8 ms·

A manager is not your best friend

200 points by thisismytest 1y ago

NAHWheatCracker 1y ago
I wish I had followed this advice when I was first a tech lead a few years ago. I wasn't a manager per say, but I had two junior engineers. We had way too much to do in too little time. I explained how the PM had messed up the project plan. I figured I was just letting them know what was going on, but it just brought the mood down. I think it's ideal that some level of commiseration happens, so people can try to find ways to fix problems that can be fixed or accept that they can't. It really depends on the people, relationship, and culture. Some people aren't willing to do anything for anyone else. Some cultures discourage trying to fix anything.
- catlifeonmars 1y ago
  It’s a fine balance. People don’t like it when you sugarcoat or otherwise patronize them. If something is bullshit, it’s worth calling out. Commiseration typically leads to feeling disempowered though and you need your reports to feel empowered for a team to function well.
  - maccard 1y ago
    > It’s a fine balance. > People don’t like it when you sugarcoat or otherwise patronize them. Agreed. One of the earliest things you have to learn as a manager is that people also don't ask for what they want, they ask for what they think they want. I had a direct report who said they wanted to know what was going on, so I told them regularly about the ups and downs. At the end of the year I got the feedback that I was providing unclear direction and being inconsistent - my direction was always the same, but it was obvious that even though they said they understood that I was telling them to stick to the roadmap we planned and checked in on, they were internalizing the week on week things we talked about. I've since learned the difference of how much to share, and how to effectively say "I know that team X are talking about changing the Foo to Bar, but we're going to keep working with Foo for now". If I've done my job as a lead, the direct acknowledgement of the uncertainty and an instruction to stay the course should be the communication the team needs, and from a technical perspective hopefully our earlier choices will make it less hassle for us to switch from Foo to Bar if/when that decision actually happens.
phendrenad2 1y ago
Your manager isn't your "bro" nor are they an uncaring faceless agent of the corporate bureaucracy. The best managers know how to be diplomatic and sympathize with grievances without over-committing. As a manager, you are as responsible for managing UP (and sideways) as well as down. Part of your job is being the "big gun" that your reports cc on emails when another team is absolutely just being a jerk.
ednite 1y ago
Solid article and great advice in my opinion. One simple takeaway for me is managing well means being accessible to your team at all times. I completely agree that managers shouldn't encourage criticism of other team members, even by staying silent when it happens. If you need to call something out, do it as a team, making yourself accountable as well. That keeps trust intact and avoids finger-pointing. Thanks for sharing.
- gnabgib 1y ago
  You just said that 12 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44170385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44170385
  - ednite 1y ago
    Yes, I did. I started my day with that comment, and funny enough, I'm logging off on it too. I guess I really do believe it. Thanks for noticing.
    - dijksterhuis 1y ago
      I think the other person was referring to the previous comment from 12 hours ago on another posting of the article being exact word for word copy of your comment on this post... (or they weren't, but it's what stood out to me)
wavemode 1y ago
The word "Best" could truthfully be omitted from this title...
tyleo 1y ago
On balance I really like this advice. However, I think there are times when bad or lacking behavior is most appropriately called out privately. Providing critical feedback publicly is often a bad idea unless you’ve done a dress rehearsal. IMO it is appropriate for managers to work with subordinates to help them level up other members of the team. That’s pretty delicate and usually happens by first acknowledging that someone is falling behind privately.
- 3abiton 1y ago
  Except it's quite tough to fight hidden wars in big teams. I was part of that hidden wars, where a team member would totally misinterpret a situation, goes full on complain to the manager, the latter lacking oversight over all of the team, roll with assumptions. Only public attempts for clearing this up helps.
catlifeonmars 1y ago
> If I think that HR sucks, and I commiserate with my directs about it, my team is going to treat them poorly. HR is definitely not your friend though
- jmye 1y ago
  What does that have to do with anything in this article?
  - catlifeonmars 1y ago
    The quote is directly from the article. I was attempting to surface the irony of the particular example they gave, because HR is typically the arm of a business that embodies the adversarial relationship between employees and employers. Thus the example rings hollow.
    - jmye 1y ago
      I get that quote was from the article. “HR is not your friend” is a low effort like-generator/meme that has nothing to do with the quote. It’s the kind of nonsense overconfident tweens mindlessly repeat because it feels good and because they think they’re really clever.
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doublesided 1y ago
i feel like i might be in a situation where commiseration is becoming too common and causing our team to lose focus on our goals. As someone not in a manager position, and more of a senior member, is there any way I can steer away from fostering negativity towards empowering the team to make change?
- schneems 1y ago
  Acknowledge the feelings (or people will think you are sweeping them under a rug), but don’t dwell on them. Don’t over-provide them. Focus on min/maxing the bad/good outcomes. Align people on the outcomes you want. Usually that’s easier 1:1 than 1:N.
throwioi 1y ago
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curtisszmania 1y ago
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squillion 1y ago
I’m not a native English speaker, can someone point me to a definition of “commiserate” that matches the usage in this article? It seems to have a different meaning according to the dictionaries.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I'm a native English speaker, and I also have no idea what the author is talking about. I don't think that word means what he thinks it means. I think he is using "commiserate" to mean "complain".
  - hug 1y ago
    Commiserating together means validating each other's negative feelings about something. You may commiserate with a team member when you both get made redundant, as a healthy example. When a team of several engineers are all thrown under a bus by a PM, they may commiserate with each other about the workload they find themselves with, as a slightly less healthy (but common) example. But when you, as a manager, commiserate with the team about the PM throwing you under the bus, you are doing your team and the organisation a disservice, in that you're creating an unhealthy us/them dynamic when doing so, and the other things the article suggests.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    One teardown and rebuild of the words that make up the roots of "commiseration" might be "to share in wretchedness" or in another way "to be co-miserable". it always used to mean some kind of shared negativity though like many words the nuance and original meaning has somewhat drifted.
  - pseudocoup 1y ago
    I’d say that ‘commiserate’ is a euphemism for complain. How do you understand it?
  - DwnVoteHoneyPot 1y ago
    It didn't make sense to me either. When normally I read "commiserate", I think someone is expressing empathy to someone else on their bad fortune. I assumed the employee was sorry something bad happened to their boss. But I think you're right, he's saying employees are complaining and the boss is providing sympathy.
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tombert 1y ago
I remember I really upset some coworkers a few years ago when I said coworkers can't be my friends. I made it clear that I like a lot of my coworkers, I think most of them are decent people and are OK to talk to, but that's a bit different than being a "friend". A "friend", to me, is someone I can completely be myself around without having to worry too much about it [1]. With a coworker, in the back of my mind I am always remembering "I have to work with this person tomorrow, best not talk about that subject..." and have to bite my tongue a bit. I don't just go around spouting racial slurs or anything too crazy, but my coworkers are exposed to a "tombert-lite" all the same. Also, if you work for startups and if you become best friends with all your coworkers, when the startup fails [2] then you can find yourself not only out of the job, but also hating a large percentage of your friends in the process. Now, I've quit/been-fired-from jobs and kept in touch with former coworkers, and then I consider them friends, but I do try and draw boundaries for the people I'm actually working with. [1] Within some degree of reason, obviously. [2] Not all startups fail, but an awful lot of them do.
- GuardianCaveman 1y ago
  So if you have a best friend you get hired on with you at the same level do you cease to be friends?
  - tombert 1y ago
    That's a tough question, and it's happened before to me. It definitely makes things a bit weird for me. If I have a prior relationship with that person, then to some extent they've already seen "full tombert" so I don't have to worry as much, but I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't a part of me that worries a little even still.
  - askonomm 1y ago
    Quite often it turns out that the connecting glue that held the friendship together was the shared experience of the same job. Remove that and the friendship fades away.
colechristensen 1y ago
You're a bad manager or a bad friend if attempted "commiseration" doesn't involve a push for attempting to interpret a situation in the light of everyone having the best intentions first (not only but definitely first). Going around constantly complaining about how X and Y are awful bad intentioned monsters out to get you makes you a bad manager, bad friend, bad person. If there are instances of bad intentions at work, it is the role of the manager to get to the bottom of them and try to get them fixed, not to sit around and complain / listen to complaints. We all get frustrated, make mistakes, and even are intentionally mean at weak points; having it met with private bitchfests just fans the flames. The insinuation that friends are for this kind of negativity breeding behavior is wrong, it's just as bad if your friends engage in it with you as if your manager does.
keiferski 1y ago
The best friends I’ve made at work have usually been in non-competitive departments. As in, I’m in marketing and they’re in graphic design, or programming, or doing something else. Practically, this means 1) I will never be their superior, and vice versa and 2) we aren’t competing for the same position. In general I think this is a decent approximation for friendships, at work or otherwise.
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  Counter data point, worked in a company 10 years ago, our team was so close that we would vacation together overseas. All in different companies, cities and countries now, but still try to get together whenever we’re in the same city. To be honest though, I’ve never been able to replicate that environment again, and it was pre-remote-first days. Might’ve been pure luck, or maybe we just understood how working with people you like is very enjoyable, despite the office politics.
  - kamaal 1y ago
    >>Counter data point, worked in a company 10 years ago, our team was so close that we would vacation together overseas. Worst thing ever, nothing is more harmful than a enemy who appears as a friend. This is even more true at workplace, as you are competing with your colleagues for promotions, bonuses, RSUs, travel opportunities etc. Whether one likes to acknowledge this are not, you are actually competing with them. Another big issue with this sort of this is, it creates all kinds of untold social contracts which eventually nobody abides by. You wouldn't expect your friend to scheme behind your back to have you stack ranked in the bottom 10%, get your fired. Save his own job and have himself promoted. But in nearly every layoff cycle, this is exactly what happens.
    - pinoy420 1y ago
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    - titanomachy 1y ago
      Please share where you work so I can make sure I never end up working anywhere near you
jmyeet 1y ago
Years ago when Google still maintained a facade that they weren't a Corporate America defense contractor, theyconducted a 2 year study study into what made a team effective: Project Aristotle [1]. The key factor? Psychological safety. Fast forward to the present day and we are in permanent layoff culture. The maverick facade from Big Tech was dropped long ago. Employees are graded on a curve and 5-10% of those regardless of their actual performance will be deemed substandard just to fit the curve. A good portion of those will end up on PIPs or just be laid off. But even those on PIPs are more likely than not to be working there 6 months later. This is an inherently cutthroat environment. Any pretense of psychological safety has been abandoned in favor of short-term profit seeking. While this is sold as a way of weeding out low performers and cutting costs (despite record high profits that's somehow still necessary), it's really a method of suppressing labor costs. But having experienced this kind of toxic environment, it doesn't select high-performers, it selects the people who are most liked by management. People who are neurodivergent suffer disproportionately (IME). My point is that in general nobbody is your friend at work. Not your colleagues, not your manager and not HR> They are to varying degrees protecting their own asses and you will be shocked how quickly someone who is nice to you at work will throw you under the bus to protect themselves ot simply to get ahead. In a desperate bid to cut and suppress labor costs, managemen thas ramped up the toxicity and further undermined and destroyed any social connections you may make at work. But they've also destroyed the psychological safety that allowed them to do great things. Stack-ranking employees for likability on a curve and OKRs are not what drives success. Those things destroy success. [1]: https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/ https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/
black_13 1y ago
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shanemhansen 1y ago
> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. Your job is to get to the truth of a matter in a respectful way, not make your team feel good. Doubt. Specifically about the call for managers to have highly conditional empathy and the assertion that making your team feel good is not close to if not the top priority in the list of managerial duties. We're working with people and whatever the official chain of command says, unhappy people generally deliver shitty work, so even if you short sightedly believe happy teams aren't your job, you'll soon understand why happy teams are a critical component to delivering for "the business". If not, your competitors will.
- dheera 1y ago
  > unhappy people generally deliver shitty work The anti-pattern I've seen happen very often in some big tech companies is that shitty work is in fact often what is desired -- by your manager. The CEO wants good work, but you're too many levels from them for that to matter. Your manager may be trying to get promoted, and isn't looking for "good work" per se, they're looking for whatever will get them promoted, which can be something shitty that their manager wants, or that the company wants for their broken PR strategy. And if you, lower down on the totem pole, don't deliver that shit, and instead insist on delivering something good that they aren't actually looking for, you'll be on the firing line. You can't align with the CEO at the cost of disaligning with everyone in-between. The CEO will never know you exist, and you'll be managed out well before they ever knew you existed.
  - freetinker 1y ago
    Astute observation, and spot-on IMO.
  - shanemhansen 1y ago
    I agree. Sometimes doing good work feels like a curve fitting problem where the objective function is a function not only of "value" but value to <manager, skip level, .... , CEO, business value>. I learned this the hard way.
  - pastamania 1y ago
dkarl 1y ago
I resisted this conclusion for a long time, but I finally accepted that many people don't easily mode-switch between complaining and constructive action. If they complain and get positive feedback from it, like commiseration, they start doing their own job less well. I used to value a bit of commiseration as healthy validation, a little switch of perspective to acknowledge that we have to cope with imperfect circumstances that are beyond our power to fix. It gives people relief from exaggerated feelings of responsibility, and then you can switch perspective back to the question of what can I control, what can I make better for other people. But over time I've worked with too many people who can't easily switch between the two perspectives. If they go too far into thinking about how the circumstances could and maybe should be better, they make a comfy little nest inside that mindset and never come back to taking responsibility for their own actions and their own effect on circumstances. I don't want to sound like a stuffy out-of-touch authority figure in a movie with a cool teenage protagonist, and I'm aware that I probably do. I try not to be a dick about it. I don't try to stamp out complaining. I just laugh politely, acknowledge, and change the focus as quickly as possible back to what is in our power to accomplish. A lot of times one of the things that is in our power is pointing out issues that transcend our team, educating and influencing other teams, etc. You'd think complaining would help with this, and it kind of does, because the things people love to complain about are very often the things that need to be addressed through engagement with leadership or with other teams. But here again, those same people who get demotivated by complaining, complaining also turns them into poisonous communicators. They aren't capable of doing a bit of discreet whining and moaning about product behind closed doors and then coming out and communicating in a constructive way with them. Again, that's something I didn't start out my career believing. I thought it was normal to vent a little frustration about a product manager in strong language behind closed doors, and then with that done, turn to the task of figuring out a more gracious and constructive way of understanding their perspective and engaging with it to create a better outcome. But it seems like maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of people are capable of making the turn back from talking shit to getting shit done. The rest seem to have the attitude of, well, we figured out this other guy is the problem, right, so what are you looking at me for? When in fact none of us are perfect, and other teams might have equally valid complaints about them. (I'm not a manager, just an IC, but somewhere along the way I got gray hair and I started worrying about this stuff.)
bravesoul2 1y ago
Just want to say this is an interesting and excellent insight.
neilv 1y ago
If you're someone who tends to be candid, and maybe empathetic, it helps to think through this in advance, and to set expectations in advance. My current thinking about established companies (flat early startup might be different): In a superior position on the org chart, your people should know that you'll be capable, honest, trustworthy, and fair, and also that you'll look out for them in some ways, but also that it's often your job to be diplomatic, as part of helping the company work together well. So, even if you secretly agree with a subordinate that you don't understand what the CEO is doing, or that an adjacent team keeps dropping the ball, you have to be diplomatic. And hopefully the person already knows that, since literally saying "I have to be diplomatic on this" in the moment probably wouldn't come across right. You can be informed by, and work with, that concern, and you can convey that you're taking their concerns seriously, but probably don't commiserate. Maybe one way to think of it (just thought of this one): It's duty of the manager to be more diplomatic, so that subordinates can be more candid within the team. This is another way that a manager can be a bit like helpful insulation. Having diplomacy as SOP can also help when it's not yet clear that the person is correct in an interpretation. It's still a concern to be looked into, but there's no expectation for you to commiserate. Of course, if a subordinate is going through a difficult personal/family event, you can express genuine sympathy (while you're also being practically supportive) -- that's not commiserating.
kraig911 1y ago
Empathy from your manager and reality mixes like entropy and the vacuum of space...
theshrike79 1y ago
People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses
- CactusRocket 1y ago
  Incorrect. I quit my job. My boss was amazing.
- askonomm 1y ago
  I've had amazing bosses, and yet I've still quit. Once you get bored and have no room to grow in the company there's little your boss can do about it.
whiplash451 1y ago
> it’s often better to give the most optimistic view for why another team is behaving the way that they are. Slightly disagree. I’d rather explain that the other team is doing an opportunity cost calculation that your team may not have access to. Sugar coating does not remove frustration
theletterf 1y ago
Great article. This bit in particular: "Bad therapists just let you rant. Good therapists let you vent, but they ask clarifying questions, and they sometimes push back. [...] You want to be a good therapist." I wish it had a less clickbaity and more relevant title though. I would have shared it on LinkedIn, but that title makes it looks as the sort of passive aggressive content people post when holding a grudge.
- jona777than 1y ago
  This was the piece that stuck out to me as well. It articulates well the distinction between the good managers I have had and the bad ones as I recollect my work history. This is applicable in close personal relationships as well.
MrDarcy 1y ago
> For evidence of this, light autists often make very effective managers. This idea is turning my world upside down, having avoided management roles my whole career yet ending up “managing” a small team of like minded experienced engineers despite actively avoiding the formal title. I put it in quotes because I don’t feel like I manage them in any way other than they technically report to me. I could tell them what to do but have only done so twice in 8 years. We chat once a week about whatever we feel like chatting about. Please could you share any context or insight into this idea so I can understand more deeply?
gorgoiler 1y ago
The word commiserate in this (otherwise useful!) article feels like a stone in my shoe. If anyone else feels the same thing try re-reading it as “grumbling with”. It’s less flowery, but a closer meaning than the kind of empathetic solace-in-hard-times associated with commiserate. Another fun, orthogonal substitution: instead of reading this from the manager/report perspective, try teacher/pupil or parent/pre-teen.
miaotech 1y ago
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raffael_de 1y ago
prompt: write a long text about something with management and use all possible inflections of "to commiserate" in every second sentence.
deleted 1y ago
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saagarjha 1y ago
Your manager isn't your best friend, but they don't have to be your enemy, either. People like to go "oh managers are faceless executors of company policy" and that is true in certain situations but not all of them. You can still provide value to your reports (and as a report, value to your manager) by explaining your grievances with what's going on. I don't think the article is saying that people should completely shut up, but I actually think the filter doesn't have to be anywhere near where they say it is. Another team is slow to deliver? It's fine to discuss that. As a manager your job, of course, is to make sure that your report isn't denigrating their coworkers. But it's fairly useful to decide how you want to prioritize your work, or whether you want to depend on that team in the future. Layoffs? There is zero reason to shut up about how dumb your CEO is and how they're doing it for Wall Street. They're coming for you just as they're coming for your reports. Better you talk about it than both people silently bottling up their feelings to please someone way up in their leadership chain.
hshshshshsh 1y ago
> This is especially true for friendly, competent, reasonable-seeming managers – people want to commiserate with winners Interesting. My experience working inside big tech was thinking of managers as mostly losers who are neither technically strong but psycho enough to think they are better and can manage other engineers. So I think of them as loosers who can't build a company from scratch but have parasitic tendencies to manage other people's money and time without having skin in the game. Especially the ones who think they know better. And are active in LinkedIn.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  Most sane 4chan/Blind dweller.
  - hshshshshsh 1y ago
    Shouldn't you be on LinkedIn?
    - wiseowise 1y ago
      Oof, I expected you to at least deny it. Keep flaunting it, king.
elric 1y ago
I feel sorry for people who work in environments where this sort of adversarial thinking, politicking, and commiseration is necessary. You spend the better part of your waking hours at work. Treating your coworkers as human beings is a sine qua non for me. I've never worked in a place with strict hierarchies, and I've never not become friends with at least most of my managers and coworkers. You don't gel as well with everyone, which is fine as long as it doesn't hinder professionalism and productivity. But working with people I view as competitors or adversaries? No thanks.
- _def 1y ago
  > I've never worked in a place with strict hierarchies I think that makes a big difference. Bigger hierarchy means more communication problems and group think. Can I ask what sizes the organizations you worked at had? (in terms of number of people)
madrox 1y ago
Managing is a hard job, which is why so many managers are bad and yet, in spite of the efforts of C-levels for decades, the role hasn't been eliminated. There's some wisdom in here, but I would not give this article to a new manager to read. I think it's easy to read too much into this and appear inhuman to your directs. Is there a line? Sure. Don't shit on your company, but don't do it for your directs...do it for you, because that's just not a healthy way to manage frustration. However, learn to lead in a way that's authentic. Authenticity requires candor.
- palata 1y ago
  > Managing is a hard job, which is why so many managers are bad Many jobs are hard, and I don't think it is a rule that most workers in hard jobs are bad. My take is multifold: - Managing takes experience. In the software industry, the evolution has been such that there aren't enough experienced people to fill all the manager positions. - Startups usually don't hire experience managers because they are deemed too expensive. They end up with inexperienced managers. If it's your first job, you never had a manager yourself, and you're suddenly managing a team, how can you be good? - It is hard to evaluate the competences of a manager. As an engineer, you can talk with another engineer and get a sense of how good/experienced they are: just ask them to talk about technology. As a manager, it seems harder to evaluate. It's easy to manage a team in a highly functional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is good. It's hard to manage a team in a highly disfunctional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is bad. - Managers are promoted from above. It's difficult to judge a manager without considering how their subordinates think about them. I have seen too many people climb the management ladder even though all of their subordinates absolutely hated them.
keybored 1y ago
A manager is my class enemy. Not my friend. It’s funny (or weird) seeing hot takes on HN like, actually you should seek meaning and friendships in your free time and not rely on your work providing it. Like what 80% of everyone knows already.
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  That’s actually somewhat blurry. Plenty of trade unions accept some managers as members since so many practitioners manage a handful of people without actual power over them. Of course at some point up the hierarchy the class interests definitely become opposed.
  - keybored 1y ago
    Maybe in general. But the author in particular is not someone for me to befriend.
bravetraveler 1y ago
> As your best friend, if you come to me saying that you were just dumped by your girlfriend, you will get unconditional sympathy beyond words. ... Unless you did something totally crazy or illegal, my loyalty will be immediate and unconditional, because – let’s be real – none of it matters. You’re going your way, she’s going hers, and it’s over. Wow, hard disagree. For someone wanting to maintain a relationship, there's a teachable moment only a friend can give being gleefully run past. Loyalty isn't blind support.
wiseowise 1y ago
Half of the article is discussing situation that shouldn’t even taken in the first place. I understand if your relative/friend/pet you grew up with dies, but if your gf/bf dumps you - keep this out of work. Request some time off and be done with it, more than that and you’re oversharing. Complaining about organization - take the feedback and move it higher up, it’s not managers responsibility to solve all injustice in the world.
braza 1y ago
> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. Your job is to get to the truth of a matter in a respectful way, not make your team feel good. You are largely stuck with your coworkers, and you need to get stuff done together or everyone suffers. I was an inexperienced manager in my late 20s managing a team with a very odd member composition (2 folks with +50 y/o, 3 folks with less than 21 y/o, and 2 apprentices (between 16-18)) and I related with it, but from the part where they became my good acquaintances. At that time, at the time that some of them had serious problems**, I usually did step in to cover their shoes until their problem was solved. I did it from the outside because I wanted to have things done, but internally I did know that they would work hard for the team when others needed to go. I got a lot of personal issues along the way (e.g., middle managers wanting to fire me because of their problems, other managers telling me (rightly) that I was wrong, and so on) but we definitely were in the mix for the top teams, and eventually everyone of the team got promoted in the time span that I was manager until 1 year after I left. ** - In that time there were some things like a DBA that ended up in jail, our trainee that had miscarriages a couple of times, an SWE that got hijacked in Colombia, and one apprentice whose parents divorced and she cannot work with us due to the custody agreement between her parents.
plaidfuji 1y ago
This is generally good advice but not universal. I’ve seen how complaining about other teams within one’s own team stifles collaboration and can kill cross-functional projects before they get started. But also, if there’s a real problem on another team, there needs to be a channel for people to be real with their direct reports about the problems, so they can build a case to fix it. And if there’s a big and obvious problem that you wilfully ignore or talk around as a manager, it can also hurt your credibility with your team. So it’s a fine line, and one that I’ve never really seen walked perfectly. I’ve had C-level bosses who were constantly complaining about other teams. Happened to be one of my favorite managers actually.
b0a04gl 1y ago
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Narciss 1y ago
> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. I don't see that as true. Your empathy always needs to be there, but your response is conditional on the situation. "I feel you, but..." and then offer a perspective that pushes the solution forward. Or even better, "I feel you, and..." to remove the defensive wall of your direct report. I am blessed that I work in a really switched on team. We focus on keep the talent density high, and on open and transparent communication. Practically everyone in our 70 odd team is a killer, so I have not heard any word of complaint from my team members around other teams. But if I did, I definitely would try to fix it via the open and transparent communcation policy. I highly recommend reading (or rereading) No rules rules..the culture at Netflix. That's the kind of culture that I strive for, and that I want to foster across the organizations that I work with.
cckolon 1y ago
I do think it’s common for managers (especially new ones) to desire too much validation from their reports. James Stockdale offered some advice here in a 1980 Proceedings article [1] > [Leaders] must be fair and they may be compassionate, but they cannot be addicted to being loved by everybody. The man who needs to be loved is an extortionist’s dream. That man will do anything to avoid face-to-face unpleasantness; he will sell his soul down the river for praise. He can be had. [1] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1980/september/leadership-forum-moral-leadership https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1980/september/le...
drewcoo 1y ago
As an autistic person, I read this and shook my head (meaning "no way," not stimming!) and wonder at the ways allistic people think they handle things better by having specific rules about how to fake emotions with one another.
bsoles 1y ago
The idea that managers are special people who can, among other things, control their emotions, get to the bottom of things, and communicate properly with their team is a ridiculous one. The author seems to have an idea of what a manager is that does not fit the reality in 95% of the cases, in my estimation. The article also has a crude and arrogant view of people as employees, who are portrayed as second class to "managers". I really hope the author is nobody's manager...
lucyjojo 1y ago
This article, like most of its kind, ignores culture, individuality, and circumstances.

200 points by thisismytest 1y ago

I wish I had followed this advice when I was first a tech lead a few years ago. I wasn't a manager per say, but I had two junior engineers. We had way too much to do in too little time. I explained how the PM had messed up the project plan. I figured I was just letting them know what was going on, but it just brought the mood down. I think it's ideal that some level of commiseration happens, so people can try to find ways to fix problems that can be fixed or accept that they can't. It really depends on the people, relationship, and culture. Some people aren't willing to do anything for anyone else. Some cultures discourage trying to fix anything.

catlifeonmars 1y ago
It’s a fine balance. People don’t like it when you sugarcoat or otherwise patronize them. If something is bullshit, it’s worth calling out. Commiseration typically leads to feeling disempowered though and you need your reports to feel empowered for a team to function well.
- maccard 1y ago
  > It’s a fine balance. > People don’t like it when you sugarcoat or otherwise patronize them. Agreed. One of the earliest things you have to learn as a manager is that people also don't ask for what they want, they ask for what they think they want. I had a direct report who said they wanted to know what was going on, so I told them regularly about the ups and downs. At the end of the year I got the feedback that I was providing unclear direction and being inconsistent - my direction was always the same, but it was obvious that even though they said they understood that I was telling them to stick to the roadmap we planned and checked in on, they were internalizing the week on week things we talked about. I've since learned the difference of how much to share, and how to effectively say "I know that team X are talking about changing the Foo to Bar, but we're going to keep working with Foo for now". If I've done my job as a lead, the direct acknowledgement of the uncertainty and an instruction to stay the course should be the communication the team needs, and from a technical perspective hopefully our earlier choices will make it less hassle for us to switch from Foo to Bar if/when that decision actually happens.

phendrenad2 1y ago

Your manager isn't your "bro" nor are they an uncaring faceless agent of the corporate bureaucracy. The best managers know how to be diplomatic and sympathize with grievances without over-committing. As a manager, you are as responsible for managing UP (and sideways) as well as down. Part of your job is being the "big gun" that your reports cc on emails when another team is absolutely just being a jerk.

ednite 1y ago

Solid article and great advice in my opinion. One simple takeaway for me is managing well means being accessible to your team at all times. I completely agree that managers shouldn't encourage criticism of other team members, even by staying silent when it happens. If you need to call something out, do it as a team, making yourself accountable as well. That keeps trust intact and avoids finger-pointing. Thanks for sharing.

gnabgib 1y ago
You just said that 12 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44170385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44170385
- ednite 1y ago
  Yes, I did. I started my day with that comment, and funny enough, I'm logging off on it too. I guess I really do believe it. Thanks for noticing.
  - dijksterhuis 1y ago
    I think the other person was referring to the previous comment from 12 hours ago on another posting of the article being exact word for word copy of your comment on this post... (or they weren't, but it's what stood out to me)

wavemode 1y ago

The word "Best" could truthfully be omitted from this title...

tyleo 1y ago

On balance I really like this advice. However, I think there are times when bad or lacking behavior is most appropriately called out privately. Providing critical feedback publicly is often a bad idea unless you’ve done a dress rehearsal. IMO it is appropriate for managers to work with subordinates to help them level up other members of the team. That’s pretty delicate and usually happens by first acknowledging that someone is falling behind privately.

3abiton 1y ago
Except it's quite tough to fight hidden wars in big teams. I was part of that hidden wars, where a team member would totally misinterpret a situation, goes full on complain to the manager, the latter lacking oversight over all of the team, roll with assumptions. Only public attempts for clearing this up helps.

catlifeonmars 1y ago

> If I think that HR sucks, and I commiserate with my directs about it, my team is going to treat them poorly. HR is definitely not your friend though

jmye 1y ago
What does that have to do with anything in this article?
- catlifeonmars 1y ago
  The quote is directly from the article. I was attempting to surface the irony of the particular example they gave, because HR is typically the arm of a business that embodies the adversarial relationship between employees and employers. Thus the example rings hollow.
  - jmye 1y ago
    I get that quote was from the article. “HR is not your friend” is a low effort like-generator/meme that has nothing to do with the quote. It’s the kind of nonsense overconfident tweens mindlessly repeat because it feels good and because they think they’re really clever.
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doublesided 1y ago

i feel like i might be in a situation where commiseration is becoming too common and causing our team to lose focus on our goals. As someone not in a manager position, and more of a senior member, is there any way I can steer away from fostering negativity towards empowering the team to make change?

schneems 1y ago
Acknowledge the feelings (or people will think you are sweeping them under a rug), but don’t dwell on them. Don’t over-provide them. Focus on min/maxing the bad/good outcomes. Align people on the outcomes you want. Usually that’s easier 1:1 than 1:N.

throwioi 1y ago

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curtisszmania 1y ago

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squillion 1y ago

I’m not a native English speaker, can someone point me to a definition of “commiserate” that matches the usage in this article? It seems to have a different meaning according to the dictionaries.

ryandrake 1y ago
I'm a native English speaker, and I also have no idea what the author is talking about. I don't think that word means what he thinks it means. I think he is using "commiserate" to mean "complain".
- hug 1y ago
  Commiserating together means validating each other's negative feelings about something. You may commiserate with a team member when you both get made redundant, as a healthy example. When a team of several engineers are all thrown under a bus by a PM, they may commiserate with each other about the workload they find themselves with, as a slightly less healthy (but common) example. But when you, as a manager, commiserate with the team about the PM throwing you under the bus, you are doing your team and the organisation a disservice, in that you're creating an unhealthy us/them dynamic when doing so, and the other things the article suggests.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  One teardown and rebuild of the words that make up the roots of "commiseration" might be "to share in wretchedness" or in another way "to be co-miserable". it always used to mean some kind of shared negativity though like many words the nuance and original meaning has somewhat drifted.
- pseudocoup 1y ago
  I’d say that ‘commiserate’ is a euphemism for complain. How do you understand it?
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 1y ago
  It didn't make sense to me either. When normally I read "commiserate", I think someone is expressing empathy to someone else on their bad fortune. I assumed the employee was sorry something bad happened to their boss. But I think you're right, he's saying employees are complaining and the boss is providing sympathy.

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tombert 1y ago

I remember I really upset some coworkers a few years ago when I said coworkers can't be my friends. I made it clear that I like a lot of my coworkers, I think most of them are decent people and are OK to talk to, but that's a bit different than being a "friend". A "friend", to me, is someone I can completely be myself around without having to worry too much about it [1]. With a coworker, in the back of my mind I am always remembering "I have to work with this person tomorrow, best not talk about that subject..." and have to bite my tongue a bit. I don't just go around spouting racial slurs or anything too crazy, but my coworkers are exposed to a "tombert-lite" all the same. Also, if you work for startups and if you become best friends with all your coworkers, when the startup fails [2] then you can find yourself not only out of the job, but also hating a large percentage of your friends in the process. Now, I've quit/been-fired-from jobs and kept in touch with former coworkers, and then I consider them friends, but I do try and draw boundaries for the people I'm actually working with. [1] Within some degree of reason, obviously. [2] Not all startups fail, but an awful lot of them do.

GuardianCaveman 1y ago
So if you have a best friend you get hired on with you at the same level do you cease to be friends?
- tombert 1y ago
  That's a tough question, and it's happened before to me. It definitely makes things a bit weird for me. If I have a prior relationship with that person, then to some extent they've already seen "full tombert" so I don't have to worry as much, but I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't a part of me that worries a little even still.
- askonomm 1y ago
  Quite often it turns out that the connecting glue that held the friendship together was the shared experience of the same job. Remove that and the friendship fades away.

colechristensen 1y ago

You're a bad manager or a bad friend if attempted "commiseration" doesn't involve a push for attempting to interpret a situation in the light of everyone having the best intentions first (not only but definitely first). Going around constantly complaining about how X and Y are awful bad intentioned monsters out to get you makes you a bad manager, bad friend, bad person. If there are instances of bad intentions at work, it is the role of the manager to get to the bottom of them and try to get them fixed, not to sit around and complain / listen to complaints. We all get frustrated, make mistakes, and even are intentionally mean at weak points; having it met with private bitchfests just fans the flames. The insinuation that friends are for this kind of negativity breeding behavior is wrong, it's just as bad if your friends engage in it with you as if your manager does.

keiferski 1y ago

The best friends I’ve made at work have usually been in non-competitive departments. As in, I’m in marketing and they’re in graphic design, or programming, or doing something else. Practically, this means 1) I will never be their superior, and vice versa and 2) we aren’t competing for the same position. In general I think this is a decent approximation for friendships, at work or otherwise.

tokioyoyo 1y ago
Counter data point, worked in a company 10 years ago, our team was so close that we would vacation together overseas. All in different companies, cities and countries now, but still try to get together whenever we’re in the same city. To be honest though, I’ve never been able to replicate that environment again, and it was pre-remote-first days. Might’ve been pure luck, or maybe we just understood how working with people you like is very enjoyable, despite the office politics.
- kamaal 1y ago
  >>Counter data point, worked in a company 10 years ago, our team was so close that we would vacation together overseas. Worst thing ever, nothing is more harmful than a enemy who appears as a friend. This is even more true at workplace, as you are competing with your colleagues for promotions, bonuses, RSUs, travel opportunities etc. Whether one likes to acknowledge this are not, you are actually competing with them. Another big issue with this sort of this is, it creates all kinds of untold social contracts which eventually nobody abides by. You wouldn't expect your friend to scheme behind your back to have you stack ranked in the bottom 10%, get your fired. Save his own job and have himself promoted. But in nearly every layoff cycle, this is exactly what happens.
  - pinoy420 1y ago
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  - titanomachy 1y ago
    Please share where you work so I can make sure I never end up working anywhere near you

jmyeet 1y ago

Years ago when Google still maintained a facade that they weren't a Corporate America defense contractor, theyconducted a 2 year study study into what made a team effective: Project Aristotle [1]. The key factor? Psychological safety. Fast forward to the present day and we are in permanent layoff culture. The maverick facade from Big Tech was dropped long ago. Employees are graded on a curve and 5-10% of those regardless of their actual performance will be deemed substandard just to fit the curve. A good portion of those will end up on PIPs or just be laid off. But even those on PIPs are more likely than not to be working there 6 months later. This is an inherently cutthroat environment. Any pretense of psychological safety has been abandoned in favor of short-term profit seeking. While this is sold as a way of weeding out low performers and cutting costs (despite record high profits that's somehow still necessary), it's really a method of suppressing labor costs. But having experienced this kind of toxic environment, it doesn't select high-performers, it selects the people who are most liked by management. People who are neurodivergent suffer disproportionately (IME). My point is that in general nobbody is your friend at work. Not your colleagues, not your manager and not HR> They are to varying degrees protecting their own asses and you will be shocked how quickly someone who is nice to you at work will throw you under the bus to protect themselves ot simply to get ahead. In a desperate bid to cut and suppress labor costs, managemen thas ramped up the toxicity and further undermined and destroyed any social connections you may make at work. But they've also destroyed the psychological safety that allowed them to do great things. Stack-ranking employees for likability on a curve and OKRs are not what drives success. Those things destroy success. [1]: https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/ https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/

black_13 1y ago

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shanemhansen 1y ago

> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. Your job is to get to the truth of a matter in a respectful way, not make your team feel good. Doubt. Specifically about the call for managers to have highly conditional empathy and the assertion that making your team feel good is not close to if not the top priority in the list of managerial duties. We're working with people and whatever the official chain of command says, unhappy people generally deliver shitty work, so even if you short sightedly believe happy teams aren't your job, you'll soon understand why happy teams are a critical component to delivering for "the business". If not, your competitors will.

dheera 1y ago
> unhappy people generally deliver shitty work The anti-pattern I've seen happen very often in some big tech companies is that shitty work is in fact often what is desired -- by your manager. The CEO wants good work, but you're too many levels from them for that to matter. Your manager may be trying to get promoted, and isn't looking for "good work" per se, they're looking for whatever will get them promoted, which can be something shitty that their manager wants, or that the company wants for their broken PR strategy. And if you, lower down on the totem pole, don't deliver that shit, and instead insist on delivering something good that they aren't actually looking for, you'll be on the firing line. You can't align with the CEO at the cost of disaligning with everyone in-between. The CEO will never know you exist, and you'll be managed out well before they ever knew you existed.
- freetinker 1y ago
  Astute observation, and spot-on IMO.
- shanemhansen 1y ago
  I agree. Sometimes doing good work feels like a curve fitting problem where the objective function is a function not only of "value" but value to <manager, skip level, .... , CEO, business value>. I learned this the hard way.
- pastamania 1y ago

dkarl 1y ago

I resisted this conclusion for a long time, but I finally accepted that many people don't easily mode-switch between complaining and constructive action. If they complain and get positive feedback from it, like commiseration, they start doing their own job less well. I used to value a bit of commiseration as healthy validation, a little switch of perspective to acknowledge that we have to cope with imperfect circumstances that are beyond our power to fix. It gives people relief from exaggerated feelings of responsibility, and then you can switch perspective back to the question of what can I control, what can I make better for other people. But over time I've worked with too many people who can't easily switch between the two perspectives. If they go too far into thinking about how the circumstances could and maybe should be better, they make a comfy little nest inside that mindset and never come back to taking responsibility for their own actions and their own effect on circumstances. I don't want to sound like a stuffy out-of-touch authority figure in a movie with a cool teenage protagonist, and I'm aware that I probably do. I try not to be a dick about it. I don't try to stamp out complaining. I just laugh politely, acknowledge, and change the focus as quickly as possible back to what is in our power to accomplish. A lot of times one of the things that is in our power is pointing out issues that transcend our team, educating and influencing other teams, etc. You'd think complaining would help with this, and it kind of does, because the things people love to complain about are very often the things that need to be addressed through engagement with leadership or with other teams. But here again, those same people who get demotivated by complaining, complaining also turns them into poisonous communicators. They aren't capable of doing a bit of discreet whining and moaning about product behind closed doors and then coming out and communicating in a constructive way with them. Again, that's something I didn't start out my career believing. I thought it was normal to vent a little frustration about a product manager in strong language behind closed doors, and then with that done, turn to the task of figuring out a more gracious and constructive way of understanding their perspective and engaging with it to create a better outcome. But it seems like maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of people are capable of making the turn back from talking shit to getting shit done. The rest seem to have the attitude of, well, we figured out this other guy is the problem, right, so what are you looking at me for? When in fact none of us are perfect, and other teams might have equally valid complaints about them. (I'm not a manager, just an IC, but somewhere along the way I got gray hair and I started worrying about this stuff.)

bravesoul2 1y ago

Just want to say this is an interesting and excellent insight.

neilv 1y ago

If you're someone who tends to be candid, and maybe empathetic, it helps to think through this in advance, and to set expectations in advance. My current thinking about established companies (flat early startup might be different): In a superior position on the org chart, your people should know that you'll be capable, honest, trustworthy, and fair, and also that you'll look out for them in some ways, but also that it's often your job to be diplomatic, as part of helping the company work together well. So, even if you secretly agree with a subordinate that you don't understand what the CEO is doing, or that an adjacent team keeps dropping the ball, you have to be diplomatic. And hopefully the person already knows that, since literally saying "I have to be diplomatic on this" in the moment probably wouldn't come across right. You can be informed by, and work with, that concern, and you can convey that you're taking their concerns seriously, but probably don't commiserate. Maybe one way to think of it (just thought of this one): It's duty of the manager to be more diplomatic, so that subordinates can be more candid within the team. This is another way that a manager can be a bit like helpful insulation. Having diplomacy as SOP can also help when it's not yet clear that the person is correct in an interpretation. It's still a concern to be looked into, but there's no expectation for you to commiserate. Of course, if a subordinate is going through a difficult personal/family event, you can express genuine sympathy (while you're also being practically supportive) -- that's not commiserating.

kraig911 1y ago

Empathy from your manager and reality mixes like entropy and the vacuum of space...

theshrike79 1y ago

People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses

CactusRocket 1y ago
Incorrect. I quit my job. My boss was amazing.
askonomm 1y ago
I've had amazing bosses, and yet I've still quit. Once you get bored and have no room to grow in the company there's little your boss can do about it.

whiplash451 1y ago

> it’s often better to give the most optimistic view for why another team is behaving the way that they are. Slightly disagree. I’d rather explain that the other team is doing an opportunity cost calculation that your team may not have access to. Sugar coating does not remove frustration

theletterf 1y ago

Great article. This bit in particular: "Bad therapists just let you rant. Good therapists let you vent, but they ask clarifying questions, and they sometimes push back. [...] You want to be a good therapist." I wish it had a less clickbaity and more relevant title though. I would have shared it on LinkedIn, but that title makes it looks as the sort of passive aggressive content people post when holding a grudge.

jona777than 1y ago
This was the piece that stuck out to me as well. It articulates well the distinction between the good managers I have had and the bad ones as I recollect my work history. This is applicable in close personal relationships as well.

MrDarcy 1y ago

> For evidence of this, light autists often make very effective managers. This idea is turning my world upside down, having avoided management roles my whole career yet ending up “managing” a small team of like minded experienced engineers despite actively avoiding the formal title. I put it in quotes because I don’t feel like I manage them in any way other than they technically report to me. I could tell them what to do but have only done so twice in 8 years. We chat once a week about whatever we feel like chatting about. Please could you share any context or insight into this idea so I can understand more deeply?

gorgoiler 1y ago

The word commiserate in this (otherwise useful!) article feels like a stone in my shoe. If anyone else feels the same thing try re-reading it as “grumbling with”. It’s less flowery, but a closer meaning than the kind of empathetic solace-in-hard-times associated with commiserate. Another fun, orthogonal substitution: instead of reading this from the manager/report perspective, try teacher/pupil or parent/pre-teen.

miaotech 1y ago

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raffael_de 1y ago

prompt: write a long text about something with management and use all possible inflections of "to commiserate" in every second sentence.

deleted 1y ago

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saagarjha 1y ago

Your manager isn't your best friend, but they don't have to be your enemy, either. People like to go "oh managers are faceless executors of company policy" and that is true in certain situations but not all of them. You can still provide value to your reports (and as a report, value to your manager) by explaining your grievances with what's going on. I don't think the article is saying that people should completely shut up, but I actually think the filter doesn't have to be anywhere near where they say it is. Another team is slow to deliver? It's fine to discuss that. As a manager your job, of course, is to make sure that your report isn't denigrating their coworkers. But it's fairly useful to decide how you want to prioritize your work, or whether you want to depend on that team in the future. Layoffs? There is zero reason to shut up about how dumb your CEO is and how they're doing it for Wall Street. They're coming for you just as they're coming for your reports. Better you talk about it than both people silently bottling up their feelings to please someone way up in their leadership chain.

hshshshshsh 1y ago

> This is especially true for friendly, competent, reasonable-seeming managers – people want to commiserate with winners Interesting. My experience working inside big tech was thinking of managers as mostly losers who are neither technically strong but psycho enough to think they are better and can manage other engineers. So I think of them as loosers who can't build a company from scratch but have parasitic tendencies to manage other people's money and time without having skin in the game. Especially the ones who think they know better. And are active in LinkedIn.

wiseowise 1y ago
Most sane 4chan/Blind dweller.
- hshshshshsh 1y ago
  Shouldn't you be on LinkedIn?
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    Oof, I expected you to at least deny it. Keep flaunting it, king.

elric 1y ago

I feel sorry for people who work in environments where this sort of adversarial thinking, politicking, and commiseration is necessary. You spend the better part of your waking hours at work. Treating your coworkers as human beings is a sine qua non for me. I've never worked in a place with strict hierarchies, and I've never not become friends with at least most of my managers and coworkers. You don't gel as well with everyone, which is fine as long as it doesn't hinder professionalism and productivity. But working with people I view as competitors or adversaries? No thanks.

_def 1y ago
> I've never worked in a place with strict hierarchies I think that makes a big difference. Bigger hierarchy means more communication problems and group think. Can I ask what sizes the organizations you worked at had? (in terms of number of people)

madrox 1y ago

Managing is a hard job, which is why so many managers are bad and yet, in spite of the efforts of C-levels for decades, the role hasn't been eliminated. There's some wisdom in here, but I would not give this article to a new manager to read. I think it's easy to read too much into this and appear inhuman to your directs. Is there a line? Sure. Don't shit on your company, but don't do it for your directs...do it for you, because that's just not a healthy way to manage frustration. However, learn to lead in a way that's authentic. Authenticity requires candor.

palata 1y ago
> Managing is a hard job, which is why so many managers are bad Many jobs are hard, and I don't think it is a rule that most workers in hard jobs are bad. My take is multifold: - Managing takes experience. In the software industry, the evolution has been such that there aren't enough experienced people to fill all the manager positions. - Startups usually don't hire experience managers because they are deemed too expensive. They end up with inexperienced managers. If it's your first job, you never had a manager yourself, and you're suddenly managing a team, how can you be good? - It is hard to evaluate the competences of a manager. As an engineer, you can talk with another engineer and get a sense of how good/experienced they are: just ask them to talk about technology. As a manager, it seems harder to evaluate. It's easy to manage a team in a highly functional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is good. It's hard to manage a team in a highly disfunctional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is bad. - Managers are promoted from above. It's difficult to judge a manager without considering how their subordinates think about them. I have seen too many people climb the management ladder even though all of their subordinates absolutely hated them.

keybored 1y ago

A manager is my class enemy. Not my friend. It’s funny (or weird) seeing hot takes on HN like, actually you should seek meaning and friendships in your free time and not rely on your work providing it. Like what 80% of everyone knows already.

dontlaugh 1y ago
That’s actually somewhat blurry. Plenty of trade unions accept some managers as members since so many practitioners manage a handful of people without actual power over them. Of course at some point up the hierarchy the class interests definitely become opposed.
- keybored 1y ago
  Maybe in general. But the author in particular is not someone for me to befriend.

bravetraveler 1y ago

> As your best friend, if you come to me saying that you were just dumped by your girlfriend, you will get unconditional sympathy beyond words. ... Unless you did something totally crazy or illegal, my loyalty will be immediate and unconditional, because – let’s be real – none of it matters. You’re going your way, she’s going hers, and it’s over. Wow, hard disagree. For someone wanting to maintain a relationship, there's a teachable moment only a friend can give being gleefully run past. Loyalty isn't blind support.

wiseowise 1y ago

Half of the article is discussing situation that shouldn’t even taken in the first place. I understand if your relative/friend/pet you grew up with dies, but if your gf/bf dumps you - keep this out of work. Request some time off and be done with it, more than that and you’re oversharing. Complaining about organization - take the feedback and move it higher up, it’s not managers responsibility to solve all injustice in the world.

braza 1y ago

> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. Your job is to get to the truth of a matter in a respectful way, not make your team feel good. You are largely stuck with your coworkers, and you need to get stuff done together or everyone suffers. I was an inexperienced manager in my late 20s managing a team with a very odd member composition (2 folks with +50 y/o, 3 folks with less than 21 y/o, and 2 apprentices (between 16-18)) and I related with it, but from the part where they became my good acquaintances. At that time, at the time that some of them had serious problems**, I usually did step in to cover their shoes until their problem was solved. I did it from the outside because I wanted to have things done, but internally I did know that they would work hard for the team when others needed to go. I got a lot of personal issues along the way (e.g., middle managers wanting to fire me because of their problems, other managers telling me (rightly) that I was wrong, and so on) but we definitely were in the mix for the top teams, and eventually everyone of the team got promoted in the time span that I was manager until 1 year after I left. ** - In that time there were some things like a DBA that ended up in jail, our trainee that had miscarriages a couple of times, an SWE that got hijacked in Colombia, and one apprentice whose parents divorced and she cannot work with us due to the custody agreement between her parents.

plaidfuji 1y ago

This is generally good advice but not universal. I’ve seen how complaining about other teams within one’s own team stifles collaboration and can kill cross-functional projects before they get started. But also, if there’s a real problem on another team, there needs to be a channel for people to be real with their direct reports about the problems, so they can build a case to fix it. And if there’s a big and obvious problem that you wilfully ignore or talk around as a manager, it can also hurt your credibility with your team. So it’s a fine line, and one that I’ve never really seen walked perfectly. I’ve had C-level bosses who were constantly complaining about other teams. Happened to be one of my favorite managers actually.

b0a04gl 1y ago

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Narciss 1y ago

> As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. I don't see that as true. Your empathy always needs to be there, but your response is conditional on the situation. "I feel you, but..." and then offer a perspective that pushes the solution forward. Or even better, "I feel you, and..." to remove the defensive wall of your direct report. I am blessed that I work in a really switched on team. We focus on keep the talent density high, and on open and transparent communication. Practically everyone in our 70 odd team is a killer, so I have not heard any word of complaint from my team members around other teams. But if I did, I definitely would try to fix it via the open and transparent communcation policy. I highly recommend reading (or rereading) No rules rules..the culture at Netflix. That's the kind of culture that I strive for, and that I want to foster across the organizations that I work with.

cckolon 1y ago

I do think it’s common for managers (especially new ones) to desire too much validation from their reports. James Stockdale offered some advice here in a 1980 Proceedings article [1] > [Leaders] must be fair and they may be compassionate, but they cannot be addicted to being loved by everybody. The man who needs to be loved is an extortionist’s dream. That man will do anything to avoid face-to-face unpleasantness; he will sell his soul down the river for praise. He can be had. [1] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1980/september/leadership-forum-moral-leadership https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1980/september/le...

drewcoo 1y ago

As an autistic person, I read this and shook my head (meaning "no way," not stimming!) and wonder at the ways allistic people think they handle things better by having specific rules about how to fake emotions with one another.

bsoles 1y ago

The idea that managers are special people who can, among other things, control their emotions, get to the bottom of things, and communicate properly with their team is a ridiculous one. The author seems to have an idea of what a manager is that does not fit the reality in 95% of the cases, in my estimation. The article also has a crude and arrogant view of people as employees, who are portrayed as second class to "managers". I really hope the author is nobody's manager...

lucyjojo 1y ago

This article, like most of its kind, ignores culture, individuality, and circumstances.