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One thing that I learned from going to IC to manager: there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about

One thing that I learned from going to IC to manager: there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC. Case in point: trying to retain good people. Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety of reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They often announce they are leaving to their direct manager and maybe one other person (E.g. head of another team they work with etc). Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a successful retention. However, the only people that know any of this happened are the employee and the manager tier. The other employees have zero idea any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions it. I point this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no one will care if I leave b/c I never see managers actively trying to keep people". The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if you are about to move from IC to manager.

fader 2y ago
I had the same experience moving from IC to manager. I didn't realize the amount of work that managers are doing that I didn't see and more importantly that they couldn't tell me about. Retention is definitely one, but there's the flip side of dealing with poor performance. You can't announce to everyone that one of the team is on a PIP or struggling with personal issues. But a poor performer means that I'm doing a _ton_ of work to figure out how to fix the issue (whether that's spending hours every week coaching them, building all the long-term documentation that HR requires before we can fire someone, picking up some of their slack myself in the meantime...) Coordination of people also takes way more time than I realized as an IC. If you meet with your manager once per week, that's an hour out of your week. But your manager is meeting with everyone on the team and a good manager is going to spend at _least_ as much time thinking and planning for each of those meetings as they spend in the meetings themselves even if everything is going well. They have to make sure nobody is accidentally working on the same thing or impacting someone else, talking to other teams, that sort of thing. That one hour out of your week is 1-2 days for your manager. Not to mention that they then have to go do the same sort of coordination with other teams. You have something that blows up your week that you need to escalate once per quarter? Multiply that by the number of reports your manager has and that's how much time they've spent fighting fires this quarter. And they need to explain to their leadership what happened and why it won't happen again. Etc. etc. It's not harder work, but it is very different work from being an IC. (On the other hand, being a manager has made me a better IC too. Everyone I've ever managed that was previously a manager themselves has this -- they know exactly what I need to know because they know what they needed to know, so our 1:1s go much faster :) ) One anecdote I have is that when I first moved to a management role, I told a colleague how happy I was that I'd finally have real control over my calendar. After he finished laughing (literally) he said "your calendar belongs to your team and you'll never be in control of that again". He was absolutely right: if something goes wrong or someone is unhappy, everything else moves aside so I can fix my team's problem.
- johnny_reilly 2y ago
  This is super interesting - thanks for sharing! > Everyone I've ever managed that was previously a manager themselves has this -- they know exactly what I need to know because they know what they needed to know, so our 1:1s go much faster Could you provide some examples of what managers need to know?
  - fader 2y ago
    It's less about what I need to know and more about how I need to organize it. I get the same information from all of my reports, but the ones who were managers hand it to me ready to go where the others I get it from a conversation. When I'm talking to my team, I need to know things like: * Anything that is blocking them (and what they think will solve that) * Any unexpected events, fires that are about to start/have started * Progress on their tasks and any timeline updates * Things they've heard from meetings with other teams that might impact what they're working on or other people on the team The ICs who were managers previously tend to come to 1:1s with this already sitting in our shared document outlined roughly like I have above when we start our meeting. E.g. * I'm waiting for Joe Bloggs to finish his API work before I can build the user workflow for X. He was supposed to be done last week but I'm still waiting. He's being very vague about the timeline and I need to know when this will be done so I can start work. Can you talk to him for me? * Mary was out sick last week so didn't finish the design for Y. We're working on it now and she'll be done by Tuesday. I've put my work on Y on hold until then and am focusing on Z instead. It should still be done by the deadline. * Status of Project Foo is... * I had a sync with the database team yesterday. Did you know that they're planning to move everything to paper tape next quarter? All of that would come out in a conversation anyway, but having it like this focuses it and puts it in context already (which is normally what I would need to do with that info). The real difference is that folks who have been managers before tend to have a better understanding of what will impact the larger team or project, not just their part of it. I care about the individual too, but some of my brain is always on the bigger picture.
    - johnny_reilly 2y ago
      Awesome - thank you
game_the0ry 2y ago
> Case in point: trying to retain good people. Word. IMO, one of the most important, yet underrated duties, of a good manager. As a leader, you want people to crawl over broken glass to want to be by your side. If not, you end up like North Korea, where you have to sell why people should stay, sometimes eve being dishonest and intimidating in the process. Seeing the latter happen is always a sad sight.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  One thing I discovered: almost everything a manager does has a big lag between input and observed impact. Retention is one of the slowest, it's like steering a cruise ship!
  - game_the0ry 2y ago
    I can't say I agree with this bc I have felt the immediate impact of a key employee leaving, usually in the form of me taking up their responsibilities. Even with a two-week, sometimes even four-week, hand off, this turns into real pain the moment that employee is gone. So do not under-estimate the impact of retention.
    - nik_0_0 2y ago
      People leaving is definitely a step-function of negatives as the responsibilities get shared between the (now smaller!) team. I think GP was more saying that improving retention, at a % level, is a slow ship to steer. (At least what is available at the manager level.) Decreasing retention across the org in the long term doesn’t happen overnight, and it can take a while to observe whether the effect is trending downwards or upwards. (And also depends on what signal you use - people actually leaving, or people talking about leaving!)
surajrmal 2y ago
If you are a very senior IC, managers may consult you in these situations as well. Fishing for interesting projects or possibly even trying to have you talk to the person leaving as well. You generally would have context and an ability to connect with the other IC in a way a manager may not. I've never been in management but have on many occasions been roped into these scenarios.
bognition 2y ago
In my experience the inverse is also true. Dealing with performance and behavioral issues can take a huge amount of time, and it something that is never discussed with parties who are not involved. Well run engineering organizations are like a well running engine. They need to have solid parts but they also need constant attention and fine tuning. The best managers do this well.
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  > Dealing with performance and behavioral issues can take a huge amount of time, and it something that is never discussed with parties who are not involved. This is true. I feel like there needs to be a better solution to it which isn't wearing your heart on your sleeve or airing dirty laundry in public. Recently, I saw some emails from the manager two levels up form me that shouldn't have been in our CRM where he was standing up for my manager and his paycheck not going through properly. It seems like it was just an oversight because this one paycheck is run differently than others, but the director was clearly triggered because he said to payroll, "if we need to withhold anyone's paycheck, don't just do it. I need to know first because I need to know how to figure it out." I just quietly deleted the email and made sure similar ones wouldn't get logged. But I was also impressed at how quickly this director just stood up for someone under him. And if not for this chance stumble upon I never would have known of this side of his work. Maybe the recognition of managers is something that has to be done publically by those above them to get their teams to hear it?
  - bognition 2y ago
    This is a perfect example of the silent work managers do. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to remind someone on the people/finance side that their systems work for the employees and not the other way around is astounding. “No we cant ask them to wait another month to get paid, no I don’t care our system doesn’t support it, fine pull out your check book and write them a physical check…”
    - AbstractH24 2y ago
      How can such silent work be made "unsilent" so potential employees can use it as a factor in determining the company/team they work for? From the applicant side, maybe it's just a question I should ask somehow in interviews.
_puk 2y ago
I agree about the hidden work, but you describe it in a reactionary manner. A huge amount of management effort goes into being proactive so you don't even need to get to the point in the conversation where they voice wanting to leave. Or when they do, you've seen it coming, have plans in place and they move on with your blessing. * Creating a culture where employees (and managers) feel valued and have autonomy. * Ensuring employees are clear about where they are headed, giving them something to work towards. * Proactively identifying and unblocking issues before they become crises, often across functions. * Identifying areas of frustrations for teams and individuals. That's just a small number of the things you'll be doing, and whilst scope varies massively by company size (though until you get to the large corp environment most of this is still covered up to the VP / CTO level), you'll be juggling it all alongside technical input, cross functional leadership responsibilities (VP may well be in the SLT if the company isn't huge), horizon scanning, constant process refinement.. The pillars of people, process and technology all need to be constantly considered.. Having done this repeatedly from IC all the way through Head, Director and VP level (and up to CTO), I can say that being a proactive problem solver is always required of a good manager / Director / VP. Edit: Having read the actual article ;) IC paths map this quite well too.. Tech Lead maps to manager, Staff maps to Director, Principal to VP
- AdamN 2y ago
  You can only be so proactive. At a ginormous company, the pace of change is glacial. You can push really hard and get buy-in from leaders with hundreds of people under them and still get blocked trying to improve things about the office/culture that are simply beyond one's control - even with VP buy-in. Big companies need to federate out more if they want this type of proactive management - or just accept it and maybe that makes sense too.
  - code_biologist 2y ago
    Indeed, don't ignore obvious issues like team morale, career paths for ICs, but there's a certain zen to the balance between proactive and reactive. Don't do too much proactive work if there isn't incremental return on it. Don't burn yourself out or set yourself up for deep disappointment. Mid-pandemic I saw another manager go from enthusiastic to despondent overnight when his upcoming hiring headcount was cut to zero and his lovingly cultivated recruiting pipeline was basically worthless. He left shortly after, unsurprisingly. It was painful to watch and taught me a lesson in contingent value in management. I don't mean to say I know better though, he was definitely a better manager than me lol.
SteveNuts 2y ago
This is very true and I learned this quickly when moving to a management role. As an IC, when someone is out for some life event, it might mean more work for you to pick up the slack. As a manager, everyone on your team's problems become your problems. Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.
- h4ny 2y ago
  I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do appreciate that you care about people you have to look after deeply. However, I also don't think what you described is professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.). > Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. These are not things that would affect you from being a good manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone without being appreciated. You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good job as a manager. > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above. If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager. Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people just because you feel differently but don't actually have a concrete argument against.
odiroot 2y ago
There's also a huge part of "managing moods" to prevent people from thinking about leaving in the first place. And all of that within the constraints of the department budget and company policies.
- apwell23 2y ago
  yes!! 90% of manager's job is setting the mood.
  - intelVISA 2y ago
    from vibe coding to vibe management
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    The real Vibe Coding
the_arun 2y ago
I think smaller companies do think this way of retaining good people. Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable. Again I am an IC & don’t see/hear any extra work done for retention. This proves your point though.
- gajjanag 2y ago
  > Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable. This is definitely true. By design, large corporations are structured so that there is no single point of failure. > Again I am an IC & don’t see/hear any extra work done for retention. Even in large corporations, extra work definitely happens for retention (I have experienced it myself as an IC). Even though everyone is by design replaceable, the organization has some incentive to work on retention: a) Bad retention hurts the organization's reputation and future hiring (horror stories spread very fast) b) Within the team, losing a great teammate hurts morale and output and managers know it will result in a hit on their metrics at least for the next half. c) Managers may not always be able to backfill, and losing an employee can reduce the size of their "empire" that they are often trying so hard to establish at whatever cost.
  - riehwvfbk 2y ago
    There's also a constant tension between using fear as a motivator to squeeze more work out of employees, but not squeeze so hard that they quit. Different companies find their own spot on this continuum. For example, Amazon is famously in the sweatshop part of the scale and they could care less about their reputation. They seem to be doing OK though.
h4ny 2y ago
> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC. That's what most bad managers I have worked tend to overestimate -- they think they are doing real work tanking the team from "bad" things when they are actually the one not communicating with the team and just cave to upper management every time when protecting your team really counts. Most people I have worked with are aware that their average-to-good managers have to deal with things that they don't see, and when that understanding is mutual and respectful, then great work happens. When the manager always thinks that they are shielding bad things (when they are not) and the team isn't getting the communication they need, that's when bad things happen (and the manger ends up getting promoted and the rest of the team gets laid-off anyway). > Case in point: trying to retain good people. It's actually not that difficult: just be honest to people, treat them fairly, and be considerate. If you spend more time arguing/reasoning why they don't deserve to be promoted/get a raise than thinking about/making planning for ways to get them promoted or fight for their salary, you're just a bad manager. Sorry (assuming they even have the awareness) is not good enough when you have screwed up someone's career progression by half a year, let alone more. It happens too often. It baffles me that people think there is some sort of art or science in retaining good people. If good people want to try something completely and they can only do so by leaving, then let them. Otherwise, if good people want to leave it's always the company's fault (bad managers, insane colleagues who hurts culture, and many other bad things). > Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety of reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They often announce they are leaving to their direct manager and maybe one other person (E.g. head of another team they work with etc). Good people usually want to leave because the company is not treating them well enough, it's as simple as that. If they leave for reasons that you can't comprehend that doesn't make them "ludicrous", you're just not good enough to understand what's really pushing them to leave. Bad people, on the other hand, would leave for a variety of reasons, including ludicrous ones. Assuming we are on the same page, good people are also often professional. So of course they will announce they are leaving to their direct manager, that's just the right, professional thing to do. Not sure what you point is there. > Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a successful retention. Successful retention in this case is very rare (unless they're they are not as good as you think they are). By the time good people want to leave, they have already made up their mind and it would take some pretty drastic changes or life-changing kind of money to keep them. It's rare that companies can make drastic changes like that when they have already screwed up for so long so that good people are pushed out. It's also rare that, by the time someone has made up their mind on leaving, that they genuinely want to stay even if the (new) price is right -- most management doesn't realize that the implication is that they have treated people unfairly for too long, and people are not just going to forget about it when you offer them more money now (what about all the time they have been underpaid?). > However, the only people that know any of this happened are the employee and the manager tier. The other employees have zero idea any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions it. I point this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no one will care if I leave b/c I never see managers actively trying to keep people". That's just bad company policy and most likely management is silencing people for some downright stupid reasons. If good people are leaving, their leaving usually already says it all, and silence actually makes other good people even more suspicious of the management. In most cases, other employees who have good working relationship with good people actually have a better idea than management. If you're talking about people who don't know/haven't worked with those good people then... they wouldn't have cared either way. So yes, the only reason people don't know is because it's now common practice to get people leaving to agree to NDAs -- especially when they aren't just leaving on normal terms/compensation -- even when there is absolutely no reason for them to sign any NDAs. It's not because nobody wants to tell, it's because people have been scared into not talking/literally gagged. In the end, if you're not a narcissist, why do you want anyone you're not close to care about you leaving anyway? As long as you get well-compensated where necessary, chances are the people who really care about you already know what's happening anyway. > The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if you are about to move from IC to manager. "Unseen" is overrated in my opinion. In the context of moving from IC to manger, the word "unexpected" is more apt then "unseen". Alternatively, if there is a lot of "unseen" work, then the manager is basically work that they aren't communicating to the reports AND their reports can't hold them accountable to those "unseen" work, which is clearly a sign of broken communication and cultural problem. You can argue about most managers don't actually see the work that good reports do equally well.
apwell23 2y ago
you should never try to retain someone thats trying to leave. Even if you are successful at the moment they will leave eventually.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Is this always true? If their only concerns are things a manager can change, then why would they leave if they get what they were seeking elsewhere?
  - kyleee 2y ago
    Definitely not always true; but commonly stated as truth.
  - super_trooper 2y ago
    Not always true. I've coached people to stay before and they are still at the company. Sometimes they have concerns that actually could be fixed from management. People are complex and have many different reasons for wanting to leave, some fixable some not.
    - apwell23 2y ago
      > Sometimes they have concerns that actually could be fixed from management. curious. what are some examples of this and why do they take threat of leaving before management fixes it.
      - paulryanrogers 2y ago
        My uncle wanted more money, and when his current employer counter offered he stayed for years afterward.
  - aprdm 2y ago
    Not true in my experience being on both sides of the equation
- 2y ago
9rx 2y ago
> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC. This is what needs to be discussed in standups, yet strangely never is.
Rickasaurus 2y ago
Crisis management is a big part of the job, and the more people you have the higher the chance there is a crisis at any given point in time. Around 100 devs there's usually at least 1-2 things going on at any given time.
moregrist 2y ago
Personally I think spending huge amounts of time on retention _after_ someone resigns indicates huge, possibly org-wide, problems with communication and career development. There are lots of reasons people resign, but a lot of the time it comes back to feeling bored, under appreciated, or that their career has stalled. If you’re actively managing a team, you should be balancing these things, _and it should be obvious_ at least to people who are paying attention. Both developing someone’s career and signaling that you want to help are fundamental in a manager building good relationships with their reports. Or as Rands in Repose points out in his post on “Diving Save” [1]: > Diving Saves are usually a sign of poor leadership. People rarely just up and leave. There are a slew of obvious warning signs I’ve documented elsewhere, but the real first question you have to ask yourself once you get over the shock of an unexpected resignation is: “Did you really not see it coming? Really?” If you routinely don’t see it coming, maybe your reports have a legit gripe about what you’re spending your time on. [1] https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-diving-save/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-diving-save/
dskhatri 2y ago
Part of being a manager is to be proactive in trying to retain the good people. Increasing their visibility within the leadership and across the organization, paying keen attention to their career goals, selling these goals in advance to your manager and others within the organization, clearing hurdles that may be affecting their work etc. And most importantly, plan for their departure. Do you have any internal candidates to take their position? What would it take to hire somebody and bring them to the IC's level? When they finally decide they want to move on, you have hopefully laid the groundwork to keep them at the company (they move to a different group with an opportunity that matches their ambitions), or you don't have the arduous task of replacing them all of a sudden.
notyourwork 2y ago
Its a good example to call out but it should be obvious to anyone genuinely considering the transition. Managers are there to manage people, the job is easy when the teams awesome and the jobs hard when the team isn't awesome. This includes poor performance, attrition, and people drama. All things that come with the territory of managing humans.
whoevercares 2y ago
Does anyone tell their manager they are leaving and still expecting anything nowadays? I thought dive-and-save is very rare since the flattening trend happened (esp. in big tech)
- jcadam 2y ago
  Never experienced the dive-and-save myself. Usually a wince and a sigh, followed by "oh... when's your last day?" Your first line supervisor is upset, but resigned that he's powerless to do anything substantive that might retain you. The MBAs at corporate HQ couldn't care less, and it'll take them weeks/months to get around to approving a new job req.
class3shock 2y ago
Are you saying you, as a manager, are running a group so poorly that you have enough churn to where retention makes up a large percentage what you work on day to day? Or are you saying your company treats/pays employees so poorly that there is significant turnover throughout the organization? And instead of generally treating/paying employees better they rather have middle management spend a significant amount of their time discussing retention? And you are choosing to highlight this as something IC's should appreciate that management has to deal with?
- snoman 2y ago
  You’re getting downvoted, it seems, but you raise a very real point: you need to have a high turnover, or rough span of control ratios, in order for this to be a common interrupt. Especially given it’s well known that people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers… it’s a bit telling. Anecdotally: I spent 6-7 years managing at various levels (manger/sr mgr/director) before going back to an IC role, and I had a single regrettable attrition (+2 non-regrettable) in that time.
  - moregrist 2y ago
    > Especially given it’s well known that people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers… I know this is an old saw because it’s usually true, but I’ve left companies where I had a good relationship with my manager because I lost confidence in leadership at some level above them. Sometimes you can see the train wreck coming and it’s time to go.
    - class3shock 2y ago
      I would point out that you still left because of a bad manager, just a higher level one.
jamwil 2y ago
Would someone be so kind as to tell me what IC stands for?
- caleblloyd 2y ago
  Individual Contributor- a position that doesn’t have reports
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
> Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. Locking, barn, horses etc.
oytis 2y ago
Sounds like pretty bad point to intervene though? If I decided to leave, and even announced it I'm probably pretty pissed off already. I probably raised my concerns before - or if I haven't, it is an indication of dysfunction of its own, I just had no space for that. In the best case you give me something that convinces me not to leave - and my takeaway will be that things are only going to change if I threaten with leaving.
groby_b 2y ago
If the majority of your retention work is escalations and meetings at the time they want to leave, you're really holding this management thing wrong. I've done this 3 times in 20+ years as a manager. It's not exactly super-common. When it happened, it took maybe a day total. (Seriously, one of your jobs is to have good relations with your execs. If somebody wants to leave due to a better offer, you need to be able to go to your exec and say "hey, we need to counter this offer, make it so please", and they trust you - you can't have endless runarounds at that point) Yes, there's a lot of unseen work, but active retention measures is so tiny a blip, it doesn't even matter.
yodsanklai 2y ago
In my (big tech) company, managers have little leverage to retain people. Salary/bonus aren't in their control. Even evaluation aren't decided by them. They can try to make people happy so they stay in the team, but I find that they aren't very good at that either. When the team has issues, I don't find them effective to solve any problem. They do administrative work, communicate with leadership, hire, 1:1 which are more or less useful, help with roadmapping and alignement, attend calibration meetings for evaluation. I'm not saying they're not useful or that they don't work, but I find they leave the hard parts to the team to figure out. The hard part would be things like pushing backs on leadership demands, helping prioritizing tasks in the team. Concrete example: right now, everybody is overworked in my team, oncall is hard because we're pushed to ship new features, not work on reliability. Manager pretends to be empathetic, "always happy to help". But practically does nothing. My criteria for a good manager is that they're not harmful and don't add friction and stress (and those ones aren't appreciated by higher management). More than that, I've never seen it. But maybe i wasn't lucky.
- mhss 2y ago
  Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.
- somekyle2 2y ago
  Oh, that explains a thing. A decade or so ago, I was a well regarded engineer at a FAANG who got an offer from a startup. I told my manager I was probably going to take it, as it sounded fun. He and his lead tried to talk me into staying, showed me other departments I might find more fun. Really, they could've offered me a trivial raise and I probably would've stayed, but I was too meek to ask for money, and they didn't bring up money at all. That always struck me as very strange; I assumed it was either a mistake, or a "if they're going somewhere that is a pay cut, clearly it isn't money, and if you offer them money they'll leave in 6mo anyway". But, if they don't have that level to pull, that's a much simpler answer.
- willjp 2y ago
zeroq 2y ago
I've been gathering anonymous feedback from teams I've worked with as a lead or eng mgr. I usually ask the scrum master or someone neutral to talk to the team and gather a few bullet points. I always talk to the team first and ask them for willingness and permission. The one single thing that keeps repeating is something along the line of "we don't know what your doing". Not as in we don't believe in you, or we haven't seen you in the office for past few weeks, but they don't understand where my focus goes. And that's on purpose. I've been battling with myself for very long time about it. I'm past "I identify with the company" credo, but I always wanted to shield my teams from distractions and bullshit. I don't feel comfortable coming back to my team saying that I just had the conversation with CTO and he's so toxic that I have to wash myself, or that I've fighting for the last two weeks to not get the team fired, or any other usual corporate machiavellian schemes that happens on a daily basis.
throwaway9588 2y ago
I recently went through the retention process, and before resigning the first thing I did was ask around to figure out exactly how the process worked (I wanted to stretch my end date for various reasons). The knowledge was definitely there among the longer tenured ICs, and I've shared notes on my case. FYI, there is a concept of a reportable event that some employees (managers and officers) are required to report, resignation usually being one of them. I.e. don't ask your manager.
Spooky23 2y ago
Alot of leadership in general is keeping drama away from the troops. A sure sign of a toxic workplace is when stuff like this and other high level drama at the management level is well known. In this case, if it becomes known, you’ll find that there’s a big todo about retaining some people but not others? Why? The lack of understanding there leads to rumors, and that perception becomes reality… and it’s always bad.
AbstractH24 2y ago
Managers have three functions 1. Keep everyone on the same page 2. Keep things humming along 3. Keep shit from rolling downhill It can be very easy as a manager to get caught up in putting out fires related to the second two and let the thrid happen or not happen on its own. But that's where ICs see them or notice their absence the most. The thing I run into more is I often see managers as part of the machine, someone who I need to protect myself from rather than someone there to support me. This is likely as much a me problem as anything else, but its also something I've see good managers overcome.

fader 2y ago

I had the same experience moving from IC to manager. I didn't realize the amount of work that managers are doing that I didn't see and more importantly that they couldn't tell me about. Retention is definitely one, but there's the flip side of dealing with poor performance. You can't announce to everyone that one of the team is on a PIP or struggling with personal issues. But a poor performer means that I'm doing a _ton_ of work to figure out how to fix the issue (whether that's spending hours every week coaching them, building all the long-term documentation that HR requires before we can fire someone, picking up some of their slack myself in the meantime...) Coordination of people also takes way more time than I realized as an IC. If you meet with your manager once per week, that's an hour out of your week. But your manager is meeting with everyone on the team and a good manager is going to spend at _least_ as much time thinking and planning for each of those meetings as they spend in the meetings themselves even if everything is going well. They have to make sure nobody is accidentally working on the same thing or impacting someone else, talking to other teams, that sort of thing. That one hour out of your week is 1-2 days for your manager. Not to mention that they then have to go do the same sort of coordination with other teams. You have something that blows up your week that you need to escalate once per quarter? Multiply that by the number of reports your manager has and that's how much time they've spent fighting fires this quarter. And they need to explain to their leadership what happened and why it won't happen again. Etc. etc. It's not harder work, but it is very different work from being an IC. (On the other hand, being a manager has made me a better IC too. Everyone I've ever managed that was previously a manager themselves has this -- they know exactly what I need to know because they know what they needed to know, so our 1:1s go much faster :) ) One anecdote I have is that when I first moved to a management role, I told a colleague how happy I was that I'd finally have real control over my calendar. After he finished laughing (literally) he said "your calendar belongs to your team and you'll never be in control of that again". He was absolutely right: if something goes wrong or someone is unhappy, everything else moves aside so I can fix my team's problem.

johnny_reilly 2y ago
This is super interesting - thanks for sharing! > Everyone I've ever managed that was previously a manager themselves has this -- they know exactly what I need to know because they know what they needed to know, so our 1:1s go much faster Could you provide some examples of what managers need to know?
- fader 2y ago
  It's less about what I need to know and more about how I need to organize it. I get the same information from all of my reports, but the ones who were managers hand it to me ready to go where the others I get it from a conversation. When I'm talking to my team, I need to know things like: * Anything that is blocking them (and what they think will solve that) * Any unexpected events, fires that are about to start/have started * Progress on their tasks and any timeline updates * Things they've heard from meetings with other teams that might impact what they're working on or other people on the team The ICs who were managers previously tend to come to 1:1s with this already sitting in our shared document outlined roughly like I have above when we start our meeting. E.g. * I'm waiting for Joe Bloggs to finish his API work before I can build the user workflow for X. He was supposed to be done last week but I'm still waiting. He's being very vague about the timeline and I need to know when this will be done so I can start work. Can you talk to him for me? * Mary was out sick last week so didn't finish the design for Y. We're working on it now and she'll be done by Tuesday. I've put my work on Y on hold until then and am focusing on Z instead. It should still be done by the deadline. * Status of Project Foo is... * I had a sync with the database team yesterday. Did you know that they're planning to move everything to paper tape next quarter? All of that would come out in a conversation anyway, but having it like this focuses it and puts it in context already (which is normally what I would need to do with that info). The real difference is that folks who have been managers before tend to have a better understanding of what will impact the larger team or project, not just their part of it. I care about the individual too, but some of my brain is always on the bigger picture.
  - johnny_reilly 2y ago
    Awesome - thank you

game_the0ry 2y ago

> Case in point: trying to retain good people. Word. IMO, one of the most important, yet underrated duties, of a good manager. As a leader, you want people to crawl over broken glass to want to be by your side. If not, you end up like North Korea, where you have to sell why people should stay, sometimes eve being dishonest and intimidating in the process. Seeing the latter happen is always a sad sight.

skeeter2020 2y ago
One thing I discovered: almost everything a manager does has a big lag between input and observed impact. Retention is one of the slowest, it's like steering a cruise ship!
- game_the0ry 2y ago
  I can't say I agree with this bc I have felt the immediate impact of a key employee leaving, usually in the form of me taking up their responsibilities. Even with a two-week, sometimes even four-week, hand off, this turns into real pain the moment that employee is gone. So do not under-estimate the impact of retention.
  - nik_0_0 2y ago
    People leaving is definitely a step-function of negatives as the responsibilities get shared between the (now smaller!) team. I think GP was more saying that improving retention, at a % level, is a slow ship to steer. (At least what is available at the manager level.) Decreasing retention across the org in the long term doesn’t happen overnight, and it can take a while to observe whether the effect is trending downwards or upwards. (And also depends on what signal you use - people actually leaving, or people talking about leaving!)

surajrmal 2y ago

If you are a very senior IC, managers may consult you in these situations as well. Fishing for interesting projects or possibly even trying to have you talk to the person leaving as well. You generally would have context and an ability to connect with the other IC in a way a manager may not. I've never been in management but have on many occasions been roped into these scenarios.

bognition 2y ago

In my experience the inverse is also true. Dealing with performance and behavioral issues can take a huge amount of time, and it something that is never discussed with parties who are not involved. Well run engineering organizations are like a well running engine. They need to have solid parts but they also need constant attention and fine tuning. The best managers do this well.

AbstractH24 2y ago
> Dealing with performance and behavioral issues can take a huge amount of time, and it something that is never discussed with parties who are not involved. This is true. I feel like there needs to be a better solution to it which isn't wearing your heart on your sleeve or airing dirty laundry in public. Recently, I saw some emails from the manager two levels up form me that shouldn't have been in our CRM where he was standing up for my manager and his paycheck not going through properly. It seems like it was just an oversight because this one paycheck is run differently than others, but the director was clearly triggered because he said to payroll, "if we need to withhold anyone's paycheck, don't just do it. I need to know first because I need to know how to figure it out." I just quietly deleted the email and made sure similar ones wouldn't get logged. But I was also impressed at how quickly this director just stood up for someone under him. And if not for this chance stumble upon I never would have known of this side of his work. Maybe the recognition of managers is something that has to be done publically by those above them to get their teams to hear it?
- bognition 2y ago
  This is a perfect example of the silent work managers do. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to remind someone on the people/finance side that their systems work for the employees and not the other way around is astounding. “No we cant ask them to wait another month to get paid, no I don’t care our system doesn’t support it, fine pull out your check book and write them a physical check…”
  - AbstractH24 2y ago
    How can such silent work be made "unsilent" so potential employees can use it as a factor in determining the company/team they work for? From the applicant side, maybe it's just a question I should ask somehow in interviews.

_puk 2y ago

I agree about the hidden work, but you describe it in a reactionary manner. A huge amount of management effort goes into being proactive so you don't even need to get to the point in the conversation where they voice wanting to leave. Or when they do, you've seen it coming, have plans in place and they move on with your blessing. * Creating a culture where employees (and managers) feel valued and have autonomy. * Ensuring employees are clear about where they are headed, giving them something to work towards. * Proactively identifying and unblocking issues before they become crises, often across functions. * Identifying areas of frustrations for teams and individuals. That's just a small number of the things you'll be doing, and whilst scope varies massively by company size (though until you get to the large corp environment most of this is still covered up to the VP / CTO level), you'll be juggling it all alongside technical input, cross functional leadership responsibilities (VP may well be in the SLT if the company isn't huge), horizon scanning, constant process refinement.. The pillars of people, process and technology all need to be constantly considered.. Having done this repeatedly from IC all the way through Head, Director and VP level (and up to CTO), I can say that being a proactive problem solver is always required of a good manager / Director / VP. Edit: Having read the actual article ;) IC paths map this quite well too.. Tech Lead maps to manager, Staff maps to Director, Principal to VP

AdamN 2y ago
You can only be so proactive. At a ginormous company, the pace of change is glacial. You can push really hard and get buy-in from leaders with hundreds of people under them and still get blocked trying to improve things about the office/culture that are simply beyond one's control - even with VP buy-in. Big companies need to federate out more if they want this type of proactive management - or just accept it and maybe that makes sense too.
- code_biologist 2y ago
  Indeed, don't ignore obvious issues like team morale, career paths for ICs, but there's a certain zen to the balance between proactive and reactive. Don't do too much proactive work if there isn't incremental return on it. Don't burn yourself out or set yourself up for deep disappointment. Mid-pandemic I saw another manager go from enthusiastic to despondent overnight when his upcoming hiring headcount was cut to zero and his lovingly cultivated recruiting pipeline was basically worthless. He left shortly after, unsurprisingly. It was painful to watch and taught me a lesson in contingent value in management. I don't mean to say I know better though, he was definitely a better manager than me lol.

SteveNuts 2y ago

This is very true and I learned this quickly when moving to a management role. As an IC, when someone is out for some life event, it might mean more work for you to pick up the slack. As a manager, everyone on your team's problems become your problems. Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.

h4ny 2y ago
I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do appreciate that you care about people you have to look after deeply. However, I also don't think what you described is professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.). > Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. These are not things that would affect you from being a good manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone without being appreciated. You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good job as a manager. > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above. If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager. Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people just because you feel differently but don't actually have a concrete argument against.

odiroot 2y ago

There's also a huge part of "managing moods" to prevent people from thinking about leaving in the first place. And all of that within the constraints of the department budget and company policies.

apwell23 2y ago
yes!! 90% of manager's job is setting the mood.
- intelVISA 2y ago
  from vibe coding to vibe management
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  The real Vibe Coding

the_arun 2y ago

I think smaller companies do think this way of retaining good people. Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable. Again I am an IC & don’t see/hear any extra work done for retention. This proves your point though.

gajjanag 2y ago
> Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable. This is definitely true. By design, large corporations are structured so that there is no single point of failure. > Again I am an IC & don’t see/hear any extra work done for retention. Even in large corporations, extra work definitely happens for retention (I have experienced it myself as an IC). Even though everyone is by design replaceable, the organization has some incentive to work on retention: a) Bad retention hurts the organization's reputation and future hiring (horror stories spread very fast) b) Within the team, losing a great teammate hurts morale and output and managers know it will result in a hit on their metrics at least for the next half. c) Managers may not always be able to backfill, and losing an employee can reduce the size of their "empire" that they are often trying so hard to establish at whatever cost.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  There's also a constant tension between using fear as a motivator to squeeze more work out of employees, but not squeeze so hard that they quit. Different companies find their own spot on this continuum. For example, Amazon is famously in the sweatshop part of the scale and they could care less about their reputation. They seem to be doing OK though.

h4ny 2y ago

> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC. That's what most bad managers I have worked tend to overestimate -- they think they are doing real work tanking the team from "bad" things when they are actually the one not communicating with the team and just cave to upper management every time when protecting your team really counts. Most people I have worked with are aware that their average-to-good managers have to deal with things that they don't see, and when that understanding is mutual and respectful, then great work happens. When the manager always thinks that they are shielding bad things (when they are not) and the team isn't getting the communication they need, that's when bad things happen (and the manger ends up getting promoted and the rest of the team gets laid-off anyway). > Case in point: trying to retain good people. It's actually not that difficult: just be honest to people, treat them fairly, and be considerate. If you spend more time arguing/reasoning why they don't deserve to be promoted/get a raise than thinking about/making planning for ways to get them promoted or fight for their salary, you're just a bad manager. Sorry (assuming they even have the awareness) is not good enough when you have screwed up someone's career progression by half a year, let alone more. It happens too often. It baffles me that people think there is some sort of art or science in retaining good people. If good people want to try something completely and they can only do so by leaving, then let them. Otherwise, if good people want to leave it's always the company's fault (bad managers, insane colleagues who hurts culture, and many other bad things). > Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety of reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They often announce they are leaving to their direct manager and maybe one other person (E.g. head of another team they work with etc). Good people usually want to leave because the company is not treating them well enough, it's as simple as that. If they leave for reasons that you can't comprehend that doesn't make them "ludicrous", you're just not good enough to understand what's really pushing them to leave. Bad people, on the other hand, would leave for a variety of reasons, including ludicrous ones. Assuming we are on the same page, good people are also often professional. So of course they will announce they are leaving to their direct manager, that's just the right, professional thing to do. Not sure what you point is there. > Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a successful retention. Successful retention in this case is very rare (unless they're they are not as good as you think they are). By the time good people want to leave, they have already made up their mind and it would take some pretty drastic changes or life-changing kind of money to keep them. It's rare that companies can make drastic changes like that when they have already screwed up for so long so that good people are pushed out. It's also rare that, by the time someone has made up their mind on leaving, that they genuinely want to stay even if the (new) price is right -- most management doesn't realize that the implication is that they have treated people unfairly for too long, and people are not just going to forget about it when you offer them more money now (what about all the time they have been underpaid?). > However, the only people that know any of this happened are the employee and the manager tier. The other employees have zero idea any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions it. I point this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no one will care if I leave b/c I never see managers actively trying to keep people". That's just bad company policy and most likely management is silencing people for some downright stupid reasons. If good people are leaving, their leaving usually already says it all, and silence actually makes other good people even more suspicious of the management. In most cases, other employees who have good working relationship with good people actually have a better idea than management. If you're talking about people who don't know/haven't worked with those good people then... they wouldn't have cared either way. So yes, the only reason people don't know is because it's now common practice to get people leaving to agree to NDAs -- especially when they aren't just leaving on normal terms/compensation -- even when there is absolutely no reason for them to sign any NDAs. It's not because nobody wants to tell, it's because people have been scared into not talking/literally gagged. In the end, if you're not a narcissist, why do you want anyone you're not close to care about you leaving anyway? As long as you get well-compensated where necessary, chances are the people who really care about you already know what's happening anyway. > The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if you are about to move from IC to manager. "Unseen" is overrated in my opinion. In the context of moving from IC to manger, the word "unexpected" is more apt then "unseen". Alternatively, if there is a lot of "unseen" work, then the manager is basically work that they aren't communicating to the reports AND their reports can't hold them accountable to those "unseen" work, which is clearly a sign of broken communication and cultural problem. You can argue about most managers don't actually see the work that good reports do equally well.

apwell23 2y ago

you should never try to retain someone thats trying to leave. Even if you are successful at the moment they will leave eventually.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Is this always true? If their only concerns are things a manager can change, then why would they leave if they get what they were seeking elsewhere?
- kyleee 2y ago
  Definitely not always true; but commonly stated as truth.
- super_trooper 2y ago
  Not always true. I've coached people to stay before and they are still at the company. Sometimes they have concerns that actually could be fixed from management. People are complex and have many different reasons for wanting to leave, some fixable some not.
  - apwell23 2y ago
    > Sometimes they have concerns that actually could be fixed from management. curious. what are some examples of this and why do they take threat of leaving before management fixes it.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      My uncle wanted more money, and when his current employer counter offered he stayed for years afterward.
- aprdm 2y ago
  Not true in my experience being on both sides of the equation
2y ago

9rx 2y ago

> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC. This is what needs to be discussed in standups, yet strangely never is.

Rickasaurus 2y ago

Crisis management is a big part of the job, and the more people you have the higher the chance there is a crisis at any given point in time. Around 100 devs there's usually at least 1-2 things going on at any given time.

moregrist 2y ago

Personally I think spending huge amounts of time on retention _after_ someone resigns indicates huge, possibly org-wide, problems with communication and career development. There are lots of reasons people resign, but a lot of the time it comes back to feeling bored, under appreciated, or that their career has stalled. If you’re actively managing a team, you should be balancing these things, _and it should be obvious_ at least to people who are paying attention. Both developing someone’s career and signaling that you want to help are fundamental in a manager building good relationships with their reports. Or as Rands in Repose points out in his post on “Diving Save” [1]: > Diving Saves are usually a sign of poor leadership. People rarely just up and leave. There are a slew of obvious warning signs I’ve documented elsewhere, but the real first question you have to ask yourself once you get over the shock of an unexpected resignation is: “Did you really not see it coming? Really?” If you routinely don’t see it coming, maybe your reports have a legit gripe about what you’re spending your time on. [1] https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-diving-save/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-diving-save/

dskhatri 2y ago

Part of being a manager is to be proactive in trying to retain the good people. Increasing their visibility within the leadership and across the organization, paying keen attention to their career goals, selling these goals in advance to your manager and others within the organization, clearing hurdles that may be affecting their work etc. And most importantly, plan for their departure. Do you have any internal candidates to take their position? What would it take to hire somebody and bring them to the IC's level? When they finally decide they want to move on, you have hopefully laid the groundwork to keep them at the company (they move to a different group with an opportunity that matches their ambitions), or you don't have the arduous task of replacing them all of a sudden.

notyourwork 2y ago

Its a good example to call out but it should be obvious to anyone genuinely considering the transition. Managers are there to manage people, the job is easy when the teams awesome and the jobs hard when the team isn't awesome. This includes poor performance, attrition, and people drama. All things that come with the territory of managing humans.

whoevercares 2y ago

Does anyone tell their manager they are leaving and still expecting anything nowadays? I thought dive-and-save is very rare since the flattening trend happened (esp. in big tech)

jcadam 2y ago
Never experienced the dive-and-save myself. Usually a wince and a sigh, followed by "oh... when's your last day?" Your first line supervisor is upset, but resigned that he's powerless to do anything substantive that might retain you. The MBAs at corporate HQ couldn't care less, and it'll take them weeks/months to get around to approving a new job req.

class3shock 2y ago

Are you saying you, as a manager, are running a group so poorly that you have enough churn to where retention makes up a large percentage what you work on day to day? Or are you saying your company treats/pays employees so poorly that there is significant turnover throughout the organization? And instead of generally treating/paying employees better they rather have middle management spend a significant amount of their time discussing retention? And you are choosing to highlight this as something IC's should appreciate that management has to deal with?

snoman 2y ago
You’re getting downvoted, it seems, but you raise a very real point: you need to have a high turnover, or rough span of control ratios, in order for this to be a common interrupt. Especially given it’s well known that people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers… it’s a bit telling. Anecdotally: I spent 6-7 years managing at various levels (manger/sr mgr/director) before going back to an IC role, and I had a single regrettable attrition (+2 non-regrettable) in that time.
- moregrist 2y ago
  > Especially given it’s well known that people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers… I know this is an old saw because it’s usually true, but I’ve left companies where I had a good relationship with my manager because I lost confidence in leadership at some level above them. Sometimes you can see the train wreck coming and it’s time to go.
  - class3shock 2y ago
    I would point out that you still left because of a bad manager, just a higher level one.

jamwil 2y ago

Would someone be so kind as to tell me what IC stands for?

caleblloyd 2y ago
Individual Contributor- a position that doesn’t have reports

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

> Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. Locking, barn, horses etc.

oytis 2y ago

Sounds like pretty bad point to intervene though? If I decided to leave, and even announced it I'm probably pretty pissed off already. I probably raised my concerns before - or if I haven't, it is an indication of dysfunction of its own, I just had no space for that. In the best case you give me something that convinces me not to leave - and my takeaway will be that things are only going to change if I threaten with leaving.

groby_b 2y ago

If the majority of your retention work is escalations and meetings at the time they want to leave, you're really holding this management thing wrong. I've done this 3 times in 20+ years as a manager. It's not exactly super-common. When it happened, it took maybe a day total. (Seriously, one of your jobs is to have good relations with your execs. If somebody wants to leave due to a better offer, you need to be able to go to your exec and say "hey, we need to counter this offer, make it so please", and they trust you - you can't have endless runarounds at that point) Yes, there's a lot of unseen work, but active retention measures is so tiny a blip, it doesn't even matter.

yodsanklai 2y ago

In my (big tech) company, managers have little leverage to retain people. Salary/bonus aren't in their control. Even evaluation aren't decided by them. They can try to make people happy so they stay in the team, but I find that they aren't very good at that either. When the team has issues, I don't find them effective to solve any problem. They do administrative work, communicate with leadership, hire, 1:1 which are more or less useful, help with roadmapping and alignement, attend calibration meetings for evaluation. I'm not saying they're not useful or that they don't work, but I find they leave the hard parts to the team to figure out. The hard part would be things like pushing backs on leadership demands, helping prioritizing tasks in the team. Concrete example: right now, everybody is overworked in my team, oncall is hard because we're pushed to ship new features, not work on reliability. Manager pretends to be empathetic, "always happy to help". But practically does nothing. My criteria for a good manager is that they're not harmful and don't add friction and stress (and those ones aren't appreciated by higher management). More than that, I've never seen it. But maybe i wasn't lucky.

mhss 2y ago
Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.
somekyle2 2y ago
Oh, that explains a thing. A decade or so ago, I was a well regarded engineer at a FAANG who got an offer from a startup. I told my manager I was probably going to take it, as it sounded fun. He and his lead tried to talk me into staying, showed me other departments I might find more fun. Really, they could've offered me a trivial raise and I probably would've stayed, but I was too meek to ask for money, and they didn't bring up money at all. That always struck me as very strange; I assumed it was either a mistake, or a "if they're going somewhere that is a pay cut, clearly it isn't money, and if you offer them money they'll leave in 6mo anyway". But, if they don't have that level to pull, that's a much simpler answer.
willjp 2y ago

zeroq 2y ago

I've been gathering anonymous feedback from teams I've worked with as a lead or eng mgr. I usually ask the scrum master or someone neutral to talk to the team and gather a few bullet points. I always talk to the team first and ask them for willingness and permission. The one single thing that keeps repeating is something along the line of "we don't know what your doing". Not as in we don't believe in you, or we haven't seen you in the office for past few weeks, but they don't understand where my focus goes. And that's on purpose. I've been battling with myself for very long time about it. I'm past "I identify with the company" credo, but I always wanted to shield my teams from distractions and bullshit. I don't feel comfortable coming back to my team saying that I just had the conversation with CTO and he's so toxic that I have to wash myself, or that I've fighting for the last two weeks to not get the team fired, or any other usual corporate machiavellian schemes that happens on a daily basis.

throwaway9588 2y ago

I recently went through the retention process, and before resigning the first thing I did was ask around to figure out exactly how the process worked (I wanted to stretch my end date for various reasons). The knowledge was definitely there among the longer tenured ICs, and I've shared notes on my case. FYI, there is a concept of a reportable event that some employees (managers and officers) are required to report, resignation usually being one of them. I.e. don't ask your manager.

Spooky23 2y ago

Alot of leadership in general is keeping drama away from the troops. A sure sign of a toxic workplace is when stuff like this and other high level drama at the management level is well known. In this case, if it becomes known, you’ll find that there’s a big todo about retaining some people but not others? Why? The lack of understanding there leads to rumors, and that perception becomes reality… and it’s always bad.

AbstractH24 2y ago

Managers have three functions 1. Keep everyone on the same page 2. Keep things humming along 3. Keep shit from rolling downhill It can be very easy as a manager to get caught up in putting out fires related to the second two and let the thrid happen or not happen on its own. But that's where ICs see them or notice their absence the most. The thing I run into more is I often see managers as part of the machine, someone who I need to protect myself from rather than someone there to support me. This is likely as much a me problem as anything else, but its also something I've see good managers overcome.