The Manager as Player-Coach © 2024 by Mark McWiggins
I resisted management for decades, but I recently dawned on me that after decades of being an individual contributor, I’m finally ready.
I had one brief experiment as a manager back in my 30’s but I wasn’t ready for it and I lapsed back into a (mostly) satisifying and (mostly) very lucrative career.
I worked up to three jobs simultaneousely and made nearly $375K total compensation.
But starting in late 2023, my financial life started to take on more of a challenging tone.
For one thing, I was down to just one of my three jobs (making around 200K, though, and still way plenty to live on).
But first on 13 December 2013, due to a series of unfortunate events (first I lost my wallet (it was found later and returned intact). But since I was pretty sure I’d never see it again it was no surprise that I wound up at the driver’s license office at the end of the day.
When I finally got out to the parking lot, I found that (a) some idiot had parked one micrometer from the car I was driving, a Kia EV6. And then (b) I found that I couldn’t shift the car out of park.
If you want to see the details of my experience with Kia, see:
It took me two weeks to finally get out of Kia who had towed the car and where the heck it was. I finally just a couple of days before Christmas got the word that I owed the tow company $2380 or something like that. The Tow Guy said he had to be so careful getting my car out that that’s what it cost. I don’t ever argue with anybody who has my car and won’t give it back, so I paid him.
The next supremely annoying thing was that in late January, I lost the one job I had.
I have been unemployed for 3 months this time … I had been thinking that there was an ongoing labor shortage, but the shortage was repealed for 2 months or so about then.
I have been trying for far more than the 3 jobs per week I’m required to get Washington State Unemployment. So far: nothing.
For one thing, I got a little too cavalier about putting my age on the Internet, and I stopped dying my hair too. This certainly (especially the hair) could have something to do with it.
I mentioned “mostly” enjoyed my individual contributor status; here are a few parts I didn’t enjoy.
I worked for a large retailer with one very good manager; for this story I’ll call him Paul (not his real name) … but there was also a code reviewer who I’ll call Bill, who somehow got the idea that code reviews were for the convenience of the reviewer, not for the joint agreement for coding standards to be followed. I ground my teeth on this subject for at least a couple of weeks until I finally realized the guy thinks he has to look at every line of code because they didn’t have much testing at all, and no automated testing whatsover.
So rather than complain about this, I first created an automated test package using Git hooks:
This can be for testing, especially regression testing to automatically figure out who broke the build.
On breaking the build: I have had at least 1 build geek come over fuming at me for breaking his build.
See below for the way I would handle this.
But! Large Bureaucratic Organization that it was, I couldn’t get permission to use the real production git hook; I got it to work with a personal hook, but I couldn’t get the management to agree to give me access to the hooks.
I get great ideas in the middle of the night often, and I this is one of those:
I was applying for jobs last week and I got all the way through one looking for “Python” and “Remote” and didn’t notice that it was for a management gig until I was done and had sent my resume.
I started to shrug and had my usual thought “I don’t want to do that” … but then I realized I was perfectly positioned for this sort of job (IMHO) …
I have decades of computing experience, with everything from Mainframes to C/C++, Java, Clojure, Ruby, Perl … and finally Python, which I’ve been using every chance I got since 2006.
Also, there is recently a new superset of Python called Mojo that I came across in a recent issue of CACM that’s get this: 35000x(!) faster than Mojo.
Now this won’t quite compete with all C++ (some runs a million times faster), but it could certainly replace a lot of it, especially the bug-prone hard/expensive to maintain kind.
Second, here’s my management philosophy: player-coach and strictly Theory Y.
For those not familiar, Theory X is the “my way or the highway” manager. We’ve all been around these, I presume.
In Theory Y managment tries to give the workers the tools they need to get their work done, then leave them alone (don’t micromanage and don’t nitpick) and support them any way you can to help them do it.
Another thing: I have been using ChatGPT myself for the past year or so, and it’s revolutionary. I have used it myself to help figure out that Google Cloud API calls (which are clunky with a ton of parameters) after I found some (I think) bugs in the Google Cloud UI that this worked around.
Second, even though I have decades as a programmer, ChaGPT is better than I am. I even used it on one job interview!
So I intend to not only allow but encourage programmers working on my team to use this. Some people apparently think this is “cheating”, but no longer being in academia and having us all being on the same team, why the heck not! For those who aren’t familiar with it, ChatGPT produces working but (a) not necessarily highly performant and (b) almost certainly won’t fit your coding standards, assuming you have any. So talented programmers are still in demand and won’t be replaced by this generation of ChatGPT, anyway
Speaking of coding exercises for interviews, they often have no bearing whatsoever on a programmers’ actual work that they’re doing:
Better than this by far is the interview where the guy or gal has you code while watching you … I was asked to code the solution so showing the first N prime numbers. Fortunately I knew the classical solution, the Sieve of Erasthosenes … I was hacking away on it for about 15 minutes and the guy said “that’s enough”, giving me the impression that he was satisfied with my ability. (Though maybe not; I haven’t heard from them again. It’s impossible to really know for most jobs.)
Even better is the take-home exercise. This can separate the wheat from the chaff, it’s much cheaper to execute than the typical “all day interview where you meet the entire team” (assuming you’re not doing that as well after the initial take-home test).
Companies that do this often say they are looking for “cultural fit”
My response to this “hogwash!” Diversity is strength, folks, and those who don’t believe this are going to lose in the marketplace to those of us who do believe it.
This first large bureacratic organization I discussed earlier hired me without an interview. I could hardly believe it.
But after I thought about it, I realized: It’s cheaper or at least not much more expensive than just to hire somebody by audition … if 1 out of 10 fails the audition, that’s still much better than most interviews.
So if given the opportunity (depending on MY management), I would like to try this method of hiring.
Finally, automate everything automatible. Why do the same operation over and over when one could just write a Python (or Mojo) program to automate the problem into submission.
The first meeting I would have with the team would go like this:
Everybody welcome … I just want to tell you that we are all on the same side here … don’t assume I know anything you already know and I will do the same. Please feel free to ask me any question (almost) any time and I’d like to be able to do the same to you.
Also there are plenty of snacks for you, healthy ones based on my reading of the literature … carbs and chips and whatnot, but without any seed oils. And meat like beef jerky snacks in various flavors … the cafeteria will have similar fare at a steeply reduced price for workers. They can eat full Atkins if they want or a standard mixed sort of American diet, with none of the rotten seed oils. We will also have various breads and deli meats (prepacakaged so not to bring listeria into work) and condiments. We don’t want you to be hungry!
And for anyone wondering where I got these ideas, it’s from a book I would love any of you to read that are interested. It’s The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. We will have 10 copies in the company lending library for you to check out.
There is a state called “Flow” that we need to be able to do our best work. This allows you to be supremely productive and work toward our common goal of getting lots of excellent work done. So everyone will have “flow hours” where they shouldn’t be interrupted. We can have a secure place to store your phone when you’re in this state, and we won’t interrupt you unless there’s something involved with your family or something involving your physical safety like a fire alarm. For the former, please make sure that your families have my email address and phone number so I can come and rouse you if there’s some family emergency …
The meeting would also have a graphic of what Urgent means, translated into the native language of anyone on the team who’s at all not a native English speaker.
Urgent, n. : meaning it JUST CAN’T WAIT.
I intend to put up a graphic with this in all those different languages because I was dealing with a Uber driver that had shaky english but wondered if it was good enough to be presentable in polite company.
That way everyone will be on the same page with what the word means.
And I will go out of my way to say: whatever YOU think is urgent, feel free to interrupt me even if I’m in Do Not Disturb/flow state. Because that’s the primary responsibililty I have is to you folks, not my own flow state.
Also I think the build breaking should be culturally attuned to whoever broke the build. I see the build break message coming from a Grandma type figure, from the culture that the person is from. My (nice) grandma — I had another that was not quite so nice ..would have said there there Mark, have a coke it’s going to be OK. But the Grandma figure should be culturally attuned to the person who broke the build. The message should go like this:
There there, sugar, you put in a line of code that broke the build. Our display lights up to show you the exact section of code that’s at fault.
There’s nothing you need to do; our automated systems really handle getting it set up right. So this culturally attuned Grandma avatar (built by whatever video tools we can afford as a company) would say shake it off, take some time to walk around the block, relax from being upset, whatever you need until you’re ready to get back into flow.
Now think if you have a completely brilliant PHD female or transgender or whatever. If you have this culturally tuned Grandma figure going the distance out of her way to make the person feel comfortable … then this peson will be thrilled to keep working with us and should be able to resist the siren song of startups giving the sun, the moon and the stars (as Pele said when he got his contract.)
Well, that’s it. It’s currently 3:43 am (we had a couple of unfortunate episodes this evening too.)
Update: 5/30/2024:
I thought of this employee perk: clothing branded with the company logo as well as all the other type of company swag that rich companies use: keychains, golf equipment, etc., etc.
I am not a fashion consultant by any means but I do know the difference between a well-tailored and well-made cotton polo shirt and the cheap knockoff teeshirts that many companies use as their complete clothing option. Imagine going to a party and seeing a lot of beautiful looking young people including a stunning PHD actuary Indian woman wearing a Sari with a subtle brand icon of YOURCOMPANY.
The older person engages the young PHD and she says it’s the best job she’s ever had, the company treats her like a human, etc., etc. The older person says “hm, I’ve seen the TV commercials but I never considered YOURCOMPANY.
As for golf, I’m an old very white guy and I have had a golf hat that covers me from head to ears … imagine this branded with YOURCOMPANY … also golf bags and balls (Titleist or other good quality balls rebranded, thanks.)
If you like this description of my management ideas and want to hire me … thanks! My number is 425–369–8286.
References:
Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister, Peopleware (latest edition)
Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
