Do you trust your manager? Why?

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My company is a bit weird. I have a team lead, a project manager, and a product manager. The only person that can really tell me what to do is my team lead. The other two are too busy dealing with company politics to do anything other than provide cover for engineering. Also they don’t really know the tech.

My team lead is quite a bit younger than me. Despite this, he’s been very well-groomed for the role, I’m very happy that I do not have to “manage upwards.” Our team is growing though and I might be in the position of having to be a team lead soon myself.

A lot of people are concerned with silliness like their managers “stealing their ideas.” It doesn’t work that way. As a manager, your job is to manage the health of a business operation. I offer all my ideas freely to my manager, and it would never bother me if they present my ideas as theirs.

As an individual contributor, my job is to contribute to the team, not to do any political scheming. If I wanted to do political scheming, I’d interview and accept a management role. Ideas are the currency of politics, not of operations. An idea needs to be sheltered and watered and nurtured, ICs just don’t have the resources needed to do that.

If I’m loyal and do my job right, and be a team player, I might get a nice career bump when the person I was loyal to gets a break and wants to take me with him. If it doesn’t happen, well, I’m managing my own career and it’s no sweat off my back. Thriving in corporate America is all about fleshing out your plan B so well that you never have to actually implement it.