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This: Manager: Can I give you some feedback? Direct: Sure, boss. Manager: When you tell my boss bad news before me, even with the best of intentions, I end up

This: Manager: Can I give you some feedback? Direct: Sure, boss. Manager: When you tell my boss bad news before me, even with the best of intentions, I end up getting in a lot of trouble for not knowing before he did. Can you try to tell me first, going forward? Is soooo American (or maybe more countries?). All this tells me is that the boss of the manager is a whiny micromanager and I feel like the boss of the boss needs to be informed, I mean why would you ever bring someone into trouble over bad news. Bad news are just facts. What's this trouble anyway?? It's such an hierarchical chain of events. If the nature of the bad news is such that the boss really does get into trouble, then it's time for some open and honest discussion on how to do things better from now on. Nothing negative about this imo. I mean the whole idea that you somehow need to discipline colleagues by giving them "trouble" is just ludicrous to me. Why not just assume that everyone around you is a smart individual with good intentions and that errors sometimes happen and we can bear the consequences together. Man this gets me worked up.

darkerside 6y ago
It's not a great example, but I do understand this, so I can share perspective. As a manager, you are hired to be an extension of your boss. Your boss may have 5 managers reporting to him, reach of which has 5 reports of their own. Your boss is tremendously busy and no longer has the time to understand all the details of all the work under their purview. If your report goes to your boss and starts presenting a problem, the report may have very little idea of how their problem fits into the other 25 problems that ICs may bring up, and yet is making a decision that this should be their boss' boss' (director) priority. If this happens continually, the direct manager is not doing their job, and the director will make sure they hear about it. More shortly, sometimes what you think is bad news as an IC is something your manager can solve without getting their boss involved. Especially with more junior reports, they may have trouble distinguishing the difference.
- deleted 6y ago
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- teekert 6y ago
  Ok, I understand that, it's also exactly why my boss would say: please discuss this with your project manager ;)
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Discussing with project manager is great. That's why PM is there. Discussing with the director of software engineering? Probably completely irrelevant to the Big Problem he or she is currently trying to solve, which is much more likely related to culture, hiring/firing, budget, or strategy. When you tell that person that you are shipping a suboptimal product for reason X, they may truly want to help, but have no context to actually do it, and have much bigger fish to fry besides.
    - teekert 6y ago
      I agree with all that, and indeed it would be wise to ask that employee to go through other/more appropriate channels first when they have "bad news". What bothers me is the "trouble" part. Completely unnecessary imho.

darkerside 6y ago

It's not a great example, but I do understand this, so I can share perspective. As a manager, you are hired to be an extension of your boss. Your boss may have 5 managers reporting to him, reach of which has 5 reports of their own. Your boss is tremendously busy and no longer has the time to understand all the details of all the work under their purview. If your report goes to your boss and starts presenting a problem, the report may have very little idea of how their problem fits into the other 25 problems that ICs may bring up, and yet is making a decision that this should be their boss' boss' (director) priority. If this happens continually, the direct manager is not doing their job, and the director will make sure they hear about it. More shortly, sometimes what you think is bad news as an IC is something your manager can solve without getting their boss involved. Especially with more junior reports, they may have trouble distinguishing the difference.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
teekert 6y ago
Ok, I understand that, it's also exactly why my boss would say: please discuss this with your project manager ;)
- darkerside 6y ago
  Discussing with project manager is great. That's why PM is there. Discussing with the director of software engineering? Probably completely irrelevant to the Big Problem he or she is currently trying to solve, which is much more likely related to culture, hiring/firing, budget, or strategy. When you tell that person that you are shipping a suboptimal product for reason X, they may truly want to help, but have no context to actually do it, and have much bigger fish to fry besides.
  - teekert 6y ago
    I agree with all that, and indeed it would be wise to ask that employee to go through other/more appropriate channels first when they have "bad news". What bothers me is the "trouble" part. Completely unnecessary imho.