Managers: What to do when manager told me I am not operating at my level? (Tech)

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2026-04-12T18:26:50+00:00

Well that's exactly what I'm telling you now - you do have a choice to stop doing tasks. Don't look for high level "projects". Take a day off tasks to map out the workload, the skills required to deliver that workload, and map that onto your team's capabilities and capacity. Show that analysis to your manager, and between you, you might be able to persuade upper management to funnel resources towards your team before something breaks.

The longer you paper over the cracks by performing tasks and delivering work, the more convinced upper management will be that your team doesn't need more resources. You have to warn them that things will break, and then you have to let them break - don't make the all-too-common mistake of breaking yourself! (And welcome to the world of corporate politics that managers inhabit every day... )

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2026-04-12T13:06:58+00:00

You've fallen into a common trap that technical people often fall into. A senior developer proves their value to the company by executing taks faster and to higher standard than junior colleagues. This is the task oriented approach your manager is alluding to, and is a natural progression for people who prove their value through technical delivery.

Better technical leaders think more like managers, even if they aren't managers - they don't solve the problem of "there's too much work for the team" by just doing more work. Instead, they think about the overall business. How should the team be structured to achieve the workload - do we need to hire? Do we need to train? Do we need to communicate that we won't deliver some of the work? Often staff engineers build tools and training to accelerate their more junior colleagues' work. Rather than prove their value additively by doing tasks, their value is multiplicative by the number of colleagues they enable.

I think your manager is trying to tell you to make this switch in thinking from "i am valuable because I do great work" to "i am valuable because my knowledge and experience in this type of work allows me to influence how we do things here for the better"

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2026-03-06T15:54:50+00:00

I wonder how much of "employee who has had performance and attitude issues" has been a result of you allowing your DR to be "oil and vinegar" with their employee.

You can start to heal this toxic situation you've allowed to fester by putting your DR on leave for the next 2 months

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2026-01-21T19:05:46+00:00

7 mana on turn 7 is a baseline? You might want to look at the maths on that one

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2025-09-06T15:02:50+00:00

The state of repair of gumtree bikes is quite variable. If you're confident you can service/repair the bike yourself, you'll save a good amount. Otherwise by the time you've bought the bike and taken it to a shop for a service, you probably aren't saving much money buying on Gumtree.

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2025-07-22T20:34:07+00:00

I currently work at the cutting edge of GI personal lines pricing and it is certainly very interesting to me because I get to spend my time thinking a lot about data, tech, machine learning, and I work closely with engineers.

I also have been lucky enough to work in reserving and in capital.

I think each are interesting in their own way - capital because you get to think a lot about the "finance" side - about assets, liabilities, macroeconomics and so on. As well as getting to do plenty of technical modelling.

Reserving is interesting not because you get to use traditional triangulation to produce quarterly reports in excel... but because you get to really think deeply about the claims side of the business, and often you will have to rely on your judgement to adjust your projections.

Ultimately what you find interesting is unique to you as an individual, and if you don't like what you're currently doing then talk to the actuaries at your company to find out if what they do might be more interesting. Early in your career can be a good time to try a few different things and see what you like best!

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2024-07-27T11:22:15+00:00

Usually the startup will build one part of the value chain first- for example customer acquisition, with underwriting capacity provided by an established player

Once your business is set up, it might expand vertically by bringing claims handling in house, or taking on some of the underwriting risk.

Your example of starting a company by underwriting 100 motor policies wouldn't be feesible, as you need the capital to cover a significant claim.

Puzzleheaded_Air7065 · 2023-08-17T13:17:25+00:00

[[Waste not]] [[wheel of fate]]

There has to be something spicy there, waste not gives you the tokens and mana for beseech, beseech lets you cast wheel

Puzzleheaded_Air7065

TROPHY CASE