DRiP Guy said:
I will now second what someone said earlier, since your earlier initial statement might have been a one time poorly chosen wording, but since then you have solidified and reiterated your general philosophies -- I am glad I don't work for you. You have some real maturing to do, that will hopefully come with introspection and time, and without ruining too many careers of others along the way.
I didn't solidify any general philosophies, at least not in the items you quoted. You quoted items about a specific employee. I was saying that for certain people I had to give them requests they don't agree with. I believe this happens with all managers. The example I gave was extreme (as I think I noted), as usually you want to give extreme examples to show your point. This employee is good at what he does (writing and designing code is his main job position). What he do not do well is communicate. This is fine, because I can handle his communication outside of our group for him.
I've protected his career by asking him to not email outside of our group. If upper managers had their way, he would be long gone by now because of some really poorly worded emails and phone calls.
DRiP Guy said:
Your most essential job as a manager is to support the people working for you. If they cannot be trusted with the tools needed to do the job, you have selected and/or retained the wrong people, OR you have defanged their own critical thinking skills to such a degree that they simply aren't engaged.
He can be trusted with the tools to do his job, as he's a great programmer, and has designed some great systems. I would say that I've supported him because I've kept him around, and let him focus on what he enjoys, and what he's good at. He might feel bad because I've asked him not to email people outside of our group, but I believe that's because he just doesn't get social situations (as many computer people don't). He doesn't understand that telling high level executives to "back off" just isn't right.
On the same side, I've also asked people to not request things from him directly, because his job isn't customer service. I've tried to let him work on what his job position allows, and grow within that position. I certainly haven't tried to limit his growth, just tried to protect his job.
DRiP Guy said:
Even the best CEO knows that he alone can actually do little. Please don't call the metaphor police, but you might say that at best he can articulate a vision and be a "Cheerleader with a gun". But using the gun more than a time or two means he is losing talent and desperate, not that he is properly 'culling the herd' of sick and diseased ur uh Middle Managers who take away essential job tools...
Unless I'm not understanding you, I think you're suggesting that I've taken away his email rights, which doesn't allow him to perform his job correctly. Or perhaps that I'm limiting his job growth because he's not allowed to email outside of the group. Just wanted to reword things to see if I've got what you're saying.
I am hands on, because I'm not a CEO, and I don't have a massive group with tiers of managers under me. If a system goes down, or a large problem occurs, I take over the official emails. It's just a much better system than what we had before (whoever gets in first writes the email, and not nearly as politely as I would).
I'm not limiting people's growth, as I've mentioned in the past, I've certainly allowed people to grow under me (my team lead having grown from a software engineer because of my encouragement). I also grew that non-social software engineer into an architect, who is even less involved in customer service issues, and more on the tech side. Win/win situation, because customers don't need to deal with him, he doesn't need to deal with customers, and he can focus on what he likes / does well.
Anyway, your email seemed a bit harsh, but I tried to make a reasonable reply back.