Agreed, but I’d be careful not to confuse good mentorship with good management. These usually go hand-in-hand. But sometimes a manager is good because they sacrifice some of your career growth for the sake of the company.
I like the archetypes of ruthless versus empathetic managers described here. It’s an arbitrary division and many managers do fulfill both archetypes. But I think it also captures an important dynamic, where managers have to tradeoff between their own career, your career, and the organization as a whole. Mentorship and career development falls into that
Edit: Another distinction I’d add is good manager versus good management. Sometimes it’s the organizational structure that determines whether you’ll get good training. In my experience, larger and stable organizations are better at mentorship for a ton of reasons, such as being able to make multi-year investments in training programs. A scrappy startup, on the other hand, may be a few weeks away from shutting down.
I definitely feel a few of my past managers would have been much better at mentorship if other aspects of the situation were different (more capacity, less short-term deadlines, better higher-up managers, etc.).
Agreed, but I’d be careful not to confuse good mentorship with good management. These usually go hand-in-hand. But sometimes a manager is good because they sacrifice some of your career growth for the sake of the company.
I like the archetypes of ruthless versus empathetic managers described here. It’s an arbitrary division and many managers do fulfill both archetypes. But I think it also captures an important dynamic, where managers have to tradeoff between their own career, your career, and the organization as a whole. Mentorship and career development falls into that
Edit: Another distinction I’d add is good manager versus good management. Sometimes it’s the organizational structure that determines whether you’ll get good training. In my experience, larger and stable organizations are better at mentorship for a ton of reasons, such as being able to make multi-year investments in training programs. A scrappy startup, on the other hand, may be a few weeks away from shutting down.
I definitely feel a few of my past managers would have been much better at mentorship if other aspects of the situation were different (more capacity, less short-term deadlines, better higher-up managers, etc.).