A manager is not your best friend
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Doubt. Specifically about the call for managers to have highly conditional empathy and the assertion that making your team feel good is not close to if not the top priority in the list of managerial duties.
We're working with people and whatever the official chain of command says, unhappy people generally deliver shitty work, so even if you short sightedly believe happy teams aren't your job, you'll soon understand why happy teams are a critical component to delivering for "the business".
If not, your competitors will.
The anti-pattern I've seen happen very often in some big tech companies is that shitty work is in fact often what is desired -- by your manager.
The CEO wants good work, but you're too many levels from them for that to matter.
Your manager may be trying to get promoted, and isn't looking for "good work" per se, they're looking for whatever will get them promoted, which can be something shitty that their manager wants, or that the company wants for their broken PR strategy.
And if you, lower down on the totem pole, don't deliver that shit, and instead insist on delivering something good that they aren't actually looking for, you'll be on the firing line. You can't align with the CEO at the cost of disaligning with everyone in-between. The CEO will never know you exist, and you'll be managed out well before they ever knew you existed.
I learned this the hard way.
If there's a difficult, unpopular decision to be made, C-suite types often can't just come out and talk about it openly because the very act of doing that will maximise the amount of ill will and damage that decision will cause throughout the business unnecessarily. So the role of middle management is to be the 'bad cop' and pass that message on in a limited way to the affected people, who then blame them for it.
Just because the CEO isn't the one saying it, it doesn't mean it's not coming from the CEO. Part of being a middle manager, maybe even the biggest part, is being the messenger whose paid to get shot.
I believe one suggestion the author likely intended but didn't make was that "commiseration" does not create happy people. It may deepen trench bonding, but it doesn't increase happiness. The focus then should be on actions that produce happy people, who then produce better work.
As the author says in the last paragraph, sometimes people do need to complain and need that commiseration. Not allowing that, or shutting it down immediately, makes it fester and just get worse.
There are ways of commiserating that don't confirm the complaint, though. Being heard is usually 90% of the need, so just "I hear you, and feel your frustration" is often enough to get them back to an emotional even keel.
And yes, there are people who love to complain, and are only happy when it rains. Managing them can be difficult, because it's treading that fine line between hearing them and agreeing with them.
I think the implication was that making the team feel good shouldn't come at the expense of communicating the truth.
This is a real problem I've had with some managers in the past: They try so hard to keep everyone happy that they're afraid to have difficult conversations. They soften negative feedback so much that the point is lost. They might even open themselves up to being manipulated by employees who learn how to leverage their desire to keep the team happy and use it against them.
Obviously it's not supposed to be like that, but it's a common pitfall for first-time managers especially.
I’ve seen it in managers, but I’ve also seen it from internal teams communicating with each other, and even when leaving PR feedback.
In general I understood very early in my life that people really hate being told the truth, and knowing what lies given social group decides to believe in is crucial to successful socializing. I don't like this, and it's a big reason why I have very few friends, but the friends I do have value me for not being an NPC.
It's a problem everywhere humans work. I've met team-leads and managers who suffered from toxic positivity everywhere. Either just in the way they conveyed messages, or the way they perceived everything, "house on fire, all is fine".
The only reason a manager is not a friend is because a manager has power over you, the subordinate. Power to fix or break things. This imbalance defines the entire relationship.
A quote from Saving Private Ryan always stuck with me:
Pvt. Reiben: [At Jackson] Oh, that's brilliant, bumpkin. [At Miller] Say Captain, you don't gripe at all?
Capt. Miller: I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a Captain. We have a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, and so on and so on and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that, as a Ranger.I understand at work I have a job to do, but I choose how to do it and I choose to do it in a humane way.
I don't want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like you're warning against being a people pleaser, in which case I so agree.
Almost, if not literally any other business I ever worked for (electric provider, insurance, telco, government, army etc) were much more humane. And of course better place to work long term. Money is only priority in life only if you don't have them which shouldn't be a concern for most folks here (at least relatively to rest of population around, stupid spending or bad investment can ruin even billionaires of course)
I would much rather my manager give me the harsh truth upfront rather than letting it simmer, and making things worse for both of us.
In other words, if a manager's choice comes down to 1) happy people v.s. 2) replacing whoever it takes to get the job done, with or without happiness, then #2 must be done. So 'getting the work done' is the top objective, and everything else is secondary and subordinate to that. An employer's job isn't to run a social club, it's to produce results.
In a pure capitalist system, sure. However, no country lives in a pure capitalist system. The US comes closest in this sense, I think. Where I'm from, the Netherlands, there are more layers to this.
> and they're generally better performers when they're happy
Agreed, including the "generally" part, definitely not always.
> but conversely if they get the job done while not getting along, then the higher objective is still attained, which is often the case.
They'll be outcompeted by people that are motivated. So I think on the short-term and medium term, yea this works. On the long-term, it depends on the industry, incentives and all those things. If the industry doesn't allow for competition, or has other odd incentive structures, then yea, I can see this happen. However, if competition does exist, then no, the companies that work like this will slowly lose market share, provided that being more: passionate, motivated and creative actually yields an edge.
I have a suspicion we're in agreement on it actually since you also mention "which is often the case". I'm not sure if it's often or not, I don't know well enough how different industries operate. But I do agree there are many industries where there's some odd incentive structure (e.g. little competition or a lot of it but passion, motivation and creativity don't matter).
I think happiness and good job performance are like 80% aligned. They're not aligned in the "let's chillout" aspect of happiness or "let's do nothing and relax" but they are aligned in the fiero sense or what game-designers also call "hard fun".
If you have workers that just do what they are told, you better be in an industry where someone isn't trying to disrupt you or is doing its best to work way more creatively and motivated than you.
> An employer's job isn't to run a social club, it's to produce results.
Not all companies look that strictly at it. Well, maybe they do in the US. I've worked for Dutch, Belgian and US companies. US companies are way more "it's to produce results" than the Belgian and Dutch companies I've worked for. Sure, they are also there to produce results. But the intensity was lower, more goodwill was given, more trust too. It didn't feel cutthroat.
Practically it means that I'm helping my company save time by programming AI workflows and we're already saving thousands of hours in my department because of it (tip: I semi-automate a lot, so a human has to have the final say and possibly intervene a bit at the end - the human touch is necessary).
If my manager was a "just get the job done" type then I wouldn't be doing that at all. My official role is being a data analyst but I was a software engineer in the past at other companies. It's precisely because of the more relaxed nature of the company culture I now work at that I'm at least as much of an LLM engineer as I am a data analyst. And I love the hybrid role.
Anyways that's my perspective. It mostly brings nuance, on broad strokes I agree, maybe even the finer strokes.
Ultimately everyone in management _should_ have their _loyalty_ to their boss, rather than to their subordinates, and different management styles can work. Of course it depends on the employees too. I've never tolerated even one slight bit of disrespect from a boss personally, even as a junior dev. If someone ever treated me badly I resigned immediately without even having the next job lined up, on pure principle. I would've lasted probably about one day working for Jobs, before quitting I bet! lol.
Haha you rebel! ;-)
Isn’t this actually an incentive to keep your employees at least happy enough so they won’t quit?
A company in the same industry that is nice to work for has a competitive advantage, provided they know how to select the more competent people. Hmm, an opinion loosely held.
You don't want empathy to be a blocker to telling the truth, fair enough. But one of the lessons high empathy people have to learn is that having empathy for someone and controlling how they feel are two completely different things. One is possible, the other is not. And usually there is a simple way to tell the truth that doesn't hurt anyone beyond what they do to themselves.
Eg, if someone is paralysed with grief and someone else comes up to give them a hug, the hugger is probably acting empathetically even though they aren't mirroring the emotion. It is more about identification and choosing an appropriate response. It is a common tactic of high empathy people to respond to negative emotions by embodying positive ones rather than mirroring the painful ones.
Managers shouldn't be making empathy conditional in the usual sense of the word, it is necessary in all settings to maintain an orderly, pleasant and respectful workplace. The article probably means something similar to but ultimately not exactly empathy. Probably sympathy, which gets used in the same paragraph. High empathy, low sympathy is par for the course for a good manager in a hard conversation.
When I've played the Manager part, I've always tried to do my best, talk to my team, set them on the proper train to success professionally and from time to time personally too, incentivize them to accomplish company goals, but also when that hasn't worked, I've also had to set them on the proper train out of the team/company.
I've only had issues with 2 out of ~30 people I've managed, all others I've had to lay off have understood (even when there wasn't a reason: Sometimes I was just told to pick someone to send home). Some people don't take it well, no matter how justified you are to fire them. I don't stand for bad friends, why should I stand for a bad employee? Or sometimes "no one" really connects with them, and they never connect with other people, I can only help them so much; maybe this person will "click" somewhere else.
I still talk with some of these people, even sometimes meet with them when I go to their cities, have parties. Normal, human interactions.
For me phrases like "it's family", "they are my blood", "we are friends" are always played like you have to stand for bad people. If you have never cut off a family member or friend, you're probably watching too many films and following too many traditions. Sometimes no matter what, you are different or the tradition is stupid. You may try to make it work, sometimes it simply doesn't.
As a Manager, you can do your job well, you can treat people well, and still bad outcomes come from it, or you can still be seen as the enemy. Whatever, take what may seem good criticism and be done with it.
As an Individual Contributor, I'm not saying not to be best friends with your Manager, I'm just saying that one thing is "the job", which has its own myriad of things happening, and another your personal life. Both can be great experiences as sometimes they aren't.
Another team is slow to deliver? It's fine to discuss that. As a manager your job, of course, is to make sure that your report isn't denigrating their coworkers. But it's fairly useful to decide how you want to prioritize your work, or whether you want to depend on that team in the future. Layoffs? There is zero reason to shut up about how dumb your CEO is and how they're doing it for Wall Street. They're coming for you just as they're coming for your reports. Better you talk about it than both people silently bottling up their feelings to please someone way up in their leadership chain.
Practically, this means 1) I will never be their superior, and vice versa and 2) we aren’t competing for the same position.
In general I think this is a decent approximation for friendships, at work or otherwise.
To be honest though, I’ve never been able to replicate that environment again, and it was pre-remote-first days. Might’ve been pure luck, or maybe we just understood how working with people you like is very enjoyable, despite the office politics.
Worst thing ever, nothing is more harmful than a enemy who appears as a friend. This is even more true at workplace, as you are competing with your colleagues for promotions, bonuses, RSUs, travel opportunities etc. Whether one likes to acknowledge this are not, you are actually competing with them.
Another big issue with this sort of this is, it creates all kinds of untold social contracts which eventually nobody abides by. You wouldn't expect your friend to scheme behind your back to have you stack ranked in the bottom 10%, get your fired. Save his own job and have himself promoted. But in nearly every layoff cycle, this is exactly what happens.
Having a social life is actually a good thing!
Not sure if you know this, due to cost centers, companies have per team budgets. Quite literally, X gets bonuses at the expense of Y.
Im not saying people act out of malice. But the game is designed such that somebody needs to lose for the other to win. Its like a pie chart, more area a section occupies, less there is for others.
Apologies, but I don’t like when people outright talk nonsense about my friends, lowering them down to numbers.
The more area a section occupies on a pie chart, the less area other sections get.
>>Apologies, but I don’t like when people outright talk nonsense about my friends, lowering them down to numbers.
But long time ago, I've been part of a company, that despite being sort of Accenture-style dev shop (meaning we were competing them for dev projects and often would win on our reputation and competence, not undercutting the price with cheap labor, also quite a few people moved from them to us), yet the atmosphere was extremely friendly. The cca original team still meets after more than 15 years when most went other ways.
I've never seen or heard about anything similar. It attracted and retained top talent much more efficiently than high salaries.
Yeah, I mean, they don't exactly go around announcing how the whole thing is done. You often don't know who won at your cost.
Offer optional outside-of-work activities like team buildings, going together to pub. And I mean really optional. No bullshit, honesty and some good hard work. Very flat managerial hierarchy where owners actually listened and acted, and managers and employees acted and communicated as equals.
That's about it. Maybe it wouldn't be enough these days, but back then we were the best game in town and attracted best folks from other companies due to above, without the need to pay higher than rest of high payers.
Best friendships I've made at work especially with my managers, in my own teams, have happened when I have openly announced I'm not competing for their position/job. Merely making this clear has made me more friends.
People just don't like to see other people do well, even more so when people are working to take their own position.
That few shitty years I had at work early career often were due to seniors finding books at my desk, or watching me work like mad on side projects, or delivering and speaking a lot during meetings. That's akin to announcing to them they must screw you to save their own jobs. Nothing good happens from there as groups of powerful people mark you up as your enemy and have to get rid of you for their collective good.
The people who got promoted are often those who pretend to be harmlessly inert but are scheming and working behind people's back to get promoted and take top positions. Only last year, a junior I know got a manager fired and took his job, much to the shock of the manager, he eventually learned the junior had been working over an year and bypassing him, talking to managers above, convincing them he could do the job et al. The manager who got fired is struggling from months to find a new job.
Long story short, speak as little as you can, avoid showing off your skills at work, don't appear aggressive, threatening or intimidating. Act totally harmless and inert, but work with people above for your progress. Career growth rarely comes from good performance, its almost always because of interpersonal relationships.
I think it's ideal that some level of commiseration happens, so people can try to find ways to fix problems that can be fixed or accept that they can't. It really depends on the people, relationship, and culture. Some people aren't willing to do anything for anyone else. Some cultures discourage trying to fix anything.
People don’t like it when you sugarcoat or otherwise patronize them. If something is bullshit, it’s worth calling out.
Commiseration typically leads to feeling disempowered though and you need your reports to feel empowered for a team to function well.
Agreed. One of the earliest things you have to learn as a manager is that people also don't ask for what they want, they ask for what they think they want.
I had a direct report who said they wanted to know what was going on, so I told them regularly about the ups and downs. At the end of the year I got the feedback that I was providing unclear direction and being inconsistent - my direction was always the same, but it was obvious that even though they said they understood that I was telling them to stick to the roadmap we planned and checked in on, they were internalizing the week on week things we talked about.
I've since learned the difference of how much to share, and how to effectively say "I know that team X are talking about changing the Foo to Bar, but we're going to keep working with Foo for now". If I've done my job as a lead, the direct acknowledgement of the uncertainty and an instruction to stay the course should be the communication the team needs, and from a technical perspective hopefully our earlier choices will make it less hassle for us to switch from Foo to Bar if/when that decision actually happens.
Fast forward to the present day and we are in permanent layoff culture. The maverick facade from Big Tech was dropped long ago. Employees are graded on a curve and 5-10% of those regardless of their actual performance will be deemed substandard just to fit the curve. A good portion of those will end up on PIPs or just be laid off. But even those on PIPs are more likely than not to be working there 6 months later.
This is an inherently cutthroat environment. Any pretense of psychological safety has been abandoned in favor of short-term profit seeking. While this is sold as a way of weeding out low performers and cutting costs (despite record high profits that's somehow still necessary), it's really a method of suppressing labor costs.
But having experienced this kind of toxic environment, it doesn't select high-performers, it selects the people who are most liked by management. People who are neurodivergent suffer disproportionately (IME).
My point is that in general nobbody is your friend at work. Not your colleagues, not your manager and not HR> They are to varying degrees protecting their own asses and you will be shocked how quickly someone who is nice to you at work will throw you under the bus to protect themselves ot simply to get ahead.
In a desperate bid to cut and suppress labor costs, managemen thas ramped up the toxicity and further undermined and destroyed any social connections you may make at work. But they've also destroyed the psychological safety that allowed them to do great things. Stack-ranking employees for likability on a curve and OKRs are not what drives success. Those things destroy success.
You spend the better part of your waking hours at work. Treating your coworkers as human beings is a sine qua non for me. I've never worked in a place with strict hierarchies, and I've never not become friends with at least most of my managers and coworkers.
You don't gel as well with everyone, which is fine as long as it doesn't hinder professionalism and productivity. But working with people I view as competitors or adversaries? No thanks.
I think that makes a big difference. Bigger hierarchy means more communication problems and group think. Can I ask what sizes the organizations you worked at had? (in terms of number of people)
HR is definitely not your friend though
I was attempting to surface the irony of the particular example they gave, because HR is typically the arm of a business that embodies the adversarial relationship between employees and employers. Thus the example rings hollow.
Another fun, orthogonal substitution: instead of reading this from the manager/report perspective, try teacher/pupil or parent/pre-teen.
I was an inexperienced manager in my late 20s managing a team with a very odd member composition (2 folks with +50 y/o, 3 folks with less than 21 y/o, and 2 apprentices (between 16-18)) and I related with it, but from the part where they became my good acquaintances.
At that time, at the time that some of them had serious problems**, I usually did step in to cover their shoes until their problem was solved. I did it from the outside because I wanted to have things done, but internally I did know that they would work hard for the team when others needed to go.
I got a lot of personal issues along the way (e.g., middle managers wanting to fire me because of their problems, other managers telling me (rightly) that I was wrong, and so on) but we definitely were in the mix for the top teams, and eventually everyone of the team got promoted in the time span that I was manager until 1 year after I left.
** - In that time there were some things like a DBA that ended up in jail, our trainee that had miscarriages a couple of times, an SWE that got hijacked in Colombia, and one apprentice whose parents divorced and she cannot work with us due to the custody agreement between her parents.
You may commiserate with a team member when you both get made redundant, as a healthy example.
When a team of several engineers are all thrown under a bus by a PM, they may commiserate with each other about the workload they find themselves with, as a slightly less healthy (but common) example.
But when you, as a manager, commiserate with the team about the PM throwing you under the bus, you are doing your team and the organisation a disservice, in that you're creating an unhealthy us/them dynamic when doing so, and the other things the article suggests.
it always used to mean some kind of shared negativity though like many words the nuance and original meaning has somewhat drifted.
But I think you're right, he's saying employees are complaining and the boss is providing sympathy.
The author is essentially saying this: a manager shouldn’t join in complaining about the job/company/personal problems etc. with his/her subordinates, because it sets up false emotional relationship expectations.
I would consider it commiseration if one were to complain to their coworkers about an HR policy in the hopes of receiving sympathy or agreement about the problems with the policy.
But the article launches (literally the first sentence) into "As people become managers, it’s quite common for their team members to want to commiserate with them." as though it is just obvious that all managers have some sadness that their team members need to help them through, which is obviously nonsense.
So yes, it's unusual phrasing.
The insinuation that friends are for this kind of negativity breeding behavior is wrong, it's just as bad if your friends engage in it with you as if your manager does.
Is there a line? Sure. Don't shit on your company, but don't do it for your directs...do it for you, because that's just not a healthy way to manage frustration. However, learn to lead in a way that's authentic. Authenticity requires candor.
Many jobs are hard, and I don't think it is a rule that most workers in hard jobs are bad.
My take is multifold:
- Managing takes experience. In the software industry, the evolution has been such that there aren't enough experienced people to fill all the manager positions.
- Startups usually don't hire experience managers because they are deemed too expensive. They end up with inexperienced managers. If it's your first job, you never had a manager yourself, and you're suddenly managing a team, how can you be good?
- It is hard to evaluate the competences of a manager. As an engineer, you can talk with another engineer and get a sense of how good/experienced they are: just ask them to talk about technology. As a manager, it seems harder to evaluate. It's easy to manage a team in a highly functional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is good. It's hard to manage a team in a highly disfunctional environment, so you can't say for sure that the manager is bad.
- Managers are promoted from above. It's difficult to judge a manager without considering how their subordinates think about them. I have seen too many people climb the management ladder even though all of their subordinates absolutely hated them.
IMO it is appropriate for managers to work with subordinates to help them level up other members of the team. That’s pretty delicate and usually happens by first acknowledging that someone is falling behind privately.
I understand if your relative/friend/pet you grew up with dies, but if your gf/bf dumps you - keep this out of work. Request some time off and be done with it, more than that and you’re oversharing.
Complaining about organization - take the feedback and move it higher up, it’s not managers responsibility to solve all injustice in the world.
I don't see that as true. Your empathy always needs to be there, but your response is conditional on the situation. "I feel you, but..." and then offer a perspective that pushes the solution forward. Or even better, "I feel you, and..." to remove the defensive wall of your direct report.
I am blessed that I work in a really switched on team. We focus on keep the talent density high, and on open and transparent communication. Practically everyone in our 70 odd team is a killer, so I have not heard any word of complaint from my team members around other teams. But if I did, I definitely would try to fix it via the open and transparent communcation policy.
I highly recommend reading (or rereading) No rules rules..the culture at Netflix. That's the kind of culture that I strive for, and that I want to foster across the organizations that I work with.
> [Leaders] must be fair and they may be compassionate, but they cannot be addicted to being loved by everybody. The man who needs to be loved is an extortionist’s dream. That man will do anything to avoid face-to-face unpleasantness; he will sell his soul down the river for praise. He can be had.
[1] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1980/september/le...
It’s funny (or weird) seeing hot takes on HN like, actually you should seek meaning and friendships in your free time and not rely on your work providing it. Like what 80% of everyone knows already.
Of course at some point up the hierarchy the class interests definitely become opposed.
This idea is turning my world upside down, having avoided management roles my whole career yet ending up “managing” a small team of like minded experienced engineers despite actively avoiding the formal title. I put it in quotes because I don’t feel like I manage them in any way other than they technically report to me. I could tell them what to do but have only done so twice in 8 years. We chat once a week about whatever we feel like chatting about.
Please could you share any context or insight into this idea so I can understand more deeply?
The author seems to have an idea of what a manager is that does not fit the reality in 95% of the cases, in my estimation. The article also has a crude and arrogant view of people as employees, who are portrayed as second class to "managers". I really hope the author is nobody's manager...
If you need to call something out, do it as a team, making yourself accountable as well. That keeps trust intact and avoids finger-pointing. Thanks for sharing.
Slightly disagree. I’d rather explain that the other team is doing an opportunity cost calculation that your team may not have access to. Sugar coating does not remove frustration
My current thinking about established companies (flat early startup might be different):
In a superior position on the org chart, your people should know that you'll be capable, honest, trustworthy, and fair, and also that you'll look out for them in some ways, but also that it's often your job to be diplomatic, as part of helping the company work together well.
So, even if you secretly agree with a subordinate that you don't understand what the CEO is doing, or that an adjacent team keeps dropping the ball, you have to be diplomatic.
And hopefully the person already knows that, since literally saying "I have to be diplomatic on this" in the moment probably wouldn't come across right.
You can be informed by, and work with, that concern, and you can convey that you're taking their concerns seriously, but probably don't commiserate.
Maybe one way to think of it (just thought of this one): It's duty of the manager to be more diplomatic, so that subordinates can be more candid within the team. This is another way that a manager can be a bit like helpful insulation.
Having diplomacy as SOP can also help when it's not yet clear that the person is correct in an interpretation. It's still a concern to be looked into, but there's no expectation for you to commiserate.
Of course, if a subordinate is going through a difficult personal/family event, you can express genuine sympathy (while you're also being practically supportive) -- that's not commiserating.
Wow, hard disagree. For someone wanting to maintain a relationship, there's a teachable moment only a friend can give being gleefully run past. Loyalty isn't blind support.
"Bad therapists just let you rant. Good therapists let you vent, but they ask clarifying questions, and they sometimes push back. [...] You want to be a good therapist."
I wish it had a less clickbaity and more relevant title though. I would have shared it on LinkedIn, but that title makes it looks as the sort of passive aggressive content people post when holding a grudge.
A "friend", to me, is someone I can completely be myself around without having to worry too much about it [1]. With a coworker, in the back of my mind I am always remembering "I have to work with this person tomorrow, best not talk about that subject..." and have to bite my tongue a bit. I don't just go around spouting racial slurs or anything too crazy, but my coworkers are exposed to a "tombert-lite" all the same.
Also, if you work for startups and if you become best friends with all your coworkers, when the startup fails [2] then you can find yourself not only out of the job, but also hating a large percentage of your friends in the process.
Now, I've quit/been-fired-from jobs and kept in touch with former coworkers, and then I consider them friends, but I do try and draw boundaries for the people I'm actually working with.
[1] Within some degree of reason, obviously.
[2] Not all startups fail, but an awful lot of them do.
If I have a prior relationship with that person, then to some extent they've already seen "full tombert" so I don't have to worry as much, but I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't a part of me that worries a little even still.
I used to value a bit of commiseration as healthy validation, a little switch of perspective to acknowledge that we have to cope with imperfect circumstances that are beyond our power to fix. It gives people relief from exaggerated feelings of responsibility, and then you can switch perspective back to the question of what can I control, what can I make better for other people.
But over time I've worked with too many people who can't easily switch between the two perspectives. If they go too far into thinking about how the circumstances could and maybe should be better, they make a comfy little nest inside that mindset and never come back to taking responsibility for their own actions and their own effect on circumstances.
I don't want to sound like a stuffy out-of-touch authority figure in a movie with a cool teenage protagonist, and I'm aware that I probably do. I try not to be a dick about it. I don't try to stamp out complaining. I just laugh politely, acknowledge, and change the focus as quickly as possible back to what is in our power to accomplish.
A lot of times one of the things that is in our power is pointing out issues that transcend our team, educating and influencing other teams, etc. You'd think complaining would help with this, and it kind of does, because the things people love to complain about are very often the things that need to be addressed through engagement with leadership or with other teams. But here again, those same people who get demotivated by complaining, complaining also turns them into poisonous communicators. They aren't capable of doing a bit of discreet whining and moaning about product behind closed doors and then coming out and communicating in a constructive way with them.
Again, that's something I didn't start out my career believing. I thought it was normal to vent a little frustration about a product manager in strong language behind closed doors, and then with that done, turn to the task of figuring out a more gracious and constructive way of understanding their perspective and engaging with it to create a better outcome. But it seems like maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of people are capable of making the turn back from talking shit to getting shit done. The rest seem to have the attitude of, well, we figured out this other guy is the problem, right, so what are you looking at me for? When in fact none of us are perfect, and other teams might have equally valid complaints about them.
(I'm not a manager, just an IC, but somewhere along the way I got gray hair and I started worrying about this stuff.)
Interesting. My experience working inside big tech was thinking of managers as mostly losers who are neither technically strong but psycho enough to think they are better and can manage other engineers.
So I think of them as loosers who can't build a company from scratch but have parasitic tendencies to manage other people's money and time without having skin in the game.
Especially the ones who think they know better. And are active in LinkedIn.
Keep flaunting it, king.