Questions tagged [people-management]

Questions relating to people management ie the practice of recruiting, training, engaging, and retaining people to optimize their talent and maximize their productivity.

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17 votes
5 answers
9k views

I think I am micromanaged. What should I do? [closed]

I've been in a big company for several years and recently had a new manager coming in. He is pretty senior in terms of working years, but he didn't work in big corporations before and I feel this is ...
  • 331
3 votes
1 answer
807 views

Does managing interns count as managerial experience?

Very straightforward question as stated in the title. I am a mid/senior level individual contributor in a technical field, with experience in creating and leading projects across teams in a company (...
5 votes
4 answers
966 views

"Undelegate" tasks from ineffective coworker?

I'm a lead software developer for a team of 4 (including myself). Part of my job is to occasionally delegate development tasks to team members. One of my team members is ineffective and requires a lot ...
  • 153
24 votes
5 answers
8k views

Managing voluntary help I am giving remotely

Background: I left a small company after completing a few big projects. The people with know-how were already merely a few, and none really had sufficient knowledge of my domain. Even those people are ...
  • 775
23 votes
5 answers
8k views

Am I doing anything wrong by getting a greeting card for an employee who is leaving?

An employee gave her two weeks notice. This employee had worked for the company for 4 years then left the company. Then came back to the company after 6 months into a new position. Now one year later, ...
-5 votes
7 answers
1k views

How to convince my overseas manager that my new hire is incompetent?

I am a manager in two person office in Asia Pacific (APAC), which is part of a global company that has offices all around the world. I recruited another person so that in my absence support could be ...
38 votes
10 answers
19k views

Struggling to motivate new employee

I currently have a direct report who I'm struggling with. He has some good attributes, but is not really stepping up to the level we expected of him when we hired him and when he was in onboarding. ...
  • 1,123
-2 votes
2 answers
808 views

how to maintain work life balance

I (senior resource) used to work for a startup and the working hours were (14-16hrs/day) so i joined a new company recently. Now, the team is assigned a task and it involves a lot of POCing, and R&...
  • 822
-5 votes
6 answers
664 views

Employees' Engagement in Virtual Meetings

We are a growing company with 12 employees. We all work virtually and meet in the office once a month or two. Office meetings are efficient compared to virtual meetings, but as everyone is working in ...
22 votes
4 answers
2k views

How to deal with new manager that humiliates a team member (me and occasionally others) almost daily

There is a new manager in my company that has been put in charge of a pretty new project. Company culture is generally good, supportive, and empathetic. The new manager seemed to be that way in the ...
20 votes
7 answers
14k views

Handle a subordinate who gives priority to office extracurricular over the actual billable work

I have no experience of team handling. Recently, a junior staff member was hired to work under me. He has been good in his work. Recently, he has started focusing more on office extracurricular ...
  • 2,425
0 votes
2 answers
416 views

How do I ask my manager for a Intern to Full Time Employee Conversion?

So, it's been 6 weeks since my internship started. It's gonna end in like 4 weeks. I have a mid internship review coming up which would be like a 1:1 with my manager. So I am planning to know his ...
  • 463
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

How to deal with passive management style ("come to me, I won't come to you")

TL;DR What are your options with a manager with "passive" management style, very little teamwork, knowledge sharing, bad onboarding for new employees, very little meetings and no incentive ...
  • 176
11 votes
4 answers
1k views

Do you share your grumble about company stuff you don't agree upon with people who report to you?

“Gripes go up, not down.” Say you got a task from your boss and feel awkward with it. You state to the boss you are uneasy with the task, but still, he asks you to do it. Then you take it to your ...
  • 5,385
6 votes
4 answers
2k views

Delivery of message to underperformers

For me I always thought that in regards to performance a direct and early feedback with concrete examples is what is the correct approach or at least what everyone wants. Being a new manager I am not ...
  • 2,180
38 votes
12 answers
11k views

How would you standardize on-call expectations across software teams when they've diverged at the same salary level?

I manage a couple of software teams for a fintech SaaS product. We generally expect teams to maintain an on-call rotation among the devs so that there's someone to contact in case of an off hours ...
6 votes
4 answers
2k views

Handling Employee Who Would Rather Complain Than Learn

I was recently promoted to manager and I have this employee who, to put it nicely, is... difficult. They interned over the summer for the past few summers and didn't seem to enjoy working here, but ...
-5 votes
1 answer
463 views

Is having to do repetitive work all day a sign that my organization is under-staffed?

Is having to do repetitive work all day a sign that my organization is under-staffed? I have an advanced degree and my job is basically pressing the same 12 buttons repeatedly all day and writing ...
user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
2k views

How can I protect myself from a sexual predator at work?

I’m an eighteen year old female, and I just started my first day at my new work placement as a farm-hand. I spent 2 weeks searching for a work placement so I was very excited and grateful. I’m afraid ...
74 votes
14 answers
29k views

Team member regularly ignores "back to office" policy

A while back, the company announced a "Two days in the office" policy after working mostly remotely for the past two years. So every week, we are expected to work three times from home and ...
  • 5,385
1 vote
2 answers
1k views

How do I tactfully tell a problematic colleague that doesn't get the hint that I don't want to interact with him outside work?

I was recently promoted to team leader, and I have several colleagues that I'm close, and some I would consider friends. I have two colleagues that I would like to distance myself from for various ...
0 votes
2 answers
529 views

How to "swap" team leads without upsetting the current one?

One of the teams in my department has a team lead that's not quite fit for the job - he is great on the technical and professional level but not made to lead a team. One of his guys has expressed an ...
  • 417
30 votes
8 answers
11k views

How do I provide clear goals for a PIP when the developer's mistakes are ambiguous and varied?

Context: I recently joined a software development company as a manager where previously my team of developers did not have a formal manager. The oversight given to the developers was unsupportive at ...
  • 309
32 votes
13 answers
18k views

Reasons someone would avoid working on career growth

In my team I wanted to dedicate time for people's growth. I gave each of them some material and actions to do, to start working together on a development plan. All my team members started on this and ...
  • 2,180
1 vote
3 answers
1k views

How to be professional with subordinates my company doesn't want to have anything to do with anymore?

I am a manager in an EU company of about 300 people in 3 countries. My company also had (until last week) a branch in Moscow with about 75 people. This branch generated about 25/30% of my company ...
-4 votes
2 answers
378 views

Are regular 1:1 meetings really that important?

Are regular 1:1 meetings really that important ? I guess that for many people the answer is, of course. But I have been working for a Beijing local company for 11 years, managing a team around 10 ...
46 votes
11 answers
11k views

How do I leave a company on good terms if my project manager views leaving the company as a form of betrayal?

I work as a software engineer under direct supervision of a project manager. Since I became employed, the project manager started trusting me more and more and now there's a lot of trust between us. ...
-3 votes
1 answer
503 views

Does the Manager's manager need to know disputes in teams?

I was reading about conflict resolution and I read a good approach, if a situation is considered as a conflict that wont resolve by itself, is to start with the manager calling an informal and private ...
  • 2,180
-2 votes
2 answers
299 views

Negative feedback but the other person is unaware of issue [closed]

This is a question for managers. When someone in your team approaches you to complain/give negative feedback about a team member does it matter to you, and how you handle things, if they have not ...
  • 2,180
48 votes
21 answers
22k views

How should I deal with new trainees when, after a course, they are not able to do even a simple related task?

The company has hired four new people in the office. Each of them stated that they like IT and that they would've become software developers but none of them had any experience in IT industry. So I'm ...
  • 630
-4 votes
3 answers
524 views

Why can other people work abroad but my partner can't - is this discrimination?

My partner is really going through it at the moment... she works in the UK at a tech startup going through some fairly aggressive acquisition management changes, which are having affects on morale. ...
8 votes
4 answers
2k views

How to work with a boss that prefers to work with the opposite sex?

TLDR: my line manager prefers to give's me a higher workload and smaller deadlines, asks me to coach his new hires but then questions my professionalism in front of the junior team members, shows ...
  • 101
81 votes
18 answers
27k views

Preventing an exodus of other employees while mass firing others? One developer holds a lot of sway?

We are a company that tries to be "strong in performance management" (I know, a poor euphemism for throwing people out) and today we terminated about 10% of the company for a variety of ...
  • 675
7 votes
6 answers
2k views

As a former manager am I responsible for sharing personal information with management

I am a former manager at company Z. A couple of years ago I accepted a management position at company A. Both A and Z companies are part of a larger contract, with Company A being prime. I was ...
17 votes
1 answer
7k views

Parting gift for departing manager for which I didn't contribute hasn't arrived, and I'm the one supposed to give it to him

I've been working in a multinational company for a few months now and I've noticed that, at least in the European branch, every time something "big" comes up (like a wedding or someone ...
  • 969
2 votes
3 answers
761 views

How to complete the handover and manage someone who applied for your job?

I received exciting news that I was successful in gaining a management position with a company I have wanted to work for. While this is exciting, I will be managing colleagues who have been working ...
0 votes
3 answers
1k views

Colleague frequently late, often when manager is not present

I work for a micro company with less than 10 employees and the working atmosphere is generally good and everyone gets along most of the time. One gripe is that people are on time but there is one ...
  • 129
83 votes
10 answers
18k views

How can I discourage my new hire from working such long hours?

I've recently hired a new mid-level developer (not a junior but not a senior yet) and have been really impressed with their performance. My only complaint about them is that I get work-related emails ...
  • 711
2 votes
4 answers
956 views

I am a marketing manager who keeps being bossed around by all the other departments

I work for a start-up that's been growing super fast in the last months. I'm their marketing manager and I work alone, I have no team. All the other teams are big yet they keep focused on their niche ...
  • 1,433
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is the most effective way to deal with insolent team member?

I am the leader of a tech team. One of my colleagues, who was only one grade lower than me, not only satirized and antagonized me in public but also questioned or satirized me in the work chat group ...
-1 votes
1 answer
265 views

What is the difference between technical coaching and mentoring?

I have seen people using both the terms for similar situations. I do not find much difference between the two. Could someone help me understand the difference between technical coaching vs mentoring ...
  • 323
1 vote
2 answers
593 views

How to clarify what my role is and how I can make an impact?

I am a 46 year old engineering manager, with 20 years of experience in the software industry, for a team of 8 people (who are mostly automation engineers in a product-based company) for the last year. ...
  • 21
1 vote
3 answers
354 views

How to gain business acumen while in a business analyst role?

Sorry for the long post. I'm working in an e-commerce firm. I have 4 years of experience working with SQL, Python and a handful of BI Tools that I have grown very comfortable working with. I feel that ...
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

Why do managers feel it's a good idea to do untrustworthy behaviour?

It's fairly routinely known that a lot of employees don't trust their managers, and I've certainly experienced that myself from time to time. https://www.careersingovernment.com/tools/gov-talk/career-...
  • 1,013
3 votes
3 answers
1k views

What titles can we use to indicate seniority other than 'Senior'

I am leading a team of SW engineers. Recently, in our enterprise, it was decided to not use Sr./Jr. titles because they had been abused. The argumentation is that some people were given these titles ...
  • 579
1 vote
1 answer
957 views

How many direct reports should/could an engineering manager have? It depends

Currently a senior dev and being offered a chance to move into an Engineering Manager position focusing on personnel. Reading the web, it seems that some say 5-7 is the max and others have 30-40 under ...
  • 139
25 votes
6 answers
14k views

Is it a standard practice for a manager to know their direct reports' salaries? [closed]

Is it a standard practice for a manager to know their direct reports' salaries? Additionally, what are the pros and cons of a manager knowing this information? I realise this may be different ...
2 votes
3 answers
542 views

What is the efficient way to track an employee's working hours? [closed]

I haven't needed to manage a business's time management system since the days of a physical time sheet, as such, I'm rather antiquated! Our company is in catering, and we bill our clients based on the ...
5 votes
2 answers
379 views

Coaching someone outside my own skill set

I was a software developer for twenty years before moving into management. For most of my programming career I did not work with Business Analysts (BAs); in fact the very concept of the position ...
2 votes
5 answers
4k views

How to be a manager if I hate being a manager and just did it for career reasons? I need to do a passable job

I got promoted to team lead at my company a couple weeks ago. I don't really want the job, but it pays more than even principal engineer, and I was a senior engineer before. I basically neglect half ...