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I thought the same way in my first engineering management position. I worked really hard to build the team I always wanted to work on. We trusted each other, wo

I thought the same way in my first engineering management position. I worked really hard to build the team I always wanted to work on. We trusted each other, worked well together, performed at the top of teams in the company, it was great. All that trust was destroyed overnight the first time I had to take a directive from executive management that required I put the interests of the business over the team. Basically, I was forced to lie and manipulate about the state of the company to keep the team in place until an acquisition deal could close. Because of my role I was involved in the details such that I knew several projects would be canceled and layoffs would be done. After that, my team completely turned against me and called me a hypocrite. I couldn’t blame them. A few even speculated I was putting on some kind of show for them and playing some epic long game to win their trust just so I could use it to benefit myself. My best engineers left, and performance of the team subsequently dropped. Executive management blamed me for that too. Basically, engineering management is a no win game and not worth the stress if you’re a good person. You will eventually, despite all efforts, work your way into an “us vs. them” situation. If you’ve previously preached trust and empathy and transparency or whatever feel good buzzwords dejour you’ll also look like a liar and hypocrite as I was. Anyone who has been in the role for a sufficiently long period will experience something similar to what I’m talking about. It’s only a matter of time. After what happened, I could no longer stomach putting on another trust-fall-esque dog and pony show. Once you’ve been shown the ugly truths, it becomes hard to keep repeating the same rhetoric that you did before that oddly would make you into exactly the thing you tried so hard not to become in the first place. It really test your own mental image of yourself. These days I try to project a more realistic attitude. I tell people I’ll do everything I can to be as transparent and open with everything but at the end of the day we’re still working for a company and business where the future is completely unpredictable and it’s in fact a lie to say there are no information asymmetry and cognitive dissonance between management and IC engineers. Having a well run trusting team isn’t enough and can even make it more likely for one of these situations to occur. At the end of the day, your direct reports view YOU as the company in a lot of ways. You are their main interface to the rest of the machine.

jongjong 3y ago
If anybody blamed me for not being fully transparent about such things, I would tell them "welcome to earth." I remember the project manager at a past company I worked for said "In here, it's all about the end user. Our lives don't matter." He was right. The markets don't give a crap about you or your life in the same way it doesn't give a crap about the life of your competitors which you put out of business. Also, omission of facts is not lying. There is no obligation for you to keep them informed about everything that's happening in the business. They can read their employment contract.
- 0xb0565e486 3y ago
  Very cold and insensitive management style in my opinion. If a project I was working on for multiple years and I believed in was shut down and my manager told me “welcome to earth” and “our lives don’t matter” I would one hundred percent leave. Yes, the markets are cold and ruthless but it doesn’t mean you have to be.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > The markets don't give a crap about you or your life in the same way it doesn't give a crap about the life of your competitors which you put out of business. It's not just markets. You also don't care about the employees' psychological safety of, say, the toothpaste manufacturer you buy the toothpaste of. You just want toothpaste. While I personally think it's important to have high integrity, and to work in a company where this is not undermined, ultimately it's about whether or not your company is doing something valuable enough for others to pay for. That's why your salary comes in every month.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Also, omission of facts is not lying. Not always, but it can be. If someone is allowing people to believe something false by withholding information, that is a form of lying.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  > Also, omission of facts is not lying. yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie > Lying by omission, also known as a continuing misrepresentation or quote mining, occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes the failure to correct pre-existing misconceptions. For example, when the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly, but does not mention that a fault was reported during the last service, the seller lies by omission. It may be compared to dissimulation. An omission is when a person tells most of the truth, but leaves out a few key facts that therefore, completely obscures the truth.

jongjong 3y ago

If anybody blamed me for not being fully transparent about such things, I would tell them "welcome to earth." I remember the project manager at a past company I worked for said "In here, it's all about the end user. Our lives don't matter." He was right. The markets don't give a crap about you or your life in the same way it doesn't give a crap about the life of your competitors which you put out of business. Also, omission of facts is not lying. There is no obligation for you to keep them informed about everything that's happening in the business. They can read their employment contract.

0xb0565e486 3y ago
Very cold and insensitive management style in my opinion. If a project I was working on for multiple years and I believed in was shut down and my manager told me “welcome to earth” and “our lives don’t matter” I would one hundred percent leave. Yes, the markets are cold and ruthless but it doesn’t mean you have to be.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> The markets don't give a crap about you or your life in the same way it doesn't give a crap about the life of your competitors which you put out of business. It's not just markets. You also don't care about the employees' psychological safety of, say, the toothpaste manufacturer you buy the toothpaste of. You just want toothpaste. While I personally think it's important to have high integrity, and to work in a company where this is not undermined, ultimately it's about whether or not your company is doing something valuable enough for others to pay for. That's why your salary comes in every month.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Also, omission of facts is not lying. Not always, but it can be. If someone is allowing people to believe something false by withholding information, that is a form of lying.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
> Also, omission of facts is not lying. yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie > Lying by omission, also known as a continuing misrepresentation or quote mining, occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes the failure to correct pre-existing misconceptions. For example, when the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly, but does not mention that a fault was reported during the last service, the seller lies by omission. It may be compared to dissimulation. An omission is when a person tells most of the truth, but leaves out a few key facts that therefore, completely obscures the truth.