Missives from the 6th Floor

Goal: Manage and lead the core platform systems engineering team. Put in place long term architecture necessary to solve key problems.

Feedback: This was an area of high success. Dan has gone a very good job of managing his team; from running the group tightly, communicating well, proactively soliciting feedback, and working very well with other groups. Many more "seasoned" managers could take notes from his success here. He has done well in making the transition from individual contributor to team manager in very short order. There are still likely management challenges ahead which will test his skills in this area, and one repeated detracting comment here is his lack of availability.

The trouble is, I'm not doing anything other than exercising common sense - I'm paying attention to my guys, making sure that I step in to resolve issues when needed (preferably before they become issues) while giving them wide latitude to do their jobs.

Surely that's not all there is to good management.

The only bits of negative feedback I got were expected. My guys observed that it's often difficult to get ad-hoc time with me, which I'm working on getting better at. I get pulled in several directions on a given day, and often spend the majority of my time in meetings, which I still consider a "distraction" from "real work" (i.e. designing/writing software).

But probably my favorite bit was this:

Needs to watch cynicism though around larger team and avoid becoming a negative element.

Me? Cynical? Christ, I was almost born that way. If I'm the chipper one in a group, it's probably a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Actually, truth be told, I'd like to think that what he meant to say was "skepticism." I don't think I'm generally very cynical, but I am generally skeptical, and I don't see that as a bad thing. If ideas can't stand up in the face of rigorous questioning, well, better to weed them out early, I say.

Anyway - I was hoping for some more "actionable" feedback - that I need to do more of X, or less of Y. I guess I should be happy that we're five by five, but that external perception doesn't agree with my internal dissatisfaction.

That's probably the root of the thing.

I don't feel like I'm adding value in my management role, and at some level I don't want to allow myself to be convinced otherwise.

Must ponder....