Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

Please know that even if you've proven yourself to be a talented and compassionate manager over many years, the folks who report to you may have had many more years of managers and companies who did not do a good job of caring for their employees, or may have been outright terrible to them.

There's also the reality that, when corresponding with your employer, it's sort of like talking to the police: anything you say can and will be used against you.

If my manager had a "hey, what's going on?" conversation with me out of the blue, my immediate reaction would be concern. I honestly believe that my manager is a good guy who wants me to succeed, and I'm still very cautious about what I say to him. I know that I can never un-say anything. Also, losing this job would be difficult. Though I am a software engineer and could find work relatively quickly this would put me in a very difficult situation due to the US health insurance system and my wife's serious illness.

I would suggest:

1. In-person or video chats instead of email/slack when possible. Written words tend to be so much more prone to misunderstanding and can be used against a person more readily.

2. When possible, regular scheduled informal reviews with your reports, instead of unscheduled "what's going on?" queries. I've never understood why managers don't make time to talk to their reports one-on-one at least once a month. They could be short 15 minute conversations!

This is really helpful. What if the engineer says "well .. this is complex and I can't really provide an estimate/depends on availability of an HPC and I have no idea how long the job will be stuck in the queue, etc."? When faced with this type of response I try to dig into the detail but it feels to me the employee gives me more molasses. Any suggestion on how to deal with this situation?

Yes, people are generally wary of seeing mental health professionals. That's understandable. There's some stigma associated with being thought to be mentally ill, and psychology is a young science studying phenomena that are devilishly hard to study. Clinical psychology in particular is forced to rely a lot on inherited lore, personal experience, and intuition, because the needed science isn't really there yet.

But that doesn't mean nobody should see a therapist. It isn't all snake oil.

A good therapist can help you identify where you need to get to for your own sake, and what skills will help you get there. They can help you realize when you're putting stumbling blocks in your own path and figure out how to stop doing that. They can help you pick out goals, point you in the right direction, and sometimes offer some help getting started on the way. The rest is up to you, of course.

You don't have to be mentally ill to benefit from a therapist's help. In fact, I think you're likely to benefit more if you're basically pretty healthy than if you're not, simply because you're more functional, and therefore better able to make use of what you learn.

That's my perspective from having seen a therapist for a while a couple of times earlier in life, from having encouraged my offspring to see them at difficult moments, from having a friend who is a licensed clinical counselor, and from having gone to graduate school in clinical psychology before I became a programmer.

Caveat emptor, of course. There are good therapists and there are charlatans. Look carefully and use common sense.

>How do you get more clear?

Consider this: "It's not our biggest account, but it does count for something, so I really want our team to get the demo online by Thursday, so I was thinking of having Jared work with you for for the next two days, or having you hold off on the Tachyon project until Fusion is ready. Which of those options sounds good to you?" These are the techniques used:

The message began with "Just wanted to check in and see," but they're not just curious and adding a layer of casualness confused the message. They're not just checking in, they are asking for reason related to the product delivery. Maybe things are going well, and the manager is seeking to optimize to deliver early. Or maybe the employee is about to delay something or maybe not until weeks from now. But with the intent hidden, the manager concentrates all of the power, setting the managed into an anxious or defensive posture. So clarify the situation with the appropriate level of urgency.

Next, add suggestions of what the manager can do. The employee can't be expected to guess or know what options are available. Is there $ for a consultant? Can a team member ahead of the game afford a few pair-programming sessions? Could tasks be reprioritized? Knowing these options is the manager's duty. Expecting the employee to come up with them is like expecting a boat to tell you how it should be washed. They are likely already pressed trying to perform technically, so generating a list of possibilities without knowing their feasibility compounds the stress. It's like picking movies with a friend: One picks a number of good possibilities and the other choose from that set.

Next, and you may pass this over as overly pedantic: There absolutely are things that a manager could do to help, so asking if there are sounds too simple. It sounds like a weak lead. And for someone struggling, getting led by a person full of uncertainty compounds everything.

Finally, I would suggest reassuring the person they're not going to get fired if they answer this question wrong. With the growth of "hire to fire" positions and stack ranking, employees often feel like managers are simply out to gather evidence of blood so they can be pecked to death. Just be level about how where this work stands in importance.

Consulting with mental health professionals is a good idea. Assuming an ADHD diagnosis with such little information is not a good idea at all. Please leave the diagnosis to professionals.

HN has a growing problem where ADHD is suggested as the root problem on virtually every question from someone struggling with work lately. We really need to stop suggesting this diagnosis for everyone and leave it to the professionals.

I’ve seen too many friends and peers mistake burnout or depression for ADHD. There’s something about an ADHD diagnosis that’s easier to accept than depression or burnout. If someone specifically seeks an ADHD diagnosis instead of presenting the root problem and letting the professionals diagnose it, they could miss the real problem and worsen their situation.

Worst case, I’ve seen many people mistake burnout for ADHD, seek stimulant prescriptions, and then try to use increasing doses of stimulants to power through the burnout. This doesn’t work, and actually leads to much deeper and more prolonged burnout when tolerance sets in. Please don’t use stimulants to try to overcome burnout.