The 8 Jobs of Management

[swyxio]

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published: true category: note cover_image: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173915686-6f215bf1-09ba-4427-986c-ddd54a8fe3cf.png

Recently, John Cutler tweeted a chart on the view of management:

This was a rehash of work he did in 2019. I found this compelling because it breaks down the jobs of a manager in a nonprescriptive and visual way that made a lot of sense to me, even though some classifications felt off.

I will rearrange some of the specific choices to match my thinking:

1. Motivator/Team Builder: You must motivate your team individually and as a group.
2. Role model/Expert: Be someone that has personal credibility on doing the job well.
3. Teacher/Mentor/Coach: Be someone that can teach others to do their job well.
4. Champion/Sponsor: Help your reports advance in their careers (within the company if possible).
5. Go-between/Shield: Filter external chaos, Say no to overload/bad fit
6. Process designer/Organizer: Define processes for how things are done, redefine them when it needs to improve. Organize chaos.
7. Goal setter/Driver: Assign goals to the right people, Hold people accountable to reach them.
8. Recruiter. Most managers at rapidly growing companies report spending 20-30% of their time recruiting.

There's enough here that you can feasibly spend 1 day a week on each job and still not have enough days in the week. Being able to share tips and systems (to reduce cost) and effectively multiplex (to improve responsiveness) is key to handle all these well.

[swyxio]

Another article on eng management responsibilities (and rights) that was popular recently: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/an-engineering-managers-bill-of-rights-and-responsibilities/

[swyxio]

planetscale management contract is short and sweet: https://gist.github.com/samlambert/c004c6c264b71d79afe3a981818f6053

[supertopher]

this a pretty cool comment/blog system. And I like the post. good around around :)