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Comment by benjohnson | Hacker News Reader

As a manager - I've had to do crap like this now and then to light a fire under people. It can be done to indicate extreme urgency. There also are real-world implications to some delays - for example not being able to run payroll is a legal nightmare and an ethical nightmare for hurting your employees.

Generally, when I've had to do this, it's been my fault for not manangeing properly.

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I'm curious, does it actually lead to faster resolution or does it lead to engineers spending time thinking about how to deliver the bad news versus actually focusing on the problem?

Also manager. I feel like the manager's communication is off, though the end result is the same. All I need to ensure is that a) you are working on this HARD and know to turn down other tasks (and possibly put in extra hours) and b) you will update me immediately if the timeline can't be met.

Usually this request, though frequently very rare takes the form of "Issue $ISSUE is causing critical impacts on $IMPORTANT_THING, if we don't solve it by $TIME, it will cause $BAD_IMPACTS. Please make this your top priority and redirect questions about all other items to me. If you think this will not be done by $TIME, please let me know as soon as possible. I appreciate your hard work" Then you tell rest of the org: "$TEAM is working on $ISSUE and is re prioritizing other commitments. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out directly to me."

If the developer turns around and says "this won't happen in time", that's a problem for the manager, not the developer in like 99% of situations. It's not "bad news", it's the truth, and you should always be able to tell the unfiltered truth (especially to your direct manager!) without any repercussions.

Wow if you're real, I'd love to have worked for you. Typically managers don't do the other half of what you do: they want critical surprise issue fixed yesterday, and with no caveats; you better still be available for marketing bullshit and that salesforce thing and that support issue we escalated to you and also when's that feature going to be ready?

>Usually this request, though frequently very rare

Spoken like a true manager

Yes, it works, and that's why it's dangerous because it lets a manager fall into bad habits of doing it again.

It makes the people doing the work pull out all the stops - beg vendors for support, drive to the customer site to witness the problem, and generally so whatever it takes.

>Generally, when I've had to do this, it's been my fault for not manangeing properly.

This is key. Sometimes it's reasonable for a manager to coerce a team member into going above and beyond, but it's important that the team understand that it's not just because the manager really wants to meet their targets on the business side, and that somebody above the team member is responsible for the situation's existence.

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