Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Third Edition

© Michael Lopp 2016

Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, 10.1007/978-1-4842-2158-7_2

2. Managers Are Not Evil

Start with a basic understanding of where managers come from and what they do

Michael Lopp¹ 

(1)Los Gatos, California, USA

A trusted employee, who has been working in my group at the startup for years, asks, “What, exactly, do you do?”

Slack.

Jawed.

Amazement.

This guy always tells me the straight dope, so I knew he was asking because he honestly does not know.

Let’s recap my day. I got to work just after 8 a.m. After my usual 30 minutes of scrubbing and answering e-mail, I did a quick check of tech news, taking a quick pulse of the planet, and then it’s off to my first meeting. It’s my boss’s staff and it runs for almost two hours as usual. After that ...