Yeah totally, and I think your earlier point about these things being designed by committee explains a lot of this. I onboarded at a place where I had to use this map of people’s desks to find certain people. Like, I can do that, but I’m never going to need to. But whatever ops manager representing their department probably thought there should be some ops thing in there, or they fought for that software and want to make sure it gets good use or whatever. I get all that, but generally what it indicates is that no one at any point (e.g. an engineering manager) said “hey this thing is intuitive enough people don’t need training on it, and culturally my people will feel condescended to”. It’s a bad signal, and borne out in Rachel’s case by the desk and equipment stuff. And while this isn’t always the case, if they can’t get small stuff like this right, what are the odds they’ll get professional development, comp, or conflict resolution right?
Hiring (or training) good managers is very hard, even more so for engineering managers. But it’s so bad as an employee to have a manager that doesn’t advocate for you, good people will leave, and that’s just a downward spiral.
Hiring (or training) good managers is very hard, even more so for engineering managers. But it’s so bad as an employee to have a manager that doesn’t advocate for you, good people will leave, and that’s just a downward spiral.