Manager: How come I go on vacation for 2 weeks and you are able to start, complete, and ship an entire sprint in that time where as when I'm around, the same amount of work takes months? I even got COMPLIMENTS from *the client* about how smoothly things went while I was gone...THIS IS COMPLETELY EMBARRASSING AND UNACCEPTABLE!

Dev: Well. I cancelled all of the status meetings, created tickets with clear expectations, didn't change those expectations, didn't add every idea that popped into the client's head during those two weeks to the current sprint, didn't pull anyone off their tickets to teach me to code, cut the budget for making degrading comments to zero, and incentivised everyone to work by allowing a half days on fridays to work on personal projects if we stayed on schedule.

Manager: THAT'S NOT YOUR JOB! I'M THE MANAGER AND ALL. OF. THOSE. THINGS. ARE. MY JOB! NOT YOURS!

Dev: ...I know.

Lol

Is this a real story OP?

@MammaNeedHummus It was a fun week while it lasted, team really came together to stick it to him. Made me *almost* even consider a future in leadership.

...🤮

Man, sometimes I also have that feeling that I would be more efficient if I‘d be doing someone else‘s job 😅

But in your case it‘s obviously not just a feeling 😄

@MammaNeedHummus I guess I haven't posted in awhile. This guy used to give me postable content weekly, you must have joined DevRant after he calmed down for a bit. Check my post history. He's.... where all my karma came from 😬.

@boombodies ooooooh some goodies there thxs

You have turned lemons into lemonade. Congrats!

Now track the business metrics (the language of managers) and show how much money you saved with your management decisions. Then present this to upper management.

@boombodies Leadership is great. Management is not… you led. 👊🏼

Translation: Stop making me look bad!

"You are right, this is completely embarrassing and unacceptable."

So we'll have people here that will say "Things that didn't happen for 100", but trust me, for a short time this works very well. Clients will have no manager to speak to and can't come up with new bullshit ideas. The manager above the manager will know he's on holidays so they will not drop their bullshit as well. However, if this manager was on holidays for like ... three weeks or more, then the next best senior dev would be the target of all management related crap.

Morale of story: Every time you think your manager is shit, remind yourself that management above is at least as crappy or even worse ;)

@Demolishun I'm reminded one time I did that and showed we could $1 USD Million a year, they wasn't interested in changing anything !

Shortly after I left, the not so old boss was pushed into early retirement and a new broom installed.

They cut something like 1/3 of the staff to get rid of the deadwood as a starting point !

I hear productivity is up since. :-)

@boombodies

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Made me *almost* even consider a future in leadership.

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Why not ?

When I went from shop floor to management, it was great to be able to make things happen better.

@CodingTripledad

I'm reminded of a garage I know, it doesn't have a manager..

If you can bypass the front desk people and just stick to communication directly with the mechanics, things go a lot better !

@Nanos I love code too much. I've looked into management a bit and read a couple books on it, but I would never feel comfortable interviewing for managerial roles and the decision to move away from code would hurt my ability to stay on top of it. If I knew someone was being underpaid for their skills I wouldn't see that as a "win", if I successfully scapegoated another department for something that was my fault I wouldn't feel proud of that, and if I did some thing illegal in order to prop up my KPIs I would have trouble sleeping at night. I'm just not cut out for the role. I'd rather accumulate as much respect and reputation as a competent and trustworthy bottom runger than try to compete in the narcisisstic, power hungry, overvalued, and exploitative world of management.

@boombodies In my last management position, I worked at the coal face and did my management duties too.

So you don't necessarily have go give up coding, just spend more time doing that and management work !

If you saw someone underpaid for their skills, you could try and make sure they was paid their worth.

Something easier to do when you have more power.

You don't have to scapegoat other departments, you can play fair.

You don't necessarily have to work in management to tinker with KPI's..

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I'm just not cut out for the role.

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Fair enough.

I did find the world of management more competitive, having to attend pointless meetings where I could make everyone else's life awkward by pointing out all the things they haven't done yet.

Having to read all the documentation so I was ahead of everyone else.

Finding loopholes to exploit to get things done.

Being able to send 50+ emails a day to various department heads to tell them to do X and Y !

@MammaNeedHummus most ofthe times, it is crafted to make op look better while making others look bad

This is honestly why more developer-led agencies need to happen. I don’t blame most managers, but most of them are just ignorant as to the best ways to lead a team.

Gotta love the tags

@chonky-quiche I blame modern management training, its awful !

They try and teach you almost all the wrong things.

Go back to 1920's books on management to get an idea on how to do things the right way !

@Nanos

Are they turning this guidance into strategies?

@CodingTripledad Wise comment. Management duties comes and goes in waves and many teams can benefit from being without one a full time manager for some weeks per year but not forever

We had a manager that left and our dev lead took the responsibility for a while - worked better than ever for a month but then they slowly got so backed up they had to stop developing and soon they demanded a full time manager cause they couldn't handle it

@Demolishun That could explain everything. :-(

Every country seems to have one of those manuals for use against other countries that are on their naughty list.

One of the many reasons we should all try and get on with each other and stop having wars all the time.

I notice here we manage to get on pretty well most of the time !