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Comment by spaetzleesser | Hacker News Reader

“You can’t defeat reality” has been my favorite line with some managers lately. I have been in plenty of planning meetings where somebody declared that something needs to be done by end of month or the world will go under. When you point out to them that X,Y and Z need to be done before that and historically they never got done in under six weeks they just don’t accept it. Of course things don’t get done by end of month, the world doesn’t go under and the same thing will happen again with the next project.

I find it really tiring to not being able to have an honest conversation with leaders. There are probably plenty of things that can be improved but first you need to accept reality before you can make meaningful changes.

I often feel that middle management is one big pyramid of people bullshitting each other constantly and people seem ok with that.

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I found that never saying no, but always responding with a list of what would be necessary in order to accomplish something, will connect a lot better than negativity.

Contrast: "We need this by January." "No."

with,

"We need this by January." "Let's discuss the hiring process for the new team members we're going to need to accomplish that."

Then they will either say "no" (what you were going for all along), or they will say "yes" and give you more resources.

It is really quite rare to be asked for something that is truly impossible, usually it is merely impossible within the organizational boundaries you're used to working within. Also, people hate being told no but love saying it, so if you want a "no," you need to work out how it's going to be them saying it.

Most experienced managers that I've met can work around that sort of comment:

"We need this by January"

"Let's discuss the hiring process for the new team members we're going to need to accomplish that."

"We don't have the budget for hiring at the moment. If more headcount is truly necessary, you are welcome to use your salary to obtain it."

90% of the time, the project arrives lat, but there's no other major consequences and the manager points to this as evidence that you were padding your budget with superfluous resource. 9% of the time, you buy a new web server on your own credit card and the manager brags to his boss about coming in under budget. 1% of the time, catastrophe hits, the company goes bankrupt, and he tells everyone that call for a reference that your incompetence drove the company out of business.

If you think this is hyperbole, a previous employer stated that a competent sysadmin would never lose data, so back-ups were a waste of money and made admins pay for them out of pocket.

> you are welcome to use your salary to obtain it

> 9% of the time, you buy a new web server on your own credit card and the manager brags to his boss about coming in under budget

I.... genuinely can't believe this is a common line. Companies do ask people to do ridiculous things in return for very little remuneration. But to fund the company yourself?

(I do get the point your making BTW but the example can't be real!)

> a previous employer stated that a competent sysadmin would never lose data, so back-ups were a waste of money and made admins pay for them out of pocket.

The first part of that sounds like the natural tech-illiteracy of a business leader; the second part says they don't believe their own schtick.

> The first part of that sounds like the natural tech-illiteracy of a business leader; the second part says they don't believe their own schtick.

You're right that what I wrote did sound that way, but that's because my wording wasn't correct. No one was ever "forced" to pay for back ups. One guy decided that he wasn't going to pay for them himself. After a couple of years, his server went down and there was no back-up. The boss fired him for negligence and then sent the server off to an expensive data-retrieval company. Legal then began a lawsuit against him, asking for the cost of the data-retrieval to be repaid. Also, any time someone called for an employment reference, the canned response was "We're in the middle of a negligence lawsuit against him at the moment, so the legal department says that all I can do is confirm that he worked here."

Eventually, he reached a settlement with the company for about half of the data recovery costs. However, no other admin ever dared not making their own personal back-ups again.

This is not how experienced or skilled managers handle it, this is how abusive incompetent managers act if people let them get away with it. The behavior you describe is both unprofessional (as in, ineffective) and immoral. The proper response to a manager suggesting something like you describe is "fuck you" in just as many words - have some self-respect, tolerating it is masochistic nonsense, there's no reasonable reason to pay out of your pocket for company needs. If they're your top boss then you don't want to work for people like that (and you don't want references from people like that); even if you're desperate, find a way out and quit (because most companies are not how you describe); if there's anybody above them, such a request (pay out of your pocket for webserver or backups) should be escalated with a "this is unacceptable, either you replace this manager or replace me" - not as an empty threat, but as a real course of action; because if the top management considers it acceptable, again, you should not be working there. The IT job market isn't that bad anywhere so that sombeody would need to tolerate abuse that hits both your wallet and self-respect.

I have never ever heard of a manager asking an W2 employee to achieve a project by hiring out of their salary.

> if you want a "no," you need to work out how it's going to be them saying it.

You, sir or madam, are an evil genius. I'd like to have you on my side of the negotiating table...

""We need this by January." "Let's discuss the hiring process for the new team members we're going to need to accomplish that.""

The usual response is "Right now we don't have time/budget but we will look into it" and nothing gets done. But the deadline still stands.

My main complaint is that a lot of managers don't really work with their underlings on issues to improve things.

And on the other hand, such an approach really helps in cases where extra resources would fix the problem.

I recall a case many years ago when my employer had a networking issue at one of the branches where we could not get to a solution for weeks... until at one meeting with the outsourced provider reiterating that a proper fix was impossible, they started to explain why it was impossible, saying that they'd need to replace all the hardware along the route which would be extremely expensive. At which point we asked how much, they named a number, and it was easily affordable compared to the problems it was causing us so the issue was approved in the same meeting. And if only they had started with the same approach, we could have had it fixed right away instead of trying to fix an "impossible" issue for weeks.

While I agree with you, at that point I’m doing my manager’s job. I only do the job I’m being paid for.

It seems to me that managers who make "impossible" demands that flout reality believe, in their heads, that they're in some kind of negotiation. They may fully realize that what they're demanding is impossible but feel that by making the demand, it will force a greater sense of urgency and thus "speed up" delivery.

There's another, perhaps more insidious, variant of this when managers ask YOU "How long will X take?" It's often asked casually. But your answer, which you think reciprocates the casual-ness, is then taken as a hard deadline regardless whatever surprises pop up (even if the manager knows there's going to be curveballs). Failure to meet the deadline is then fully your responsibility. It's something that everyone learns sooner or later in their careers-- to not make casual estimates, EVER.

I think as long as you think (know?) this is true the easier it makes dealing with work stress. "It has to get done or else" is so common in my place it falls on deaf ears with most the devs.

At my place, I think its more CYA than BS. "See VP Person, i said it has to get done or else!" so its not my fault!

I think we've evolved to the point where middle management no longer involves a coherently planning or organizing process. Rather, middle management comes up with justification to force more out of people and the underlings both plan and execute the results.

See The Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

I believe there's an emotional gradient at play.

High rank doesn't want to deal with reality, so he will add 2 guys underneath who will absorb half the pressure each dealing with frictions and mishaps. Each layer wants to keep its status so they'll take some of the heat.

So interesting to hear some of these views.

I am totally middle management :)

My sense is; at higher rank (i.e. those above me) the problems are more macro than micro and so are the motivations and consequences. Therefore reality is dealt with on a broader platform and you have people to deal with the detail.

That's why my bosses boss has to worry about what error will land him in jail, and I just have to care about delivering some quarterly goal or other.

(or in other words; that guy totally knows how hard it is to empower an organisation of 60+ engineering/product/agile folks to deliver consistently, but he doesn't really care because that's my problem)

Does your boss still know how things are going below. Most higher ranks I've seen live in a disconnected reality. Any time they had to enact their own orders they failed to carry threw. While the middle managers were constantly forcing people to follow orders.

That's why I said it's mostly emotional buffering. They know shit will happen one way or another, shielded by intermediate layers of authority (relying on the fact that rent is not free so lower classes aren't free to talk much.)

That said, lower layers aren't perfect. Lots of bad apples, liars, cons. But I believe all it would take is more honest, close to the ground interactions to solve this bad game theory setup.

I think you hit on an interesting question; and the answer is yes.

What is different is the value framework, right?

The further down a hierarchy you go the more individual the problems become; therefore the guy at the top is never going to solve for N challenges, just the macro ones.

> You can’t defeat reality”

Yes, as in "You can fool the people, but you can't fool the laws of physics."

What I learned is that it never helps to argue with these people. Just say we will start working on it and when the deadline expires come with the things that were done abd say that it will take longer to be done.

I need an ontological reason for the existence of these people.

How many times they come down to operators (be it engineers or anything) and call for stuff to happen magically.

It's never "so on average you need 1 week, what could be improved so we only take 6 days ? anything we can change or add ?"

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