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My job role in middle-management forces me to have these conversations frequently, resource planning and such. I am often asking questions of my senior leaders

by dvtrn 6y ago

My job role in middle-management forces me to have these conversations frequently, resource planning and such. I am often asking questions of my senior leaders about the volume of organizational change that is a constant in the company and what I can do to act as a “shock absorber” for my direct reports and subordinate leaders. A major customer facing outage resulted in an RCA compiled by yours truly. I found that a critical engineer had quit months before-never backfilled. Work got reassigned to other people. A second event and second RCA, similarly created by me. Same story: an Ops person had left the company last year, never backfilled. A third. Each time I pointed to workloads and capacities. Not because it’s my job to do these things specifically or by expectations of my director but because no one else in the 400 person organization is yet no one else knows how to go looking for this info so it’s sort of become my duty just because I have enough of a damn to start doing it. These aren’t even MY teams, shit just rolls down hill and my team is at the bottom of the shit pipe. Which is something I hoped bringing these results would get action on. They barely have. What I’ve come to conclude is that my leaders are NOT thinking about these things until someone or something catastrophic forces them to. If I had the balls I would straight up ask my senior leaders “what would you say it is you do here if it’s taken such severe consequences to start looking at what we’re asking our people to do?” What’s most saddening: it’s becoming alarmingly common from job to job. It’s forced me to rethink drastically how I’m vetting companies because they do a GREAT job disguising this during interviews.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
> What I’ve come to conclude is that my leaders are NOT thinking about these things until someone or something catastrophic forces them to. No one gets paid for preventing problems. They get paid for increasing profit, either by increasing revenue and/or reducing costs. I would bet your leaders are consciously trying to skate by and reap the short term rewards and hoping someone like you fills in the gaps. As long as the problem can’t be pinned on them, or they can bounce before it causes sufficient disruption to the business to affect compensation, their goals are met.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Probably. Maybe. I have no clue. I only recently found out there have been three people in this middle management role before me; not a single one of them stayed around for two years. I’m on month 14 and started working on the resume this morning. :/
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Certain middle management positions are setup to be “fall guy” positions. Technically, everyone is a fall guy for the person above them, but some more than others. For example, the budget gets decided a few levels up, but the the immediate manager knows they aren’t being given the resources to succeed. Then their strategy, if they have the ability, might be to hire someone who they can point a finger to when it inevitably fails.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Semi-related but I also wonder much longer we’ll be hearing the use of “the pandemic” as reasons for leadership decision making.
  - efitz 6y ago
    Time to make 3 envelopes: http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Prepare_three_envelopes http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Prepare_three_envelopes
    - beckingz 6y ago
      This is great. The morale of the story is that it takes a year to figure out that organization-person fit is bad?
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  No one gets paid for preventing problems. That may be true now but it seems like a recipe for disaster (check 3-4 ongoing disasters outside my window, yep). I assume in earlier eras society prepared for disasters, paid people to prevent disasters and so-forth. Has something changed?
mattgreenrocks 6y ago
Hope you find a company that values this quality. Don’t be afraid to move on after two years or so until you find a good one. Re: vetting companies, it’s so true. You probably have a lot of wisdom already, but it’s quite the learning process.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I would consume like Thanksgiving turkey any recommended reading on asking difficult questions in job interviews without immediately getting dismissed as “not a culture fit”. Had that happen once. Friend in one department made a referral for me to join another, I ask pointed and direct questions in the interview-which was otherwise light hearted and engaging, the response was filibustering, platitudinous non-answers about “shared sacrifices” and “we all jump in” and “take the flank” and “no man left behind” (please do NOT get me started on the amount of militarized battle-speak that has rooted itself into corporate America like a tick). So I tactfully and delicately but firmly try to bring the conversation back on track. Friend tells me a few days later “they disqualified you as not being a good culture fit. What did you say??” “I asked what the on-call schedule was like”
  - blisse 6y ago
    Definitely don't have the experience asking these questions, but I think this would be much better served as a question to the hiring manager and as follow-up questions post-interview, as opposed to "confrontations" during the interview? Usually after they've extended the offer, before you've accepted, you can have more "real" talks with your supposed manager, which might be a more appropriate time (since you'll eventually have real 1:1s with them anyways).
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      I think this would be much better served as a question to the hiring manager and as follow-up questions post-interview, as opposed to "confrontations" during the interview? That's the kicker: experience has taught me that if I don't ask specific (but tactful) questions about things that have caused excess anxiety and stress in the job, and how the company interviewing me handles them (or fails to handle them) early enough, I find out in the worst ways after taking the job and starting. This is no attempt at setting myself up for malingering down the road, I am not that kind of a person; but I have also grasped how important it is to interview the company as much as the company is interviewing me. If they get to be stringent about how good we would "fit", then so should job candidates. And ironically given the thread we're in about 'over optimization', it's just not worth the time to me to wait until getting an offer to find out the engineering culture believes in 'drinking from the firehose'. I want to know that early, so as to self-select out.
mft_ 6y ago
> What’s most saddening: it’s becoming alarmingly common from job to job. It’s forced me to rethink drastically how I’m vetting companies because they do a GREAT job disguising this during interviews. Any flashes of inspiration on this? I’m always searching for the perfect set of little questions to help uncover the real culture of a company, rather than the platitudinous corporate-buzzword answers about culture you otherwise get.
- citizenpaul 6y ago
  I think the market is taking care of it. That is why there are a million SAAS companies that seem redundant. Also why there are a million micro brands for simple things. I think this is a backlash exactly from this 100% efficiency thinking. Software and manufacturing are both highly susceptible to misery from this efficiency BS. If you are gonna work to death might as well start your own company.
theoka 6y ago
Was looking at your username while reading, trying figure out which person from my org you are though we're in different industries. The similarities are uncanny; company size, leadership issues, ops person leaving, which of course is disturbing but makes me feel less crazy.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I am you. You are me. ?
ntr-- 6y ago
I feel like a lot of this is attributable to the push towards devops. In my junior role I did the development and the ops guys did the deployments and we both knew at least some of what the other person did. It helped knowledge transfer of hot new framework from me to the elder ops people and sage unix wisdom from them down to me. We had a "read-only" Friday where deployments were forbidden to help prevent outages over the weekend. The software changed slowly and employee churn was minimal. Now (much later) I'm elsewhere, expected to do the dev, the ops, the deployment itself, the documentation, training a junior all the while; there are effectively half as many people keeping the ship afloat. The most bizarre part of all is my daily rate is almost 3x what it was then, as the market dictates for such drudgery. Relevant to the article it's obviously strategic for me to accept that, but if the rates weren't so absurd and you could get a dev and an ops for 0.5x the devops rate each the company would get twice as many man-hours, not to mention the added safety of doubling the system's bus factor, cutting workloads in half and vastly improving employee quality of life. Companies offering a devops role for 1.5x a single developer's rate 10 years ago to ostensibly save themselves 0.5 of a salary, are now collectively getting 0.333x as much value out of their hires (and then losing them completely when they burn out and being thrust into chaos).

by dvtrn 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

> What I’ve come to conclude is that my leaders are NOT thinking about these things until someone or something catastrophic forces them to. No one gets paid for preventing problems. They get paid for increasing profit, either by increasing revenue and/or reducing costs. I would bet your leaders are consciously trying to skate by and reap the short term rewards and hoping someone like you fills in the gaps. As long as the problem can’t be pinned on them, or they can bounce before it causes sufficient disruption to the business to affect compensation, their goals are met.

dvtrn 6y ago
Probably. Maybe. I have no clue. I only recently found out there have been three people in this middle management role before me; not a single one of them stayed around for two years. I’m on month 14 and started working on the resume this morning. :/
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Certain middle management positions are setup to be “fall guy” positions. Technically, everyone is a fall guy for the person above them, but some more than others. For example, the budget gets decided a few levels up, but the the immediate manager knows they aren’t being given the resources to succeed. Then their strategy, if they have the ability, might be to hire someone who they can point a finger to when it inevitably fails.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Semi-related but I also wonder much longer we’ll be hearing the use of “the pandemic” as reasons for leadership decision making.
- efitz 6y ago
  Time to make 3 envelopes: http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Prepare_three_envelopes http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Prepare_three_envelopes
  - beckingz 6y ago
    This is great. The morale of the story is that it takes a year to figure out that organization-person fit is bad?
joe_the_user 6y ago
No one gets paid for preventing problems. That may be true now but it seems like a recipe for disaster (check 3-4 ongoing disasters outside my window, yep). I assume in earlier eras society prepared for disasters, paid people to prevent disasters and so-forth. Has something changed?

mattgreenrocks 6y ago

Hope you find a company that values this quality. Don’t be afraid to move on after two years or so until you find a good one. Re: vetting companies, it’s so true. You probably have a lot of wisdom already, but it’s quite the learning process.

dvtrn 6y ago
I would consume like Thanksgiving turkey any recommended reading on asking difficult questions in job interviews without immediately getting dismissed as “not a culture fit”. Had that happen once. Friend in one department made a referral for me to join another, I ask pointed and direct questions in the interview-which was otherwise light hearted and engaging, the response was filibustering, platitudinous non-answers about “shared sacrifices” and “we all jump in” and “take the flank” and “no man left behind” (please do NOT get me started on the amount of militarized battle-speak that has rooted itself into corporate America like a tick). So I tactfully and delicately but firmly try to bring the conversation back on track. Friend tells me a few days later “they disqualified you as not being a good culture fit. What did you say??” “I asked what the on-call schedule was like”
- blisse 6y ago
  Definitely don't have the experience asking these questions, but I think this would be much better served as a question to the hiring manager and as follow-up questions post-interview, as opposed to "confrontations" during the interview? Usually after they've extended the offer, before you've accepted, you can have more "real" talks with your supposed manager, which might be a more appropriate time (since you'll eventually have real 1:1s with them anyways).
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I think this would be much better served as a question to the hiring manager and as follow-up questions post-interview, as opposed to "confrontations" during the interview? That's the kicker: experience has taught me that if I don't ask specific (but tactful) questions about things that have caused excess anxiety and stress in the job, and how the company interviewing me handles them (or fails to handle them) early enough, I find out in the worst ways after taking the job and starting. This is no attempt at setting myself up for malingering down the road, I am not that kind of a person; but I have also grasped how important it is to interview the company as much as the company is interviewing me. If they get to be stringent about how good we would "fit", then so should job candidates. And ironically given the thread we're in about 'over optimization', it's just not worth the time to me to wait until getting an offer to find out the engineering culture believes in 'drinking from the firehose'. I want to know that early, so as to self-select out.

mft_ 6y ago

> What’s most saddening: it’s becoming alarmingly common from job to job. It’s forced me to rethink drastically how I’m vetting companies because they do a GREAT job disguising this during interviews. Any flashes of inspiration on this? I’m always searching for the perfect set of little questions to help uncover the real culture of a company, rather than the platitudinous corporate-buzzword answers about culture you otherwise get.

citizenpaul 6y ago
I think the market is taking care of it. That is why there are a million SAAS companies that seem redundant. Also why there are a million micro brands for simple things. I think this is a backlash exactly from this 100% efficiency thinking. Software and manufacturing are both highly susceptible to misery from this efficiency BS. If you are gonna work to death might as well start your own company.

theoka 6y ago

Was looking at your username while reading, trying figure out which person from my org you are though we're in different industries. The similarities are uncanny; company size, leadership issues, ops person leaving, which of course is disturbing but makes me feel less crazy.

dvtrn 6y ago
I am you. You are me. ?

ntr-- 6y ago

I feel like a lot of this is attributable to the push towards devops. In my junior role I did the development and the ops guys did the deployments and we both knew at least some of what the other person did. It helped knowledge transfer of hot new framework from me to the elder ops people and sage unix wisdom from them down to me. We had a "read-only" Friday where deployments were forbidden to help prevent outages over the weekend. The software changed slowly and employee churn was minimal. Now (much later) I'm elsewhere, expected to do the dev, the ops, the deployment itself, the documentation, training a junior all the while; there are effectively half as many people keeping the ship afloat. The most bizarre part of all is my daily rate is almost 3x what it was then, as the market dictates for such drudgery. Relevant to the article it's obviously strategic for me to accept that, but if the rates weren't so absurd and you could get a dev and an ops for 0.5x the devops rate each the company would get twice as many man-hours, not to mention the added safety of doubling the system's bus factor, cutting workloads in half and vastly improving employee quality of life. Companies offering a devops role for 1.5x a single developer's rate 10 years ago to ostensibly save themselves 0.5 of a salary, are now collectively getting 0.333x as much value out of their hires (and then losing them completely when they burn out and being thrust into chaos).