What to do if manager is not respected?

Question

I am starting to realize that my manager might not be the most competent engineering leader. While he's a nice guy and has been very good to me, I have noticed recently that:

he does not get much respect from his XFN coworkers
- a data scientist on the team has confided to me that he does not think that my manager is technically capable
- other stakeholders (e.g. PMs) do not seem to value his opinions
he has not been able to show business impact and value for the team, and it's likely that my team will receive additional scrutiny as a cost center
he always seems to over-promise and under-deliver every quarter, with the excuse that he can always move the goals/timelines around come review time
my manager also mentioned that he did not get a great perf review rating in the most recent round of reviews, and I'm worried that this might percolate down to my own reviews

In short he seems to be doing the opposite of what Taro advises (both as EM and IC). What do I do at this point? Jump ship to a different team?

[Another recent question asked about toxic managers -- to be clear, my manager has been anything but toxic and I am on very friendly terms with him. I am just worried that continuing to be on his team would hamper my own career growth if he doesn't know what he's doing.]

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

There are 2 types of bad managers:

Good intent (nice, wants to help, cares about reports), low skills
Bad intent (mean, selfish, burns reports out), medium to high skills (largely on politics)

I would take #1 any day of the week, because it's fundamentally fixable.

I have seen your situation before with relatively new managers (switched to EM at senior instead of staff, <1 year of experience as a manager). Most of them don't make it, but I have seen turnaround stories.

Like with any other teammate, you should give them feedback. Yes, feedback should mainly flow from manager -> engineer, but there's no reason why it can't go the other way with engineer -> manager. In fact, every healthy relationship has feedback flowing both ways. Use the tips from my Effective Communication course to deliver the feedback empathetically: https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/effective-communication-guide-part-5-giving-feedback/

As we've talked about before in Taro, view your manager as more of a partner than a boss. This is really relevant in your case as your manager really needs the support. A lot of where they're struggling can be assisted by engineering:

Creating OKRs/KPIs (Staff engineers often do this)
Crafting more reasonable timelines (expectation for all senior+ engineers)
Helping your manager communicate more clearly and with better technical opinions in meetings to earn respect

If you can meaningfully help with the turnaround, you'll get a ton of credit and earn a bunch of trust with your manager. And well, if it doesn't work, you can switch teams (but I recommend giving it a decent shot first).

What to do if manager is not respected?

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