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If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not really understood what it means to be a manager and what sort of power you have over your reports. Try to think of things from their perspective and imagine this coming from your boss.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  I mean, being threatened is a "cheap education" relative to being fired, sure.
- maxbond 4y ago
  That's just a fractal version of this same problem. Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living, and not to role play palace intrigue. But certainly it's my experience that this toxicity comes from the top down and I have sympathy with managers who are putting their reports under unreasonable pressure because they are themselves under unreasonable pressure.
  - invig 4y ago
    "Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living" Miss-aligned goals do create all kinds of problems, don't they?
duped 4y ago
What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?
- pjc50 4y ago
  Delivering information. Now, it takes a lot of company culture work to make it safe to actually deliver that, but you have to choose: do you want to have some awkward meetings, or some awkward subpoenas?
- jrockway 4y ago
  Presumably you're conveying the results of your research, which means new facts are on the table that the "mismanagers" weren't previously aware of. They assigned you that research work presumably because they wanted to know those facts. Now that you're showing up with useful information, they can go back and deliver an even better estimate of the project than they had before. If you show up and are like "hey idiots, you fucked up the estimate, man you're dumb" then, sure, people will react negatively. If you show up and say "you were right that we needed to look into this more; we found 9 months of work we hadn't incorporated into the plan" then they're going to have a lot of work to do, but they probably aren't going to be unhappy about being in a position of higher certainty. To some extent, it's not really different from what engineers do. Are you mad when there's a production outage? No. You just debug it and mitigate it. Project planning is no different; new facts are on the table, and the plan has to change. Changing the plan is a lot of work, and that's why project management is a dedicated profession. They can now go do their job better with the data that you collected. No reason to be mad.
- jalla 4y ago
  I've been naive like that a few times. I managed to get away unharmed most times but once I was publicly blamed for the project's failure by the incompetent managers, in a governmental organisation. I overestimated people's honesty in the face of their own career death. I considered blowing the whistle or taking them to court for slander but I had strong doubts I could clear my name as power corrupts.
hnlmorg 4y ago
This is 100% correct. It doesn’t matter if it was intended as a threat because if it wasn’t, it was still an appallingly judged comment.
monksy 4y ago
Seeing this and the todolu work advice girl ... I think educating people on how threats are composed and used is something that everyone should understand. I'm now realized that I've been soft threatened quite a lot.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I had a similar disagreement with a manager once about a project, and I said something like, "I'm stressed and working around the clock, I don't need you threatening me," and they were genuinely taken aback and even hurt that I would interpret it that way (as they felt they were offering advice). When I asked them to reverse the situation, they immediately understood. When the pressure is on, it's an easy mistake to make. For reference: https://youtube.com/channel/UCCtfpN-3GkF7HKvj5qs2EPQ https://youtube.com/channel/UCCtfpN-3GkF7HKvj5qs2EPQ ("toodaloo advice girl" Lou Whaley, who makes videos about office politics and setting boundaries with your manager.)
  - monksy 4y ago
    Yep that's the one. I can never remember the person. But this is the video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gr8AgR42sDo https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gr8AgR42sDo
- lmm 4y ago
  Being able to understand threats is not always beneficial.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Could you elaborate?
    - lmm 4y ago
      You're harder to effectively blackmail (and therefore less likely to be blackmailed) if you can't understand when someone's blackmailing you, for example.
apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
Semi-related to this, but this type of statement and the reaction to it is how I discovered that I had basically assumed a manager role in all but title. For the first little bit of my career, my coworkers and I would often joke about how the mistake one of us had made was going to get us fired. One day, I made a similar joke to another developer and was met with a look of sheer terror. Later that day, he pulled me into a room and asked me if I was serious. After doing my best to calm him down and assure him I didn't even have that type of authority, I came to realize that he viewed me as a manager even though I was technically at the same level in the org chart as he was (something that would be changed a few months later). So that was the last time I ever made a joke about someone's job security and it made me realize that absent-minded statements from someone in a position of power are absolutely taken by others as things to be concerned about. I've been much more guarded with what I say to team members since that interaction, even those who aren't under me. It's not worth stressing your team over.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

andrewflnr 4y ago
I mean, being threatened is a "cheap education" relative to being fired, sure.
maxbond 4y ago
That's just a fractal version of this same problem. Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living, and not to role play palace intrigue. But certainly it's my experience that this toxicity comes from the top down and I have sympathy with managers who are putting their reports under unreasonable pressure because they are themselves under unreasonable pressure.
- invig 4y ago
  "Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living" Miss-aligned goals do create all kinds of problems, don't they?

duped 4y ago

What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?

pjc50 4y ago
Delivering information. Now, it takes a lot of company culture work to make it safe to actually deliver that, but you have to choose: do you want to have some awkward meetings, or some awkward subpoenas?
jrockway 4y ago
Presumably you're conveying the results of your research, which means new facts are on the table that the "mismanagers" weren't previously aware of. They assigned you that research work presumably because they wanted to know those facts. Now that you're showing up with useful information, they can go back and deliver an even better estimate of the project than they had before. If you show up and are like "hey idiots, you fucked up the estimate, man you're dumb" then, sure, people will react negatively. If you show up and say "you were right that we needed to look into this more; we found 9 months of work we hadn't incorporated into the plan" then they're going to have a lot of work to do, but they probably aren't going to be unhappy about being in a position of higher certainty. To some extent, it's not really different from what engineers do. Are you mad when there's a production outage? No. You just debug it and mitigate it. Project planning is no different; new facts are on the table, and the plan has to change. Changing the plan is a lot of work, and that's why project management is a dedicated profession. They can now go do their job better with the data that you collected. No reason to be mad.
jalla 4y ago
I've been naive like that a few times. I managed to get away unharmed most times but once I was publicly blamed for the project's failure by the incompetent managers, in a governmental organisation. I overestimated people's honesty in the face of their own career death. I considered blowing the whistle or taking them to court for slander but I had strong doubts I could clear my name as power corrupts.

hnlmorg 4y ago

This is 100% correct. It doesn’t matter if it was intended as a threat because if it wasn’t, it was still an appallingly judged comment.

monksy 4y ago

Seeing this and the todolu work advice girl ... I think educating people on how threats are composed and used is something that everyone should understand. I'm now realized that I've been soft threatened quite a lot.

maxbond 4y ago
I had a similar disagreement with a manager once about a project, and I said something like, "I'm stressed and working around the clock, I don't need you threatening me," and they were genuinely taken aback and even hurt that I would interpret it that way (as they felt they were offering advice). When I asked them to reverse the situation, they immediately understood. When the pressure is on, it's an easy mistake to make. For reference: https://youtube.com/channel/UCCtfpN-3GkF7HKvj5qs2EPQ https://youtube.com/channel/UCCtfpN-3GkF7HKvj5qs2EPQ ("toodaloo advice girl" Lou Whaley, who makes videos about office politics and setting boundaries with your manager.)
- monksy 4y ago
  Yep that's the one. I can never remember the person. But this is the video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gr8AgR42sDo https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gr8AgR42sDo
lmm 4y ago
Being able to understand threats is not always beneficial.
- maxbond 4y ago
  Could you elaborate?
  - lmm 4y ago
    You're harder to effectively blackmail (and therefore less likely to be blackmailed) if you can't understand when someone's blackmailing you, for example.

apocalyptic0n3 4y ago

Semi-related to this, but this type of statement and the reaction to it is how I discovered that I had basically assumed a manager role in all but title. For the first little bit of my career, my coworkers and I would often joke about how the mistake one of us had made was going to get us fired. One day, I made a similar joke to another developer and was met with a look of sheer terror. Later that day, he pulled me into a room and asked me if I was serious. After doing my best to calm him down and assure him I didn't even have that type of authority, I came to realize that he viewed me as a manager even though I was technically at the same level in the org chart as he was (something that would be changed a few months later). So that was the last time I ever made a joke about someone's job security and it made me realize that absent-minded statements from someone in a position of power are absolutely taken by others as things to be concerned about. I've been much more guarded with what I say to team members since that interaction, even those who aren't under me. It's not worth stressing your team over.