How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired • Hacker News Board

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#241

Post by zuppy » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

i was in that position of receiving a negative feedback over certain things from one of the people i manage (and i believe any manager has been at least once). surprise, i’m not perfect :-)

the best way to tell it is to be direct, with examples. i want to know that, i want to improve myself. i only expect perfect honesty.

it’s good for both parties. i’m a no bs guy. tell me things straight, good and bad, i will do the same always in a fair honest way. i expect nothing else and there are no repercussions for that. in the end, if you are unhappy and you do nothing about it, nothing will change.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#242

Post by xyst » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

I used to be able to tell my bosses to “fuck off” (usually ones I got well with) when asked something absolutely absurd; or just tell the plain truth. Now in this hypercapitalistic world, you have to fluff your feedback so you don’t hurt their fragile egos.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#243

Post by palata » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #89

palata wrote: post #42

In my 13 years of experience, I would say it's never worth giving feedback to your manager. Either they are good and it's useless, or they are not and they won't learn from you. I have come to a simple rule: if the manager is good, there is no problem. If the manager sucks (often that's because they lack experience, but it's all the same), just lie to them in order to preserve yourself. No need to have empathy for th…

So bleak. It's fine to protect yourself but your managers are people too. You _can_ build a report with them and be frank with them. When I manage folks, I much prefer honesty over someone who just bullshits you.

I feel like you took only half of my point. If the manager is good, then there is no reason to bullshit them. But believing that a bad manager will suddenly become good because you as a report taught them with a few carefully-crafted politically-correct statements sounds extremely naive to me.

Let me give an example: to a good manager, you could say "I'm under a lot of pressure because I have two many urgent things on my plate" and they should try to improve your life by maybe de-prioritizing some of them. In a way you gave feedback "it's not going well for me", but you did not try to guide your manager in their role. So that's not the kind of feedback the featured article talks about.

Now a bad manager will maybe be nice and say "I understand, I really appreciate the late nights and weekends you spend getting closer and closer to a burnout, you are a really valuable employee to me", but that's completely useless. Trying to tell them "you know, in a previous job I had a manager who in these situations would try to de-prioritize stuff so that I could live normally" is completely useless. If they aren't doing it yet, it means that they should not be your manager in the first place. Best case they say "thank you for the feedback, I appreciate that you feel comfortable speaking up" and don't change anything, worst case they get pissed because you "overstepped" (they are the manager, they know they know better, remember?).

There is no world where they say "you're right, I sucked until today, but from tomorrow on I will magically know how to be a good manager".

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#244

Post by loup-vaillant » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #209

bambax wrote: post #17

In aviation this is what Crew Resource Management is about, and in particular, how to make sure the monitoring pilot, who may be the least experienced one, can effectively supervise and review the actions of the other. Many crashes were the result of copilots' fear of speaking up. Business life could learn from this. The person in charge is not a king, they're simply the person tasked with making decisions. There is…

It’s fascinating how resistant pretty much every industry is to taking lessons from aviation, considering how much empirical evidence there is compared to almost every other management paradigm, which basically amounts to “just trust me bro”. It particularly shocked me working in shipping where the lessons can be implemented pretty much without modification since it’s all the same work except they move in 2 rather th…

The difference is how measurable the consequences are. In aviation when there's a screw up people die right then and there. People dying is a very hard to game metric, and it provides a very strong incentive.

The consequences of bad management in a software project on the other hand are much more nebulous. And nobody died as a direct consequence of some manager being a jerk… oh wait, I'm sure some did (committed suicide or gone postal), but it's easy to just blame the worker instead of the working place.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#245

Post by palata » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #131

palata wrote: post #42

In my 13 years of experience, I would say it's never worth giving feedback to your manager. Either they are good and it's useless, or they are not and they won't learn from you. I have come to a simple rule: if the manager is good, there is no problem. If the manager sucks (often that's because they lack experience, but it's all the same), just lie to them in order to preserve yourself. No need to have empathy for th…

I disagree. Superiors are people too, and they make mistakes. I've had subordinates give me feedback (which I followed), and I've given feedback to superiors (which they've followed). Both ways were extremely positive experiences and everyone involved was happier for it.

What kind of feedback was it? My guess is that those were pretty minor things that slightly improved your life. But the fact that it worked hints towards the fact that the managers were already competent, so the reports were already in a pretty good situation. No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#246

Post by palata » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #94

jayd16 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So bleak. It's fine to protect yourself but your managers are people too. You _can_ build a report with them and be frank with them. When I manage folks, I much prefer honesty over someone who just bullshits you.

People who are busy thriving at work aren't hanging out in this self-pity party thread.

Not sure what you are trying to say here.

I personally have good managers right now, so I don't bullshit them.

I have had mostly bad managers in my career though, and my advice in this situation is: bad managers are adversaries, behave accordingly.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#247

Post by loup-vaillant » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

ilitirit wrote: post #156

This title of my article doesn't make much sense to me. Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing? I give feedback to my superiors all the time, and expect my subordinates to do the same. In fact, as far as my team goes, you're more likely to get into trouble (not fired) if you rarely give feedback.

> Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing?

Possibly: in many places there they have "at will" employment, where they can basically fire you with little to no severance at any time for any reason. There are limits, but compared to most of Europe that's the gist of it.

So yeah, you can be fired just because someone doesn't like you. And giving feedback is a good way to not be liked.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#248

Post by Ylpertnodi » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:36 PM UTC

ph4evers wrote: post #155

I’m too Dutch for this kind of indirectness. Say it without the fluff and not in public and everything will be fine.

I love the Dutch 'no bollocking around' method, but it translates horribly to non-Dutch. Which is a real shame. With my Dutch friends, one colleague, I know exactly where I stand. Everyone/ everywhere else (often Americans, but the Brits are catching up), fluffs and huffs and puffs - and then start 'things' in the background.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#249

Post by loup-vaillant » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:40 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #27

These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea. If you ever want to get anything done in painfully structured or faux-flat orgs, this is the way. Why this psyop works: 1. People like to take credit for things. 2. People don't like to be wrong. 3. People get irked when a good idea wasn't their idea. 4. People don't like to feel threatened. 5. Just remove the duck. The examples given are a little cont…

> These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea.

Ok, cool, I've heard this a gazillion times by now. I don't disagree, it does looks like it's better at getting shit done. Just one question: how do I get credited for anything? I have my career to look out for too.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#250

Post by whateveracct » Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 2:49 PM UTC

lijok wrote: post #6

Astonishing. Completely backwards. This article describes how to give feedback to your subordinates, not to your superiors. If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start poli…

> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone

and yet here we are...