F1 Fanatic

I was thinking the other day that when you work at a place and your manager changes, most people would consider that a job change. Your manager decides whether you will be promoted, what raise you’ll get, whether you will enjoy working there, and to a large extent your ability and willingness to deliver quality work. If you get along with your manager everything is hunky dory. If you don’t get along with your manager, the rule is to leave asap as you’ll be the one to suffer, not the manager. If in doubt watch Horrible Bosses:-)

I think the corollary applies to Hamilton who effectively did change teams in 2009 joining a new McLaren led by Martin Whitmarsh. The results support that. Under previous management, Lewis managed to clinch 1 WDC and came within a point of another in his rookie season. Over the next 4 years, he’s placed 5th in 2009, 4th in 2010, 5th in 2011 and is currently 4th in 2012.

Alonso was most impressed by Hamilton in 2009 when his car was not competitive but Hamilton still managed to fight.

His performance in 2012 has been outstanding but it’s been marred by the team’s mistakes and reliability issues and yet he’s 4th and out of contention with 4 races to go.

Obviously 4th-5th is the best that Hamilton can do under the new management.

The point I’m making here is that Hamilton is NOT leaving McLaren, McLaren left him in 2009 when the manager changed and he stuck with them for 4 years without a chance of winning the WDC.

If you work for a large corporation like a FTSE100 company, your line manager in general makes little difference. So no. Lewis has been with the same corporate entity since he started his professional career.

I disagree – I think the manager is important and if you feel your direct manager does not have the largest impact in your careers and enjoyment of your work at a particular company, then you must be self-employed and probably did that to avoid having a direct manager who has such control over your life.

I don’t think that McLaren with Horner at the helm since 2009 would have yielded the exact same results as Whitmarsh has. Ditto for the change from Ron Dennis to Martin Whitmarsh. In fact the results from 2007/08 and 2009/12 are vastly different.

@katederby
I agree that you can do that but you are rolling the dice with your career and hoping that when the dust settles and openings become available, that manager in power at that moment will favor you. It’s a big gamble with a career. I speak from experience as my wife had 7 managers in 7 years at one of the best companies in the world all of whom gave her a review to be promoted EXCEPT for the last manager who found himself with the actual openings to promote and then promoted everyone except my wife and hid the promotions from my wife because that’s what professional people do – so our experience has not been rosy…

It worked out fine for my wife who decided to become an independent consultant and is in a much better spot now than before.

While my wife and you can do that, I’m sure everyone agrees that Hamilton is hardly in the same situation where he can just sit around and wait for 5-10 years hoping Whitmarsh will get better or replaced. He actually DID wait for 4 years which is technically a mistake in F1 and he may pay for it with 3 more years at Mercedes for a final sentence of 7 years… We can only hope that Mercedes has a car that’s within 0.2 seconds of the top car and Hamilton can get back in the game.

That’s why David Hobbs keeps saying that the best drivers weren’t just the best drivers, they knew when to move to another team and which team to move to. 50% of driving skill seems to be choosing the car to drive at the right time…