5 ms·

I'm sorry, but I can't connect the dots in that story. 1) He did great (like, there's actual metrics mentioned) 2) Others wanted a different direction (even t

by nothis 5y ago

I'm sorry, but I can't connect the dots in that story. 1) He did great (like, there's actual metrics mentioned) 2) Others wanted a different direction (even though he did great?) and didn't tell him 3) They excluded him from meetings 4) They fired him 5) He blamed not "re-centering" himself In the notes, he mentions that one of his later decisions (splitting engineering) was a bad choice. So isn't that the core of it, then? The way he describes it, it sounds like the problem was him not being himself but it sounds like it's a simple management error that the others were too socially awkward to point out to him, instead firing him outright.

xyzzy123 5y ago
Mainly it sounds like a failure to connect with everyone else and read the room. This is "getting kicked out of the tribe" 101 and people are normally very sensitive to this. But as a new leader it's hard to understand all your status relationships (and that the happiness of the people under you on the org chart affects the happiness of the people listed above you). You can disagree with everyone else, you can be overridden (and quit, or disagree and commit or whatever you have to do) but not to see it coming is to live in a fundamentally different reality than your team. One thing I notice is a lot of words devoted to senior leadership and the author's personal leadership experience but not much focus on the experience or input of the (100+) people doing the work. The reason you don't fire a really good leader is because they'll take the team with them! The blog post is a bit of a Rorschach test but for me that's how I parse the blind spot. I actually think it's a great blog post due to the Rashomon effect it seems to provoke among people who read it.
- ilteris 5y ago
  I have a similar problem in my workplace. I have a hard time reading what's going on in the room or the relationships between ups and downs. It's exhausting. Is there a playbook for this type of thing?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - khafra 5y ago
    The book Moral Mazes is the best guide I know of. The basic takeaway is that if you're in middle management, it's already too late, you poor sucker. https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-managerial-work https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-manageri... https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moral-mazes https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moral-mazes
    - hitekker 5y ago
      I strongly recommend Moral Mazes. It's great reading for anyone who wants to achieve some level of honesty as a manager. It also arouses the ire of dishonest or duplicitous managers, which is another useful social signal to account for.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- le-mark 5y ago
  For convenience; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect
- dkarl 5y ago
  I have had a hard experience with that (as an IC) as well, finding myself isolated at my current job and unable to exert any influence. All the developers I work with have been at the same job for 5+ years and don't have a clue that the team is massively underperforming, their release and operational support processes take much more work and are less reliable than the same processes at other companies, the codebase seems almost intentionally hostile to new contributors (to the point of caricature; any description would come off as comic exaggeration,) but they think they're doing great and have all the answers, and every time I suggest improvements they respond like, "Well, actually, the reason it's better to do it our way is because..." and from that point on they are talking and not listening. All the other developers they hired in the last five years are gone, probably because they weren't listened to. I don't know if the isolation happened suddenly or gradually. I realized it all at once, but by the time I did, it had been happening for so long I don't know how it started. Somehow people stopped telling me what was going on and stopped consulting me on new decisions. I am the last person to find out about anything. One part of their existing pathology is a background churn of unilateral, unannounced, shuffling-the-deck-chairs "improvements" that cause a lot of errors and interruptions without making a worthwhile difference, but this is different. Even the changes that are formally talked about are talked about without me. I know that leadership has my back (they came into the picture more recently and can see that the team is underperforming) and they are planning changes that include me, but other than management, which is detached from day-to-day work, I'm on an island. Reading between the lines, I think I was brought in to try to fix the team, but without any management authority (and management not involved day-to-day) and with the team just ignoring my ideas and trying to assimilate me into their way of doing things, I have accomplished almost nothing on that score. Meanwhile, my social isolation is such that I can't stand to stick around much longer. I am going to go somewhere where I can be part of a team again. EDIT: Reading the article through fully, I think I should learn from his characterization of "swagger" (though I don't think the word is quite right.) When I wasn't listened to after repeated attempts to make the same point with the people who needed to hear it, I shouldn't have stopped talking. I should have kept saying the same thing whenever it was warranted. I should have talked louder. I should have taken my points to venues that included a larger audience than just the people who needed to act on them. I should have pressured management to put their weight behind me. I didn't do these things because I didn't want to be an asshole, and I didn't want to alienate people, and maybe because I was afraid of inviting open aggression against myself, but I should have been prepared to stand up to that. Why was I avoiding confrontation instead of inviting it? Maybe because I wasn't confident in my ability to argue my points in the face of hostility, but if that's the case, I should be practicing it more, not avoiding it.
soneca 5y ago
I think the “lost swagger” thing is that there was a decision made behind closed doors that he knew was bad and chose not to speak up. So when that decision indeed caused something bad, he emailed the CEO explaining why they should have know it was bad from the start. And the CEO complained that he was hired to “speak up” and he didn’t. And instead of bouncing back, he spiraled downwards (presumably doing a very bad job and justifying his firing). If he had the confidence to come back to who he was, even after being targeted by jealous executives and messing up with one decision (splitting the eng team), he would have done a better job. That’s my take of it
- mistersquid 5y ago
  > So when that decision indeed caused something bad, he emailed the CEO explaining why they should have know it was bad from the start. Given the meetings where decisions were being made were happening behind closed doors, he very well may have complained about a direction the CEO had chosen. Too many blind spots.
roland35 5y ago
I hope no one comes away after reading this thinking it is a good way to run a company. It is not! If you are making any decision, it is on you to seek out and include all relevant stakeholders and include them. People should not have to walk around sniffing for meetings that they weren't invited to and pushing their opinions in so that they feel heard. I trust my coworkers to include me if they want my opinion, and I trust them to make a good decision on their own if they don't!
bambax 5y ago
Yes, it's quite obscure. The meeting with the COO that asks for a brain dump and then fire him the morning after is the most troubling. Did the COO want to get what was on his mind so the company would lose nothing by firing him? Or was he utterly disappointed about said mind? I really don't understand what any of this has to do with swagger. Yet it is true you have to find it, and it's not obvious. Many times, what you're good at is what you can do better than others with less effort. But we can't see it because we associate value with effort; if it's easy for me then surely it's worthless? Well, no. If it's easy for you (and difficult for others) then that's your trade.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > Did the COO want to get what was on his mind so the company would lose nothing by firing him? Or was he utterly disappointed about said mind? In abusive environments, there is no logic, both things can be "true" at the same time. The COO wants to hurt him by firing him, but on some level also realizes that his contribution is valuable. Just because they want to get rid of him, that is no reason not to use him for one last time. (Usually this works the other way round: people are told that they are worthless, but also that it would be highly irresponsible and unethical of them to leave. Somehow, both things can be "true" at the same time.)
princeofxanadu 5y ago
I can perceive a lack of openness in the startup Kevin was working for. For instance, why did the C.E.O, the C.O.O and the team exclude him blindly rather than communicate?

by nothis 5y ago

xyzzy123 5y ago

Mainly it sounds like a failure to connect with everyone else and read the room. This is "getting kicked out of the tribe" 101 and people are normally very sensitive to this. But as a new leader it's hard to understand all your status relationships (and that the happiness of the people under you on the org chart affects the happiness of the people listed above you). You can disagree with everyone else, you can be overridden (and quit, or disagree and commit or whatever you have to do) but not to see it coming is to live in a fundamentally different reality than your team. One thing I notice is a lot of words devoted to senior leadership and the author's personal leadership experience but not much focus on the experience or input of the (100+) people doing the work. The reason you don't fire a really good leader is because they'll take the team with them! The blog post is a bit of a Rorschach test but for me that's how I parse the blind spot. I actually think it's a great blog post due to the Rashomon effect it seems to provoke among people who read it.

ilteris 5y ago
I have a similar problem in my workplace. I have a hard time reading what's going on in the room or the relationships between ups and downs. It's exhausting. Is there a playbook for this type of thing?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- khafra 5y ago
  The book Moral Mazes is the best guide I know of. The basic takeaway is that if you're in middle management, it's already too late, you poor sucker. https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-managerial-work https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-manageri... https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moral-mazes https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moral-mazes
  - hitekker 5y ago
    I strongly recommend Moral Mazes. It's great reading for anyone who wants to achieve some level of honesty as a manager. It also arouses the ire of dishonest or duplicitous managers, which is another useful social signal to account for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
le-mark 5y ago
For convenience; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect
dkarl 5y ago
I have had a hard experience with that (as an IC) as well, finding myself isolated at my current job and unable to exert any influence. All the developers I work with have been at the same job for 5+ years and don't have a clue that the team is massively underperforming, their release and operational support processes take much more work and are less reliable than the same processes at other companies, the codebase seems almost intentionally hostile to new contributors (to the point of caricature; any description would come off as comic exaggeration,) but they think they're doing great and have all the answers, and every time I suggest improvements they respond like, "Well, actually, the reason it's better to do it our way is because..." and from that point on they are talking and not listening. All the other developers they hired in the last five years are gone, probably because they weren't listened to. I don't know if the isolation happened suddenly or gradually. I realized it all at once, but by the time I did, it had been happening for so long I don't know how it started. Somehow people stopped telling me what was going on and stopped consulting me on new decisions. I am the last person to find out about anything. One part of their existing pathology is a background churn of unilateral, unannounced, shuffling-the-deck-chairs "improvements" that cause a lot of errors and interruptions without making a worthwhile difference, but this is different. Even the changes that are formally talked about are talked about without me. I know that leadership has my back (they came into the picture more recently and can see that the team is underperforming) and they are planning changes that include me, but other than management, which is detached from day-to-day work, I'm on an island. Reading between the lines, I think I was brought in to try to fix the team, but without any management authority (and management not involved day-to-day) and with the team just ignoring my ideas and trying to assimilate me into their way of doing things, I have accomplished almost nothing on that score. Meanwhile, my social isolation is such that I can't stand to stick around much longer. I am going to go somewhere where I can be part of a team again. EDIT: Reading the article through fully, I think I should learn from his characterization of "swagger" (though I don't think the word is quite right.) When I wasn't listened to after repeated attempts to make the same point with the people who needed to hear it, I shouldn't have stopped talking. I should have kept saying the same thing whenever it was warranted. I should have talked louder. I should have taken my points to venues that included a larger audience than just the people who needed to act on them. I should have pressured management to put their weight behind me. I didn't do these things because I didn't want to be an asshole, and I didn't want to alienate people, and maybe because I was afraid of inviting open aggression against myself, but I should have been prepared to stand up to that. Why was I avoiding confrontation instead of inviting it? Maybe because I wasn't confident in my ability to argue my points in the face of hostility, but if that's the case, I should be practicing it more, not avoiding it.

soneca 5y ago

I think the “lost swagger” thing is that there was a decision made behind closed doors that he knew was bad and chose not to speak up. So when that decision indeed caused something bad, he emailed the CEO explaining why they should have know it was bad from the start. And the CEO complained that he was hired to “speak up” and he didn’t. And instead of bouncing back, he spiraled downwards (presumably doing a very bad job and justifying his firing). If he had the confidence to come back to who he was, even after being targeted by jealous executives and messing up with one decision (splitting the eng team), he would have done a better job. That’s my take of it

mistersquid 5y ago
> So when that decision indeed caused something bad, he emailed the CEO explaining why they should have know it was bad from the start. Given the meetings where decisions were being made were happening behind closed doors, he very well may have complained about a direction the CEO had chosen. Too many blind spots.

roland35 5y ago

I hope no one comes away after reading this thinking it is a good way to run a company. It is not! If you are making any decision, it is on you to seek out and include all relevant stakeholders and include them. People should not have to walk around sniffing for meetings that they weren't invited to and pushing their opinions in so that they feel heard. I trust my coworkers to include me if they want my opinion, and I trust them to make a good decision on their own if they don't!

bambax 5y ago

Yes, it's quite obscure. The meeting with the COO that asks for a brain dump and then fire him the morning after is the most troubling. Did the COO want to get what was on his mind so the company would lose nothing by firing him? Or was he utterly disappointed about said mind? I really don't understand what any of this has to do with swagger. Yet it is true you have to find it, and it's not obvious. Many times, what you're good at is what you can do better than others with less effort. But we can't see it because we associate value with effort; if it's easy for me then surely it's worthless? Well, no. If it's easy for you (and difficult for others) then that's your trade.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Viliam1234 5y ago
> Did the COO want to get what was on his mind so the company would lose nothing by firing him? Or was he utterly disappointed about said mind? In abusive environments, there is no logic, both things can be "true" at the same time. The COO wants to hurt him by firing him, but on some level also realizes that his contribution is valuable. Just because they want to get rid of him, that is no reason not to use him for one last time. (Usually this works the other way round: people are told that they are worthless, but also that it would be highly irresponsible and unethical of them to leave. Somehow, both things can be "true" at the same time.)

princeofxanadu 5y ago

I can perceive a lack of openness in the startup Kevin was working for. For instance, why did the C.E.O, the C.O.O and the team exclude him blindly rather than communicate?