Do you need managers in IT?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin seriously believed that their company managers had no reason. In 2002, they tried to build a horizontal organizational structure - without managers, directing programmers. So, they believed, nothing would interfere with the rapid exchange and the emergence of ideas. In addition, they wanted to recreate the atmosphere of student life, which they liked so much at university. The experiment did not last long: after a few months it had to be stopped. Brin and Page changed their opinion about the internal structure of the company, when employees pushed the page to Page with questions that were far from creative: with financial reports, complaints against each other, etc. And when the company began to grow, its founders were convinced that managers are useful in other ways: they explain the strategy, the importance of projects and their order, establish cooperation in the team, monitor the career growth of people and ensure that all work processes and systems meet the objectives business.

Nevertheless, many developers still believe that they do not need managers. Is it so? Let's figure it out together.

When a manager is bad
Very often, developers are unhappy with managers. Instead of writing code and thinking about the perfect architecture, they are forced to fill out some reports and do other boring and incomprehensible work. Managers are often absent from the workplace, take part in a huge number of meetings, and the result of their work is very difficult to measure in lines of code, and this is just the measure for which the customer pays as a result.
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The share of truth (and, very significant) in this view is. Very often, managers, in order to justify the absence of any results of their work, force their subordinates to draw daily reports, to record every step, for example, the time spent in visiting the smoking room, in order to imitate the turbulent management activities. Some managers deal only with those who “implement the process”, conduct Scramovsky’s five minutes and organize meetings on every occasion.

The first rule of a bad manager: do not know what to do - organize a rally.

The reason that many IT managers are not very competent is that we do not have a full-fledged educational institution that would train managers with an IT bias. Therefore, managers are often either very bad, or very good developers, or those who have never worked in IT, but speak good English. In all these cases, having a manager on a project rather hurts the project than helps.

In one company, where about ten project managers worked in the department, a small survey was conducted on the topic: did they read the book “Deadline: a novel about project management”. The result was stunning: no one read the book. No one asked about Brooks and his mythical man-month.

Why no one is training managers? Let's do arithmetic. In order to make a manager from an IT specialist, it takes from 0.5 year (almost perfect and rarely occurring in the wild case of IT) to four years. The average duration of an IT specialist in a company is a year / a half. Thus, if a company starts to invest money in the transformation process of an IT-manager, then competitors will take advantage of the work of this training. Therefore, companies are happy to teach IT specialists in refresher courses, but are not ready to invest in the training of managers.

So what should an IT person do in this case? First, decide whether he wants to be a manager in the future. If the answer is yes, then starting somewhere from the middle level, you need to start reading books on psychology, risk management and project management in parallel with books on technologies.

When a manager is good

And yet, why are managers needed? At first, the articles by Page and Brin answered the question a little: explain the strategy, the significance of the projects and their sequence, establish cooperation in the team, monitor the career growth of people and ensure that all work processes and systems meet the objectives of the business.

We want to add to the piggy bank some more important tasks of the manager.

Problem number 1: to be a wall between customers and performers

Somehow one of our friends, while still quite young, happened to play the role of “23-year-old seigneur” (as well as the role of team-lead) for one very serious customer (Fortune 100). The project was not technically challenging, but difficult from the point of view of integration and hardware requirements. For the integration, a separate machine was allocated (on the customer side), where everything started up safely. But the engineers of this customer seemed not enough and they decided to deploy the system on a personal laptop, as well as on a working computer. And at some point the system did not start. It took a long time to figure out why, and problems arose one after another.

This could continue for quite a long time if the manager had not intervened in the situation. He forbade the customer’s engineers to assign tasks to the contractor without his knowledge and deploy the system on an unproven hardware. After this intervention, the situation settled down, the developer stopped pulling, and the project was successfully delivered after a few days.

Problem number 2: take responsibility for the entire project

“We have problems with the project,” said once the top manager of the company for whom the project was being made. The developer has gone cold inside. “But don't worry, this is not your area of ​​responsibility,” he added.

It is worth remembering one simple thought: the programmer is Kodit, the manager responds. If the programmer is bad, the manager is guilty, because he didn’t follow the project and / or hired the wrong employee.

Yes, the manager gets more buns, but his responsibility is much higher.

Task number 3: to ensure the achievement of the goal in conditions of limited access to resources

And he needs to guarantee the achievement of the goals of both the customer and the performers. This is rarely possible. After all, the manager faces a million different problems: lack of and insufficient number of personnel, time and budget, an evil or incompetent customer, lack of expertise, etc.

But if the manager can guarantee the result, then it does not matter where, how much and how it works. Moreover, a manager who will work 7-8 hours a day is guaranteed to fill up the project. The manager must pay for his decisions and the final result. Ideally, the manager should receive the basic income in the form of bonuses for projects completed on time, and not for the number of hours spent in linkedin or skype.

Objective number 4: to be a motivator and follow the development of subordinates

If the developers asked us which company would be best to work with, we would have answered without hesitation: the one where they will have an adequate manager (even if they have half the money to pay there).

In one of the companies, the programmer received a great deal of credibility from his manager. The trust consisted in full approval of the decisions made by him (the programmer), autonomy of work, assistance in organizing developer meetings, training courses and trips to various conferences. The result was not long in coming: a new department was opened for 5-6 people; The knowledge gained at the events was introduced into the workflow, and the projects began to use modern technologies and tools. Total? All offers of other companies (including offers with a higher salary) were rejected by the programmer for a year and a half without a drop of regret.

What is he, the perfect manager?

In Google, there are 8 qualities of good managers:

1. A sensitive mentor.
2. It gives the team freedom and does not control every step.
3. Follows the success of subordinates and tries to help.
4. Competent and focused on results.
5. Able to talk with people - listens and shares information.
6. Helps subordinates to make a career.
7. Has a clear idea of ​​the future of his group and understands the strategy of its work.
8. Possesses basic professional skills, therefore can give advice to the group.

We would add the following to this portrait: the ideal manager must be competent in copyright issues, risk management, in such areas as psychology, motivation, resource management, jurisprudence, and must also possess a number of additional qualities: sociability, hardness, justice, adequacy.

Ideal managers are few, but if a person with such qualities and skills accidentally gets you, excellent results will not take long to wait.