> I am saying having to deal with things like your manager asking you to force your team to come to work becase he wants to see the office alive, but not bothering to take the responsibility on the decision.
Moving up the ladder means dealing with requests that may be ill informed from a ground-level perspective, your job as a manager is to reconcile those things. It's impossible to make an accurate read on the situation based on what you're posting here. On one hand, maybe your boss is incompetent and not doing his job, on the other hand maybe he's making a reasonable ask and it's you that's failing to see the big picture and how to navigate the situation. Either way, you should be getting on the same page privately. Make your case 1:1, but if you're not able to influence then you have to disagree and commit.
What doesn't help is to air your dirty laundry publicly—either within the team or anonymously in a public forum like HN. It might feel good to vent in the moment, but it doesn't help morale of the team, and ultimately it does not help improve the situation so the team can do their best work.
I did not say where I work or who these people are, I am not publicly airing anything, it's an example I gave to explain the problems people may face "moving up the ladder" which are much more complex to deal with as the personal opinions and management style are much less comparable in short term, compared to coding, and end up easily becoming a religious war (just like this conversation) and obviously the team is shielded and not aware of these discussions, but it sucks to be in that room and having to commit on doing things that go against your beliefs around culture and how to manage people.
At the same time some people are cut for the corporate mindset and easily align or deal with these type of situation with a more detached approach, I am glad you handle this better than me. I still care about my values :)
This is not a religious issue for me, as I stated I don't have the information to judge the situation, my goal was just to reflect how your initial message struck me as someone who has been in software engineering for 25 year and seen a lot of failure modes from all levels of leadership, management and ICs. Feel free to take it or leave it.
It's less than 25 years (about 15) but very intense, and yeah I have had the luck to work in very different environments, countries and type of companies and I have seen amazing leaders and ICs and pretty average middle managers (the "average" part has nothing to do with personal performance, but average processes win over great individuals every time).
I wanted to highlight that the higher you get in the ladder, the more the processes get you and suppress the individual qualities (good or bad).
Sorry if my answer came out a bit negative, I am just saying that as an IC you are not exposed to these type of problems (as a matter of fact I have never experienced these types of problems as an IC).
thanks for sharing your opinions!
Moving up the ladder means dealing with requests that may be ill informed from a ground-level perspective, your job as a manager is to reconcile those things. It's impossible to make an accurate read on the situation based on what you're posting here. On one hand, maybe your boss is incompetent and not doing his job, on the other hand maybe he's making a reasonable ask and it's you that's failing to see the big picture and how to navigate the situation. Either way, you should be getting on the same page privately. Make your case 1:1, but if you're not able to influence then you have to disagree and commit.
What doesn't help is to air your dirty laundry publicly—either within the team or anonymously in a public forum like HN. It might feel good to vent in the moment, but it doesn't help morale of the team, and ultimately it does not help improve the situation so the team can do their best work.