used to work for a company that made flight simulators. He said his manager would stand in the front foyer on the 2nd floor and make notes of who arrived after 9:00am.

Jerry64545• 8 years ago

This is very true in india. Almost most of the managers go in to management because they can't code and to evalulate an employee they take every metric other than looking in to the commits.

larschdk• 8 years ago

A couple of articles, that I found previously here on HN address this exact self-perpetuating downward spiral of mistrust.

https://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome

https://sites.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?di...

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8166701

alphonsegaston• 8 years ago

But also for teams to be successful, employees have to be able to trust their managers. I just quit a job after a month because, within that short time, my manager twice misrepresented the scope of a task so he could either leave early or have the day off.

I knew after those incidents that there was no point in continuing. It would be foolish to trust someone in any larger way who would casually treat a new employee in that fashion.

gaius• 8 years ago

That manager may not be your line manager, they may be several levels above, they may even by the CEO. So actually, it is “the company”.

lliamander• 8 years ago

I have only ever left good managers. I've had bad managers, but it was only under good managers that I was fully enabled to do my best work - work that would give me the confidence (and the resume fodder) to pitch myself to a new company for better pay.

That may seem disloyal to those good managers, but I never left on a whim. It was always an agonizing process. But it was also always necessary. My former managers have never held it against me, and I now have connections with a number of great managers who would hire me without question if I was ever looking again (and they know I would work for them in a heartbeat).

What always happened was that it became evident that my interests and my company's interest had diverged, whether it was a lack of opportunity for advancement, the company was going under, the product was a non-starter, or upper-management was bent on self-sabotage.

EDIT: Added missing words

toomanybeersies• 8 years ago

At my previous job, I left due to the company, not the management.

My direct supervisor was great. He was a good manager on most levels.

I left because the company had no future, they weren't going bankrupt, but they weren't growing either. I never got a pay rise, probably never would. My benefits actually shrunk as time went on, staff social functions were cut (e.g. team lunches), use of networking funds became more restricted, and my work environment became less flexible.

In fact, the only reason I considered staying was my manager and coworkers.

People leave poor working environments, whether it's a company or a manager causing that poor environment.

murukesh_s• 8 years ago

Yea, its too easy to say people leave managers, but it was never in my case. I think it varies between industry. With the software companies, the churn is mostly due to folks looking out for better opportunities..

Me personally almost always looked outside due to availability of better opportunities. The argument that people leave managers makes sense only if you are in the best possible job/company you can get with your skill set (which is a very small %) and you somehow got a rift with the manager big enough to leave.

But it could be different in other domains/industries where people stick with the same company till their retirement..

speby2• 8 years ago

As somberi commented awhile ago, people leave due to managers -> company -> cause, in roughly that order. So even good managers will lose people if the company has traction issues or the cause is unclear or there is no future. So it absolutely can happen and it is fair to say that a single manager's performance, in isolation, is not the only reason for retention.

somberi• 8 years ago

I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently.

1. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company.

2. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work.

This manager being the end-all of association comes from military knowledge that you fight because of allegiance to your battalion, cause and the country - in that order.

In an knowledge enterprise, these constructs exist, but with almost equal weightage.

The best manager cannot make an employee stay back if the company is not going anywhere, or if the cause is not evident.

The worst manager will lose employees even if the company is going bonkers.

jondubois• 8 years ago

Totally agree. If the company has enough traction and I have a decent shares/options package with a clear exit strategy in sight then I'd stay even if my boss was a wild baboon and my job mostly involved shoveling monkey shit.

If you're a manager in a high traction company and you're losing employees regularly, you should seriously consider finding another career.

xerophyte12932• 8 years ago

You have been directly managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy

cpfohl3• 8 years ago

I didn't interpret their comment that way. It's common to have a handful of managers under you, but reference to their reports as your managees as well. That easily reaches 100-200 people.

jpatokal• 8 years ago

They did not claim to directly manage 300 people, and it's somewhat bizarre to assume they did.

eldavido• 8 years ago

This is a really insightful comment. I came here to say I'm the counter-example to the article, in that I left a pretty good manager at a company that was clearly failing.

This article feels like one of these things where someone's trying to fit something messy and human into a simple, clean narrative.

sifoo2• 8 years ago

There's a lot of talk about full stack developers lately, I'm still waiting to find the first full stack manager. Someone who's visionary, yet realistic; confident, yet empathic; powerful, yet humble. I feel like there's some truth to the saying that the best leaders are those who don't consider themselves fit to lead.

perl4ever5• 8 years ago

I've seen a variety of managers doing bad jobs, and it never makes me think I could do it better. It makes me think about managerial problems, and how they are inherently difficult because of conflicts of interest.

On the other hand, I got tired of technical problems, because the real problems always seemed to be managerial where I worked.

DaniFong• 8 years ago

people drop out of shitty things that undervalue them, which is much of the modern world. welcome to the world, 2.0.

unabst2• 8 years ago

The manager is your interface to management. It's their job to tell you what you need to know and what to do. To an employee, they're the face of the business.

But at the end of the day, if it's the people that make up a business, then I'd question if they are not the same thing.

I asked a new acquaintance of mine about something bothering me.

I asked him, "so, how often do you fire people? How do find the right people for your businesses?"

"I hardly ever have to fire anyone," he said. "I ask them questions, and they leave."

Damn.

And the thing is, this pressure isn't faked or manufactured. This isn't anyone trying to fire someone. This is just someone needing work done, and answers.

No business wants anyone incompetent, yet, it happens, because of interviewees lying through their teeth and not knowing any better.

So they walk in and fail to do the exact job they won for themselves, then come the questions.

Now they lose their place and have to leave, knowing they got the job by accident.

There is plenty of real pressure to go around in a real business, and we avoid managerial roles because we know the stakes are higher. We know that having a manager is "safer" than being one, because having a manager is having someone responsible for you, and for your well being. It's how America figured out how to hire from the abundant talent pool of those who can't handle tough responsibilities and stay happy on their own, and those who'd rather have it easier. It's the luxury of being managed.

But above that, it gets even worse. Fewer luxuries, just higher pay. Just think of all the bullets the CEO has to catch with their teeth every day. And wen they fail, it's news.

perl4ever5• 8 years ago

Being a manager is about being loyal to the company and not individuals. It pays more precisely because it causes pain to peoples' consciences to put an abstraction above fellow employees.

Talking about a CEO catching bullets in their teeth is ridiculously inflated language. Why use such imagery? Because the mission of a typical company does not sufficiently compensate for the guilt produced by putting the organization ahead of individuals.

scaryclam• 8 years ago

I usually think of the managerial responsibilities to be in this order:

- Company, because without it there's no employees - The team you're managing, because teams are more than just a single person - The individuals in the team, since they're the one's that can make a team better

It seriously sucks to have to think of things in that order sometimes. I've never been involved in firing a person I didn't like.

Though, when it comes down to it it's not fair for the team to suffer because of an individual, no matter how much they are liked, and it's not fair for all of the teams to suffer because one of them can't cut it.

That's not to say there's no wiggle room though. I'll fight tooth and nail for an employee or team if I think it's a management fault that they've not performed (especially if I'm the manager screwing up) and will try to take a long term view of their value, not just the next quarter.

Of course, all of this could be making me a bad manager. I've been put into managing people by virtue of being technically strong, not being a great people herder. I really do wish companies would spend as much time mentoring and helping managers get better at hands on managing as they do other tasks.

balls1872• 8 years ago

Being a manager is about being loyal to the company and not individuals.

That's not true at all.

Being a manager requires you to balance both the needs of individuals with the needs of the company.

Being a good manager means you can correctly handle when those two needs come into conflict.

unabst2• 8 years ago

No.

Putting the organization ahead of individuals isn't what's happening. The individuals ARE the organization.

So if you put yourself ahead of the organization, you're putting everyone else behind you, including your boss. This is a challenge for millennials especially, who are used to always being put first, and having their emotions managed.

A good manager doesn't put themselves before their boss or anyone else. How often do you hear of programmers who enter management to hardly touch code again? A good manager puts the organization first, both above and below their pay grade.

But their performance also depends on the people they manage. If a worker is incompetent, they have every right to be hard on those mistakes. And the worker is fully responsible for setting things right. Work is not homework that gets handed back to you after its graded. It's something needed by someone else that needs it for something important. And nothing is redundant in a tightly run business.

When I think of Melissa Mayers, I think of bullets. Despite whether anyone agrees with "her" moves (which were clearly backed by her counsel), she was doing everything she could to increase market share and rebuild a failing business. She took on all the risk, and becomes target practice for those who despise her failures. When was the last time you were bashed on HN? And she does this so that everyone at Yahoo has a job. She is fighting for YOU.

Regardless of my word choice, to borrow your words, the CEO is a ridiculously inflated position.

CalRobert2• 8 years ago

Tellingly, when I interviewed with Intercom their "culture fit" manager was extremely rude and condescending, and constantly interrupted. Everyone else was polite, but if this is the person who gets to decide "yeah, they'd fit in here" that's a pretty huge problem.

People turn you down because of managers, not companies, too.

sloxy2• 8 years ago

Funnily enough, I like Intercom's hiring process (as it appears on paper). But...my real life experience was quite different.

Interviewed by a precocious child who didn't have interview skills.

CalRobert2• 8 years ago

Intercom does a fantastic job with content marketing. I'm not sure how much it reflects reality, though. Again, most of the people I talked to were polite; it was just one extremely off-putting interviewer. I nearly thought it must be some kind of perverse test to see how I handle jerks.

korginator• 8 years ago

People leave the environment, not just the manager, though the manager is a big piece of the puzzle.

I quit my last employer because the manager was an abusive bully with severe trust issues who would constantly threaten, abuse and demoralize people, but HR was also to blame since they did not lift a finger to address the issue even though this manager's behavior was widely known throughout the company for decades.

I've also left a great manager in the past since the business was going nowhere. I've left a good manager and good team because I was very underpaid in another company.

nishantvyas2• 8 years ago

#1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail.

#2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy...

#3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"

rich_archbold• 8 years ago

Hey all,

I'm the blog author, Rich Archbold from Intercom. Just to clarify …

I wrote this blog, with the exaggerated / cliched title, to try to speak to the large cohort of over-confident, under-skilled and often lacking-enough-self-awareness, managers out there. I was (and often still am) a member of this cohort. Being a great manager all the time is really hard and almost impossible IMHO.

The goal was to hopefully try and generate some more self-awareness and introspection and thus make life a little fairer, more pleasant, more growth-oriented and hopefully more successful for all concerned.

I wasn't trying to deny or downplay that people also leave their jobs for all of the other reasons highlighted by folks here.

Thanks, Rich.

nishantvyas2• 8 years ago

My take based on my experience is,

brlewis3• 8 years ago

Hey Rich,

I enjoyed the article and IMHO it did well in encouraging self-awareness and introspection. I hope it goes far.

jumpkickhit• 8 years ago

I liked the "tracking the dust in your phone" part. Hehe

gadders• 8 years ago

I can't help feeling that sometimes saying "People leave managers, not companies" is something senior company management tell themselves to absolve themselves of blame for staff turnover.

I could be managed by the best manager in the world, but if I'm paid 20% below market rate I'm going to leave for a better paid job.

spodek• 8 years ago

"People join good projects and leave bad managers" is how I phrase it, quoting a business school professor and author, Michael Feiner.

I wrote about how to use the perspective to help prepare for job searches and interviews, and to enjoy your time at work more: http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2

notacoward• 8 years ago

There's often a third possibility; leaving groups. At a small enough startup they're effectively the same, but I've seen distinct groups form in companies as small as 20. While it's true that a manager can affect the quality of the entire group, they're only one factor. High-performing fun group with a ho-hum manager? I'll probably stay. Dysfunctional bunch of ho-hum peers with a really good manager? That was my last job, and it's not my current job for exactly that reason.

Especially at a larger company, managers might be constrained wrt hiring and firing, reviews and raises, pushing back against misguided product-management decisions, etc. Even a good manager might not be able to deal with these issues quickly enough to prevent attrition. I've seen some really good managers, people I'd worked with before and who have been superstars at other companies, burn out trying. That's sort of leaving the company that hobbled the manager, but other managers and other groups within the same company were doing fine so I'd call it leaving the group.

ZenoArrow2• 8 years ago

I think this article misses an important point, which is that managers, or at least line managers, are often the messenger for decisions made in upper management.

If I think back on the jobs I've had in the past, it's very rare for me to have issues with line managers. However, I had serious doubts about the competency of upper management in multiple companies that I've worked for.

In this case, unless upper management recognise the problems that the line manager is highlighting, there's often not much more the line manager can do. Seeing as upper are (in my experience) frequently out of touch with the repercussions of their decisions, line managers should accept that they can only do what they can with what they're given (either that or leave).

dominotw2• 8 years ago

I am this exact situation. I love my manager, simply one of the best i've ever worked with. But he is simply is messenger for poor decisions that are made by couple of incompetent people above him.

I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. Often its too late before the magnitude of their fuckups is visible, usually these people move on to different orgs with their pumped up resumes while lower level people scramble to undo the damage.

corpMaverick2• 8 years ago

In corporate IT, it is an accepted practice to promote people who don't have hands on experience, or who did the job 20 years ago and haven't followed up on the industry trends. They have a hard time admitting that they don't know and refuse to listen to the competent people in their teams. They don't even know who is competent and who is faking it.

kbenson2• 8 years ago

I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions.

A lot of the time this is because of the Peter Principle.[1] There are ways to combat it, though. A friend a Google explained to me that to get around this there, before being promoted you have to take on the responsibilities of the position you are looking to advance to for a few (or six?) months. Once you've proven that you can do the job passably well, they'll consider you for the promotion.

The idea is that you prevent advancing someone from an engineering role to a managerial role only to find you've lost a good engineer and gained a crappy manager, which is a double blow (ignoring for this example that engineering and managerial tracks are separate at Google AFAIK, and managers actually get paid a bit less at the same level).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

triplesec2• 8 years ago

Isn't it then incumbent upon your manager to challenge the incompetents above him, or work round them? There has to be a large body of literature and practice on this problem.

onezerozeroone• 8 years ago

Save up a lot of money and build a large network of contacts with whom you have a reputation for being a badass...then you will have no fear of repercussions for speaking out frankly about things.

Eventually it will go to your head and you'll be viewed as a brash, arrogant, out-of-touch upper manager who throws their weight and ego around without appreciation for the repercussions of their horrendous misinformed decisions.

You either die a hero or live to see yourself become the problem.

AnAnonyCowherd• 8 years ago

I wish it were as simple as "incompetence."

There's a director-level IT manager where I work which has made my personal job a hassle for years.

There's a follow-on business process to our main process, which was a terrible mess. I wrote a program in a year and a half which vastly simplified the process. The director is mad, because his team of 10 contractors has been unable to write a successful version for 4 years now. (Hundreds of people use my software every day. There are still no production programs using his.) I even told his team's manager how to fix what's broken about their program, and they wouldn't listen. (And then the director fired that manager.)

He wants to own the process because it's important. He needs it to line his nest. So he finally got moves made to put a sympathetic middle manager in place to force me (and my direct boss) to hand over the program to his team to maintain. As they say, if you can't code it, take it over and act like you wrote it. (And charge internal groups $1000/user/year for the privilege of using it.)

Now my job involves improving another follow-on process that's also horribly broken, even worse than the first. And I just found out at lunch today that the director MADE HIS BONES, fifteen years ago, by IMPLEMENTING the horrible process that makes all these other follow-on processes both necessary and nightmarish.

So my new quote is: "Never attribute to incompetence what can be explained as ruthlessness driven by an inferiority complex."

I'm tired now, so I won't go into how I saw this behavior distort correct outcomes and delay business improvement for personal gain, a long time ago, at another Fortune 250.

binaryanomaly• 8 years ago

I am in exact this situation as well and I did give notice. Thought we have left this era behind years ago, seems I was wrong.

maxxxxx2• 8 years ago

As manager in the middle you often feel helpless. You want to help your people but you have nothing to offer. Can't give raises, no place to promote people, top management doesn't support your initiatives. It's a difficult place to be in.

dagw3• 8 years ago

My last manager quit because of that feeling of helplessness. Basically my manager left his manager.

bcbrown• 8 years ago

You might find this book interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Systems-Unlocking-Mysteries-Or.... It's a great view into the differing perspectives of executives, middle managers, and ICs.

scarface742• 8 years ago

I bet not all of your peers feel the same way. Some managers are better at playing politics than others and get more resources for their directs.

But I've given up on ever getting a decent raise from a company. I've been prepared to switch companies every two years.

nei-takk• 8 years ago

I worked as CTO for a startup, even as CTO I couldn't do anything to help the team, and I had to focus on writing more code than managing. The CEO always had the last word. In the end, I told him that I just want to be a software developer and you can come to me when you're in trouble. The big perk, no more long hours... The bad, I no longer feel any ownership for what I do.

whatever_dude• 8 years ago

Can relate too. I'm going through this right now and it kills me. I'm not a real manager but I have a number of devs I oversee in some aspects and it's obvious to me some are underused, undervalued, or underchallenged. The problem might be that as a lead I empathize /too much/, but it drives me crazy that in the end I'm just a proxy for communication with very little power for change. I feel like I'm always making up excuses for the company's decisions and that's not good either.

speby2• 8 years ago

I think this article misses an important point, which is that managers, or at least line managers, are often the messenger for decisions made in upper management.

You are 100% correct on this. In many, if not most companies, though definitely not all or everywhere, line managers have limited freedom as to what they can decide to do with their teams in terms of people, process, and technology without having to "get permission" or have the blessing of more senior leaders. Certainly hiring new people to the team, the line manager will have nearly full control over a yes or no, barring some extenuating circumstance. Although with firing a team member, it is quite the process, not just because of the corporate HR and legal red tape but also because frequently senior leaders will be interested in or meddle in the the decision and process of letting a team member go.

Finally, as you said about the messenger role, it is very common for senior leaders to have their weekly or monthly or bi-weekly or whatever meeting with their managers where they cover issues of policy or process and certain decisions will get made there and then need to be funneled down to individual teams. It is here where line managers, even if they don't agree, may be forced to deliver a chance (and the associated announcement of said change) to the team and there is little, if anything, they can do about it.

On the other hand, there are strong line managers and weak line managers. Strong line managers will be move actively involved in cross-cutting team concerns, particularly those that may affect their own team. And as such, they may be influencers themselves, in which case they do have a lot more sway because in many cases, they will have been the proponent or even instigator of a change that does get rolled across and out to multiple teams. Weak line managers, on the other hand, may suffer from lack of experience, poor peer relationships, or some other factors that leave them in the lurch and that means their role is much more marginalized in the context of the wider organization.

aezell• 8 years ago

I came here to make this exact point. I would further state that in tech businesses, tools shift, interests shift, and markets shift. Smart employees respond to that regardless of how amazing their manager might be.

lazyasciiart• 8 years ago

The article is based on data that includes, among other points, that the individual manager accounts for 70% of the variance in employee engagement, and that 50% of Americans had left their job because of the individual manager. If you want to argue that the individual managers are not important and the bad effects come from higher up, you'd have to show some counter evidence to these points. (I am personally about to leave a job because of my individual manager, so I'm inclined to believe the article and study pretty easily).

AnimalMuppet2• 8 years ago

Well, 30% that's not from the individual managers still leaves plenty of people who have never seen this even once in their careers. So there's plenty of, if not exactly counter evidence, then... counter experience?

I once had a manager who had a bunch of people leaving. They were not leaving him, the manager; they were leaving the situation the division was in that put the engineers in difficult working conditions. But the manager had HR interview several of his people, to see if he, the manager, was the problem. He said, "I had to know." (Of course, if he's that honest and that willing to look, you have a pretty good idea that he's not the problem, even before HR comes back with the results.)

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

If the individual manager is bad enough for long enough to make people leave, that in and of itself means there is a supervision problem that extends at least 2-3 levels above that manager.

ZenoArrow2• 8 years ago

"If you want to argue that the individual managers are not important and the bad effects come from higher up, you'd have to show some counter evidence to these points."

I'm not here to dispute the figures that were shared in the article, I'm suggesting that the interpretation of those figures was off, as it overlooks the aspects of management that are out of the control of the line/middle manager.

Furthermore, I'm not disputing your own reasons for leaving, as I'm not suggesting the competency of line managers can't be the reason people leave their job.

Balgair2• 8 years ago

Middle management people are the graphite control rods of a nuclear reactor, they slow down the process enough to be useful and act as sacrificial elements in the power plant.

The Gervais Principle is a great lens with which to look at company hierarchies and all people in any large organization should know about it: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

"Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves."(Don't get too attached to the names used, Rao intentionally makes everyone into a miserable cog in the machine)

stevarino• 8 years ago

While I agree with your analogy, graphite is actually a moderator which (in a nuclear context) accelerates reactions. This was a factor for Chernobyl [1] where the rods had graphite tips, so a scram had a momentary rapid increase in reactivity. This burst of reactivity caused temperature to momentarily spike. The heat produced steam which increased pressure and the vessel exploded.

[1] http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.pd...

jdsknene• 8 years ago

No, people leave companies too. Using my throwaway account because I don't want my name attached to this.

I went contract-to-hire at my current job. When it came time to come on full-time, the offer they made was far too low to accept. The owner of the company made a big deal out of the bonus and at the time I believed him. I held out for $5k more before accepting.

Fast forward a year later and I'm really looking forward to this bonus. It was 5% of my salary, basically an extra paycheck. I was expecting at least three times that because of what he said during the negotiation. I started looking that day and am interviewing with two companies.

I've since realized that I just don't want to work for consultants anymore. You're being farmed out and your labor is being arbitraged. This incentivizes them to dick you on comp. I know in his mind it's just business, but I don't want that in my life anymore.

So while the thesis of this article may hold for a certain segment of the labor market, it certainly doesn't hold for all of them. Some segments just suck. Conflicts of interest in these segments invariably pit line workers against management and no amount of manager cordialness or professionalism will prevent turnover.

Sure there are a few workplaces that have ironed out conflicts of interest and so can attract the cream of the crop, these places can build nice engineer caves and then personal relationships rather than endemic conflicts of interest become the dominant cultural factor that drives turnover. But these guys trying to tell the rest of the world's managers how to run a shop is just profoundly naive.

sriku• 8 years ago

It was ironic to see this title and "here is why I left google" on HN front page at the same time.

Paul_S• 8 years ago

People leave salaries.

tnolet• 8 years ago

Not disagreeing with the point made, but why is this "article" (or rehash of other people's management philosophy) on the intercom site? What does it have to do to with them outside the fact they probably have managers. I might be a sour old man, but I honestly don't get these infomercial type blog posts. It makes me have a lesser opinion of companies publishing these types of things, although with intercom their beep boop sound already pretty much destroyed any sympathy. /s

haddr• 8 years ago

people also leave the environment, so not only their managers, but their peers. managers are somehow reponsible for creating a proper environment, but it is hard to enforce the atmosphere created by the rest of the team...

paul7986• 8 years ago

I left my big fat paying job after....

- reported a females colleagues non sexual harassment

- started to be harassed myself by my direct coworker who insisted I use css lint in the strictest mode. When I disagreed with what lint was saying in the strictest mode he sold to management that I don’t know how to code or do my job. From then on I struggled to change their minds even when linking to things like using negative margins is valid.

oldsmallcorp• 8 years ago

Not my usual account for obvious reasons, but - I'm on my way out because of the company, not my manager. My current manager is decent, and my previous one was the reason I came to work for this company.

The thing that's driving me out is the company's lack of direction. They talk of innovation, but their actions demonstrate that they're more concerned with maintaining the status quo with incremental improvements to aging products.

I've spent about 70% of my few years here working on new products that never saw the light of day. That's disheartening. Fool me twice... time to go.

amyjess• 8 years ago

I have mixed thoughts on this. The one company I quit, I quit in large part because my manager was abusive. A particular tantrum my manager threw was what caused me to apply to several jobs in a fit of pique, and when one of them gave me an offer, I put in my notice. On the other hand, the company was toxic on several levels, the abusive manager was only part of it, and I'd been looking at job postings on and off for months before that incident.

The pay was abysmal. Nobody at the company had any insurance (because of this I will never work for a startup again). Company leadership was willing to roll over for a transphobic landlord and throw me under the bus. The company was a young startup without any infrastructure or processes, and pretty much everybody technical had very little professional experience (including both the technical leadership and the rank-and-file; and I say this even though I ended up becoming friends with several of my fellow rank-and-file, most of whom I still talk to to this day). Somehow I got along well with the CTO, but he was very mercurial and there were some people there (including a couple friends of mine) he took a strong personal dislike to for no real reason, and I was always afraid he would turn on me. I definitely quit the company and not just the manager.

I still keep up with them and their employees on LinkedIn. One thing I've noticed is that since I left, they've been handing out Director titles like candy, I'm assuming to compensate for their lack of monetary compensation.

The company was a disaster on pretty much every level. The one good thing I could say about it was that some of my ex-coworkers there are still friends of mine, but that's a really low bar.

Edit: I want to add another story. The company I ended up jumping ship to, I came close to quitting before they laid me off, for reasons that had nothing to do with my manager. My manager was excellent. I liked him a lot. But the work I was doing had nothing whatsoever to do with my skillset. I felt like an idiot compared to my coworkers, I made far less useful contributions than pretty much anybody else at the company (my boss reassured me that he didn't care because he knew the stuff they did was esoteric and was willing to spend years training someone new), and the longer I stayed the more it felt like it was actually harming my career since I was letting my specialty atrophy (and I still thought this even though I'm not a career-minded person!). Ultimately, that decision got taken out of my hands because 1/3 of the company including me got taken out in the only layoff in the company's 20-year history, but if I did quit it would have been despite my manager being awesome, not because of him.

phaus• 8 years ago

I work on a team that lost about 66% of its members in the last year and a half. Every single one of them liked our manager, but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable. People absolutely leave companies because of the company.

I've also had toxic managers at other organizations, so I agree a manager CAN drive an employee away, but that's not always or even usually the case.

cgore• 8 years ago

I think that too is on the company. A good one-level-up manager will check up on their underlings, the managers in question, and figure out who's good and bad and resolve the situation.

crescentfresh• 8 years ago

but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable

Isn't this attributing the cause of leaving to management as well, just not direct managers?

awefpoij• 8 years ago

My experience has been the complete opposite. I'm grossly underpaid and I know for a fact that my manager is fighting for me to stay here.

The company (HR and upper management) and myself (I should not have accepted such a low starting salary) are solely to blame.

rconti• 8 years ago

Funny, I just left a job where new management was installed and promptly lost ~12/30 people in the span of 9 months. Not only was life markedly worse on day 1, it got worse every time another quality coworker or line manager left.

You'd think this would send a signal to someone that a mistake had been made. Nope!

hkmurakami• 8 years ago

Do people join managers, not companies?

Serious question btw. I think such a scenario would be vastly superior to the general "join a black box" type of recruiting we have today.

husamia• 8 years ago

I can relate to this as a manager and as being managed. I been looking into this, do you think Self-Managed types of Organizations reduce the issues with this type of problem of out of date communication style from top down? we are in the 21st century. We don't need to have information coming from top down we need information coming the the bottom up. Our smart devices can do better job than a human manager!

People leave managers, not companies

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