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Question for the crowd: how to manage up a politically savvy skip manager that routinely trivializes engineering effort? They couch it in sarcasm, something like "oh you can build that in like 2 minutes, it's just an SQL query and 3 lines of python, right?"
Not sure if they cover... A typical scenario is that you are in a corporate culture where, for whatever reason your manager does not "manage down", like at all. Meaning that they are not giving you direction and nor are they listening to any needs, direction from you (ok, maybe once per quarter?). Your interactions with them (if you are letting them set the schedule) are very limited. Now that can be great or bad. Ty…
Indeed, there's a whole range of dysfunctional (and sometimes simply toxic) managerial behaviors that seem to occur very frequently int the workplace, and for which it'd be nice to see some advice as to how to deal with them.
But overall the advice in this particular article seems very superficial.
So, when a decision is made that doesn't make sense to you, here are the steps: 2. Don't disagree; This sounds like a recipe for a toxic work culture where everyone is walking on eggshells and fearful not only of stating their opinions - but in many cases, making simple statements about objective reality.
The next part of that sentence is "ask about the context and reasons for the change", immediately followed by, "Start with your manager or the main decision maker if you have a prior relationship, and then escalate up the chain of command together (rather than just emailing your thoughts to the CEO)."
> making simple statements about objective reality.
It is extremely rare that decisions are "objectively" bad -- that was the main point of that section. In fact, the article explicitly says: "Remember there is someone in the chain who thinks this is a good idea; that is why it is being implemented. So, it is worth your time to try to understand the "why" behind this idea"
Question for the crowd: how to manage up a politically savvy skip manager that routinely trivializes engineering effort? They couch it in sarcasm, something like "oh you can build that in like 2 minutes, it's just an SQL query and 3 lines of python, right?"
I think you would find negotiation practices helpful, e.g. check out the book "Never split the difference" to learn some negotiation techniques and "Elephant in the brain" to understand that this behavior is likely not about technology.
So, when a decision is made that doesn't make sense to you, here are the steps: 2. Don't disagree; This sounds like a recipe for a toxic work culture where everyone is walking on eggshells and fearful not only of stating their opinions - but in many cases, making simple statements about objective reality.
Great job taking the comment entirely out of context. The next part of that sentence is "ask about the context and reasons for the change", immediately followed by, "Start with your manager or the main decision maker if you have a prior relationship, and then escalate up the chain of command together (rather than just emailing your thoughts to the CEO)." > making simple statements about objective reality. It is extre…
I read and understood the full context. I was keeping it short for the sake of simplicity.
The basic message they're conveying is, after all: "If you have disagreements, don't express them."
It is extremely rare that decisions are "objectively" bad -- that was the main point of that section.
I was referring not to the decisions, but to the assertions about reality that are used to justify them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great job taking the comment entirely out of context. The next part of that sentence is "ask about the context and reasons for the change", immediately followed by, "Start with your manager or the main decision maker if you have a prior relationship, and then escalate up the chain of command together (rather than just emailing your thoughts to the CEO)." > making simple statements about objective reality. It is extre…
Great job taking the comment entirely out of context. I read and understood the full context. I was keeping it short for the sake of simplicity. The basic message they're conveying is, after all: "If you have disagreements, don't express them." It is extremely rare that decisions are "objectively" bad -- that was the main point of that section. I was referring not to the decisions , but to the assertions about realit…
See also Chesterton's Fence: https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/
Concise articulation, and valuable. My comment is that this is happy-path advice. Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.) The m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're higher up the food chain than the audience of that article. Just keep doing your job better than they do their job and vent to allies behind closed doors. There's a guy on our team who does #1 one in the article ALL the time. NNP who slows the team by 25% probably. No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.
I'm not sure I understanding you but I'm curious to hear more. What is an NNP? And are you saying that a colleague following the advice in part 1 of the article is slowing down your entire team? If yes, how so?
He sits between the business people who tell him what they want us to build. So we build it exactly to the spec and the end user sits down to verify what we did is correct and immediately says, "this isn't what I asked for at all."
We've had to rebuild things 2, 3, 4 times, maybe more I've lost count. Without him we would have been on time and budget, instead we are WAY behind.
Imagine user stories with one sentence like: System should search like Google does.
He'll say it's easy just do it like it's already been done. Are you saying you aren't a Google level developer? that's a 3 point story, right? It's simple.
I believe the better approach to #1 is to: - say that you’re not sure - articulate an hypothesis of what it might be to the best of your knowledge (it's likely you’re going to be 80% right) - propose to launch an effort / work stream / project to figure it out In many cases managers are just happy with an 80% answer and will reject to waste efforts to dive deeper. Managers can deal with uncertainty and with situation…
> articulate an hypothesis of what it might be to the best of your knowledge (it's likely you’re going to be 80% right) Please don't do this. Many managers and clients have a far better bullshit detector than you give them credit for. They might never say it directly to you, but you just lost their respect by trying to guess instead of being honest. When programmers I interview try to bullshit their way through an an…
The other people are usually smart enough to know if they need a more precise answer or not.
If I have completely no idea, then I just say so.
Concise articulation, and valuable. My comment is that this is happy-path advice. Corporate culture has changed to where instead of handling conflict according to principle (e.g. Harvard negotiation project, getting to yes, principled negotiations etc), today people are trained to out-passive each other, and marshal political campaigns to isolate opposition. (salience, political survival, working the ref, etc.) The m…
I’d recommend the works of Venkatesh Rao: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... https://www.ribbonfarm.com/be-slightly-evil/
The one bit of advice I would give to someone trying to use Gervais to understand someone in the organization's motivations : just because they may act according to Gervais doesn't mean they are bad or evil or broken in some way.