Ok, I am going to be brutally honest here. Some may not like it.
Micromanaging is complicated. When I was in a leadership position I was the happiest boss when I could let people just do their thing and come back with great results and we'd be all happy. And that's how I loved working with my bosses before as well.
But then again, I had some employees I had to micromanage. I really, really abhorred it. But there was just no other way to achieve results. The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead. But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.
What I am trying to say is: As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one. Maybe your work is the reason for him/her to be micromanaging you.
I read a good book about management recently that pretty much defined the need for micromanagement as either lack of training, and/or lack of clear expectations and appropriate resolution when those expectations are broken.
The sum of it is an employee that knows the right way, and is given the freedom to do that will make the correct choices, if they fail occasionally that's ok. If they can't be trained, or refused to follow the expectations, then they need another job.
Micromanagement will just repress those employees further where they'll be too afraid to make their own decisions.
Humorously, the book is called "It's your Ship", by a navy captain who turned the worst ship in the navy into the top ship
Making all of the decisions is just another variant on the "don't accept responsibility for things you have no control over". Your boss is taking the power to make the decision. Your boss is not taking responsibility for cleaning up the mess if that decision turns out to be just as stupid as all of the developers predicted.
I mostly agree with you. But there are many many reasons why these constraints may still apply, at least in the short term. Ideally you want everyone to be competent enough at their role to need minimal management. But the reality is that often times you'll find yourself in a situation where that's not true. And it's pretty rare when you just have the freedom to bring everything to a halt to start from scratch.
This is true, I didn't mean to suggest there weren't good exceptions. Although instead of starting from scratch sometimes reassigning crew will uncover unknown strengths and weaknesses.
Personal example of this, an old foreman I knew on a job, had a boss who didn't understand that people had strengths, so as an example he would routinely swap people into tasks that emphasized their weakness to prove it.
Additionally, this allowed people who didnt do X job because they didn't have the confidence or skill, to actually get a little extra experience as well
On the other hand, I have been in positions where I and the team delivered spectacular results year after year, and I am not micro-managed, and then my excellent boss leaves for greener pastures, and suddenly a new much worse boss comes in and begins micromanaging me.
Fellow workers, the boss and management is not looking out for your interest, the default is they're looking out for their interest. Your best hope is once in a while to find a "good" boss who is not 100% on board with the investors and is willing to split the difference. If you're on the top half of people in your position in terms of skills, if you're willing to do what reasonably needs to be done within 40 hours a week, then the boss is who needs to be questioned, not yourself - you are the one who is doing the work and creating the wealth for the company.
Have walked into roles where managers were used to dealing with nothing but jr developers.
Some have backed off when they realized I know what I’m doing. We have a good working relationship.
Others double down hard, and take it as personal insult that I’m not going to be micromanaged. These cases end badly.
Others give try to micromanage, I let them know I’m not going to follow their rules.
They don’t actually care what I do.
But they keep trying.
Basically pretending they are managing me.
These situations are depressing and sad.
To contrast.
Then there are the ones that just point a general direction and encourage good team dynamics. I love these ones
> Your best hope is once in a while to find a "good" boss who is not 100% on board with the investors and is willing to split the difference.
Investors care about results; they don't care about the style middle management uses. This is a false dichotomy.
If the company is focused on short-term wins to the detriment of long-term viability, that's a separate issue (and really has nothing to do with management style).
> ..then my excellent boss leaves for greener pastures, and suddenly a new much worse boss comes in and begins micromanaging...
> ..then the boss is who needs to be questioned
If this means results suffer (probably), then it's pretty obvious the cause in this case, right?
> I was the happiest boss when I could let people just do their thing and come back with great results
This is decentralized command, and really the best place to be. That's why I believe being a leader in software dev. is really about serving the ppl under you - not the opposite.
I think it's about balance:
I will micromanage new hires initially, so that I can ensure they are sticking to SOPs, code standards etc. and developing the habits we need to be successful.
After awhile, the training wheels can come off and you can give them ownership of larger and larger stakes in projects. They'll stumble once in awhile, but chances are that goes back to something you (leader) left as ambiguous - or that they genuinely didn't know.
This is the same way I treat PhD students. A lot of micromanagement early on, and then I progressively try to step back. That said, it is always a big concern if they stumble for a considerable amount of time (a year) or are not capable of being independent as they approach graduation, even if they can deliver very effectively when being micromanaged.
Do you find you get a lot of negative feedback or churn during that period? Seems like it would be an awful first impression, but maybe not if you communicate things well.
You mean during the intro / "more hands on period"?
I've not heard any negative feedback, but I think it requires a 'fine touch' - or you risk drowning people in information / tedium. If they get things the first time, I won't be prone to checking up on them as much.
Ya, that's what I meant. If I started at a company and my manager micromanaged me—especially with no clear reason why—I'd feel like this company isn't for me. No negative feedback isn't terribly surprising given that I don't know anyone besides myself inclined to actually say anything about an issue. Out of curiosity though, have you ever received negative feedback about anything, or given it yourself explicity before being more "hands-on"?
I totally get where you are coming from. I should clarify that historically, all of my new hires were pretty much fresh out of school, or transitioning to software dev from other roles.
If I hired a dev with significant experience, I don't think I would use the same process, aside from knowledge gaps.
I definitely have received negative feedback on processes that are in place, and I welcome that, because if something can be done better, or more efficiently - then we should change it. Flexibility is key.
>But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.
I disagree. It's like parents who spend all their time on the problem child, and then the children who are doing well become bitter and resentful. You're neglecting the rest of the team for one individual, who they all probably see is problematic, which is not a good way to run a team.
Work is not family. At work, I thrive on benign neglect.
While I would love for my boss to purposefully ignore me; it's ok if my boss is only ignoring me because there's no time for me after tending to the other employees. I will not be sad or resentful if my 1:1 had to be canceled because my boss had something else to do.
Your boss spending all their time on a trouble employee means they're also not doing the fifty other things they could to help the team other than bothering you. Yes, managers do have things to do other than bothering their reports. At least good ones do.
As a peer and/or lead I've found a process that should help with this. Unfortunately you rarely get a boss who will fire someone (layoffs are another story) and so the most you can do is slowly take away their responsibilities and give them to someone else. Effectively, ghosting them.
Essentially you build tools that help avoid some of the problems you're seeing, and slowly ratchet up from beta test to mandatory as the tool becomes more reliable. At the end if the problem person refuses to use the tool, then you have a clear HR problem.
The people who make mistakes aren't your enemy. The people who make mistakes and insist they don't need help are the enemy.
> The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead.
Absolutely. A manager should regularly have conversations with everyone on their team. During reviews, absolutely nobody should be surprised by their review. If a manager has to fire someone, that person should not be surprised by this. Constant communication is not micromanagement, it is an absolute requirement of management. It is not one way, either; it is an open conversation.
> As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one.
Yes and no. A manager cannot push their responsibility of open communication onto the employee by expecting them to just know what their performance is. That being said, upon proper feedback, yes, an employee should ingest that and reflect upon that feedback.
I agree 100%, reviews should never be a surprise. But it's amazing how people have selection attention. I've told people that they were headed for a below average rating and found them to be surprised when they received that. It's tricky when you have an employee with performance issues, because you want to focus on the parts they're doing right but at the same time you need to give them honest feedback and it can get confusing. "But you said I was doing better."
> The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead.
Did you take the micromanaging approach because you didn't open a channel for feedback between you and the team?
Micromanagement is one thing: a lack of trust. You micromanage because you don't trust, or maybe they don't trust either. So, what do you do to build up trust? You talk.
Note that this is different to accountability. You can hold people to account without micromanaging them.
What do you do when talking leads to them saying "I understand, next time I'll either get it done faster, or let you know when I realize it's gonna slip" but then what actually happens is that it slips without them giving you any updates again after all? Repeatedly? Talking doesn't build trust when the actions don't match the talk.
It depends on whether your demands are reasonable or not if it's going to work, but:
If there's a persistent lack of communication when it should've been known that a deadline is not going to be met or is at least going to be close, set-up a PIP where you lay down a checklist to follow at the start/end of the day of behaviors you expect regarding communication.
If that doesn't help, then yes, firing is the correct response, not permanent micromanagement.
This is all under the generous assumption that your deadlines are actually very important in the business and plans will have to be shifted if they're not met because of a harsh business reality. Otherwise it's your fault for allowing the cost of deadlines to be incurred in a team where all they will do is hinder morale, add bureaucracy and reduce productivity.
> This is all under the generous assumption that your deadlines are actually very important in the business and plans will have to be shifted if they're not met because of a harsh business reality. Otherwise it's your fault for allowing the cost of deadlines to be incurred in a team where all they will do is hinder morale, add bureaucracy and reduce productivity.
As far as most dev teams are concerned, timelines are less important for the business than they are to each other.
People don't like it when they are constantly waiting on person X to finish their part of the work. (That's a good way to know you've really dropped the ball as manager: the other team members start asking YOU what's going on with the other person.)
PIPs are a waste of time imo. Usually if you're at the PIP stage, you're going to end up firing them anyway. I've only heard a handful of cases where PIPs actually *worked*. The rest of the time they were a waste of everyone's time.
That's why there are usually progressive disciplinary steps. I've been on the receiving end of that in a couple of situations (which I'll admit after the faact, were due to my own issues). It's not pleasant but it was necessary, because I wasn't going to give up trying, but I was in no shape to actually succeed. Better to cut the cord - I wound up in better situations after each occasion, mostly because I wasn't bailing water anymore and had energy to do well.
It could be that the IC is just very bad at estimating schedules, so much so that they don’t realize they are falling behind. If that’s the case, some training on software estimation and how to set good milestones could pay large dividends.
Another possibility is that the environment is one in which it’s not okay to admit that schedules are slipping, despite the manager’s insistence to the contrary.
There are many more possibilities of course. Does the employee have any insights into why they failed to take the action they promised?
A lack of trust and/or misalignment on goals doesn’t automatically mean the employee is a poor performer. If your first resort is to fire them, there is no reason to believe the same problem won’t happen with the next employee.
I think you're oversimplifying. I bet that what you're saying may work fine in a factory line, but when we're talking creative work such as programming, holding people to account without zooming in deep sometimes is impossible.
If a designer makes an unresponsive site, the manager can just say "hey do a responsive design tutorial". But if the designer gets all kinds of patterns or structures or the company design language just wrong, it's very hard to discuss that without making the designer feel like you're micromanaging them.
Micromanaging is no different than telling someone what to do, at an extreme level.
All of your examples can be handled with good communication. If a designer makes an unresponsive site but the site should be responsive, then the communication failed and the requirements were wrong.
If you're a manager or a leader then, ultimately, you are responsible for the failures you presided over. You can't sit back and observe the chaos.
Sometimes you end up with someone who can’t do the job that they were hired for, or won’t, without constant direction. Sometimes they come into the job this way, sometimes factors outside of your control put them here.
Sometimes you can have a Frank discussion about it, or regular ‘adult’ type discussion, and there is something that can be done that fixes it, and it can be fixed. That is not always the case. Sometimes the person is fundamentally incapable of doing the work (rare), or in a place they can’t care about or don’t want to do it - but won’t or can’t acknowledge it.
Re:accountability - there are many different definitions one can use for what this really means. The clearest I am familiar with is ‘if you can’t or won’t do the job to standard, and there is no special circumstance like a leave that should be applied, you don’t have that job anymore’.
That is easier said than done in many business environments.
I’ve worked in places where someone literally not doing any useful work was going on a year+ of dragging on with the team, constantly changing reasons for why they couldn’t do the job, and killing the teams morale. Literally 4 layers of management involved in HR processes trying to drive this to a useful conclusion, but new buttons being pushed every month by the employee and a highly risk adverse HR/Corp culture meant the situation couldn’t be resolved. All this on top of 6 months of coaching and attempting to help this individual be a productive member of the team.
These environments all require micromanagement of low performers as part of the performance management process - it’s the way things have to be to get the documentation and proof of coaching for CYA.
Your last example sounds like a complete failure of leadership. And the accountability buck stops with them for enabling that situation.
Accountability isn't easier said than done; it exists everywhere, but you choose how to apply it and when and you use your bias to decide how hard to apply the discipline.
If you feel you need to micromanage someone, then you've lost your leadership too.
Easy to say, but pretty useless on the ground. Which leadership is failing? Who holds whom accountable?
If you, as a leader, will get fired for holding someone accountable to the job (and firing them) and stopping a toxic environment from happening on the team, what then? What if the reason for that is some meta PR corporate reason that makes sense for corporate maybe but not for you and your team?
What if your job includes not causing those larger corporate issues and following the rules of the larger org?
It’s a failure of a large organization, and part of that failure is often making sure there is no one to actually hold accountable in a real way. It sucks. It happens.
Some people don't have their own drive and rely entirely on expectations set by leaders. Specifically, they will say they're working on something and might even get it done but they could have gotten it done faster and possibly better with at worst micromanagement and at best genuine coaching.
Not OP, but generally because they aren’t doing the work I need them to. In my experience some folks literally don’t know what they’re supposed to do to get started or get stuck on small tasks. Micromanaging is a way to get past those blocks. That said, I absolutely hate doing it and it runs counter to my entire people leadership philosophy (it’s a waste of time for me and condescending to the employee). But at some point you have to get work done, and if that takes micromanagement, so be it.
Not the OP, but the one time I had to micromanage someone was because the engineer was unable to focus on the important tasks and would deliver nice things but totally unrelated to the end goal...
> As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one. Maybe your work is the reason for him/her to be micromanaging
This is great advice about being reflective, however most humans don't like such conversations (for example like most friend groups). Do you have advice on how to approach such conversations?
No, it’s a shared responsibility. It’s the managers job to set up someone for success not to make them successful. If a report is not responding to that, then it’s the report’s fault for either not applying themselves or just not a good culture fit for the org. Nothing wrong with the latter either, mind you. Some people just don’t work in the existing system.
True iff there are people to hire who are better, cost of hire is low && latency of hire is low.
In many situations none of those things hold. In some of these situations investing in the failing team is far better than checking them out and then repeating the disaster.
And, remember others are watching. If you have a rep as an axeman a lot of people won't work for you - no ifs, no buts, no amount of comp will make a difference. You can end up with the B team - a B team who won't look you in the eye and produces 70 pages of evidence at every evaluation.
FYI - The official line for several FAANG’s is that the week/day level of micromanagement done as part of typical performance management for underperformers is referred to as investment. And it kinda is - about 25% of the people I’ve had to do it for did well (4 if I remember correctly). Another 25% needed a clear ‘you need to improve or you’re out’ message that merely saying it to them did not provide. They needed the paperwork. They reset and got their act together right away, and the ‘micromanagement’ consisted of checking in with them for a few weeks or a month until it was clear that their trajectory was changed. Roughly another 25% had mis-fitting roles or expectations (one was a CS major, and despite interviewing for and taking a coding job, realized they hated coding about 2 kmonths in).
The remaining 25% approx. fought the whole way, refused to take any ownership of their issues, and were a huge relief for the team when they were gone - and in the environment I dealt with most of these cases? It was incredibly, incredibly hard to get rid of them. 3+ months of constant work, mandatory weekly check-ins and micromanagement, you name it.
I don’t like firing people, but I hate toxic team environments, and recognize it helps no one for someone to stay in a culture/org/team that clearly doesn’t work. I personally always put the work in, because I knew how important it was. I’ve seen many managers not do that.
I agree with you that it’s better to fire a not fit. I’ve also seen many (50%ish) turn it around after or shortly after other companies would have summarily fired them.
Big Corp, especially big tech Corp, has a giant target on it’s back and is very risk adverse to firing (justifiably so) in many cases, even if it hurts the team or the individual.
Some people are not self-driven but can still do good work if subjected to stronger authority. It's ultimately a business decision as to whether it's worth providing that kind of authority.
But note that to the extent that someone suffers from ADHD and just needs a stronger hand from their manager as an accommodation in order to be productive, you might be legally required to give it to them.
I believe what you're saying amounts of effective leadership.
I feel there's a very LARGE and DISTINCT difference between effective management and micromanagement. The article's points show that when dealing with a micromanager, you're dealing with a narcissist. Nothing the employee does is right; the manager's path forward is likely not even possible; and, most importantly, only the manager feels they themselves can do it correctly.
When a team is underperforming, there are ways to help out which do not amount to nitpicks and providing poor direction. Offering very direct support and feedback is NOT micromanagement.
If you’re having to go through item by item to give direct support, and explicit feedback for literally everything the person is doing - I’d consider that micromanagement if done to me, no matter who was doing it or why.
I think most people would consider that the case. There is also the trope of the ‘micromanager’ who is the insecure ‘I asked 5 minutes ago, why isn’t it done exactly right already’ type. They might be narcissists, but I’ve seen plenty who weren’t - insecurity always plays a huge part, and seems correlated with workaholism too. They micromanage everyone.
It’s entirely possible to be micromanaged by someone due to something you’re doing, and by someone who isn’t a micromanager or prone to micromanaging. They’ll hate it, but they have reasons why specifically they are doing it with you that may suck to hear, but probably have some grounding in reality. I’ve been on both sides of this and it sucks on both sides.
It’s also possible to work for someone that micromanages everyone because that’s who they are.
This hits home. I recently quit a job (~2 months ago) that was exactly the situation described. I had never encountered micromanagement to that degree before and was initially, naively, willing to accept my boss's criticism as "learnings" for myself. He was of course totally unavailable until ~6PM, after which he would dive into the weeds on my work product for the day. "This chart's axis aren't clear enough". "Line colors are too similar". "Please justify why you made XYZ technical decision this week". Sometimes I would be working until 10PM responding to his questions.
Eventually it really started to take a toll on my self-confidence. I started feeling like I didn't know what I was doing, questioning if I was cut out for the company. Just as OP states, I woke up every day in a TERRIBLE mood. I stopped caring about the quality of any first-pass work product. Why bother, when he's going to find something to critique anyway? Ironically his micromanagement made my work quality go way down.
Anyway, I quit with nothing else lined up (and am still looking for work, if you need a data scientist :)). But I don't regret it at all, if only for my mental health's sake. I STILL feel like I somehow did something wrong in the situation even though looking back on it, he was clearly just an asshole (and many current and former coworkers came out of the woodwork to agree when I made my quitting public knowledge).
I have a long and healthy career in tech, including some companies you would have heard of. At one point in the last 6 years I briefly worked for a manager just as bad as what you describe. I quit within 3 months, and I'm so glad I did.
I've never had anything quite like it before or since. These stories are worth remembering and sharing, had I been less wordly at the time I might have suffered a psychologically unhleathy work dynamic for longer, thinking it was my problem to fix.
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Edit: Just as one example, one random Tuesday that boss called me up from California (he was remote, I wasn't) and, out of the blue, asked "How can I justify your salary?" No real company is going to ask you a mind-screw question like that once they hire you. I didn't really need the job and basically explained to him, "I have no idea if you need my specific skills at this company, that's ultimately your job to figure out. If you don't I'm sure I'll find somewhere else that does need them. And you must realize that if you call me up and say something like this, you're basically going to make me wonder if I need a new job for a whole day."
Maybe the moral of this story is to invest a lot of money early, so you have that escape-hatch in case things go south.
Thanks for chiming in. I honestly felt gaslit by the whole ordeal, I would come home and tell my partner somewhat similar stories to your own and she would recoil in horror at the toxic work environment. And then I would somehow end up defending the situation as "not that bad" lest I reveal myself as...what...weak? Unable to handle the combination of long hours and constant criticism? Crazy what can be normalized so quickly.
One of the better examples from my situation: The CEO of the company (who was buddy-buddy with my boss, and a micromanager himself) had a habit of dialing people's personal cell phones and putting them on speaker in meetings if he wasn't satisfied with the information in the moment. "Hey John, extr here tells me that we can't look at data XYZ until you've repopulated the database? Care to explain more? ETA on that?". I spent a lot of time apologizing to people for getting them in those situations - until someone explained not to worry about it because they were all used to it. This was in a post-series-C startup with hundreds of employees.
There are a lot of bad managers out there. In some cases it's because they never had any kind of training in how to be a manager. I lasted at a place 6 months at a place with a terrible manager (see my post elsewhere in this thread) who went from being an individual contributor to suddenly managing 6 people - he was just really bad at managing. At some point you just have to quit and move on. If enough people vote with their feet maybe we can weed out these bad managers.
What you're describing doesn't sound like micromanagement, it just sounds like a manager who's fussy about all the little details. Some people really care about the small details, but there's a way of doing that correctly, especially when it's directed towards your subordinate (for example, asking why something was done a certain way - maybe there's a good reason - instead of saying it's wrong). If it was done in a way that caused you to leave then it's obviously bad.
Micromanagement is usually more about the manager taking a normal-sized task and breaking it up to steps that are too small to make sense on their own, then checking in with the employee on every step. This blocks the employee from developing their own method of work, applying creative thinking, etc.
The micromanagement you're talking about actually came directly from the top (CEO), which was even more awkward. For example, the first month on the job the CEO set up a daily meeting with me to talk details about how my team was supposed to accomplish the goals he had set out for us. To the point of asking exactly about the schema of the database we needed, what our ETL pipeline was going to look like, hand-picking an external technical resource to help with the task (who then no-showed on the deliverable, nearly killing the CEO of embarrassment).
I found it extremely bizarre to say the least. The organization was at a scale where it made no sense for him to be that involved in the minutia. And here my boss told me I was lucky to be getting so much time with such an important and brilliant man...
The advice here seems practical but only if you have a very fixed mindset about who people are.
That might be appropriate sometimes but I think it’s worth trying to heal relationships. On the theory that managers are also humans, try to imagine why they are micromanaging.
One of the biggest problems in computerland is that we promote technical specialists to manage people and strategy. Many people are far more comfortable with, and nostalgic for, the craft of programming. Such a manager ends up dictating solutions that would have been brilliant about 5 years ago, but which don’t match current practice.
Other managers are coping with the trauma of employees who wasted tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars on things that don’t work out. This manager trusts themself technically so reluctantly (actually not so reluctantly) they try to dictate solutions.
The common characteristic here is someone who perceives themselves to have high technical skill but very shaky skills with management and hiring. They feel fear and uncertainty in that domain and fall back on technical skill + their new authority to command people. Imagine if you were in draining meetings all day struggling with abstract squishy problems under limited information. They want the joy of feeling _smart_ again.
Some organizations can support such a manager to buff their people skills but that’s rare. If this person’s ego can take it, it’s worth using your 1:1 to point out the dysfunction and trying to ask them what it would take for them to be more hands-off. They probably are in some kind of pain that causes them to micromanage and maybe in a small way you can relieve that pain.
This won’t work with everyone! If your boss has ego or narcissism issues they cannot see you as an equal.
It is often a no-win situation but in some cases I still think it’s worth trying.
> One of the biggest problems in computerland is that we promote technical specialists to manage people and strategy. Many people are far more comfortable with, and nostalgic for, the craft of programming. Such a manager ends up dictating solutions that would have been brilliant about 5 years ago, but which don’t match current practice.
Very good point. To add, technical managers who like the craft of programming often cannot understand engineers who use different approaches to delivering projects. This is because there is NO ONE WAY to perform intellectual tasks but the craftsman fails to recognize that.
Eg: If the manager prefers a PR with every corner case covered, they would never understand an iterative development strategy with smaller PRs, leading to them nitpicking on every PR. Code reviews become a toxic nightmare then.
I second this notion - other comments here are saying micromanagement is a symptom of a trust shortfall (which can be true), but where I’ve seen it most is managers who aren’t as adept at communicating direction or feedback and fall back to dictating how they would do it.
I’ve found there’s quite a bit I could do as their subordinate to coach them surprisingly - open conversation about what kind of direction was useful, what kind of feedback was valuable etc went a long way to mature their ability to manage people.
This article, written by a career engineer/non-manager it should be noted, attributes pretty incorrect intent to the micromanagers the author has apparently worked for.
It’s pretty easy to solve this, and it can be summarized as “manage upwards.”
Every micromanager does it out of a lack of trust. Not so much not trusting the specific employee, but more not trusting the specific process that generate the information and results for the process the micromanager is “managing.” They also might suck at delegation, and they also might (usually are) getting info request after info request from their bosses.
It all flows down to you as a line worker.
Either way, every micromanager I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with some really intense ones, have been solved:
0) rule out that you actually know how to do your job, as maybe your manager is really hand holding you for a reason, and that reason is you’re an unorganized mess. That aside…
1) by tactically empathizing with the manager’s plight. You don’t have to know why they’re asking for stuff, but it almost always derived from the above situations.
2) understand that the root of it, no matter the cause, is need for information.
3) figure out the timing and cause of the waves information requests, and *just start preempting them on a schedule your manager can anticipate and start to rely on*
Provide that manager every gosh darn piece of info you know they’ll ask for, and do it on a scheduled basis. This will work. It builds the manager’s trust in the process generating the results he has to manager into existence. It implicitly runs on the manager’s “needs” schedule, as you learn it and preempt it. The manager will then start looking for those 10am, 4pm updates instead of to you, as you provide them like clockwork and they’re well done and detailed.
I promise this works. It’s hard to understand why if you’ve never been in a manager role. Weak managers deal with the pressures of it by micromanaging.
Great points. One of the major roles of effective managers is to provide context on what they need to do, such that you can identify what you need to help solve their problems.
If they don't provide this context, "managing up" is effectively soliciting this context such that you can help them do their job.
At the end of the day they just want their problems solved, and if you can do this for them - with or without them - all the better.
Good points and I agree that they can help in a lot of cases. However, I would argue that, if you're an engineer and the best use of your time is to report 2 times a day, for things to be "working", it might be that you're just empowering a flawed manager / process / organization that way.
Hm perhaps, but look at it this way assuming a job/team change isn’t possible.
If you can condense a winding conversation with your manager at whatever time they decide to intrude with this behavior into a timeline and format that you control, but also works for their needs, that IMO is a significantly better outcome.
The other side of this is this tends to sort of heal micromanagers as a pleasant side effect. Managing upwards usually really tunes down the behavior to ab entirely manageable level, in most situations except the “time to leave the job” types.
I think "Trust" is the primary reason for Micromanaging. If a person doesn't trust their subordinates they try to micromanage. This just doesn't happen at work, at home as well (eg. between parents & kids).
If someone doesn't "trust" their team, I think they should also look inward at their own expectations. I've definitely seen micromanagers who should be able to trust their team but due to their own sense of pride/narcissism/whatever you want to call it, they believe they need to get personally involved.
This is a recurring joke in design, where a CEO hires a designer only to throw away all their feedback and build something hideous.
Strongly agree here. Micromanaging is a sign of a manager in over their head more than an environmental problem. It manifests as a lack of trust, but you don’t really fix the underlying cause by addressing only the lack of trust.
I don't manage people but something I've seen several times are colleagues that are very talented but are just straight up lazy. The company would lose talent if they fire them but at the same time somebody needs to be there pushing them so they finish their tasks in a reasonable amount of time.
I’m probably the exception, but I’m actually glad my relaxed/lazy boss was replaced by a micromanager early on in my career. All of my positions up until I was 22 had busy work deadlines-don’t-matter type cultures and made me an extremely lazy person. My micromanaging boss came in, lit a fire under my ass and made me realize that’s not how the real world works. I hated it at the time, but now in my 30s I realized it was probably the best thing for me.
That being said I was a poor performer, and most people probably don’t think of themselves as poor performers.
A lot of comments here about trust being the key to software dev management, with the implication being that managers should trust their subordinates. I agree with that, but also it needs to go the other way: as a subordinate you need to trust your manager; this isn't just for ICs, it goes all the way up the management chain. To be clear, this is not about your manager looking out for your interests per se—that should be table stakes since you have a mutual interest in your team's success—but rather you need to know that your manager is competent. If you haven't had much experience, this is incredibly difficult to suss out since you really don't know what's involved in management, however they should be able to engage any question you have about why they are asking things be done a certain way. If they aren't able to listen and address your concerns in a meaningful way, that's a red flag. Also, if what they are saying is not aligned with what you hear from higher-level leadership that is also a red flag.
The other thing to call out here is that the word "micromanaging" is already framing the conversation around the worst connotations of high-touch management. But the reality is that sometimes people need high-touch management at certain times in order to be successful. In an ideal team, the manager understands each subordinate well enough to give them exactly the right guardrails that they have the autonomy and decision-making power commensurate with their skill, while also leaving room for mistakes and growth. For junior to mid-level this means assigning tasks and projects, for senior to staff level this means taking more input from them and aligning with organizational priorities. At any level it's possible for an IC to feel micromanaged, which is why two-way trust and open communication are so critical.
People don't quit companies, they quit managers/bosses.
Talk to them directly about it and tell them how you _feel_ about it or move on/leave. You can also talk to their supervisor/boss/manager as a last attempt.
I've been on both sides, both as a "servant leader" and as a "servant".
Context matters. The only time I micro-managed a team myself, was when someone at the top was instigating a blame culture. I did explain all the goals in detail to the people, and explained why it mattered that we delivered exactly according to the specs, even though it wasn't really functional. Sales always blamed IT for failing to deliver according to specs, while the sales intake was actually fubarred, resulting in way too low quotes and everyone blaming IT, resulting in a negative downfall.
I have been micro-managed about 3 years ago for about 3 months, but this was when I was consulting in a highly political organisation with very complex regulation (EU airspace), so it was part of my initial training. Once trust was there I spent most of my time engaging with all the counterparts according to the explicit and implicit protocol and rules ("continuous improvement manager" for the curious, but what's in a name...)
What I have done quite a few times, is not micro-managing, but micro-coaching: sitting next to a person every waking hour available for help, assistance and spotting potential frustrations. This is usually part of a bigger, risky change trajectory where I decide to start with the one person "impossible to convert"; in a lot of cases these people actually became some of the ambassadors of the whole project, and this is a big win for such projects...
Edit: some more details regarding the "being micro-managed" part.
I was going to comment without reading TFA. I'm happy I read it because it says the same I was going to write :)
Just one nuance from experience: sometimes the micromanager tries hard not to seem like one, even to himself. I had a very humble, very caring micromanager that praised my technical competence and beat the bush for a long time but eventually second guessed everything I did.
I have my real name in my profile here so I'm not going to comment on the last straw.
My worst experience was with a manager who had no software development background. He had about 8 years of project and product management and was assigned to lead a team of 12 developers on a new initiative. Everything had to be implemented his way that he read on some blog/article even though the team would show why it doesn't apply to our use case.
Not surprisingly, people quickly started leaving one by one (including myself) and eventually his team was merged with another and he was let go. A micromanaging boss is bad, an incompetent micromanaging boss is a disaster.
I think micromanagement can be a manifestation of the pressure a person is under. It can come from outside or inside, but whenever you feel that too much is at stake you might start micromanaging.
It's hard to generalize, sometimes the issue is the boss, sometimes it's the employee and often it's both.
Managers need to understand that the goal is not and should not be 'employee performed this task exactly how I would have'. Especially if the differences aren't material. But so I often I see managers kill initiative by focusing on stylistic or minor issues. If you want it done exactly your way, do it yourself or hire a clone.
A. Your boss is not doing his job well, or
B. You are underperforming. Your boss is trying to work with you to improve performance instead of firing you
A couple of years ago I got what I thought was a dream job - my title was Research Scientist. I was working for a manager that was 20+ years younger then myself. What I didn't know going in was that he'd never managed anyone before - and suddenly he was managing 6 people.
From the start it was clear that he was in over his head. He'd come into meetings (late because he had so many meetings) and start firing questions at people like a machine gun. He wasn't listening to the answers. He wasn't listening to our input at all. He was constantly second guessing everyone in the group. He'd ask someone a question in a meeting and then after they answered he'd ask someone else if that was the right answer and keep going until he got an answer he liked.
After a couple of months he started having several of us give him 2 status reports / day. We were working on deliverables for another group and our manager clearly had not communicated with that other group to gauge their expectations - I had done that and knew what they expected and it was a lot less than what our manager thought they expected in the given timeframe (if he were right we would've all had to be pulling all-nighters for weeks and even then... well, that just doesn't work). I put up with this for about a week. I was at least 25 years older than all the others in the group and several of my coworkers were on H1B's and thus were scared to rock the boat, so I figured it was up to me. Finally I sent the manager an email in which I told him that in 30 years of work experience I had never had a manager that micromanaged to the level that he was doing and that I thought it was best if I moved on - essentially I quit. He called a hasty meeting with me for that afternoon and he was all apologetic and promised that he'd try to listen and do better as a manager. I reluctantly agreed to stay on. He did do better (at least to me, not to some of my younger coworkers) for about a month. But then he started slowly slipping back into his previous ways. I found another job and left. There was really no other alternative. I felt sorry for my coworkers who felt stuck there without any recourse. One of the other workers who was closer to my age quit the day I did - without giving 2 weeks, he was just gone - can't say as I blame him. The bottom line is that this guy should have never been allowed to manage people - and definitely not 6 people - without having had a lot of training in how to manage.
Only way to look at management is that you are there to support. You are there to provide a best possible environment where an employee can express themselves. Employee only needs one other thing from management - "What is the expectation". If expectations are set right and communicated well and reiterated frequently, you are set up for success.
One advice I've read back in the day for how to deal with a micromanaging boss was "Overwhelm them with updates" and it anecdotally always worked for me. Lucky for me there was only a couple occasions I had to deal with a boss like that.
The idea that one can 'manage' another seems very primitive to me. Every one that did good job for me did so because they genuinely wanted to do a good job, not because I 'managed' them somehow. All I did was to steer the work towards the goal. If they didn't like the work to begin with or didn't have enough skills and inclination to learn, no amount of 'management' would have corrected that situation.
The way I deal with it is by leaving the team immediately. My life is too short to put up with being treated like a slave. I am too good at programming.
> My life is too short to put up with being treated like a slave.
> logicslave 2 minutes ago
That made me chuckle. On a serious note though, why not start by talking about it first? Why not say what you're experiencing, how it makes you feel, and see how your manager responds? Unless you work in total isolation, which few of us do, we have to get along with other people. And talking about things usually is the way to go.
That may work sometimes, but most of the time you're going to run into one of two problems, and possibly both at the same time:
1) Micromanaging is often co-morbid with other bad-boss habits. These may make attempts at "managing" your boss toward improvement unrealistic and even highly ill-advised.
2) If your boss is micromanaging you, this is a strong signal that their opinion of you is already somewhere around the Earth's core (unless they just do it to everyone, but then, see #1). Your best bet is trying to honestly evaluate why there was a mis-match so it doesn't happen again (even if the problem truly is them, not you, it's worth reflecting on what exactly about them is the problem and how to spot it early next time) and look for another opportunity. That'll be much faster & more pleasant than trying to dig out of that hole.
This is all assuming all kinds of things that may or may not be true. Until you can read people's minds, validate your assumptions by communicating with people. The same argument you made can be made the other way. Maybe it's just a matter of reporting what you did, updating tickets. Maybe your manager thinks you like the attention. Maybe maybe maybe. Just talk to each other!
Managers who listen and react to what they hear don't become micromanagers. If the issue is just a matter of you not updating jira, then the chance it will come across as micromanagement is quite small.
My first job out of college, I had a manager sit behind me for 8 hours a day with the ol' "move that one pixel to the left, no, 2 pixels to the right.. no back again" after I had impressed the customer with some fast results.
I coped with it for a few days before telling him I needed to talk about his management style.
He agreed, and we went out into the atrium. There, he told me I just needed to shut up and do what I was told.
I think it's important to have an intuition for why you are being micromanaged. Sometimes it's because you're missing processes and procedures, sometimes it's because you intimidate your superior.
I imagine the former should feel like it has an obvious expiration date, where you learn the CI/CD workflow or whatever.
It almost never resolves. Ive been doing this for ten years now. People accept too much abuse from their employers, and if more just simply walked out on this behavior then we would all be better off.
I've been in the industry longer than that and I never had an issue that couldn't be at least mitigated, if not resolved through communication. Obviously it's easier to just walk out the door and that's a totally valid option. I just think it wouldn't allow me to grow in any way.
Micromanaging is complicated. When I was in a leadership position I was the happiest boss when I could let people just do their thing and come back with great results and we'd be all happy. And that's how I loved working with my bosses before as well.
But then again, I had some employees I had to micromanage. I really, really abhorred it. But there was just no other way to achieve results. The truth is probably that I should have gotten into more serious talks with those employees instead. But before you fire people, you have to invest to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.
What I am trying to say is: As an employee, try to be as a reflective person as you ask your boss to be one. Maybe your work is the reason for him/her to be micromanaging you.