On Great Managers

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/via https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/average-manager-vs-great-manager-cf8a2e30907d
Do you trust your managers?
Do they have your back?
Do they look out for you, help you grow, provide helpful feedback, and, in general, make you willing to walk through hell with them?
Do they help you find — and exceed! — your limits, give you enough rope to fail, but make sure that you don’t fail (often! you need to learn!)?
Do they go to bat for you, and protect you from the insanity going on above them?
Do they give you enough “political” context for you to be informed, but not so much that it turns corrosive?
Do you trust your managers?
If the answers to the above are all “Yes” then you have rare gems for managers! Learn from them, follow them wherever they go, and don’t worry — they’ll push you out of the nest when it’s time for you to fly.
And, of course, don’t forget to reciprocate — if they call and ask for help in the future, say “yes” .
One corollary though — do differentiate between your manager, and your company. Your company is only as good as the management team, and, well, management teams change. A few bad quarters can result in the “no layoffs” policy biting the dust, a dev team being Riffed, and you on the receiving end of (maybe!) a month of severance, a COBRA disclosure, and mortgage payments to make.
Your manager, OTOH, is the one who wrangles those critical extra few weeks of severance, calls around his/her network to help you land on your feet, and follows up to make sure that you are doing well.
So yeah, trust your manager, but not your company.
And always, always, remember — No Sociopaths, No Assholes.
Coda: What answers would your reports give if they were asked the above questions?

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