4 ms·

Change is hard, but to succeed in a political organization with political currents in the mix, you have to embrace it, so if you choose to stay, I recommend ado

Change is hard, but to succeed in a political organization with political currents in the mix, you have to embrace it, so if you choose to stay, I recommend adopting a fresh perspective -- Your old job is over. This is a new job. Forget all past attachments to your old boss and walk into this new team with an open mind. Maybe the new boss is a decent leader, maybe not, but go in without any preconceived notions, do the work and see what happens. Realize that even though it may be political, the leadership chose your new boss, so he is doing something they like. You are tanking your own role if you go in fighting. So go in and see what is going on that is working. There may be completely different measures of success vs. what you were striving for, which is why there is a discrepancy in how people view performance. Learn what the desired outcomes and expectations are, and why. And if you spend some time in that mode of learning and acceptance and find they are all idiots, then leave. It is never too late to walk out. But give them a chance - there is a possibility that teams other than your own are different, but still decent teams.

RaftPeople 2y ago
> you have to embrace it, so if you choose to stay, I recommend adopting a fresh perspective -- Your old job is over Agree with everything in above post, will add this: From new director/mgr perspective, he/she wants people that are on board with the mission, which is always success measured by whatever their view is, and frequently their particular experience probably emphasizes some things a previous mgr didn't. Show him/her that you are on board and that your goal is to help that person achieve their vision. You do that by listening and understanding their perspective and making it happen. I once got a new CIO mgr and when I met with him, this is what I told him (at some point during the conversation): "I'm an analytical person and I like to debate the pros and cons of things, so I tend to offer my opinion, but don't mistake that for being an obstructionist, I fully understand and respect the chain of command, once a decision is made I'm on board and just want things to get done successfully."
- golly_ned 2y ago
  Frankly it seems like he is upset my team wasn’t prioritizing his team. He managed an upstream service that called mine, and called my service out for not meeting our availability SLO — in our case, we host applications, so degraded availability depends in part on application availability, not platform. Instead, we onboarded an entire organization, tripling our request volume and meeting a very strict latency SLO. It was much higher priority than supporting his own platform. Since I have the option to move teams, I will probably do that to stick with my manager even if he ends up being my director anyway. I just don’t want to be leaving over a years work for which I received great praise in a position where it ends up not being appreciated by this new director. I think the big turning point in the conversation was when I expressed doubts about staying on his team. I sensed a few sour grapes statements. I really don’t want to deal with this fallout from the conflict between these directors. It’s unnecessary except for the fact that I now feel like I have to defend myself from this guy.
- Onavo 2y ago
  > I fully understand and respect the chain of command It's absolutely hilarious how quick HN users are to bend the knee and play politics when the economy is bad. I remember a time when the standard answer would be "fuck the company management and jump ship". Avez-vous perdu votre spine Hacker News?
  - petermcneeley 2y ago
    What do you expect of people? Also these are undoubtably not the same people.
  - codingdave 2y ago
    wat. When your company re-orgs, finding out what the new strategy is and what the expectations are is not bending a knee. There are absolutely times to stand up for yourself and defy what corporations try to pull, but "They rearranged the management structure" is not one of them.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    They write the checks and we do what they tell us. Anything else is a fantasy, not a job.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    Firstly, if you are an employee they are paying you to bend the knee and do what they ask. That is the very definition of employment. If you don't like it you can leave. The willingness to dislike it and stay boils down to your options elsewhere. Not surprisingly in a tough job market options elsewhere might be less, resulting in more tolerance for dislike. All of this has nothing to do with spine and everything to do with taking the best option for you. Jumping ship into unemployment in a bad job market isn't a good option. When it comes to company re-orgs, you already have a new job. Mentally and emotionally it helps to treat it as if you just jumped in here.
golly_ned 2y ago
Thanks. I didn’t do a good job of listening to what the new director wants when we met. Frankly I was (understandably, I think) concerned for my career, and asked things mostly related to myself. I should’ve planned the conversation better. It’s unfortunate that a 30 minute conversation like that can establish a first impression that’ll be hard to get rid of. I think he will most likely be named the new director of both my current team and my manager’s other team, which will make him my skip either way. They drafted an hiring req for the position that seems especially tuned to him. Any thoughts on how I might repair things?
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  I say this from my experience with people, more than with managers in particular, so bear that in mind: It's actually usually pretty easy to repair first impressions. Ask for another brief meeting with him, or shoot him an email, or try to just casually run into him at work, and communicate your concerns, reframed in a way that's likely to land with him. For example, I would consider saying something like "Hey, I was thinking over our meeting the other day and realized I might have given you the wrong impression. I was feeling a little uncertain with the recent shakeups, and might have been a bit too focused on establishing my role in the department going forward, rather than listening to you and understanding what you need from me. I'm actually really looking forward to working with the new broader team and getting a more direct understanding of what the new director's previous team that your team is getting merged with needs from your product! Please let me know if there's anything immediate I can do to help smooth this transition." I wrote that more as an email, but you can say more or less the same things in person. Just reassure him that you're going to play ball, give an understandable, mostly-true justification for your poor communication that's slightly more politic than "I thought I was about to be fired lol," and communicate that you understand and are committed to what he already said he wanted (working more with the other team) and you'll probably be fine.

RaftPeople 2y ago

> you have to embrace it, so if you choose to stay, I recommend adopting a fresh perspective -- Your old job is over Agree with everything in above post, will add this: From new director/mgr perspective, he/she wants people that are on board with the mission, which is always success measured by whatever their view is, and frequently their particular experience probably emphasizes some things a previous mgr didn't. Show him/her that you are on board and that your goal is to help that person achieve their vision. You do that by listening and understanding their perspective and making it happen. I once got a new CIO mgr and when I met with him, this is what I told him (at some point during the conversation): "I'm an analytical person and I like to debate the pros and cons of things, so I tend to offer my opinion, but don't mistake that for being an obstructionist, I fully understand and respect the chain of command, once a decision is made I'm on board and just want things to get done successfully."

golly_ned 2y ago
Frankly it seems like he is upset my team wasn’t prioritizing his team. He managed an upstream service that called mine, and called my service out for not meeting our availability SLO — in our case, we host applications, so degraded availability depends in part on application availability, not platform. Instead, we onboarded an entire organization, tripling our request volume and meeting a very strict latency SLO. It was much higher priority than supporting his own platform. Since I have the option to move teams, I will probably do that to stick with my manager even if he ends up being my director anyway. I just don’t want to be leaving over a years work for which I received great praise in a position where it ends up not being appreciated by this new director. I think the big turning point in the conversation was when I expressed doubts about staying on his team. I sensed a few sour grapes statements. I really don’t want to deal with this fallout from the conflict between these directors. It’s unnecessary except for the fact that I now feel like I have to defend myself from this guy.
Onavo 2y ago
> I fully understand and respect the chain of command It's absolutely hilarious how quick HN users are to bend the knee and play politics when the economy is bad. I remember a time when the standard answer would be "fuck the company management and jump ship". Avez-vous perdu votre spine Hacker News?
- petermcneeley 2y ago
  What do you expect of people? Also these are undoubtably not the same people.
- codingdave 2y ago
  wat. When your company re-orgs, finding out what the new strategy is and what the expectations are is not bending a knee. There are absolutely times to stand up for yourself and defy what corporations try to pull, but "They rearranged the management structure" is not one of them.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  They write the checks and we do what they tell us. Anything else is a fantasy, not a job.
- bruce511 2y ago
  Firstly, if you are an employee they are paying you to bend the knee and do what they ask. That is the very definition of employment. If you don't like it you can leave. The willingness to dislike it and stay boils down to your options elsewhere. Not surprisingly in a tough job market options elsewhere might be less, resulting in more tolerance for dislike. All of this has nothing to do with spine and everything to do with taking the best option for you. Jumping ship into unemployment in a bad job market isn't a good option. When it comes to company re-orgs, you already have a new job. Mentally and emotionally it helps to treat it as if you just jumped in here.

golly_ned 2y ago

Thanks. I didn’t do a good job of listening to what the new director wants when we met. Frankly I was (understandably, I think) concerned for my career, and asked things mostly related to myself. I should’ve planned the conversation better. It’s unfortunate that a 30 minute conversation like that can establish a first impression that’ll be hard to get rid of. I think he will most likely be named the new director of both my current team and my manager’s other team, which will make him my skip either way. They drafted an hiring req for the position that seems especially tuned to him. Any thoughts on how I might repair things?

BobaFloutist 2y ago
I say this from my experience with people, more than with managers in particular, so bear that in mind: It's actually usually pretty easy to repair first impressions. Ask for another brief meeting with him, or shoot him an email, or try to just casually run into him at work, and communicate your concerns, reframed in a way that's likely to land with him. For example, I would consider saying something like "Hey, I was thinking over our meeting the other day and realized I might have given you the wrong impression. I was feeling a little uncertain with the recent shakeups, and might have been a bit too focused on establishing my role in the department going forward, rather than listening to you and understanding what you need from me. I'm actually really looking forward to working with the new broader team and getting a more direct understanding of what the new director's previous team that your team is getting merged with needs from your product! Please let me know if there's anything immediate I can do to help smooth this transition." I wrote that more as an email, but you can say more or less the same things in person. Just reassure him that you're going to play ball, give an understandable, mostly-true justification for your poor communication that's slightly more politic than "I thought I was about to be fired lol," and communicate that you understand and are committed to what he already said he wanted (working more with the other team) and you'll probably be fine.