My book review as a developer — The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
In my work experiences, I always feel difficult to prepare 1-on-1 with my manager. Although my manager often told me I organised well the material for 1-on-1, I still find it difficult to distinguish what’s more important for my manager. If the issue I propose is critical, my manager would put more effort on this issue. Therefore I read this book The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You and want to summarise some key points. The idea from this book works for Facebook at certain time, and the management process is constantly changing.
Your manager is your coach like in basketball game or baseball game.
I use to play basketball a lot and this is a great metaphor for me. The manager would lead your career, and also tries to win the game: At 1-on-1 with your manager you talk about what you think can win the game and what you should do.
At 1-on-1, talk about something you feel embarrassed: If you talk very superficial thing, it doesn’t touch the point and is useless. 1-on-1 is for discussing sth that you and your manager would feel embarrassed to discuss. Some items to discuss at 1-on-1:
1. Most important tasks to complete and the challenges. 2. What is superior performance so match the expectation from the manager and the staff. 3. Feedback to manager to increase efficiency. 4. What is satisfying and not satisfying in the work environment?
Don’t grab all the tasks and try to distribute them
You will have something else to do when your colleagues take over your usually work.
I feel this applies because the author works at Facebook, and my idea would be if the work is too less that you and your colleagues have to compete for the project, it’s time to consider leaving this company
Some issues are not always necessary to solve
Some people cannot work with each other because they have very different values or principles. Change their work environment is a better solution.
The situation that makes you work inefficiently
Know what situation can make your mind out of control, and leave the conflict point immediately: When someone lose their patience and offends me with the word, for example: “You are stupid!”, I will not be able to control myself. I found few developers are irritated when I asked: 1.Why do you think that approach is not useful/useless? 2. xxx library is the most popular library. you can see it has XXX stars 3. Not many companies have used the technology you proposed, and it has some difficulties like …
Feedback
How to start the conversation for giving feedback: Start with the expectation first, and you have to build trust relationship with the person.
