Firing Frankness
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
So maybe frankness wasn't the cause. It's even possible they were interested in his perspective and wanted to get his honest opinion before they lost the opportunity. Or maybe they had nearly made a final decision but not quite and wanted this conversation to see if what they learned made a difference either way.
On a separate(?) topic, a lot of tech organizations seem to be fond of saying they want to hear all ideas and judge the ideas on their merits, but when you actually say something that goes against popular opinion or conventional thinking within the organization, people aren't open to it or are even hostile or dismissive. In my opinion, it's not as easy for humans to be objective and open-minded as we think.
This is often true, but it is also sometimes perceived as true even if it isn't.
I'm very picky about where I'm willing to work, and sometimes that means there can be gaps between permanent positions for me to fill. I fill those gaps by taking contract gigs.
On one such gig, I was working on code that was dismally bad and, given a number of arbitrary constraints from management, couldn't be improved.
I decided that I would try honesty, and tell management my honest assessments of the issues. I figured that this was not a contract that I enjoyed and although I wasn't going to violate the terms by quitting without sufficient cause, it would be a perfectly acceptable outcome if they fired me because I was too outspoken.
So I did. And for the next few weeks, I had a steady stream of permanent engineers stopping me to say variations of "Thank you for speaking out. I've been wanting to say that stuff for years, but didn't want to lose my job".
Weirdly enough, rather than fire me, the company wanted to extend my contract when the original term was up. I declined.
Why do you consider this weird? The most valuable engineers have strong opinions, weakly held, and shared constructively.
The best teams I've ever worked on had many such engineers with opposing viewpoints, where the 'debate' usually boiled down to, "Can we get data to support one path over another? What are the values we're using to judge success?"
Also because of the fear the permanent engineers had about speaking up. I assumed that if there was so much fear, there was probably a reason for it, and I honestly expected to be let go. That was the point of my story -- sometimes such fear is not justified.
"The most valuable engineers have strong opinions, weakly held, and shared constructively."
That sounds true to me.
I'm not about to classify myself as a "most valuable engineer" (It's hard to know if I'm being honest or egotistical), but I am a very opinionated person and my opinions are pretty easy to shift with a good, substantiated argument.
You were an outsider. That has inherent value, even if you and I agree it shouldn't. One of the quirks of humans. You could have probably been a positive force for change, for a while anyway, had you stayed.
I've experienced this - converting from contractor to employee. Stuff talked about and agreed to when I was a contractor is now questioned when an employee. Other outsiders brought in to "validate". Whatever - I just pass the "validators" what I need mgmt to hear, they parrot it, everyone nods their heads and life goes on. Stupid? Yup. Worth fighting? Absolutely not - if you like accomplishing stuff.
I also agree, everyone wants to believe they are the type of person who is open-minded and receptive to criticism, but that doesn't mean they actually are.
Individuals don’t behave like machines, especially not when dealing with people they have known for a long time. That idea is readily accepted by most anybody when evaluating the CEO here, as far as I can tell, who would seem to be putting his emotions (pride) over the interests of his company. If we readily accept that he is guided by emotions, it’s inconsistent to assume someone in a similar situation (the HR head) would be completely immune from emotions and act machine-like, with Machiavellian calculus.
The only way to make this work would be to posit a difference in the ability of negative emotions to influence us, vs positive—pride vs loyalty, honesty, friendship, etc. since I’ve seen more people lose money loaned to a friend, than make money stealing from friends, or seeing the willingness of people to die rescuing others, I can’t really subscribe to such an arbitrary split.
Another one I often hear is some variation of "present solutions not problems", often from developers and not just management. Except problems are easy to spot and solutions often require a substantial time investment to solve and present, time that won't be allocated unless problems are identified. Even if you spend your own time on the solution it will often be dismissed by people that don't see the problem in the first place, it's just "how we've always done it". It's basically a long winded way of telling people to stop complaining.
My favorite response to that is that understanding a problem is the first part of a solution. We had names for the sound barrier, smallpox, and moon landing problems long before we had solutions.
Also, don't hire problem solvers and then complain that they are good at spotting problems.
> Another one I often hear is some variation of "present solutions
> not problems", often from developers and not just management.
> Except problems are easy to spot and solutions often require a
> substantial time investment to solve and present, time that won't
> be allocated unless problems are identified.
From an employee's perspective, it's crucial to adopt the mentality of always striving to deliver solutions and not problems. Considered in a vacuum, yes, it's a valuable trait! Of course solutions are better than mere gripes!
But it's equally crucial to realize that the common refrain of "bring me solutions, not problems" is -- as you say -- often a profound way for management to (perhaps sometimes unintentionally) bully, stifle, and ignore engineers.
It works as an instrument of management's bullying because it preys upon the guilt we engineers feel when we present a problem without a solution.
I should have been better. I should have developed a solution as well. That's what we tell ourselves. But, as you say, this is not always feasible. A solution may take days, weeks, months, or years. And the importance of the problem is often positively correlated with the time and resources needed to develop the solution.
So they got the exit interview that they were hoping for.
Over the years I noticed that you have to keep repeating your idea. The first time everyone ignores it or is dismissive. But keep bringing it up. After some time, you might hear someone else bring up your idea, sometimes thinking they came up with it.
It seems you have to give the idea its own life. Maybe you can compare it to ads, where a person needs to have multiple contact points with it before getting ingrained.
I had multiple ideas like this, that were eventually accepted, without anyone knowing where it originally came from.
Whoops. There is no such thing as off the record. Lesson learned. Though in the end it worked out okay and I just got some mildly amused reprimands from my superiors about telling someone [whom everyone agreed was a jerk] that he was a jerk. I'm much better at keeping my flap shut now.
I think it might be evolutinary for the same reason people are reluctant to openly question authority or hold it to the same standards and why public speaking is feared more than death - angering the big man could get your entire family killed.
It reminds me of one thing that Google faced backlash in Japan over with streetview - people worried about being caught shitfaced drunk and ashamed of it. Everyone knew that it was a norm that "everyone" does yet they were ashamed of it.
What we can do is stay as honest as we are, strive to be more honest, and more inviting and supporting of honesty, or becoming more dishonest. And you can of course still adapt it to another person; if someone is punishing people for being honest there is no reason to fall onto your sword, let them surround themselves with the kind of people they deserve, and keep your capacity and willingness for honesty for the people who deserve that. "Being honest" isn't this kind of absolute thing, but that doesn't mean it's not anything.
And hey, honesty can be quite disarming, especially when it comes with genuine goodwill, while dishonesty can trip people up. At the least, it costs a lot of resources to have various versions of the truth and juggle them constantly, the more that can be simplified the better. It really does help thinking. You can't think freely if you're not free, and that's a hell of a thing to give up.
Dishonesty only greases things in the very short term. Longer term, that grease degrades and gets fouled with all manner of dirt, resulting in damage to the "greased" parts.
-- Rabbi J. Gordon
In my personal life, I have two observations about being honest. First, honesty should be paired with treating others with dignity and respect. Second, not everything needs to be said. While you can lie by omission, often you can and should omit without lying. (A "lie" is a deliberate deception, and can be done without saying a word, or without saying anything that is factually incorrect.)
Jack Nicholson: You want the truth? Tom Cruise: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH
Caps intentional as Tom was shouting.
I just watched the scene. It was Jack's character shouting that.
Funny thing, the jerk owned it. Said basically, "truth", but was secure in being a jerk. The others were a lot more upset. Not only did I put it out there frank, raw, blunt, but they were sucked into what could be a real mess! The whole deal was at major risk.
You know it's bad when your phone rings 30 seconds after "send." You know it's worse when other calls come in rapid fire. Beep, beep, beep...
Before it went too far, I dropped an ice breaker to the effect of, "Hey Jerk I cannot take it back, but I can give you one free swing, let whatever it is really slide", in the figurative sense.
Jerk said, "cool, I will keep that in mind." And, "you are not wrong." Gave reasons.
Laughs all around from there, major event averted.
We (jerk and I) actually got along after that. Seeing how secure they were, and understanding their why really helped! I got it. Outside the workplace they were unlikely to be that jerk.
The deal went through. I ended up working with Jerk.
Moral: seek understanding of others. There may be more there than it may seem.
Very true! I've been around the block a few times and have come to the conclusion that it's good practice to never operate "off the record". I want just the opposite -- I want a record of everything I say or am told in the workplace.
I know this emotion well - it has led me to any number of problems. Some cases where in retrospect I was being a self-indulgent jerk ("What did you think of my performance/presentation/etc?") and some cases where I still feel I was not being harsh but was pointing out valid and relevant concerns, but from both I've learned to distrust this emotion. Perhaps saying what I think is good, perhaps not, but it should never feel _good_ to criticize.
Why not? I feel good when I help someone. I feel good when I have made a great project. I feel good when I made a good decision.
I feel good when I did something good.
Your sentence is true only if we consider a critic as a bad thing, which I certainly don't.
- Voluntary and encouraged.
- If done at all competently, all involved learn something. The reviewers get familiar with some part of the system, and everybody learns from comments and their responses.
Now model the person as in your outgroup. Same analysis but now you feel good when they feel bad. Pointing out flaws will feel good, independent of viability of correction. A real person will be somewhere in between ingroup and outgroup, how good you feel for criticising them should tell you where.
The trick is to hang around other people with the same sort of mindset. Growth-mindset people constantly make this error with fixed-mindset people, and alienate potential allies in the process. (Indeed, learning not to do this could be an important area for growth.) Fixed-mindset people tend not to make this particular error as much, because most people shy away from people who constantly make them feel bad. In the process they develop a sort of confirmation bias for their fixed mindset, though, because they don't come in contact with anyone who could point out where they might grow.
Concur. Whenever a reader points out an error in my blog — whether of fact or attribution or spelling or grammar or syntax or punctuation — I take the time to thank them and ask for more of the same. Why? It only makes my blog better. I love being corrected.
Not everyone is uncomfortable with self criticism and making mistakes, so the Golden rule isn't universally applicable here.
Some people consider forthright language to be a sign of respect. It can show confidence in the rationality, empathy, and maturity of the audience.
The problem is that it's like saying "I'm not a pessimist or an optimist, I'm a realist" - everyone says that.
I really value when people are forthright with me. I know some, I respect them, and I really value what they say, even when it's hard. OTOH, the ones most likely to claim they are ("I just tell it like it is") are also the ones most often just using it as a license to not bear any responsibility for their words.
Which doesn't mean there aren't people out there that ARE honest and clear...just that you can't trust someone claiming to be one of them to be accurate.
Those are all good things to feel good about. You're feeling good about the results, not the criticism. If you feel good about those results and NOT about the criticism, you will try to use the criticism to get those results and no more.
If you assume you'll get those results from the criticism, you'll just criticize a lot, without concern.
And generally, to get those results you need to be judicious in the criticism, because bad results are also possible (and probable, if you aren't considering the criticism itself before offering it)
The fact that the first reaction to any even remotely negative feedback is defensive is what's bad. I feel this is why some people don't like code reviews. What's also bad is that often feedback is given as a put-down rather than to help (i.e. not in good faith), or when negative feedback is given in front of others.
When criticizing, it helps to have a clear reason why. It may be a good faith attempt to help the other person, or because their actions affect some other thing they are contributing to, or because their actions have unintended consequences for someone else. Regardless, there should be some benefit beyond one's own gratification. If you catch yourself enjoying the act of criticizing others, it's probably a good idea to doublecheck your motivations and results to make sure that it's actually for someone else's benefit.
Bingo - Good criticism is a matter of considering how it will be taken, because you aren't feeling good about the criticism itself, but rather the results you are trying to achieve. Bad criticism is enjoying the criticism itself.
Later I learned, yes, a quick solution can be a good solution; but there can be more than one good solution, and in fact, others can be better. More maintainable, less verbose, so clear and simple there are obviously no errors. Abstractions in the right place and the right level. Modeling a business domain that stakeholders understand.
In the same way, just telling somebody "the truth" can get the message across. But it makes you the junior engineer of talking to people. As you grow in your career, you learn that there are many ways to communicate with the people around you. And different tones and patterns appeal to different people... or even to the same person at different times, based on mood or context.
You can learn (if you care) to work well with these complicated organic machines we call humans. And you can always get better and better at it, even when you already think you're doing the brave thing, the heroic thing, the right thing.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make systems better (technical and non-technical systems), and when I reach some conclusions it feels obvious to me, making communication frustrating.
I need to learn how to take people through the same thought process as I went through; when to use other tools of persuasion; when to escalate; how to speak to a whole organization instead of an individual or single team.
What a great explanation for HN, and for me. Thanks!
That was the the prime example of the better tech losing. I know most of us know about it but to actually use it was totally different. I couldn't get a low resolution video to play but on Be OS I could have 12 high resolution videos play at the same time move them around and if I unplug my computer I can boot up and the videos would all start back up right where they left off.
I don't think that's true. Apple is a lot more mass market than they used to be, but the tech that goes into their products is quite advanced. For example, the iPad Pro benchmarks that put Apple's CPU in the same class as the Intel CPU used in MacBook Pros is pure tech. There's nothing fashionable about a CPU.
Apple's Face ID recently passed a hacking test that other facial recognition systems failed. The latest Apple Watch has an ECG. Perhaps health is fashionable, but that's also tech built into a tiny product.
Apple's camera tech consistently scores near the top of the pack.
I'm not arguing their products are perfect or anything of that sort. I just don't think it's fair to characterize Apple as being more about fashion than tech, because I think they're quite busy pushing tech forward on mass market products.
That being said, I do wish Haiku well because I get the feeling that it really could be great.
I don’t know. A BeOS-based MacOS would’ve been ready for prime time years before Mac OS X was. And one suspects the Finder would have been usable. But there would be no iPhone.
I'm not so sure. NeXTSTEP was pretty stable. I get the feeling that a lot of the delay had little to do with NeXTSTEP and much more to do with Apple and Adobe/Microsoft. Plus, the development environment was no where near as good on BeOS.
You have to have marketing and market fit with tech that's good enough. That's the lesson of history, time and time again.
Relatedly, I remember that the Macintosh-oriented press hinted that there was trouble brewing at Apple for a long time but they didn't want to come out and say, "Apple's management is slowly killing the company." This story suggests that Sculley would have cut off those reporters if they had.
Edit: at the time of writing, the submission title was "My boss asks me what I really think of him. HR advises me to tell the truth. I’m fired."
Everyone in the Valley knew Sculley was killing apple by installing a parasitic Midwest style management class.
I don't follow his reasoning, here. What is it about Cupertino which immediately leads him to this conclusion?
I think that was such a moment.
He's saying "After half a decade at Apple"
edit: Never mind, found it https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-12-cupertino-cu....
I wasn't there of course, but I can speculate on why Jean-Louis felt the way he did. I did have a number of friends at Apple at that time, some of them quite senior, who talked about the politics of the organization. Based on their input, my own experiences, and what Jean-Louis wrote, I'm guessing it went down like this.
At that exact moment in time, that response from Sullivan would tell Jean-Louis that he had been played.
My friends worked at Apple during the "Scully years" remarked that Scully had two things which were really hurting his effectiveness. The first was that he was trying to apply brand marketing to a market that was still technology and feature driven, and second was that he was not good at taking feedback that didn't agree with his world view. The senior people who were perceived as successful at that time, were similarly perceived as "yes" people. When people disagreed with Scully they ended up leaving the company. When they brought up their disagreement to Scully directly, they left more quickly.
So put yourselves in the shoes of the VP of HR. You have a senior leader who you know is not doing well, you need to give them feedback that they are screwing up but you also know that this person has a tendency to fire anyone who does so. How do you both give this person feedback and leave yourself with a way to talk to them about it without putting yourself at risk? Answer, find someone who is willing to give them that feedback who isn't you.
After the dinner when Sullivan says "I'm proud of you," I am guessing that Jean-Louis realized he had done exactly what Sullivan wanted, gave Scully the negative feedback that Sullivan wanted to give but was unwilling to pay the cost for doing so. Like the test subject who volunteered to test the vaccine for the fatal disease, and ends up becoming terminally ill because the vaccine didn't work. "I'm proud of you, you did this thing and everyone will be better off because of it." What is left unspoken is "Too bad about the dying part."
Its not life or death of course, its just a job, but Jean-Louis is aware enough of the dynamic to know, at that moment, what has transpired and what it will cost him.
Thanks - that is an interesting tool to deal with an arrogant boss.
Did HR tell him to do that too? This guy is quite the politician - playing the victim, sincerity card really well. I had to google to piece it together.
Good on him, what a master storyteller of self serving narratives.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/business/marketer-s-dream...
So, thank you for your work on that project!
I still have a box full of Newtons. Maybe I should pull that out and play around a bit, just for old time's sake.
HR represents your employer interests. Period.
For example, a primary responsibility of HR is "keep the company from getting sued" when it comes to personnel matters. A really shitty HR department will interpret this as "sweep shit under the rug", but a good, competent HR department will handle things above board, according to established procedure. A good HR dept. does this not because they want to be nice, but they realize that the best long-term way to keep the company from being sued is to make sure complaints are handled above board.
In general, when evaluating how people will really act I think it's best to leave morality out of it, and instead realize where their incentives are coming from and try to align your goals with those incentives.
He said it himself in the article: When the general and his lieutenant disagree too much, the lieutenant must go. Sculley has made the right decision.
There can be only one CEO; if I'm not on board with the mission and direction that CEO wants to take the company, I don't belong there. As level-headed adults, it's time to negotiate the terms of my leaving...
>Just for crossing the street, I’m rewarded with an even fancier President (of Apple Products) title
I'm not saying this is happening more often, I just have been noticing it recently.
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone or misunderstanding the situation. But, this seems in contrast to actual humility where someone is grateful for a raise or promotion but possibly feels undeserving or lucky. The author comes across to me as pretty detached from the struggles that the lion's share of the world experiences. I get that this article is about some high level corporate politics but it still seems tone deaf to me.
He admits that he was probably on the chopping block for quite a while at the end. And yet, he calls the essay "Firing Frankness"? Comes off as bitter, to be totally frank.
This could be humble bragging - I got a promotion, but I'm not gonna toot my own horn. It could also be a poke at the C-suites to gain support from the masses (they don't deserve what they get just because of where they sit) or out of resentment. It could also be a psychological defense attempting to frame it as though he didn't belong there in the first place, rather than being fired for screwing up. I'm sure there are plenty of other interpretations, but I can't think of a really positive reason for making such a statement.
Essentially, he was being "promoted" from the top of the engineering organization to the bottom of the CEO's political organization. This meant that in practice he had much less control over his own future and was now mostly accountable for his perception amongst his fellow political peers, who (as other people have already discussed here) were already "Yes Men" for the CEO and not interested or even able to consider contrary positions.
An exec that cannot deal with (polite) disagreement is probably on the way downwards already himself. Of course you might hit a sensible spot with honesty by chance but even then it is hard to justify an otherwise successful employee.
Sculley fires Jean-Louis, the resulting blowback doesn't convince Sculley of anything and Sculley is too dumb to know he needs to leave. So two years later the board is forced to can him.
Apple management is concerned that some engineers might elect to follow me, wherever I may land.
I would suppose that they looked back at 1985 and realized that Jean-Louis Gassée was popular with a lot of engineers. I wonder if John Sculley was ever popular in the same way and resented it. I look back at the navigator video with the newspaper and realize that he really didn't get the effects of a technology on how things would work.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-BS-Fixing-Workplaces-Caree...
HR serves the company, not the employee.
Little do you know you’re a dead man.
Same goes for people all up and down the career or hierarchy ladders. If being charitably honest with thoughtful communication gets you fired, or if your honesty is subverted by the politics of your organization to be used to attribute something negative to you, just quit, take time away from working and get back on the job hunt in a few weeks or months. Sticking around would be too unacceptably bad for your health.
I’ve done this twice in my career, both times without significant savings to live on, and even with the financial pressure to get a job, it was way, way healthier to forego income and insurance than continuing to work in those unhealthy situations. I also found that recruiters seemed mostly fine with my reasons for a resume gap, most didn’t even ask or care.
How do you achieve that level of leadership and loyalty?
It's hard to be an executive, and hard to manage them, sometimes they have to go.
The only part that bothered me about this was the cringeworthy fake emotions about the firing. "I'm sorry but we have to 'separate you from Apple'".
That's the bit of California newspeak that drives me nuts.
We can be honest and cordial the same time, and in both directions - and - if we hav just a little bit of tolerance for those who are either a little to frank or a little to effusive, then everyone gets along.
And while the person doing so often personally suffers the consequences, it is a healthy signal to an organization that those opinions could be shared by others.
If nobody ever heard anything counter to the group-think, the organization itself would very quickly become stuck by momentum.
Indeed, that's a great reason not to fire people when they're honest. And yet, here we are.
At least in SV tech companies, in my experience, people really get their feelings hurt over small amounts of honesty. More importantly, the conversations you'll have to have afterward and the way people will sit on it for months until it comes up in your review make it just not worth it.
"You're the greatest boss I ever had. You taught me a lot... I admire you... I just disagree with you a bit on this...... "
It's just virtue signaling (and I don't mean that in a pejorative way). It doesn't matter that everyone knows HR isn't there to protect you. What you're really saying is "I share your beliefs".
I think probably most people believe that if they have a dispute with another employee that HR will resolve it in a “fair” way. But of course HR is only really thinking of which outcome is less likely to involve lawyers or a tribunal. Head on over to workplace.SE to see loads of this... if you can’t bring a credible threat of a lawsuit HR will always side with your boss, no matter what he or she has done.
“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”
- Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people.
If you disagree with the quotes above. Be frank about it, I can take it.
Criticism usually makes me think twice and reevaluate it if I feel it comes from a good place and is even somewhat reasonable. Most times the criticism isnt accurate enough to be useful or actionable...or the criticism is tone deaf.
If you value being able to feed your family, learn to love your boss and his ideas.
Or at least learn to keep your mouth shut, no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary.
He can still make your work life difficult. But if he goes to far, HR has to consider that maybe he should leave, since they cannot make you leave without cause.
AT WILL STATE - I live in Pennsylvania and you can be fired for no reason. Sure you can sue and you might win but probably not. Why we allow these laws in a Democracy/Republic is mind blowing.
So you "Don't want to work with a person" means you should be able to fire them for your emotional good? That sounds horribly selfish and an environment people wouldn't want to work in.
Most people spend more time with their coworkers than their spouse.
We even make ex-spouses pay support. Or let them live in the common house for a bit.
strong labor market and low unemployment.
I disagree with your assessment, and fully support "at will" employment.
What is your perception as to how many people agree with you versus disagree?
Results are what matter and also build your value. Being known as the guy, gal or nonbinary who did X is way better than "just went along with using a massive spreadsheet as a database because the boss doesn't trust software he hasn't paid for and won't spend money on sonething he doesn't know how to use."
I would modify this: "learn to support your boss, and make them look good in front of their peers."
I've had situations where my boss and I didn't get along.
In one case that led to a dismissal with a very comfortable severance, which I believe was because while I wasn't a good fit, my boss respected me and bore no ill will toward me.
In another case my boss was openly hostile to me even in front of my peers both inside and outside the organization almost from the first day; I survived about three years there because I was effective and did my best to keep our disagreements behind closed doors. Everyone knew that my boss and I didn't get along, but I did the job well and took every opportunity to make them good and make the best of their strategies and decisions. Over time I developed a reputation for having strong opinions, a strong personality, but being very easy to work with. I learned a lot during that time, built lifelong professional relationships, and believe that I changed a few lives through mentorship of those with less experience.
I will always be frank with my immediate boss; the cost of not doing so is too high for me. I'm also clear that I see my job as contributing to the company's success, and that I see their voice on my behalf as my most effective means of impacting the organization's direction. I recognize when I don't have the final say on something, and while I'll not pretend that I support something I don't, it's their job to determine strategy, not mine, and that I'll execute their strategy to the best of my ability and without grumbling about it - and without undermining them.
Of course there are some people who simply cannot accept that the people who report to them have opinions contrary to their own or believe that they are making a mistake. I don't want to work for those people. There are too many good jobs doing things that will change the world for me to spend my time being unhappy and working on something I don't think matters.
Or, even better, find a position in a company where you don't have to "learn" those things.