I once worked for a startup co-founded by people who created DirectX at Microsoft. There is a book written on how DirectX was created and what went on inside the team during those initial days of DirectX. Hence this book was available in the library of the startup where I worked. These is a very interesting statement in that book on the topic of what a manager's responsibility should be in a team. And this is what it said:
"A manager's responsibility is to remove any roadblocks from the path of an engineer. If an engineer is coming down a hallway and there is a chair in the path blocking that engineer, then it is the manager's responsibility to remove the chair from the path so that the engineer is not troubled." :)
Years ago, very early in my career, I rotated among a few teams at the company, and even then, one manager stood out as different from the others. I straight-up asked him if he had a philosophy or something, and this is what he said:
"Yeah, my job as a manager has three parts. First, get the right people for the job. Second, get them the resources they need. Third, get everything else out of their way."
Decades later, this still rings true. That team was the most productive I've ever seen.
That I very cool to hear. Only once have I had a manager with that philosophy and mindset.
He left my place of work recently and as a result I’m leaving too. Good managers are rare as leprechaun gold.
It’s a world of difference from the manager I had at my first job out of university who was more interested in their own job security and didn’t give a shit about his reports.
This always gets stated - "Removing roadblocks". But if the engineer isn't removing roadblocks on their own and collaborating with other teams, then they get labeled as "lacking initiative". People managers really don't deserve a place in the software industry. More often than not, they are the real roadblocks.
"A manager's responsibility is to remove any roadblocks from the path of an engineer. If an engineer is coming down a hallway and there is a chair in the path blocking that engineer, then it is the manager's responsibility to remove the chair from the path so that the engineer is not troubled." :)