Ask HN: I lost my job | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I lost my job

156 pointsuvw126 comments

About a week ago I was laid off. In 15+ years I am working as developer, I was never considered for a layoff. I am soul searching for a week now, and finally I got over my anger, disappointment and anxiety and ready to move on.

I believe it was nothing to do with my performance of skills as a developer. I believe I was expected to perform as a leader on top of solving problems, writing applications and my lack of leadership skills made me not worth my paycheck. In retrospect, higher ups did mention in passing about an year ago about how I need to speak up in meetings etc.

I think I don't know how to be a leader at a workplace.

So I come here being humbled. If you are a leader/team leader/c-suite people/managers please enlighten me. Or point me towards videos, books, ted talks, internet articles. I want to learn and be a better person and also don't want to repeat the mistakes in a new job.

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Unfortunately a lot of the comments are mixing together leadership with management. These are not the same thing. Some of the best technical leaders I have had the pleasure to work with were not managers.

As a developer gets older and has more experience they are definitely expected to show leadership skills. While this can look different for everybody, usually it looks like some combination of:

1. Ability to mentor others 2. Ability to be the "expert" on the team. A go to developer for design and architecture advice 3. Ability to be the liaison with other development teams, product management, or sometimes upper management

Unfortunately it is rare that you can be an experienced develop er and not be expected to show leadership in these areas, along with your development work.

So where do you draw the line between team leader and manager? Team size? Amount of liaison with non-technical folks? Can you be a manager and a technical lead?

Manager is a title. Leader is a set of behaviors.

Most managers are not leaders. At minimum, they approve expense reports and check the boxes. Better ones know how to operate in an organization and detect & solve operational problems.

Leaders take a position and make their case and defend it effectively. They grow and support the people around them. And they try to improve themselves along the way by learning from the people above, below, and parallel to them. They have the trust of people around them because they earned it and reflect it.

You can be none of the above, one of the above, or - and this is special - both of the above.

And of course, none of that is static. People can improve and grow at any time.

technical lead on a project is also determined sometimes by other factors - for example:

developer longest on project by a significant factor is likely to be the leader by default.

developer likely to be on project longer than more experienced developers may be deferred to as leader (at least I often do if I am consulting for a short period and a less experienced guy from the company is on the project for the next year I defer to how he wants to do things)

Often leadership is just going to the most experienced because of course they know how to make their case and defend it.

> technical lead on a project is also determined sometimes by other factors - for example:

You're arguing 2 very different concepts with the GP, he made the case (quite elegantly) that a leader is a set of behaviors and you're ignoring all of that and stating "nope, it's a job title".

I'd recommend you re-read their comment.

I was going to respond at length to this but I realized I must be in some bad mood because it started to become rude.

As regards rereading comments I suggest you reread mine with the consideration that the phrases "leader by default" or "deferred to as leader" would indicate someone who is not leader by title, yet has also not necessarily demonstrated a lot of leadership qualities to get the position (as indicated by the rest of the comment).

They are leaders not by title or nature, but leaders by necessity and pragmatism.

Yes, you're right, there's a possible third category of leader by necessity but it could be argued that this is a subtype of leader by title which is why I didn't understand your comment on first read.

Maybe leader by "position" or "circumstance" is a better term as it covers the situations like "most experienced in a team" even if that experience is only a few months more than the person they're helping and even if they don't have the title to match.

I still agree with the parent commenter that distinguished between _true_ leaders and those who've been placed or defaulted into the role.

Exactly this. As you become a senior dev and up, you have to start having an impact beyond the code you write personally, and the 3 areas you listed are perfect examples.

It doesn’t mean you have to stop coding, or become a people manager, but you do need to start spending a decent amount of time helping the team improve and make good decisions. This does mean less coding, but there can still be a solid amount of coding time.

Like, OP, it sucks that you lost your job, especially during this crazy COVID time. But if you can learn to develop your leadership skills, it’ll be a big help to your career long term. I’d say the biggest thing is to try to keep the needs of the business in mind, and to realize that very often you can make a bigger impact by guiding/mentoring others than you can by just doing it yourself.

and this is why we can only upvote once, otherwise I would give you a million points. you hit the nail on the head. there is more to be a leader than just running to the frontline and getting things done. if you are unapproachable then others cannot learn from you, how can you hand off the skills you've acquired?

They sound like terrible managers.

If they are unable to evaluate your actual work, the only way they can evaluate you is based on your verbal contributions during a meeting.

As they are clearly unable to coach you, they are probably relying on you to coach the younger workers.

Just realize that each manager is looking for a different set of things. Some managers would be perfectly happy with you quietly writing applications well.

Nobody knows how to be a manager, and while some with encouragement can learn, some people either don't have the inclination or correct temperament.

I personally would never push someone into management or push the person out if that person was happiest as a individual contributor.

The world needs more makers, not more managers.

All the best!

I think I agree with this response the most. Even if this person didn't feel much like being in a leadership position, that's still 15 years of real-world experience and accumulated talent they just threw away. Unless this person's code quality was somehow declining in spite of that, they just lost a huge resource.

It makes me wonder if the OP got their lines crossed about the lack of leadership thing being a significant part of the reason they got fired and/or there's a significant part of the story not being told here, like maybe the company is being pummeled by the effects of the pandemic and had to trim some of their more expensive employees (of which someone with 15 years of experience is likely to be) or something.

Yeah whatever happened here, the communication from this person's leadership was bad. I'm not trying to vilify them—maybe they had their reasons—but OP is clearly confused about why they were laid off and how (if) it could have been avoided. If I were going to fire someone with 15 years' experience, I would really try to give several clear warnings and actions leading up to it, assuming that was my actual reasoning.

"Fired" and "laid off" are two different things entirely. OP was laid off, not fired, and I think it's reasonable to assume that the pandemic was the immediate cause of having to cut staff. There's really no way to give several clear warnings about that.

If that's the case, that's what should have been made clear. OP clearly doesn't think that's what happened.

We're all just guessing based on partial evidence, but every time I've mentioned that people should talk up more in meetings, it has had nothing to do with their leadership skills. It's always been as part of a discussion about how they need to try to understand the bigger picture. Being able to describe your designs, and being able to articulate alternate designs, is a very important part of software development. If OP is the kind of dev who gets lost and can't contribute when the discussion becomes abstract, that's an important skill to be lacking.

And let's be honest, lots of people with 15 years experience really have 1 year of experience 15 times. It's really hard to guess at the situation based on no evidence, but I can easily see both sides here.

I was a developer for about 11 years before I started in leaderships positions "by force" (in a fast growing startup). For me as a technical person, being a manager is very difficult, there are a lot of subtleties of people interaction got completely lost to me several times... One time I "gave a rise" to a guy and the way I put it he felt I was conditioning the rise to something else... it was subtle and I did not know until after a year later while talking to him.

People relationships are difficult. Then there is the "game" to play as part being part of a company (once you are at the manager/director/vp level, you have to understand that you represent the company to your peers. I have something very interesting happen to me, one week I was a developer, peer of my colleagues, we joked a lot and had a lot of fun interactions at work. Next week I become "director of Engineering", become their boss, and the interaction changed completely (it was not something I did, it literally changed from one day to another).

Now, on the current state of things, I would not search a lot to what the company told you, regarding why they let you go. At a previous startup I was, at some point we had to make cuts, and all the VPs and C levels sat down in a meeting looking at each of our teams, and then each team had to decide to cut 2 people. It was ruthless, and every manager had to explain to the person why they were let go...

The best thing would be, if you had a more friendly relation with your manager, that now, after the fact, you can have a informal call with him and ask him, what do you think you could have done better in general to avoid being affected by the layoffs in your company.

Not everybody is suited to be in a "leadership" position and that is OK. If you prefer solving technical problems rather than people problems, you aren't going to be a good fit for a "leadership" position.

Having said that, you do need to realize that the "glass ceiling" on developer positions tends to be lower than on management (aka. "leadership") positions. There often is lip service saying the "technical ladder" is parallel and equal to the "management ladder", but it isn't in my experience. Fact of life.

Consequently, if you prefer solving technical problems rather than people problems, you will be trading off money for happiness.[1] In my book, that is a trade-off I'm happy to make. In fact, I've deliberately chosen to stay in the technical realm rather than "leadership" realm for 35 years now. Especially early on in my carrier, my managers pushed me towards "leadership" roles and I let them know I was not interested. While I have and will take on a leadership role out of necessity due to circumstances in a project, I've always made a point of reverting to the technical work when the crisis is over.

I have less money but more happiness. That doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me. Sounds like it would work for you.

[1] There are people that enjoy being in a leadership position. "Rands in Repose" https://randsinrepose.com/archives/managing-nerds/ is a good example of that. I'm happy for him and I'm happy for my managers who enjoy being in a leadership position because that means I can focus and satiate my inner nerd.

Without context, it's hard to know the real situation.

I was laid off at the end of February. To make a long story short, the product wasn't selling well and the company had to cut costs.

In my case, my manager gave me a heads up months in advance. If you're still in touch with your manager or people you worked with, try to find out the real story.

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Think about some of the excellent experienced people you learned from early in your career. You now need to be just like them.

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Career-wise, what kind of "leadership" is expected from someone with 15+ years experience? A lead does the most important designs, sets the technical direction, mentors other developers, takes part in bug triages, works on the most difficult parts of a product, and interviews candidates. Sometimes the title of "architect" is used.

You can also be a manager, or a consultant who can get in and get things done.

But, someone with 15+ years of experience isn't just a coder getting a bigger paycheck than someone with 3 years of experience. Your career lessons need to rub off on the younger developers. Otherwise, your large paycheck just turns into a giant target compared to your cheaper peers.

I (among a few others) in my team was laid off this week due to the COVID-19 crisis.

That never happened to me before. I have never once fired, laid-off, or furloughed. And I don't know how to cope with this. The market has gotten very tight since the beginning of the crisis. Usually, my email would explode within hours whenever I make myself available for hire. Now I'm into the third day of my unemployment and still have no prospects, no interviews, no offers.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was tweeting about how concerned I was about seeing so many developers losing their jobs. I was hoping we'd figure out something, maybe a way to help them. Now I'm looking for a job myself.

Fuck this virus. And fuck those politicians who didn't take it seriously. And fuck those people who still support them.

While I totally agree with your last paragraph, just keep in mind that most of those in HN are still really lucky, even if layed-off. Getting angry after only job-hunting for three days seems a little over the top. There are a lot of unemployed service workers who won't be able to afford food or rent, and others who are forced to work in dangerous conditions without PPE. And then there are the nurses and doctors at the front line....

I'm not angry only because it affected me. Besides, I also rent and my rent is high. And I am an immigrant in this country, I have no relatives, nobody to ask for help. I have two kids and a wife who cannot work and we don't have any savings. We literally live from a paycheck to a paycheck. If I don't earn money for two, three weeks in a row - we are basically homeless. So please don't tell me how lucky I am.

Genuinely curious, are you living in the US? (You seem to be located in SF Bay area) Living paycheck to paycheck isn't something I hear about much. (in regards to people working in tech within the US)

It might not help now but I would highly advise you learn how to budget better and grow a sizable emergency fund.

I genuinely have a hard time believing someone is living paycheck to paycheck (even in the bay area with two kids - where housing is extremely expensive) on a senior software engineer salary at a startup. ($180k/yr) I know people who manage it. It's not a comfortable life but it's stable and they can still save. I mean, they have to. They're not gonna be able to buy their options when they quit if they didn't save.

The GP hasn't mentioned US, but even then, if they have recently immigrated they might have spent most of their savings.

This is maybe a time for you to listen and learn about the experiences of others. Not, as you've done, call a stranger financially incompetent or insinuate they're lying.

> I would highly advise you learn how to budget better and grow a sizable emergency fund.

Genuinely wondering, do you think that this insight simply hasn't occurred to him? The obstacles to someone spending less money are generally more complicated — even when they're within the person's control at all — than simply "start budgeting better." You're being condescending and providing no value.

Also, I bet that you know more people living paycheck-to-paycheck than you realize.

Perhaps that person really never heard that.

Nonetheless shouldn't the society tell you something like this?

Yes, but this is probably not the best time to do it. We don't know anything about their life - maybe their situation is caused by poor financial management, but maybe there are other factors at play, such as a lawsuit, high medical or student debt, helping family back home etc.

OP, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I hope you can find a new position soon. Try to stay positive - this too shall pass.

If they're living paycheck to paycheck and in tech, I do wonder if basic financial literacy has escaped them. It's not uncommon for people in this field to maximize for one skill only at the cost of all other knowledge.

I've met enough people in this field who are completely inept when it comes to anything that doesn't involve typing code.

HN commenters see someone having a life crisis and start debugging...

> do you think that this insight simply hasn't occurred to him?

There's this duality where we appreciate there are many out there who truly cannot downsize their lifestyle to accommodate, and we should sympathize. But of the people I know personally in these scenarios, all of them could easily budget better. And again, in my personal experience, its always a pretty simple evaluation and decision. Its deeply frustrating to see someone I know complaining about how tight things are, but then buying a better car than me, better computer than me, better phone than me. Going out to eat all the time. Etc ad infinitum. So while certainly there are factors outside our controls, I'd wager a lot that the average high salary earners (e.g., HN crowd) do have simple budgeting choices they aren't making. I won't presume much about OP, this is mostly in response to your comment about it being condescending. It is. But, in reality, for many and perhaps most high earners, it really is simple, and sometimes people do need to be called out to realize it.

IME if you're assuming anonymous internet poor person is like your strawman friend who bought a nicer car than you, you're already assuming they have a lot more money than they actually do.

Not using strawmen, using actual people, none of whom earn as much as an entry level programmer in the US. It was a counter point to a common generalization. I believe completely there are many in the US who must budget well and barely get by. I've seen it. But I'm skeptical the average HNer falls into this category.

a lot of people are losing their jobs, my wife lost her job and i'm furloughed. but the skills that made you and i so valuable before still make us valuable now and in the future. so i do think we are lucky, despite everything. things will get better!

That sucks. I hope you will find a new job soon!

Hey, I'm sorry, that's awful. Best of luck finding a new job.

> That never happened to me before. I have never once fired, laid-off, or furloughed. And I don't know how to cope with this.

I've been in your shoes multiple times. It sucks, and it's easy to blame yourself (or relatedly, for others - like here in this very thread - to encourage you to blame yourself). Don't fall into that trap. It won't help.

The only productive thing to do is to take things one step at a time.

1. Apply for unemployment if you haven't already. It won't be anywhere near what you were getting before, but it's better than nothing, and with a layoff it should be an open-and-shut case for approval (especially in places like California that almost always err on the side of the former employee).

2. Just because you don't have an employer doesn't mean you don't have a job. Your unemployment benefits are contingent on you documenting that you've applied for some number of jobs, which you're hopefully already doing, so keep doing that.

3. Just because you don't have an employer doesn't mean you don't have a job. Open-source contributions, side projects, whatever you can do to further demonstrate your value to prospective future employers (and - preferably - make the world a better place in the process) - now's the time to start cranking on those.

4. Obviously, you'll want to trim expenses as much as possible. The lower your costs, the longer your runway.

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In terms of finding that next job, it's gonna be a brutal affair. It took me months, and I ended up compromising and moving down on my career ladder for a bit. You might have better luck, especially if you were previously getting offers regularly, but I'd say 3 days is a bit too soon to be too disheartened.

It seems like your best bet right now is going to be in the medical world (e.g. hospital IT), and in fact that's exactly where I'd be applying right now should my own job go under. As a bonus, if you really do want to "fuck the virus", I can't think of a better way to put your technical skills to use.

Thank you for your support and for taking the time to write a lengthy comment. It seems my original comment looks like I'm complaining about my situation - that wasn't my intent. I wasn't trying to win sympathy or start a controversial thread to get fake gold or virtual likes; it isn't Reddit, Twitter, or Instagram. I just wanted to point out that the market dried up and even industries such as ours (where software engineers are usually in demand) suffering greatly from the economic downturn.

> Open-source contributions, side projects, whatever you can do to further demonstrate your value to prospective future employers

That's what I was talking about. Why can't we all as a community figure out some platform where we can help those developers who [temporarily] lost their jobs? We all use lots of open-source tools without paying a dime. Wouldn't it be great to have a platform where they can still contribute to open-source projects during a transitional period? Platforms like Patreon and Github Sponsors are aimed to help authors, but not contributors.

That was the whole point of my comment. I wasn't asking for an advice and certainly wasn't ready for people telling me how incredibly lucky I am.

> Wouldn't it be great to have a platform where they can still contribute to open-source projects during a transitional period?

Indeed it would. Things like Patreon are still usable even if you're "just" a contributor, but it'd be nice if there was one of these patron platforms that better showcased open-source contributions. GitHub Sponsors is a step in the right direction, but there's still a waitlist to be eligible for sponsorships after, what, a year?

Of course, in all likelihood, if jobs are drying up then so will such sponsorships, be it on existing platforms or entirely new ones.

First and foremost - it's not about you. Millions of people are getting laid off daily now due to the exceptional circumstances.

It's ok to feel down for some time, but it's important to understand the broad picture and not take this personally - regardless of what you were told.

Now, regarding leadership resources, I would recommend to start with the following (in this order):

Moneyball (movie), books: The Goal, The Phoenix Project, The Mythical Man-Month, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, The Culture Code and in-between those - various Simon Sinek videos.

If you read this far, you should be able to continue finding materials on your own from here ;)

Best of luck!

Reading books doesn't pay you rent.

Wtf dude.

Take a breath, everyone is getting laid off. Don't blame yourself, that's a road to hell you don't want to go down right now.

Yep - this was my gut feeling also.

It isn't a bad time to reflect and improve yourself but I wouldn't take it personally.

From your OP, I'd say...

- grow a much thicker skin

- form and share your opinion more often

- actively seek out other leaders at your level or above to see how you can improve _something_ (this is often just watercooler/gossip for leaders/managers but it is part of the game)

- take a more active part in guiding the team processes

If you really just feel comfortable as a developer then just guide the development process - help create/iterate on/enforce style guides and other development pieces. You can do this with very little people leadership skills but still have a visible impact on an organization.

One of the important aspects of leadership is learning how to listen. You said management mentioned in passing that you needed to speak up. People rarely come right out and say things. It tends to be oblique, in passing, casual references. You will have to learn to pick up on those cues, read body language, pay attention to unspoken signs.

I know that leadership can be taught, but I don't think it can be taught while you're not already in a leadership position, or at least a simulation of it, i.e., hands-on classes. Olivia Fox Cabane has a some YouTube videos on Charisma that I think would be good to watch. She's a damn good communicator.

Take responsibility for the actions of the people you lead, do the things you want them to do. Your actions will speak far louder than the words you say: lead by example and all that.

In the same period of time, many many people haven't thought that their jobs were vulnerable. The first time this happens, it's perspective-changing. My expectations were set early on when I was laid off from my first job. There are things I certainly didn't do as they were expecting, but that's not necessarily your problem nor was it mine. They gave me the reason that they didn't need me as a full-time employee and could basically outsource it. That's fine. Since then, I've been fired or laid off for various reasons at least 6 times and might be looking at another coming up soon. What it's taught me is that I always need to bet against having stability, simply because there's no evidence to suggest I'll ever have it. It's also taught me to never put my employer before my well-being, and to bet much more heavily on normal friends rather than anyone I met at the company—because when you go, so do they. After every job loss, it took me at least many many months to find new work and much introspection about how much I care about software engineering or whatever. Just because you were laid off doesn't mean you need to learn to be a better person. It just means you'll be on a break for a while.

Similar experience here. Two redundancies so far in my career and one job I voluntarily left to do more study. The first redundancy was really difficult but taught me similar lessons. The second one was nowhere near as traumatic as the first.

Similarly, in both cases it took me a few months to find a new job. Reading HN you can get the impression that there’s something wrong with you because it seems like a software engineer shouldn’t be able to even cross the street without being offered a job. I think that really depends on where you live and how much of a network you’ve built. That can be difficult if you’re the introverted type.

Even then, you might only get into a spot where to find another job you have to go through 20 tests of skill + phone interviews + in person interviews only to get passed over. Not often an easy situation to get out of, particularly if you were let go from the last one.

Executive leadership is directive, actionable, factual, simple. It's not about taking direction-- at least not overtly-- it's about giving it. You already sound like a great person. Some great people also are leaders and executives but I find as often that is not the case. Great people who learn the executive mindset can be truly extraordinary leaders. They'll ask the question on everyone's mind, and then outline a simple plan to solve it. They will break the ice in a group, rather than wait for it to be broken. They will concede as much of a point as necessary to establish and maintain their credibility. People will trust them not to always be brilliant, but to do the right thing competently and on time.

We all have some work to achieve that kind of stature, but from your question I also sense the people you reported to were not a good fit for what I perceive to be your likely leadership style. Don't take it personally, they dont have all the answers.

Well look, if it was a layoff it probably wasn't personal. It's a reflection on the economic conditions. Granted, you weren't one of the ones chosen to keep, but that should be viewed as: how can you make yourself indispensable? not that you don't bring value.

I don't know you enough to tell you what you need to do, but if you have 15 years of experience: you probably have useful things to share with the less experienced. Most people want to learn, they want mentors, so if that isn't happening maybe a tiny bit of reflection on how to be more welcoming. But man, it's a layoff, don't kick yourself over it.

(Can't stop thinking about this thread)

> In retrospect, higher ups did mention in passing about an year ago about how I need to speak up in meetings etc.

That's a critical point. If you have 15 years experience, even if you don't have a "leadership" title, you are expected to demonstrate some leadership in meetings.

First: In the meeting, you should be able to discuss tradeoffs, explain why certain things are easier, safer, or more dangerous. You should be able to give context and have an opinion. Your opinions need to be fair and unbiased, or you should be able to point out that you're biased towards a particular approach. You're in the meeting for your experience, both career experience, and (if you've been in the job for awhile,) experience with the product(s).

Second, and this is more critical, but harder to do: You need to be able to stop bad meetings. In some cases, this is a matter of just telling someone that their 20 person invite list is too long. In other cases, you need to interrupt people and force them to make their point or move on; or you need to interrupt a meeting to politely excuse half of the people in the room who don't need to be there.

Yes, it's technically management's job to stop bad meetings, but it's also your job too. Stopping bad meetings is everybody's job, but it falls on the most experienced people on a team to lead by setting an example.

This is really great advice. But it's important to know your audience too. I'm a fairly (very) blunt person. I'd follow this advice to the letter with most of my bosses and deal with fallout when necessary. At least that's my go to method.

But I've found that at times it's better to work within the system a little bit like. IMing my boss if we're in the meeting to check with him first.

You need to be able to stop bad meetings

This is a really bad advice, especially in this context. Don't annoy or confront your coworkers. Tell your manager if you feel like stopping some meetings. It's strictly their job, and they will be happy to step in and do that. Besides, any meeting of 20 people should have a manager present.

It really depends on the company. At every company I've worked at, either the company was too small to be able to invite that many people (it would basically be an all-hands) or the management was the ones planning these meetings.

In my experience, the way to handle this is usually a quick Slack conversation with the meeting organizer starting with "hey, I saw you invited all of team X to the meeting - do they all need to be there or just Y". The response is almost always "I don't know anyone on that team so I just invited them all", and by initiating the conversation you are offering to help.

That's the point. Doing this effectively means interrupting the meeting without annoying coworkers. Everyone stuck in an unproductive meeting wants to do the rest of the items on their list. But no one feels that they have the authority to act as a circuit breaker.

Valid point, but I wouldn’t be so prescriptive. It’s also about understanding other variables — the culture of your workplace, the particular meeting/situation — and calibrating your approach accordingly. Of course, easier said than done.

The point of being a leader is you don't need to go through your manager when someone's wasting your team's time.

> Stopping bad meetings is everybody's job

Maybe in a perfect world, but this is heavily context-dependent. Ignore office culture/politics at your own risk.

I'm constantly in awe of my manager's ability to fix a bad meeting in real-time. It's amazing. And he's never even slightly rude about it.

Any anecdotes as to how they do it?

Hard to say any specific anecdotes for how he does it. It's mostly in attitude; how he says things rather than what he says. You can tell from his attitude that when he challenges you, it's not to put you down or exert authority, it's because he genuinely wants everyone to come to the strongest conclusion. (Even if most people think they also act this way, probably they don't, or they don't express it that well).

There will be a discussion that starts meandering, going down rabbit holes, and somehow he'll find the perfect question to ask, which is always a very simple one, to set everyone back on target. Sometimes I don't think people even realize this is happening.

The reason it's hard to explain is because it comes across as an innate character trait, a skill that's just core to his personality, which is why it's so hard to emulate.

What makes a meeting bad? Is it getting off-topic, non productive, that sort of thing? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to re-orient the group than to stop it?

Stopping a meeting seems like a massive waste of resources, especially when you've already gathered the folks that can fix it.

A good meeting should generally be transmitting information effectively or driving to a decision. If a meeting is unable to do that, it should be stopped.

Stopping a meeting in the middle of the planned duration is a bit dramatic, but if it’s clear after 15 minutes the group collectively doesn’t have the information needed to make a decision, its worth stopping.

I’m currently spending a quarter of my day or more in status meetings of various types. I will absolutely tell people I’m dropping (which is a the “lite” version of stopping a meeting) if they stop providing value.

Sometimes the meeting turns into a discussion among 2-3 people with a large audience, sometimes the discussion turns circular where everyone just repeats themselves.

> when you've already gathered the folks that can fix it.

Far too many people gather the wrong people, and stopping to excuse people is critical.

Bad meetings usually don't have agendas. Don't attend a meeting without an agenda.

Leadership is simple: Be proactive and do the right thing.

That’s it. But being proactive and doing the right thing is often painful and difficult, so people avoid it.

We typically think of leaders as people being at the top of an organizational hierarchy, but everyone in an organization can be a leader according to this definition. Leadership doesn't arise from assuming a role, it arises from using one's role to further the objectives of the organization.

You don’t need books and instructions on how to be a leader. You just need to step up to the plate and have the courage to be one.

This. The leader is the target and his/her actions will be scrutinized and critisized.

Yet if you build upon your team and create mutual trust, people will follow you and work really hard. That's the rewarding part of the job.

Regarding higher-ups, you have to choose wisely, most of the time it's very difficult because you give them what they want, but it costs a lot of time, energy and money.

Be pedagogic, explain, and explain. The most difficult part is when you want to take action that doesn't give reward instantly (CI/refactoring/...). Until they've been bitten by this, they won't understand. But you won't know beforehand, so ask the question in interviews !

Promote your best teammates eagerly and give them responsibilities.

Share as much information as possible with the team.

Enforce collective decision processes based on technical merit and cost (RFC-style), to rally everyone to the chosen solution.

Question - Do you never speak up in meetings? Or you only speak up in certain types of meetings with certain types of people?

Some people can be good leaders and speak up in meetings where they are talking about an area they are comfortable in. For example, a senior or lead engineer does an excellent job speaking up and leading in an engineering meeting - but in a room with a bunch of business people they don't really have anything to add so they don't say anything.

I only ask this because it's important to remember context. Sometimes people are in expected to be leaders in a situation that does not fit them. In other situations they can do well. Just something to keep in mind.

As for the layoffs...don't take it personally. If you were a good developer and your management was too short-sighted to realize you might fit better in a different role, that's not your fault.

> I am soul searching for a week now, and finally I got over my anger, disappointment and anxiety and ready to move on.

Why would you be down on yourself? Many many developers at many companies are being laid as many companies are folding and many others are hanging on by their nails. This is the current economy.

I have retained my job only, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, because I am lucky enough to work in an essential industry (banking). That's it. I don't know you, but I would place a hard bet that it has nothing to do with competence, capability, or performance.

> I think I don't know how to be a leader at a workplace.

I figured it out when it was dropped in my lap. My first time to really really own a large team as both a people and business leader was about 5 years ago. I was just some dumb army guy, but withing a short time frame the leaders around me moved on leaving me with 29 people to manage. I was told I did well and received letters of recommendation to pad my warrant office packet. The opportunity just dropped in my lap and I just performed as well as I could.

My actual first time in management, this was military as well and was also not of my choosing, I was 24 years old and I only had two people working directly beneath me, but I had two business units that provided oversight for. In that role I mostly just ran operations. I was the managing technician in charge of operations for the 335th Theater Signal Command and ran all ops for all void and data communications in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan during the 2004 surge.

I have never made it into management in the corporate world. Perhaps I am just waiting for it drop on me, which likely won't ever happen. The morale of my story is that you don't really know what kind of leader you will be until you are leading. The most important thing I learned about it is that if you take care of your people and ensure the mission always comes before you the people you manage will try harder to make you a success.

I had been coding for about 18 years before I realized almost all of my learnings had come form side projects and work for me was a way to get dissappointed (unless I sacrificed money for interesting work). While I could learn technical things on the side, I realized I could not learn "leadership" on the side so switched to management (a very important "component" of leadership). For me it was the best decision. Still slapping myself for not having done this 10 years earlier as soon I felt like I wasnt really learning much technically as an engineer that I couldnt on my own.

DM me. If I can do it, anybody can (I definitely still have a long way to go though but happy to share learnings and surprises).

OP, a quick comment as I think many replies you are receiving are missing the forest for the trees.

We do not live in a meritocracy. For better or for worse, your "job performance" does not have a one-to-one relationship with how well you perform at your job.

Your "job performance" is based on how you are perceived by those reviewing you. If you have a disconnect between your work and how you are perceived, you probably need to improve how you market and present yourself. Consider this as just another part of investing in yourself.

Translating back into developer-centric jargon: the best technical solution isn't automatically the best. You need good marketing and product-market fit.

I've had similar experience as you in a previous job. No matter what, I couldn't get people to listen to my ideas, and it actually felt like I wasn't part of the in-group (similar to certain high school experiences).

My solution took a few things. First, like you, I was part of a layoff. I eventually came to realize that the company culture was a big part of it, as I really didn't have that issue at previous employers (although I wasn't in, or expect to be in, a leadership position at that point in my career).

Secondly, I had to shake off imposter syndrome. Part of the feeling was that I was constantly working with newer technologies, and therefore always felt like a beginner. So I took a step back, and went for a position that was purely Linux based. Then, I approached the position as if I was a consultant who's job was to go in, identify trouble spots, and provide solutions. Getting into that mindset helped immensely, and combined with shaking the impostor syndrome feeling, allowed me to nail the interview.

Finally the last part was taking ownership over several key areas, things that I identified as having lacking skills in the organization that I could fill in for. This involved lots of cross training -- initially one on one, then building up to group training sessions (effectively meeting where I was the leader). That, combined with working with other key individuals in the organization helped me to understand what problems they needed solving, and from there delivering on those solutions (and not just writing code -- but starting off with the base documentation, such as functional requirements documents, system design documents, risk assessments, making pretty infographs, elevator pitches, the works).

Oh, and being the go to resource when other team members run into issues helped to build up a reputation that brings with it respect from various levels of the company.

Here's an idea -- many C-suite execs have customers that they handle personally -- these are long term customers that the particular exec handled from early on in the company. Find one, that has a nagging problem that you can solve. Make them happy, they tell the C-suite about how pleased they were to work with you, and you have a high level person that will go to bat for you in the future. Just make sure that you never screw up that customer.

So sorry to hear you lost your job, it's pretty traumatic, going from working every day, dead lines, things that important to suddenly, none of that's important and not your problem. Personally I've found it jarring the few times it's happened to me, and it's really hard.

So a few thoughts:

1. Were you the only one laid-off or was a portion of the org?

2. 3.3 million people in the US filed for first time unemployment last week, and it'll surely be similar this week.

A couple of weeks ago I got asked "what if we need to cut engineering staff?" And we ran the numbers. Of course the first thing I did was push back, we won't be able to hire them back, it's an amazing team of dedicated engineers, if the bad times are 4 weeks this will gut our skill set, at this level what managers are left, do we need any? Certainly don't need me. Thankfully we found a way through without cutting engineering staff.

It's pretty dreadful on the engineering management side, though not as devastating. I never want to let any of my team go, but I can't be a petulant child either. :(

How we pick people...sometimes it's seniority, or experience with the product/team/etc. Sometimes you just have to reduce to meet burn rates.

I don't want to recommend any 1 leadership book. But leadership comes in big L and small l versions. Technical leadership is important, and something I would expect out of any team member with 15 years experience. Much of the literature focuses on how to be a big L people leader, but if you want to stay technical ferret through all the books and find a book focused on how to be a technical leader/architect/etc.

After reading these posts of people being laid off after 10+ years and having a hard time coping with it, I’m kinda glad I was laid off less than a year into my first job when there wasn’t even a crisis.

To OP, layoffs are very common now and know that more will come soon because of COVID, it’s not within your control and doesn’t make you a bad developer, companies need to make cuts at times like this to keep afloat, you don’t need to blame yourself.

Take a deep breath, it may take more than a week to recover and don’t be hard on yourself. I’d find it hard to believe that you’ve truly overcame all the stages of grief in just a week, when I was laid off the first week I was still going through denial, and was trying to find a new job ASAP to prove myself. By the look of your post chances are you’re still in denial too. You have 15 years of exp under your belt, give it time to think about where you’d like to go and what you’d like to be doing in your next role, it will come to you sooner or later.

> "I believe I was expected to perform as a leader on top of solving problems, writing applications and my lack of leadership skills made me not worth my paycheck. In retrospect, higher ups did mention in passing about an year ago about how I need to speak up in meetings etc."

I think this needs to be resolved across industry. The so-called "leadership" should learn that not all fingers are equal but every finger has use and value. Similary not every employee can be a leader and extrovert. It is the leadership's responsibility to identify and make use of "silent souls" on a team to greater effect. In my career I have seen people who are introverts to be very capable when given a right environment; in fact they exceed others on the team. Forcing people to be what they are not is not a good leadership practice.

Three books that you should read, and why they will help you at this point:

1. High Output Management, Andy Grove - Explains management from first principles in a very engineering mindset. You'll understand the value of meetings, one-on-one's and so on.

2. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Verne Harnish - Explains the structure of a business, and the priorities and trade-offs of rapid growth. A bit more holistic and pragmatic than #1, and assumes you're stepping up into new roles and responsibilities relatively frequently

3. Critical Conversations, Grenny/Switzler - Talks about the need for (and differences between) discussion/conflict/control/coordination in communication in an org. Reading this should help you recognise when and how to speak up.

These are more management than leadership, but I found that a strong basis in management made it easier for me to step into leadership when necessary - I knew the why/what/how of the technical and organisational sides of the matter, and built trust and respect on that competence/understanding.

Ping me by DM if you want more customised recommendations - There's books like Pat Lencioni's '7 dysfunctions of a team' which are excellent for helping you recognise and address the most obvious flaws in a team, and it's a great starting point for becoming a good leader.

I'd also recommend things like therapy or the Landmark Forum as a way of working through your feelings about leadership and the way you relate to people. Leading people will bring out a bunch of positive and negative stereotypes in you and the people around you, and I don't think there's a better way than doing the emotional labour of recognising and working through those issues - you start getting into territoriality and survival-mode mechanisms when you are in charge of teams, and so much of it is kept below conscious awareness because the emotions involved tend to be overwhelming and imprinted at a very young age.

*crucial conversations

Trying to answer the actual question. I have seen leaders/managers any style. You do not have to be big mouthed or particularly assertive, although in some organizations that may be more or less expected from a manager.

What I think is required though is the ability to handle gracefully unmotivated or deceptive people, blatant liars, tired ones or those who have personal problems. At the other end of the spectrum, you have to keep a relevant distance from those you may admire, or even be attracted to.

As for planning, you will have to handle a number of events that are out of your control but still affect your project.

Personally I can do none of these. I am way too sensitive. And I still am a developer. I think there is easily work for 20 years as a developer, but then a number of specialties will face increased automation.

That's just BS. Nothing about being a developer today has anything resembling leadership role. If that were true, developers would be coached, that never happens. They would decide what to build themselves, they do not. Others decide what, when and how to build everything, using backlog, scrum and sprints. You would have a say over how things should progress, odds are if you're too focused in coding, your head is in a totally different place.

There are options though. If you're happy just being a coder, you'll probably have to accept all of the above and a not high paycheck to boot. You get job satisfaction, and maybe the right place won't have an axe hanging over your head.

Getting into other roles, will require you to focus elsewhere. If your job is coding, you need to stop coding for a while. Find out how you can get others to do your work, coach them, while also working to elevate the tech stack, take risks that pays off, test new stuff. This requires to go beyond regular paycheck, study stuff all the time etc. You might become Tech Lead, but only if you become useful to others across the board. Not about you anymore, but best not to stop coding to keep fresh.

Architect? That could be a next step, chill.

I'm sorry to say that there are not so many realistic career paths on the dev track, but switching to IT, brings lots of opportunity - both as generalist or as specialist with higher pay. You will learn to stand on your own feet in BS. It'll be hard to impossible to keep current coding wise. Though, there are much more opportunity to rise to be a natural leader than to be an introvert dev staring into monitor all day.

Too bad this is all there is in current systemic conditions. Probably no leader is vested in you, interested or knowledgeable / connected enough to mentor you to put you on the right track. Lots is either natural knack and/or pure dumb luck. What always helps is knowing the right people and working hard to expand skills and value to others. Same as with being born by the right parents, being taught by a true teacher or working for a wise natural leader.

> mention in passing about an year ago about how I need to speak up in meetings [...] I think I don't know how to be a leader at a workplace

It sounds like at the very least your boss doesn't know how to be a leader in the workplace either: if you have a shortcoming which is impacting the way you are perceived by your leadership team, or your job performance, then it is incumbent on leadership to:

1/ Help you understand the deficiency and determine whether it's real, or optical (for example: "I see John coming in late all the time! That guy is really lazy!" vs. "Wow, John comes in late and leaves early but he's SO productive when he's here!")

2/ Provide you with clear practical steps you can take to improve, and what the impact of you improving will be (on you, on the business)

3/ A clear expectation on what the consequences will be if you do not improve (is it just "you're gonna be a midweight forever dude", or "the skills you lack are vital for this job").

Most people have a cap on where their natural intuition and instinct can take them as leaders. Going beyond that requires coaching, mentoring, and training. If you were hired into a leadership role but can't lead, then it's a deficiency of their hiring process. If you were hired as an individual contributor (IC) and are being expected to lead, then you need coaching.

Do not accept the part of your brain which is telling you that this is on you. If you were fired because you can't lead then that's terrible leadership in and of itself.

Find somewhere with a strong engineering culture and great leadership. Be open that you are worried about being stuck in Individual Contributor land forever and that as part of your development, you want to receive coaching from a leader who can help you adopt a leadership mindset. Make it clear this is not about promotions, titles, or pay grades: you want to understand leadership and have regular conversations with someone who is leading.

You do not need to be humbled.

My company just had a lay-off. Lots of good people gone not because they did anything but because the market we are in tanked. Went from a we are going to crush it this year and hiring like crazy to WTF in a matter of weeks. I feel extremely bad for everyone that got laid off. Bad time to lose your job.

Since everyone was working at home there were no goodbyes or good luck. I had people on my team I realized I didn’t even have their cell phone number to check in on them.

Feel for you. Don’t beat yourself up. Find best thing you can and work to prep yourself for the next thing.

A good leader is connecting people to the right mentors; going to bat to help someone's good idea come true; recognizing natural areas of expertise for contributors to develop their skills in; identifying, predicting, and preventing bottlenecks in the process; and making sure information flows smoothly into, out of, and within the team. Think about what the people on your team need and what little strings you can pull to make their lives easier and help them to feel more productive, fulfilled, and impactful.

Protip (for when the jobs situation improves): change jobs every 2 years or so. That way people won't have any preconceived (and largely incorrect) notions about you. It's useful to start from a fresh sheet of paper from time to time. It also helps with getting better pay, since you can't be treated as a piece of furniture and you always get market rate, which tends to go up over time. Or at least it did for the past 2 decades.

And you also experience different companies. Not all companies are the same. A job title that is a nightmare in one place can be a pleasure in another. Sometimes you question yourself because you dont have recent experiences to compare it to and once you do, you may realize it was simply a bad place to work at. When you’ll look back at this you’re going to somehow be grateful it happened this way. This will open you to new experiences. Granted, you’re gonna be forced out of uour comfort zone. Good luck to you and don’t forget to trust in yourslef

Start with managing people and expectations outside of your team.

1. Speak up. Not everyone understands the problem like you do.

2. When you speak, start from the reason why something needs to be done. People reason better forwards, from the "why" to the "what". Don't go straight to the "what" unless you are 100% sure everyone is already on the same page.

3. Be prepared to learn from different types of people. The people who are good orators.

We all wish you best of luck.

Don’t change anything now. I’m not saying « don’t change », but I’m saying emergencies are a bad time to evolve on character traits, particularly because you may be believing an excuse that they used to fire you, when in fact you were just redundant or your boss arrived late at the meeting where they decided of the people to fire.

Secondly, I once asked your question and a friend answered that most managers land their position by necessity for the company. They were here when the team grew. Or created their company, so they had to manage it. Most managers just deal with what is happening. Most people don’t know what they are doing, or why they have been selected. Sometimes there is no rationale. So don’t sweat it too much, because being relaxed and easy to manage plays a good part in career success.

For me it was much easier to be a manager than be an employee, because as an employee you are expected to compete and establish your presence (such as speaking up in meetings); As a manager you have entirely different incentives, it was way more intuitive for me.

First off, this is about the world taking a downturn than your performance. Rather than focusing on traditional leadership, focus more on listening and teaching. The higher ups usually want someone who actively listens, asks good/productive questions, and is able to teach the younger team members how to execute and avoid the mistakes you've learned over 15+ years.

It's really not. I saw the signs since early January. They were waiting for me to finish a project that I was working on. This was way before people in US got serious about the Pandemic.

was this a contract position, what company is this?

Not that it helps, but the world was beginning to take a downturn before the pandemic.

I have similar problems like OP. Lack of leadership has been a problem with me both at home and at work. When I get the change to be a leader, I chicken out and don't tell my juniors what needs to be done because I feel I am not worthy of being a leader. All the thoughts of my own failure come rushing to my mind I feel that I am not qualified to be a leader. One day the director told me that I don't have it in me. I felt so bad. I have a colleague who is really good at talking even though he is technically less qualified than me. When there is an issue he is able to talk and stand his ground. I on the other hand can't handle issues and feel very anxious. I don't know how to overcome this. Like the OP said, if someone can suggest a book it will be great. I have over 20 years of experience and still am a contributor and not a team lead or manager. I have also had depression and two instances of severe anxiety attacks for which I received medication.

This is called Impostor Syndrome [1] and it is more common than you think:

> Studies suggest that more than 70% of people experience the impostor syndrome at some point in their career.

You can use writing (email) to guide your team instead of speaking to help you act rationally instead of emotionally since you are already aware that he (or anyone else) is technically less qualified.

I have over 20 years of experience too, and was a bit like you when I was younger. Then I noticed that 99% (I might be boasting here, but the exact percentage does not matter) of my colleagues have no idea of what they are doing, even though they make themselves look otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

What helped me overcome my sense of self-worth, lack of confidence, depression, anxiety were regular exercise, meditation, yoga, spiritual development, always learning, and never giving up. The book that shaped my perspective with regards to being a leader and success in my professional and personal life was "The Diamond Cutter" by Michael Roach. Note: I am a free thinker. HTH

Thank you. I will read the book. I have not exercised in years. I will incorporate trust.

First, figure out what you want for yourself. Are you even interested in a leadership position? If not, all working at it is likely to do is make you miserable. In that case, you'll probably need to adjust your compensation target down a bit because as you become more senior in pay, there is often an expectation of some form of leadership traits to go along with it. Many companies won't financially reward technical excellence alone.

If you're interested in a leadership role but just don't know how to go about it, you need to decide what kind of leadership role are you interested in. The technical aspects of the project? Leading a team? Moving into management? Something else? (people on the business side will almost always try to guide you to managing people since that's usually the most commonly accepted/rewarded career track... but it's not for everyone) Once you know that, then you can go about developing the needed skills.

Instead of guessing or mind-reading, I encourage you to ask your former co-workers (peers and supervisors) directly for concrete examples where you didn't perform or suggestions for areas to improve on.

Reality testing is critical. Ask them out to lunch or coffee and frame it as seeking their thoughts as a means to improvement, not bitterness about the divorce.

It seems like you are doing your best to improve yourself here, which is great. I wonder, however, if your skills are the problem? We are in an unprecedented economic situation, and I can't comment on the stability of the company you were laid off from.

There are a few comments in this thread agreeing with your self-assessment that a person with your experience should have leadership capability. You probably should. That said, you don't know that is why you were let go. It may just be why you hadn't been promoted. A few of the places I have worked have been happy to let people hang out as senior engineers indefinitely.

If I were you, I would reach out to your former managers and coworkers to see if they have any feedback they can give you. You would be especially well served by reaching out to a manager at a company that _didn't_ let you go. Do you have a boss you are still in contact with from a job you left voluntarily?

Lots of people are getting laid off, I've only 2 years experience, and was laid off a week ago today, I was told it was a necessary downsize, because the company had suddenly stopped selling as much, I've been applying for other jobs, but because I've got savings, I can survive even if I don't find anything for a few months, just like you, I'm taking this time to fill gaps in my skillset, learn new things, and focus on my university courses

also, getting laid off and getting fired are different, lay offs are usually a financial thing, it's not about your skills, you weren't in the wrong, they're trying to minimize how much they spend (including how much they pay employees) so you could probably get a recommendation from your former employer

stay strong

Sorry to hear that, but it looks like you're taking this as a growth opportunity. It seems like your management failed you somewhat - management is not easily learned from books, much better to have mentors and people modeling the behavior expected in a role like that.

Before you start down this road, I'd ask yourself if you want to be a manager. You can lead, based on your experience, but that doesn't mean you need to have people reporting directly to you. I was a manager in an IT group, and while everyone liked me (I'm a likable guy!) I wasn't particularly good at the managing part. It made me miserable to not be good at my job and I'm much happier consulting/contracting now.

Sorry to hear that, I have been in your position in the past, I know how it feels. Learn charisma, learn social dynamics, learn how to communicate with people properly. It makes a huge difference. And it is a learnable, like coding or riding a bike. There are many great books, you can start with this classic https://www.vitalsmarts.com/resource/crucial-conversations-b.... Let me know if you need more info.

I think as soon as you remove yourself from the equation it becomes a lot easier to know how to "be a leader" IMO.

Some people take offense when others seem to be "encroaching" on their territory.

When looking at a problem and a room of people trying to address that problem draw the line between the ROOM and the PROBLEM. A lot of times the way people speak about or address things is by first drawing a line between the people in the room, and then draw another line between the room and the problem.

There is no actual urgent need for software engineer to be more "leaderish". It is totally okay just to do your individual contribution, build expertise, give good task estimations, solve problems, things like this.

I beleive it is a better idea to get strait feedback from your manager about actual cause of your discharge. Maybe you are just plain wrong about it.

I wouldn't try to micro analyze the reasons for your layoff. The "speak up in meetings" critique is a standard go-to for performance reviews. It basically means you are doing pretty good and they just need some filler for the critique section.

This is a time of troubles. People of all personality types are getting laid off.

It seems you still don't know exact reasons why you were laid off. Did your managers tell the exact reason during your lay off interview? Maybe it's just bad luck with current situation. Did your managers tell you about lack of leadership problem at any time during your reviews and one on ones?

If you need help with your resume, feel free to ping me. I'm a dev now, used to be a recruiter, and am pretty good at landing interview opportunities myself.

Also, if you need practice with interview questions, I liked Elements of Programming Interviews in Python: The Insiders' Guide.

Just remember they're people too and not infallible. You might have the most inspiring leader or technical expert but when they're in a meeting with their superiors then they're totally different. They sounds almost like you might. Don't be intimidated.

there is no real context here, but

Leader != "I need to speak up in meetings"

The problem here might be more general, not communicating enough. You might be technically competent but there's a problem when the level of communication isn't high enough. Countless problems (an unnecessary development) can be avoided through high bandwidth communication. Even when it might be unjustified, if people feel like people aren't communicating, then they wonder if perhaps problems are getting created that could be avoided simply because that person isn't speaking up. It leads to frustration. This may not be applicable to your situation, but I thought I'd throw that out there

Become an expert in what you do, care about others, work to convey your principles and values to them, excite them through the technical decisions you made or will make and inspire them through your vision. Be the person that sees through the cloud.

Did anyone give you a reason why you were being laid off? If they gave you a reason, then how truthful would you consider it to be thinking about it now, given that you're not angry, disappointed or anxious anymore?

Be A leader

A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behaviour. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people mistakes indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Let the other person save face. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise." Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Thanks to Dale Carnegie. "How to win Friends & Influence People"

>So I come here being humbled

Humility is something many never get an opportunity to learn. But at the end of the day humility does not pay the bills.

Read or listen to Enders Game, by Orson Card.

Right there with you buddy.

Oddly enough I have an education in emergency medicine and can't seem to find work...

The truth is that good talented people lose thier job. Don't lose faith in yourself.

AEAB (all employers are bastards)

I can give you one tip.

--Over a period of many years I found out that you can't please everyone and you can't be everybody's friend. So don't be afraid to speak up. Get informed, make a decision and speak up. You may be right or you may be wrong but follow thru and lead by example.

Think about this and act on it.

It can be a delicate balance if you're not consistently outspoken. I've found the most success in trying to provide new proposals instead of critisim/feedback on others. No one minds an idea that sparks discussion, it's pretty rare that anything is a "waste of time". The reason I led in with "if you're not outspoken" is that if you're typically quiet and start giving out bad but discussion sparking ideas, it will probably lead to office drama. If you always give your opinions then people will get over it immediately and meetings will be more productive. No one wants to talk to someone who seems to only critique things, but lots of people want to hear new ideas.

Read "High Output Management" by Andy Grove. If you learn to do 20% of what's in that small book you'll be ahead of 80% of so called "managers".

For leadership, read "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy".

trial & error >> book knowledge on this topic, IMO. Get your reps in: - start a business - teach a live online coding course

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