7 ms·

I went through some pretty bizarre layoffs. A huge chunk of the ICs got laid off - so managers that had teams of 8-10 now had teams of 3-6. The product org was

I went through some pretty bizarre layoffs. A huge chunk of the ICs got laid off - so managers that had teams of 8-10 now had teams of 3-6. The product org was hit, but proportionally not as heavily. No projects got descoped. The end result was that the engineers were basically in meetings throughout the day every day, as they'd each suddenly have twice as many projects on their plate. Then because things inevitably were moving more slowly, more meetings got added to track progress more closely. This was earlier in the pandemic, so a bunch of engineers just left for greener pastures. And as you can imagine, the whole thing ground to a halt. The big thing I realized is how hard it was to for leadership - whether product or engineering - to say no, or to stack rank priorities. It's hard to blame them, the past decade has been one of abundance. There were always more resources around the next corner, and so having to deal with less wasn't a skill that anyone had developed.

cheschire 4y ago
There's a whole book about this sort of thing called The Phoenix Project that you may be interested in reading. A lot of what you're saying falls under "the first way" which covers systems thinking and the flow of work.
- barbariangrunge 4y ago
  I enjoyed the book, but after looking at the situation from a querying theory pov, I became skeptical of some of the authors claims
  - episteme 4y ago
    Care to elaborate?
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Kind of a non- statement. The book is fiction, and an extended advertisement for the author's management consulting business. Its "claims" are barely hypotheses.
treeman79 4y ago
Learning to say no to management was one of the hardest things for me in my career. It has also been the one of the best things.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Boundaries are crucial, but one must derisk their downside to effectively enforce them.
- esel2k 4y ago
  And how did you actually do it? Any good advice/books on this. I know my management has clear ideas what they want so even if I am told - it’s my job to figure it out they say what needs to happen (not accepting a No).
  - treeman79 4y ago
    Entire engineering / infrastructure team quit. I hired in just after last one gave notice. System was in complete collapse. Nothing was documented. I had to reboot servers at random to even find out what might get system going again. Couple weeks in CEO asked when new feature would be ready. It took that level of complete absurdity for me to finally say no. I eventually rebuilt the entire infrastructure, scaled traffic 3x, hired and trained new team. It was about a year before I would even listen to a request for a new feature. Took me a long time to recover from that job.
  - BackBlast 4y ago
    Easiest way to is to provide an illustration of the cost of doing said action. Those costs need to be put in terms that they understand. That way they can evaluate how much they really want things. This is an indirect no. We can do that, it will cost X and take Y time and have Z impact on the code base and our long term velocity. Is this what you would like to do? Quite often, they will say no themselves. If you have no trust with management and they ignore your warning, the org is already at high levels of toxicity and there isn't much you can do anyway. Realize that and navigate the position accordingly.
Spooky23 4y ago
You need clever middle management to navigate that. The solution is to play the fiefdoms against each other. One way I navigated a team through this is that we just halted work on critical stuff and we doubled down as rockstars for politically important critical stuff. As each other team complained, we let the people up the chain kill each other, and eventually got relief from the crazy.
- pc86 4y ago
  Having a line manager or director who can play the VPs and SVPs against each other is invaluable for an IC on a critical team, and honestly a pretty good indicator of who the next director or VP might be.
  - brettermeier 4y ago
    VP, SVP, IC?
    - artimaeis 4y ago
      Vice President, Senior Vice President, Individual Contributor.
  - eunoia 4y ago
    My first big tech manager was incredible at this. Took me a few other managers to realize what a specific (and rare!) skill this is, as she made it seem so easy. I miss working for her.
- hypothesis 4y ago
  Spectacular! Can we get a show out of this short story? Name it DevCrowd or smth.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
People are rewarded highly at the top with the assumption they are valuable contributing intelligent leaders who can do the job better than the people getting paid poorly. They have boats and vacation homes and generational wealth, I find it VERY easy to blame them for their poor leadership. We should blame them much more often, they don't face any blame because there aren't enough people above them to enforce it. Shareholders aren't close enough to structure incentives in a way that require leaders to face any blame. You want to be rich and say it's because you earned it? Then earn it.
- pc86 4y ago
  I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you in principle but I still have no idea how this comment relates whatsoever to the parent comment.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    Teams being shrunk to smaller sizes implies that layoffs are hitting non-management harder than management.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Teams being shrunk to smaller sizes implies that layoffs are hitting non-management harder than management. It implies that layoffs are hitting non-supervisory non-managers more than line supervisors; but “management” includes non-supervisory specialist managers, and middle and upper management above the line level, all of which could be hit more than line supervisors and those they supervise. (Ideally, not enough to really make a difference in this effect – but an overload of non-line, particularly middle and specialist, management is not an uncommon organizational disease.)
- eshack94 4y ago
  I agree with the core sentiment expressed here, though I think your statements come off as absolutist. I think there are plenty of people in management (though maybe not the majority) that don't come from generational wealth. I think the boats + vacation homes + generational wealth statements you brought up are irrelevant to the main point you're making, which is that leaders should be held accountable (which I fully agree with). Take care not to let cynicism, spite, or resentment overshadow a strong core argument.
pmoriarty 4y ago
> The big thing I realized is how hard it was to for leadership - whether product or engineering - to say no... I really respected my manager at my last job for frequently saying no, for good reasons that he articulated so well that the other managers who he said no to actually agreed and accepted his decisions. That's a rare quality in managers that I haven't seen before or since. Most are pushovers who usually agree to do almost anything asked of them, no matter how ridiculous and unrealistic.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
>I realized is how hard it was to for leadership - whether product or engineering - to say no, or to stack rank priorities. I I can't speak for other people, but personally, I always speak my mind. I don't care what level the person above me is. I don't do it in a dickish way, but I will say my say. I always feel that is my duty, to let people above me know what the situation on the ground is, because they just don't know. And usually, in a new job, I'll start out small and work my way up to bigger things as I get to know the system and services/products better. And I've never had any kind of weird shit happen to me, like have someone blow up that I contradict them in the slightest way. Especially in knowledge work. Every boss I've ever had has been good with my feedback and has taken it very seriously. Very often they change their decisions with my input. Often I'll say, "No, can't be done, nope" and explain why, unless they know something I don't know which they always let me know if that is the case. It's all of our jobs to tell our bosses if something can't be done and be very clear about it, or to have them prioritize work, and also give feedback on that as well. If you have a boss that is a dick and won't listen - time to move jobs. Resources are finite, even during flush times, companies go out of business due to squandering of resources.
- Andaith 4y ago
  I'm so glad to see you say this, because I also do it. I thought I was the only one, but I see it as part of my job responsibilities to be "say my say" in an honest, polite way. Especially towards management, telling people what the consequences of their decision are(good or bad).
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
This seems to happen more frequently than people realize - ie more project equals more meetings equals less time to do real work. I've heard people talk about it before but not as frequently as I expected after noticing it. Steve Jobs seemed to be aware.

cheschire 4y ago

There's a whole book about this sort of thing called The Phoenix Project that you may be interested in reading. A lot of what you're saying falls under "the first way" which covers systems thinking and the flow of work.

barbariangrunge 4y ago
I enjoyed the book, but after looking at the situation from a querying theory pov, I became skeptical of some of the authors claims
- episteme 4y ago
  Care to elaborate?
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Kind of a non- statement. The book is fiction, and an extended advertisement for the author's management consulting business. Its "claims" are barely hypotheses.

treeman79 4y ago

Learning to say no to management was one of the hardest things for me in my career. It has also been the one of the best things.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Boundaries are crucial, but one must derisk their downside to effectively enforce them.
esel2k 4y ago
And how did you actually do it? Any good advice/books on this. I know my management has clear ideas what they want so even if I am told - it’s my job to figure it out they say what needs to happen (not accepting a No).
- treeman79 4y ago
  Entire engineering / infrastructure team quit. I hired in just after last one gave notice. System was in complete collapse. Nothing was documented. I had to reboot servers at random to even find out what might get system going again. Couple weeks in CEO asked when new feature would be ready. It took that level of complete absurdity for me to finally say no. I eventually rebuilt the entire infrastructure, scaled traffic 3x, hired and trained new team. It was about a year before I would even listen to a request for a new feature. Took me a long time to recover from that job.
- BackBlast 4y ago
  Easiest way to is to provide an illustration of the cost of doing said action. Those costs need to be put in terms that they understand. That way they can evaluate how much they really want things. This is an indirect no. We can do that, it will cost X and take Y time and have Z impact on the code base and our long term velocity. Is this what you would like to do? Quite often, they will say no themselves. If you have no trust with management and they ignore your warning, the org is already at high levels of toxicity and there isn't much you can do anyway. Realize that and navigate the position accordingly.

Spooky23 4y ago

You need clever middle management to navigate that. The solution is to play the fiefdoms against each other. One way I navigated a team through this is that we just halted work on critical stuff and we doubled down as rockstars for politically important critical stuff. As each other team complained, we let the people up the chain kill each other, and eventually got relief from the crazy.

pc86 4y ago
Having a line manager or director who can play the VPs and SVPs against each other is invaluable for an IC on a critical team, and honestly a pretty good indicator of who the next director or VP might be.
- brettermeier 4y ago
  VP, SVP, IC?
  - artimaeis 4y ago
    Vice President, Senior Vice President, Individual Contributor.
- eunoia 4y ago
  My first big tech manager was incredible at this. Took me a few other managers to realize what a specific (and rare!) skill this is, as she made it seem so easy. I miss working for her.
hypothesis 4y ago
Spectacular! Can we get a show out of this short story? Name it DevCrowd or smth.

tracerbulletx 4y ago

People are rewarded highly at the top with the assumption they are valuable contributing intelligent leaders who can do the job better than the people getting paid poorly. They have boats and vacation homes and generational wealth, I find it VERY easy to blame them for their poor leadership. We should blame them much more often, they don't face any blame because there aren't enough people above them to enforce it. Shareholders aren't close enough to structure incentives in a way that require leaders to face any blame. You want to be rich and say it's because you earned it? Then earn it.

pc86 4y ago
I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you in principle but I still have no idea how this comment relates whatsoever to the parent comment.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  Teams being shrunk to smaller sizes implies that layoffs are hitting non-management harder than management.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Teams being shrunk to smaller sizes implies that layoffs are hitting non-management harder than management. It implies that layoffs are hitting non-supervisory non-managers more than line supervisors; but “management” includes non-supervisory specialist managers, and middle and upper management above the line level, all of which could be hit more than line supervisors and those they supervise. (Ideally, not enough to really make a difference in this effect – but an overload of non-line, particularly middle and specialist, management is not an uncommon organizational disease.)
eshack94 4y ago
I agree with the core sentiment expressed here, though I think your statements come off as absolutist. I think there are plenty of people in management (though maybe not the majority) that don't come from generational wealth. I think the boats + vacation homes + generational wealth statements you brought up are irrelevant to the main point you're making, which is that leaders should be held accountable (which I fully agree with). Take care not to let cynicism, spite, or resentment overshadow a strong core argument.

pmoriarty 4y ago

> The big thing I realized is how hard it was to for leadership - whether product or engineering - to say no... I really respected my manager at my last job for frequently saying no, for good reasons that he articulated so well that the other managers who he said no to actually agreed and accepted his decisions. That's a rare quality in managers that I haven't seen before or since. Most are pushovers who usually agree to do almost anything asked of them, no matter how ridiculous and unrealistic.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

>I realized is how hard it was to for leadership - whether product or engineering - to say no, or to stack rank priorities. I I can't speak for other people, but personally, I always speak my mind. I don't care what level the person above me is. I don't do it in a dickish way, but I will say my say. I always feel that is my duty, to let people above me know what the situation on the ground is, because they just don't know. And usually, in a new job, I'll start out small and work my way up to bigger things as I get to know the system and services/products better. And I've never had any kind of weird shit happen to me, like have someone blow up that I contradict them in the slightest way. Especially in knowledge work. Every boss I've ever had has been good with my feedback and has taken it very seriously. Very often they change their decisions with my input. Often I'll say, "No, can't be done, nope" and explain why, unless they know something I don't know which they always let me know if that is the case. It's all of our jobs to tell our bosses if something can't be done and be very clear about it, or to have them prioritize work, and also give feedback on that as well. If you have a boss that is a dick and won't listen - time to move jobs. Resources are finite, even during flush times, companies go out of business due to squandering of resources.

Andaith 4y ago
I'm so glad to see you say this, because I also do it. I thought I was the only one, but I see it as part of my job responsibilities to be "say my say" in an honest, polite way. Especially towards management, telling people what the consequences of their decision are(good or bad).

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

This seems to happen more frequently than people realize - ie more project equals more meetings equals less time to do real work. I've heard people talk about it before but not as frequently as I expected after noticing it. Steve Jobs seemed to be aware.