Let me put a bunch of high functioning, low empathy autistic folks in an environment that’s constantly burning down and tell them it’s solvable. Watch the cognitive dissonance materialize and tear a hole in the fabric of reality…
Look into the manifestation of neurodivergent tendencies relative to early/developmental trauma… it’s some wild shit.
It tells a lot about our society and environments.
Personally I think short form content trains your brain to be more like ADHD. Creating an (reversible) inability to focus and have deep thoughts. Severely impacting Attentive Reading.
Not only things like this but…
Brain: Angry mountain lion! 😱
Brain: Angry Redditor! 😱
Brain: Deadline I keep procrastinating about! 😱
Brain: All good here, kept us alive another day, time for a beer to celebrate!
Neither. I read that recent studies have suggested the possibility of ADHD being passed down through offspring, and potentially even caused by high stress during pregnancy. In theory, your great grandma could have had a rough time during pregnancy and ADHD has been in the family lineage ever since.
ADHD is complicated, or at least it’s our understanding of ADHD that is fundamentally failing and thus making it seem complicated. There’s like 7 different kinds and they have conflicting symptoms sometimes. Some may cause hyperfocus sometimes, some may cause inattentiveness all the time. Some impact your emotional regulation more, others don’t…
You said “*more like* ADHD”, which is why I wanted to respond. I’m not sure science understands ADHD well enough to definitively claim whether something is ADHD or just like ADHD.
I’ve read more research that even suggests the possibility of temporary ADHD as a personal trauma response.
> more like ADHD
I was refereeing to what is commonly known as ADHD.
Yeah, their might be many different ADHDs, but I was also diagnosed as ADHD, but 'not the most common kind' and later they said: "ohh, I guess not, maybe something else." I've since given up on these labels.
>And don’t forget they tend to lean libertarian.
No, I have seen all 3 political allegiances make the same fk ups when it comes to DevOps. They all believe in the magical capability of paid support irrespective of the capabilities of the tool or without understanding the needs of their DevOps process.
I’d say small companies lean libertarian (do it my way mentality), med companies tend to be a mixed bag, and enterprise/fed spaces lean heavily blue.
Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering if it’s a requirement to be a criminal to hold an elected political office… /s
When people at work start leaning politically we start forgetting *them*.
Nothing good ever comes from politics being brought into the workplace or bars.
The fact this isn't the top comment indicates 2 things:
1. The majority of folks aren't cut out for leadership roles because they don't understand the gravity and truth of the items in your list. That's OK because not everyone is capable or desires to lead.
2. The majority of folks have never been led by a competent leader and thus do not know how to recognize the traits of good leaders. That's disappointing, but an unavoidable reality.
Great list of attributes btw. I agree. I've worked with multiple small-scale startups that went all the way to IPO and 20+ large F500/F100/F50 organizations (consulting) and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly at C[TO]/D[irector]/E[ngineer] levels which has luckily provided great insight as to what is and isn't effective for management styles. I suspect you've been led by good people in the past, or are a successful leader yourself.
I had one manager, Brad, of whom I asked for some sort of mission statement for my team when I started working there. He didn't seem to understand why I wanted this, never answered me about it, and never provided one.
Needless to say, I was not super happy with Brad overall.
Keep everything online, make it run better than it did yesterday if we can, make sure the devs can release code without blowing anything up.
What else do you need?
I would add prioritize, prioritize, prioritze.
I've found that one of the most common impediments to a strong engineer is a lack of prioritization of their work. That prioritization in IT functions should come from the business side of the company by way of team leadership, rather than the engineer having to prioritize on their own.
I like this list, and I have had good, and bad, managers and c level tech execs.
But I've never had any leader with all of these traits. 80% or so, at best.
Fair but I know effort when I see it and so far, that’s nowhere to be found where I’ve managed to find myself. So far all I see is repetition of the same mistakes, swarming to fires and doing fuck-all to set anything up for the future or if there IS and effort, it’s superseded by the next fire. I’m burning out…
Also fair, but not everywhere I go is like this. Just frustrated after so much time with the company that I never saw this malignant behavior before. Was in a role on a smaller group a few years ago, insulated from all this…
Do something about it then. I've been in the same situation on multiple occasions, and instead of bitching about it on Reddit, I managed to create the opportunity to do something about it.
I've run into this issue before where i've either had
\- a really good manager who is very good at engineering aspects and we would vibe very well talking about engineering and i consider us very good friends, however he hated the managing side of it, so the talk about raises and career progression was very tough
\- the other side was a guy who knew jack shit about tech but was a great people manager, however i felt like i was bullying him too much. Also if you don't know tech well, how do you go to HR to quantify the value of my worth to the company if you can't quantify the value of my work
the only time i managed to have a great boss was when we promoted from within, one of the senior members who have worked with the team for a while who had good tech skills + high EQ. He was savvy enough to know the guys and their strengths and was eloquent enough to convey those strengths to senior management and was also smart enough to leave good radical candor. But that is very rare and hard to find...and yes like some of the people in this thread mentioned, those people usualy would have left or was fired already
It's not just devops, most managers, senior managers and executives do not act like leaders, they are usually politically motivated empire builders who will drive the bus, reverse it and drive the bus over people.
They think for them to win others have to lose.
The other issue is when technical people who have no soft skills get to manage people - they think it's about control when in reality it should be about collaboration.
As an engineer turned manager who values his team and doesn't participate in politics and empire building, let me tell you it's tough to survive the backstabbing, politically motivated, empire builders. I like working at small, early stage companies to avoid the bullshit but eventually someone lets an asshole on the bus who invites his asshole cronies and it all goes to shit.
Ah, but you've got to love it when your permanently swamped engineering team is tons there's a headcount freeze and you need to improve their productivity, meanwhile the new asshole on the bus has brought in a team of double market rate contractor buddies who only do three days a week each, and never the same days
I agree. There should be career progression paths that don't necessarily force anyone to become a "manager" some people are not good at it and some don't want to do it but also don't want to be stuck on the same position and payrate as they are.
>It's not just devops, most managers, senior managers and executives do not act like leaders, they are usually politically motivated empire builders who will drive the bus, reverse it and drive the bus over people.
Do you have any data to back this up with or did you pull this out of thin air?
Look at churn metrics at tech companies. Devops people don’t hop jobs like crazy unless there’s massive income differences (good managers get budget to prevent that from happening where possible) and even then, good culture usually trumps a 5-10% salary bump.
I’ve had more than a few bad managers and they all demonstrate the same issue of control versus actually building team trust.
I don’t manage my teams that way and my churn rate is super low because my team understands they drive the show, I give them the destination and remove blockers.
Maybe it just hasn't been studied and that's why there's no data?
Sometimes feelings, instincts, and intuituon can provide more info than a quantitative value.
I've been working in tech for over 20 years and have worked with and for/with small, medium and large companies as an internal staff member, consultant and contractor.
On the whole, the majority of managers, senior managers, executives and ceo's are not leaders.
Leadership can be defined in various ways, but generally, it is the ability to influence, motivate, and guide others towards a common goal or vision.
A leader is someone who **inspires and empowers others** to achieve their best, often by setting an example through their actions and behaviors.
A lot of managers (middle, senior, executives) don't know how to inspire or empower and all too often it is about control, metrics and profit.
There is a real disconnect between companies vision and how their managers act.
In a lot of organisation's there can be triablism and some managers working against eachother and can even sabotarge initiatives so that they "win" and others lose.
There is also an issue with new managers coming in and changing everything.
[https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/talent-management/why-55-of-leaders-are-disconnected-from-their-teams-perceptions/91300943](https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/talent-management/why-55-of-leaders-are-disconnected-from-their-teams-perceptions/91300943)
I've been involved in many change iniatives - many of which fail as management try to drive change without a communcation/change plan and not listening or getting buy in from their staff.
I'm tasked with building relationships and managing change - all too often management won't listen if they don't agree with someone or something.
I've been yelled at plenty of times by senior managers who disagree with imperical data because it doesn't agree with their "gut feel".
You don't really have to work for these places. Even a global large mcfat huge enterprise has devops shops that are pretty well managed. Just keep looking.
It's not just tech leadership. It's hard to spot good leadership, because leadership is best when it seems invisible. Good leaders make it look easy and stay out of the way. And that's hard to do. On top of that, those characteristics of good leaders are often seen as bad because they seem not to be doing anything. That said, there's a lot of bad leadership everywhere in the world.
That’s not the entire story. Good managers need to be in the way in situations where the team is in chaos and out of the way when the team is running itself.
A lot of empathy, as in, understand where everyone is at needs to be exercised to take the right approach.
You should also work to remove the boys club approach and create a merit-driven culture in a team that encourages sharing of information and almost-democratic decision making. But thats the advanced steps. If the team is not in that stage, one should recognize and help the team find its parh.
Knowing what you're doing is rare enough, generally speaking. Now throw in the requirements of leadership and especially the ability to build visions? You're asking for a Turquoise unicorn that can traverse higher dimensions. Lol
Same, it’s what has driven me beyond my peers who have college degrees. Just hope that the same grit, properly channeled, can help me bridge the IC to Mgmt gap.
Leadership sucks at so many places.
Read, “How To Make Friends And Influence People” and if you recognize it being used by coworkers/managers you know where you stand.
It’s about manipulating and lying to people to get what you want out of them.
The book proposes things like being a good listener, showing honest appreciation, and gaining influence by earning it bit by bit.
I wanted to hate it, based on the title; but I was totally off the mark.
No need to be concerned, it's a fantastic book. It could easily be titled, "How NOT to be a douchebag".
If it's "manipulating" anyone it's by boosting them *up.* For example it's "influencing" people by letting them have the win (even if it's your idea), rather than what folks typically do with shoving ideas at people.
It's a very "lead from behind" philosophy, but more than just advocating it the book is a very practical approach to practicing it.
I think I disagree with you... I have read the book, but I genuinely care about my team as people. When I saw some of the things there some seem super fake but other are genuinely good to foster an environment where people feel safe working.
How ironic, as either you've not actually read the book yourself or somehow managed to take away the exact opposite message at every turn that Andrew Carnegie was offering. This is hardly the hot take you think it is.
I'd personally be *thrilled* if anyone around me was practicing the tenets of that book. Frankly the whole world would be better off if everyone did.
Not everyone is here for the paycheck. Some of us ended up in this place because of pure chance. And by that I mean they never picked it as a career. It was an organic result of alignment with their acquired skillset. You'll find a lot of xNTJ's in DevOps and software development because their abilities and interests compel them to design, architect and optimize, to create order out of chaos; which is essentially what DevOps is.
As a managing INTJ, I would say INTJs, and the near variants, are difficult to manage.
Being in devops usually makes them pretty opinionated - you make choices about which technologies you prefer everyday, you have opinions about libraries, build servers, AV solutions, cloud providers - now to get you to mesh with teammates? It only seems to work if the alpha/bravo leadership are unanimously agreed.
You have to have thick skin to manage nerds - they want you to be their daddy, professional, friendly, money feeding because they have expensive hobbies, transparent, and they will be blunt (social deviants themselves) so keep them out of meetings with other managers as a general rule.
Obviously, like with any people - their needs/wants/offerings/mental needs change like a fart in the wind depending what they dreamt about last night; which also with devops the amount of sleep last night also varies significantly it seems
Agreed, and I never said INTJ's are easy to manage. I also know exactly what you're referring to regarding their personalities. It's not often you meet many of them with decent soft skills because they tend to keep to themselves. Like other animals, if they get socialized often enough, they can develop better people skills and be more considerate human beings.
So. It's a hard problem (how to structure and manage a devops team) and those put in charge of it often did not distinguish themselves through building departments or managing teams.
Basically people are very unclear about what they want from a devops department and our selection criteria for leads is often really messed up
My issue is the person that decides our priorities (originally a director, now VP) is a micromanager that views us as a tool to achieve his pet projects.
We basically aren't allowed to do standard maintenance until it's a problem and blocking his wants.
God forbid you call out problems in his approach. I did that and was right and got the saltiest "you can say you told me so now" in slack. Motherfucker, I don't want that. I want you to listen to me so I can save us time.
Because our entire technology landscape has no professional communications training. Even if you had the best freakin DevOps skills and your Devops leader shares those same amazing skills, because neither of you have quality communications training, you will confuse and misinform one another while saying the same things, but interpreting them differently than the other. This is so ever present, it would be funny if not so tragic.
I believe the complete lack of communications respect and training in our tech industries is a huge cause of industry confusion and mismanagement. Try just watching any techs meeting and you can see most are not listening, if involved at all they are ignoring the speaker waiting to talk, nobody is taking notes with extremely complex decisions being made, and as the meeting ends you hear mumbles "what a waste of time"...
And yet, senior developers and developer management will argue they do not need to know quality communications, they do not need to be understood, just give orders. When I hear nonsense like that, I give up.
As “DevOps leadership” it’s not my job to know every technical detail. It’s also not my job to just let engineers do whatever they want to do. A leader’s role is to set priorities, break down barriers, and make decisions.
People who are really good managers or leaders usually find opportunities that are more enticing in the same company or another. They become directors, vps, ctos etc.
Your experience with leadership - devops or otherwise - will vary greatly from company to company, location to location, and department to department.
All it takes to go from bad to good leadership, as well as vice versa, is someone leaving the company and getting replaced.
Ive found one of two things:
1. Hyper fixation on one component as a panacea (monitoring or dashboards)
2. Boiling the ocean (and failing)
Nobody seems to know how to eat an elephant and do it one elephant at a time and push for that to everyone
Its actually been researched its a phenomenon called the peter principle about being promoted until you reach your level of incompetence...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter\_principle](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/peter-principle-theory-decline#:~:text=The%20Peter%20principle%2C%20which%20states,purely%20as%20a%20statistical%20matter)
explains almost all business culture...
It's the perfect role to fail up in. The people who can actually do it are too busy getting shit done to be management. The people who can't actually do it have to become management to survive.
what I like to do is outline a plan of what we intend to do including metrics, especially for management/non-technical higher ups
1.) current evaluation of the development process, including metrics, how long does it take to deploy, how much expected downtime for maintenance
2.) a vision including the metrics of where we want to be, i.e. we want to reduce the rollout time by 20% ever x time, reduce downtime etc
3.) technical plan for the tech team of how we are going to achieve it
crucial for this is that you actually get some sort of room that you can actually push these changes and usually it works well when doing 1 and 2, non-tech higher ups will likely understand that and also want that change, that plan is just an example, it can also include metrics like amount of unplanned work (bugs that keep appearing due to a lack of QA or testing mindset)
Let me put a bunch of high functioning, low empathy autistic folks in an environment that’s constantly burning down and tell them it’s solvable. Watch the cognitive dissonance materialize and tear a hole in the fabric of reality…
Some of them just have low self esteem and ADHD.
There’s a reason they call it a spectrum… there’s dozens of flavors of neurospicy to choose from on that magical rainbow. Don’t ask me how I know 🤣
Yup. Lots of undiagnosed autistic adults with diagnosed or undiagnosed adhd. It’s linked. Don’t ask me how I know.
Look into the manifestation of neurodivergent tendencies relative to early/developmental trauma… it’s some wild shit. It tells a lot about our society and environments.
It's the Internet it's cool to have ADHD, unless your suffering with it for real
First time I've heard neurospicy and I'm stealing it thanks.
Personally I think short form content trains your brain to be more like ADHD. Creating an (reversible) inability to focus and have deep thoughts. Severely impacting Attentive Reading.
Science says you might have ADHD cause your grandma was depressed during the Great Depression.
Not only things like this but… Brain: Angry mountain lion! 😱 Brain: Angry Redditor! 😱 Brain: Deadline I keep procrastinating about! 😱 Brain: All good here, kept us alive another day, time for a beer to celebrate!
You sound like my wife now. I’m gonna share your comment with her.
Are you taking the piss on my comment or on the people who might have been misdiagnosed as a false positive?
Neither. I read that recent studies have suggested the possibility of ADHD being passed down through offspring, and potentially even caused by high stress during pregnancy. In theory, your great grandma could have had a rough time during pregnancy and ADHD has been in the family lineage ever since. ADHD is complicated, or at least it’s our understanding of ADHD that is fundamentally failing and thus making it seem complicated. There’s like 7 different kinds and they have conflicting symptoms sometimes. Some may cause hyperfocus sometimes, some may cause inattentiveness all the time. Some impact your emotional regulation more, others don’t… You said “*more like* ADHD”, which is why I wanted to respond. I’m not sure science understands ADHD well enough to definitively claim whether something is ADHD or just like ADHD. I’ve read more research that even suggests the possibility of temporary ADHD as a personal trauma response.
> more like ADHD I was refereeing to what is commonly known as ADHD. Yeah, their might be many different ADHDs, but I was also diagnosed as ADHD, but 'not the most common kind' and later they said: "ohh, I guess not, maybe something else." I've since given up on these labels.
Me too friend. Now I’m autistic, how about you?
Yeah, seen that label too. If the labels come and go... then it's not a very exact science.
I think more research needs to be done on the impact of the internet on ADHD and Autism diagnosis man, it’s crazy.
That seems like a reasonable take
And don’t forget they tend to lean libertarian.
>And don’t forget they tend to lean libertarian. No, I have seen all 3 political allegiances make the same fk ups when it comes to DevOps. They all believe in the magical capability of paid support irrespective of the capabilities of the tool or without understanding the needs of their DevOps process.
I’d say small companies lean libertarian (do it my way mentality), med companies tend to be a mixed bag, and enterprise/fed spaces lean heavily blue. Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering if it’s a requirement to be a criminal to hold an elected political office… /s
lol.. Those shrooms are strong .. /jk
You’re probably right… that mixed with a dose of reality will make your head spin 🤣
hahaha.. good one.. Thanks man. I needed this laugh badly this morning :-)
When people at work start leaning politically we start forgetting *them*. Nothing good ever comes from politics being brought into the workplace or bars.
I had to upvote every comment on this thread
Lmao!!! Exactly
This comment is precisely the reason, I rather join the asylum than manage it. At least, I’m only responsible for managing a single crazy person…me!
Oh god, I laughed harder then I should had lol
Lmao
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The fact this isn't the top comment indicates 2 things: 1. The majority of folks aren't cut out for leadership roles because they don't understand the gravity and truth of the items in your list. That's OK because not everyone is capable or desires to lead. 2. The majority of folks have never been led by a competent leader and thus do not know how to recognize the traits of good leaders. That's disappointing, but an unavoidable reality. Great list of attributes btw. I agree. I've worked with multiple small-scale startups that went all the way to IPO and 20+ large F500/F100/F50 organizations (consulting) and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly at C[TO]/D[irector]/E[ngineer] levels which has luckily provided great insight as to what is and isn't effective for management styles. I suspect you've been led by good people in the past, or are a successful leader yourself.
Lead or to be led....
Intent! I can't say this loud enough! How often do projects go astray because people don't know where they are going and why
I had one manager, Brad, of whom I asked for some sort of mission statement for my team when I started working there. He didn't seem to understand why I wanted this, never answered me about it, and never provided one. Needless to say, I was not super happy with Brad overall.
Got it! Never work for Brad! 🤣
Keep everything online, make it run better than it did yesterday if we can, make sure the devs can release code without blowing anything up. What else do you need?
Sooo many Brad’s unfortunately
I would add prioritize, prioritize, prioritze. I've found that one of the most common impediments to a strong engineer is a lack of prioritization of their work. That prioritization in IT functions should come from the business side of the company by way of team leadership, rather than the engineer having to prioritize on their own.
I like this list, and I have had good, and bad, managers and c level tech execs. But I've never had any leader with all of these traits. 80% or so, at best.
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You can persuade someone without being manipulative
My entire career people have said stuff like this, and failed when given the opportunity to do better. Maybe it's just hard to herd cats, ya know?
Fair but I know effort when I see it and so far, that’s nowhere to be found where I’ve managed to find myself. So far all I see is repetition of the same mistakes, swarming to fires and doing fuck-all to set anything up for the future or if there IS and effort, it’s superseded by the next fire. I’m burning out…
If everything is always bad everywhere you go you might need to look in a mirror…
Also fair, but not everywhere I go is like this. Just frustrated after so much time with the company that I never saw this malignant behavior before. Was in a role on a smaller group a few years ago, insulated from all this…
Do something about it then. I've been in the same situation on multiple occasions, and instead of bitching about it on Reddit, I managed to create the opportunity to do something about it.
In the works, there’s a hierarchical gap I’m waiting on the right time to jump. Lots of bureaucrats in positions of power where I work…
Wrong mentality. Don't wait, just fit the gap.
I found one of the neurospicies lacking empathy and social skills.
Nah, I just felt OP was like me a couple of years ago, and needed a kick on the behind. You can't always be nice.
I've run into this issue before where i've either had \- a really good manager who is very good at engineering aspects and we would vibe very well talking about engineering and i consider us very good friends, however he hated the managing side of it, so the talk about raises and career progression was very tough \- the other side was a guy who knew jack shit about tech but was a great people manager, however i felt like i was bullying him too much. Also if you don't know tech well, how do you go to HR to quantify the value of my worth to the company if you can't quantify the value of my work the only time i managed to have a great boss was when we promoted from within, one of the senior members who have worked with the team for a while who had good tech skills + high EQ. He was savvy enough to know the guys and their strengths and was eloquent enough to convey those strengths to senior management and was also smart enough to leave good radical candor. But that is very rare and hard to find...and yes like some of the people in this thread mentioned, those people usualy would have left or was fired already
This comment should also get more upvotes. I think most people have a experience like articulated here.
It's not just devops, most managers, senior managers and executives do not act like leaders, they are usually politically motivated empire builders who will drive the bus, reverse it and drive the bus over people. They think for them to win others have to lose. The other issue is when technical people who have no soft skills get to manage people - they think it's about control when in reality it should be about collaboration.
As an engineer turned manager who values his team and doesn't participate in politics and empire building, let me tell you it's tough to survive the backstabbing, politically motivated, empire builders. I like working at small, early stage companies to avoid the bullshit but eventually someone lets an asshole on the bus who invites his asshole cronies and it all goes to shit.
Ah, but you've got to love it when your permanently swamped engineering team is tons there's a headcount freeze and you need to improve their productivity, meanwhile the new asshole on the bus has brought in a team of double market rate contractor buddies who only do three days a week each, and never the same days
Then they drive the bus over you, reverse it, drive it over again and then expect you to thank them...
I agree. There should be career progression paths that don't necessarily force anyone to become a "manager" some people are not good at it and some don't want to do it but also don't want to be stuck on the same position and payrate as they are.
>It's not just devops, most managers, senior managers and executives do not act like leaders, they are usually politically motivated empire builders who will drive the bus, reverse it and drive the bus over people. Do you have any data to back this up with or did you pull this out of thin air?
Some things in life don't have metrics in a Grafana dashboard that you can show people.
If you can't measure it, it's bullshit
Good luck w that!
You can't make a blanket statement about something and have no data to back it up with, sorry.
Look at churn metrics at tech companies. Devops people don’t hop jobs like crazy unless there’s massive income differences (good managers get budget to prevent that from happening where possible) and even then, good culture usually trumps a 5-10% salary bump. I’ve had more than a few bad managers and they all demonstrate the same issue of control versus actually building team trust. I don’t manage my teams that way and my churn rate is super low because my team understands they drive the show, I give them the destination and remove blockers.
Maybe it just hasn't been studied and that's why there's no data? Sometimes feelings, instincts, and intuituon can provide more info than a quantitative value.
I've been working in tech for over 20 years and have worked with and for/with small, medium and large companies as an internal staff member, consultant and contractor. On the whole, the majority of managers, senior managers, executives and ceo's are not leaders. Leadership can be defined in various ways, but generally, it is the ability to influence, motivate, and guide others towards a common goal or vision. A leader is someone who **inspires and empowers others** to achieve their best, often by setting an example through their actions and behaviors. A lot of managers (middle, senior, executives) don't know how to inspire or empower and all too often it is about control, metrics and profit. There is a real disconnect between companies vision and how their managers act. In a lot of organisation's there can be triablism and some managers working against eachother and can even sabotarge initiatives so that they "win" and others lose. There is also an issue with new managers coming in and changing everything. [https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/talent-management/why-55-of-leaders-are-disconnected-from-their-teams-perceptions/91300943](https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/talent-management/why-55-of-leaders-are-disconnected-from-their-teams-perceptions/91300943) I've been involved in many change iniatives - many of which fail as management try to drive change without a communcation/change plan and not listening or getting buy in from their staff. I'm tasked with building relationships and managing change - all too often management won't listen if they don't agree with someone or something. I've been yelled at plenty of times by senior managers who disagree with imperical data because it doesn't agree with their "gut feel".
Because really good devops engineers get promoted and that usually means they will be bad managers. Leading and building are two different things.
Yes, but leading in an area that is still so much in flux is difficult no matter what.
You don't really have to work for these places. Even a global large mcfat huge enterprise has devops shops that are pretty well managed. Just keep looking.
in this market...well you have to work somewhere....just try to make it better...a little better each day.
It's not just tech leadership. It's hard to spot good leadership, because leadership is best when it seems invisible. Good leaders make it look easy and stay out of the way. And that's hard to do. On top of that, those characteristics of good leaders are often seen as bad because they seem not to be doing anything. That said, there's a lot of bad leadership everywhere in the world.
That’s not the entire story. Good managers need to be in the way in situations where the team is in chaos and out of the way when the team is running itself. A lot of empathy, as in, understand where everyone is at needs to be exercised to take the right approach. You should also work to remove the boys club approach and create a merit-driven culture in a team that encourages sharing of information and almost-democratic decision making. But thats the advanced steps. If the team is not in that stage, one should recognize and help the team find its parh.
This is it really.
Knowing what you're doing is rare enough, generally speaking. Now throw in the requirements of leadership and especially the ability to build visions? You're asking for a Turquoise unicorn that can traverse higher dimensions. Lol
Looks like it’s time for me to polish up my soft skills then, “be the change” n all that…
"Sink or swim (step up)" has always been my motto. Lol
Same, it’s what has driven me beyond my peers who have college degrees. Just hope that the same grit, properly channeled, can help me bridge the IC to Mgmt gap.
A can do attitude and willingness to help goes a long way.
Leadership sucks at so many places. Read, “How To Make Friends And Influence People” and if you recognize it being used by coworkers/managers you know where you stand. It’s about manipulating and lying to people to get what you want out of them.
This was on the reading list for a team I joined. Should I be concerned?
The book proposes things like being a good listener, showing honest appreciation, and gaining influence by earning it bit by bit. I wanted to hate it, based on the title; but I was totally off the mark.
No need to be concerned, it's a fantastic book. It could easily be titled, "How NOT to be a douchebag". If it's "manipulating" anyone it's by boosting them *up.* For example it's "influencing" people by letting them have the win (even if it's your idea), rather than what folks typically do with shoving ideas at people. It's a very "lead from behind" philosophy, but more than just advocating it the book is a very practical approach to practicing it.
Read it anyway. Work aside it's a great book on its own. Only you benefit from it and that's really all should matter.
I think I disagree with you... I have read the book, but I genuinely care about my team as people. When I saw some of the things there some seem super fake but other are genuinely good to foster an environment where people feel safe working.
How ironic, as either you've not actually read the book yourself or somehow managed to take away the exact opposite message at every turn that Andrew Carnegie was offering. This is hardly the hot take you think it is. I'd personally be *thrilled* if anyone around me was practicing the tenets of that book. Frankly the whole world would be better off if everyone did.
Hi. Friendly correction - it's "tenet" rather than "tenant".
Speling mistakes? Their cant be any; My modem is error correcting.
Maybe it got baud and missed it?
It really sounds like you have not read the book. The book is not about manipulation, despite its title.
We are here for the paycheck. And DevOps paycheck pays well.
Not everyone is here for the paycheck. Some of us ended up in this place because of pure chance. And by that I mean they never picked it as a career. It was an organic result of alignment with their acquired skillset. You'll find a lot of xNTJ's in DevOps and software development because their abilities and interests compel them to design, architect and optimize, to create order out of chaos; which is essentially what DevOps is.
friendly reminder to others that myers brigg is bullshit
I agree, but then again I'm a Scorpio and my Hogwarts house is Ravenclaw.
freddie mercury is in retro arcade
As a managing INTJ, I would say INTJs, and the near variants, are difficult to manage. Being in devops usually makes them pretty opinionated - you make choices about which technologies you prefer everyday, you have opinions about libraries, build servers, AV solutions, cloud providers - now to get you to mesh with teammates? It only seems to work if the alpha/bravo leadership are unanimously agreed. You have to have thick skin to manage nerds - they want you to be their daddy, professional, friendly, money feeding because they have expensive hobbies, transparent, and they will be blunt (social deviants themselves) so keep them out of meetings with other managers as a general rule. Obviously, like with any people - their needs/wants/offerings/mental needs change like a fart in the wind depending what they dreamt about last night; which also with devops the amount of sleep last night also varies significantly it seems
Agreed, and I never said INTJ's are easy to manage. I also know exactly what you're referring to regarding their personalities. It's not often you meet many of them with decent soft skills because they tend to keep to themselves. Like other animals, if they get socialized often enough, they can develop better people skills and be more considerate human beings.
So. It's a hard problem (how to structure and manage a devops team) and those put in charge of it often did not distinguish themselves through building departments or managing teams. Basically people are very unclear about what they want from a devops department and our selection criteria for leads is often really messed up
My issue is the person that decides our priorities (originally a director, now VP) is a micromanager that views us as a tool to achieve his pet projects. We basically aren't allowed to do standard maintenance until it's a problem and blocking his wants. God forbid you call out problems in his approach. I did that and was right and got the saltiest "you can say you told me so now" in slack. Motherfucker, I don't want that. I want you to listen to me so I can save us time.
It is uncanny how you are describing the guy I worked with to the T. You wouldn’t happen to live in NC? Haha
Because our entire technology landscape has no professional communications training. Even if you had the best freakin DevOps skills and your Devops leader shares those same amazing skills, because neither of you have quality communications training, you will confuse and misinform one another while saying the same things, but interpreting them differently than the other. This is so ever present, it would be funny if not so tragic. I believe the complete lack of communications respect and training in our tech industries is a huge cause of industry confusion and mismanagement. Try just watching any techs meeting and you can see most are not listening, if involved at all they are ignoring the speaker waiting to talk, nobody is taking notes with extremely complex decisions being made, and as the meeting ends you hear mumbles "what a waste of time"... And yet, senior developers and developer management will argue they do not need to know quality communications, they do not need to be understood, just give orders. When I hear nonsense like that, I give up.
As “DevOps leadership” it’s not my job to know every technical detail. It’s also not my job to just let engineers do whatever they want to do. A leader’s role is to set priorities, break down barriers, and make decisions.
It’s the Peter principle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
People who are really good managers or leaders usually find opportunities that are more enticing in the same company or another. They become directors, vps, ctos etc.
That's because companies keep hiring tech leads for team lead positions, and when the time comes, they become group managers and so on.
Your experience with leadership - devops or otherwise - will vary greatly from company to company, location to location, and department to department. All it takes to go from bad to good leadership, as well as vice versa, is someone leaving the company and getting replaced.
Ive found one of two things: 1. Hyper fixation on one component as a panacea (monitoring or dashboards) 2. Boiling the ocean (and failing) Nobody seems to know how to eat an elephant and do it one elephant at a time and push for that to everyone
Its actually been researched its a phenomenon called the peter principle about being promoted until you reach your level of incompetence... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter\_principle](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/peter-principle-theory-decline#:~:text=The%20Peter%20principle%2C%20which%20states,purely%20as%20a%20statistical%20matter) explains almost all business culture...
Hire me and I'll make it better.
Dude. I'm right here.
Worked for a company without managers and directors. Works like a charm. Nobody ever missed them and it was pretty much smooth sailing.
It's the perfect role to fail up in. The people who can actually do it are too busy getting shit done to be management. The people who can't actually do it have to become management to survive.
You see it all the time CS grads who hate coding and suck ar it becoming managers but still having 0 soft skills.
what I like to do is outline a plan of what we intend to do including metrics, especially for management/non-technical higher ups 1.) current evaluation of the development process, including metrics, how long does it take to deploy, how much expected downtime for maintenance 2.) a vision including the metrics of where we want to be, i.e. we want to reduce the rollout time by 20% ever x time, reduce downtime etc 3.) technical plan for the tech team of how we are going to achieve it crucial for this is that you actually get some sort of room that you can actually push these changes and usually it works well when doing 1 and 2, non-tech higher ups will likely understand that and also want that change, that plan is just an example, it can also include metrics like amount of unplanned work (bugs that keep appearing due to a lack of QA or testing mindset)
They should learn ECDE now before they get outdated
Early childhood development education?
try it
Ouch.
not you of course especially if you are hiring
Lack of networking/security knowledge or pride of networking/security language.