OMG...I'm being Micromanaged

And it's nothing like those fun cars I played with as a kid (Micromachines). I was talking with a buddy the other day about my new boss. I was going over how getting a new screen up on our Intranet site was taking 3 weeks because I kept having to wait for people to test or evaluate the screen to suggest changes or report bugs. During this time period my manager has had multiple meetings with me to go over things like font size, margins between H1 tags, how many times I was querying the database, what words to use when making the documentation, where to start on the documentation, what words to use for the status, when to send out emails, what size the logo should be, etc, etc, etc. Finally after all this time, we push it off to the production web server and I thought, "Whew, now I can finally move onto other things, hoo-ray!"

Boy was I wrong. My manager calls me up at 6:00PM after I had just left for the day. He asks about the documentation. I had written documentation, but IT hadn't been finalised by this lovely process. I said that I could come in if needed to finalize it up and I'd have it sent off to him before tomorrow, I had a racquetball league to attend. After I was done with league, I took a look at my phone and saw 3 messages and 5 missed calls. Oh shit, what now.

Turns out my manager decided to do some last minute "testing" on the production server. He got an email that he decided he should not have gotten. Having gotten this email he decided that there hadn't been enough testing. His message on my phone called my testing methods (it was a simple page with 3 grids, which sent off an email when a status was changed for god sake) were "bogus". He was pissed, and while I was banging around a blue ball he decided to revert the application back to the prior version. He then thanked me for my effort on the phone and said he'd see me Monday after he got back from his trip. WTF does that mean?

I get in the next day expecting to be handed a pink slip (I'm still wondering what's going to happen on Monday). Turns out we can't replicate the bug he said he saw (I'm now requiring screen shots in any bug post, but doubt that'll help much). Everything still works fine. Nothing is wrong!

He leaves an email letting us know to have it ready for Monday morning, he'll need to do a final review. We go through and bug test more (probably going to make a test matrix in the future) to make sure it works...and it does.

Since he's been gone I've been able to completely rewrite our Corporate Intranet and add tons of features and update everything. I'm sure he will hate it and we'll need a month to go over everything, but I had fun doing it.

After this drama, I realized I was being micromanaged. This is especially ironic because earlier that day, we had a meeting where he professed how he did not want to micromanage everyone in the group (he went further to say that if he did, he was doing it the most with the IT Helpdesk [I so thought he was going to say me at the time] pity them) and we were the professionals who knew how to complete our jobs.

A quick rundown of what I'm thinking:

My Title: Senior Software Engineer

Questions:

Why am I discussing font sizes, margin space, and overall app architecture with a manager? Shouldn't I make that call?

Why is my manager doing testing at all? If a problem is there, it's my fault, blame me and make me fix the error (which obviously wasn't there).

What am I Senior of exactly?

This is my life right now at work

Friday, September 29, 2006 7:26 AM

Your Comments.

# re: OMG...I'm being Micromanaged

I'm a lead arch, developer and manager of 3 people. I worked with these people for a few years and I've learned what they can and can't seem to do on their own. In some cases, I probably micromanage but this is usually after they have failed to prove themselves or are taking way toooo long on something simple. I really try to always loosen up on the reins and let them stretch themselves. I always always encourage them to talk to me about brainstorming through a solution or just to bounce some ideas/direction off. I really don't know what my style is but I try to be flexible and let them grow or prove themselves.

Interesting conversation because I just had a conersation with my wife yesterday about here manager. He really gets under her skin sometimes because he constantly wants her to double and triple check what she did / is doing with other people. He seems to be CYA'ing himself in case something goes wrong. I had to tell her it was his management 'style' and what it appeared his motivations were. Perhpas if she looks at it that way she won't take it as personal.

Left by Scott Fauque at 10/13/2006 3:11 AM

# re: OMG...I'm being Micromanaged

I've only been here a short time. 1 screen took 4 weeks to put out even though the screen was developed by me in 2 days. The rest of the time was tweaking, and testing, and tweaking, and testing.

I think what was happening is there was a ton of pressure being put on our manager by the top people of the company to produce a flawless product. This is probably why he was so involved. Now that I have rolled that out successfully pretty much with out his help, it seems that his micromanagement style is gone.

If someone fails to prove themselves repeatedly or has the attitude of not want to learn anything, I would show them the door. I would just think it's bad business.

Right now I think I'm taking waaay to long on a simple project, but it's a brand new database, working with existing crap code, and I'm not even sure of the business requirements (but I've nailed them down now), so it's been a week process.

I think it's fine to have status reports, but you need to rely on your employees to at leave move things forward. If they are unable to...well, I'd get rid of them, not take up my own day micromanaging them.

Left by Willie Tilton at 10/13/2006 6:42 AM

Your Reply.

Comment Form.

Fields denoted with a "*" are required.

*Your name:

*Subject:

You may also like to leave your email or website.

*Your message:

Please add 4 and 3 and type the answer here:

# re: OMG...I'm being Micromanaged
I'm a lead arch, developer and manager of 3 people. I worked with these people for a few years and I've learned what they can and can't seem to do on their own. In some cases, I probably micromanage but this is usually after they have failed to prove themselves or are taking way toooo long on something simple. I really try to always loosen up on the reins and let them stretch themselves. I always always encourage them to talk to me about brainstorming through a solution or just to bounce some ideas/direction off. I really don't know what my style is but I try to be flexible and let them grow or prove themselves.

Interesting conversation because I just had a conersation with my wife yesterday about here manager. He really gets under her skin sometimes because he constantly wants her to double and triple check what she did / is doing with other people. He seems to be CYA'ing himself in case something goes wrong. I had to tell her it was his management 'style' and what it appeared his motivations were. Perhpas if she looks at it that way she won't take it as personal.

Left by Scott Fauque at 10/13/2006 3:11 AM
# re: OMG...I'm being Micromanaged
I've only been here a short time. 1 screen took 4 weeks to put out even though the screen was developed by me in 2 days. The rest of the time was tweaking, and testing, and tweaking, and testing.

I think what was happening is there was a ton of pressure being put on our manager by the top people of the company to produce a flawless product. This is probably why he was so involved. Now that I have rolled that out successfully pretty much with out his help, it seems that his micromanagement style is gone.

If someone fails to prove themselves repeatedly or has the attitude of not want to learn anything, I would show them the door. I would just think it's bad business.

Right now I think I'm taking waaay to long on a simple project, but it's a brand new database, working with existing crap code, and I'm not even sure of the business requirements (but I've nailed them down now), so it's been a week process.

I think it's fine to have status reports, but you need to rely on your employees to at leave move things forward. If they are unable to...well, I'd get rid of them, not take up my own day micromanaging them.

Left by Willie Tilton at 10/13/2006 6:42 AM

Jump Menu

So what are all these buttons for?

Personalize

Text Size

Layout

Navigation Position

Willie Tilton

Check out my l337 LCD Tan!

OMG...I'm being Micromanaged

Your Comments.

Your Reply.

Article Categories

Archives

Post Categories

Image Galleries

Racquetball

Syndication: