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One of the most difficult things I had to learn to do as an engineering manager was to be able to confront attitude problems and take action as quickly as possi

One of the most difficult things I had to learn to do as an engineering manager was to be able to confront attitude problems and take action as quickly as possible. Performance problems can be fixed. Attitude problems are much harder to solve. You will face this situation multiple times in your career as engineering manager. I'm not very aggressive or confrontational by nature, so having that conversation with the engineer in question is absolutely not something I looked forward to. This obviously led to an unfair amount of work for the others in the team, a feeling of unfair treatment, resentment and a hit to morale and performance. Two situations were so extreme that we've had to lay off the engineer(s) in question, which is one of the hardest things to do as a manager. I can tell you that in both instances the teams fared much better afterwards.

abybaddi009 6y ago
Can you please elaborate on the attitude issue and how you handled it?
- korginator 6y ago
  Two instances, in two different companies that I can share. In one case the developer was hostile to working with anyone else. This was a project that involved close co-operation with teams across three countries, so his attitude was a no-go. In another case, the engineer was constantly slacking off, dumping his work on the other devs in the team. In both cases I'd have several 1:1's with the engineers, and first try and understand what was going on. I usually trust people, and when something like this turns up, there are often other serious problems, for example at home with family or with the developer's health. We settle these issues quickly through flexi-time, reduced workloads, sabbaticals, coaching, changing their scope of work, etc, and things turn around very nicely. However the engineers I wrote about above didn't fall into this category. In both cases I had extensive 1:1's with them, to help both of us understand what was going on. In this process I'd get insights into the nature of each person, and that helped define the right approach to resolve the problems. I then set clear expectations that we would review each week. We unfortunately got no progress for both the devs after 4 weeks, and at this point I had to involve HR and turn this into a probation. Both flunked and were asked to leave the companies. There's no set formula here. If faced with this situation today, I'd handle it slightly differently and more quickly.

abybaddi009 6y ago

Can you please elaborate on the attitude issue and how you handled it?

korginator 6y ago
Two instances, in two different companies that I can share. In one case the developer was hostile to working with anyone else. This was a project that involved close co-operation with teams across three countries, so his attitude was a no-go. In another case, the engineer was constantly slacking off, dumping his work on the other devs in the team. In both cases I'd have several 1:1's with the engineers, and first try and understand what was going on. I usually trust people, and when something like this turns up, there are often other serious problems, for example at home with family or with the developer's health. We settle these issues quickly through flexi-time, reduced workloads, sabbaticals, coaching, changing their scope of work, etc, and things turn around very nicely. However the engineers I wrote about above didn't fall into this category. In both cases I had extensive 1:1's with them, to help both of us understand what was going on. In this process I'd get insights into the nature of each person, and that helped define the right approach to resolve the problems. I then set clear expectations that we would review each week. We unfortunately got no progress for both the devs after 4 weeks, and at this point I had to involve HR and turn this into a probation. Both flunked and were asked to leave the companies. There's no set formula here. If faced with this situation today, I'd handle it slightly differently and more quickly.