Experience sharing by a front-end supervisor with 7 years of practical experience

Today, I am sharing the valuable experience of a veteran. The author has 7 years of experience in technical management, and at most he led more than 80 people. He is currently working at 360. This article is a summary of his personal experience over many years of work, and is definitely not chicken soup>>>

The author of this article is @十年踪迹. Please be lenient if you do not have the author's permission. Thank you in advance:)

I have been engaged in technical management for 7 years, from leading a front-end team of 7 or 8 people to a team of up to 80+ people with several technical supervisors. I dare not say how successful I am, because I have stumbled along the way. I always feel that I am better at focusing on technology, because management and technology are different, and more of them are trivial things. If coding brings me more happiness than troubles, then technical management is just the opposite. However, our life is not just for pleasure. Sometimes I wonder if I can contribute more to the front-end as a technical expert than a technical manager. Reason tells me that it may not be the case. The power of one person is limited. In this era, there is obviously no shortage of talented people in the front-end. Many times, we don’t fight alone...

Okay, after so much complaining, let’s start talking about something practical.

What is the difference between being a technical person and a manager?

Putting aside the skills level, I think the most important thing to become an excellent technician is to know and be good at playing to your strengths. Many excellent technical experts are familiar with and good at this, so they often have personality because they have distinct characteristics and strengths. As for a qualified manager, the most important thing is not to play to your strengths and promote your own personality, but to recognize your own shortcomings and improve yourself. On top of that, you must know and be good at playing to the strengths of others and tolerate their shortcomings. From the comparison above, we can see that technology and management are not actually things of the same dimension, and we can also understand why many excellent technical personnel have a difficult time when they have the opportunity to switch to management roles - because their thinking cannot be transformed, and thus the skill points are not added correctly.

How can you know fish if you are not a fish?

Do you remember the fable of the little horse crossing the river? The squirrel thought the water was deep, but the old cow thought it was shallow. Who was right? A common mistake made by technical managers is to substitute their own feelings for those of team members.

"Why can't 'he' do this when it's so simple? I might as well do it myself."

"These things are so tedious, I don't even want to do them, let alone trouble the brothers below, I'd better do it myself."

Have all of you management students encountered the above two situations? Just like every parent thinks they know everything about their children, but in fact you really don’t understand, and what you see is far from the truth. Many times, when a member is about to leave, you talk to him and find out that your expectations and judgments of him are very different from his own expectations and judgments. Whose negligence is it that caused this situation?

Living Space: What We Can Do, What We Want to Do, and What We Need to Do

Whether doing technical research, platform tools or projects, a technician and a team need to match three concepts in order to grow in the environment, namely "what I can do", "what I want to do" and "what I need to do".

I can do it + I want to do it + I am needed = Core Value

I can do it + I want to do it + I am not needed = potential value

I can do it + I don't want to do it + I am needed = routine work

I can do it + I don't want to do it + I'm not needed = Backup

I can't do it + I want to do it + need me = room for growth

I can't do it + I want to do it + I'm not needed = Self-seeking

I can't do it + I don't want to do it + I'm needed = Unable to do it

I can't do it + I don't want to do it + I'm not needed = No need to pay attention

Good managers pay special attention to the "potential value" and "growth space" of members.

Team development: dependence and being relied upon

There is no free trust, and no free voice. Many managers hope that the company or the boss will "pay attention to the front end", but in fact, if you want to have an environment that "pays attention to the front end", you should strive for it yourself. What kind of team can have a say? It’s simple: a team that is relied upon. The team I currently lead serves many businesses of the company. In most of the businesses, the front-end has more say. It is not because of how much importance the front-end is attached to that business or the entire company, but through long-term and smooth cooperation, the business side can understand and recognize that this front-end team is irreplaceable. Many businesses did not have front-end before, and the front-end work was previously done by back-end students. Some businesses also had their own independent teams, but in the end they all had full trust in our team without exception, and we also had a lot of say in the business team.

Why is this? Because they rely on us to do our job efficiently, professionally and responsibly.

What did the managers sacrifice?

As mentioned above, building trust is a process. People and teams all have a need for a sense of security. Unless there is no choice, the normal environment always tends to maintain the status quo. As a manager, you often need to drive the carriage to break the inertia of maintaining the status quo and move forward. How to do this? In fact, it is very simple, that is, to break your own sense of security in exchange for the development space of the team. There are many excuses for maintaining a sense of security, such as "Salary is not decided by me", "Don't want to trouble my superiors", "Don't want to offend my colleagues", "Don't want to deal with annoying people or teams", "Please superiors, please colleagues, and agree to other people's demands blindly"

The first point is the issue of salary. Many technical personnel are thin-skinned and are not willing to work hard for their own salary and benefits. After they become managers, they are used to the idea of ​​doing less is worse than more.

The second point is that the shitty manager always suppresses the demands of his team and tries to please his superiors, as if he thinks his superiors like subordinates who don't meddle with other people the most.

Third point, be a good guy and long live harmony.

Fourth, refuse to communicate with other teams, spread negative news about other teams within your own team, or have a protective mentality.

Fifth, we can’t stop the demand and can’t withstand the pressure.

In essence, the above is because team managers are unwilling to sacrifice their own sense of security (not thick-skinned enough) in exchange for the team's growth space. In fact, this is often not intentional, but a problem of personality and ability. So sometimes we feel that bad managers are always targeting themselves or suppressing the team, but in fact, they often do not realize it or do not do it intentionally.

Team Development 2: Room for Growth

As a technical developer, all I need is a salary that satisfies me. As a manager, sometimes you ask for a high salary not for yourself, but for the growth space of the team (a reason to raise your own salary, haha). As a manager, you need to know that your own skills, management level, and salary may become the ceiling for your team’s growth. So what should we do? Technical managers should have a greater sense of crisis about technology. If it really doesn’t work, they should find someone with better technology than themselves to assist them. Not to mention that management level needs to be honed over time. As for salary, try to get it as high as possible. If you really can't get it, then hire someone with a much higher salary than you (such as the technical expert mentioned earlier). This way, the team members will have room for salary increase. Many managers like egalitarianism and always equalize the salaries of team members, which is actually not advisable.

Why should managers pay attention to details in daily life?

Managers need to pay attention to details, such as caring for their employees. Because managers have performance and other incentives at their disposal, including positive and negative incentives. This is easier to do positively, and everyone is happy. Negative motivation or putting pressure on employees is difficult for many managers to handle. Sometimes we blame the company for being KPI-oriented, but in fact, if you think about it carefully, in the hands of excellent managers, KPI is just a tool. Whether it is S, A or C, D, they are all means of motivation. C and D are not hot potatoes (many managers think so), but useful tools, provided that you use both kindness and severity in your daily life, have prestige in the team and be liked by team members. Managers who know how to reward get 60 points, and managers who know how to punish (effective punishment helps employees grow and does not cause resentment) get 90 points.

A dilemma: Should we be responsible to our superiors or to our subordinates?

My boss told me that your job is to serve your subordinates, not your superiors. I don’t mind if you serve me well, but serving your team members well is what I want to see.

Not all bosses are as good as my boss, but there is one truth to understand: who is working hard to get things done? The superior or the subordinate?