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Consider that you're advertising yourself as the type of person who absolutely must be lied to in order to maintain morale. I've been close to situations where

Consider that you're advertising yourself as the type of person who absolutely must be lied to in order to maintain morale. I've been close to situations where the ICs did their absolute best and it was a total waste because of politics outside of their control. Do you tell them that so-and-so highly-respected person was shit-talking them because of an unrelated agenda and invalidated all of their work? Or do you tell them good job (it was a good job) and not get into it?

warent 4y ago
Frankly if this actually happened, I would do neither. Just tell my IC "I'm not sure why your work was invalidated. Let me look into it for you." and then address this as a grievous issue on behalf of my IC with the leadership. If leadership doesn't fix the problem then just resign in protest. EDIT: It's now occurring to me that there's probably different schools of thought here. Yes, I've resigned in protest on behalf of my workers before. If my team is getting fucked, then I've either failed my team, or my purpose is meaningless. Either way, get me out.
- skipidarink 4y ago
  > Just tell my IC "I'm not sure why your work was invalidated. Let me look into it for you." And so you take your first step down the path.. "I'm not sure" is a lie here.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - warent 4y ago
    Why do post mortems happen for production issues, when you could just open up "git blame?" Are you lying to the team when you say, "we're not sure how this happened" rather than just quoting the git blame? Well, no. The problem is much more complicated than a buggy commit. It's a wider problem with the system. So you say "we don't know, we have to look more into it" and do a post mortem because that is the honest truth. The same principle applies here. So-and-so highly respected person committed a real-life communication bug that got merged into this IC's production career. But the problem is much more complicated than that. You don't know what the actual problem is until you address it with the leadership team.
    - skipidarink 4y ago
      I hear you on all of that, I'm just saying that leadership gets complicated. Sometimes the lie is better for all involved, especially the IC. You recognized this with your first instinct on how to communicate it. As far as the rewards for poorly-motivated actions, we've always got the long term.
comex 4y ago
> Or do you tell them good job (it was a good job) and not get into it? Personally, I’m okay with not being informed about everything that’s going on. I work at a big enough company that I couldn’t possibly know what goes on all the way up the management chain, but even if I worked at a small startup, I could understand if management didn’t want to be fully transparent. I don’t need to know; it’s none of my business. But I won’t stand being lied to – even about small things, or things I don’t even care about in their own right. I see lies as a breach of trust and as a sign that I can’t trust that person, moving forward. So it depends on what you mean by “not get into it”. If you really stick to truthful statements, and if there isn’t a high enough prior expectation of transparency to make it amount to a lie of omission, then leaving it at “good job” is perfectly fine. But if you do lie… well, if I find out, I’m probably leaving.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

warent 4y ago

Frankly if this actually happened, I would do neither. Just tell my IC "I'm not sure why your work was invalidated. Let me look into it for you." and then address this as a grievous issue on behalf of my IC with the leadership. If leadership doesn't fix the problem then just resign in protest. EDIT: It's now occurring to me that there's probably different schools of thought here. Yes, I've resigned in protest on behalf of my workers before. If my team is getting fucked, then I've either failed my team, or my purpose is meaningless. Either way, get me out.

skipidarink 4y ago
> Just tell my IC "I'm not sure why your work was invalidated. Let me look into it for you." And so you take your first step down the path.. "I'm not sure" is a lie here.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- warent 4y ago
  Why do post mortems happen for production issues, when you could just open up "git blame?" Are you lying to the team when you say, "we're not sure how this happened" rather than just quoting the git blame? Well, no. The problem is much more complicated than a buggy commit. It's a wider problem with the system. So you say "we don't know, we have to look more into it" and do a post mortem because that is the honest truth. The same principle applies here. So-and-so highly respected person committed a real-life communication bug that got merged into this IC's production career. But the problem is much more complicated than that. You don't know what the actual problem is until you address it with the leadership team.
  - skipidarink 4y ago
    I hear you on all of that, I'm just saying that leadership gets complicated. Sometimes the lie is better for all involved, especially the IC. You recognized this with your first instinct on how to communicate it. As far as the rewards for poorly-motivated actions, we've always got the long term.

comex 4y ago

> Or do you tell them good job (it was a good job) and not get into it? Personally, I’m okay with not being informed about everything that’s going on. I work at a big enough company that I couldn’t possibly know what goes on all the way up the management chain, but even if I worked at a small startup, I could understand if management didn’t want to be fully transparent. I don’t need to know; it’s none of my business. But I won’t stand being lied to – even about small things, or things I don’t even care about in their own right. I see lies as a breach of trust and as a sign that I can’t trust that person, moving forward. So it depends on what you mean by “not get into it”. If you really stick to truthful statements, and if there isn’t a high enough prior expectation of transparency to make it amount to a lie of omission, then leaving it at “good job” is perfectly fine. But if you do lie… well, if I find out, I’m probably leaving.

deleted 4y ago
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