> If judges and counter-intel agents regularly fail at this, isn't it foolish to think that eng. managers have some secret sauce?
But I'm not interrogating prisoners about terrorist plots. I'm not regularly dealing with scam artists and criminals.
I'm dealing with people, my staff, folks that I trust and respect; trust and respect based on years of experience working together, building relationships, while solving hard problems.
The question was: "How do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought?"
Well, guess what? I am never, ever, going to have a perfect, 100% guaranteed sense of how productive people are. That's not how the world works. There is no "secret sauce", nor did I claim there was.
Your mistake is in thinking I'm trying to verify, with perfect accuracy, precisely how effectively everyone is performing and whether they're living up to their claims of productivity and effectiveness. I can only guess this is based on a misconception of what management is; that my job is to be a surrogate helicopter parent, policing everyone to make sure they're doing their jobs properly.
But that's not my job. Or, at least, it sure isn't how I do my job.
Rather, my goal is to hire good team members who are independent, driven, focused, and reliable; give them challenging problems and the support they need to solve them; coach them to be effective contributors; identify strengths and amplify them; identify areas for improvement and coach/train; identify long-term aspirations and career goals and set out plans to achieve them; when they achieve those goals, to recognize that fact in changes to title/roles/responsibilities.
In short, I treat them like functioning, responsible adults and not like adversaries or closet criminals.
And so, I talk to them.
As I said before, yes, there is always "the rare possibility that I could end up the victim of a sociopath who deliberately tries to abuse that trust."
But I'm not interrogating prisoners about terrorist plots. I'm not regularly dealing with scam artists and criminals.
I'm dealing with people, my staff, folks that I trust and respect; trust and respect based on years of experience working together, building relationships, while solving hard problems.
The question was: "How do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought?"
Well, guess what? I am never, ever, going to have a perfect, 100% guaranteed sense of how productive people are. That's not how the world works. There is no "secret sauce", nor did I claim there was.
Your mistake is in thinking I'm trying to verify, with perfect accuracy, precisely how effectively everyone is performing and whether they're living up to their claims of productivity and effectiveness. I can only guess this is based on a misconception of what management is; that my job is to be a surrogate helicopter parent, policing everyone to make sure they're doing their jobs properly.
But that's not my job. Or, at least, it sure isn't how I do my job.
Rather, my goal is to hire good team members who are independent, driven, focused, and reliable; give them challenging problems and the support they need to solve them; coach them to be effective contributors; identify strengths and amplify them; identify areas for improvement and coach/train; identify long-term aspirations and career goals and set out plans to achieve them; when they achieve those goals, to recognize that fact in changes to title/roles/responsibilities.
In short, I treat them like functioning, responsible adults and not like adversaries or closet criminals.
And so, I talk to them.
As I said before, yes, there is always "the rare possibility that I could end up the victim of a sociopath who deliberately tries to abuse that trust."
And I'm fine with that.