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How to be a leader when the vibes are off

364 points by mooreds 1y ago

reb 1y ago
Great write up! I've found these techniques pretty effective in tricky times over the years, and they don't only apply to tech workplaces. That said, they're very much geared toward "polishing shit" leadership. Getting yourself and the people you're responsible for through the hard times is a crucial skill. Getting them out and onto something better is important too, even if it can be tougher to square with the mandate middle managers work under.
dogleash 1y ago
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- bigfishrunning 1y ago
  haha yeah "Chaotic Good" is not a great choice of title for this blog...
- karmakurtisaani 1y ago
  > Lie through your teeth, but not so much people quit? I didn't get this message from the blog post at all. Let me summarize for you: In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight (and most likely you suffer from the bad leadership as well). Protect the team from bad consequences by not being zealous about the new order.
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - watwut 1y ago
    > In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight This person is not on the side of the team. This person is simply supporting that policy. There is no "protecting the team from consequences" if what you do is enforcing new other, just in a sane way. Well, ok, it is that persons job, but it is not true they are on the "side of the team".
    - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
      > Well, ok, it is that persons job This is the key. If they don't do it, it's not their job anymore. The team won't just revolt in unison, but the lead will be replaced with someone more complacent. The only option is to comply, but let the team know in private that you don't like the new vibes.
ajkjk 1y ago
Well, this advice is all tailored towards "how to keep your job and make your money as a leader when the vibes are off". But I and almost everyone else would prefer the question you're asking to be "how to start the revolution when the vibes are off"; explanations on how best to not fight the ways everything is going to shit are explanations of how to be complicit with it. For example, buying into the company message while privately criticizing it---good job advice, but morally, that's cowardice; it's pathetic; that's the behavior of a person who is trying to have their cake and eat it too, who's just there for the money; whose friendship is a lie. That's the spineless substitute for leadership we've come to expect in our disappointing world. "Yeah it sucks, it affects me negatively" in private only counts if you are also taking a non-infinitesimal stand against it in public; if your actual moral position comes out in favor of the right thing. Otherwise it is a lie, manipulating your employees to make them feel like they have a friend while not actually sticking up for them. If everyone felt and acted morally then the place would be forced to improve. Or at minimum, to fire all of you, but they should be forced to actually do that, morally, and suffer the political and economic consequences of doing so. But for that to happen people have to be systematically standing up to them in the first place, saying "do better, or else".
- deleted 1y ago
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- woah 1y ago
  What are you going to do after the revolution? I'm going to lead poetry readings and design upcycled fashion
  - ajkjk 1y ago
    well since the revolution in question is one where the company you're working for becomes attendant to its employees' dignity, I imagine you would keep working the same job under a new CEO and board (the old ones being forced out by the revolution), but you would enjoy it a lot more and feel much more inspired to keep doing good work....
  - jonahx 1y ago
fyrn_ 1y ago
"How be a good C-suite sycophant and not trigger a revolt from your team"
boston_clone 1y ago
> part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment this is not chaotic good, this is lawful neutral. and really bad leadership.
- rglynn 1y ago
  Out of genuine curiosity, what about this do you think is bad leadership? And, if I may, what would good look like?
  - boston_clone 1y ago
    because we must, above all else, keep an ethical backbone in our decision-making that respects both the welfare of the people we lead and the task at hand. if c suite is demanding people RTO to a toxic work environment, I'm not going to require my team to meet the exact requirements - wanna use your lunch break to drive to the office, tap your badge, then drive back home? sounds good to me. I'd also be asking for data to substantiate claims made regarding productivity gains or morale improvements. or if newly appointed partisan hacks start programs for employees to snitch on LGBTQ+ people, you should channel chaotic good and not fulfill their request, and actively work against others fulfilling it, too. I know of at least one government organization in which this has taken place. good leadership is about doing the right thing, and getting the job done. the right thing means leading by example with a high degree of proficiency, teaching others to be competent and confident, and growing yourself as an individual and as part of a larger community. committing yourself to always carrying out the orders of leadership is a hella slipppery slope dude - especially when the "vibes are off". maybe my examples are a bit pessimistic, but I just feel the author really missed the mark and left me (and others) scratching my head. maybe I'll give it another read later and try to steel man some of the positions. good and fair questions, by the way :)
miltonlost 1y ago
"How to suck up in public but bad mouth in private" is I suppose some good advice if one doesn't mind hypocrisy or lying or having integrity. But if you're middle-management in a company being described here, you've long since lost any revulsion to hypocrisy. If my manager was saying one thing to one person/group and another to me, I don't think that's good leadership at all, mainly shitty humanity.
deleted 1y ago
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apercu 1y ago
The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. They hated pretending that they care about employee health or well-being. So now they are vindictively sticking it to everyone. This phase, too, will pass. AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. AI will be the same (if it ever achieves its hype, which might be like Tesla FSD) - you lay off half your tech staff, lose your training pipeline, then in a couple years you're paying more than you were. The toxic "leadership" has always been there - kind of like the racism on the right of politics - it's just that it's viewed as "ok" to be shitty now. Also, leadership is in quotes because there's not really much of it around, despite angry comments to contrary to follow.
- motorest 1y ago
  > AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. There's some ignorance in this comment, which turns your comment into a pointless jab at pet peeves. I'll explain you why. The value proposition of cloud providers for business perspectives is a) turning capex into open, b) lowering upfront costs infrastructure and colocation by paying someone else to use their own infrastructure and managed services, c) be able to scale up instantly to meet demand, even internationally. The hard truth is that self-hosting only brings in meaningful improvements in cost if your operation grows beyond a certain scale and can afford to have on the payroll a dedicated infrastructure team to manage and administrate your compute infrastructure. We are talking yearly payroll expenses that are in the six or even seven figure range. How big does your operation need to be to amortize that volume of expenses by migrating out of the cloud? I think you should pause for a second and think really hard on why the whole world opts to pay cloud providers instead of going bare metal. If your conclusion is that all cloud engineers are oblivious to cost control, you should go to square one and try again.
  - apercu 1y ago
    Cool story bro.
doodaddy 1y ago
Even as a jaded person I’m surprised how many people read this and immediately go to statements about hypocrisy, having no integrity, or bad leadership. Get a grip! Real life doesn’t always let you be a crusader. It’s called choosing your battles and it’s something that most of us have to do almost every day. Nothing in this advice suggests being two-faced. Nothing suggests lying or being deceitful. What it does suggest is to try and do the least bad thing in a set of less-than-ideal circumstances, most of which are outside any of the rank-and-file’s control. Edit to add: nothing says you have to publicly agree with an unpopular policy while disparaging it in private. Staying quiet is an option and probably the most sensible one.
- deleted 1y ago
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theideaofcoffee 1y ago
> Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. Naw, man. Do your work as you were hired to do, as an expert, disagree and push back against idiotic and clueless decisions, loudly and publicly. None of this militaristic, jingoist "the C-suite always knows best and we have to follow their 'orders' blindly because they have the title, we can't possibly know all that they know." Fuck that. You were hired for your skills, your form of "loyalty" that they so desperately want is showing them why they are wrong and doing good work. Dangerous? Yes. But you have to be prepared to leave as well. People are so hopelessly inured to the craziness of corporate life they forget that they, the laborers, have -all- of the power in the relationship. And don't forget that you -are- the labor until you get on the list of "major holders".
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  That will put you ahead in some contexts or completely destroy your life on different contexts. And even make you ineffective for fighting against the problem. Apply it smartly, and evaluate if forcibly changing your context isn't the right move for you. Blindly sticking to the anti-jingoist approach is as bad as blindly applying it.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > And even make you ineffective for fighting against the problem. We are not discussing someone who has any potential or interest to be effective in fighting the problem. The proposed alternative to what you call innefective fighting is complete support of that thing. And second no, it will not destroy your life. People really love to exaggerate risks management or C-suite or teamleaders take.
JohnMakin 1y ago
> The right thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge that you see the situation the same way they do, but do it privately, within your immediate team only or in 1-1s. “Yeah, this new policy sucks, I get it. It’s going to affect me in negative ways too.” It’s really important that you validate the emotions that all of these aspects are bringing up in people. This I wish more leaders did. It can be really demoralizing to the point of leaving a role when you hear company stuff that's blatantly false, in bad faith, or whatever - and your leader, who you know damn well is smart enough to see it as well, looks you dead in the eye and repeats the company line. In other words, "don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining." I'd rather be told you're screwing me than being screwed and gaslit about it. No matter what, in the end I'm going to remember I was screwed and how you approached that.
- serial_dev 1y ago
  On the other hand, I do not expect middle managers to talk negatively about a policy that they do not have influence over and they did not initiate because in the end they cannot change it and I don’t want them to get into trouble for validating my feelings. Middle managers will say that it is only raining and I will nod along even if we both know that they are pissing on my shoes. I might start looking for another job, but as long as I’m there, I will smile and play along if I know that my resistance will not change the decision. Even in my exit interview, I’ll say everything was great. This is probably not what I would have done at the beginning of my career but now I have a family so I don’t mind pretending.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > Even in my exit interview, I’ll say everything was great. This is really understandable. Don't burn bridges and such I can't help but wonder if we're just screwed though. We can't hope to course correct without this sort of honest feedback but we're conditioning ourselves never to give it or receive it by ... Never giving it or receiving it
nsedlet 1y ago
Another factor with the vibes being off (at least in the US): mass outsourcing of jobs thanks to remote work. You used to have to be a multinational company with global entities and offices. Now you can be a 10-person startup with half your people outside the country. When the world went remote many folks were happy with the better work-life balance. But it means that we compete in a ruthless global labor market. That's why companies rejecting remote work is good for the American worker in some ways.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  "remote" can just mean "far enough from the financial district that I can afford a little space" as it turns out. You're not WRONG but just being in the same time zone as your coworkers gets you 90% of the in person benefits and, realistically, it's too hard to work with a team that is on a vastly different tz. Local can still be better than global while still allowing people to work from home and convene in meat space as needed
- throw725725168 1y ago
  > Now you can be a 10-person startup with half your people outside the country. You can be even if a multinational company moves their employees back to the office. If you chop off your limbs, not everyone can compete at that game, but why play it in the first place?
- elzbardico 1y ago
  Small scale offshore outsourcing existed way before the pandemic and the big shift to remote. They used to call it software factories.
- pjc50 1y ago
  > companies rejecting remote work is good for the American worker It's good for American real estate owners, who end up with more money as a result of this, both from offices and from staff who have to live in nearby high COL areas.
nextworddev 1y ago
You - the “leader” - is responsible for the off vibes
- deleted 1y ago
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foxfired 1y ago
I'm going through this right now where all expectations have been reversed after an acquisition. Ex: I'm not big on metrics, I rather have direct communication with my team to understand issues we are facing and any challenge an individual is struggling with. Looking at metrics hardly tells you the full story. Well, after the acquisition, metrics are in! story points, number of comments on PR, number of PRs, etc. I don't believe in these methods, but the company as a whole is going to align. I do not pretend I'm excited about it, but I remember that I am in a room with full grown adults. I've addressed the issue, and made sure to frame it with "we are aligning with the rest of the company" as opposed to just saying this is the way forward, deal with it. Edit: Coincidentally one of my blog posts is on the front page right now and addresses similar issues -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359604
physicsguy 1y ago
A lot of this I think is interest rate driven rather than AI driven.
- hn_throw_250924 1y ago
  [dead]
  - nextworddev 1y ago
    It will through increasing unemployment rate
- staplers 1y ago
  Definitely plays a huge part in expectations and burnout when the roadmap flips halfway through a quarter because suddenly we need to court VCs or trim staff or whatever the fed/gov decides. The snip-snapping is wreaking havoc on products and you see it everywhere from price hikes to low-quality ux and bug-filled code as teams adjust and pivot constantly. Even worse this leads to less enthusiasm and focus as teams expect it more so they buy-in less.
gdbsjjdn 1y ago
I can't over-emphasize the role line managers play in decoupling the delusion expectations of leadership and the ground truth of employees' lives. I think a lot of CEOs would burst into flames if they saw an average IC's day, but those ICs can still be high performers and achieve the goals of the business. Having automonomy and flexibility is huge for ICs. The role of the line manager is to provide plausible deniability both ways by tolerating a necessary amount of deviation from the black letter "law". A great example is my friend, who works in a non-technical office job. She has always gotten great performance reviews and gone above-and-beyond because she's very passionate about her work. She's been doing this for over 10 years. Lately she has experienced some pretty severe burnout, and her immediate manager didn't know how to handle it so they immediately punted her to HR for a disability leave. Of course because HR is involved now there's paperwork and doctors and insurance implications. A competent manager could have navigated the situation "unofficially" and preserved a valuable employee, instead of sending them on a 6 month odyssey of navigating the healthcare system. Ultimately the business got less value out of the employee because she's stressed and has to take a bunch of time off to deal with administrative BS.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  Her manager probably did her a huge favor Yeah, navigating disability leave can be a little rough Not as rough as being PIPed out though, which was probably the other most likely path in front of your friend
  - gdbsjjdn 1y ago
    Nope! Her manager had no concerns about her performance and has expressed regret about the situation because it has made everyone's life harder. The manager likes her and wants her to stay at the company, but because she's a "problem" for HR they want to fire her.
- InvOfSmallC 1y ago
  I agree with her manager. She needs to preserve her health. Involving HR doesn't mean the manager is not with her.
dvcoolarun 1y ago
In their mind, I guess everyone is a strong leader, as they say everyone judges themselves by effort and others by results. From a employee's perspective. I think you get a good idea, when working for a company, if your leader's vibes are off. If they have a ego or can have a adult conversation or like to avoid it. Since life is not a 'silver lining' You will meet some behaviours (which you can call toxic or not ) But times are changing, and people are less patient.
catigula 1y ago
>I see lots of people worried that the aim of all of this is to ultimately have a robot do their entire job Correct, this is the aim and tons of capital is being deployed to this end. Worse, it looks inevitable, not just plausible, if you look at the progress of the technology. To be more specific, though, a robot doesn't need to do their entire job to devalue their job. One senior engineer doing 10x work with an LLM is someone who has cut 10 roles. >Let them know you’re still on their side You're not and never have been. You're on the side of your company. >This too shall pass That's the problem. "This" is their gainful employment and possibly a host of other protections and dignities up-ended, such as privacy, enabled by AI. The reality is that, even if people don't put it in these terms, we are all held hostage to this existential nightmare engine because a few billionaires want infinite power and eternal life and nobody is stopping them. Anyways, yeah, you can't be ethical in this position because your role, as explicated here, is to attempt to alleviate natural and very understandable pressures that could harm the company rather than let them boil over, which they likely should. Framing what's good for the company as what's good for the employee is part and parcel of this mentality.
neilv 1y ago
> The right thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge that you see the situation the same way they do, but do it privately, within your immediate team only or in 1-1s. "Yeah, this new policy sucks, [...] If you're a manager in a company that does sucky things, does (inevitably) being quoted saying a policy 'sucks' risk you losing your manager job there? I'm an OG techie, who ends up doing some manager-y things, and I'm going to be very straightforward with everyone. But on something like sucky policy, I might not say "sucks". Instead, maybe acknowledge they're concerned/upset, ask questions about how it affects, ask/discuss how that can be fixed/improved, and honestly say some of what I will try to do about it. Example of last part: "Thank you, I'm going to escalate this, and I plan to get back to you within the next 2 days. If anything comes up before then, let me know."
- jdefr89 1y ago
  Your employees won’t rat you out… Just don’t say “sucky” to those above you. If I have a cool ass manager who looks out for me and is real (I’m lucky enough to be at a MIT lab where everyone is cool as hell), I will always have their back…
  - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
    I think this is true 90% of the time, but that 10% of the time is really risky. The high stakes of the bad case make it wise (imo) to avoid saying your company's policy "sucks"
  - neilv 1y ago
    If you're a manager, consider not saying that up the org chart is "sucky". Almost certainly no one on your team will go tattle, but it can leak out accidentally, such as when someone is flustered over a problem. More likely, it will leak out indirectly, in a way, if your team starts thinking of itself a little too much as a group that has to stick together against hostile outsiders within the company, either up the chain or sideways. People outside the team will pick up on that's the tone you're promoting to the team. But it's not just about not wanting impolitic words to come back to you... For one thing, it's part of your job to help the team work with the company and people outside the team. Not promote a sense of hostile environment. (If there's an intractably hostile environment, then either that's getting fixed promptly, or your people should be escaping.) A good manager should have the team's back, especially in a hostile corporate environment, but also insulate the team from a lot of noise including some of what they're being shielded from, as a team and individually. Just like personal life, if you care, you don't have to tell people all the things you do for them. (I was fortunate to have some awesome managers, who knew when to shield and help me, who knew when to (on rare occasions) lower their voice and tell me something that a drone wouldn't, and who always came across as honest and caring. Some of it rubbed off of me despite my strong-minded personality, and I can always just ask myself what would Bill/Kathy/Nancy/Tom do, to name some of the earliest and most formative ones. All highly skilled engineers first, and later managers/mentors.)
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
checking in as someone who successfully ducked two rounds of RTO by just getting a different job. The first one absolutely outright told us they were bringing us back to an office where there isn't enough room for all of us. They justified it by saying we're hybrid 3 in 2 out and can figure out amongst ourselves who will be in when in order to optimize desk space, and on days where we have all hands or some other reason to have everyone in the office people can sit on the floor or in the lobby. The other tried to bring our remote team back to the office for in-person collaboration only to realize that I'm fully remote as per my hiring agreement and the rest of the team is split across Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Dallas and one of our contractors is secretly working from his family's horse farm in Jalisco. So we all had to dress nice, commute and pay to park in order to sit on teams calls in an empty office rather than sitting on teams calls at home in comfort for free. We eventually figured out that our employer also owned the parking garage adjacent to the building and was counting on us as a $12/person/day revenue stream. The trust is broken because someone looked at the trust and said "I'm gonna break that to see if there's money inside."
- kmeisthax 1y ago
  > We eventually figured out that our employer also owned the parking garage adjacent to the building and was counting on us as a $12/person/day revenue stream I suspect a nontrival % of RTO-obsessed businesses have conflicting real estate investments like this.
- pjc50 1y ago
  > The trust is broken because someone looked at the trust and said "I'm gonna break that to see if there's money inside." This sums up so much of modern society. And in the resulting migration to low trust, a lot of opportunities for mutual benefit are going to go away, in order to enable a few people to engage in looting.
ori_b 1y ago
Alternative title: "I'm just here for a paycheck. Maybe you should be too."
- tayo42 1y ago
  for some reason, this is harder then it should be. I just feels bad to phone it in. illogical i guess.
Poomba 1y ago
I feel like OP has either never worked outside of tech startups/Silicon Valley or never worked pre-2012 (dont wanna assume tho and this is not meant in a disparaging manner) A lot of these things exists in other industries for awhile. Like lack of trust (you have to be from 8 to 6 in a lot of Wall St firms) and fear of layoffs (everyone who worked during the financial crisis in 07-08 know this all too well). I would say they are the norm, and the things that OP missed was the exception
tschellenbach 1y ago
There are literally subreddits about how to abuse the trust of remote work, but there have always been people doing that. I think the main thing that changed is that amazing revenue multiples that made it possible for companies to ignore these issues are no longer there. Meanwhile the costs of everything, including salaries has skyrocketed. So I think it's lower valuations + higher costs -> more pressure on efficiency. Companies that don't become efficient have their valuation collapse or go under.
- itsnowandnever 1y ago
  well, and let's be honest - most CEOs and boards get the same advice from the same advisors and peers. and the advice since Elon took over Twitter (not that I can say he "started it" but it was around that time I started hearing C-suites say he was right to let everyone go) has been to implement more draconic policies at your software companies. that interest rates have been higher and liquidity in general has been tight created a perfect storm of bias that these policies are working or could be beneficial. in better times, a company with good funding and a healthy customer base would come through and eat everyone's lunch if their competitors were treating their devs like that. but because of the temporary complete collapse in competition as we've known it, especially amongst startups, this has gone on far longer than it typically would. it'll get better soon but we've lost an entire generation of technical leadership now (due to burnout and other factors) so it'll be a slow and turbulent recovery.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > it'll get better soon I really wish I had your optimism about that. I'm starting to worry that nothing will ever be better again
  - pjc50 1y ago
    > it'll get better soon We're only just beginning the AI-sourcing workslop era, that's going to be a few years of confusing chaos.
- cramsession 1y ago
  Valuations are at record highs though. For instance Microsoft stock is at an all time high yet they're instituting RTO (which was clearly not needed to get the stock to the ATH) and an aggressive, anti-employee culture. You can see a lot of this coming from people like Musk who have astronomical valuations, not tied in any way to reality.
tschellenbach 1y ago
The other part of this is the AI wave. Every SAAS company in the world is vulnerable to someone with higher AI driven pace, or better AI features to overtake them. Even Google is an example, it seemed like the most defensible business. They could coast for years, but now they are literally at risk of losing vs openAI.
- jdlshore 1y ago
  I think this is the fear, but I haven’t seen any evidence that AI is making companies more productive. Lots of anecodotes, pro and con, about individual effects, and a small number of studies, pro and con, about company effects, but nothing definitive, and certainly not the kind of groundswell of new products and releases that I would expect.
itsnowandnever 1y ago
This blog was essentially my exact strategy over the last few turbulent years. I know it helped my people and I don't regret it. but, man, did it take a lot out of me. I've seen a quip out there before about the perfect recipe for burnout being the combination of high expectations with minimal empowerment to achieve those expectations. and this current market is burning leaders in this industry out like I haven't seen in 15 years.
- airspresso 1y ago
  Man, this hits hard. I've done so much to protect my part of the org chart from the whims of others and the cost-cutting pressure of the organization at large. My team are happy. Personally, I'm burned out to the level that nothing excites me any more and it's really hard to muster the energy to even do what's needed at the job, let alone drive vision and the team forward.
  - dwaltrip 1y ago
    Take care of yourself. Your oxygen mask goes on first.
  - Propelloni 1y ago
    My sympathies, I've been there, too. You are not alone. What helped me was to talk about my predicament with peers outside my company at face-to-face meetups. It changed my trajectory and allowed me to find purpose again.
- data_ders 1y ago
  > the perfect recipe for burnout being the combination of high expectations with minimal empowerment to achieve those expectations wow. real!
  - euroderf 1y ago
    It seems that burnout is the summation of anxiety over time.
- 1y ago
bob1029 1y ago
> Across the board, execs seem more efficiency-focused, financialized, and less mission-driven The last point is what I've been experiencing the most. I walked away from a job because it became clear that the other leaders in the organization were hopelessly lost with regard to mission. The wild part is they weren't even chasing money, efficiency, etc. They were chasing some kind of weird internal management/org chart tribalism with zero value-add. All for a 10~20 person company. None of this was a problem before 2020. We were aggressively customer oriented and very agile with the product stack. I think covid got a lot of people trapped in really bad "lifestyle choices" that are effectively impossible to get away from. The consequences of these things extend far beyond the person who engages with them. The more employees and capital you are responsible for the worse all of this gets. I wish our culture was more open to the idea of being honest about all of this and getting help. Imagine how beneficial it could be for other employees in the same company to know their CEO isnt some inhuman freak by way of a frank and honest internal email. To know that the last 3 years of your life wasnt you taking crazy pills, it was literally them taking crazy pills. The other employees might even be compelled to seek out similar help under this kind of leadership.
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago
  > Imagine how beneficial it could be for other employees in the same company to know their CEO isnt some inhuman freak ... or how beneficial it could be for your entire company and customers. Think about how well regarded gabe newel is and the resulting longlevity of valve.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > The wild part is they weren't even chasing money, efficiency, etc. They were chasing some kind of weird internal management/org chart tribalism with zero value-add. This hits close to home. A promising startup I joined hired a cluster of people who wanted to do nothing other than grow their headcount and play hardball politics all of the time. The VP of Product had hired 20 people and spent a year building a “product decision framework” and he still couldn’t answer the question about what we were going to build. The strangest part for me was that it was all so obviously broken but it persisted anyway. There were some factions that emerged where the underperforming VPs banded together to support each other and attack anyone who spoke out about their obvious problems.
manoDev 1y ago
TL;DR "yes men" middle managers keep their jobs.
polynomial 1y ago
So basically, leadership is coping? No thanks.
citizenpaul 1y ago
This headline reminds me of a headline a while back that was something like how to do founder mode when you are not the founder. It all goes back to some Orwellian newspeak vibes. The words for what we are doing sound horrible. Can we just change word meanings so it sounds good? If you are not the founder f founder mode. They can make you a cofounder if they want founder mode behavior from you. If the vibes are off its because upper management is toxic and hostile to humanity. All you can do is protect your own job. I've made the same mistake the author made and had some immature naive dipstick employee I managed confront the upper management because of course they could not be evil ghouls. Almost cost me my job and destroyed any chance of a future at the company.
arandr0x 1y ago
I found the take a little too much on the doomer side for someone who presumably has several years of management experience. Yeah there's been a lot of social media posts and talking about the efficiency era, AI slop etc but over there in the real world you're working with humans. Some are going to be operating under a shareholder- or investor-derived goal to improve margins and some are not, but even for those who are "improving margins" looks different at every business (depending on e.g. current headcount, COGS, whether you use contractors, etc). I feel like it's a super reductive take to go "aaah, this current culture is anti-human or anti-empathy" rather than like, look at the actual actions that are being taken, who is benefitting, and what specific negotiating room yourself and your team have in this value context. I find the actual advice here very worthwhile, though.
stevage 1y ago
> In public, you have to support the policies, but when you’re in private with your manager and your peers, that’s the time you can safely push for change. They are actually advocating being two-faced as a form of leadership.
- cyrnel 1y ago
  I know, right? It's sycophancy. If you are actually against the policy and suspect a lot of people are too, then don't silence your employees by keeping their feedback isolated to 1:1s which you admit are ineffective. Executives need clear feedback to avoid making major mistakes.
  - aesthethiccs 1y ago
    thought i was taking crazy pills when no one else but you two pointed out how ridiculous a manager with two faces is, if the execs don't get proper feedback they will never change, and employees complaining to this type of manager will immediately start looking elsewhere.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    I don't think I've ever worked anywhere that executives are actually capable of taking feedback constructively In all cases they have eventually just told me to shut up, no matter how diplomatic I try to be, and in some cases it has led to me being terminated Feedback is just taken as a sign that you aren't aligned with their vision, so you have to go
    - CSSer 1y ago
      Everyone has an ego. Everyone wants to exercise their power their way when it's their time to shine. I wish I could upvote this twice. If you are reading the above early in your career, please don't take the comment as cynical. It doesn't have to be. Rather, look for it as the sign that you're ready to find your next role. Companies will never clearly give you that. This is often the closest heuristic you'll find, and if you take advantage of it with the right timing, you can leave with grace. If someone asks you why you're leaving, keep it to yourself.
throwaway346434 1y ago
As others have expressed, sycophancy is not leadership. How do you "safely push for change" in private if your executive leadership display sociopathic or narcissistic behaviors, where they expressly do not care about the harm they inflict on others? Polls show that about a quarter of employees see something unethical, and half don't report it because they think nothing will happen OR they will be retaliated against. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/648770/unethical-behavior-goes-unreported-unresolved.aspx https://www.gallup.com/workplace/648770/unethical-behavior-g... This means that individuals who are doing misdeeds perceive there are no consequences. Part of your role is to surface that there are consequences; and you bringing them up now is far less expensive than a lawsuit later. We know this pattern of behaviour is not beneficial - in the context of NPD the worst version of this is becoming an enabler - https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-enablers/ https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-enablers/ While you can absolutely choose your battles and there are some things that are ultimately harmful for you and achieve no great outcome; you are not a leader if you do not advocate for your team when obviously unjust things occur.
SanjayMehta 1y ago
One of the things he doesn’t say is you have to be extra careful when your boss is replaced by an outsider; it’s exactly as if you changed you changed your job and have to prove yourself all over again. The new guy also comes with an inflated sense of self-importance; he’s there to fix things which the old guy messed up.
zug_zug 1y ago
> Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. No, not for a staff engineer. You keep your mouth shut in the #general channel when something crazy is said, or you ask a single question in a thread when you don't understand at all. The sound of a dozen people not clapping is the perfect rebuke to management mistakes.
mfru 1y ago
This reads like "How to follow orders and resignate". Only shows that companies are dictatorships where workers don't have a say
- nenenejej 1y ago
  What is the answer? unions?
  - mfru 1y ago
    Sure, also: worker cooperatives. The key point is: workers need to organize together for themselves. Nobody else is going to stand up for you, certainly not your boss(es).
  - bluGill 1y ago
    There is a tine to speak up. at meals with close family. At meetings with your boss. The right question at company meetings - though there are wrong question here: think long and hard before ask. You can speak up it meetings with your team but be careful of the tone. You need to come off as overall having the companies back but this one thing you can't support. Or maybe things will change again. There are lots of options. There have been recessions before. There will be a recovery. Leave when things get better (or you retire) and cite working conditions in the bad times in your exit interview. unions can work, but they can force you into situation you don't want to be in.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      As a collective we would have done well to have organized long ago. Unions or professional associations with teeth (e.g. like the Bar for lawyers, CPA boards for accountants etc) seem to be the only realistic options
      - bluGill 1y ago
        There are lots of places that treat their employees well, work for them. There are a lot of complainers who yell about little things but are unreasonable. We have other options.
alex-moon 1y ago
This is depressing to be sure, but rest assured there is a long history of middle management being "the buffer" between upper management and everyone else. It's a common trope in TV shows and such. I think one of the most important things this write up is maybe missing (though I am not super clear on how this has changed recently) is when middle management are acknowledging to their reports that the C suite are a bunch of cunts, is that they also need to be saying the same thing to the C suite themselves. "Going out to bat" literally means feeding back to upper management that what they're doing isn't going to work. This should be a fight that is ongoing. Again, privately, one to one, but you do actually need to be doing it. If you can back it up with numbers, even better.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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motbus3 1y ago
It is all true. I do the same. But it is not the healthy thing. C suite abuse should not be tolerated. People needs money but not at the cost of healthy. I have someone in my family heavily affected by this mentality. 25y of treatment and it was never enough to bring him fully back to himself
cube00 1y ago
> I’ve even heard of people being told they need to be “at their desks at 9am” and “expected to stay until 5pm at a minimum.” PMs always manage to end their day on time with "I'm heading out for a bit, I'll be back online later tonight for a quick check in on progress so send me a link when the ticket is complete" and I'll be able to finally say without guilt or shame "I'm heading out too and I'll continue working on your ticket tomorrow from 9am."
philipallstar 1y ago
Don't vote for anyone who thinks ZIRP is a good idea, and floods the world with overly-cheap cash that gets wasted on extravagences, that need to be over-corrected now
gnomespaceship 1y ago
Good essay! Jason, if you read this - the form to subscribe doesn't work on Android (in Firefox or Chrome). I can't input my address or press the Subscribe button.
jus3sixty 1y ago
None of these generalizations are new to people who have had to work in service industry or customer service. I have no sympathy for tech workers griping about these changes. Before I transitioned to I.T. I worked in the some of the most demanding call centers in the BPO world. There was no remote work, every single minute of your day was monitored and you felt like you were in a fish bowl where every word and kpi was being analyzed by management. If you didn’t meet all 10-15 metrics you basically had one foot on a banana peel. Put your big boy pants on tech bro. Winter is coming!
paulcole 1y ago
> This too shall pass Funny how most people only use this when they don't like how things are going. Who ever saw a blog post about, "This too shall pass" during remote-ZIRP-brain era?
supjeff 1y ago
> how to be a leader: total and complete capitulation while you wait for it to blow over yep. that's leadership.
tedggh 1y ago
“Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. When acting “in public” (all-hands, department meetings, the #general channel), this is mandatory, as contradicting the bosses in a broad forum can kill the credibility you have the leadership across the wider team“ Take this advice with a grain of salt. If bad decisions can lead to very bad things and you know it you must push back even if that means getting fired. This is particularly important when the life and wellbeing of others are at stake. Just look at Boeing to see how prioritizing a job over ethics can actually kill people and destroy companies.
phendrenad2 1y ago
> Return to Office feels like trust has been broken. Teams that continued to work well (or in some cases, better) after everyone in the industry went remote are now being told to come back to desks in offices. I’ve even heard tales of this happening despite there not being enough office space for everyone, which seems very silly I sometimes wonder what it feels like to work at a place like this. On the one hand, you're still employed, and that's saying a lot in the tech industry right now. But on the other hand, you must, deep down, know that your management are either (a) incompetent or (b) beholden to majority investors that are using the company as a pawn to prop up commercial real estate valuations. If you don't believe that the higher-ups have the company's best interest in mind, why bother working hard? In the words of Office Space, "you know Bob, that'll just make someone work just hard enough to not get fired".
falcor84 1y ago
>This too shall pass > Things will eventually settle down into a new normal While I accept the former as a wise axiom, I don't think we can derive the latter in regards to the tech industry. Things have been accelerating, and I'm concerned that we're now fully in "Present Shock" territory and it'll keep being hectic with no ground to stand on until eventually there is no more tech industry as we know it.

364 points by mooreds 1y ago

reb 1y ago

Great write up! I've found these techniques pretty effective in tricky times over the years, and they don't only apply to tech workplaces. That said, they're very much geared toward "polishing shit" leadership. Getting yourself and the people you're responsible for through the hard times is a crucial skill. Getting them out and onto something better is important too, even if it can be tougher to square with the mandate middle managers work under.

dogleash 1y ago

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bigfishrunning 1y ago
haha yeah "Chaotic Good" is not a great choice of title for this blog...
karmakurtisaani 1y ago
> Lie through your teeth, but not so much people quit? I didn't get this message from the blog post at all. Let me summarize for you: In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight (and most likely you suffer from the bad leadership as well). Protect the team from bad consequences by not being zealous about the new order.
- deleted 1y ago
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- watwut 1y ago
  > In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight This person is not on the side of the team. This person is simply supporting that policy. There is no "protecting the team from consequences" if what you do is enforcing new other, just in a sane way. Well, ok, it is that persons job, but it is not true they are on the "side of the team".
  - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
    > Well, ok, it is that persons job This is the key. If they don't do it, it's not their job anymore. The team won't just revolt in unison, but the lead will be replaced with someone more complacent. The only option is to comply, but let the team know in private that you don't like the new vibes.

ajkjk 1y ago

Well, this advice is all tailored towards "how to keep your job and make your money as a leader when the vibes are off". But I and almost everyone else would prefer the question you're asking to be "how to start the revolution when the vibes are off"; explanations on how best to not fight the ways everything is going to shit are explanations of how to be complicit with it. For example, buying into the company message while privately criticizing it---good job advice, but morally, that's cowardice; it's pathetic; that's the behavior of a person who is trying to have their cake and eat it too, who's just there for the money; whose friendship is a lie. That's the spineless substitute for leadership we've come to expect in our disappointing world. "Yeah it sucks, it affects me negatively" in private only counts if you are also taking a non-infinitesimal stand against it in public; if your actual moral position comes out in favor of the right thing. Otherwise it is a lie, manipulating your employees to make them feel like they have a friend while not actually sticking up for them. If everyone felt and acted morally then the place would be forced to improve. Or at minimum, to fire all of you, but they should be forced to actually do that, morally, and suffer the political and economic consequences of doing so. But for that to happen people have to be systematically standing up to them in the first place, saying "do better, or else".

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woah 1y ago
What are you going to do after the revolution? I'm going to lead poetry readings and design upcycled fashion
- ajkjk 1y ago
  well since the revolution in question is one where the company you're working for becomes attendant to its employees' dignity, I imagine you would keep working the same job under a new CEO and board (the old ones being forced out by the revolution), but you would enjoy it a lot more and feel much more inspired to keep doing good work....
- jonahx 1y ago

fyrn_ 1y ago

"How be a good C-suite sycophant and not trigger a revolt from your team"

boston_clone 1y ago

> part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment this is not chaotic good, this is lawful neutral. and really bad leadership.

rglynn 1y ago
Out of genuine curiosity, what about this do you think is bad leadership? And, if I may, what would good look like?
- boston_clone 1y ago
  because we must, above all else, keep an ethical backbone in our decision-making that respects both the welfare of the people we lead and the task at hand. if c suite is demanding people RTO to a toxic work environment, I'm not going to require my team to meet the exact requirements - wanna use your lunch break to drive to the office, tap your badge, then drive back home? sounds good to me. I'd also be asking for data to substantiate claims made regarding productivity gains or morale improvements. or if newly appointed partisan hacks start programs for employees to snitch on LGBTQ+ people, you should channel chaotic good and not fulfill their request, and actively work against others fulfilling it, too. I know of at least one government organization in which this has taken place. good leadership is about doing the right thing, and getting the job done. the right thing means leading by example with a high degree of proficiency, teaching others to be competent and confident, and growing yourself as an individual and as part of a larger community. committing yourself to always carrying out the orders of leadership is a hella slipppery slope dude - especially when the "vibes are off". maybe my examples are a bit pessimistic, but I just feel the author really missed the mark and left me (and others) scratching my head. maybe I'll give it another read later and try to steel man some of the positions. good and fair questions, by the way :)

miltonlost 1y ago

"How to suck up in public but bad mouth in private" is I suppose some good advice if one doesn't mind hypocrisy or lying or having integrity. But if you're middle-management in a company being described here, you've long since lost any revulsion to hypocrisy. If my manager was saying one thing to one person/group and another to me, I don't think that's good leadership at all, mainly shitty humanity.

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apercu 1y ago

The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. They hated pretending that they care about employee health or well-being. So now they are vindictively sticking it to everyone. This phase, too, will pass. AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. AI will be the same (if it ever achieves its hype, which might be like Tesla FSD) - you lay off half your tech staff, lose your training pipeline, then in a couple years you're paying more than you were. The toxic "leadership" has always been there - kind of like the racism on the right of politics - it's just that it's viewed as "ok" to be shitty now. Also, leadership is in quotes because there's not really much of it around, despite angry comments to contrary to follow.

motorest 1y ago
> AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. There's some ignorance in this comment, which turns your comment into a pointless jab at pet peeves. I'll explain you why. The value proposition of cloud providers for business perspectives is a) turning capex into open, b) lowering upfront costs infrastructure and colocation by paying someone else to use their own infrastructure and managed services, c) be able to scale up instantly to meet demand, even internationally. The hard truth is that self-hosting only brings in meaningful improvements in cost if your operation grows beyond a certain scale and can afford to have on the payroll a dedicated infrastructure team to manage and administrate your compute infrastructure. We are talking yearly payroll expenses that are in the six or even seven figure range. How big does your operation need to be to amortize that volume of expenses by migrating out of the cloud? I think you should pause for a second and think really hard on why the whole world opts to pay cloud providers instead of going bare metal. If your conclusion is that all cloud engineers are oblivious to cost control, you should go to square one and try again.
- apercu 1y ago
  Cool story bro.

doodaddy 1y ago

Even as a jaded person I’m surprised how many people read this and immediately go to statements about hypocrisy, having no integrity, or bad leadership. Get a grip! Real life doesn’t always let you be a crusader. It’s called choosing your battles and it’s something that most of us have to do almost every day. Nothing in this advice suggests being two-faced. Nothing suggests lying or being deceitful. What it does suggest is to try and do the least bad thing in a set of less-than-ideal circumstances, most of which are outside any of the rank-and-file’s control. Edit to add: nothing says you have to publicly agree with an unpopular policy while disparaging it in private. Staying quiet is an option and probably the most sensible one.

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theideaofcoffee 1y ago

> Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. Naw, man. Do your work as you were hired to do, as an expert, disagree and push back against idiotic and clueless decisions, loudly and publicly. None of this militaristic, jingoist "the C-suite always knows best and we have to follow their 'orders' blindly because they have the title, we can't possibly know all that they know." Fuck that. You were hired for your skills, your form of "loyalty" that they so desperately want is showing them why they are wrong and doing good work. Dangerous? Yes. But you have to be prepared to leave as well. People are so hopelessly inured to the craziness of corporate life they forget that they, the laborers, have -all- of the power in the relationship. And don't forget that you -are- the labor until you get on the list of "major holders".

marcosdumay 1y ago
That will put you ahead in some contexts or completely destroy your life on different contexts. And even make you ineffective for fighting against the problem. Apply it smartly, and evaluate if forcibly changing your context isn't the right move for you. Blindly sticking to the anti-jingoist approach is as bad as blindly applying it.
- watwut 1y ago
  > And even make you ineffective for fighting against the problem. We are not discussing someone who has any potential or interest to be effective in fighting the problem. The proposed alternative to what you call innefective fighting is complete support of that thing. And second no, it will not destroy your life. People really love to exaggerate risks management or C-suite or teamleaders take.

JohnMakin 1y ago

> The right thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge that you see the situation the same way they do, but do it privately, within your immediate team only or in 1-1s. “Yeah, this new policy sucks, I get it. It’s going to affect me in negative ways too.” It’s really important that you validate the emotions that all of these aspects are bringing up in people. This I wish more leaders did. It can be really demoralizing to the point of leaving a role when you hear company stuff that's blatantly false, in bad faith, or whatever - and your leader, who you know damn well is smart enough to see it as well, looks you dead in the eye and repeats the company line. In other words, "don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining." I'd rather be told you're screwing me than being screwed and gaslit about it. No matter what, in the end I'm going to remember I was screwed and how you approached that.

serial_dev 1y ago
On the other hand, I do not expect middle managers to talk negatively about a policy that they do not have influence over and they did not initiate because in the end they cannot change it and I don’t want them to get into trouble for validating my feelings. Middle managers will say that it is only raining and I will nod along even if we both know that they are pissing on my shoes. I might start looking for another job, but as long as I’m there, I will smile and play along if I know that my resistance will not change the decision. Even in my exit interview, I’ll say everything was great. This is probably not what I would have done at the beginning of my career but now I have a family so I don’t mind pretending.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > Even in my exit interview, I’ll say everything was great. This is really understandable. Don't burn bridges and such I can't help but wonder if we're just screwed though. We can't hope to course correct without this sort of honest feedback but we're conditioning ourselves never to give it or receive it by ... Never giving it or receiving it

nsedlet 1y ago

Another factor with the vibes being off (at least in the US): mass outsourcing of jobs thanks to remote work. You used to have to be a multinational company with global entities and offices. Now you can be a 10-person startup with half your people outside the country. When the world went remote many folks were happy with the better work-life balance. But it means that we compete in a ruthless global labor market. That's why companies rejecting remote work is good for the American worker in some ways.

dingnuts 1y ago
"remote" can just mean "far enough from the financial district that I can afford a little space" as it turns out. You're not WRONG but just being in the same time zone as your coworkers gets you 90% of the in person benefits and, realistically, it's too hard to work with a team that is on a vastly different tz. Local can still be better than global while still allowing people to work from home and convene in meat space as needed
throw725725168 1y ago
> Now you can be a 10-person startup with half your people outside the country. You can be even if a multinational company moves their employees back to the office. If you chop off your limbs, not everyone can compete at that game, but why play it in the first place?
elzbardico 1y ago
Small scale offshore outsourcing existed way before the pandemic and the big shift to remote. They used to call it software factories.
pjc50 1y ago
> companies rejecting remote work is good for the American worker It's good for American real estate owners, who end up with more money as a result of this, both from offices and from staff who have to live in nearby high COL areas.

nextworddev 1y ago

You - the “leader” - is responsible for the off vibes

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foxfired 1y ago

I'm going through this right now where all expectations have been reversed after an acquisition. Ex: I'm not big on metrics, I rather have direct communication with my team to understand issues we are facing and any challenge an individual is struggling with. Looking at metrics hardly tells you the full story. Well, after the acquisition, metrics are in! story points, number of comments on PR, number of PRs, etc. I don't believe in these methods, but the company as a whole is going to align. I do not pretend I'm excited about it, but I remember that I am in a room with full grown adults. I've addressed the issue, and made sure to frame it with "we are aligning with the rest of the company" as opposed to just saying this is the way forward, deal with it. Edit: Coincidentally one of my blog posts is on the front page right now and addresses similar issues -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359604

physicsguy 1y ago

A lot of this I think is interest rate driven rather than AI driven.

hn_throw_250924 1y ago
[dead]
- nextworddev 1y ago
  It will through increasing unemployment rate
staplers 1y ago
Definitely plays a huge part in expectations and burnout when the roadmap flips halfway through a quarter because suddenly we need to court VCs or trim staff or whatever the fed/gov decides. The snip-snapping is wreaking havoc on products and you see it everywhere from price hikes to low-quality ux and bug-filled code as teams adjust and pivot constantly. Even worse this leads to less enthusiasm and focus as teams expect it more so they buy-in less.

gdbsjjdn 1y ago

I can't over-emphasize the role line managers play in decoupling the delusion expectations of leadership and the ground truth of employees' lives. I think a lot of CEOs would burst into flames if they saw an average IC's day, but those ICs can still be high performers and achieve the goals of the business. Having automonomy and flexibility is huge for ICs. The role of the line manager is to provide plausible deniability both ways by tolerating a necessary amount of deviation from the black letter "law". A great example is my friend, who works in a non-technical office job. She has always gotten great performance reviews and gone above-and-beyond because she's very passionate about her work. She's been doing this for over 10 years. Lately she has experienced some pretty severe burnout, and her immediate manager didn't know how to handle it so they immediately punted her to HR for a disability leave. Of course because HR is involved now there's paperwork and doctors and insurance implications. A competent manager could have navigated the situation "unofficially" and preserved a valuable employee, instead of sending them on a 6 month odyssey of navigating the healthcare system. Ultimately the business got less value out of the employee because she's stressed and has to take a bunch of time off to deal with administrative BS.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
Her manager probably did her a huge favor Yeah, navigating disability leave can be a little rough Not as rough as being PIPed out though, which was probably the other most likely path in front of your friend
- gdbsjjdn 1y ago
  Nope! Her manager had no concerns about her performance and has expressed regret about the situation because it has made everyone's life harder. The manager likes her and wants her to stay at the company, but because she's a "problem" for HR they want to fire her.
InvOfSmallC 1y ago
I agree with her manager. She needs to preserve her health. Involving HR doesn't mean the manager is not with her.

dvcoolarun 1y ago

In their mind, I guess everyone is a strong leader, as they say everyone judges themselves by effort and others by results. From a employee's perspective. I think you get a good idea, when working for a company, if your leader's vibes are off. If they have a ego or can have a adult conversation or like to avoid it. Since life is not a 'silver lining' You will meet some behaviours (which you can call toxic or not ) But times are changing, and people are less patient.

catigula 1y ago

>I see lots of people worried that the aim of all of this is to ultimately have a robot do their entire job Correct, this is the aim and tons of capital is being deployed to this end. Worse, it looks inevitable, not just plausible, if you look at the progress of the technology. To be more specific, though, a robot doesn't need to do their entire job to devalue their job. One senior engineer doing 10x work with an LLM is someone who has cut 10 roles. >Let them know you’re still on their side You're not and never have been. You're on the side of your company. >This too shall pass That's the problem. "This" is their gainful employment and possibly a host of other protections and dignities up-ended, such as privacy, enabled by AI. The reality is that, even if people don't put it in these terms, we are all held hostage to this existential nightmare engine because a few billionaires want infinite power and eternal life and nobody is stopping them. Anyways, yeah, you can't be ethical in this position because your role, as explicated here, is to attempt to alleviate natural and very understandable pressures that could harm the company rather than let them boil over, which they likely should. Framing what's good for the company as what's good for the employee is part and parcel of this mentality.

neilv 1y ago

> The right thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge that you see the situation the same way they do, but do it privately, within your immediate team only or in 1-1s. "Yeah, this new policy sucks, [...] If you're a manager in a company that does sucky things, does (inevitably) being quoted saying a policy 'sucks' risk you losing your manager job there? I'm an OG techie, who ends up doing some manager-y things, and I'm going to be very straightforward with everyone. But on something like sucky policy, I might not say "sucks". Instead, maybe acknowledge they're concerned/upset, ask questions about how it affects, ask/discuss how that can be fixed/improved, and honestly say some of what I will try to do about it. Example of last part: "Thank you, I'm going to escalate this, and I plan to get back to you within the next 2 days. If anything comes up before then, let me know."

jdefr89 1y ago
Your employees won’t rat you out… Just don’t say “sucky” to those above you. If I have a cool ass manager who looks out for me and is real (I’m lucky enough to be at a MIT lab where everyone is cool as hell), I will always have their back…
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  I think this is true 90% of the time, but that 10% of the time is really risky. The high stakes of the bad case make it wise (imo) to avoid saying your company's policy "sucks"
- neilv 1y ago
  If you're a manager, consider not saying that up the org chart is "sucky". Almost certainly no one on your team will go tattle, but it can leak out accidentally, such as when someone is flustered over a problem. More likely, it will leak out indirectly, in a way, if your team starts thinking of itself a little too much as a group that has to stick together against hostile outsiders within the company, either up the chain or sideways. People outside the team will pick up on that's the tone you're promoting to the team. But it's not just about not wanting impolitic words to come back to you... For one thing, it's part of your job to help the team work with the company and people outside the team. Not promote a sense of hostile environment. (If there's an intractably hostile environment, then either that's getting fixed promptly, or your people should be escaping.) A good manager should have the team's back, especially in a hostile corporate environment, but also insulate the team from a lot of noise including some of what they're being shielded from, as a team and individually. Just like personal life, if you care, you don't have to tell people all the things you do for them. (I was fortunate to have some awesome managers, who knew when to shield and help me, who knew when to (on rare occasions) lower their voice and tell me something that a drone wouldn't, and who always came across as honest and caring. Some of it rubbed off of me despite my strong-minded personality, and I can always just ask myself what would Bill/Kathy/Nancy/Tom do, to name some of the earliest and most formative ones. All highly skilled engineers first, and later managers/mentors.)

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

checking in as someone who successfully ducked two rounds of RTO by just getting a different job. The first one absolutely outright told us they were bringing us back to an office where there isn't enough room for all of us. They justified it by saying we're hybrid 3 in 2 out and can figure out amongst ourselves who will be in when in order to optimize desk space, and on days where we have all hands or some other reason to have everyone in the office people can sit on the floor or in the lobby. The other tried to bring our remote team back to the office for in-person collaboration only to realize that I'm fully remote as per my hiring agreement and the rest of the team is split across Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Dallas and one of our contractors is secretly working from his family's horse farm in Jalisco. So we all had to dress nice, commute and pay to park in order to sit on teams calls in an empty office rather than sitting on teams calls at home in comfort for free. We eventually figured out that our employer also owned the parking garage adjacent to the building and was counting on us as a $12/person/day revenue stream. The trust is broken because someone looked at the trust and said "I'm gonna break that to see if there's money inside."

kmeisthax 1y ago
> We eventually figured out that our employer also owned the parking garage adjacent to the building and was counting on us as a $12/person/day revenue stream I suspect a nontrival % of RTO-obsessed businesses have conflicting real estate investments like this.
pjc50 1y ago
> The trust is broken because someone looked at the trust and said "I'm gonna break that to see if there's money inside." This sums up so much of modern society. And in the resulting migration to low trust, a lot of opportunities for mutual benefit are going to go away, in order to enable a few people to engage in looting.

ori_b 1y ago

Alternative title: "I'm just here for a paycheck. Maybe you should be too."

tayo42 1y ago
for some reason, this is harder then it should be. I just feels bad to phone it in. illogical i guess.

Poomba 1y ago

I feel like OP has either never worked outside of tech startups/Silicon Valley or never worked pre-2012 (dont wanna assume tho and this is not meant in a disparaging manner) A lot of these things exists in other industries for awhile. Like lack of trust (you have to be from 8 to 6 in a lot of Wall St firms) and fear of layoffs (everyone who worked during the financial crisis in 07-08 know this all too well). I would say they are the norm, and the things that OP missed was the exception

tschellenbach 1y ago

There are literally subreddits about how to abuse the trust of remote work, but there have always been people doing that. I think the main thing that changed is that amazing revenue multiples that made it possible for companies to ignore these issues are no longer there. Meanwhile the costs of everything, including salaries has skyrocketed. So I think it's lower valuations + higher costs -> more pressure on efficiency. Companies that don't become efficient have their valuation collapse or go under.

itsnowandnever 1y ago
well, and let's be honest - most CEOs and boards get the same advice from the same advisors and peers. and the advice since Elon took over Twitter (not that I can say he "started it" but it was around that time I started hearing C-suites say he was right to let everyone go) has been to implement more draconic policies at your software companies. that interest rates have been higher and liquidity in general has been tight created a perfect storm of bias that these policies are working or could be beneficial. in better times, a company with good funding and a healthy customer base would come through and eat everyone's lunch if their competitors were treating their devs like that. but because of the temporary complete collapse in competition as we've known it, especially amongst startups, this has gone on far longer than it typically would. it'll get better soon but we've lost an entire generation of technical leadership now (due to burnout and other factors) so it'll be a slow and turbulent recovery.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > it'll get better soon I really wish I had your optimism about that. I'm starting to worry that nothing will ever be better again
- pjc50 1y ago
  > it'll get better soon We're only just beginning the AI-sourcing workslop era, that's going to be a few years of confusing chaos.
cramsession 1y ago
Valuations are at record highs though. For instance Microsoft stock is at an all time high yet they're instituting RTO (which was clearly not needed to get the stock to the ATH) and an aggressive, anti-employee culture. You can see a lot of this coming from people like Musk who have astronomical valuations, not tied in any way to reality.

tschellenbach 1y ago

The other part of this is the AI wave. Every SAAS company in the world is vulnerable to someone with higher AI driven pace, or better AI features to overtake them. Even Google is an example, it seemed like the most defensible business. They could coast for years, but now they are literally at risk of losing vs openAI.

jdlshore 1y ago
I think this is the fear, but I haven’t seen any evidence that AI is making companies more productive. Lots of anecodotes, pro and con, about individual effects, and a small number of studies, pro and con, about company effects, but nothing definitive, and certainly not the kind of groundswell of new products and releases that I would expect.

itsnowandnever 1y ago

This blog was essentially my exact strategy over the last few turbulent years. I know it helped my people and I don't regret it. but, man, did it take a lot out of me. I've seen a quip out there before about the perfect recipe for burnout being the combination of high expectations with minimal empowerment to achieve those expectations. and this current market is burning leaders in this industry out like I haven't seen in 15 years.

airspresso 1y ago
Man, this hits hard. I've done so much to protect my part of the org chart from the whims of others and the cost-cutting pressure of the organization at large. My team are happy. Personally, I'm burned out to the level that nothing excites me any more and it's really hard to muster the energy to even do what's needed at the job, let alone drive vision and the team forward.
- dwaltrip 1y ago
  Take care of yourself. Your oxygen mask goes on first.
- Propelloni 1y ago
  My sympathies, I've been there, too. You are not alone. What helped me was to talk about my predicament with peers outside my company at face-to-face meetups. It changed my trajectory and allowed me to find purpose again.
data_ders 1y ago
> the perfect recipe for burnout being the combination of high expectations with minimal empowerment to achieve those expectations wow. real!
- euroderf 1y ago
  It seems that burnout is the summation of anxiety over time.
1y ago

bob1029 1y ago

> Across the board, execs seem more efficiency-focused, financialized, and less mission-driven The last point is what I've been experiencing the most. I walked away from a job because it became clear that the other leaders in the organization were hopelessly lost with regard to mission. The wild part is they weren't even chasing money, efficiency, etc. They were chasing some kind of weird internal management/org chart tribalism with zero value-add. All for a 10~20 person company. None of this was a problem before 2020. We were aggressively customer oriented and very agile with the product stack. I think covid got a lot of people trapped in really bad "lifestyle choices" that are effectively impossible to get away from. The consequences of these things extend far beyond the person who engages with them. The more employees and capital you are responsible for the worse all of this gets. I wish our culture was more open to the idea of being honest about all of this and getting help. Imagine how beneficial it could be for other employees in the same company to know their CEO isnt some inhuman freak by way of a frank and honest internal email. To know that the last 3 years of your life wasnt you taking crazy pills, it was literally them taking crazy pills. The other employees might even be compelled to seek out similar help under this kind of leadership.

throwawayqqq11 1y ago
> Imagine how beneficial it could be for other employees in the same company to know their CEO isnt some inhuman freak ... or how beneficial it could be for your entire company and customers. Think about how well regarded gabe newel is and the resulting longlevity of valve.
Aurornis 1y ago
> The wild part is they weren't even chasing money, efficiency, etc. They were chasing some kind of weird internal management/org chart tribalism with zero value-add. This hits close to home. A promising startup I joined hired a cluster of people who wanted to do nothing other than grow their headcount and play hardball politics all of the time. The VP of Product had hired 20 people and spent a year building a “product decision framework” and he still couldn’t answer the question about what we were going to build. The strangest part for me was that it was all so obviously broken but it persisted anyway. There were some factions that emerged where the underperforming VPs banded together to support each other and attack anyone who spoke out about their obvious problems.

manoDev 1y ago

TL;DR "yes men" middle managers keep their jobs.

polynomial 1y ago

So basically, leadership is coping? No thanks.

citizenpaul 1y ago

This headline reminds me of a headline a while back that was something like how to do founder mode when you are not the founder. It all goes back to some Orwellian newspeak vibes. The words for what we are doing sound horrible. Can we just change word meanings so it sounds good? If you are not the founder f founder mode. They can make you a cofounder if they want founder mode behavior from you. If the vibes are off its because upper management is toxic and hostile to humanity. All you can do is protect your own job. I've made the same mistake the author made and had some immature naive dipstick employee I managed confront the upper management because of course they could not be evil ghouls. Almost cost me my job and destroyed any chance of a future at the company.

arandr0x 1y ago

I found the take a little too much on the doomer side for someone who presumably has several years of management experience. Yeah there's been a lot of social media posts and talking about the efficiency era, AI slop etc but over there in the real world you're working with humans. Some are going to be operating under a shareholder- or investor-derived goal to improve margins and some are not, but even for those who are "improving margins" looks different at every business (depending on e.g. current headcount, COGS, whether you use contractors, etc). I feel like it's a super reductive take to go "aaah, this current culture is anti-human or anti-empathy" rather than like, look at the actual actions that are being taken, who is benefitting, and what specific negotiating room yourself and your team have in this value context. I find the actual advice here very worthwhile, though.

stevage 1y ago

> In public, you have to support the policies, but when you’re in private with your manager and your peers, that’s the time you can safely push for change. They are actually advocating being two-faced as a form of leadership.

cyrnel 1y ago
I know, right? It's sycophancy. If you are actually against the policy and suspect a lot of people are too, then don't silence your employees by keeping their feedback isolated to 1:1s which you admit are ineffective. Executives need clear feedback to avoid making major mistakes.
- aesthethiccs 1y ago
  thought i was taking crazy pills when no one else but you two pointed out how ridiculous a manager with two faces is, if the execs don't get proper feedback they will never change, and employees complaining to this type of manager will immediately start looking elsewhere.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  I don't think I've ever worked anywhere that executives are actually capable of taking feedback constructively In all cases they have eventually just told me to shut up, no matter how diplomatic I try to be, and in some cases it has led to me being terminated Feedback is just taken as a sign that you aren't aligned with their vision, so you have to go
  - CSSer 1y ago
    Everyone has an ego. Everyone wants to exercise their power their way when it's their time to shine. I wish I could upvote this twice. If you are reading the above early in your career, please don't take the comment as cynical. It doesn't have to be. Rather, look for it as the sign that you're ready to find your next role. Companies will never clearly give you that. This is often the closest heuristic you'll find, and if you take advantage of it with the right timing, you can leave with grace. If someone asks you why you're leaving, keep it to yourself.

throwaway346434 1y ago

As others have expressed, sycophancy is not leadership. How do you "safely push for change" in private if your executive leadership display sociopathic or narcissistic behaviors, where they expressly do not care about the harm they inflict on others? Polls show that about a quarter of employees see something unethical, and half don't report it because they think nothing will happen OR they will be retaliated against. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/648770/unethical-behavior-goes-unreported-unresolved.aspx https://www.gallup.com/workplace/648770/unethical-behavior-g... This means that individuals who are doing misdeeds perceive there are no consequences. Part of your role is to surface that there are consequences; and you bringing them up now is far less expensive than a lawsuit later. We know this pattern of behaviour is not beneficial - in the context of NPD the worst version of this is becoming an enabler - https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-enablers/ https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-enablers/ While you can absolutely choose your battles and there are some things that are ultimately harmful for you and achieve no great outcome; you are not a leader if you do not advocate for your team when obviously unjust things occur.

SanjayMehta 1y ago

One of the things he doesn’t say is you have to be extra careful when your boss is replaced by an outsider; it’s exactly as if you changed you changed your job and have to prove yourself all over again. The new guy also comes with an inflated sense of self-importance; he’s there to fix things which the old guy messed up.

zug_zug 1y ago

> Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. No, not for a staff engineer. You keep your mouth shut in the #general channel when something crazy is said, or you ask a single question in a thread when you don't understand at all. The sound of a dozen people not clapping is the perfect rebuke to management mistakes.

mfru 1y ago

This reads like "How to follow orders and resignate". Only shows that companies are dictatorships where workers don't have a say

nenenejej 1y ago
What is the answer? unions?
- mfru 1y ago
  Sure, also: worker cooperatives. The key point is: workers need to organize together for themselves. Nobody else is going to stand up for you, certainly not your boss(es).
- bluGill 1y ago
  There is a tine to speak up. at meals with close family. At meetings with your boss. The right question at company meetings - though there are wrong question here: think long and hard before ask. You can speak up it meetings with your team but be careful of the tone. You need to come off as overall having the companies back but this one thing you can't support. Or maybe things will change again. There are lots of options. There have been recessions before. There will be a recovery. Leave when things get better (or you retire) and cite working conditions in the bad times in your exit interview. unions can work, but they can force you into situation you don't want to be in.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    As a collective we would have done well to have organized long ago. Unions or professional associations with teeth (e.g. like the Bar for lawyers, CPA boards for accountants etc) seem to be the only realistic options
    - bluGill 1y ago
      There are lots of places that treat their employees well, work for them. There are a lot of complainers who yell about little things but are unreasonable. We have other options.

alex-moon 1y ago

This is depressing to be sure, but rest assured there is a long history of middle management being "the buffer" between upper management and everyone else. It's a common trope in TV shows and such. I think one of the most important things this write up is maybe missing (though I am not super clear on how this has changed recently) is when middle management are acknowledging to their reports that the C suite are a bunch of cunts, is that they also need to be saying the same thing to the C suite themselves. "Going out to bat" literally means feeding back to upper management that what they're doing isn't going to work. This should be a fight that is ongoing. Again, privately, one to one, but you do actually need to be doing it. If you can back it up with numbers, even better.

cindyllm 1y ago
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motbus3 1y ago

It is all true. I do the same. But it is not the healthy thing. C suite abuse should not be tolerated. People needs money but not at the cost of healthy. I have someone in my family heavily affected by this mentality. 25y of treatment and it was never enough to bring him fully back to himself

cube00 1y ago

> I’ve even heard of people being told they need to be “at their desks at 9am” and “expected to stay until 5pm at a minimum.” PMs always manage to end their day on time with "I'm heading out for a bit, I'll be back online later tonight for a quick check in on progress so send me a link when the ticket is complete" and I'll be able to finally say without guilt or shame "I'm heading out too and I'll continue working on your ticket tomorrow from 9am."

philipallstar 1y ago

Don't vote for anyone who thinks ZIRP is a good idea, and floods the world with overly-cheap cash that gets wasted on extravagences, that need to be over-corrected now

gnomespaceship 1y ago

Good essay! Jason, if you read this - the form to subscribe doesn't work on Android (in Firefox or Chrome). I can't input my address or press the Subscribe button.

jus3sixty 1y ago

None of these generalizations are new to people who have had to work in service industry or customer service. I have no sympathy for tech workers griping about these changes. Before I transitioned to I.T. I worked in the some of the most demanding call centers in the BPO world. There was no remote work, every single minute of your day was monitored and you felt like you were in a fish bowl where every word and kpi was being analyzed by management. If you didn’t meet all 10-15 metrics you basically had one foot on a banana peel. Put your big boy pants on tech bro. Winter is coming!

paulcole 1y ago

> This too shall pass Funny how most people only use this when they don't like how things are going. Who ever saw a blog post about, "This too shall pass" during remote-ZIRP-brain era?

supjeff 1y ago

> how to be a leader: total and complete capitulation while you wait for it to blow over yep. that's leadership.

tedggh 1y ago

“Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment. When acting “in public” (all-hands, department meetings, the #general channel), this is mandatory, as contradicting the bosses in a broad forum can kill the credibility you have the leadership across the wider team“ Take this advice with a grain of salt. If bad decisions can lead to very bad things and you know it you must push back even if that means getting fired. This is particularly important when the life and wellbeing of others are at stake. Just look at Boeing to see how prioritizing a job over ethics can actually kill people and destroy companies.

phendrenad2 1y ago

> Return to Office feels like trust has been broken. Teams that continued to work well (or in some cases, better) after everyone in the industry went remote are now being told to come back to desks in offices. I’ve even heard tales of this happening despite there not being enough office space for everyone, which seems very silly I sometimes wonder what it feels like to work at a place like this. On the one hand, you're still employed, and that's saying a lot in the tech industry right now. But on the other hand, you must, deep down, know that your management are either (a) incompetent or (b) beholden to majority investors that are using the company as a pawn to prop up commercial real estate valuations. If you don't believe that the higher-ups have the company's best interest in mind, why bother working hard? In the words of Office Space, "you know Bob, that'll just make someone work just hard enough to not get fired".

falcor84 1y ago

>This too shall pass > Things will eventually settle down into a new normal While I accept the former as a wise axiom, I don't think we can derive the latter in regards to the tech industry. Things have been accelerating, and I'm concerned that we're now fully in "Present Shock" territory and it'll keep being hectic with no ground to stand on until eventually there is no more tech industry as we know it.