Currently having a product manager with micro managing tendencies. When he’s writing tasks for us, he doesn’t always describe the actual problem, but instead try to “help us” by describing what he believe will solve the problem. Kind of like the XY problem, but it’s the product manager doing it.
So often it’s a struggle to identify when a task is a “XY problem” task. It’s not always obvious.
I had a new VP start and immediately was DMing me on slack asking for details on every thread i was in.
3 months in and continues the trend but then started having 1-1s with my team to further get details and question the decisions being made
6 months in I had a talk wiht him about this level of micromanagement as it still had not changed and it was all “I have no idea” “I don’t feel like i’m being that bad” “I don’t agree”
7 months in I’m looking for a new job and his boss is asking “why” after i informed him since the interview and constantly over the last 6 months that I could tell he was a micromanager type
I feel for you. My director likes to tell us how to solution things (i.e. how to develop software) because he was a dev long ago (not even an architect) and he has an aneurysm every time we say, “but this way is better.” He’d rather arm wrestle with other teams to make his process the best process than let us do something that works just as well within the current landscape. I also demo to him WAY more than the people that will actually use the product (i.e. internal teams).
I did, actually. One was a “good” manager because both my team and the customer were fully committed to agile and he (along with the tech lead/senior dev) ensured requirements were well-defined and locked by the time they reached the team; the other was good 'cos she kept all the shit from upstream management - many layers or course - from hitting the team’s fan (we noticed when she left).
These are the exceptions.
Let me rephrase: do management tasks require someone full-time and/or can they be diluted throughout the team? Does one need to be managed to work well?
it just depends on the specifics. a manager (or management team) can theoretically offload administrative stuff in big organizations that would overwhelm everyone at the edge to distribute
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