16 ms·

I feel like there is a fair amount of literature on empowering managers to sugarcoat (or not, as this article says) negative feedback. An alternative point tha

I feel like there is a fair amount of literature on empowering managers to sugarcoat (or not, as this article says) negative feedback. An alternative point that perhaps a lot of managers have trouble considering – it's perfectly okay to not have any critical or negative feedback if things are going well. If things are fine, just go ahead and say that. Negative feedback or criticism should be relatively rare. I have noticed a pattern where managers, especially new managers, tend to take articles like this and others at face value, and nerdily try to maintain some kind of weird ratio in their feedback. They feel like they have to say something critical every time they give feedback to their reports. This leads to situations where there is no actual problem but they are spinning minor things into critical feedback just so they have something to say in that "column", which quickly becomes off-putting. It causes individual contributors to think, "I would rather get off this constant criticism treadmill, and work for someone more peaceful". Story time: I watched a new manager tear apart an otherwise great team like this once; six months after they took charge, 3 out of their 5 engineers had left for new jobs and higher salaries because the manager kept telling them "Weeeeell, you could have improved upon <inconsequential minor point>" every week, when actually they were doing a stellar job under time pressure and hitting all their targets. The appropriate response should have been "Great job, thank you, and please let me write you this large bonus check for year end".

quelltext 5y ago
This applies to peer feedback as well. Every few months we have to choose peers to evaluate us (not anonymously) and vice versa and the official peer feedback forms always ask for feedback on how the peer could improve. Real feedback isn't provided. You always have to come up with both positive and negative feedback. And obviously nobody wants to be an ass, so the negative feedback is extremely muted or some fake ideas for development are provided. I just want to tell someone and their manager how good a job they did, or in some rare cases help identify issues. It seems like a farce, really. I also had quarters in which I got glowing peer reviews where folks declined to fill in the development piece, and my very off hands manager came up with some made up generic negative feedback for me that did not come up before.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > Every few months we have to [...] come up with both positive and negative feedback. I hate this so much! The company has decided that my colleagues deserve negative feedback for their work (why? no reason at all, just to remind them of their place I guess), but I am the one who is told to make up some and deliver it to them. Fuck no! How about you play your crazy mind games yourself. Next time, will you also ask me to spit in their faces? So my "negative feedback" is usually of the type: works too hard, or cares about the project too much. The real reason for this forced negative feedback is probably to give managers some material to quote when your colleague will ask for a raise, so they don't even have to bother making up the reason for rejection themselves. As a bonus, if the colleague knows that you wrote the part they quoted, it makes you the bad guy, not the company. Are these new trends in company management modelled after abusive relatioships? Or is this just the natural behavior of people who are born to be bosses?
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    If I had to guess, it’s because the people in charge care more about short-term targets than they care about the company or its people. Those in power abusing the people under them has been a human flaw since the beginning of history.
- tomasdore 5y ago
  This should be easy to fix with a lorem ipsum generator for feedback that generates rambling paragraphs that are not obviously completely lacking in syntax. Eventually the reader will give up. Something about communication skills would do fine, as long as it's sufficiently indecipherable. Just keep opening clauses and rarely closing them. "While you are well-known as an excellent worker, sometimes those who are not engaged on the same workflows will, notwithstanding their own excellent and well-known communication skills, find it still time-consuming, if not time-inefficient, to reconfigure your updates into modes that are more familiar within their own teams' communications styles, thus necessitating an extra step of interpretation, that many, if not most, would be unwilling, or unable, to provide, at least within the timeframe that would accommodate both their own project and yours, as well as the percentages of their own workdays, and yours, that they can usefully devote, on a regular basis, to a teasing out, or a finessing, for a fuller understanding, such as you and they can both agree, as to what the final product, or product at any given stage of a deliverable, might contribute, both to the end-goals of their team and yours, balanced against the novel, or at least additional, requirements that would be entailed, or at least implied, if they were to adopt, or afford options for integrating with, the...
benhoyt 5y ago
I think this is good advice (I've been in both managerial and individual contributor roles over the years). On the other hand, as an individual contributor, especially if I'm new on the job, I often have imposter syndrome, and keep worrying I'm not doing a good job. (I'm sure I'm not alone in this.) And when my manager doesn't say anything about my performance I start thinking that maybe I'm doing badly. So I feel the need to ask, which is not as nice as them just telling me. So I guess I'm not disagreeing, as long as if things are fine, the manager does "just go ahead and say that".
fractalb 5y ago
I can’t vote it enough for that very relatable story.
twelvechairs 5y ago
Sure thank people if they have made a big contribution. But also a lot of very good people want to know what they can improve. Maybe they work hard under pressure and deliver results as you say, but they are never going to step up in job title because they cant communicate well with the wider office or are poor with estimating deadlines. A good manager will thank them appropriately and also give career guidance appropriately and try to help them move forward. Most staff will thank you for that. Its treading a bit of a line though and if delivered poorly can come off as you saw it.
- watwut 5y ago
  > Sure thank people if they have made a big contribution. You can thank people for minor thigs too. It harms nothing. > Maybe they work hard under pressure and deliver results as you say, but they are never going to step up in job title because they cant communicate well with the wider office or are poor with estimating deadlines. Practically, people who work very hard while being under pressure tend to communicate badly, because they are stressed and overworked. This wont change no matter how much you complain about them not communicate properly. Proper communication requires time. > A good manager will thank them appropriately and also give career guidance appropriately and try to help them move forward. Good manager will step up and manage their workload. Consistently overworked people under pressure are mostly result of organizational and managerial decision making. > Most staff will thank you for that. That is where the issue starts. If we all work hard under pressure, you dont thank people for that and just start complaining they are not nice while being stressed, they wont improve. They will get resentful and feel unappreciated.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    > You can thank people for minor thigs too. It harms nothing. Please don't, just don't. At least not as my manager. There's very little that I find as bad on the job as hearing thank you's for things that come naturally on the job. It's just part and parcel of my job. I find there is little that devalues genuine thanks for a job well done as quickly as being praised for every proverbial fart. > because they are stressed and overworked. That wasn't what I read from OP. I know the difference of being stressed out or just working under pressure. I can feel stressed out while a relatively low workload. And I can have a great bunch of problems to solve and still feel great about it. It isn't black or white. > They will get resentful and feel unappreciated. I know the feeling - but at least in my case this had nothing to do with workload when I was in that state of mind/situation on the job. It was a lack of control, a lack of overall recognition and respect. Not the work load per se.
BarryMilo 5y ago
Almost no one who is untrained in learning/psychology knows how to give feedback in a useful way. For any such mentor, you can say "forget about the bad, focus on highlighting what the person did right". This will almost always dramatically increase the mentee's rate of progress. This is because for any given task there are a million ways to get things wrong, but only one/very few ways to get things right. So people learn almost nothing from "don't". You can eliminate negative feedback altogether and lose almost nothing. Of course, it can be useful in very specific situations, and these are generally not cases you need to sugarcoat because they are very technical (e.g. "don't spike the ball when leading by more than 14 points", "don't close the issue when a manager has commented on it", etc).
- 4monthsaway 5y ago
  I like that million ways to do it wrong line. Never thought of it like that.
  - oblio 5y ago
    It's a sort of general principle and the first time I encountered it was in Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. It's the first paragraph: > Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
    - chriswarbo 5y ago
      Indeed, it's why an exit code of 0 indicates a successful program execution, whilst anything else is an error code (which other programs can compared against known values, if appropriate).
      - gmfawcett 5y ago
        You've given me hope that, one day, all the great Russian novelists will be translated into POSIX. :)
    - jodrellblank 5y ago
austincheney 5y ago
Sugarcoat is completely the wrong approach. Ultimately it comes down to receptivity of the audience. Some people cannot listen, a cognitive impairment, such as Dunning-Kruger. In this case it doesn’t matter what you say because they hear: I’m awesome. Don’t waste your time. Be direct and be deliberately honest. Do not soften the blow. If the product is complete shit then start with that. Then find the merits, opportunities for improvements, and provide guidance for the path forward. For some reason, contrary to all expectations, this is so much easier and effective with children than adults. Children seem more inclined to learning and a willingness to accept productive feedback while adults are more inclined to filter commentary and simply stop listening.
- dukeyukey 5y ago
  Children don't have preconceived notions that failure is anything more than not doing a thing, or not doing a thing right. To an adult, failure is a reason why could be fired, or something that loses them the respect of their peers, or proof that their imposter syndrome was right all along.
  - austincheney 5y ago
    That sounds like the perfect description of fragility and indicates behavior of damaged risk analysis.
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      Just because you don’t worry about a particular thing doesn’t mean anyone who does is “fragile” or “damaged”.
      - austincheney 5y ago
        Yes, the complete inability to handle failure is absolutely an indication of fragility. I don’t feel that bad if this personal opinion crushes the soul of an emotionally mature adult.
- 5y ago
gherkinnn 5y ago
> They feel like they have to say something critical every time they give feedback to their reports. Same applies to code reviews.
- llampx 5y ago
  If you don't have anything negative to say or criticism to give, some people take it as them being better than you at the task that's being reviewed. I've found it better to have more criticism at the start and then reduce it over time, but that's getting into Machiavellian territory.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
Doesn't it depend on employee too though? If my manager cannot tell me what to focus on next,where my long term gaps are,I feel they are not doing they job (not paying attention to me / not caring enough). My sister has even changed jobs over a manager who failed to provide any actionable feedback over a year (she's very ambitious and thus expects direction / support for improvement from her leadership & support structure). I want to improve and advance and do better; "nice job" is nice to hear (no sarcasm; we all need it in our lives:) but doesn't alone help me move the needle. I personally strive for a "great job! here's what to focus on next / even better if..." from a good manager or mentor. (I may not be a majority and I recognize that. I'm comfy in absolute metrics - I hate being told "awesome job!" all the time in a meaningless attempt at validation. I'm happy to hear I'm a 3 out of 100 on some specific axis I'm new at, as long as you help me reach 3.5 tomorrow and 4 next week).
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Why does the desire for a coach/mentor mean your current immediate manager has to be it? Hell my concept of ambition involves not being overly concerned with your current immediate managers opinion of your skillset because you’ll have moved on to newer and greater things soon anyway, and your ambitious sister changing jobs after a year would seem entirely reasonable to me even if her manager was superb. Even if my immediate manager was such a superstar in my field that I would otherwise love to have them as my coach if they weren’t my manager, I’d still be reluctant to treat them as such because of all the conflict of interest. What’s best for me, my growth, my career isn’t necessarily what’s best for the company, team, or them.
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    Thanks for responding! I appreciate the discussion, even if we may not agree :) First, I 100% agree that one should seek coaches and mentors outside of their boss, team, and even department/organization/practice. Somebody to provide broad, long-term perspective and awareness; open up eyes beyond the immediate. However, in practical terms, your team lead / boss / manager should have the most immediate awareness and visibility of what you're doing and how, and would be able to provide most granular and tactical feedback. Some of it may be technical-skillset oriented, but a lot of it would be around business priorities and how to best achieved them - focus and prioritization. If they are unable or unwilling to provide that mentorship and guidance effectively, I hold it against them and I feel they are not performing their duties to the fullest - that is the gist of my original point. ---- That does bring us to our point of likely disagreement though: There is a very vocal sentiment on HN that individuals and teams/companies inherently do not align, and we as employees should not stay long / invest in the teams and companies, and treat them as very temporary allies at best, if not passive permanent antagonists. Come in, take / learn what we need, depart. I will put forward that an organization where employees, teams, and business pervasively do not align in their interest and goals, is at best dynamically unstable and more realistically inherently dysfunctional. While company may survive some percentage of prima donas, writ large, if every employee had distinct differing goals from the team and business, that is pure Brownian motion - moving fast but going nowhere. --- Beyond organizational, down to personal - much of it may come to individuals and personalities. Some people (hopefully many!) may agree with business goals, like their teams, and want to support them long term, grow something together. I've been in the same company for almost two decades, love many (not all! :) of the people I've been surrounded on many & various teams in that time, and have sought leaders/managers/bosses I respect, appreciate and want to learn from (our personal agency and ability to choose/move does not only exist between jobs & companies; a little attention and initiative will enable a lot of agency and self-guided direction within a company). I've partnered with my bosses and managers wherever I went, tried to understand their perspective and goals even when our styles didn't match, and looked to learn something from them all even if I would've done it differently (at least once, that was a formidable challenge:). My sister and her husband on the other hand have changed jobs every 18-24 months, and have complained, moaned and grown frustrated/stressed with every.single.one of them; and have never seen something big to completion. At some point one asks - is it everybody else, or is it you (and your attitude? :). And contrary to common wisdom , my salary has tended to keep ahead of theirs - a person with skills and initiative may be able to grow within a company as much as by skipping. My 100 Croatian Lipa, as always :). This is not to say that my way is the only way, it empathically is not - but I also think treating your team lead / boss / manager with deep-rooted suspicion and antagonism, with reluctance to find a way to learn from them and ally with them, seek knowledge and mentorship anywhere but the leader closest to you, is also not the universally best / happiest path either. I think we should expect, encourage, and demand more of our team leads and managers.
resonious 5y ago
I've worked with engineers that do this in code reviews. Always requesting some changes maybe gives the illusion that we're "refining" the codebase, but it takes up a lot of time. Of course I do expect some negative feedback when there's a real problem.
SamPatt 5y ago
I was a wire puller in a factory another lifetime ago and my manager gave me an excellent performance review, but at the end he said "I rated you low in 'knowledge of using hand tools' because I have to be able to show improvement in your next review. You're fine though.' " That wasn't particularly motivating but I did appreciate the honesty.
asdfman123 5y ago
Yeah, exactly. "Feedback" should be "I'm going to tell you how to change course so you don't eventually get fired." If they aren't on course to be fired, or worse are doing well, you don't need to find feedback. Any manager who objects to that should think how they'd feel if they turned around and started nitpicking THEIR management style.
scrubs 5y ago
To get grounded in this issue I highly recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Esteem-Management/dp/1555426123/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=human+element+schutz&qid=1637691285&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Estee... to nail the fundamentals. There's too many HN posts on human dynamics that float above the fundamentals leaving the whole issue in a fog. It will make clear there are three interrelated issues in sharing feedback: - behavior of openness - self-esteem on TL and mentee's parts, which depends on self-awareness - both of which run on concurrent with potential conflicts around control, openness, and inclusion. As the book explains openness in the context of human organizations is one of the last things to be well-resolved. Why that's the case is very important to understand. Seen in the context of the book, the OP's write-up makes some good points, however, without the deep principles advanced in the book the solution space will remain in a fog. And to the extent it's foggy, no real progress can take place.

quelltext 5y ago

This applies to peer feedback as well. Every few months we have to choose peers to evaluate us (not anonymously) and vice versa and the official peer feedback forms always ask for feedback on how the peer could improve. Real feedback isn't provided. You always have to come up with both positive and negative feedback. And obviously nobody wants to be an ass, so the negative feedback is extremely muted or some fake ideas for development are provided. I just want to tell someone and their manager how good a job they did, or in some rare cases help identify issues. It seems like a farce, really. I also had quarters in which I got glowing peer reviews where folks declined to fill in the development piece, and my very off hands manager came up with some made up generic negative feedback for me that did not come up before.

Viliam1234 5y ago
> Every few months we have to [...] come up with both positive and negative feedback. I hate this so much! The company has decided that my colleagues deserve negative feedback for their work (why? no reason at all, just to remind them of their place I guess), but I am the one who is told to make up some and deliver it to them. Fuck no! How about you play your crazy mind games yourself. Next time, will you also ask me to spit in their faces? So my "negative feedback" is usually of the type: works too hard, or cares about the project too much. The real reason for this forced negative feedback is probably to give managers some material to quote when your colleague will ask for a raise, so they don't even have to bother making up the reason for rejection themselves. As a bonus, if the colleague knows that you wrote the part they quoted, it makes you the bad guy, not the company. Are these new trends in company management modelled after abusive relatioships? Or is this just the natural behavior of people who are born to be bosses?
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  If I had to guess, it’s because the people in charge care more about short-term targets than they care about the company or its people. Those in power abusing the people under them has been a human flaw since the beginning of history.
tomasdore 5y ago
This should be easy to fix with a lorem ipsum generator for feedback that generates rambling paragraphs that are not obviously completely lacking in syntax. Eventually the reader will give up. Something about communication skills would do fine, as long as it's sufficiently indecipherable. Just keep opening clauses and rarely closing them. "While you are well-known as an excellent worker, sometimes those who are not engaged on the same workflows will, notwithstanding their own excellent and well-known communication skills, find it still time-consuming, if not time-inefficient, to reconfigure your updates into modes that are more familiar within their own teams' communications styles, thus necessitating an extra step of interpretation, that many, if not most, would be unwilling, or unable, to provide, at least within the timeframe that would accommodate both their own project and yours, as well as the percentages of their own workdays, and yours, that they can usefully devote, on a regular basis, to a teasing out, or a finessing, for a fuller understanding, such as you and they can both agree, as to what the final product, or product at any given stage of a deliverable, might contribute, both to the end-goals of their team and yours, balanced against the novel, or at least additional, requirements that would be entailed, or at least implied, if they were to adopt, or afford options for integrating with, the...

benhoyt 5y ago

I think this is good advice (I've been in both managerial and individual contributor roles over the years). On the other hand, as an individual contributor, especially if I'm new on the job, I often have imposter syndrome, and keep worrying I'm not doing a good job. (I'm sure I'm not alone in this.) And when my manager doesn't say anything about my performance I start thinking that maybe I'm doing badly. So I feel the need to ask, which is not as nice as them just telling me. So I guess I'm not disagreeing, as long as if things are fine, the manager does "just go ahead and say that".

fractalb 5y ago

I can’t vote it enough for that very relatable story.

twelvechairs 5y ago

Sure thank people if they have made a big contribution. But also a lot of very good people want to know what they can improve. Maybe they work hard under pressure and deliver results as you say, but they are never going to step up in job title because they cant communicate well with the wider office or are poor with estimating deadlines. A good manager will thank them appropriately and also give career guidance appropriately and try to help them move forward. Most staff will thank you for that. Its treading a bit of a line though and if delivered poorly can come off as you saw it.

watwut 5y ago
> Sure thank people if they have made a big contribution. You can thank people for minor thigs too. It harms nothing. > Maybe they work hard under pressure and deliver results as you say, but they are never going to step up in job title because they cant communicate well with the wider office or are poor with estimating deadlines. Practically, people who work very hard while being under pressure tend to communicate badly, because they are stressed and overworked. This wont change no matter how much you complain about them not communicate properly. Proper communication requires time. > A good manager will thank them appropriately and also give career guidance appropriately and try to help them move forward. Good manager will step up and manage their workload. Consistently overworked people under pressure are mostly result of organizational and managerial decision making. > Most staff will thank you for that. That is where the issue starts. If we all work hard under pressure, you dont thank people for that and just start complaining they are not nice while being stressed, they wont improve. They will get resentful and feel unappreciated.
- sdoering 5y ago
  > You can thank people for minor thigs too. It harms nothing. Please don't, just don't. At least not as my manager. There's very little that I find as bad on the job as hearing thank you's for things that come naturally on the job. It's just part and parcel of my job. I find there is little that devalues genuine thanks for a job well done as quickly as being praised for every proverbial fart. > because they are stressed and overworked. That wasn't what I read from OP. I know the difference of being stressed out or just working under pressure. I can feel stressed out while a relatively low workload. And I can have a great bunch of problems to solve and still feel great about it. It isn't black or white. > They will get resentful and feel unappreciated. I know the feeling - but at least in my case this had nothing to do with workload when I was in that state of mind/situation on the job. It was a lack of control, a lack of overall recognition and respect. Not the work load per se.

BarryMilo 5y ago

Almost no one who is untrained in learning/psychology knows how to give feedback in a useful way. For any such mentor, you can say "forget about the bad, focus on highlighting what the person did right". This will almost always dramatically increase the mentee's rate of progress. This is because for any given task there are a million ways to get things wrong, but only one/very few ways to get things right. So people learn almost nothing from "don't". You can eliminate negative feedback altogether and lose almost nothing. Of course, it can be useful in very specific situations, and these are generally not cases you need to sugarcoat because they are very technical (e.g. "don't spike the ball when leading by more than 14 points", "don't close the issue when a manager has commented on it", etc).

4monthsaway 5y ago
I like that million ways to do it wrong line. Never thought of it like that.
- oblio 5y ago
  It's a sort of general principle and the first time I encountered it was in Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. It's the first paragraph: > Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    Indeed, it's why an exit code of 0 indicates a successful program execution, whilst anything else is an error code (which other programs can compared against known values, if appropriate).
    - gmfawcett 5y ago
      You've given me hope that, one day, all the great Russian novelists will be translated into POSIX. :)
  - jodrellblank 5y ago

austincheney 5y ago

Sugarcoat is completely the wrong approach. Ultimately it comes down to receptivity of the audience. Some people cannot listen, a cognitive impairment, such as Dunning-Kruger. In this case it doesn’t matter what you say because they hear: I’m awesome. Don’t waste your time. Be direct and be deliberately honest. Do not soften the blow. If the product is complete shit then start with that. Then find the merits, opportunities for improvements, and provide guidance for the path forward. For some reason, contrary to all expectations, this is so much easier and effective with children than adults. Children seem more inclined to learning and a willingness to accept productive feedback while adults are more inclined to filter commentary and simply stop listening.

dukeyukey 5y ago
Children don't have preconceived notions that failure is anything more than not doing a thing, or not doing a thing right. To an adult, failure is a reason why could be fired, or something that loses them the respect of their peers, or proof that their imposter syndrome was right all along.
- austincheney 5y ago
  That sounds like the perfect description of fragility and indicates behavior of damaged risk analysis.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Just because you don’t worry about a particular thing doesn’t mean anyone who does is “fragile” or “damaged”.
    - austincheney 5y ago
      Yes, the complete inability to handle failure is absolutely an indication of fragility. I don’t feel that bad if this personal opinion crushes the soul of an emotionally mature adult.
5y ago

gherkinnn 5y ago

> They feel like they have to say something critical every time they give feedback to their reports. Same applies to code reviews.

llampx 5y ago
If you don't have anything negative to say or criticism to give, some people take it as them being better than you at the task that's being reviewed. I've found it better to have more criticism at the start and then reduce it over time, but that's getting into Machiavellian territory.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

Doesn't it depend on employee too though? If my manager cannot tell me what to focus on next,where my long term gaps are,I feel they are not doing they job (not paying attention to me / not caring enough). My sister has even changed jobs over a manager who failed to provide any actionable feedback over a year (she's very ambitious and thus expects direction / support for improvement from her leadership & support structure). I want to improve and advance and do better; "nice job" is nice to hear (no sarcasm; we all need it in our lives:) but doesn't alone help me move the needle. I personally strive for a "great job! here's what to focus on next / even better if..." from a good manager or mentor. (I may not be a majority and I recognize that. I'm comfy in absolute metrics - I hate being told "awesome job!" all the time in a meaningless attempt at validation. I'm happy to hear I'm a 3 out of 100 on some specific axis I'm new at, as long as you help me reach 3.5 tomorrow and 4 next week).

austhrow743 5y ago
Why does the desire for a coach/mentor mean your current immediate manager has to be it? Hell my concept of ambition involves not being overly concerned with your current immediate managers opinion of your skillset because you’ll have moved on to newer and greater things soon anyway, and your ambitious sister changing jobs after a year would seem entirely reasonable to me even if her manager was superb. Even if my immediate manager was such a superstar in my field that I would otherwise love to have them as my coach if they weren’t my manager, I’d still be reluctant to treat them as such because of all the conflict of interest. What’s best for me, my growth, my career isn’t necessarily what’s best for the company, team, or them.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Thanks for responding! I appreciate the discussion, even if we may not agree :) First, I 100% agree that one should seek coaches and mentors outside of their boss, team, and even department/organization/practice. Somebody to provide broad, long-term perspective and awareness; open up eyes beyond the immediate. However, in practical terms, your team lead / boss / manager should have the most immediate awareness and visibility of what you're doing and how, and would be able to provide most granular and tactical feedback. Some of it may be technical-skillset oriented, but a lot of it would be around business priorities and how to best achieved them - focus and prioritization. If they are unable or unwilling to provide that mentorship and guidance effectively, I hold it against them and I feel they are not performing their duties to the fullest - that is the gist of my original point. ---- That does bring us to our point of likely disagreement though: There is a very vocal sentiment on HN that individuals and teams/companies inherently do not align, and we as employees should not stay long / invest in the teams and companies, and treat them as very temporary allies at best, if not passive permanent antagonists. Come in, take / learn what we need, depart. I will put forward that an organization where employees, teams, and business pervasively do not align in their interest and goals, is at best dynamically unstable and more realistically inherently dysfunctional. While company may survive some percentage of prima donas, writ large, if every employee had distinct differing goals from the team and business, that is pure Brownian motion - moving fast but going nowhere. --- Beyond organizational, down to personal - much of it may come to individuals and personalities. Some people (hopefully many!) may agree with business goals, like their teams, and want to support them long term, grow something together. I've been in the same company for almost two decades, love many (not all! :) of the people I've been surrounded on many & various teams in that time, and have sought leaders/managers/bosses I respect, appreciate and want to learn from (our personal agency and ability to choose/move does not only exist between jobs & companies; a little attention and initiative will enable a lot of agency and self-guided direction within a company). I've partnered with my bosses and managers wherever I went, tried to understand their perspective and goals even when our styles didn't match, and looked to learn something from them all even if I would've done it differently (at least once, that was a formidable challenge:). My sister and her husband on the other hand have changed jobs every 18-24 months, and have complained, moaned and grown frustrated/stressed with every.single.one of them; and have never seen something big to completion. At some point one asks - is it everybody else, or is it you (and your attitude? :). And contrary to common wisdom , my salary has tended to keep ahead of theirs - a person with skills and initiative may be able to grow within a company as much as by skipping. My 100 Croatian Lipa, as always :). This is not to say that my way is the only way, it empathically is not - but I also think treating your team lead / boss / manager with deep-rooted suspicion and antagonism, with reluctance to find a way to learn from them and ally with them, seek knowledge and mentorship anywhere but the leader closest to you, is also not the universally best / happiest path either. I think we should expect, encourage, and demand more of our team leads and managers.

resonious 5y ago

I've worked with engineers that do this in code reviews. Always requesting some changes maybe gives the illusion that we're "refining" the codebase, but it takes up a lot of time. Of course I do expect some negative feedback when there's a real problem.

SamPatt 5y ago

I was a wire puller in a factory another lifetime ago and my manager gave me an excellent performance review, but at the end he said "I rated you low in 'knowledge of using hand tools' because I have to be able to show improvement in your next review. You're fine though.' " That wasn't particularly motivating but I did appreciate the honesty.

asdfman123 5y ago

Yeah, exactly. "Feedback" should be "I'm going to tell you how to change course so you don't eventually get fired." If they aren't on course to be fired, or worse are doing well, you don't need to find feedback. Any manager who objects to that should think how they'd feel if they turned around and started nitpicking THEIR management style.

scrubs 5y ago

To get grounded in this issue I highly recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Esteem-Management/dp/1555426123/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=human+element+schutz&qid=1637691285&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Estee... to nail the fundamentals. There's too many HN posts on human dynamics that float above the fundamentals leaving the whole issue in a fog. It will make clear there are three interrelated issues in sharing feedback: - behavior of openness - self-esteem on TL and mentee's parts, which depends on self-awareness - both of which run on concurrent with potential conflicts around control, openness, and inclusion. As the book explains openness in the context of human organizations is one of the last things to be well-resolved. Why that's the case is very important to understand. Seen in the context of the book, the OP's write-up makes some good points, however, without the deep principles advanced in the book the solution space will remain in a fog. And to the extent it's foggy, no real progress can take place.