Michael Lopp > Quotes

“My definition of a great manager is someone with whom you can make a connection no matter where you sit in the organization chart.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“The moment I walk into a bookstore, I remember what I love about them. They are an oasis of intellectual calm. Perhaps it’s the potential of all the ideas hidden behind those delicious covers. Or perhaps it’s the social reverence for the library-like quiet. You don’t yell in a bookstore; you’ll piss off the books.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“One of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“The rule is simple: if you don’t write it down, it never happened.”
― Michael Lopp

“A manager’s job is to transform his glaring deficiency into a strength by finding the best person to fill it and trusting him to do the job.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“The difference between a manager who knows what’s going on in an organization and one who is a purely politically driven slimeball is thin. But I would take either of those over some passive manager who lets the organization happen to him.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Every time you say blah blah blah, a creative writing teacher dies.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“I’m a geek, and I might be a nerd, but I’m not a dork.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“I hired you because you’ve got enough skill and enough will to have my job one day … whether you want it or not.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“in the absence of information, people will create their own.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Managers who don’t have a plan to talk to everyone on their team regularly are deluded. They believe they are going to learn what is going on in their group through some magical organizational osmosis and they won’t. Ideas will not be discovered, talent will be ignored, and the team will slowly begin to believe what they think does not matter, and the team is the company.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Forty-five minutes after the meeting began, I did something I’d never ever done before. I walked out of a meeting where I was a key player because I simply couldn’t waste any more time on this uselessness. Stood up, walked out, and slammed the door. Yes, it’s an emotional move that is almost always a bad move in business, but near the top of my list of professional pet peeves is the following: Do not waste my time.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Project managers don’t write code, they don’t test the use cases, and they’re not designing the interface. You know what a good project manager does? They are chaos-destroying machines, and each new person you bring onto your team, each dependency you create, adds hard-to-measure entropy to your team. A good project manager thrives on measuring, controlling, and crushing entropy. You did this easily when you were a team of five, but if you’re going to succeed at 105, what was done organically now needs to be done mechanically.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Reorganizations represent opportunity to those who are unhappy with the state of the current organization. As mentioned above, the moment stakeholders hear that there is a reorg brewing, they start working the grapevine to steer the course of the reorg in their favor. When you combine this fact with people’s love of gossip, you’re guaranteed a big, juicy, drawn-out reorganization.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Stay flexible, remember what it means to be an engineer, and don’t stop developing.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“In order to manage human beings in the moment, you’ve got to be one.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“The core attribute of a productive team is so simple and obvious that we forget it — it’s like breathing, an act so essential that we forget we do it, though we can’t exist without it. A productive team knows itself. The team members know each other’s names, and they understand and appreciate each other’s respective strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. They are not strangers. With this essential understanding in place, and with practice, the humans in a healthy team effortlessly and without ego call on each other when they need help. They do not care who gets the credit for the work because they want the work to get done well by the most qualified humans with the best judgment.”
― Michael Lopp, The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well

“Relationships need time to bake. Trust doesn't magically appear; it's cautiously built over time via shared experience.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“Just like delegation, the act of navigating politics in an organization is slippery. The difference between a manager who knows what’s going on in an organization and one who is a purely politically driven slimeball is thin. But I would take either of those over some passive manager who lets the organization happen to him. Politically active managers are informed managers. They know when change is afoot and they know what action to take to best represent their organization in that change.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“I'm in a hurry, but being in a hurry isn't an excuse for not taking a small amount of time to say something real.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“This engineer in training had now experienced two essential emotions: the joy of creation and the satisfaction of learning while gaining experience, perfecting the craft.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of solid information, people generate their own information to fill that vacuum. They're not lying, they have no ill will; they're just trying to build a semblance of structure amongst the confusion.”
― Michael Lopp, Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook

“The snake is the anchor in hiding and he’s in the left corner. For some reason, he’s got the fake anchor out there taking the heat while he sits there taking it all in. Maybe he doesn’t like the spotlight. Maybe there is some strategic advantage to the room not knowing he’s the man, but he is. Fortunately for everyone, the snake move only works a few times within a company before word gets out who the real anchor is.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Even if you haven’t successfully predicted a freakout, you can still use your experience as a means of exploring the freak’s understanding of whatever the issue might be. Heck, you don’t even need experience; all you need is the desire to understand what this person is freaking out about.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“What’s important is, who needs to move where? Does the incrementalist need to move closer to the completionist’s view or vice versa? In either case, you’ve got to use the simplest trick in the conflict resolution book : finding common ground. A better way to think about this is, “What do these disparate philosophies need from each other?”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“Business is noisy because there is always stuff to do, and the process of doing stuff is called tactics. It’s tactical work, and while tactics are progress, the real progress is made when we get strategic. A productive one-on-one is one where we talk strategically about how we do stuff, but more importantly, how we might do this stuff better.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“gossip, rumors, and lies,”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“You need to go out of your way to make this happen, but it only need be a small gesture. A brief one-on-one moment where you acknowledge this person is relevant. More than a fly-by “bye” on your last day. Less than a tearful hug in the hallway.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“I recently got into a war of words with a coworker regarding the proper solution to a problem with one of our products. As an aside, let me say that e-mail is never ever ever never ever the right way to resolve controversy. Too much subtlety is lost when you’re YELLING IN ALL CAPS at your program manager. Don’t waste your time solving problems in e-mail. Stand up. Walk down the hall. And look the person in the eye. You’ll live longer.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

“All active participants in a meeting can instinctively sense progress, and when progress isn’t being made, they get cranky and start looking for the exit. A referee’s job is to shape the meeting to meet the requirements of the agenda and the expectations of the participants. Style and execution vary wildly from referee to referee, but the defining characteristics are the perceptions of the meeting participants. A good referee not only makes sure the majority of the attendees believe progress is being made, but they’re aware of anyone who doesn’t believe that progress is being made at any given moment. And they’re looking for one thing . . . people checked out.”
― Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager