Warning: Lengthy post :)
Though I am an optimist, I do tend to look at the negative side of situations quite often. It gives me pleasure, not in a sadistic kind of way but as an extension of introspection. I tend to look at all my actions for the day and see how I could have handled it differently with probably better results. This does not mean I regret anything I said/did.
Coming to the corporate jungle and having worked in it for close to 5 years I feel I can do managing better (but I won’t know unless I actually do it :P ). I have had the fortune of working with 8 managers in 4 years. No, I did not “jump” companies. In fact I changed 6 managers in 3 years in one company. I had a new manager every six months with almost the same competency as the previous one. I have many a time seen myself in my manager’s shoe and taken better decisions – all in my head, of course. And I would have liked to share my opinion/understanding with my manager hoping something would come out of it and made the situation better for everyone in the team at least. The only opportunity for something like this to take place is during the appraisals. Except for my very first manager who was also the best, every time else it was the same story.
Based on the experience I have gone through, I’ve categorized the managers into the following 7 classes -
1. Manager who blames another for his own incompetency
Let us take for example this typical situation I have faced in an appraisal meeting.
Mgr: So do you have anything to share with me? Any problem you are facing in the team or anything else related to work?
Me: Yes. For one, I have found quite often that work is not distributed properly among the team. While one is slogging day n night, another is completely free. Perhaps if the work were distributed better, both would learn and no one would need to slog.
Mgr: Yes I understand that and have noted it down. But what have you done about this problem? (I know that it is the dumbest thing ever to ask me to do anything about it, after all I am not the manager, am I? But I *had* done something about it, so…)
Me: Yes of course. Seeing my in such a situation and I was relatively free, I offered to help him finish
Mgr: Well, if you were free you should have come to me. I’d have assigned something to you.
Me: I did that too (he had to remember it. The specifics were too much and too recent to ignore or forget). Nothing was assigned to me then.
Mgr: Ya ya I have taken it down and will look into it. This is a big team and managing all of them gets difficult sometimes. (yes it, sometimes, not always. And well, you are hired to manage, right ?)
I later came to know that my team mate who I had mentioned to my manager was gruelled for taking help from another person in the team, ie. me. (whoever believes that team members don’t discuss appraisals is sadly mistaken). My only reaction was, “WTH?!!” On one side we are a team and are supposed to help each other at times. And here was this manager was breaking the whole notion of the team by discouraging taking/offering help from/to someone in the team. Instead of doing something to solve it, the problem was blamed on someone else. Needless to say, the problem remained and nothing was done to solve it. And this is just one example.
2. Manager who takes credit for a team member’s work/idea
This happens so often around me that it is hard to ignore. A bug fix/new requirement is assigned to a team member and asked to complete it without giving any further detail such as the exact requirement or expected behavior/outcome of the module/feature.When the team member comes up with some solution, it is literally crushed like a worm. And after a while the manager comes up with this brilliant idea which in fact is *same* as that by the team member. The team member may choose to ignore it once but the manager speaks of “his own idea” in a meeting in the presence of *his* manager,without any credit to the team member, giving his manager a false notion that he himself came up with this solution. Not only that, this type of manager takes every petty mistake by the team member to his manager and tried to show how stupid this team member is.
3. Manager who believes “hard-working” means “working long hours” and “commitment to work” is “working during your vacation”
I just do not understand this. How is someone who takes 5 hours to complete a task be better than someone who takes 2 hours to finish the same task ? But apparently this type of manager feels that the former is a good employee and the latter is not. It has happened that I was questioned for coming late to office (max one hour later than office timings) but no one bothered to ask me to leave if I stayed beyond the office timings). A person who comes at noon, leaves at 4:00 PM and comes back again for five minutes at 9:00 PM (because the person forgot to shutdown the system) is apparently more hardworking than those who work from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Someone who completes all the assigned work and goes on leave is apparently less committed than one who doesn’t plan out leaves and works from home. It does not matter to the manager to check out if the person is actually working. A messenger status as “Working from home” suffices (I’m not making this up. This has happened). Also, isn’t it foolish to work from home during your vacation? You take a leave to be with family, say, and work. That way you are neither working nor spending time with your family.
4. Manager who “favors” you for sharing a cigarette with him and not because your work was good
In our previous company, we had this huge product and customer’s requirements were delivered as plug-ins, to say in simple layman terms. It so happens that two different customers ask for the same plug-in at different points in time. During these times, the code/module that was created for the first customer was put at specific places in the base product, with little or no change, compiled and delivered. Many times the plug-in was to be tested by me. I had to write test cases, prepare the data and execute them. Report the bugs and see through the closure. After that the user manual and release manual had to be prepared. Much later when new members joined the team and the same task had to be repeated for a different customer, the same test cases and same manuals were used with some changes such as the customer name and release date. When the appraisals happened, I got a lesser number than my team mate against the KRA “Preparation and execution of test cases, test reporting and delivery” (whatever…) Only thing my team mate and I did differently? He smoked and shared a cigarette more than once with the manager. “Cigarette” may be replaced with booze, money, flattery or anything else.
5. Managers who think they can influence the team by threatening members
My appraisal following the lay off (could be called “smart sizing” in MBA terms or “firing” in layman terms) season, two years back, was when I first encountered this thing. My team was changed and had to learn a few things unrelated to testing and was kinda pushed into it. I had been doing this for less than a month when I had the appraisal with the new manager. There was nothing much for me to “show” in this team. The manager was quite taken aback seeing that my appraisal sheet was almost empty. It was an automated system and hence I could not add my 5 months’ testing activity against the KRA set for me. So the meeting went something like -
Mgr1: Well you have left most things blank. I expected more from you than this. (I was angry then, looking back now I find it so funny)
Me: I know there isn’t much as of now. As time goes by you will definitely see a lot more of my work. I think you would get an idea if you spoke to my previous manager you would know quite a few things about my work in that team.
Mgr1: No that’s ok.
Me: It isn’t. I love my work and would not like to see it wasted.
Mgr1: Why are you so adamant about it?
Me: Why shouldn’t I? I love my work and that’s just it. I have put my time, heart n soul into it and can’t bear to see it thrown away like that. If at all there is a lay off season again, I do not want to hear anyone say it was because of my performance.
Mgr1: If the manager decides you have to go, you have to go. (At least he was honest about it)
Me: I can’t argue with that (…and laughed. I actually laughed there in the meeting when he said that. It was such a stupid way to show his superiority in designation. He too laughed, no idea why)
What followed afterward was another BS meeting most of which went through one ear and out the other. But seriously, it was an open threat. This was not serious at all. But I have seen others in different situations being threatened in far serious manner.
6. Manager who thinks he is God
There have been situations where an acting PL felt his ego hurt because I had not spoken to him about my leave. I had spoken to and applied leave directly with my reporting manager.
Whatever the reporting manager said/did had to be personally over-written by him.
7. Manager who cannot be classified
It happened also that the manager commits something to the customer with no knowledge whatsoever about how to go about it. This happened often. The manager once committed delivery of 9 tasks by end of day, distributed between a team mate and me. And this commitment was done at about 3:00 PM in the afternoon. Briefing us on the things made us clear that he was not going to take up a few tasks so that it could be finished earlier. It was also clear that he was not willing to fore-go a few processes for the time being like not editing the test cases at the moment. Request for them to be sent later fell on deaf ears. After the briefing he promptly left for home at 4:00 PM, after telling us not to leave before we delivered the tasks. The only other thing he left for us was to pick the tasks ourselves in whatever order we wanted.
There are other incidents where I was called to work on weekends whether or not I had any work. The reason mostly was, “The team is working over the weekend and you are part of the team.” (see how the word “team” is used selectively).
The “lazy manager” is lazy to the height of not having a checkout on his machine (in case of desktop application) or not knowing the URL of the application (in case of web application). Time spent in the team/company is irrelevant.
Then there was this “pressure manager” who gave fake deadlines. “You have to give a release today itself. The implementation engineer is already in Indonesia waiting for this release.” So I extend 2 – 3 hours to finish it and email the details to the implementation engineer in Indonesia. I get an email immediately, that of “Out of office autoreply – I won’t be available from this day to this day next week… blah blah…”
There was one who would favor girl team mates by calling them on their personal phones to ask about their “health” or sent forward mails to their personal email ids within 24 hours of their joining. A hospitalized male team mate was the least of his bothers. He spoke to them mostly of things outside of work and it did not stop at hobbies/interests. It went to girlfriends/boyfriends and further.
There was even one Romeo manager whose eyes wandered everywhere else but the eyes when speaking. I loathed this one.
I have come across all breeds of managers in my 4+ years in the corporate industry. I won’t call it a sad thing because I have learned so much.
This post would be incomplete without mentioning the best manager I have worked with. His name is Ameeth Linus Daniel. He was human. As a person, he was down to earth, soft spoken and understanding. As a manager, he knew how exactly to motivate the team. Working with him I never felt work as “work”. He pushed me into all the things that mattered, passing on material for study. He sat with me and explained things I did not understand. I have seen him sitting and coding with the programmers more than once. Not once has he “accused” anyone in the team. Even then we have worked overnight. But we never once felt the need to question “why”. We did it gladly. There was much of team bonding between all of us that eventually the “team mate” disappeared – we all became friends. He appreciated good work, frequently gave feedback on each of us outlining our strengths and suggesting ways to work around our weaknesses. He had a good sense of humor, knew where to draw the line between professional and personal relations. Never did any favoritism, did not play politics, had clear understanding of the requirements, explained them to us until we got it right, did not complain when we asked him to repeat a few things, did not make fun of us for asking a seemingly silly/basic doubt. I have worked with him for a year after which he decided to pursue dreams of his own.
Maybe having worked with The Best Manager in the beginning of my career made me less tolerable of the others. If Ameeth taught me how a good manager should be, I have learned so much about “how not be a bad manager” from the others. And learning is a good thing :)
Note: The official channels for these issues in the organizations were used and nothing happened of them. The managers I have spoken about here no longer work in the organization and neither do I and hence I thought it safe to blog about it, more than an year later. The blog is not to be taken personally. Any relation to anyone “else” alive is purely co-incidental.
Though I am an optimist, I do tend to look at the negative side of situations quite often. It gives me pleasure, not in a sadistic kind of way but as an extension of introspection. I tend to look at all my actions for the day and see how I could have handled it differently with probably better results. This does not mean I regret anything I said/did.
Coming to the corporate jungle and having worked in it for close to 5 years I feel I can do managing better (but I won’t know unless I actually do it :P ). I have had the fortune of working with 8 managers in 4 years. No, I did not “jump” companies. In fact I changed 6 managers in 3 years in one company. I had a new manager every six months with almost the same competency as the previous one. I have many a time seen myself in my manager’s shoe and taken better decisions – all in my head, of course. And I would have liked to share my opinion/understanding with my manager hoping something would come out of it and made the situation better for everyone in the team at least. The only opportunity for something like this to take place is during the appraisals. Except for my very first manager who was also the best, every time else it was the same story.
Based on the experience I have gone through, I’ve categorized the managers into the following 7 classes -
1. Manager who blames another for his own incompetency
Let us take for example this typical situation I have faced in an appraisal meeting.
Mgr: So do you have anything to share with me? Any problem you are facing in the team or anything else related to work?
Me: Yes. For one, I have found quite often that work is not distributed properly among the team. While one is slogging day n night, another is completely free. Perhaps if the work were distributed better, both would learn and no one would need to slog.
Mgr: Yes I understand that and have noted it down. But what have you done about this problem? (I know that it is the dumbest thing ever to ask me to do anything about it, after all I am not the manager, am I? But I *had* done something about it, so…)
Me: Yes of course. Seeing my
Mgr: Well, if you were free you should have come to me. I’d have assigned something to you.
Me: I did that too
Mgr: Ya ya I have taken it down and will look into it. This is a big team and managing all of them gets difficult sometimes. (yes it, sometimes, not always. And well, you are hired to manage, right ?)
I later came to know that my team mate who I had mentioned to my manager was gruelled for taking help from another person in the team, ie. me. (whoever believes that team members don’t discuss appraisals is sadly mistaken). My only reaction was, “WTH?!!” On one side we are a team and are supposed to help each other at times. And here was this manager was breaking the whole notion of the team by discouraging taking/offering help from/to someone in the team. Instead of doing something to solve it, the problem was blamed on someone else. Needless to say, the problem remained and nothing was done to solve it. And this is just one example.
2. Manager who takes credit for a team member’s work/idea
This happens so often around me that it is hard to ignore. A bug fix/new requirement is assigned to a team member and asked to complete it without giving any further detail such as the exact requirement or expected behavior/outcome of the module/feature.When the team member comes up with some solution, it is literally crushed like a worm. And after a while the manager comes up with this brilliant idea which in fact is *same* as that by the team member. The team member may choose to ignore it once but the manager speaks of “his own idea” in a meeting in the presence of *his* manager,without any credit to the team member, giving his manager a false notion that he himself came up with this solution. Not only that, this type of manager takes every petty mistake by the team member to his manager and tried to show how stupid this team member is.
3. Manager who believes “hard-working” means “working long hours” and “commitment to work” is “working during your vacation”
I just do not understand this. How is someone who takes 5 hours to complete a task be better than someone who takes 2 hours to finish the same task ? But apparently this type of manager feels that the former is a good employee and the latter is not. It has happened that I was questioned for coming late to office (max one hour later than office timings) but no one bothered to ask me to leave if I stayed beyond the office timings). A person who comes at noon, leaves at 4:00 PM and comes back again for five minutes at 9:00 PM (because the person forgot to shutdown the system) is apparently more hardworking than those who work from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Someone who completes all the assigned work and goes on leave is apparently less committed than one who doesn’t plan out leaves and works from home. It does not matter to the manager to check out if the person is actually working. A messenger status as “Working from home” suffices (I’m not making this up. This has happened). Also, isn’t it foolish to work from home during your vacation? You take a leave to be with family, say, and work. That way you are neither working nor spending time with your family.
4. Manager who “favors” you for sharing a cigarette with him and not because your work was good
In our previous company, we had this huge product and customer’s requirements were delivered as plug-ins, to say in simple layman terms. It so happens that two different customers ask for the same plug-in at different points in time. During these times, the code/module that was created for the first customer was put at specific places in the base product, with little or no change, compiled and delivered. Many times the plug-in was to be tested by me. I had to write test cases, prepare the data and execute them. Report the bugs and see through the closure. After that the user manual and release manual had to be prepared. Much later when new members joined the team and the same task had to be repeated for a different customer, the same test cases and same manuals were used with some changes such as the customer name and release date. When the appraisals happened, I got a lesser number than my team mate against the KRA “Preparation and execution of test cases, test reporting and delivery” (whatever…) Only thing my team mate and I did differently? He smoked and shared a cigarette more than once with the manager. “Cigarette” may be replaced with booze, money, flattery or anything else.
5. Managers who think they can influence the team by threatening members
My appraisal following the lay off (could be called “smart sizing” in MBA terms or “firing” in layman terms) season, two years back, was when I first encountered this thing. My team was changed and had to learn a few things unrelated to testing and was kinda pushed into it. I had been doing this for less than a month when I had the appraisal with the new manager. There was nothing much for me to “show” in this team. The manager was quite taken aback seeing that my appraisal sheet was almost empty. It was an automated system and hence I could not add my 5 months’ testing activity against the KRA set for me. So the meeting went something like -
Mgr1: Well you have left most things blank. I expected more from you than this. (I was angry then, looking back now I find it so funny)
Me: I know there isn’t much as of now. As time goes by you will definitely see a lot more of my work. I think you would get an idea if you spoke to my previous manager you would know quite a few things about my work in that team.
Mgr1: No that’s ok.
Me: It isn’t. I love my work and would not like to see it wasted.
Mgr1: Why are you so adamant about it?
Me: Why shouldn’t I? I love my work and that’s just it. I have put my time, heart n soul into it and can’t bear to see it thrown away like that. If at all there is a lay off season again, I do not want to hear anyone say it was because of my performance.
Mgr1: If the manager decides you have to go, you have to go. (At least he was honest about it)
Me: I can’t argue with that (…and laughed. I actually laughed there in the meeting when he said that. It was such a stupid way to show his superiority in designation. He too laughed, no idea why)
What followed afterward was another BS meeting most of which went through one ear and out the other. But seriously, it was an open threat. This was not serious at all. But I have seen others in different situations being threatened in far serious manner.
6. Manager who thinks he is God
There have been situations where an acting PL felt his ego hurt because I had not spoken to him about my leave. I had spoken to and applied leave directly with my reporting manager.
Whatever the reporting manager said/did had to be personally over-written by him.
7. Manager who cannot be classified
It happened also that the manager commits something to the customer with no knowledge whatsoever about how to go about it. This happened often. The manager once committed delivery of 9 tasks by end of day, distributed between a team mate and me. And this commitment was done at about 3:00 PM in the afternoon. Briefing us on the things made us clear that he was not going to take up a few tasks so that it could be finished earlier. It was also clear that he was not willing to fore-go a few processes for the time being like not editing the test cases at the moment. Request for them to be sent later fell on deaf ears. After the briefing he promptly left for home at 4:00 PM, after telling us not to leave before we delivered the tasks. The only other thing he left for us was to pick the tasks ourselves in whatever order we wanted.
There are other incidents where I was called to work on weekends whether or not I had any work. The reason mostly was, “The team is working over the weekend and you are part of the team.” (see how the word “team” is used selectively).
The “lazy manager” is lazy to the height of not having a checkout on his machine (in case of desktop application) or not knowing the URL of the application (in case of web application). Time spent in the team/company is irrelevant.
Then there was this “pressure manager” who gave fake deadlines. “You have to give a release today itself. The implementation engineer is already in Indonesia waiting for this release.” So I extend 2 – 3 hours to finish it and email the details to the implementation engineer in Indonesia. I get an email immediately, that of “Out of office autoreply – I won’t be available from this day to this day next week… blah blah…”
There was one who would favor girl team mates by calling them on their personal phones to ask about their “health” or sent forward mails to their personal email ids within 24 hours of their joining. A hospitalized male team mate was the least of his bothers. He spoke to them mostly of things outside of work and it did not stop at hobbies/interests. It went to girlfriends/boyfriends and further.
There was even one Romeo manager whose eyes wandered everywhere else but the eyes when speaking. I loathed this one.
I have come across all breeds of managers in my 4+ years in the corporate industry. I won’t call it a sad thing because I have learned so much.
This post would be incomplete without mentioning the best manager I have worked with. His name is Ameeth Linus Daniel. He was human. As a person, he was down to earth, soft spoken and understanding. As a manager, he knew how exactly to motivate the team. Working with him I never felt work as “work”. He pushed me into all the things that mattered, passing on material for study. He sat with me and explained things I did not understand. I have seen him sitting and coding with the programmers more than once. Not once has he “accused” anyone in the team. Even then we have worked overnight. But we never once felt the need to question “why”. We did it gladly. There was much of team bonding between all of us that eventually the “team mate” disappeared – we all became friends. He appreciated good work, frequently gave feedback on each of us outlining our strengths and suggesting ways to work around our weaknesses. He had a good sense of humor, knew where to draw the line between professional and personal relations. Never did any favoritism, did not play politics, had clear understanding of the requirements, explained them to us until we got it right, did not complain when we asked him to repeat a few things, did not make fun of us for asking a seemingly silly/basic doubt. I have worked with him for a year after which he decided to pursue dreams of his own.
Maybe having worked with The Best Manager in the beginning of my career made me less tolerable of the others. If Ameeth taught me how a good manager should be, I have learned so much about “how not be a bad manager” from the others. And learning is a good thing :)
Note: The official channels for these issues in the organizations were used and nothing happened of them. The managers I have spoken about here no longer work in the organization and neither do I and hence I thought it safe to blog about it, more than an year later. The blog is not to be taken personally. Any relation to anyone “else” alive is purely co-incidental.
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