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Things your manager might not know!
When people talk about “managing up”, sometimes it’s framed as a bad thing – massaging the ego of people in charge so that they treat you well.
In my experience, managing up is usually a lot more practical. Your manager doesn’t (and can’t!) know every single detail about what you do in your job, and being aware of what they might not know and giving them the information they need to do their job well makes everyone’s job a lot easier.
Here are the facts your manager might not know about you and your team that we’ll cover in this post:
- What’s slowing the team down
- Exactly what individual people on the team are working on
- Where the technical debt is
- How to help you get better at your job
- What your goals are
- What issues they should be escalating
- What extra work you’re doing
- How compensation/promotions work at the company
For each one, I’ll give specific ways you can help get them the information they need. All of these ways you can help them will also help you – it’s not just an altruistic endeavor :)
This post (like all my writing about working with a manager) assumes that you generally have a good relationship with your manager.
your manager can’t know every detail about your job
I said this already, but I want to reiterate it: the reason your manager doesn’t know all these things isn’t because they’re not doing their job. It’s literally impossible for them to keep track of every detail about every person’s on their team’s job. It’s normal for managers to rely on their team to keep them informed about important facts they need to know, especially with more senior engineers.
Keeping them informed helps them do their job better, and it makes your job a lot easier too. Let’s talk about how that works!
they might not know: what’s slowing the team down
Sometimes, you’re working on a project and the project is going more slowly than you hoped. There are always reasons for this – maybe there have been a lot more bugs than you expected, maybe you’re using a new technology nobody on the team has ever used before, maybe you’re waiting for another team to do something. The reasons things are hard change a lot! Even if your manager knew what was slowing you down 2 weeks ago, maybe that issue has been totally resolved and you’re onto a totally different problem.
It’s a problem if your manager doesn’t know this mostly because if they know why you’re stuck, they might be able to help.
Here is the full article.
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