Hacker News Reader

Comment by ojosilva | Hacker News Reader

I find the advice highly condescending.

> Because of that small change, that person no longer feels full ownership of their project.

What kind of person is that who 1) thinks the ownership is 100% theirs when working in a team? 2) can't handle a little nitpicking? 3) feels it's less their work just because of a little change? 4) can't defend their work and resist those 2c?

This is advice for managing 2 year olds. As a manager, just be your reasonable self. The truth is key for a functioning team. Giving people feedback and letting them know where they stand helps build trust.

> It’s perfect. Great work! Let’s ship it.

Ditto!

View on HN

In every team I've observed, there has been a steady stream of comments from staff about how one manager or other keeps asking for changes they see as pointless or negative, often accompanied by further complaints about how the manager in question never thinks their work is good enough.

I've seen this be the primary reason for high performing team members quitting. I think you underestimate substantially how much negative feelings this type of thing can produce.

It's not that you can never make suggestions. It's about making sure that you don't always make suggestions, and to avoid making suggestions unless the change you're asking for is important enough.

It's also not about people not being able to "handle a little nitpicking" but that even though they'll handle it, it often creates resentment and feelings of not being appreciated. And the team members that takes the most pride in their work are often most likely to be annoyed by this, and most likely to have plenty of options to move on.

Constantly giving people feedback that says "your work wasn't good enough for me as is" does not build trust. If you want to demonstrate that you trust their judgement, then do that by letting their judgement stand.

> Constantly giving people feedback that says "your work wasn't good enough for me as is"

That's what I mean by giving reasonable feedback. Constantly being a dick is definitely counterproductive.

> resentment and feelings of not being appreciated

That is a symptom of a broken framework for managing a team, not a result of giving natural, reasonable feedback to the output of a person.

> That's what I mean by giving reasonable feedback. Constantly being a dick is definitely counterproductive.

But it's not about being a dick. The point is that even feedback that is totally reasonable in isolation sends all the wrong signals if they become a constant factor.

By restraining yourself to asking for changes when there are actual, important reasons for them you minimise that. As a bonus, when it is clear that the changes you ask for are actually important, people tend to take them a lot more seriously.

> That is a symptom of a broken framework for managing a team, not a result of giving natural, reasonable feedback to the output of a person.

I agree with this, with the caveat of what I have written above:

If you have to give constant suggestions for change once someone comes to you with something they believe is ready, I don't see that as reasonable, no matter how reasonable each individual piece of feedback is.

I believe that in that case, either the suggestions aren't all necessary, or if they are necessary the team is badly managed as the staff clearly does not understand what areas they need to collect feedback on during the process, and don't understand when the work is actually complete and/or doesn't have access to the necessary skills and resources.

Note that there is also a clear difference between someone coming to you and asking for feedback or asking you to make a choice or suggestion during execution of a task vs. you giving unsolicited suggestions for changes when they come to you with what they believe is a finished piece of work. The former is generally, if given well, welcomed and appreciated in my experience. It is the latter which often produces negative responses.

It's a good example. Sometimes bosses will go even further than that and suggest changes that the employee feels are wrong. Then they argue about it. Then the boss says "I feel I'm right, and I hope I can convince you that this is the right decision, but you need to make the change now". That's the point where the employee feels like his input is worth nothing because he can't do anything against the boss's opinion and arguing was useless.

This is why a trivial example like this crystallizes the exact point: it's not worth micromanaging employees over some changes that are not that important.

>This is advice for managing 2 year olds.

That's exactly the vibe I got from reading this article. I immediately thought of someone trying to manage super-fragile millennials who wilt and pout without constant encouragement and affirmation. If I submit I project for scrutiny, I want constructive criticism and advice. The goal should to make the project as good as it can be, not manage the feelings of emotionally challenged workers.

People can be impacted negatively without them wilting and pouting over it. Feelings are also very intangible. They might not even realize it themselves if it demoralizes them. Just the same as many people don't fully understand why their boss is such "a great boss". Managing people is also about understanding that your feelings are not a model for other people's feelings, and you must actively compensate for how others may react.

The article is not about affirmation. It's pointing out that opinions of a manager often implicitly mean something more than an opinion, and your objective criticism isn't fully taken as such but rather in some part as an instruction. This is demoralizing for most people, even though it might be small. The conclusion is that perhaps-not-so-important opinions aren't worth the potential negative effect.

> If I submit I project for scrutiny, I want constructive criticism and advice

That's were you're misunderstanding the post: "2 cents" is unsolicited, minor advice that would be safely ignored from a co-worker, but with the cachet of a manager, its no longer just criticism or advice but an instruction. I suspect you assume that all teams are free to challenge their managers, but Derek's assumes the opposite (not all teams feel they are free to challenge their managers' opinions without repercussions).

> The goal should to make the project as good as it can be

That's entirely dependent on whether the manager is always right, otherwise they are making the project worse by fiat from time to time

But in most workplaces I've worked in this inevitably leads to the manager pulling rank and saying "do this because I told you so."

I've seen this again and again in creative industries, and I'm certainly not a millennial.

A family member of mine worked for a boss (owner of company) who would constantly derail projects with his bullshit suggestions, because he just couldn't restrain himself. Some proportion of his suggestions were actually good, but his belittling and badgering of staff trained them all to do exactly what he asked for, even when that wasn't what he wanted, or what was good.

The article isn't about objective criticism, it's about subjective opinion. Usually by a person with less experience, e.g. when a manager suggests a color change to a designer.

I find objective and subjective sometimes difficult to discern.

To the manager, and specially founders and visionaries, it all may sound objective. Frequently, management literature advocates for an instinctive response as a perfectly justified, even inherently better, contribution.

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk's celebrated style of input comes to mind. Fast, truthful and direct, even if subjective. Sometimes one lacks the time to add insight to support an opinion. "Green instead of blue" may as well be sound feedback only the missing objectivity may be left as an exercise to the designer.

Nobody are saying managers shouldn't ever give subjective feedback.

The issue is when managers always give subjective suggestions for changes, because it implies that the work isn't good enough.

If the work is never good enough, why is that person presenting stuff to you? (Or why are they even working for you?)

Clearly, if the work is never good enough, they need someone more on their own level to bounce ideas of, or someone slightly more senior to mentor them until what they present to you is good enough a reasonable portion of the time.

In other words: If you constantly need to suggest changes, the team is badly managed to begin with. And if the changes you suggest are not needed, then don't suggest them, or at least not all the time. Not only does it negatively affect team morale if you always do it, but the extra time spent costs you money.

If you are a visionary that people are clamouring to work for, then, sure, you have more latitude in the amount of suggestions you make. But most of us are not in that position.

The point was though that if your 2 cents' worth isn't constructive, if it's not the difference that could "make the project as good as it can be", you shouldn't give it.

I've unfortunately had to manage baby boomers who'd often react this way.

Perhaps it's like SEO, where all the low-hanging fruit is obvious and sensible, but where further optimization beyond that point is stuff that looks really odd and counter-intuitive, or like it "couldn't possibly" have any impact.

Maybe people put out a 1.0 units of effort when you're just a reasonable person, but put out e.g. 1.1 units when you baby them, and so babying them is a "win" in some sense?

>Maybe people put out a 1.0 units of effort when you're just a reasonable person, but put out e.g. 1.1 units when you baby them, and so babying them is a "win" in some sense?

I'd contend that any worker that you have to "baby" in a business environment to get their best effort is a worker you are better off without.

Note that I'm talking about results, not effort. Someone could be giving their best effort already, resulting in 1.0 units of output. But babying them might be the emotional equivalent of blood-doping in a marathon, a psychological stimulus that actually partially restores or extends the willpower-resource that is spent internally to accomplish work.

I'm also not talking about a specific kind of person who "needs" babying. I'm proposing instead that your average neurotypical human brain might have this effect built in, such that it applies to anyone and everyone. It would just be an effect that most of the time goes untapped.

I think a truer kind of relationship is the most significant factor still. It's the common denominator that will take people to great results for a wider "audience" (a team here).

But I agree that fine-tuning your feedback and style per individual needs, even if counterintuitive, may also be productive, as long as it's not contradictory and leads to situations where one team member feels another is being babied around more.

That's not true. You could probably get better output out of most employees if you baby them just right. Who doesn't like a boss that lets them do whatever as long as it's beneficial to the company?

There's no objective feedback loop when the boss can use their rank to push through changes, though. I've seen multiple projects run into the ground based on wasting schedule for essentially arbitrary subjective changes backed by rank.

But this article isn't about giving constructive criticism and advice. It's about those 2c opinions which are not constructive, but rather just subjective.

In my role as employee: I usually ask peers/possible end users for a bit of feedback. This is especially true when writing any kind of extended text for use with the Great British Public.

In my role as manager/mentor: I would always encourage colleagues to seek feedback from others, and have, in the past, even done training on giving and receiving feedback ('don't argue or defend, just listen record then see if the statements are actually meaningful later on).

Disclaimer: I work as a teacher. It is mostly content/activities/text designed for communication of steps in a process that I have to produce.

If someone has gotten to be "the big boss at work" (per TFA) and hasn't learned this lesson yet, then there's a whole bunch of issues they'll need to sort out (unfortunately, that's not an uncommon scenario)

But for new managers I find it's quite a common issue. They think that being in charge means that they need to throw in "2 cents" on everything even if they're not really contributing anything of value. Though it's often not intentional, there's something in their mind that makes them think that if their team gets something done without their involvement, then that makes them redundant

For people new to those roles, it's helpful to stop and ask yourself questions like:

- "I just gave this 1 minutes thought and 30 seconds of feedback, do I want this person to go off and do a few hours more work based on that off-the-cuff remark?"

- "Am I throwing another opinion into the mix, or am I telling my team what I want from them. Have I set up the team dynamics in way that allows everyone to know the difference between those?"

- "What action do I expect to come from this, and who benefits from that?"

> there's something in their mind that makes them think that if their team gets something done without their involvement, then that makes them redundant

I don't think that's the intent. I think it's more like, "I'm not doing my job if all I do is rubber stamp". If the manager isn't helping the team to get better work done, then they are redundant. Nitpicky comments are probably not the way to help the team, but if I had a manager who just said "sounds good" every time I presented an idea or a piece of work, I wouldn't interpret that as empowering in any sense. I'd interpret it as "this guy doesn't even care".

>I just gave this 1 minutes thought and 30 seconds of feedback, do I want this person to go off and do a few hours more work based on that off-the-cuff remark?

It depends a lot on who the comment is being given to. I've got people on my team that I can make an off the cuff suggestion to, and they'll consider it just as if it came from any other senior person. I've got other people who will take an off the cuff suggestion from me and run with it for a week. I have to be much more cautious with my suggestions to the latter.

I think the nuance of this advice is in the final two paragraphs of the article. If there’s more than "2 cents" worth of stuff that needs to change, then this rule does not apply. But if your contribution is small, just let it go.

As a boss, having observed the impact of motivated and unmotivated employees...

The motivational difference between it being a shade of blue I like vs. just being shipped right now because it's done is a gulf.

At first glance it seemed to imply collaboration is only possible between employees of equal grade, but I guess this applies more to unsolicited advice rather than an open discussion.

As long as the person offering their 2 cents is open to a fluctuating exchange rate, then I'm always happy to discuss my work with management!

> This is advice for managing 2 year olds.

Welcome to Silicon Valley!

If you work for somebody else, it's 0% yours, and that's it. While you can take pride on some of that, it's simply not yours. If you want it to be your don't sell it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com