I have to tell you, when you are running a company, if you try to preempt
what folks under you are doing, then you run the risk of alienating them,
and pissing them off. Most competent and talented technical folks take it
as a direct affront if you try to "micro manage" what they are doing, or if
you try to order them to do something that is contrary to what they
recommend. This is management 101 of technical folks. managing engineers
is not like managing people who work on an assembly line -- you have to
cater to their needs and advice, or you run the risk of loosing them or
damaging their morale and self-esteem.
I have managed engineers now for about 10 years, and I always empower them
and get out of their way. Just becuase I'm the CEO doesn't mean that I'm
the king and I can bop people with my royal scepter. In the real world it
doesn't work this way, and I find that I am the one who works for my people
and not the other way around. Not all managers are like this, and I agree
there are some real tyrants out there, but these folks have a hard time
keeping talented engineers around. If I were an engineer, I would not
tolerate this. This was part of the reason I left Novell. Eric Schmidt
struck me as quite a tyrant when I first met him because of his attitude and
"I'm the CEO and you're a piece of dogsh_t" attitude towards engineers. I
understand that his demeanor has changed and he's grown up a lot since
taking over Novell, but because of his attitudes I and my entire team of 12
engineers left Novell to do our own thing. I think if Eric had it to do
over again, he would have taken the high road instead of the low road.
People are people, and we do learn from our mistakes.
Hope this helps you understand.
Jeff
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Clark <cpclark@xmission.com>
To: Jeff Merkey <jmerkey@timpanogas.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 1999 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: NwFs 1.4.5 Source Code Available (FENRIS)
>
> On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Jeff Merkey wrote:
> > I'll get you a copy of NWDISK which creates netware partitions. I have
not
> > uploaded it yet becuase our QA guy, Larry Angus won't let me send it out
> > until he's finished testing it. He is very thorough. I will check with
him
> > tommorrow and see where he is at, and perhaps I can convince him to let
me
> > send it out early before he finishes all of his testing.
>
> Hi Jeff,
>
> Maybe it's not what you intended, but you make it sound like you have no
> control over the situation:
>
> "Larry Angus won't let me send it out..." ?
>
> "Perhaps I can convince him..." ?
>
> I thought the CEO was supposed to tell the others what to do, not the
> other way around! ;^)
>
> Chris
>
>
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/