Maybe management has changed since I was doing it, also depends on whether you are first level, middle manager, C-suite, line management or staff, etc. But I had a pretty full day.
Hiring, firing, quarterly performance reviews, salary increases, promotions, assigning projects Project management Budgets (capital, salaries, expenses) Attending project reviews, design reviews, staff meetings Writing monthly project and budget status reports for upper management Approving things like purchase orders, vacation requests, etc. Try to offload meetings and paperwork from your people so they can do actual work Much of the time was problem solving related to project or personnel issues. Prototype fails testing, need an unexpected PCB layout cycle, how to keep project from slipping and affecting overall program. Or a key person quits or gets injured or an employee can't handle an assignment, do you assign a more senior person to help, hire a contractor, shuffle assignments, or just accept a slip in the schedule, etc. Then there's managing your manager. Example from real life - senior management says cut 10% of employees but decides not to do it my seniority or skill level but by canceling projects and then telling us to fire whoever was on those projects. Except that has us keeping an employee we planned to fire for poor performance and firing the senior person we had assigned to help the incompetent one, dooming both projects, so we need to convince the big boss to let us decide who to fire and who to keep. My impression is big tech companies no longer worry about this, they have some AI program pick 1,000 random employees and email or text them they're fired. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Sterling Jacobson via AF Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 4:27 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Cc: Sterling Jacobson <sterl...@avative.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] hired manager Ummm, I'm going to need you to come in on Sunday... Steve, you are right about your observations from my limited experience. That is why fractional is becoming more of an option, and it should be. It's also why management needs more bodies to fill their time managing them lol _____ From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > on behalf of Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com <mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 3:05 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] hired manager Have you done your TPS reports? From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Steve Jones Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 3:51 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: [AFMUG] hired manager so I've been putting my poker in a lot of fires lately. in a couple instances in an upperish managerial role for small companies I'm finding more idle time than expected in regard to the management aspect of the roles. the other unrelated tasks fill the gaps, but when that's done does management actually do stuff through the whole day? I haven't had a single role position in decades. is this why fractional employment is so popular now? it seems everything is always waiting on something, a call, a meeting, a task completion by somebody else.
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