Astonishing. Completely backwards. This article describes how to give feedback to your subordinates, not to your superiors. If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
> People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating.
You don't do it in public. There's no face to lose in private (you're a subordinate, face is only lost among peers and superiors).
It is, however, not really a good idea to be 100% blunt out of the gate. There's a dance to it. But in public, I'm there to make my manager look good, and in private I'll tell them exactly what I think. Once they're confident I'm there to be at their back, it's never gone wrong, even in highly disfunctional orgs (I'm a consultant and get brought in to play "doctor" with hopeless projects a lot).
Even if you do it in private, they may take it as a sign of a subordinate who has designs on their job. Or on toppling them at any rate. Insecurity is everywhere.
If your superior is managing up well, then it truly doesn’t matter if subordinates lose respect. Probably laying groundwork for new ones well in advance of that becoming a real issue for their status.
Yeah good luck with getting anything, ever, out of folks that feel butt-hurt due to their fragile emotions, in my experience women often go the extra mile to hold grudges, while sporting big smiles publicly.. That gate is closed for good, and you really have no idea what to expect - be it silent treatment or even subversion and backstabbing.
To summarize - each of us is pretty unique, and without going though it you can't know how words can affect other people, even those above you that should know better. But they didn't get to that elevated position via honed skill of listening calmly to their subordinates feedback, did they.
From my experience, you build that non-fluff boundaries in the first one or two meetings with a senior leader.
I’d advise against going in the first one throwing punches.
Go with actionable feedback and be honest about what it is and what is not something you can solve. From there, if you genuinely care about whatever you’re complaning, you are more likely to be taken seriously.
> I’d advise against going in the first one throwing punches.
I’d advise against going in any one throwing punches. Instead, give actionable, honest, factual feedback with the intent to legitimately help the other person.
Fair enough, while I agree, in real project life, this calm, honest, factual feedback isn’t always enough for senior management to prioritise your issue.
Sometimes you need to a bit more assertive and blunt so that you become the top of the agenda, that’s what I meant by “throwing punches”.
Perhaps it means a much more over the top attitude in your view? (Happy to be corrected here)
If I need an issue prioritized, I'd have a discussion with senior leadership until one of us was convinced of the other's viewpoint, or we understood why we can't agree. For example, if my issue is clearly higher priority than anything else, I should easily be able to demonstrate that to senior leadership, and vice-versa. If we can't agree for a specific reason, we can say "the data is too fuzzy to know either way" and try to minimize risk.
Not all organizations will work like this, but that's a dysfunction that will need to be corrected. In that case, you should do what works (and that will be different for everyone), my particular situation won't apply to your particular situation.
I don't know what godawful chain you are hitched to but I hope you can find a way off it.
High-performance managers realise they are there to enable the talent. You're Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. The job is to create the conditions for folks at the pointy end to be wildly successful.
One of the most defining characteristics of this attitude is the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself", a very fine sentiment with the only problem being that by induction it makes the CEO the dumbest person in the company.
But I digress. If I'm fucking up, then I hope to god my trusted lieutenants will tell me without any pussyfooting around. It's practically what I hired them for.
Can I suggest there is a difference between feedback and therapy
We are all human, we have biases and blindspots.
Your trusted lieutenants can come to you and tell you you forgot to do X and because doing X is something either within your personality comfort zone or just outside it, you can if reasonably adjusted take that on.
But there will be things you are not reasonably adjusted for, things that require you to make significant adjustments to your world view and personality - things that you need to make serious compromises on
Some people are so maladjusted they cannot compromise on stuff most of the world agrees on - generally we call them criminals. But this is a spectrum - bad managers usually have very poor matching between their personal problems and the needs of the role.
But even good managers reach a point that their instincts and their rational mind cannot take them past.
In short “everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence” is not a skills problem, but a character problem.
I don't know you, but based on what you're saying, I guess you're in a much different environment than I've ever been in. You're probably also more of a "type A" person than I am.
I've always worked in places that are essentially established businesses. People are mostly bureaucrats and lazy. I believe that's a large majority employers. If you honestly can't understand that that's how a lot of people work, then I think you live in a bubble.
I cannot disagree with your assertion that the majority of employment environments have a toxic pathology of hierarchical insecurities, and I've certainly worked within them.
Albeit, yes, with a flagrant disregard for authority (I hesitate to label myself "type A", it's such a reductive term) that worked best when in the second and third decades of my career I was generally engaged on a consulting basis as a fixer/troubleshooter.
So I would admit guilt to an accusation that I have placed myself inside my current bubble intentionally. It's a matter of psychological safety and self-respect. I wasn't kidding when I said I hope you can find a way off that chain, it's an outcome I'd wish on all my peers.
I agree with you in principle that's the correct attitude. However I don't think the comparison to the music industry is necessarily correct.
A lot of managers in tech got there because they are technically strong. We can argue about whether that's correct or not but I think that's typically the case. People who perform well as engineers are the ones who are given leadership opportunities. People who do not are not.
So first challenge is given you were maybe one of the smarter hires, of some smart people that tried to hire people smarter than themselves (let's assume), how do you hire people smarter than yourself? at scale?
Where we end up typically in successful tech companies is with some degree of a mix of trying to make "folks at the pointy end successful" and some degree of "telling the folks at the pointy end what to do". Usually managers and directors are very strong technically and quite sharp, though more distant from the actual work because they don't do it any more. The precise mix depends on culture and circumstances but it's almost never this ideal environment of servant leaders surrounded by immense talent and just facilitating that talent doing great things.
I've been in places that are very close to the "good" end of this spectrum and there's still going to be some pause in giving feedback to leadership that they've done something wrong. Maybe you have a great relationship with your lieutenants where they can be openly critical of you and you reinforce that. I think that's highly unusual in a social environment. It's a lot more likely there are certain things they won't share with you because they estimate the damage to the relationship is larger than the utility of being open.
EDIT: I misread your statement about hiring people smarter than yourself, so I think we agree there. The problem is still that if you're the smartest person there's a bit of tension between that and creating conditions for the people under you to be successful. Btw, I still think you should try and hire people smarter than yourself ;) it's just hard to impossible to scale that - as you point out.
I don't want to rebut anything you say, but I will add one observation.
> I think that's highly unusual in a social environment
Agreed, but in my experience of startups particularly, this becomes more commonplace with older founders. It can also form the basis of an high-performance enclave within otherwise ossified large companies/institutions; these tend to get dragged down by the mediocrity police after a few years, but in the meantime you can get some good stuff done.
Whether the music industry analogy is valid may be debatable, but I've had the privilege of seeing it first-hand, music was/is the family business, I grew up knocking around recording studios. So this mindset is engraved on my expectations of all talent-based professions, and I try to remember it whenever I fail to be humble.
The phrase “hire people smarter than yourself” is a platitude that is intended to foster an attitude, just a useful way of framing & thinking about people, mainly aimed at the manager, but has the byproduct of making ICs feel good about themselves. It’s not really a literal measurable specific requirement or goal. One way to see that nobody is taking it literally is that nobody is reporting IQ on their resume, and nobody is giving standardized IQ tests during job interviews. (And of course I mean statistically nobody, I’m not claiming that it’s never happened.) Often in hiring ‘smart’ doesn’t really mean smart anyway, it means wisdom, experience, attitude, skill, communication, knowledge, motivation, creativity, adaptability, friendliness, culture-fit, etc., there are many different ways someone can be ‘smarter’ than you on at least 1 axis of whatever ‘smart’ means, and it’s generally not hard to find them if we’re realistic about how smart we are on all axes.
I agree. And the insecurity that these managers feel makes them very poor leaders. They tend to be overly subservient to higher-ups and just pass all management decisions down the chain without too much thought. And they like to punish any disagreement (no matter how reasonable) from their subordinates. Insecurity is the opposite of a culture of trust. And where there is no trust, there is no real leadership.
I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part. The implication is that you’re in a situation where management is stubborn or even hostile to feedback.
Most organizations don’t practice “highly effective communication”. It’s often a nightmare riddled with politics and ego.
Unless you are the .1% of developer (and probably with a heaping helping of luck) you aren't going to end up working someplace that isn't terminally dysfunctional no matter how much you polish your resume.
I'd argue 99% percent of companies operate like this. No one likes blunt feedback--even in friendships and marriage. Good luck if you throw money and ego into the mix.
It would be wonderful if the world could accept blunt feedback. It is certainly easier to give and more in-line with what most technical people would prefer. However, we work with humans, and we have learned an awful lot about how humans respond to language, especially criticism. The advice here applies to giving feedback to any human, not just superiors. As you spend time working with humans, you learn, perhaps slowly that what you might consider "fluff" is really about helping make your point. Being direct doesn't always, or even usually, work as well.
Being too blunt raises defenses and completely wipes out the effectiveness of your feedback. Folks that are invested in outcomes make choices for good reason, and they've probably got a track record to back it up. You have to meet them where they are, and considering their communication styles and how they make decisions will improve the chances you're actually heard.
It's a fact of life that people shut down when approached with evidence that refutes their world view or choices. It doesn't matter if it's your boss or grandparents.
> It's a fact of life that people shut down when approached with evidence that refutes their world view or choices.
I don't really agree with you. This is a basic quality of skilled leadership. You want people refuting your worldview with evidence! It lets you correct course and make things better.
Only insecure people shut down like this in my experience.
There is some important piece of context there though - if leaders aren't capable of the emotional intelligence to process blunt feedback, they are bad leaders and there is no hope of change. Learning to recognise them and just leave them alone is one of those valuable life skills that most employees learn sooner or later. Some people are just not going to take feedback and if they end up in management that is that; there is nothing to do but enjoy the show as best you can.
In that situation fluffing the feedback will do nothing. It might take years of effort to get marginal improvements and it is more productive to focus on something that is ... well ... more productive.
There is a lot of truth in this, but especially when developers are semi-randomly promoted into leadership roles, they should be given enough time (and mentorship) to learn from their own mistakes. Some will learn very quickly (those with enough emotional intelligence), and some will learn nothing no matter how much time you give them. Being a good manager with formidable leadership skills is something you can only get through experience.
There is an off chance that management (I'm not using the word leadership here deliberately) is taking leadership coaching, that the coaching is good, and that the coach will actually intervene and bring about change. Small likelihood of course, but not zero.
At [company that purportedly highly values candor], I’ve seen multiple people get canned by VPs or directors they’ve criticized internally. Granted, these situations were cases where this was communicated either in a larger feedback meeting that was supposed to be a “safe” space for such feedback, or via other communications that were visible to more than just the person being criticized. These criticisms were definitely high up in the PG pyramid and critical of the direction / vision / execution, not of the person themselves. The people who were fired from this were high performers who weren’t otherwise on PIPs or anything like that. Leadership did the typical leadership dance of shifting blame, re-org, and carry on. It was sad and further eroded both trust and morale of others familiar with these situations.
I've seen this a lot, especially with junior folks getting on their high horse publicly about some direction or decision. Whenever it happens I make a point of putting a reminder in my calendar to check their corp Slack handle after three weeks to see if they're still employed. 9 out of 10 are deactivated when I check back.
Hold your tongue, there's no such thing as a safe space in any all hands or group-level meeting.
I suppose it depends on what type of “criticism” it is. Generally feedback is most valuable when it’s constructive not critical. If you just say “X is bad” that isn’t very useful no matter how you phrase it.
I would be surprised if respectful constructive criticism was met with firing but I suppose it does happen. Probably not the best to be working for those people in any case.
25% of my manager and above in big tech have acted in the ideal way you describe, and the rest have been back stabbing, childish, two faced, toxic, and many other negative traits, making any open honest or direct communication impossible
This. I had to get a little used to not fluffing around my feedback. One of our managers just asked me to give it to him straight, directly and 1-on-1 and we’d get along fine. So we did. I still am having trouble with how little, what I see as fact based, feedback is needed before the average person has had enough.
Example: I like to point out shitty work processes (one needs a hobby). Anything with a few loops and some rework goes for me to start my first time right story. People take offense. No stop, you are not the process. You didn’t design it, you merely took part because we asked you to. Now stop and consider whether you think it is shitty and if so, what can we do? Can you do it? Do you need help? When? Organizationally, it’s a good riff. For me, it’s strange to do and see it help. It feels like delivering snake oil. (I rationalize this as delivering Lean in thirty minutes.)
My communication plan is facts >> options >> opinions >> advice. This way I help people mentally separate “what is” from whatever opinion I’m holding. This works for both verbal and written communication. It’s a coping strategy for being outlier direct.
I would give up a huge amount of my paycheck for a manager who heard me bitch and whinge about every little flaw; told me I'd made them too angry to continue the conversation but we should pick it up in ~48 hours with a mutually agreeable plan coming back with stats and analysis for where my opinion was simply wrong; vs where it was right.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business. It might not be. It might also not be important to the business if subordinates leave b/c their feedback is disregarded. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where a leader could still succeed while not giving a crap about subordinate feedback. It depends on the goals and the dynamics of the business, the leader's experience, market conditions, labor environments, etc.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.
It’s even more important to give it bluntly if the feedback is irrelevant. That way you’ve wasted less time.
Me: “we aren’t giving enough guidance to new hires”
Leader: “it’s not a priority for us since we are freezing hiring”
Perfectly good interaction, where you didn’t waste time sneakily phrasing things you think you know better than the leader. And you learned some valuable info about the org priorities as a result.
If the feedback is irrelevant, you'll waste the least amount of time by not giving it at all. (I think that's slightly different from your scenario though, where you don't actually know if it's irrelevant.)
Depends on the org and how information travels. Knowing tricks like this are the superpowers of people who move up quickly in large orgs and make things happen. You can sometimes do fine without knowing this, and going through the "official" route of the direct feedback loop. If you can figure it out elsewhere though, it'll usually build more trust with your superiors.
> You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business.
That's for the superior to evaluate impartially, and if the feedback was not important, feed that back to the subordinate.
Are you suggesting that it is reasonable for superiors to shut down when faced with uninteresting feedback?
> You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.
I believe you skipped over the following part of my comment;
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
As a senior leader myself, that was my initial reaction. Then, I thought about myself and cohort and I would say, unfortunately, the advice in the article is required. There are challenges in feedback in both directions. E.g.the people who are best at receiving it are the ones who usually don't, either because they are strong in many other things than the feedback domain, or because they seem so self confident that people are intimidated. On the other hand, people who are not good at receiving feedback are also the ones who would be vindictive and their reactions may poison feedback as a practice. And also people may switch from one category to the other transiently, because of other pressures etc. In summary, in my own practice, while I am opinionated, I have never given negative feedback either to managers or subordinates. Not that they were all perfect, but I found it is usually up to me to work with the people and their strengths and weaknesses and by focusing on strengths I have not corrected any weakness, but have often made them irrelevant to me. Some may say this is a weakness for a leader, and I would agree but still focus on my other strengths.
Edit: an additional consideration as I am digesting my response. People are more open to discussing how to improve a process or a system rather than a person or even more so themselves. Feedback is sometimes personal, that's why things like post mortems, process reviews etc. can work miracles when we manage to keep them about the process or framework rather than the people who are assigned to them.
An additional slightly cynical point on feedback received as a subordinate (no matter how high up you most probably report to someone unless you are at the top). If someone gives you feedback about what you should do to get promoted/a raise etc , you are 90% not going to get those even if you heed to the feedback. These things happen for things you do, and the broader perception of yourself not on the basis of a checklist, and if they use a checklist against you, they don't really care about You. If someone mentors you, you will get it. Learn to read the difference between the two.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Sounds good on paper. Maybe true, oh 5 years ago. In this job market, polishing the resume is nice but you might have to deal with irrational superiors for a little longer. That's what the article is about.
> The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
It would all be nice and good if "subordinates" and "superiors" were some completely different, disjoint sets. Yesterday's insecure peers and your subordinates will tomorrow become your superiors. People who can - do, those who can't - manage. Their personalities and other qualities likely wouldn't change in the meantime. In a perfect world, everyone who is promoted to be anyone's superior will go through a strong leadership vetting process and they will take un-fluffed honest feedback from subordinates, without retribution. But I have yet to work for such an organization. Maybe you're luckier...
> Sounds good on paper. Maybe true, oh 5 years ago. In this job market, polishing the resume is nice but you might have to deal with irrational superiors for a little longer. That's what the article is about.
Wouldn't it be better to just not provide feedback and coast along if you're in this position?
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
Maybe, but the title is "without getting fired" not "without being wrong damnit!". Unless you have a significant number of shares in the company you should care about your own employment and success over the success of the whatever function this person has oversight of.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
>The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
This is the key assertion underlying your comment, yet you just wave it off by referring to unnamed "[handbooks] on highly effective communication in organizations".
My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger if you simply specified these unnamed handbooks, and summarized their argument, as opposed to fulminating + offering a handwavey argument-from-authority.
(Curious to see how you'll take this no-fluff feedback. Let's see if you're management material by your own standards.)
EDIT -- here is a LinkedIn post by a lady who wrote a book on workplace communication called Radical Candor. Her post recommends plenty of fluff for the boss, and to be frank, I think she makes some pretty good points: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kimm4_how-can-you-practice-sa...
I'm always curious when comment responders glom on to the least important part of a comment and dissect it to no end. I took "is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations." as essentially "the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point." It did not warrant a "SOURCES??!!" response IMO because it wasn't saying anything that was uniquely attributable.
The claim didn't ring true to me, based on what I've read about the topic in the past, or based on my personal thoughts and experiences. So I wanted a source. It should be easy to provide a source, if sources are as plentiful as lijok says.
>the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point.
Sounds very nice, but empirically humans often struggle with frank feedback. I think that goes for both subordinates and superiors, for different reasons.
I would argue it can be worthwhile to spend an additional 25% time to make it clear that it's nothing personal, to avoid risking a deterioration of your relationship.
Obviously, it's good to have friendly relations with your coworkers, including your boss.
If you have a high-trust relationship with your boss where there's no risk of deterioration, and you know your boss likes it when you speak your mind -- more power to you. Be direct and to the point.
I agree, I think there was a Buddhist analysis of conversation, right speech, which I find useful as a guide to giving and receiving information: Is it well intentioned? Is it kind? Is it timely? Is it beneficial? Is it true?
I suppose that if you can craft feedback with this criteria in mind it’ll have a high chance of going over well.
> My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger if you simply specified these unnamed handbooks, and summarized their argument, as opposed to fulminating + offering a handwavey argument-from-authority.
I know.
That post you linked to is great. I especially found insightful the part where she said "If your boss says no, let it drop and polish up your résumé! "
Are you replying to your superior? He didn't say always no fluff, just that as a superior you should be able to handle it. That actually is the key assertion, the power imbalance direction.
None of the books identified by Perplexity.AI appear to endorse lijok's claim. Of course, it could be a confabulation -- this is just a quick sanity check, to see if the claim is as manifestly true as lijok seems to think.
(Putting this in a separate comment so people can downvote separately if they want. If people don't like this sort of AI sanity check on HN, that's fine. Thought it was worth trying as an experiment, though.)
Scroll down to the 2nd question: "What advice do these books offer to a subordinate who wants to give feedback to their manager? What's their reasoning for the advice?"
LLM(and LLM+) afaik, even Perplexity, do not do textual analysis. They do not “know” what is in the book, they will only try to predict how someone else would answer your question based on data in the training set. If there are not many similar questions asked and answered accurately, the results will be poor.
more like an insanity check. Did you ask the AI multiple times? usually if I ask a yes or no question and simply repeat the prompt a few times the model will tell me yes, no, and maybe, for any question.
>How can you practice safe Radical Candor with your boss?
>...
>Start by asking for feedback before you give it. You want to make sure you understand the you're boss's perspective before you start dishing out praise or criticism.
>...
>Tell your boss what you appreciate about them. This is not "kissing up." It's praise, which is an even more important part of Radical Candor than criticism.
>...
>Say something like, “Would it be helpful if I told you what I thought of X?”
>...
>If your boss says yes, start with something pretty small and benign and gauge how they react...
That’s nice in theory. In practice, the likelihood of you working for someone who’s unable to process the truth and will shoot the messenger is very high
I don’t know if it’s “very high”. It can happen but on average I think successful people tend to be more reasonable and intelligent than average (not always obviously).
My limited corporate experience is that you fluff feedback to the less effective leaders so that you can still influence them. The more effective leaders you talk to them directly and team up with them to accomplish great things together. It is a matter of different strategies.
If you've honestly never seen the types of leaders envisioned in this article you are very lucky indeed.
For a large majority of supervisors, if you give them carefully-worded, polite, respectful, private, accurate, truthful, ego-preserving feedback about something they're doing wrong, their response will range between "immediate firing" and "hold a grudge against you, fire you as soon as they can find a replacement". There is nothing that makes people as angry as accurately pointing out their flaws.
The way around this is in essence to get the leader to think it was their idea to make a change, which is possible in some cases but not in others.
It’s surprising to me that such dysfunctional orgs exist where a single person can just fire someone immediately over some feedback. How have they even grown to be a business with that attitude?
But sure, you do need to adapt your strategy for the environment you exist in. That’s just common sense.
The org has to be small for the firing to be immediate, but I have seen a "top of stack rank to unpassable PIP" be caused by a single conversation... and that's even in companies most of this forum would consider top performing. I would argue that trying to figure out the fragility of your management chain's ego is a key part of a successful career, even if what we are going to do with the news is to choose to change jobs.
> The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
Rather than fluff it up, just make it explicit whichever you are doing.
If you actually like their work and are making an actionable suggestion, just say that, and don't forget to praise them for the work that you like. Far too often I see managers only give the suggestion and then it ends up looking like a threat.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
The reason you do fluff feedback to your superiors is that you're on an H1B visa, are at risk of getting deported from the country and having to find a new home for your partner and new school for your kids (possibly in an unfamiliar language and environment for them), just for upsetting one superior.
The reality is most people in large companies do not care about "highly effective communication". They are just trying to survive and not get deported. Once we can get rid of this stupid 60 day rule and insane housing and child-raising costs maybe people will start caring about their work. The most basic of Maslow's needs are not being met, hence the fluffing up to the authorities (bosses) who are in control of your livelihood.
Well yes, it’s a higher variance approach. If you can’t afford to look for a new job then by all means keep your head down and avoid all controversy. I would do the same in that situation. That doesn’t apply to everyone however, so for those people it would make sense to try to make things better and potentially advance their careers.
If most people in your company are on s, your management is probably breaking the laws and is not the sort of person who appreciates honest communication.
I agree strongly - if I worked at an organisation where the linked article was the 'necessary' way of communicating I would look for a job at a less dysfunctional company. The context of the article seems to be a workplace with a sense of hierarchy that is inimical to honesty if it threatens insecure managers' egos or social standing.
You must be very lucky. The majority of places where I worked was headed by people with fragile egos that you had to slowly guide to the right conclusion without the presence of an audience.
If you told them something that could be interpreted as a criticism of a decision in front of others they would in principle not accept it and play to the audience. If you just told them a fact thst they disliked they would argue against it, I had a superior argue against fundamental laws of physics bscause he disliked the conclusion that followed from that lae being true.
Luckily I am a very diplomatic person and have no issues with that — but apparently things within organizations aren't as they should be.
I think you may be making assumption: that the feedback you are trying to give is clear, articulate, and constructive. When speaking to someone significantly more senior than you it’s entire possible that your feedback may not be.
And that is really the point of the post. Here is advice on how to make sure your point is clear, articulate, and constructive.
As someone becomes more senior 2 things happen:
1. They acquire more authority
2. They have more demands on their time.
In these situations, you need to work to make sure you are communicating what you intended to communicate. That requires effort.
I wouldn’t view this advice as “how to deal with fragile egos”, but instead would view it as “how to make sure you are not misunderstood when having critical conversations with high stakes”.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
You're arguing based on how you think the world should be instead of how the world actually is.
There a lot more subtlety to this than you seem to indicate.
I’d never give negative feedback to an exec (+2 levels above me) in a large meeting. I’d wait for a more private setting.
With my immediate boss (director) I’d provide feedback in a small “managers only” group if I thought there was something to debate as a group, but not an open team meeting.
But your comments about subordinates is true. Generally try to keep feedback positive/constructive. And time it so they don’t feel attacked.
Only do this IF you think management is well adjusted human being that is not ego driven. I leave it to reader to decide exactly how much of management falls into that bin.
If management is not, they will know that you are a threat to them and work to undermine you and get you removed. If you provide feedback publically they can less afford the reputational hit (if you're correct in your publically aired assessments).
In either case you must play nice with your coworkers and subordinates.
Fair point. “More private” not 1-on-1. I’d probably have my manager in that conversation (and quite possibly run my thoughts by them before offering them to the exec).
I'm not a fan of a lot of the examples here for feedback up or down.
> “We may need to give even more guidance to new hires.”
Up or down, "we may" and "even more" are weasel words that weaken what you're saying. It's trivial for someone to interpret that as "they think maybe we could do more, but they seem to also see that we do a good amount already."
> “I used to struggle with this, and when I tried X, it really helped.”
This one I think is good for managing down; bad for managing up. It's less weasel-y but it risks coming off very aggressive - "I already figured this out, what is wrong with you?"
> “The team made amazing progress when we all focused on the website update last month. It might help to have one or two clear priorities for the team this month that everyone can rally behind.”
You have a great example, "it might help" is again weakening your POV compared to something more like a direct "what are the top priorities this month that we can all rally around?"
> “When we were able to dedicate that first week to training Steve, he got up to speed pretty quickly. The bit of upfront time seemed to have paid off, and taking a similar training approach for our next hire could help them ramp up just as fast. What do you think?”
Here we've taken a lot of words to state the obvious, which IMO both runs the risk of losing the urgency in the verbosity and coming off as pandering and over-explaining the obvious.
I think "what are your thoughts on" and "one approach might be" are better in both up-and-down directions as long as associated with a clear specific "here is something I noticed that I think is sub-optimal" situation.
Exactly this. Somewhat an issue here though, that this is essentially a matter of a person's culture. What you've said is most likely true for WEIRD (acronym) people, but for other cultures where retailiation is quite possible, one either have to dance that silly dances, or indeed polish their CV.
You are not entirely wrong, but I think you're underestimating the value of respecting human emotion. If people are leaving the team or it is missing deadlines, angering customers, making more work for other teams etc., your manager doesn't need your blunt feedback about performance and sustainability.
I had much the same reaction. To put it diplomatically, the article's advice is all about diplomacy.
Much of their examples are a kind of diplomacy that you might use with a somewhat hostile, stupid, and/or petty person. Not in an environment of trust and respect.
Or with an enterprise customer, where "business politeness" is expected, trying to gain advantage is expected, and no one expects you to be very honest.
(Exception: In some cultures, it might be outright rude and mutually awkward to ever say anything critical-sounding upwards, or to offend someone by not going through the politeness motions, which would just be disrespectful. The article seems to be coming from some kind of environment or social expectations like that. I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about, say, a US tech business environment that at least thinks it values speaking up with honest assessments.)
Ideally, management welcomes straight talk, and will do the right thing with it.
For example, if you've not been given reason to think the person above you is dishonest or unreasonable, and they haven't been given reason to think that about you, but you don't yet know them well, here's an example:
"The team is having some serious difficulty. Is now a good time to talk very candidly and constructively about that? ... Two things. First, I think that people are feeling that they don't have a good understanding of what the goals are, and how they're supposed to be prioritizing, on a daily basis. The other thing that seems to be bothering people is that onboarding is rough, and people immediately feel like they're not doing well, and then they aren't getting out of that feeling."
Note that this might sound a bit like some of the diplomatic framing of the article, in that it's not accusatory, but that's not what I'm doing. Some examples in the article attribute problems to the manager, and then use diplomacy, for cultural politeness, and/or to circumvent some pettiness they expect.
By contrast, in this example, I'm instead respecting the manager as someone who will take the information constructively. I'm also not presuming to attribute blame for the problems, since I don't have all the information about the situation, including not knowing everything the manager has been doing and why.
Yes, many "superiors" would be better replaced by AI because they would be better able to process accurate feedback dispationately.
Where have you worked my dude that you have this perspective? After a long and storied career I can safely say you must have a narrow experience and there is nearly endless literature about the need to manage up.
Or maybe you're a bully boss yourself and it's just an empathy disconnect.
Or maybe you've only worked in relatively large corporations? Idk, the thick skinned executive isn't a trope and it isn't a trope for a reason.
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Never a truer word said than this. It's incredibly naive to think that any unfiltered feedback upwards to senior management will be welcomed. In reality, no matter how accurate the feedback may be it will be regarded at best as useless, and at worst as a direct threat to leadership requiring a response. This response may come in the form of a re-org, team move or headcount reduction.
While totally disingenuous, your best strategy is to simply tow the corporate line while looking for a new job.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Yeah, I'm not going to change a job just because one of my superiors is insecure (and the other things are good). This all-or-nothing mentality is just thought-stopping.
In my 13 years of experience, I would say it's never worth giving feedback to your manager. Either they are good and it's useless, or they are not and they won't learn from you.
I have come to a simple rule: if the manager is good, there is no problem. If the manager sucks (often that's because they lack experience, but it's all the same), just lie to them in order to preserve yourself. No need to have empathy for them: there is no karma out there. Bad managers usually have no problem climbing the ladder, even if it means making your life miserable. Work for you, not them.
Largely agree, 19 years here. Good managers and bad managers alike have weaknesses that are largely in-built personality traits. Telling them won't change how they've spent decades behaving.
The two worst managers I had clearly had anger management issues and some sort of inferiority complex, theres no feedback to fix that.
Try to stick with good managers as long as you can, especially if their weaknesses that don't bother you too much, understand where it's coming from, and try not to take it personally.
The 3 examples at the top of the article - unclear guidance, unable to set priorities, and not training new hires .. these are good benign issues that I've seen repeatedly from good managers.
You can remind them in a friendly tone why things are happening -(as they raise yet another low importance high urgency task) "if we keep switching to these urgent but less important tasks, the long-term important things (give examples) you are unhappy with the pace of will continue to be slow". The best outcome tends to be a 20% reduction in the undesired behavior, over many months. It doesn't go away or get unlearned.
The trick is to get into a company where the mission is sound, the direction makes sense, and your manager is good (i.e. protects you from above, and makes sure shit gets done in a timely and orderly fashion).
Then, help your manager out. Everyone has their flaws, bad situations etc. Be a true team member and help your manager out on those rare occasions where they really need it.
I disagree. Superiors are people too, and they make mistakes. I've had subordinates give me feedback (which I followed), and I've given feedback to superiors (which they've followed). Both ways were extremely positive experiences and everyone involved was happier for it.
What kind of feedback was it? My guess is that those were pretty minor things that slightly improved your life. But the fact that it worked hints towards the fact that the managers were already competent, so the reports were already in a pretty good situation. No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
The most recent instance, a few days ago, my feedback to the CTO was that, while the org restructuring he proposed was a good idea in principle, the way he did it was terrible, and that he ignored and disrespected his highest performers. I said he hogs all the growth for himself and doesn't let any of his reports grow into more responsibilities, and he's showing that he doesn't respect the people who are integral in the company's functioning. I also told him that there are people who do a ton of work to correct others' mistakes and don't get any credit or recognition for it, and he failed to recognize those.
It kind of made him sad, which wasn't great because he's a nice guy and a competent CTO, but his latest move was catastrophic and he needed to hear it.
> No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
I mostly agree with the other commenters here, giving feedback upwards is easier and you don't need to sugarcoat it as much, because you can't fire the person above so they aren't going to be insecure about your feedback. Then again, they are people, and giving constructive feedback gently is better than giving it harshly, so I can't say the article is entirely unnecessary. Maybe partly.
I've told the CTO that he needs to push the CEO for some specific things I've needed, that he needs to be more assertive with certain issues, that he shouldn't talk to the teams I'm running because he confuses them, and many other instances like that. He's followed feedback every time I gave it, usually immediately.
I try to do the same when my reports give me feedback, and they've also been satisfied with it. Most recently, I was told I shouldn't abstract things too quickly, which was good advice, and following it has gotten good results.
"Don't bite the hand which feeds you" is a common phrase for what you described.
In my experience (20yr) good managers don't need any feedback. They were good because of clear communication as to what both parties expected of each other. Bad managers rarely listen to feedback and few make changes.
At my current role I'm thankful for the high level of autonomy received and being shielded from anything not relevant to my primary tasks.
I'm constantly asked to do "side quests" for others due to being a subject matter expert in several things (relative to my colleagues).
Every request gets the same answer - if my line manager agrees to it then I shall help - provided it does not get in the way of my primary tasks.
IMHO unless you own the company, your number one customer should always be your line manager.
There is a difference between treating someone as a human and bullshitting your manager though. I’m painfully blunt to the point where the management staff had to spend 3 hours in a crisis meeting discussing whether to fire me an another developer over our opinions given on a department meeting. Which to be fair was the wrong place to throw a couple of managers under the bus for something we’d been telling them for months, but hey. Anyway we didn’t get fired and nothing changed either. I stopped stressing about it after I had spoken my piece though so it worked rather well for me. Less so for the company, but it’s not like the two of us were the only ones management wouldn’t listen to.
So I like it when I can be frank with managers. I think I’m also notoriously hard to manage because one of my character flaws is that I don’t respect authorities. I’m not stupid though. I’ll absolutely bullshit managers in situations where there isn’t really a “win” to be achieved. Obviously this will mainly happen with bad managers, but there will always be great managers who won’t like, understand or have a good connection with you.
I think this is an example of a different issue. It sounds like your managers listened to your feedback often and even let high profile disruptions slide.
In general I think honesty is a good policy and management should be receptive to hearing out problems and possible solutions but that's not the same thing as implementing all feedback.
Maybe you're right or maybe your pet peeve just isn't a priority or can't be done for countless reasons. I'm not saying you did this but something I've seen often is employees confusing being heard with taking the advice.
As professionals I think it's our job to give advice and respect management's decision to take it or not. That's it I also think it's management's job to explain the reasoning.
I mean, this is one example which fits the discussion. Also one that I cherrypicked because I was actually right. I’ve had plenty of managers who were good at listening, however, I think most have been great. I have also worked management a few years myself and taken education in that direction before figuring out it wasn’t for me, so I certainly understand the financial and political parts of management and that you as an employee never have the full picture.
That being said, I have also had managers that I’ve played board games with on our free time who I haven’t actually given my opinion on certain issues with because they weren’t very good at taking that advice. Sometimes I’ve also not done it because I knew managers of my manager wouldn’t take it well if it made I up the chain. I view this more as an issue between me and the organisation I work for. If I’m not invested I’m not going to help it beyond what they pay me to do because it rarely comes back to me in a positive way.
There are many aspect to it. I’ve also had a manager who was a total waste of space as a manager, only caring about the “good story” whether it was true or not to push their own career. Who was also rather cold in regards to management employee duties since they really didn’t like the negative sides of it. Who was then the warmest nicest person in their personal life.
So it’s a very complex situation as you pointed out, but it’s also one where it’s perfectly reasonable to not try to lead upwards if you don’t want the hassle. At least in my opinion.
I feel like you took only half of my point. If the manager is good, then there is no reason to bullshit them. But believing that a bad manager will suddenly become good because you as a report taught them with a few carefully-crafted politically-correct statements sounds extremely naive to me.
Let me give an example: to a good manager, you could say "I'm under a lot of pressure because I have two many urgent things on my plate" and they should try to improve your life by maybe de-prioritizing some of them. In a way you gave feedback "it's not going well for me", but you did not try to guide your manager in their role. So that's not the kind of feedback the featured article talks about.
Now a bad manager will maybe be nice and say "I understand, I really appreciate the late nights and weekends you spend getting closer and closer to a burnout, you are a really valuable employee to me", but that's completely useless. Trying to tell them "you know, in a previous job I had a manager who in these situations would try to de-prioritize stuff so that I could live normally" is completely useless. If they aren't doing it yet, it means that they should not be your manager in the first place. Best case they say "thank you for the feedback, I appreciate that you feel comfortable speaking up" and don't change anything, worst case they get pissed because you "overstepped" (they are the manager, they know they know better, remember?).
There is no world where they say "you're right, I sucked until today, but from tomorrow on I will magically know how to be a good manager".
Crazily oversimplified view of people. Just one thing you’ve missed: in addition to the axis of good/bad there’s an axis of experienced/inexperienced. Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
Then proceeds to add one axis, getting the total up to 2! :-)
> Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
If they are good and inexperienced, I don't think they need to be taught that if they don't set priorities, they should not be disappointed when they realise that... no priorities have been set. So they are still good.
If they are bad "because they are inexperienced", then they are still bad. They should not be a manager. They can acquire experience without being a manager though, e.g. by having a manager in the first place.
Yes and: Churn moots the entire notion. That whole storming -> forming -> norming -> performing team maturity model stuff. Have a bad boss? No worries; wait 3 months and you'll have a new boss. Thereby resetting the team(s) and relationship(s) back to storming.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Best feedback I've ever gotten was from peers (other bosses). And that was only after years of working together. Sadly, that was a long time ago. I'd kick a puppy to work on a stable, durable team again.
wow that's quite black or white. really good managers should want your feedback. even if there are no obvious problems, groups can always be better. and don't forget sometimes large problems start small.
This was one of the most exhausting aspects of working for a US company, especially as an H1B. Simply: just don't say anything, it wasn't worth it.
I'm from cultures where we bluntly call a spade a spade and pride ourselves on disdain for hierarchy. There's far less fear in raising concerns generally to anyone, but it's quite possibly because of the far better employment laws.
It's not just due to an employee being H1B. It's that 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
I don't even feel like I'm working in the US when I'm working for any tech company these days. If I'm at ads for FB, I may as well be in Beijing. Some others, I may as well be in Mumbai.
It would be nice to work with Americans/westerners for once and actually be able to speak up about something without getting fired.
I don't agree with OP. I'm American and have mostly worked for American companies and have rarely had issues with giving honest, often difficult, feedback to superiors.
But
> 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
is sadly spot on. Even when the org is very receptive to feedback, one manager in the chain who possesses a cultural belief in absolute authority is enough to break the feedback chain and lead to an organizational abscess of festering dysfunction.
It becomes even worse when your org's management has been taken over by a single cultural group and there is no one to turn to and your only option is to wait for the org to implode and be restructured from above.
This happens with any sort of foreign investments into any other country that has different sets of values. Even now the locals in my country are complaining about neo-colonialism and india/china-only perspectives in the companies they work for. Protectionist reactions are real and shape politics.
In my experience, Americans are much more likely to see criticism as a threat or an insult than in most European business cultures, where blunt feedback is common. I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face. It’s absurd, and it destroys teams.
> I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face.
I’ve been put into the “practitioner of the dark arts” bucket twice when I predicted with detail and accuracy why certain large projects would fail.
The folks in charge were offended when I presented my analysis, and they were just afraid of me after my predictions came true.
When I had reasonable certainty of my next gig being lined up, I even put the question to leaders. "If I tell you why this project is destined to failure now in Q1 vs being quiet and playing along til end of year, will I be rewarded or punished any differently then?".
The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended.
The gap is much bigger between Americans and Chinese/Indian than it is between American and European.
I’m not just talking about public forums. Saying anything to your superior (perceived superior or otherwise) would result in disciplinary action nearly 100% of the time. It is not even about blunt vs tactful feedback. It’s about any feedback. You do exactly what you’re told and you shut the fuck up.
I found that out the hard way first time I worked in a company with European managers and majority Indian ICs. Acting European got me PIPed and then fired so damned fast for failure to shut up and do the needful.
I don’t think H1Bism is even primarily about depressing IC wages in the west, it’s about middle managers being so burdened with pointless make-work from above that they just don’t have time to lead. They need people who don’t need to be led even if it costs in terms of quality and efficiency.
Interesting. I used to work mainly with european developers (dutch, french, germans, russians, spaniards, polish, etc.) and I always could speak my mind, and others would do so. No BS, no avoiding direct confrontation. But more recently I have been working with ex-faang american developers and I don’t like it. It’s not that they are like indians and the like, but definitely not as direct and straightforward as europeans.
I feel like Americans are all over the place. The top echelons of business in the US are very blunt and direct. The lower levels tend to be very indirect with lots of toxic positivity. I think this works out for capitalism and exactly fits the Gervais Principle.
Brits are even worse than Americans at all levels (hence, the largely incompetent government and the fact most businesses are poorly run - it's literally The Thick of It at all levels).
Indian/Asians are the absolute worst in terms of directness, these are all very strict hierarchies of business that only succeed if the top person is a genius, since they will never be challenged by anyone.
Europeans definitely are most direct of all, so they don't put up with wage slavery, so business leaders can't maximize their extraction of value from labour, but they tend to have better quality of life all around :).
As a Brit, I agree with your comments. I've had to overcome a lot of my own culture to be an effective leader, and even then I don't always do a good job.
In my ~30 year career in the US, as a local, I have seen constant change. The FAANGs are even an amplified version of this. So when someone draws a comparison I always wonder if they are comparing contemporaries or rather an older experience versus a newer one, which is confounded by these temporal shifts.
I think there are a few significant (first-order) factors in the evolving US tech culture.
One is the often discussed age bias and growth rate, where these organizations are constantly diluting with incoming college grads and leaking their institutional knowledge and culture through low retention rates. It's not just H1B workers but all these new local hires who are "colonizing" the old tech world.
The second is the way FAANGs have focused on general consumer markets, advertising, and pop culture. To my eye, other markets used to be more influential. These other tech problems and investments remain, but the new media gold rush has seized the attention for many years. Consumer tech has been merging with media in general, and I think the culture inherently shifts in the same way.
The third factor is a bit recursive. The adoption of social media in the general population affects the way that culture evolves. This disproportionately influences young people, and a subset become the next wave of employees mentioned in the first point. But this is also why I wonder if these changes are more global, as my impression is that social media has accelerated the way regional cultural differences are eroding with more frequent and constant cross contact.
I've had a pretty similar experience in big tech. Some cultures do really seem to struggle with feedback (both giving and receiving). It can be a very painful work environment as a result - given I'm an incredibly direct person.
The best work culture I had was in a dutch firm. People just straight up called bullshit out all the time, and it got fixed fast. So refreshing. I've never been able to find another workplace like that.
Reasonable observations on office behaviour are being processed into glib stereotypes on culture. Employees routinely show discontent in India, (just one instance https://www.reuters.com/world/india/workers-apple-supplier-f...). So much so, that labour disputes are considered a major obstacle to corporate investment. Like Europe, India has labour laws which make people hard to fire.
There are other factors involved - if a H1B employee, whose job security is tied to the employer risks taking a 10x salary cut or more by going back home, then a fear for job security leading to such behaviour is a given.
Inside AWS felt like hundreds (thousands?) of Indians who have terrible jobs but don't do anything about it. Now that I'm out I can't believe what I put up with.
Perhaps you could present yourself as worthy through your work, rather than bemoaning that others as worthy were more conducive to being treasured employees?
It's not just H1-Bs from those cultures, either. I'll give everybody a fair shot but if your cultural mores are extreme deference to authority I'd like to be far away from you when doing anything serious. I'd argue that a certain level of distrust of authority is not only good but inherently American. And no, I'm not saying "Americans take criticism well."
I don't like all the stereotypes people throw around, but among those stereotypes is that California tech bros are pathological delusional wannabe-hippie optimists who blow smoke and sunshine at everyone.
This is why sometimes, "just don’t say anything" becomes the survival tactic - especially when the risk of speaking up feels like it outweighs any potential benefit
Captain Miller: "I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, 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."
Private Reiben: "I'm sorry, sir, but uh... let's say you weren't a captain, or maybe I was a major. What would you say then?"
Captain Miller: Well, in that case... I'd say, "This is an excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective, sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover... I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and am willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men - especially you, Reiben - to ease her suffering."
No, that is exactly how you inform a superior officer that you believe the mission is a waste of time, effort, equipment, and manpower, and will probably get everyone killed for next-to-no benefit.
I interpreted it to mean that he was still Captain and part of his job was to keep up morale and model positive attitude. Even hypothetically, he was not going to gripe to his troops, and as far as they are concerned, he believes it is a worthy mission. He was jokingly modeling the proper, positive attitude. All this was understood by his men.
In aviation this is what Crew Resource Management is about, and in particular, how to make sure the monitoring pilot, who may be the least experienced one, can effectively supervise and review the actions of the other. Many crashes were the result of copilots' fear of speaking up.
Business life could learn from this. The person in charge is not a king, they're simply the person tasked with making decisions. There is nothing scandalous in having another person evaluate those decisions against a set of principles or common sense, and speaking up when something doesn't feel right.
That story in Gladwell about the (IIRC) Korean Air having to switch cockpit languages to English in order to escape the intrinsic layers of deference built into the language was hardcore. They were going to get delisted in Canada if they didn't do it.
Yeah, better than crashing into a mountain. That cockpit voice recording was really chilling. Gladwell gets a lot of flack, but he's told some interesting stories.
And your further point about businesses needing it too should be expanded to organizations of all kinds. This is a human problem, which means it's an ego problem, on both sides.
He recently did a mea culpa about the tipping point stuff. Glad he did.
I really, really disliked Gladwell. And yet Pushkin (his podcast network) carries some of the best stuff ever (Jill Lepore). And I found I was agreeing with a lot of Gladwell's (and Michael Lewis') overall "punching up" worldview. So I was having trouble reconciliing my two views of him.
As we've seen with Lewis' recent hagiography for that crypto freak: people are just people, they make mistakes, everyone's got blind spots, we don't have to agree on everything to learn from each other.
I haven't followed stories about him, but I doubt that all or even most of his stories were made up. I mean, the Korean Air (IIRC) one can't have been fudged, right?
Even kings (nominally) have advisors and some level of contact with the people they rule over; they aren't expected to just make decisions from an empty room with exactly no room for being swayed. In theory, a good king is like that. A bad king, and similarly a bad business leader, shouldn't be used as exemplars though.
It’s fascinating how resistant pretty much every industry is to taking lessons from aviation, considering how much empirical evidence there is compared to almost every other management paradigm, which basically amounts to “just trust me bro”.
It particularly shocked me working in shipping where the lessons can be implemented pretty much without modification since it’s all the same work except they move in 2 rather than 3 dimensions.
The difference is how measurable the consequences are. In aviation when there's a screw up people die right then and there. People dying is a very hard to game metric, and it provides a very strong incentive.
The consequences of bad management in a software project on the other hand are much more nebulous. And nobody died as a direct consequence of some manager being a jerk… oh wait, I'm sure some did (committed suicide or gone postal), but it's easy to just blame the worker instead of the working place.
It’s not that. MV Sewol killed 304, many of them schoolchildren. The captain was put away for life, and rightfully so, but it’s not an incentive to do much else.
For some reason only air crashes seem to make any lasting impressions.
Most of those examples (not giving enough direction, not training new hires enough, not being clear enough on priorities) are probably not going to be surprises for the person, and if you give feedback that shows you want someone to behave differently without having given some thought about why they aren't already then your feedback talks more about your own lack of experience and empathy than anything else.
To give good feedback to anyone you need to understand something about the pressures and challenges that they are facing. And remember that everything is a trade off. For example, perhaps they're incredibly busy, and would like to spend more time with new hires, but are struggling to find time because they aren't getting enough blocks of concentration time to work out clear priorities and they have been told they need to give their trusted colleague more opportunities to grow so they delegated it to someone.
Most likely, if you think something is a problem then they do too. They don't need to be told that or criticised for it, they need help solving the problem that causes the problem.
Imagine the difference between "I want to give you feedback that you aren't spending enough time with new hires" vs "I know you've been wanting to spend more time with the new hires, why don't you take them for lunch and send me to your status meeting over Tuesday lunch time this week."
As I started doing more leadership, I became aware that a lot of the things I might previously have cited as predictable examples of leadership incompetence causing problems were not surprises to leadership. They knew that this course of action would cause problems. The reason that they went ahead anyway was because they believed that the problems caused by the other courses of action available to them would be worse.
Of course, there are situations this advice does not apply, maybe the leader genuinely is clueless or evil or mistaken about the severity of a problem, but a good leader when presented with a problem elsewhere needs to start from a position of respect and learning and if you want to give advice to a leader you should start by trying to model good leadership yourself.
> Imagine the difference between "I want to give you feedback that you aren't spending enough time with new hires" vs "I know you've been wanting to spend more time with the new hires, why don't you take them for lunch and send me to your status meeting over Tuesday lunch time this week."
This is the proper answer. Ultimately, feedback should be about changing something. My experience is that most people are neither good at giving or receiving feedback, and that includes myself. There are more effective ways to change things.
OP's is useful when you have to give feedback, which is expected in most large companies in some form or other (evals, etc.).
One of the surest way to get your manager's back is to help them make their goals and put some stuff off their plates. Like other people said, most semi competent managers are aware of issues happening in their team. If you come up w/ some proposal to solve those issues, it will improve the team much more effectively than some feedback.
It also depends on your goals, but fixing some issues encountered by your manager is one of the most reliable way to promotion in up to mid size companies, unless your manager is a a*hole.
I agree that most leaders will now they are fallible, and also have some idea of which things are problematic. As an inexperienced leader, I still valued getting "known feedback". It gave me a better idea of which problems were growing too large, and which ones remained minor annoyances. In addition, acknowledging the points that were brought up and explaining why I hadn't gotten to addressing them (besides being human) usually gave the person giving the feedback a more positive outlook.
I think the best feedback is pointing out problems (and then trusting the other party to act or at least explain why things are that way). You never have the full context so just telling someone they need to behave differently may not even be ideal given the information they have.
I don't think a manager will be impressed by a report saying "I know you can't do your whole job, so let me handle face time with the execs so I can take your job from you."
I can only speak for myself, but if someone I trust wants to solve some of my problems for me, enabling me to be better at my job, I love that and will push for their recognition and promotion.
If I don't trust them to represent me and the team, then obviously that suggestion wouldn't work, but I'm trying to express the difference between someone pointing out a problem as if the problem is just yours or offering to help take responsibility for the problem as part of a team with you.
I've worked with people who made it a point of pride to always bring a concrete, workable suggestion whenever they brought me a problem. We didn't always go with their suggestion, but they were fantastic to work with.
Thankfully, I've never had to worry about keeping good people on my team down out of fear they'd take my job.
> I don't think a manager will be impressed by a report saying
It's funny because it could go exactly the two opposite ways. If you "report the problem", you might be - totally as punishment - volunteered into the position to work on it, in addition to your normal workload. If you "report the problem and volunteer to do something about it", you might be shot down. Hilarious, right?
That's back to the fundamental problem: you need to work on building an understanding of your manager. You have the workload assigned to you, then you have everything you need to do to further your own career.
I would be impressed by one of my reports saying “We’ve worked together to get me ready for the next step in my career, and I think more face time with our execs will help me take that step. Can you help me find opportunities to get it?”
This is assuming we’re on the same page about how ready they are to take that step. But if we’re not on the same page, then I’ve already failed in performance reviews and feedback.
Another tactic I like to use is a riff on the authors suggestion #3: “Is there a reason you did (or did not do) X?” This works because it’s framed as accepting the decision and being genuinely curious about the rationale. Often the answer is: no, I never really gave it any thought. Other times there turns out to be a good reason that didn’t occur to me and it turns into a learning experience for me.
Another tactic that works for me is “Can I offer a suggestion?” The answer is almost always yes but it’s a sign of respect to ask.
This seems like a very shallow way of thinking. "Losing all respect for the person" implies that you think this is NEVER an appropriate way to address someone. Phrasing a disagreement of opinion as a question of reasoning is often the best course of action.
In particular if a choice has been made and going back to reverse it has significant costs, it is important to not say anything like "We should not be doing this" or "You made a mistake." Unless there is a good of action to reverse course that is simply being rude for no reason. Even in the case where there is a good way to reverse a decision, I would rather ask for the reasoning that led to the decision than strongly state the decision is wrong. If I am working with someone I respect at all, I must entertain the thought that I am wrong and they made the right decision with good reasoning.
What would you say to a superior who made a decision that you disagree with, but don't think is worth reversing? My best guess is either nothing or something that more strongly asserts your belief, but I can't think of any better option than phrasing it as a question.
> What would you say to a superior who made a decision that you disagree with, but don't think is worth reversing?
"I don't understand ... it seems it has the consequence of ... My professional opinion in that case would be... and I would advise to... because of... Is there something I'm not seeing here?"
Benefits:
- I'm not faking it.
- I already provide a lot of information up front to limit back-and-forth. This avoids assumptions and also works better for when you WFH.
- The person knows exactly where I stand and where I want to go. It's not chit-chat, it's not politics, it's purely technical and I want to move on the issue.
- If I'm wrong, I can get told right away. If I'm right, it's factual, and we can move on to solving the problem. And if the person's ego/social status is on the line, they can just BS their way out of it, and I'll just add nothing and move on.
- The template drives the conversation enough that they only need a short answer to let us decide if it's worth reversing. And we can conclude on the price / consequence of that and move on if needed.
I'll change that depending on the person. Some people are way better than me, in that case, I'll default to asking what I'm missing because it's likely they see something I don't.
On the opposite, if it's a junior, I'll assume they get it wrong and help them to fix it (unless they can justify it).
And of course, phrasing will depend of how much intimate I am with the person. Good friends will get a playful version, uptight clients will get the more formal one.
Once you have done that several times and people know the routine and the relationship is good, you barely have to speak. You can just nod at something or raise an eyebrow, and start problem solving or get the info.
But note that I can do that also because my clients value my opinion enough, have respect for my professionalism, and also know, because of my past interactions with them, that I focus on the problem to solve rather than blaming.
That's essentially the same thing. The only difference is that you're putting your uncertainty at the end and I'm putting it at the beginning. The key is to explicitly acknowledge that you recognize the possibility that you might be wrong.
Same here - whenever I see someone trying to get around giving honest feedback, and trying to frame it as "humble curiosity" instead, I immediately assume they read some "leadership" articles and are trying to apply it because they are second guessing themselves. I believe it depends a lot on the culture, but I am much more used to either keeping my mouth shut (when there is nothing on the line) or being blunt (when it matters). Either way, no sugarcoating or "being curious".
The problem with being more assertive is that there is always the possibility that you are wrong and the person you are "correcting" is right. Opening with an assertion makes it hard to save face in that case.
I think many people would take that as a direct challenge of their decision.
I'm no human expert but personally I'd try something like "Man I bet you had to make some tradeoffs and juggle priorities over $X right ! ..." and then see what they offer up. At the water-cooler, bar etc
> "Can I offer a suggestion?”
It's not the done thing to say no to that but depending on the tone a lot of people would then just ignore whatever comes out your mouth
Dutch person here (have been told we are some of the most direct people): my experience is that it is not the words but the intention. E.g. the
'give more training' example: 'I do not understand why we do not give more training. It seemed to help with Steve, why are we not doing more so'. And being genuinely interested in the answer.
Do not assume you are always right in assuming more training helps, but ask yourself why it may not be. Having an open mind can really help. And perhaps you were right to be astonished in 95% of situations, in 5% (or more) you might learn something.
Other things are certainly true: it may be better to ask that question in private, as opposed to while the leader addresses the whole staff.
The interesting thing in my mind is how dysfunctional I've found reporting chains' behavior (to the company). I've found the same thing others here have found -- certain cultural backgrounds or a large preponderance of H1Bs create a culture where upward feedback is silenced.
And in the end usually the company loses out - directors forge ahead with ill-informed projects (rewrite entire system X), don't measure/cherry-pick/game-metrics, and create a major threat to anybody on the team who surfaces any contraindicating metrics (e.g. "Our pipeline still takes Y hours and nobody is happy about it, including us").
This title of my article doesn't make much sense to me. Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing? I give feedback to my superiors all the time, and expect my subordinates to do the same. In fact, as far as my team goes, you're more likely to get into trouble (not fired) if you rarely give feedback.
American workplaces are very toxic. Waves of managers ride on the coattails of the latest dude in charge. That they are completely clueless doesn’t prevent them from getting the job. If you point out their failures, you will immediately be labeled as part of the opposition.
In other words, this is pure Machiavellian politics. The truth doesn’t matter. If you don’t kiss the donkey’s ass, the best advice IMO is to shut the hell up, collect your paycheck, and go home and kiss your wife. Your family is the only people who matter. The farce will go on for years. Like all Ponzi schemes, it will eventually collapse. But it may take years.
when your boss is a one-upper who doesnt understand your teams product, they will do everything possible to sabatoge your efforts and spin metrics to make you look bad. attempting to give feedback to such a person will get you this response: "you need to earn trust and learn to disagree and commit".
idk if this is a US thing; its mainly a thing where a manager is tasked with supporting a product that they dont understand. managers in these situations attempt to treat their managerial role as if the product itself does not matter - the team has metrics to hit, and to them thats more important than the product.
> give feedback to such a person will get you this response: "you need to earn trust and learn to disagree and commit"
Sure, but you won't get fired, right?
Even so, this is just about dealing in general with people who have ego (for the sake of brevity) issues. I don't understand why this should be advice for dealing with senior leadership in general.
It's not only US thing, eastern european too. We're on average rather alright developers but culturally there's no skill of good management - we have been destroyed in this aspect by Soviet occupation and communism.
> Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing?
Possibly: in many places there they have "at will" employment, where they can basically fire you with little to no severance at any time for any reason. There are limits, but compared to most of Europe that's the gist of it.
So yeah, you can be fired just because someone doesn't like you. And giving feedback is a good way to not be liked.
every employment should be at will!! is there a constitutional or birthright to employment at XYZ company? these discussion always look at one side, like “employer can’t fire employee X without paying severance and other junk” but if I started a company and said “if you leave the company you have to pay severance back to the company for leaving” everyone would be up in arms about it…
I would agree in an ideal world where salaries are tied to a qualification (a notion a tad more nuanced than just diploma), instead of their job. While there is no (nor should be any) constitutional right to work at any given company, I think people should have an inalienable right to live. Which in practice means food, shelter, and health care at a minimum, regardless of their ability (perhaps even willingness) to work anywhere.
The compromise most EU countries have settled on is that once you're employed and past some probation period (in my line of work that can last up to 8 months), then they can't fire you without a damn good reason or a hefty severance (the better the reason the lower the severance, basically). But it cuts both ways: I personally can't leave immediately, I have to tell my employer 3 months in advance. It is in a way a kind of severance.
I think this arrangement would be fair if you had to pay back to the company the same amount they have to pay you. to get a notice for some period of time makes sense (both ways) but I can’t see a reason why this is all not equal on both sides.
> I can’t see a reason why this is all not equal on both sides.
I can.
Think of what employment is for a second: shareholders (or company owners) own the capital, and the employee gets to follow orders. Structurally, the company pay workers less than their actual value: shareholders gotta hold, and they squeeze the margin out of the employee. The margin may be thin, but it's never meant to be zero (except for non-profits, but they're the exception).
Such a relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, such an exchange fundamentally unequal. If you want any hope of restoring fairness from this system, termination conditions have to be asymmetrical as well.
And I can’t see a reason why it should be equal. Even if you strip the relationship down to its most basic principle, there is asymmetry. One party provides work with the expectation of pay, the other party providess pay with the expectation of work.
But the asymmetries don’t end there. Terminating employment is a far greater threat to the employee than the employer. This creates a power imbalance which could easily be exploited by malicious or incompetent employers. That power imbalance is fundamental to this relationship and is reason enough (in the opinion of many countries) to bolster worker rights.
I once had an owner of a small business threaten to sue me for quitting because it would cause financial harm to the business. And that was with giving 4 weeks notice.
At-will employment laws protect employees that want to quit, not just employers that want to fire.
Leaders don't hold all the power. As others have said, I think this is a good approach for everyone - showing a bit of empathy and "you don't know what you don't know" when corresponding with people. In fact it's good leadership 101.
Edit: can anyone suggest any good (free) tools for eliciting 360 feedback? Potentially anonymously?
Sounds culturally biased. From working in northern Europe and especially with people from Scandinavian countries, I'd say that for each of those examples the 'wrong' choice would be the more likely to be exchanged and taken at face value.
Whereas when I work with people from the US a lot of fluff is always needed or offense may be taken. Just as the article purports.
And there is also body language. Here is one of my favorite exchanges I once witnessed, between two senior leaders, one Spanish, one Finnish, after a few beers at a company party. I leave it to the inclined reader to guess who is from which country.
Sergio (gesticulating, grinning): Lauri, why don't you use your hands more when you're talking?
Lauri (hands flat on the table, straight face): Because it's not efficient.
These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea. If you ever want to get anything done in painfully structured or faux-flat orgs, this is the way.
Why this psyop works:
1. People like to take credit for things.
2. People don't like to be wrong.
3. People get irked when a good idea wasn't their idea.
4. People don't like to feel threatened.
5. Just remove the duck.
The examples given are a little contrived, but the techniques applied are gold for more tricky scenarios.
> These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea.
Ok, cool, I've heard this a gazillion times by now. I don't disagree, it does looks like it's better at getting shit done. Just one question: how do I get credited for anything? I have my career to look out for too.
NotebookLM is very decent at giving summaries to lengthy audio files:
The sources strongly advise against giving feedback to your boss, even if your boss claims to be open to it. This is due to the inherent power dynamics in organizations and the potential negative consequences. Here's why:
- Power Differentials: Organizations have vertical structures where bosses have more power, authority, and responsibility [1-3]. This means that certain behaviors, like giving feedback, are reserved for those in higher positions [3].
- Risk of Negative Reaction: Even if a boss claims to be open to feedback, they might react negatively, consciously or subconsciously, to criticism from their subordinates [4-6]. This can lead to:
- Damaged Relationships: The boss may view the feedback as insubordination or a lack of respect, straining the relationship [7].
Stalled Career Progress: The boss may hold a grudge, potentially impacting future promotions or opportunities [7].
- Job Security: In extreme cases, giving unsolicited feedback could even lead to termination [8].
- Misinterpretation and Misunderstanding: Bosses often interpret upward feedback as a challenge to their authority or a lack of understanding of the complexities of their role [9, 10]. They might feel that the direct is overstepping their boundaries or does not have enough experience to offer valid criticisms [11].
- Breakdown of Hierarchy: Allowing upward feedback can blur the lines of authority and lead to a situation where directs feel empowered to dictate their boss's actions [9]. This can create chaos and undermine the effectiveness of the team.
- False Sense of Openness: Many bosses want to believe they are open to feedback, but in reality, very few are truly capable of handling it maturely and constructively [12, 13]. Their initial openness might just be a facade that crumbles when faced with actual criticism [14].
The sources highlight that while it's tempting to give upward feedback, especially with good intentions, it's generally unproductive and carries significant risks. They advocate for focusing on alternative approaches like offering suggestions during brainstorming sessions or providing input through formalized channels like 360 reviews, while exercising extreme caution even in those situations.
In my experience one of the best ways to "get ahead" is to give direct 1:1 feedback to someone higher up in your management chain for something that you are obviously right about it (some wiggle room here, but be sure to be atleast mostly right on a non-trivial topic). It demonstrates to them that you have good judgement and have backbone. They will trust you more and start to think of you as more of a peer than merely someone in their span of control (obviously you need to do this tactfully / not be a dick about it but also be firm). This has been a huge unlock for my career. ymmv.
I hope corporate ling like this stops for good. Seriously. Bad management is the norm, not the exception. We're all suffering from poor leadership at every level; I bet you all can count the good managers you've had on one hand.
I'd rather live in a world where we could give blunt and direct feedback like, "You suck as a manager, why are you still insisting on this?" However, we live in a situation where the system will always push back against any dissenting voices, and in the end, back-patting and corporate camaraderie are what keep the wheels turning.
One important option seem to be entirely missing here: Start. A. Union.
It seems the real problem here is the power difference between people, combined with the powerful side not having a thick enough skin… or lacking the actual competence that we ought to expect of their position.
A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback, however negative: either the feedback is crap and they'll calmly say "nope, trust me I know what I'm doing here", or the feedback has enough truth in it for them to say "oops, I'll do better next time", and then proceed to actually do better.
An incompetent leader however likely know they're incompetent, and they're less likely to meaningfully judge feedback. They're more likely to look for social validation, and more importantly secure their position. Any negative feedback threatens that position, and when that feedback comes from below, the solution is obvious: slap the peasant down, perhaps even fire them.
Often there's little you can do around those people. For instance, I once applied for a contracting gig that would involve cryptographic work. I was rejected because I was "more competent than the project lead". My guess is the hiring manager there knew that if they brought in someone more competent than the project lead, things would go bad. Quite the indictment of the project lead if you ask me.
My best project lead on the other hand had no problem being a worse programmer than the people under him (the tech lead for sure, and I probably). He worked on the parts he could, trusted us to do our thing, and I trusted him with telling me the priorities. Best gig of my entire career.
>A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback
Replace 'competent' with 'perfect'. Most people are very easily offended or threatened by negative feedback. One can argue that they shouldn't be, ideally, but I don't think you can really say that anyone who's not maximally receptive to negative feedback is incompetent.
This is not the first conversation on HN about management and feedback I've seen where the wide range of opinion and disagreement may reflect only 4 possible things:
1) There is some ideal way to interact that exists, but is not yet known, so we're all essentially still just fumbling in the dark and occasionally encountering light from an as-yet-unknown source
2) There is some ideal way to interact that is more or less understood by some but not all because it is simply not being communicated well (the rate of incoming employees is greater than the rate of knowledge spread- incidentally, this is the same problem I suspect exists with functional languages being perennially less-popular)
3) There is some ideal way to interact that is understood and known but is incompatible with existing and persistent (stable dysfunctional equilibrium) dysfunctionalities in orgs
4) There is in fact no ideal way to interact in a hierarchy because it is largely dependent on the individual personalities of the participants as well as the setup of the org
Mmm. There's also the 4th option is probably better expanded to, individual perception of communication are encoded and decided using fundamentally incompatible protocols because of entirely differing status, background, wealth and social structure.
I don't think personality real encapsulates it. I don't believe Elon musks personality has changed, but his fundamental GIGO has.
One foremost aspect I see missing in the discussion is:
"It depends"
It depends massively and that's the main problem. So I'd focus on understanding how that works with this specific manager M you are concerned about. It will be different with another manager. After that it's detail. Managers are human, flawed, not anywhere near rational (not fully rational anyway), and in some cases crooked or insane. Just like their reports and bosses, kind of? Try and feel out how that manager operates before "doing anyone a service".
In particular, it means not relying on the idea that they would reason the same as you do.
Because for example, absolutely "providing info so they get to look good, privately so there is no loss of face" will blow up in your face with some managers. Even if it's to the detriment of that manager.
In some cases, it will be even worse than this because that manager will be well ahead of you and already have their own plans in place for their own future. In a case like this it's not even necessarily possible for you to imagine what reaction you might get.
To be fair, there is a general plan available for you: Cultivate a network, keep your resume in front of people. Then you can be bolder.
I love the Dutch 'no bollocking around' method, but it translates horribly to non-Dutch. Which is a real shame.
With my Dutch friends, one colleague, I know exactly where I stand. Everyone/ everywhere else (often Americans, but the Brits are catching up), fluffs and huffs and puffs - and then start 'things' in the background.
If you’re not on a visa and don’t have kids I’d recommend simply not caring if you get fired by insecure leadership. You’re better off elsewhere if they would do that.
People can grow into their roles. You don’t expect junior devs to know everything one day one, so why would you expect a “junior[1]” manager?
[1] I know the article is about senior managers, but it reads as though the mean “somebody more senior than me” and not “somebody who has been managing a long time”
Genuine question: how do we train managers, then? Surgeons have pigs, but even then it's not perfect, and there comes a point where they have to perform surgeries on actual humans (hopefully under supervision).
> If you do speak up, you might put your employment and well-being at risk.
I'm so glad i spent most of my career in Norway where that is so much less likely. In fact it putting your employment at risk is really so unlikely as to not be worth consideration. Well being is of course a bit harder to quantify and control.
This is all bad advice. A bad manager is rarely ignorant they are bad; they are often going to be insecure having moved outside of their comfort zone. A good leader is going to be aware they often act terribly and invite you to their world view - who knows, you could be wrong.
You can coddle bad managers as this article suggests; but take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Will this person cause harm, death, or injury due to their decision making or lack there of? Attempt to fix them for a limited duration or get the hell out. Do it in a collaborative way, where you can enable them to make the right choices.
That doesn't work? Get out. Don't enable them to cause harm.
This is all cultural. As an immigrant from New York to a Nordic country, I have been lucky enough to experience two working cultures intimately. New Yorkers are considered blunt and no-nonsense, but I had no idea. Nordics are utter minimalists when it comes to feedback. It is unadorned and without any frills whatsoever. None of this couching the ouch between two positives. Nordics make New Yorkers look like Californians.
They will genuinely be confused by American-style feedback. Did you ever notice that we use a lot of superlatives? Something we like is the best, we love it, it's the greatest ever? That's not bad, it's just our style of talking, but the untrained Nordic will take that seriously. I have to tone that way down: "That code is really well done."
Moreover, you are required to give truthful feedback, here. It's not optional. If you think something is a bad idea and you don't say anything, you are doing a bad. If somehow you're caught not saying something, or worse, lying and saying you think it's a good idea, you will be in trouble and lose reputation.
This approach to giving and getting feedback took some getting used to, but I find it refreshing and I am afraid I'm spoiled for any other way.
It’s also important to note that scrum masters, product owners and business analysts, despite what the company org chart may lead you to believe, belong to middle management and need to be treated accordingly.
Scrum masters are particularly dangerous because they are highly skilled at blending in by speaking and acting like developers. That’s why they are so popular to spend project money on despite their apparent uselessness.
I assume the mentioned feedback could be interpreted as critical.
First I'd start by mentioning something they doing well OR something positive about them that relates to their job. Ie they have good attitude or get on good with co workers etc.
Then I would move on to what it was thought needed "some improvement"
Id mention the "positive outcome" that would result if the feedback I was about to give was implemented. I could even tone it down ...with the words "...my opinion ..."
ie My opinion , is if we ( meaning the manager ) where to do "... what ever ..." it could result in this "....more desirable outcome..." I could soften it more by saying .... we tried this at my previous job ... and it gave "...whatever the positive result is "
( Giving effective feedback is a skill. I learnt how to do in a speech training program called "Toastmasters " We had a internal Toastmasters club for the company I worked add ( Not in the US ) with about 30 members. Often the other members where >several levels< above me. Me - a very junior person at the time. So had to give feedback to Senior staff about their speech. )
I disagree with much of the premise and frankly don't think this person should be giving advice. Some of what's in there isn't bad like "be thoughtful about what you say". However, if you already feel something needs to be changed to the point where you're thinking something needs to be said but then you follow the article to force yourself to ask questions like
> “Can I live with this? How much does this bother me? Is it worth giving them feedback and what are my chances of success doing it?”
and doing multiple rounds of this you are compromising with yourself at an early stage. This frequently leads to things escalating (the problem didn't go away and in fact got incrementally worse because there was no negative feedback) which makes it a much harder situation.
This article is also written with examples like, if you don't make small changes to your wording, you'll get responses like "You think I don’t know that I need to give new hires guidance? I obviously gave them guidance. GTFO." which clearly catastrophizes outcomes based on small nuances in your own already inoffensive language.
Feedback is like gardening. Take care of small problems early and gently but relentlessly. If there's a wolf in your garden you should probably do something about the wolf instead of working around the wolf and spending your life in fear, even if that means finding a different garden.
I will recommend the book "The Coward's Guide to Conflict" which helped me get a healthy perspective.
At work I always give positive and friendly feedback, regardless of who is asking. I don’t need to put myself in a position in which the receiver didn’t like or misunderstood my feedback the wrong way. What for? I couldn’t care less about their professional development, and I don’t want to be a blocker in their path to promotion.
I do my time, I get paid and move on. Don’t need drama at work.
These seem like decent tricks but make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. IME you can't change anyone's mind about anything, and trying will usually piss them off. If you don't like your boss, go shopping for a new one instead of trying to reform the one you have.
I agree voting with your feet is good and underutilized, but it's also extremely expensive for both sides. There's no successful group that didn't need feedback or even internal conflict (with healthy resolution) to be successful.
People have ego's. Instead of saying they are wrong, adopt their perspective and help them discover your perspective. They may like your perspective and adopt it as their own reasoned opinion, lead them to it, and then they may adopt it and own it. Sometimes you'll find they have unstated reasons for choices, find workarounds for them. This is a basic human skill everyone should understand.
This is a lesson to us all, though. Like it or not — and it'll vary depending on your geography and industry and so on, I know — this is an issue of at least some proportion.
So, just be aware. Many of us are someone's boss. You might not feel like you're 'senior', but to them you are.
Be open. Listen. Don't react (immediately). Consider. Just stop and think for a second. Realise that these other people's views are, at the very least, worth considering. (They may, of course, be wrong.)
One of the most rewarding things I did before I left the corporate world was have a 26-year-old grad as a direct report. I was 46 and had 'Head of…' in my job title. She was as smart as anything and it was an incredible experience. Hopefully, for us both.
I’m sick of dealing with managers and bad leaders, and want to get back to coding and building cool stuff.
Is there any solution for this? Co-op? Contract work? Consultancy? Union? Flat org structure? Self employment? Start a company with a couple of engineer friends and have flat org, based on trust?
I’m guessing only the last two options are promising. I’d appreciate hearing everyone’s stories, as I am genuinely interested.
I hope that in the future maybe AI will be to organize people better in larger organizations so people are more focused on doing productive work instead of endlessly aligning on things and the hoard of people doing alignment in large organizations can find a better use of their time.
I think this article is teaching you how to dance on a song that isn't being played for you. Unless the feedback is something that is going to benefit, or improve your own work, then toss it aside. My experience [1].
Unless your company is in pursuit of a noble human endeavor, just make sure you get some good work done, and make good connections along them way. The truth is rarely what a company seeks. So if your manager is imperfect, don't sweat it.
> How to give a senior leader feedback (without getting fired)
I don't do it because it can play against me in the worst case. And I won't get anything out of it. People can be more sensitive than it seems and unsolicited feedback isn't always welcome.
My company is big on feedback, so we're expected to give peers and managers feedback. I never fill the "constructive feedback" part of the form, or I just put something harmless. We also have anonymous evaluation forms. If something is wrong with manager or leadership, it'll show there.
I love that I live in a country where I can just tell my superiors exactly how they suck and never risk getting fired. It might not be wise for other reasons but fire me they cannot.
One rule I try to remember with leaders is to speak for impact and not impressing them.
Dealing with senior leaders (VP/Director, not C-suite) can be different too.
Managing up and influencing others may work well, or not at all.
Working one's way up in different workplaces, industries and regions can vary wildly and I would probably caution from my own experience in a lot of verticals that it's best to get to know the scenario and see if you can recognize what might help.
Give enough context to avoid back-and-forth follow ups. Don’t be coy when you can be direct. Don’t speak in stream of consciousness. Assume your manager is task switching or checking your Slack message between meetings—make it super easy for them to catch up on context and dive into what you want to discuss.
I understand the wisdom that they are trying to convey. But sucking up to those on higher pay grades like this for the greater good of the company? I think if it’s that dangerous providing feedback to the company then upper management need to put even more effort into determining who makes good leadership material.
Superiors love to solve their problem first, its as simple as that. Not in a bad way but they are dealing with 10 times issues compare to your own level issues. Manager > Team Lead > IC so start there. Dont just complaint about superior, try to deal with it from problem solving approach.
The "even more" technique is brilliant because it bypasses the natural defensiveness that feedback can trigger, especially in hierarchical settings. Framing suggestions as amplifications of existing strengths is genius.
The moment I'm in a position where I can't say - politely of course, like I do to any other person at work - that I think the direction they are taking is wrong, is the moment I'll start searching for another job.
i was in that position of receiving a negative feedback over certain things from one of the people i manage (and i believe any manager has been at least once). surprise, i’m not perfect :-)
the best way to tell it is to be direct, with examples. i want to know that, i want to improve myself. i only expect perfect honesty.
it’s good for both parties. i’m a no bs guy. tell me things straight, good and bad, i will do the same always in a fair honest way. i expect nothing else and there are no repercussions for that. in the end, if you are unhappy and you do nothing about it, nothing will change.
I found strange to see so much criticism of the post as usually, anything that Wes Kao writes really resonates with me as a senior IC. Usually there’s a great balance of nuance and depth to the advice that makes it easy to digest and pick small bits and pieces to try out on my own context
Nearly 30 years in the business here and I think most of what was said in the article is spot on if you are in an appropriate situation.
Many commenters seem to take absolutist positions on this and think no one should ever allow themselves to be under a bad manager but it happens and then you need to effectively deal with it and these are some good techniques to do so.
The techniques even apply to working with a good manager. You shouldn't just vomit every criticism or critique to your superior. You should engage in introspection and internal dialogue to see if your perspective is correct and if there is more you can do to address the issue before spamming your manager.
If someone is offended by the article they might need to take a step back and ask if their ego has grown beyond its useful size.
Yeah I mean to generalize even further, these are techniques that can apply to your direct reports, your friends, your spouse.
Giving feedback is definitely an art and a thin line between getting your point across in a clear way vs running up against ego or impatience.
If you care about your org's success it's critical to know your audience, their approach and value system, and how to tailor your message to account for what will resonate with them. It's really tough stuff.
I absolutely hate having to say stuff in between the lines or trying to interpret veiled intentions. There's def no need to be pointlessly rude when giving criticism, but to me, beating around the bush is exhausting and often frustratingly ineffective.
Actually you just don't give feedback to your superiors. But you really may/should plant the seeds of ideas in their brains. You discuss concepts, fundamental stuff that will grow into their brain and make them change. This takes time, patience and repetition, like educating a kid. It's actually the same, nothing has changed there.
And you remain modest and ready to learn and listen. Especially because your superiors always have information that you don't have and which might explain decisions which you don't understand, and won't without this information.
And you don't "tell", you ask about topics, and show interest.
Then you might be able to propose real help to your boss, and suggest him to delegate some responsibility to you. And that's where you have some agency to create meaningful change. Bingo.
There are a lot of comments about the up vs down hierarchy thing, but I think it's not really the most important factor for "giving feedback", which here seems to mean more "advocating for change".
The important factors are
- do you have a good understanding of where your goals and priorities differ and where they overlap? Maybe you want to reduce tech debt and your manager wants to hit q3 goals. Then saying "spending 1 week addressing this issue will allow us to implement features a,b,c in 2 weeks instead of 4" is stating your goal with an emphasis on how it helps manager get to theirs.
- do you have an existing relationship of trust? Humans are pretty tribal. If person you're talking to up or down defaults to "this is an ally who usually says competent things" then you can be much more direct and blunt. "Your idea is stupid because of these flaws that you didn't consider". If you don't have that trust, then some of the sugar coating "fluff" is necessary to avoid emotional reactions.
Why on earth would someone deserve to be fired based on mere "feedback"? As long as it's not an outright offensive rant, it should be handled sensibly. But even if it is an offensive rant, firing should be a last resort. The amount of toxic subordination that's assumed to be normal is sickening.
I agree that bluntness is often mishandled, but the sort of language in this article just reads as wildly disingenuous. Obfuscating your actual point (and visceral, human feelings/opinions/experience!) to hopefully confuse your subject into compliance.
Makes me think of that brain-dead article a few years back about how you should dodge offering support in close personal relationships. “I don’t have capacity,” “I’m not paid to perform emotional labour” etc. Sad! Promote humanity!
I used to be able to tell my bosses to “fuck off” (usually ones I got well with) when asked something absolutely absurd; or just tell the plain truth. Now in this hypercapitalistic world, you have to fluff your feedback so you don’t hurt their fragile egos.
Astonishing. Completely backwards. This article describes how to give feedback to your subordinates, not to your superiors. If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
I agree with you that's how it should be, but experience tells me that everyone is insecure and it's hardly correlated with position and job security.
People lower down the chain are insecure because they could legitimately be let go at any time for any reason.
People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating. Especially having failings pointed out by someone "below" them.
> People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating.
You don't do it in public. There's no face to lose in private (you're a subordinate, face is only lost among peers and superiors).
It is, however, not really a good idea to be 100% blunt out of the gate. There's a dance to it. But in public, I'm there to make my manager look good, and in private I'll tell them exactly what I think. Once they're confident I'm there to be at their back, it's never gone wrong, even in highly disfunctional orgs (I'm a consultant and get brought in to play "doctor" with hopeless projects a lot).
Even if you do it in private, they may take it as a sign of a subordinate who has designs on their job. Or on toppling them at any rate. Insecurity is everywhere.
One of my favorite pieces of consultant advice, is Beans and Noses: https://archive.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and-nos...
> you're a subordinate, face is only lost among peers and superiors
I disagree. Losing the respect of your subordinates is IMHO worse than of your superior.
To a point. I have found that subordinates always have to feel that they have a "little secret edge" over their managers.
In my experience, this is both harmless and necessary. If I, as a manager, can't handle that, then I'm kinda screwed.
But it is also highly dependent on the types of people we manage.
Source: Manager for over 25 years, of a bunch of folks much smarter and more experienced than me.
You can lose the respect of your subordinates, but that's different than losing face.
Although one may lead to the other, they are different things.
I think the OP meant: in private, face is only lost when criticised by a peer or superior.
If your superior is managing up well, then it truly doesn’t matter if subordinates lose respect. Probably laying groundwork for new ones well in advance of that becoming a real issue for their status.
Most people can, some people can’t - and the ones who can’t can be incredibly dangerous.
Yeah good luck with getting anything, ever, out of folks that feel butt-hurt due to their fragile emotions, in my experience women often go the extra mile to hold grudges, while sporting big smiles publicly.. That gate is closed for good, and you really have no idea what to expect - be it silent treatment or even subversion and backstabbing.
To summarize - each of us is pretty unique, and without going though it you can't know how words can affect other people, even those above you that should know better. But they didn't get to that elevated position via honed skill of listening calmly to their subordinates feedback, did they.
The challenge we all have is, that just leaves everyone angry with each other and unable to actually make progress or solve any problems together.
You sound like a ray of sunshine
From my experience, you build that non-fluff boundaries in the first one or two meetings with a senior leader.
I’d advise against going in the first one throwing punches.
Go with actionable feedback and be honest about what it is and what is not something you can solve. From there, if you genuinely care about whatever you’re complaning, you are more likely to be taken seriously.
> I’d advise against going in the first one throwing punches.
I’d advise against going in any one throwing punches. Instead, give actionable, honest, factual feedback with the intent to legitimately help the other person.
Fair enough, while I agree, in real project life, this calm, honest, factual feedback isn’t always enough for senior management to prioritise your issue.
Sometimes you need to a bit more assertive and blunt so that you become the top of the agenda, that’s what I meant by “throwing punches”.
Perhaps it means a much more over the top attitude in your view? (Happy to be corrected here)
If I need an issue prioritized, I'd have a discussion with senior leadership until one of us was convinced of the other's viewpoint, or we understood why we can't agree. For example, if my issue is clearly higher priority than anything else, I should easily be able to demonstrate that to senior leadership, and vice-versa. If we can't agree for a specific reason, we can say "the data is too fuzzy to know either way" and try to minimize risk.
Not all organizations will work like this, but that's a dysfunction that will need to be corrected. In that case, you should do what works (and that will be different for everyone), my particular situation won't apply to your particular situation.
This is the correct approach.
Simply be blunt about other topics to set the tone for interactions.
I don't know what godawful chain you are hitched to but I hope you can find a way off it.
High-performance managers realise they are there to enable the talent. You're Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. The job is to create the conditions for folks at the pointy end to be wildly successful.
One of the most defining characteristics of this attitude is the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself", a very fine sentiment with the only problem being that by induction it makes the CEO the dumbest person in the company.
But I digress. If I'm fucking up, then I hope to god my trusted lieutenants will tell me without any pussyfooting around. It's practically what I hired them for.
Can I suggest there is a difference between feedback and therapy
We are all human, we have biases and blindspots.
Your trusted lieutenants can come to you and tell you you forgot to do X and because doing X is something either within your personality comfort zone or just outside it, you can if reasonably adjusted take that on.
But there will be things you are not reasonably adjusted for, things that require you to make significant adjustments to your world view and personality - things that you need to make serious compromises on
Some people are so maladjusted they cannot compromise on stuff most of the world agrees on - generally we call them criminals. But this is a spectrum - bad managers usually have very poor matching between their personal problems and the needs of the role.
But even good managers reach a point that their instincts and their rational mind cannot take them past.
In short “everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence” is not a skills problem, but a character problem.
I don't know you, but based on what you're saying, I guess you're in a much different environment than I've ever been in. You're probably also more of a "type A" person than I am.
I've always worked in places that are essentially established businesses. People are mostly bureaucrats and lazy. I believe that's a large majority employers. If you honestly can't understand that that's how a lot of people work, then I think you live in a bubble.
I cannot disagree with your assertion that the majority of employment environments have a toxic pathology of hierarchical insecurities, and I've certainly worked within them.
Albeit, yes, with a flagrant disregard for authority (I hesitate to label myself "type A", it's such a reductive term) that worked best when in the second and third decades of my career I was generally engaged on a consulting basis as a fixer/troubleshooter.
So I would admit guilt to an accusation that I have placed myself inside my current bubble intentionally. It's a matter of psychological safety and self-respect. I wasn't kidding when I said I hope you can find a way off that chain, it's an outcome I'd wish on all my peers.
I agree with you in principle that's the correct attitude. However I don't think the comparison to the music industry is necessarily correct.
A lot of managers in tech got there because they are technically strong. We can argue about whether that's correct or not but I think that's typically the case. People who perform well as engineers are the ones who are given leadership opportunities. People who do not are not.
So first challenge is given you were maybe one of the smarter hires, of some smart people that tried to hire people smarter than themselves (let's assume), how do you hire people smarter than yourself? at scale?
Where we end up typically in successful tech companies is with some degree of a mix of trying to make "folks at the pointy end successful" and some degree of "telling the folks at the pointy end what to do". Usually managers and directors are very strong technically and quite sharp, though more distant from the actual work because they don't do it any more. The precise mix depends on culture and circumstances but it's almost never this ideal environment of servant leaders surrounded by immense talent and just facilitating that talent doing great things.
I've been in places that are very close to the "good" end of this spectrum and there's still going to be some pause in giving feedback to leadership that they've done something wrong. Maybe you have a great relationship with your lieutenants where they can be openly critical of you and you reinforce that. I think that's highly unusual in a social environment. It's a lot more likely there are certain things they won't share with you because they estimate the damage to the relationship is larger than the utility of being open.
EDIT: I misread your statement about hiring people smarter than yourself, so I think we agree there. The problem is still that if you're the smartest person there's a bit of tension between that and creating conditions for the people under you to be successful. Btw, I still think you should try and hire people smarter than yourself ;) it's just hard to impossible to scale that - as you point out.
I don't want to rebut anything you say, but I will add one observation.
> I think that's highly unusual in a social environment
Agreed, but in my experience of startups particularly, this becomes more commonplace with older founders. It can also form the basis of an high-performance enclave within otherwise ossified large companies/institutions; these tend to get dragged down by the mediocrity police after a few years, but in the meantime you can get some good stuff done.
Whether the music industry analogy is valid may be debatable, but I've had the privilege of seeing it first-hand, music was/is the family business, I grew up knocking around recording studios. So this mindset is engraved on my expectations of all talent-based professions, and I try to remember it whenever I fail to be humble.
> it’s just hard to impossible to scale that
The phrase “hire people smarter than yourself” is a platitude that is intended to foster an attitude, just a useful way of framing & thinking about people, mainly aimed at the manager, but has the byproduct of making ICs feel good about themselves. It’s not really a literal measurable specific requirement or goal. One way to see that nobody is taking it literally is that nobody is reporting IQ on their resume, and nobody is giving standardized IQ tests during job interviews. (And of course I mean statistically nobody, I’m not claiming that it’s never happened.) Often in hiring ‘smart’ doesn’t really mean smart anyway, it means wisdom, experience, attitude, skill, communication, knowledge, motivation, creativity, adaptability, friendliness, culture-fit, etc., there are many different ways someone can be ‘smarter’ than you on at least 1 axis of whatever ‘smart’ means, and it’s generally not hard to find them if we’re realistic about how smart we are on all axes.
in my experience, people higher up the chain are much more at risk of being let go at any time
I agree. And the insecurity that these managers feel makes them very poor leaders. They tend to be overly subservient to higher-ups and just pass all management decisions down the chain without too much thought. And they like to punish any disagreement (no matter how reasonable) from their subordinates. Insecurity is the opposite of a culture of trust. And where there is no trust, there is no real leadership.
I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part. The implication is that you’re in a situation where management is stubborn or even hostile to feedback.
Most organizations don’t practice “highly effective communication”. It’s often a nightmare riddled with politics and ego.
> I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part.
The "start polishing your resume" bit was quite explicit.
Unless you are the .1% of developer (and probably with a heaping helping of luck) you aren't going to end up working someplace that isn't terminally dysfunctional no matter how much you polish your resume.
Being in the top 0.001% of developers won’t help if you don’t have a large network or good brand
Besides, who wants to work with someone that’s only worked in these terminally dysfunctional workplaces. There must be something wrong with them.
I'd argue 99% percent of companies operate like this. No one likes blunt feedback--even in friendships and marriage. Good luck if you throw money and ego into the mix.
I would say ego problem comes with a title.
It would be wonderful if the world could accept blunt feedback. It is certainly easier to give and more in-line with what most technical people would prefer. However, we work with humans, and we have learned an awful lot about how humans respond to language, especially criticism. The advice here applies to giving feedback to any human, not just superiors. As you spend time working with humans, you learn, perhaps slowly that what you might consider "fluff" is really about helping make your point. Being direct doesn't always, or even usually, work as well.
Definitively agree. Being blunt, too direct is just the opposite of a good and effective communication.
Being too blunt raises defenses and completely wipes out the effectiveness of your feedback. Folks that are invested in outcomes make choices for good reason, and they've probably got a track record to back it up. You have to meet them where they are, and considering their communication styles and how they make decisions will improve the chances you're actually heard.
It's a fact of life that people shut down when approached with evidence that refutes their world view or choices. It doesn't matter if it's your boss or grandparents.
> It's a fact of life that people shut down when approached with evidence that refutes their world view or choices.
I don't really agree with you. This is a basic quality of skilled leadership. You want people refuting your worldview with evidence! It lets you correct course and make things better.
Only insecure people shut down like this in my experience.
There is some important piece of context there though - if leaders aren't capable of the emotional intelligence to process blunt feedback, they are bad leaders and there is no hope of change. Learning to recognise them and just leave them alone is one of those valuable life skills that most employees learn sooner or later. Some people are just not going to take feedback and if they end up in management that is that; there is nothing to do but enjoy the show as best you can.
In that situation fluffing the feedback will do nothing. It might take years of effort to get marginal improvements and it is more productive to focus on something that is ... well ... more productive.
There is a lot of truth in this, but especially when developers are semi-randomly promoted into leadership roles, they should be given enough time (and mentorship) to learn from their own mistakes. Some will learn very quickly (those with enough emotional intelligence), and some will learn nothing no matter how much time you give them. Being a good manager with formidable leadership skills is something you can only get through experience.
> there is no hope of change.
There is an off chance that management (I'm not using the word leadership here deliberately) is taking leadership coaching, that the coaching is good, and that the coach will actually intervene and bring about change. Small likelihood of course, but not zero.
At [company that purportedly highly values candor], I’ve seen multiple people get canned by VPs or directors they’ve criticized internally. Granted, these situations were cases where this was communicated either in a larger feedback meeting that was supposed to be a “safe” space for such feedback, or via other communications that were visible to more than just the person being criticized. These criticisms were definitely high up in the PG pyramid and critical of the direction / vision / execution, not of the person themselves. The people who were fired from this were high performers who weren’t otherwise on PIPs or anything like that. Leadership did the typical leadership dance of shifting blame, re-org, and carry on. It was sad and further eroded both trust and morale of others familiar with these situations.
I've seen this a lot, especially with junior folks getting on their high horse publicly about some direction or decision. Whenever it happens I make a point of putting a reminder in my calendar to check their corp Slack handle after three weeks to see if they're still employed. 9 out of 10 are deactivated when I check back.
Hold your tongue, there's no such thing as a safe space in any all hands or group-level meeting.
Sorry you work in such a toxic job
I suppose it depends on what type of “criticism” it is. Generally feedback is most valuable when it’s constructive not critical. If you just say “X is bad” that isn’t very useful no matter how you phrase it.
I would be surprised if respectful constructive criticism was met with firing but I suppose it does happen. Probably not the best to be working for those people in any case.
Seen this dance many times
25% of my manager and above in big tech have acted in the ideal way you describe, and the rest have been back stabbing, childish, two faced, toxic, and many other negative traits, making any open honest or direct communication impossible
Honestly, if you've had decent management 25% of the time, you're doing much better than the rest of us.
Management is hard, because it makes significant emotional demands on us, and a lot of people deal with the combination of power and emotions badly.
This. I had to get a little used to not fluffing around my feedback. One of our managers just asked me to give it to him straight, directly and 1-on-1 and we’d get along fine. So we did. I still am having trouble with how little, what I see as fact based, feedback is needed before the average person has had enough.
Example: I like to point out shitty work processes (one needs a hobby). Anything with a few loops and some rework goes for me to start my first time right story. People take offense. No stop, you are not the process. You didn’t design it, you merely took part because we asked you to. Now stop and consider whether you think it is shitty and if so, what can we do? Can you do it? Do you need help? When? Organizationally, it’s a good riff. For me, it’s strange to do and see it help. It feels like delivering snake oil. (I rationalize this as delivering Lean in thirty minutes.)
My communication plan is facts >> options >> opinions >> advice. This way I help people mentally separate “what is” from whatever opinion I’m holding. This works for both verbal and written communication. It’s a coping strategy for being outlier direct.
I would give up a huge amount of my paycheck for a manager who heard me bitch and whinge about every little flaw; told me I'd made them too angry to continue the conversation but we should pick it up in ~48 hours with a mutually agreeable plan coming back with stats and analysis for where my opinion was simply wrong; vs where it was right.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business. It might not be. It might also not be important to the business if subordinates leave b/c their feedback is disregarded. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where a leader could still succeed while not giving a crap about subordinate feedback. It depends on the goals and the dynamics of the business, the leader's experience, market conditions, labor environments, etc.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.
It’s even more important to give it bluntly if the feedback is irrelevant. That way you’ve wasted less time.
Me: “we aren’t giving enough guidance to new hires” Leader: “it’s not a priority for us since we are freezing hiring”
Perfectly good interaction, where you didn’t waste time sneakily phrasing things you think you know better than the leader. And you learned some valuable info about the org priorities as a result.
If the feedback is irrelevant, you'll waste the least amount of time by not giving it at all. (I think that's slightly different from your scenario though, where you don't actually know if it's irrelevant.)
And how would you know if it is irrelevant? See prior comment.
Depends on the org and how information travels. Knowing tricks like this are the superpowers of people who move up quickly in large orgs and make things happen. You can sometimes do fine without knowing this, and going through the "official" route of the direct feedback loop. If you can figure it out elsewhere though, it'll usually build more trust with your superiors.
> You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business.
That's for the superior to evaluate impartially, and if the feedback was not important, feed that back to the subordinate. Are you suggesting that it is reasonable for superiors to shut down when faced with uninteresting feedback?
> You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.
I believe you skipped over the following part of my comment;
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
The advice isn't backwards, but some senior leaders are in the sense that they don't take feedback well. In this case, this advice is sound.
Sure, in an ideal world you wouldn't have to fluff it, but I'm guessing many of us aren't in that world.
As a senior leader myself, that was my initial reaction. Then, I thought about myself and cohort and I would say, unfortunately, the advice in the article is required. There are challenges in feedback in both directions. E.g.the people who are best at receiving it are the ones who usually don't, either because they are strong in many other things than the feedback domain, or because they seem so self confident that people are intimidated. On the other hand, people who are not good at receiving feedback are also the ones who would be vindictive and their reactions may poison feedback as a practice. And also people may switch from one category to the other transiently, because of other pressures etc. In summary, in my own practice, while I am opinionated, I have never given negative feedback either to managers or subordinates. Not that they were all perfect, but I found it is usually up to me to work with the people and their strengths and weaknesses and by focusing on strengths I have not corrected any weakness, but have often made them irrelevant to me. Some may say this is a weakness for a leader, and I would agree but still focus on my other strengths.
Edit: an additional consideration as I am digesting my response. People are more open to discussing how to improve a process or a system rather than a person or even more so themselves. Feedback is sometimes personal, that's why things like post mortems, process reviews etc. can work miracles when we manage to keep them about the process or framework rather than the people who are assigned to them.
An additional slightly cynical point on feedback received as a subordinate (no matter how high up you most probably report to someone unless you are at the top). If someone gives you feedback about what you should do to get promoted/a raise etc , you are 90% not going to get those even if you heed to the feedback. These things happen for things you do, and the broader perception of yourself not on the basis of a checklist, and if they use a checklist against you, they don't really care about You. If someone mentors you, you will get it. Learn to read the difference between the two.
Well, "senior leader", if this is the kind of incomprehensible stuff you routinely come up with, I'm amazed your teams produce anything.
Formatting/phrasing could be improved, but incomprehensible? I don't think so.
Well, I must be good in other things right? Not known for being very comprehensible indeed. We all have to play to our strengths.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Sounds good on paper. Maybe true, oh 5 years ago. In this job market, polishing the resume is nice but you might have to deal with irrational superiors for a little longer. That's what the article is about.
> The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
It would all be nice and good if "subordinates" and "superiors" were some completely different, disjoint sets. Yesterday's insecure peers and your subordinates will tomorrow become your superiors. People who can - do, those who can't - manage. Their personalities and other qualities likely wouldn't change in the meantime. In a perfect world, everyone who is promoted to be anyone's superior will go through a strong leadership vetting process and they will take un-fluffed honest feedback from subordinates, without retribution. But I have yet to work for such an organization. Maybe you're luckier...
> Sounds good on paper. Maybe true, oh 5 years ago. In this job market, polishing the resume is nice but you might have to deal with irrational superiors for a little longer. That's what the article is about.
Wouldn't it be better to just not provide feedback and coast along if you're in this position?
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
Maybe, but the title is "without getting fired" not "without being wrong damnit!". Unless you have a significant number of shares in the company you should care about your own employment and success over the success of the whatever function this person has oversight of.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
And that reason is...?
>The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
This is the key assertion underlying your comment, yet you just wave it off by referring to unnamed "[handbooks] on highly effective communication in organizations".
My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger if you simply specified these unnamed handbooks, and summarized their argument, as opposed to fulminating + offering a handwavey argument-from-authority.
(Curious to see how you'll take this no-fluff feedback. Let's see if you're management material by your own standards.)
EDIT -- here is a LinkedIn post by a lady who wrote a book on workplace communication called Radical Candor. Her post recommends plenty of fluff for the boss, and to be frank, I think she makes some pretty good points: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kimm4_how-can-you-practice-sa...
I'm always curious when comment responders glom on to the least important part of a comment and dissect it to no end. I took "is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations." as essentially "the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point." It did not warrant a "SOURCES??!!" response IMO because it wasn't saying anything that was uniquely attributable.
The claim didn't ring true to me, based on what I've read about the topic in the past, or based on my personal thoughts and experiences. So I wanted a source. It should be easy to provide a source, if sources are as plentiful as lijok says.
>the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point.
Sounds very nice, but empirically humans often struggle with frank feedback. I think that goes for both subordinates and superiors, for different reasons.
I would argue it can be worthwhile to spend an additional 25% time to make it clear that it's nothing personal, to avoid risking a deterioration of your relationship.
Obviously, it's good to have friendly relations with your coworkers, including your boss.
If you have a high-trust relationship with your boss where there's no risk of deterioration, and you know your boss likes it when you speak your mind -- more power to you. Be direct and to the point.
I agree, I think there was a Buddhist analysis of conversation, right speech, which I find useful as a guide to giving and receiving information: Is it well intentioned? Is it kind? Is it timely? Is it beneficial? Is it true?
I suppose that if you can craft feedback with this criteria in mind it’ll have a high chance of going over well.
> My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger if you simply specified these unnamed handbooks, and summarized their argument, as opposed to fulminating + offering a handwavey argument-from-authority.
I know.
That post you linked to is great. I especially found insightful the part where she said "If your boss says no, let it drop and polish up your résumé! "
Are you replying to your superior? He didn't say always no fluff, just that as a superior you should be able to handle it. That actually is the key assertion, the power imbalance direction.
I was curious, so I used Perplexity.AI as a quick sanity check for lijok's comment. Here's the result:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-are-some-handbooks-on-...
None of the books identified by Perplexity.AI appear to endorse lijok's claim. Of course, it could be a confabulation -- this is just a quick sanity check, to see if the claim is as manifestly true as lijok seems to think.
(Putting this in a separate comment so people can downvote separately if they want. If people don't like this sort of AI sanity check on HN, that's fine. Thought it was worth trying as an experiment, though.)
Did you read the result you linked?
> Several handbooks on highly effective communication in organizations are:
1. “Winning” by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch, which emphasizes clear communication, open dialogue, and transparency in organizational success.
2. “Fierce Conversations” by Susan Scott, focusing on transforming everyday conversations at work to achieve success.
3. “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott, which promotes empathetic yet direct communication in professional settings.
In your reading of those titles and summaries, do they seem likely to recommend communicating layers of fluff to executives?
Scroll down to the 2nd question: "What advice do these books offer to a subordinate who wants to give feedback to their manager? What's their reasoning for the advice?"
LLM(and LLM+) afaik, even Perplexity, do not do textual analysis. They do not “know” what is in the book, they will only try to predict how someone else would answer your question based on data in the training set. If there are not many similar questions asked and answered accurately, the results will be poor.
Ah, Jack Welch is the top source in 2024… hm
more like an insanity check. Did you ask the AI multiple times? usually if I ask a yes or no question and simply repeat the prompt a few times the model will tell me yes, no, and maybe, for any question.
Here's a link the AI cited, a LinkedIn post by the author of the book Radical Candor
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kimm4_how-can-you-practice-sa...
>How can you practice safe Radical Candor with your boss?
>...
>Start by asking for feedback before you give it. You want to make sure you understand the you're boss's perspective before you start dishing out praise or criticism.
>...
>Tell your boss what you appreciate about them. This is not "kissing up." It's praise, which is an even more important part of Radical Candor than criticism.
>...
>Say something like, “Would it be helpful if I told you what I thought of X?”
>...
>If your boss says yes, start with something pretty small and benign and gauge how they react...
That’s nice in theory. In practice, the likelihood of you working for someone who’s unable to process the truth and will shoot the messenger is very high
I don’t know if it’s “very high”. It can happen but on average I think successful people tend to be more reasonable and intelligent than average (not always obviously).
When times are good? You have a chance.
When times are bad? Oh boy.
My limited corporate experience is that you fluff feedback to the less effective leaders so that you can still influence them. The more effective leaders you talk to them directly and team up with them to accomplish great things together. It is a matter of different strategies.
Less effective leaders are like GPT.
You need to be both careful and creative with your prompt in order to get them to produce the result you want. :)
If you've honestly never seen the types of leaders envisioned in this article you are very lucky indeed.
For a large majority of supervisors, if you give them carefully-worded, polite, respectful, private, accurate, truthful, ego-preserving feedback about something they're doing wrong, their response will range between "immediate firing" and "hold a grudge against you, fire you as soon as they can find a replacement". There is nothing that makes people as angry as accurately pointing out their flaws.
The way around this is in essence to get the leader to think it was their idea to make a change, which is possible in some cases but not in others.
It’s surprising to me that such dysfunctional orgs exist where a single person can just fire someone immediately over some feedback. How have they even grown to be a business with that attitude?
But sure, you do need to adapt your strategy for the environment you exist in. That’s just common sense.
The org has to be small for the firing to be immediate, but I have seen a "top of stack rank to unpassable PIP" be caused by a single conversation... and that's even in companies most of this forum would consider top performing. I would argue that trying to figure out the fragility of your management chain's ego is a key part of a successful career, even if what we are going to do with the news is to choose to change jobs.
> The reason you fluff up feedback to your subordinates is because lower down the chain they tend to be insecure and don't yet have the experience to distinguish between actionable impartial feedback, and threats to their job security.
Rather than fluff it up, just make it explicit whichever you are doing.
If you actually like their work and are making an actionable suggestion, just say that, and don't forget to praise them for the work that you like. Far too often I see managers only give the suggestion and then it ends up looking like a threat.
> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.
The reason you do fluff feedback to your superiors is that you're on an H1B visa, are at risk of getting deported from the country and having to find a new home for your partner and new school for your kids (possibly in an unfamiliar language and environment for them), just for upsetting one superior.
The reality is most people in large companies do not care about "highly effective communication". They are just trying to survive and not get deported. Once we can get rid of this stupid 60 day rule and insane housing and child-raising costs maybe people will start caring about their work. The most basic of Maslow's needs are not being met, hence the fluffing up to the authorities (bosses) who are in control of your livelihood.
Well yes, it’s a higher variance approach. If you can’t afford to look for a new job then by all means keep your head down and avoid all controversy. I would do the same in that situation. That doesn’t apply to everyone however, so for those people it would make sense to try to make things better and potentially advance their careers.
If most people in your company are on s, your management is probably breaking the laws and is not the sort of person who appreciates honest communication.
I agree strongly - if I worked at an organisation where the linked article was the 'necessary' way of communicating I would look for a job at a less dysfunctional company. The context of the article seems to be a workplace with a sense of hierarchy that is inimical to honesty if it threatens insecure managers' egos or social standing.
You must be very lucky. The majority of places where I worked was headed by people with fragile egos that you had to slowly guide to the right conclusion without the presence of an audience.
If you told them something that could be interpreted as a criticism of a decision in front of others they would in principle not accept it and play to the audience. If you just told them a fact thst they disliked they would argue against it, I had a superior argue against fundamental laws of physics bscause he disliked the conclusion that followed from that lae being true.
Luckily I am a very diplomatic person and have no issues with that — but apparently things within organizations aren't as they should be.
I think you may be making assumption: that the feedback you are trying to give is clear, articulate, and constructive. When speaking to someone significantly more senior than you it’s entire possible that your feedback may not be.
And that is really the point of the post. Here is advice on how to make sure your point is clear, articulate, and constructive.
As someone becomes more senior 2 things happen:
1. They acquire more authority 2. They have more demands on their time.
In these situations, you need to work to make sure you are communicating what you intended to communicate. That requires effort.
I wouldn’t view this advice as “how to deal with fragile egos”, but instead would view it as “how to make sure you are not misunderstood when having critical conversations with high stakes”.
In that regard it is good advice.
Hard not to be cynical about your response but do you believe most of the superiors out there are on this level that you specify? Would be a joke.
I think not raising anyones hackles with your feedback applies pretty universally. It’s too much to expect senior leaders to not be human.
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
You're arguing based on how you think the world should be instead of how the world actually is.
Are you suggesting that functions overseen by those unable to process no-fluff information, are often successful and do not sink?
What happens when all functions are overseen by people unable to process no-fluff information.
This article gives a good advice how to give feedback to anyone without souring relationship.
Everyone can be insecure and if your superior happens to feel insecure about you that day the damage can be severe.
There a lot more subtlety to this than you seem to indicate.
I’d never give negative feedback to an exec (+2 levels above me) in a large meeting. I’d wait for a more private setting.
With my immediate boss (director) I’d provide feedback in a small “managers only” group if I thought there was something to debate as a group, but not an open team meeting.
But your comments about subordinates is true. Generally try to keep feedback positive/constructive. And time it so they don’t feel attacked.
For (most) management. Absolutely do NOT do this:
"I’d wait for a more private setting."
Only do this IF you think management is well adjusted human being that is not ego driven. I leave it to reader to decide exactly how much of management falls into that bin.
If management is not, they will know that you are a threat to them and work to undermine you and get you removed. If you provide feedback publically they can less afford the reputational hit (if you're correct in your publically aired assessments).
In either case you must play nice with your coworkers and subordinates.
Fair point. “More private” not 1-on-1. I’d probably have my manager in that conversation (and quite possibly run my thoughts by them before offering them to the exec).
Fully agreed. I would consider not pointing at people's faults in a public setting to be basic etiquette.
I'm not a fan of a lot of the examples here for feedback up or down.
> “We may need to give even more guidance to new hires.”
Up or down, "we may" and "even more" are weasel words that weaken what you're saying. It's trivial for someone to interpret that as "they think maybe we could do more, but they seem to also see that we do a good amount already."
> “I used to struggle with this, and when I tried X, it really helped.”
This one I think is good for managing down; bad for managing up. It's less weasel-y but it risks coming off very aggressive - "I already figured this out, what is wrong with you?"
> “The team made amazing progress when we all focused on the website update last month. It might help to have one or two clear priorities for the team this month that everyone can rally behind.”
You have a great example, "it might help" is again weakening your POV compared to something more like a direct "what are the top priorities this month that we can all rally around?"
> “When we were able to dedicate that first week to training Steve, he got up to speed pretty quickly. The bit of upfront time seemed to have paid off, and taking a similar training approach for our next hire could help them ramp up just as fast. What do you think?”
Here we've taken a lot of words to state the obvious, which IMO both runs the risk of losing the urgency in the verbosity and coming off as pandering and over-explaining the obvious.
I think "what are your thoughts on" and "one approach might be" are better in both up-and-down directions as long as associated with a clear specific "here is something I noticed that I think is sub-optimal" situation.
Exactly this. Somewhat an issue here though, that this is essentially a matter of a person's culture. What you've said is most likely true for WEIRD (acronym) people, but for other cultures where retailiation is quite possible, one either have to dance that silly dances, or indeed polish their CV.
You are not entirely wrong, but I think you're underestimating the value of respecting human emotion. If people are leaving the team or it is missing deadlines, angering customers, making more work for other teams etc., your manager doesn't need your blunt feedback about performance and sustainability.
This is very much a "the world _should_ work this way" view point.
But this attitude is not particularly useful in a world where things aren't black and white.
People get promoted by "managing up," which you call "fluffing."
> start polishing your resume
What if you have reached the optimal level of income, and the work itself you like? Anywhere else would be a cut in either one of those 2.
I guess distance yourself emotionally from your job, but continue looking and be picky about your next role.
I'm in a similar boat, but my engineering manager wants to get rid of them, so I'm being dragged into office politics now.
Other than a few rotten apples, the company is great. So, I'm also somewhat reluctantly looking for a new role.
If you find yourself needing to tiptoe around a leader's ego too often, it might signal deeper systemic issues
I had much the same reaction. To put it diplomatically, the article's advice is all about diplomacy.
Much of their examples are a kind of diplomacy that you might use with a somewhat hostile, stupid, and/or petty person. Not in an environment of trust and respect.
Or with an enterprise customer, where "business politeness" is expected, trying to gain advantage is expected, and no one expects you to be very honest.
(Exception: In some cultures, it might be outright rude and mutually awkward to ever say anything critical-sounding upwards, or to offend someone by not going through the politeness motions, which would just be disrespectful. The article seems to be coming from some kind of environment or social expectations like that. I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about, say, a US tech business environment that at least thinks it values speaking up with honest assessments.)
Ideally, management welcomes straight talk, and will do the right thing with it.
For example, if you've not been given reason to think the person above you is dishonest or unreasonable, and they haven't been given reason to think that about you, but you don't yet know them well, here's an example:
"The team is having some serious difficulty. Is now a good time to talk very candidly and constructively about that? ... Two things. First, I think that people are feeling that they don't have a good understanding of what the goals are, and how they're supposed to be prioritizing, on a daily basis. The other thing that seems to be bothering people is that onboarding is rough, and people immediately feel like they're not doing well, and then they aren't getting out of that feeling."
Note that this might sound a bit like some of the diplomatic framing of the article, in that it's not accusatory, but that's not what I'm doing. Some examples in the article attribute problems to the manager, and then use diplomacy, for cultural politeness, and/or to circumvent some pettiness they expect.
By contrast, in this example, I'm instead respecting the manager as someone who will take the information constructively. I'm also not presuming to attribute blame for the problems, since I don't have all the information about the situation, including not knowing everything the manager has been doing and why.
Yes, many "superiors" would be better replaced by AI because they would be better able to process accurate feedback dispationately.
Where have you worked my dude that you have this perspective? After a long and storied career I can safely say you must have a narrow experience and there is nearly endless literature about the need to manage up.
Or maybe you're a bully boss yourself and it's just an empathy disconnect.
Or maybe you've only worked in relatively large corporations? Idk, the thick skinned executive isn't a trope and it isn't a trope for a reason.
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Never a truer word said than this. It's incredibly naive to think that any unfiltered feedback upwards to senior management will be welcomed. In reality, no matter how accurate the feedback may be it will be regarded at best as useless, and at worst as a direct threat to leadership requiring a response. This response may come in the form of a re-org, team move or headcount reduction.
While totally disingenuous, your best strategy is to simply tow the corporate line while looking for a new job.
> they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.
Be sure to tell them that too!
> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone
and yet here we are...
> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.
Yeah, I'm not going to change a job just because one of my superiors is insecure (and the other things are good). This all-or-nothing mentality is just thought-stopping.
> Yeah, I'm not going to change a job just because one of my superiors is insecure
You likely are, willingly or not.
Good lord the comments section surely blew up. Can we just give this "fluff-up feedback" job to LLM already?
Thank God I didn't have to write all of that myself :)
Well said!
In my 13 years of experience, I would say it's never worth giving feedback to your manager. Either they are good and it's useless, or they are not and they won't learn from you.
I have come to a simple rule: if the manager is good, there is no problem. If the manager sucks (often that's because they lack experience, but it's all the same), just lie to them in order to preserve yourself. No need to have empathy for them: there is no karma out there. Bad managers usually have no problem climbing the ladder, even if it means making your life miserable. Work for you, not them.
Largely agree, 19 years here. Good managers and bad managers alike have weaknesses that are largely in-built personality traits. Telling them won't change how they've spent decades behaving.
The two worst managers I had clearly had anger management issues and some sort of inferiority complex, theres no feedback to fix that.
Try to stick with good managers as long as you can, especially if their weaknesses that don't bother you too much, understand where it's coming from, and try not to take it personally.
The 3 examples at the top of the article - unclear guidance, unable to set priorities, and not training new hires .. these are good benign issues that I've seen repeatedly from good managers.
You can remind them in a friendly tone why things are happening -(as they raise yet another low importance high urgency task) "if we keep switching to these urgent but less important tasks, the long-term important things (give examples) you are unhappy with the pace of will continue to be slow". The best outcome tends to be a 20% reduction in the undesired behavior, over many months. It doesn't go away or get unlearned.
Closing in on 30 years now.
The trick is to get into a company where the mission is sound, the direction makes sense, and your manager is good (i.e. protects you from above, and makes sure shit gets done in a timely and orderly fashion).
Then, help your manager out. Everyone has their flaws, bad situations etc. Be a true team member and help your manager out on those rare occasions where they really need it.
Agreed! Unfortunately not always easy to end up in such a position, but definitely something to look for!
I disagree. Superiors are people too, and they make mistakes. I've had subordinates give me feedback (which I followed), and I've given feedback to superiors (which they've followed). Both ways were extremely positive experiences and everyone involved was happier for it.
What kind of feedback was it? My guess is that those were pretty minor things that slightly improved your life. But the fact that it worked hints towards the fact that the managers were already competent, so the reports were already in a pretty good situation. No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
The most recent instance, a few days ago, my feedback to the CTO was that, while the org restructuring he proposed was a good idea in principle, the way he did it was terrible, and that he ignored and disrespected his highest performers. I said he hogs all the growth for himself and doesn't let any of his reports grow into more responsibilities, and he's showing that he doesn't respect the people who are integral in the company's functioning. I also told him that there are people who do a ton of work to correct others' mistakes and don't get any credit or recognition for it, and he failed to recognize those.
It kind of made him sad, which wasn't great because he's a nice guy and a competent CTO, but his latest move was catastrophic and he needed to hear it.
> No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
I mostly agree with the other commenters here, giving feedback upwards is easier and you don't need to sugarcoat it as much, because you can't fire the person above so they aren't going to be insecure about your feedback. Then again, they are people, and giving constructive feedback gently is better than giving it harshly, so I can't say the article is entirely unnecessary. Maybe partly.
> a few days ago, my feedback to the CTO was
Did he completely change course because of your feedback?
It's only been one working day since, but, knowing him and the rest of the senior leadership team, I do expect a large correction.
Right. But you mentioned feedback you gave that was followed. Do you have examples?
I've told the CTO that he needs to push the CEO for some specific things I've needed, that he needs to be more assertive with certain issues, that he shouldn't talk to the teams I'm running because he confuses them, and many other instances like that. He's followed feedback every time I gave it, usually immediately.
I try to do the same when my reports give me feedback, and they've also been satisfied with it. Most recently, I was told I shouldn't abstract things too quickly, which was good advice, and following it has gotten good results.
So bleak. It's fine to protect yourself but your managers are people too. You _can_ build a report with them and be frank with them.
When I manage folks, I much prefer honesty over someone who just bullshits you.
Managers aren't just people, they're people who have your employment in their hands. Reports will act appropriately for that fact.
"Don't bite the hand which feeds you" is a common phrase for what you described.
In my experience (20yr) good managers don't need any feedback. They were good because of clear communication as to what both parties expected of each other. Bad managers rarely listen to feedback and few make changes.
At my current role I'm thankful for the high level of autonomy received and being shielded from anything not relevant to my primary tasks.
I'm constantly asked to do "side quests" for others due to being a subject matter expert in several things (relative to my colleagues).
Every request gets the same answer - if my line manager agrees to it then I shall help - provided it does not get in the way of my primary tasks.
IMHO unless you own the company, your number one customer should always be your line manager.
There is a difference between treating someone as a human and bullshitting your manager though. I’m painfully blunt to the point where the management staff had to spend 3 hours in a crisis meeting discussing whether to fire me an another developer over our opinions given on a department meeting. Which to be fair was the wrong place to throw a couple of managers under the bus for something we’d been telling them for months, but hey. Anyway we didn’t get fired and nothing changed either. I stopped stressing about it after I had spoken my piece though so it worked rather well for me. Less so for the company, but it’s not like the two of us were the only ones management wouldn’t listen to.
So I like it when I can be frank with managers. I think I’m also notoriously hard to manage because one of my character flaws is that I don’t respect authorities. I’m not stupid though. I’ll absolutely bullshit managers in situations where there isn’t really a “win” to be achieved. Obviously this will mainly happen with bad managers, but there will always be great managers who won’t like, understand or have a good connection with you.
I think this is an example of a different issue. It sounds like your managers listened to your feedback often and even let high profile disruptions slide.
In general I think honesty is a good policy and management should be receptive to hearing out problems and possible solutions but that's not the same thing as implementing all feedback.
Maybe you're right or maybe your pet peeve just isn't a priority or can't be done for countless reasons. I'm not saying you did this but something I've seen often is employees confusing being heard with taking the advice.
As professionals I think it's our job to give advice and respect management's decision to take it or not. That's it I also think it's management's job to explain the reasoning.
I mean, this is one example which fits the discussion. Also one that I cherrypicked because I was actually right. I’ve had plenty of managers who were good at listening, however, I think most have been great. I have also worked management a few years myself and taken education in that direction before figuring out it wasn’t for me, so I certainly understand the financial and political parts of management and that you as an employee never have the full picture.
That being said, I have also had managers that I’ve played board games with on our free time who I haven’t actually given my opinion on certain issues with because they weren’t very good at taking that advice. Sometimes I’ve also not done it because I knew managers of my manager wouldn’t take it well if it made I up the chain. I view this more as an issue between me and the organisation I work for. If I’m not invested I’m not going to help it beyond what they pay me to do because it rarely comes back to me in a positive way.
There are many aspect to it. I’ve also had a manager who was a total waste of space as a manager, only caring about the “good story” whether it was true or not to push their own career. Who was also rather cold in regards to management employee duties since they really didn’t like the negative sides of it. Who was then the warmest nicest person in their personal life.
So it’s a very complex situation as you pointed out, but it’s also one where it’s perfectly reasonable to not try to lead upwards if you don’t want the hassle. At least in my opinion.
I feel like you took only half of my point. If the manager is good, then there is no reason to bullshit them. But believing that a bad manager will suddenly become good because you as a report taught them with a few carefully-crafted politically-correct statements sounds extremely naive to me.
Let me give an example: to a good manager, you could say "I'm under a lot of pressure because I have two many urgent things on my plate" and they should try to improve your life by maybe de-prioritizing some of them. In a way you gave feedback "it's not going well for me", but you did not try to guide your manager in their role. So that's not the kind of feedback the featured article talks about.
Now a bad manager will maybe be nice and say "I understand, I really appreciate the late nights and weekends you spend getting closer and closer to a burnout, you are a really valuable employee to me", but that's completely useless. Trying to tell them "you know, in a previous job I had a manager who in these situations would try to de-prioritize stuff so that I could live normally" is completely useless. If they aren't doing it yet, it means that they should not be your manager in the first place. Best case they say "thank you for the feedback, I appreciate that you feel comfortable speaking up" and don't change anything, worst case they get pissed because you "overstepped" (they are the manager, they know they know better, remember?).
There is no world where they say "you're right, I sucked until today, but from tomorrow on I will magically know how to be a good manager".
Crazily oversimplified view of people. Just one thing you’ve missed: in addition to the axis of good/bad there’s an axis of experienced/inexperienced. Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
> Crazily oversimplified view of people.
Then proceeds to add one axis, getting the total up to 2! :-)
> Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
If they are good and inexperienced, I don't think they need to be taught that if they don't set priorities, they should not be disappointed when they realise that... no priorities have been set. So they are still good.
If they are bad "because they are inexperienced", then they are still bad. They should not be a manager. They can acquire experience without being a manager though, e.g. by having a manager in the first place.
People who are busy thriving at work aren't hanging out in this self-pity party thread.
Not sure what you are trying to say here.
I personally have good managers right now, so I don't bullshit them.
I have had mostly bad managers in my career though, and my advice in this situation is: bad managers are adversaries, behave accordingly.
Yes and: Churn moots the entire notion. That whole storming -> forming -> norming -> performing team maturity model stuff. Have a bad boss? No worries; wait 3 months and you'll have a new boss. Thereby resetting the team(s) and relationship(s) back to storming.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Best feedback I've ever gotten was from peers (other bosses). And that was only after years of working together. Sadly, that was a long time ago. I'd kick a puppy to work on a stable, durable team again.
wow that's quite black or white. really good managers should want your feedback. even if there are no obvious problems, groups can always be better. and don't forget sometimes large problems start small.
This is very accurate
This was one of the most exhausting aspects of working for a US company, especially as an H1B. Simply: just don't say anything, it wasn't worth it.
I'm from cultures where we bluntly call a spade a spade and pride ourselves on disdain for hierarchy. There's far less fear in raising concerns generally to anyone, but it's quite possibly because of the far better employment laws.
It's not just due to an employee being H1B. It's that 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
I don't even feel like I'm working in the US when I'm working for any tech company these days. If I'm at ads for FB, I may as well be in Beijing. Some others, I may as well be in Mumbai.
It would be nice to work with Americans/westerners for once and actually be able to speak up about something without getting fired.
I don't agree with OP. I'm American and have mostly worked for American companies and have rarely had issues with giving honest, often difficult, feedback to superiors.
But
> 80% of your peers are Chinese and Indian H1Bs who bring that culture of deference to authority into the US.
is sadly spot on. Even when the org is very receptive to feedback, one manager in the chain who possesses a cultural belief in absolute authority is enough to break the feedback chain and lead to an organizational abscess of festering dysfunction.
It becomes even worse when your org's management has been taken over by a single cultural group and there is no one to turn to and your only option is to wait for the org to implode and be restructured from above.
This happens with any sort of foreign investments into any other country that has different sets of values. Even now the locals in my country are complaining about neo-colonialism and india/china-only perspectives in the companies they work for. Protectionist reactions are real and shape politics.
In my experience, Americans are much more likely to see criticism as a threat or an insult than in most European business cultures, where blunt feedback is common. I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face. It’s absurd, and it destroys teams.
> I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face.
I’ve been put into the “practitioner of the dark arts” bucket twice when I predicted with detail and accuracy why certain large projects would fail.
The folks in charge were offended when I presented my analysis, and they were just afraid of me after my predictions came true.
I've found these situations to be no-win.
When I had reasonable certainty of my next gig being lined up, I even put the question to leaders. "If I tell you why this project is destined to failure now in Q1 vs being quiet and playing along til end of year, will I be rewarded or punished any differently then?".
The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.
If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Yes it’s quite explanatory
The gap is much bigger between Americans and Chinese/Indian than it is between American and European.
I’m not just talking about public forums. Saying anything to your superior (perceived superior or otherwise) would result in disciplinary action nearly 100% of the time. It is not even about blunt vs tactful feedback. It’s about any feedback. You do exactly what you’re told and you shut the fuck up.
I found that out the hard way first time I worked in a company with European managers and majority Indian ICs. Acting European got me PIPed and then fired so damned fast for failure to shut up and do the needful.
I don’t think H1Bism is even primarily about depressing IC wages in the west, it’s about middle managers being so burdened with pointless make-work from above that they just don’t have time to lead. They need people who don’t need to be led even if it costs in terms of quality and efficiency.
Interesting. I used to work mainly with european developers (dutch, french, germans, russians, spaniards, polish, etc.) and I always could speak my mind, and others would do so. No BS, no avoiding direct confrontation. But more recently I have been working with ex-faang american developers and I don’t like it. It’s not that they are like indians and the like, but definitely not as direct and straightforward as europeans.
I feel like Americans are all over the place. The top echelons of business in the US are very blunt and direct. The lower levels tend to be very indirect with lots of toxic positivity. I think this works out for capitalism and exactly fits the Gervais Principle.
Brits are even worse than Americans at all levels (hence, the largely incompetent government and the fact most businesses are poorly run - it's literally The Thick of It at all levels).
Indian/Asians are the absolute worst in terms of directness, these are all very strict hierarchies of business that only succeed if the top person is a genius, since they will never be challenged by anyone.
Europeans definitely are most direct of all, so they don't put up with wage slavery, so business leaders can't maximize their extraction of value from labour, but they tend to have better quality of life all around :).
As a Brit, I agree with your comments. I've had to overcome a lot of my own culture to be an effective leader, and even then I don't always do a good job.
In my ~30 year career in the US, as a local, I have seen constant change. The FAANGs are even an amplified version of this. So when someone draws a comparison I always wonder if they are comparing contemporaries or rather an older experience versus a newer one, which is confounded by these temporal shifts.
I think there are a few significant (first-order) factors in the evolving US tech culture.
One is the often discussed age bias and growth rate, where these organizations are constantly diluting with incoming college grads and leaking their institutional knowledge and culture through low retention rates. It's not just H1B workers but all these new local hires who are "colonizing" the old tech world.
The second is the way FAANGs have focused on general consumer markets, advertising, and pop culture. To my eye, other markets used to be more influential. These other tech problems and investments remain, but the new media gold rush has seized the attention for many years. Consumer tech has been merging with media in general, and I think the culture inherently shifts in the same way.
The third factor is a bit recursive. The adoption of social media in the general population affects the way that culture evolves. This disproportionately influences young people, and a subset become the next wave of employees mentioned in the first point. But this is also why I wonder if these changes are more global, as my impression is that social media has accelerated the way regional cultural differences are eroding with more frequent and constant cross contact.
I've had a pretty similar experience in big tech. Some cultures do really seem to struggle with feedback (both giving and receiving). It can be a very painful work environment as a result - given I'm an incredibly direct person.
The best work culture I had was in a dutch firm. People just straight up called bullshit out all the time, and it got fixed fast. So refreshing. I've never been able to find another workplace like that.
Reasonable observations on office behaviour are being processed into glib stereotypes on culture. Employees routinely show discontent in India, (just one instance https://www.reuters.com/world/india/workers-apple-supplier-f...). So much so, that labour disputes are considered a major obstacle to corporate investment. Like Europe, India has labour laws which make people hard to fire.
There are other factors involved - if a H1B employee, whose job security is tied to the employer risks taking a 10x salary cut or more by going back home, then a fear for job security leading to such behaviour is a given.
> It would be nice to work with Americans/westerners for once and actually be able to speak up about something without getting fired.
In my experience Americans layer the “we’re all friends here” on too thickly to ever be described as blunt.
Too much my experience as well.
Inside AWS felt like hundreds (thousands?) of Indians who have terrible jobs but don't do anything about it. Now that I'm out I can't believe what I put up with.
Perhaps you could present yourself as worthy through your work, rather than bemoaning that others as worthy were more conducive to being treasured employees?
They are treasured employees for sure, though I'd call it abused. Not sure where my worth comes into this.
It's not just H1-Bs from those cultures, either. I'll give everybody a fair shot but if your cultural mores are extreme deference to authority I'd like to be far away from you when doing anything serious. I'd argue that a certain level of distrust of authority is not only good but inherently American. And no, I'm not saying "Americans take criticism well."
What a ridiculous complaint and wild gymnastics to blame a cultural gripe on to the hardworking deferent immigrants
I don't like all the stereotypes people throw around, but among those stereotypes is that California tech bros are pathological delusional wannabe-hippie optimists who blow smoke and sunshine at everyone.
I call it the "smile and wave boys" response.
This is why sometimes, "just don’t say anything" becomes the survival tactic - especially when the risk of speaking up feels like it outweighs any potential benefit
Sounds like you are Norwegian.
Or Swedish, Danish, German, Finnish, Dutch, and many other European countries where the laws protect workers.
Kiwi.
Captain Miller: "I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, 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."
Private Reiben: "I'm sorry, sir, but uh... let's say you weren't a captain, or maybe I was a major. What would you say then?"
Captain Miller: Well, in that case... I'd say, "This is an excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective, sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover... I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and am willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men - especially you, Reiben - to ease her suffering."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhbObZEF0Mc Saving Private Ryan
I don’t get it. He said gripe to his superior but he is basically kissing ass?
No, that is exactly how you inform a superior officer that you believe the mission is a waste of time, effort, equipment, and manpower, and will probably get everyone killed for next-to-no benefit.
I interpreted it to mean that he was still Captain and part of his job was to keep up morale and model positive attitude. Even hypothetically, he was not going to gripe to his troops, and as far as they are concerned, he believes it is a worthy mission. He was jokingly modeling the proper, positive attitude. All this was understood by his men.
I’d add that the answer was clearly over the top, thus sarcastic, thus he is agreement with his soldiers.
No, I did not interpret it that way. Perhaps he did think the mission was dumb, but he was not letting on even subtly.
It's best understood in the context of the story. I highly recommend the movie.
He's being sarcastic about his approval of the mission they're on, but is making the point of not overtly complaining to his unit.
In aviation this is what Crew Resource Management is about, and in particular, how to make sure the monitoring pilot, who may be the least experienced one, can effectively supervise and review the actions of the other. Many crashes were the result of copilots' fear of speaking up.
Business life could learn from this. The person in charge is not a king, they're simply the person tasked with making decisions. There is nothing scandalous in having another person evaluate those decisions against a set of principles or common sense, and speaking up when something doesn't feel right.
Better that than crashing into a mountain.
> Better that than crashing into a mountain.
Quite literally: https://youtu.be/kamyxB-yKrc?t=1479
Or rolling off a cliff: https://youtu.be/0ga8UFy1M04?t=742
That story in Gladwell about the (IIRC) Korean Air having to switch cockpit languages to English in order to escape the intrinsic layers of deference built into the language was hardcore. They were going to get delisted in Canada if they didn't do it.
Yeah, better than crashing into a mountain. That cockpit voice recording was really chilling. Gladwell gets a lot of flack, but he's told some interesting stories.
And your further point about businesses needing it too should be expanded to organizations of all kinds. This is a human problem, which means it's an ego problem, on both sides.
He recently did a mea culpa about the tipping point stuff. Glad he did.
I really, really disliked Gladwell. And yet Pushkin (his podcast network) carries some of the best stuff ever (Jill Lepore). And I found I was agreeing with a lot of Gladwell's (and Michael Lewis') overall "punching up" worldview. So I was having trouble reconciliing my two views of him.
As we've seen with Lewis' recent hagiography for that crypto freak: people are just people, they make mistakes, everyone's got blind spots, we don't have to agree on everything to learn from each other.
> Gladwell gets a lot of flack, but he's told some interesting stories.
Isn't the flack he's getting due to exactly that, that his stories would be interesting if true but often aren't?
I haven't followed stories about him, but I doubt that all or even most of his stories were made up. I mean, the Korean Air (IIRC) one can't have been fudged, right?
Even kings (nominally) have advisors and some level of contact with the people they rule over; they aren't expected to just make decisions from an empty room with exactly no room for being swayed. In theory, a good king is like that. A bad king, and similarly a bad business leader, shouldn't be used as exemplars though.
It’s fascinating how resistant pretty much every industry is to taking lessons from aviation, considering how much empirical evidence there is compared to almost every other management paradigm, which basically amounts to “just trust me bro”.
It particularly shocked me working in shipping where the lessons can be implemented pretty much without modification since it’s all the same work except they move in 2 rather than 3 dimensions.
The difference is how measurable the consequences are. In aviation when there's a screw up people die right then and there. People dying is a very hard to game metric, and it provides a very strong incentive.
The consequences of bad management in a software project on the other hand are much more nebulous. And nobody died as a direct consequence of some manager being a jerk… oh wait, I'm sure some did (committed suicide or gone postal), but it's easy to just blame the worker instead of the working place.
It’s not that. MV Sewol killed 304, many of them schoolchildren. The captain was put away for life, and rightfully so, but it’s not an incentive to do much else.
For some reason only air crashes seem to make any lasting impressions.
Most of those examples (not giving enough direction, not training new hires enough, not being clear enough on priorities) are probably not going to be surprises for the person, and if you give feedback that shows you want someone to behave differently without having given some thought about why they aren't already then your feedback talks more about your own lack of experience and empathy than anything else.
To give good feedback to anyone you need to understand something about the pressures and challenges that they are facing. And remember that everything is a trade off. For example, perhaps they're incredibly busy, and would like to spend more time with new hires, but are struggling to find time because they aren't getting enough blocks of concentration time to work out clear priorities and they have been told they need to give their trusted colleague more opportunities to grow so they delegated it to someone.
Most likely, if you think something is a problem then they do too. They don't need to be told that or criticised for it, they need help solving the problem that causes the problem.
Imagine the difference between "I want to give you feedback that you aren't spending enough time with new hires" vs "I know you've been wanting to spend more time with the new hires, why don't you take them for lunch and send me to your status meeting over Tuesday lunch time this week."
As I started doing more leadership, I became aware that a lot of the things I might previously have cited as predictable examples of leadership incompetence causing problems were not surprises to leadership. They knew that this course of action would cause problems. The reason that they went ahead anyway was because they believed that the problems caused by the other courses of action available to them would be worse.
Of course, there are situations this advice does not apply, maybe the leader genuinely is clueless or evil or mistaken about the severity of a problem, but a good leader when presented with a problem elsewhere needs to start from a position of respect and learning and if you want to give advice to a leader you should start by trying to model good leadership yourself.
> Imagine the difference between "I want to give you feedback that you aren't spending enough time with new hires" vs "I know you've been wanting to spend more time with the new hires, why don't you take them for lunch and send me to your status meeting over Tuesday lunch time this week."
This is the proper answer. Ultimately, feedback should be about changing something. My experience is that most people are neither good at giving or receiving feedback, and that includes myself. There are more effective ways to change things.
OP's is useful when you have to give feedback, which is expected in most large companies in some form or other (evals, etc.).
Delegation is the managers job - it's not up to the subordinate to delegate on their managers behalf IMO.
One of the surest way to get your manager's back is to help them make their goals and put some stuff off their plates. Like other people said, most semi competent managers are aware of issues happening in their team. If you come up w/ some proposal to solve those issues, it will improve the team much more effectively than some feedback.
It also depends on your goals, but fixing some issues encountered by your manager is one of the most reliable way to promotion in up to mid size companies, unless your manager is a a*hole.
I agree that most leaders will now they are fallible, and also have some idea of which things are problematic. As an inexperienced leader, I still valued getting "known feedback". It gave me a better idea of which problems were growing too large, and which ones remained minor annoyances. In addition, acknowledging the points that were brought up and explaining why I hadn't gotten to addressing them (besides being human) usually gave the person giving the feedback a more positive outlook.
I think the best feedback is pointing out problems (and then trusting the other party to act or at least explain why things are that way). You never have the full context so just telling someone they need to behave differently may not even be ideal given the information they have.
I don't think a manager will be impressed by a report saying "I know you can't do your whole job, so let me handle face time with the execs so I can take your job from you."
I can only speak for myself, but if someone I trust wants to solve some of my problems for me, enabling me to be better at my job, I love that and will push for their recognition and promotion.
If I don't trust them to represent me and the team, then obviously that suggestion wouldn't work, but I'm trying to express the difference between someone pointing out a problem as if the problem is just yours or offering to help take responsibility for the problem as part of a team with you.
I've worked with people who made it a point of pride to always bring a concrete, workable suggestion whenever they brought me a problem. We didn't always go with their suggestion, but they were fantastic to work with.
Thankfully, I've never had to worry about keeping good people on my team down out of fear they'd take my job.
> I don't think a manager will be impressed by a report saying
It's funny because it could go exactly the two opposite ways. If you "report the problem", you might be - totally as punishment - volunteered into the position to work on it, in addition to your normal workload. If you "report the problem and volunteer to do something about it", you might be shot down. Hilarious, right?
That's back to the fundamental problem: you need to work on building an understanding of your manager. You have the workload assigned to you, then you have everything you need to do to further your own career.
I would be impressed by one of my reports saying “We’ve worked together to get me ready for the next step in my career, and I think more face time with our execs will help me take that step. Can you help me find opportunities to get it?” This is assuming we’re on the same page about how ready they are to take that step. But if we’re not on the same page, then I’ve already failed in performance reviews and feedback.
Another tactic I like to use is a riff on the authors suggestion #3: “Is there a reason you did (or did not do) X?” This works because it’s framed as accepting the decision and being genuinely curious about the rationale. Often the answer is: no, I never really gave it any thought. Other times there turns out to be a good reason that didn’t occur to me and it turns into a learning experience for me.
Another tactic that works for me is “Can I offer a suggestion?” The answer is almost always yes but it’s a sign of respect to ask.
Depends on the profile, when somebody talks to me like that I immediately cringe in my head and lose all respect for the person.
Probably a matter of culture too.
This seems like a very shallow way of thinking. "Losing all respect for the person" implies that you think this is NEVER an appropriate way to address someone. Phrasing a disagreement of opinion as a question of reasoning is often the best course of action.
In particular if a choice has been made and going back to reverse it has significant costs, it is important to not say anything like "We should not be doing this" or "You made a mistake." Unless there is a good of action to reverse course that is simply being rude for no reason. Even in the case where there is a good way to reverse a decision, I would rather ask for the reasoning that led to the decision than strongly state the decision is wrong. If I am working with someone I respect at all, I must entertain the thought that I am wrong and they made the right decision with good reasoning.
What would you say to a superior who made a decision that you disagree with, but don't think is worth reversing? My best guess is either nothing or something that more strongly asserts your belief, but I can't think of any better option than phrasing it as a question.
> What would you say to a superior who made a decision that you disagree with, but don't think is worth reversing?
"I don't understand ... it seems it has the consequence of ... My professional opinion in that case would be... and I would advise to... because of... Is there something I'm not seeing here?"
Benefits:
- I'm not faking it.
- I already provide a lot of information up front to limit back-and-forth. This avoids assumptions and also works better for when you WFH.
- The person knows exactly where I stand and where I want to go. It's not chit-chat, it's not politics, it's purely technical and I want to move on the issue.
- If I'm wrong, I can get told right away. If I'm right, it's factual, and we can move on to solving the problem. And if the person's ego/social status is on the line, they can just BS their way out of it, and I'll just add nothing and move on.
- The template drives the conversation enough that they only need a short answer to let us decide if it's worth reversing. And we can conclude on the price / consequence of that and move on if needed.
I'll change that depending on the person. Some people are way better than me, in that case, I'll default to asking what I'm missing because it's likely they see something I don't.
On the opposite, if it's a junior, I'll assume they get it wrong and help them to fix it (unless they can justify it).
And of course, phrasing will depend of how much intimate I am with the person. Good friends will get a playful version, uptight clients will get the more formal one.
Once you have done that several times and people know the routine and the relationship is good, you barely have to speak. You can just nod at something or raise an eyebrow, and start problem solving or get the info.
But note that I can do that also because my clients value my opinion enough, have respect for my professionalism, and also know, because of my past interactions with them, that I focus on the problem to solve rather than blaming.
> Is there something I'm not seeing here?
That's essentially the same thing. The only difference is that you're putting your uncertainty at the end and I'm putting it at the beginning. The key is to explicitly acknowledge that you recognize the possibility that you might be wrong.
Same here - whenever I see someone trying to get around giving honest feedback, and trying to frame it as "humble curiosity" instead, I immediately assume they read some "leadership" articles and are trying to apply it because they are second guessing themselves. I believe it depends a lot on the culture, but I am much more used to either keeping my mouth shut (when there is nothing on the line) or being blunt (when it matters). Either way, no sugarcoating or "being curious".
The problem with being more assertive is that there is always the possibility that you are wrong and the person you are "correcting" is right. Opening with an assertion makes it hard to save face in that case.
In my experience, those phrases are more often used to disguise the real intent: "you are doing it wrong and I can't stand it".
I think the best feedback comes from people who have tried to understand the reasons other people have, before asking "is there a reason ...?".
> "Is there a reason you did (or did not do) X?”
I think many people would take that as a direct challenge of their decision.
I'm no human expert but personally I'd try something like "Man I bet you had to make some tradeoffs and juggle priorities over $X right ! ..." and then see what they offer up. At the water-cooler, bar etc
> "Can I offer a suggestion?”
It's not the done thing to say no to that but depending on the tone a lot of people would then just ignore whatever comes out your mouth
This is excellent advice. In general, offering feedback in the form of a question is an extremely underutilized way of beginning a productive dialog.
Unfortunately, likely due to surveys, most people are accustomed only offering declarations in lieu of interrogatives.
Your manager often admits they do bad things for no reason?
It's more like, "No, I didn't have any particular reason for doing it this way, if you have a better idea, go for it."
Dutch person here (have been told we are some of the most direct people): my experience is that it is not the words but the intention. E.g. the 'give more training' example: 'I do not understand why we do not give more training. It seemed to help with Steve, why are we not doing more so'. And being genuinely interested in the answer. Do not assume you are always right in assuming more training helps, but ask yourself why it may not be. Having an open mind can really help. And perhaps you were right to be astonished in 95% of situations, in 5% (or more) you might learn something. Other things are certainly true: it may be better to ask that question in private, as opposed to while the leader addresses the whole staff.
The interesting thing in my mind is how dysfunctional I've found reporting chains' behavior (to the company). I've found the same thing others here have found -- certain cultural backgrounds or a large preponderance of H1Bs create a culture where upward feedback is silenced.
And in the end usually the company loses out - directors forge ahead with ill-informed projects (rewrite entire system X), don't measure/cherry-pick/game-metrics, and create a major threat to anybody on the team who surfaces any contraindicating metrics (e.g. "Our pipeline still takes Y hours and nobody is happy about it, including us").
This title of my article doesn't make much sense to me. Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing? I give feedback to my superiors all the time, and expect my subordinates to do the same. In fact, as far as my team goes, you're more likely to get into trouble (not fired) if you rarely give feedback.
American workplaces are very toxic. Waves of managers ride on the coattails of the latest dude in charge. That they are completely clueless doesn’t prevent them from getting the job. If you point out their failures, you will immediately be labeled as part of the opposition.
In other words, this is pure Machiavellian politics. The truth doesn’t matter. If you don’t kiss the donkey’s ass, the best advice IMO is to shut the hell up, collect your paycheck, and go home and kiss your wife. Your family is the only people who matter. The farce will go on for years. Like all Ponzi schemes, it will eventually collapse. But it may take years.
That's an incredible summary, totally matching my experience
when your boss is a one-upper who doesnt understand your teams product, they will do everything possible to sabatoge your efforts and spin metrics to make you look bad. attempting to give feedback to such a person will get you this response: "you need to earn trust and learn to disagree and commit".
idk if this is a US thing; its mainly a thing where a manager is tasked with supporting a product that they dont understand. managers in these situations attempt to treat their managerial role as if the product itself does not matter - the team has metrics to hit, and to them thats more important than the product.
> give feedback to such a person will get you this response: "you need to earn trust and learn to disagree and commit"
Sure, but you won't get fired, right?
Even so, this is just about dealing in general with people who have ego (for the sake of brevity) issues. I don't understand why this should be advice for dealing with senior leadership in general.
> Sure, but you won't get fired, right?
in my experience, they will start an email paper trail as a precursor to a PIP.
It's not only US thing, eastern european too. We're on average rather alright developers but culturally there's no skill of good management - we have been destroyed in this aspect by Soviet occupation and communism.
> Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing?
Possibly: in many places there they have "at will" employment, where they can basically fire you with little to no severance at any time for any reason. There are limits, but compared to most of Europe that's the gist of it.
So yeah, you can be fired just because someone doesn't like you. And giving feedback is a good way to not be liked.
every employment should be at will!! is there a constitutional or birthright to employment at XYZ company? these discussion always look at one side, like “employer can’t fire employee X without paying severance and other junk” but if I started a company and said “if you leave the company you have to pay severance back to the company for leaving” everyone would be up in arms about it…
> every employment should be at will!!
I would agree in an ideal world where salaries are tied to a qualification (a notion a tad more nuanced than just diploma), instead of their job. While there is no (nor should be any) constitutional right to work at any given company, I think people should have an inalienable right to live. Which in practice means food, shelter, and health care at a minimum, regardless of their ability (perhaps even willingness) to work anywhere.
The compromise most EU countries have settled on is that once you're employed and past some probation period (in my line of work that can last up to 8 months), then they can't fire you without a damn good reason or a hefty severance (the better the reason the lower the severance, basically). But it cuts both ways: I personally can't leave immediately, I have to tell my employer 3 months in advance. It is in a way a kind of severance.
I think this arrangement would be fair if you had to pay back to the company the same amount they have to pay you. to get a notice for some period of time makes sense (both ways) but I can’t see a reason why this is all not equal on both sides.
> I can’t see a reason why this is all not equal on both sides.
I can.
Think of what employment is for a second: shareholders (or company owners) own the capital, and the employee gets to follow orders. Structurally, the company pay workers less than their actual value: shareholders gotta hold, and they squeeze the margin out of the employee. The margin may be thin, but it's never meant to be zero (except for non-profits, but they're the exception).
Such a relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, such an exchange fundamentally unequal. If you want any hope of restoring fairness from this system, termination conditions have to be asymmetrical as well.
And I can’t see a reason why it should be equal. Even if you strip the relationship down to its most basic principle, there is asymmetry. One party provides work with the expectation of pay, the other party providess pay with the expectation of work.
But the asymmetries don’t end there. Terminating employment is a far greater threat to the employee than the employer. This creates a power imbalance which could easily be exploited by malicious or incompetent employers. That power imbalance is fundamental to this relationship and is reason enough (in the opinion of many countries) to bolster worker rights.
I live in a US state that has at-will employment.
I once had an owner of a small business threaten to sue me for quitting because it would cause financial harm to the business. And that was with giving 4 weeks notice.
At-will employment laws protect employees that want to quit, not just employers that want to fire.
> At-will employment laws protect employees that want to quit
Does your unemployment insurance work after you quit? Or does it only work when you're fired?
Leaders don't hold all the power. As others have said, I think this is a good approach for everyone - showing a bit of empathy and "you don't know what you don't know" when corresponding with people. In fact it's good leadership 101.
Edit: can anyone suggest any good (free) tools for eliciting 360 feedback? Potentially anonymously?
Answer: they need to be open to hearing it first, and you need to be someone they trust.
How to build trust? Make it clear you are on their 'side'.
Luckily giving feedback can be that way:
- Give any positive feedback publicly
- Give any negative feedback privately
- Rather than give negative feedback, come with concrete things that could be done to improve things. Try not to assign blame.
Do this consistently while being good at your job and they are more likely to not misinterpret your opinions as rationalization
Sounds culturally biased. From working in northern Europe and especially with people from Scandinavian countries, I'd say that for each of those examples the 'wrong' choice would be the more likely to be exchanged and taken at face value.
Whereas when I work with people from the US a lot of fluff is always needed or offense may be taken. Just as the article purports.
And there is also body language. Here is one of my favorite exchanges I once witnessed, between two senior leaders, one Spanish, one Finnish, after a few beers at a company party. I leave it to the inclined reader to guess who is from which country.
Sergio (gesticulating, grinning): Lauri, why don't you use your hands more when you're talking?
Lauri (hands flat on the table, straight face): Because it's not efficient.
These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea. If you ever want to get anything done in painfully structured or faux-flat orgs, this is the way.
Why this psyop works:
1. People like to take credit for things.
2. People don't like to be wrong.
3. People get irked when a good idea wasn't their idea.
4. People don't like to feel threatened.
5. Just remove the duck.
The examples given are a little contrived, but the techniques applied are gold for more tricky scenarios.
> These are all rhetorical techniques to make your idea their idea.
Ok, cool, I've heard this a gazillion times by now. I don't disagree, it does looks like it's better at getting shit done. Just one question: how do I get credited for anything? I have my career to look out for too.
You involve yourself in executing the idea and talk up those contributions. If it turns out you were wrong, hide.
Do not give feedback to your boss.
https://www.manager-tools.com/2012/02/do-not-give-feedback-y...
Would you be so kind provide a summary of your link? The show notes cost $15!
NotebookLM is very decent at giving summaries to lengthy audio files:
The sources strongly advise against giving feedback to your boss, even if your boss claims to be open to it. This is due to the inherent power dynamics in organizations and the potential negative consequences. Here's why:
- Power Differentials: Organizations have vertical structures where bosses have more power, authority, and responsibility [1-3]. This means that certain behaviors, like giving feedback, are reserved for those in higher positions [3].
- Risk of Negative Reaction: Even if a boss claims to be open to feedback, they might react negatively, consciously or subconsciously, to criticism from their subordinates [4-6]. This can lead to:
- Damaged Relationships: The boss may view the feedback as insubordination or a lack of respect, straining the relationship [7]. Stalled Career Progress: The boss may hold a grudge, potentially impacting future promotions or opportunities [7].
- Job Security: In extreme cases, giving unsolicited feedback could even lead to termination [8].
- Misinterpretation and Misunderstanding: Bosses often interpret upward feedback as a challenge to their authority or a lack of understanding of the complexities of their role [9, 10]. They might feel that the direct is overstepping their boundaries or does not have enough experience to offer valid criticisms [11].
- Breakdown of Hierarchy: Allowing upward feedback can blur the lines of authority and lead to a situation where directs feel empowered to dictate their boss's actions [9]. This can create chaos and undermine the effectiveness of the team.
- False Sense of Openness: Many bosses want to believe they are open to feedback, but in reality, very few are truly capable of handling it maturely and constructively [12, 13]. Their initial openness might just be a facade that crumbles when faced with actual criticism [14].
The sources highlight that while it's tempting to give upward feedback, especially with good intentions, it's generally unproductive and carries significant risks. They advocate for focusing on alternative approaches like offering suggestions during brainstorming sessions or providing input through formalized channels like 360 reviews, while exercising extreme caution even in those situations.
In my experience one of the best ways to "get ahead" is to give direct 1:1 feedback to someone higher up in your management chain for something that you are obviously right about it (some wiggle room here, but be sure to be atleast mostly right on a non-trivial topic). It demonstrates to them that you have good judgement and have backbone. They will trust you more and start to think of you as more of a peer than merely someone in their span of control (obviously you need to do this tactfully / not be a dick about it but also be firm). This has been a huge unlock for my career. ymmv.
I hope corporate ling like this stops for good. Seriously. Bad management is the norm, not the exception. We're all suffering from poor leadership at every level; I bet you all can count the good managers you've had on one hand.
I'd rather live in a world where we could give blunt and direct feedback like, "You suck as a manager, why are you still insisting on this?" However, we live in a situation where the system will always push back against any dissenting voices, and in the end, back-patting and corporate camaraderie are what keep the wheels turning.
One important option seem to be entirely missing here: Start. A. Union.
It seems the real problem here is the power difference between people, combined with the powerful side not having a thick enough skin… or lacking the actual competence that we ought to expect of their position.
A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback, however negative: either the feedback is crap and they'll calmly say "nope, trust me I know what I'm doing here", or the feedback has enough truth in it for them to say "oops, I'll do better next time", and then proceed to actually do better.
An incompetent leader however likely know they're incompetent, and they're less likely to meaningfully judge feedback. They're more likely to look for social validation, and more importantly secure their position. Any negative feedback threatens that position, and when that feedback comes from below, the solution is obvious: slap the peasant down, perhaps even fire them.
Often there's little you can do around those people. For instance, I once applied for a contracting gig that would involve cryptographic work. I was rejected because I was "more competent than the project lead". My guess is the hiring manager there knew that if they brought in someone more competent than the project lead, things would go bad. Quite the indictment of the project lead if you ask me.
My best project lead on the other hand had no problem being a worse programmer than the people under him (the tech lead for sure, and I probably). He worked on the parts he could, trusted us to do our thing, and I trusted him with telling me the priorities. Best gig of my entire career.
>A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback
Replace 'competent' with 'perfect'. Most people are very easily offended or threatened by negative feedback. One can argue that they shouldn't be, ideally, but I don't think you can really say that anyone who's not maximally receptive to negative feedback is incompetent.
This is not the first conversation on HN about management and feedback I've seen where the wide range of opinion and disagreement may reflect only 4 possible things:
1) There is some ideal way to interact that exists, but is not yet known, so we're all essentially still just fumbling in the dark and occasionally encountering light from an as-yet-unknown source
2) There is some ideal way to interact that is more or less understood by some but not all because it is simply not being communicated well (the rate of incoming employees is greater than the rate of knowledge spread- incidentally, this is the same problem I suspect exists with functional languages being perennially less-popular)
3) There is some ideal way to interact that is understood and known but is incompatible with existing and persistent (stable dysfunctional equilibrium) dysfunctionalities in orgs
4) There is in fact no ideal way to interact in a hierarchy because it is largely dependent on the individual personalities of the participants as well as the setup of the org
Mmm. There's also the 4th option is probably better expanded to, individual perception of communication are encoded and decided using fundamentally incompatible protocols because of entirely differing status, background, wealth and social structure.
I don't think personality real encapsulates it. I don't believe Elon musks personality has changed, but his fundamental GIGO has.
One foremost aspect I see missing in the discussion is:
"It depends"
It depends massively and that's the main problem. So I'd focus on understanding how that works with this specific manager M you are concerned about. It will be different with another manager. After that it's detail. Managers are human, flawed, not anywhere near rational (not fully rational anyway), and in some cases crooked or insane. Just like their reports and bosses, kind of? Try and feel out how that manager operates before "doing anyone a service".
In particular, it means not relying on the idea that they would reason the same as you do.
Because for example, absolutely "providing info so they get to look good, privately so there is no loss of face" will blow up in your face with some managers. Even if it's to the detriment of that manager.
In some cases, it will be even worse than this because that manager will be well ahead of you and already have their own plans in place for their own future. In a case like this it's not even necessarily possible for you to imagine what reaction you might get.
To be fair, there is a general plan available for you: Cultivate a network, keep your resume in front of people. Then you can be bolder.
I’m too Dutch for this kind of indirectness. Say it without the fluff and not in public and everything will be fine.
I love the Dutch 'no bollocking around' method, but it translates horribly to non-Dutch. Which is a real shame. With my Dutch friends, one colleague, I know exactly where I stand. Everyone/ everywhere else (often Americans, but the Brits are catching up), fluffs and huffs and puffs - and then start 'things' in the background.
If you’re not on a visa and don’t have kids I’d recommend simply not caring if you get fired by insecure leadership. You’re better off elsewhere if they would do that.
It's not a senior leader if they aren't spending a lot of time prying out this kind of information from their team already.
Looking at their web page this author seems like a professional bullshitter that pivoted into enabling other bullshitters, for a fee.
I don't think tip toeing around people like this is a solution at all. But I've never worked in the US.
Some important questions:
1) Why are they a leader at all?
2) Why are they your chosen leader?
Just like there are plenty of employed, bad devs there are employed, bad leaders/managers.
Maybe they aren’t good at it, or maybe they’re new to managing and this is one skill where they will get better.
I'm thinking maybe we should be more careful in general with who we give these kinds of responsibilities to.
People can grow into their roles. You don’t expect junior devs to know everything one day one, so why would you expect a “junior[1]” manager?
[1] I know the article is about senior managers, but it reads as though the mean “somebody more senior than me” and not “somebody who has been managing a long time”
The difference is the damage done.
I don't think training managers on real people is a good idea.
Genuine question: how do we train managers, then? Surgeons have pigs, but even then it's not perfect, and there comes a point where they have to perform surgeries on actual humans (hopefully under supervision).
Mentoring?
> If you do speak up, you might put your employment and well-being at risk.
I'm so glad i spent most of my career in Norway where that is so much less likely. In fact it putting your employment at risk is really so unlikely as to not be worth consideration. Well being is of course a bit harder to quantify and control.
This is all bad advice. A bad manager is rarely ignorant they are bad; they are often going to be insecure having moved outside of their comfort zone. A good leader is going to be aware they often act terribly and invite you to their world view - who knows, you could be wrong.
You can coddle bad managers as this article suggests; but take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Will this person cause harm, death, or injury due to their decision making or lack there of? Attempt to fix them for a limited duration or get the hell out. Do it in a collaborative way, where you can enable them to make the right choices. That doesn't work? Get out. Don't enable them to cause harm.
> If you don’t speak up, you’re robbing your organization of your good insights.
No you're not. If your organization does not giving feedback easy, and safe, they're the ones who have failed. You don't owe them anything.
This is all cultural. As an immigrant from New York to a Nordic country, I have been lucky enough to experience two working cultures intimately. New Yorkers are considered blunt and no-nonsense, but I had no idea. Nordics are utter minimalists when it comes to feedback. It is unadorned and without any frills whatsoever. None of this couching the ouch between two positives. Nordics make New Yorkers look like Californians.
They will genuinely be confused by American-style feedback. Did you ever notice that we use a lot of superlatives? Something we like is the best, we love it, it's the greatest ever? That's not bad, it's just our style of talking, but the untrained Nordic will take that seriously. I have to tone that way down: "That code is really well done."
Moreover, you are required to give truthful feedback, here. It's not optional. If you think something is a bad idea and you don't say anything, you are doing a bad. If somehow you're caught not saying something, or worse, lying and saying you think it's a good idea, you will be in trouble and lose reputation.
This approach to giving and getting feedback took some getting used to, but I find it refreshing and I am afraid I'm spoiled for any other way.
It’s also important to note that scrum masters, product owners and business analysts, despite what the company org chart may lead you to believe, belong to middle management and need to be treated accordingly.
Scrum masters are particularly dangerous because they are highly skilled at blending in by speaking and acting like developers. That’s why they are so popular to spend project money on despite their apparent uselessness.
I assume the mentioned feedback could be interpreted as critical.
First I'd start by mentioning something they doing well OR something positive about them that relates to their job. Ie they have good attitude or get on good with co workers etc.
Then I would move on to what it was thought needed "some improvement" Id mention the "positive outcome" that would result if the feedback I was about to give was implemented. I could even tone it down ...with the words "...my opinion ..."
ie My opinion , is if we ( meaning the manager ) where to do "... what ever ..." it could result in this "....more desirable outcome..." I could soften it more by saying .... we tried this at my previous job ... and it gave "...whatever the positive result is "
( Giving effective feedback is a skill. I learnt how to do in a speech training program called "Toastmasters " We had a internal Toastmasters club for the company I worked add ( Not in the US ) with about 30 members. Often the other members where >several levels< above me. Me - a very junior person at the time. So had to give feedback to Senior staff about their speech. )
Actually this is good advice for giving feedback to anyone.
I disagree with much of the premise and frankly don't think this person should be giving advice. Some of what's in there isn't bad like "be thoughtful about what you say". However, if you already feel something needs to be changed to the point where you're thinking something needs to be said but then you follow the article to force yourself to ask questions like
> “Can I live with this? How much does this bother me? Is it worth giving them feedback and what are my chances of success doing it?”
and doing multiple rounds of this you are compromising with yourself at an early stage. This frequently leads to things escalating (the problem didn't go away and in fact got incrementally worse because there was no negative feedback) which makes it a much harder situation.
This article is also written with examples like, if you don't make small changes to your wording, you'll get responses like "You think I don’t know that I need to give new hires guidance? I obviously gave them guidance. GTFO." which clearly catastrophizes outcomes based on small nuances in your own already inoffensive language.
Feedback is like gardening. Take care of small problems early and gently but relentlessly. If there's a wolf in your garden you should probably do something about the wolf instead of working around the wolf and spending your life in fear, even if that means finding a different garden.
I will recommend the book "The Coward's Guide to Conflict" which helped me get a healthy perspective.
https://www.amazon.com/Cowards-Guide-Conflict-Empowering-Sol...
At work I always give positive and friendly feedback, regardless of who is asking. I don’t need to put myself in a position in which the receiver didn’t like or misunderstood my feedback the wrong way. What for? I couldn’t care less about their professional development, and I don’t want to be a blocker in their path to promotion.
I do my time, I get paid and move on. Don’t need drama at work.
One of the most annoying things in companies is how criticism only flows downwards and praise usually only only flows upwards.
These seem like decent tricks but make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. IME you can't change anyone's mind about anything, and trying will usually piss them off. If you don't like your boss, go shopping for a new one instead of trying to reform the one you have.
Feedback is pointless. Vote with your feet. If a team has high churn it's guaranteed the leadership is garbage.
I agree voting with your feet is good and underutilized, but it's also extremely expensive for both sides. There's no successful group that didn't need feedback or even internal conflict (with healthy resolution) to be successful.
People have ego's. Instead of saying they are wrong, adopt their perspective and help them discover your perspective. They may like your perspective and adopt it as their own reasoned opinion, lead them to it, and then they may adopt it and own it. Sometimes you'll find they have unstated reasons for choices, find workarounds for them. This is a basic human skill everyone should understand.
This is a lesson to us all, though. Like it or not — and it'll vary depending on your geography and industry and so on, I know — this is an issue of at least some proportion.
So, just be aware. Many of us are someone's boss. You might not feel like you're 'senior', but to them you are.
Be open. Listen. Don't react (immediately). Consider. Just stop and think for a second. Realise that these other people's views are, at the very least, worth considering. (They may, of course, be wrong.)
One of the most rewarding things I did before I left the corporate world was have a 26-year-old grad as a direct report. I was 46 and had 'Head of…' in my job title. She was as smart as anything and it was an incredible experience. Hopefully, for us both.
I’m sick of dealing with managers and bad leaders, and want to get back to coding and building cool stuff.
Is there any solution for this? Co-op? Contract work? Consultancy? Union? Flat org structure? Self employment? Start a company with a couple of engineer friends and have flat org, based on trust?
I’m guessing only the last two options are promising. I’d appreciate hearing everyone’s stories, as I am genuinely interested.
I hope that in the future maybe AI will be to organize people better in larger organizations so people are more focused on doing productive work instead of endlessly aligning on things and the hoard of people doing alignment in large organizations can find a better use of their time.
My very simple process:
If you choose to be right, then get a job where you can be right. Probably means becoming a manager.I think this article is teaching you how to dance on a song that isn't being played for you. Unless the feedback is something that is going to benefit, or improve your own work, then toss it aside. My experience [1].
Unless your company is in pursuit of a noble human endeavor, just make sure you get some good work done, and make good connections along them way. The truth is rarely what a company seeks. So if your manager is imperfect, don't sweat it.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21766903
> How to give a senior leader feedback (without getting fired)
I don't do it because it can play against me in the worst case. And I won't get anything out of it. People can be more sensitive than it seems and unsolicited feedback isn't always welcome.
My company is big on feedback, so we're expected to give peers and managers feedback. I never fill the "constructive feedback" part of the form, or I just put something harmless. We also have anonymous evaluation forms. If something is wrong with manager or leadership, it'll show there.
I love that I live in a country where I can just tell my superiors exactly how they suck and never risk getting fired. It might not be wise for other reasons but fire me they cannot.
One rule I try to remember with leaders is to speak for impact and not impressing them.
Dealing with senior leaders (VP/Director, not C-suite) can be different too.
Managing up and influencing others may work well, or not at all.
Working one's way up in different workplaces, industries and regions can vary wildly and I would probably caution from my own experience in a lot of verticals that it's best to get to know the scenario and see if you can recognize what might help.
And then from her other article :
Give enough context to avoid back-and-forth follow ups. Don’t be coy when you can be direct. Don’t speak in stream of consciousness. Assume your manager is task switching or checking your Slack message between meetings—make it super easy for them to catch up on context and dive into what you want to discuss.
Re-title the article to be called
“How can I suck up EVEN MORE than I am now”
I understand the wisdom that they are trying to convey. But sucking up to those on higher pay grades like this for the greater good of the company? I think if it’s that dangerous providing feedback to the company then upper management need to put even more effort into determining who makes good leadership material.
Superiors love to solve their problem first, its as simple as that. Not in a bad way but they are dealing with 10 times issues compare to your own level issues. Manager > Team Lead > IC so start there. Dont just complaint about superior, try to deal with it from problem solving approach.
The "even more" technique is brilliant because it bypasses the natural defensiveness that feedback can trigger, especially in hierarchical settings. Framing suggestions as amplifications of existing strengths is genius.
Very simple. Make sure the feedback is positive. You can give negative feedback on Glassdoor.
The moment I'm in a position where I can't say - politely of course, like I do to any other person at work - that I think the direction they are taking is wrong, is the moment I'll start searching for another job.
i was in that position of receiving a negative feedback over certain things from one of the people i manage (and i believe any manager has been at least once). surprise, i’m not perfect :-)
the best way to tell it is to be direct, with examples. i want to know that, i want to improve myself. i only expect perfect honesty.
it’s good for both parties. i’m a no bs guy. tell me things straight, good and bad, i will do the same always in a fair honest way. i expect nothing else and there are no repercussions for that. in the end, if you are unhappy and you do nothing about it, nothing will change.
I found strange to see so much criticism of the post as usually, anything that Wes Kao writes really resonates with me as a senior IC. Usually there’s a great balance of nuance and depth to the advice that makes it easy to digest and pick small bits and pieces to try out on my own context
Nearly 30 years in the business here and I think most of what was said in the article is spot on if you are in an appropriate situation.
Many commenters seem to take absolutist positions on this and think no one should ever allow themselves to be under a bad manager but it happens and then you need to effectively deal with it and these are some good techniques to do so.
The techniques even apply to working with a good manager. You shouldn't just vomit every criticism or critique to your superior. You should engage in introspection and internal dialogue to see if your perspective is correct and if there is more you can do to address the issue before spamming your manager.
If someone is offended by the article they might need to take a step back and ask if their ego has grown beyond its useful size.
Yeah I mean to generalize even further, these are techniques that can apply to your direct reports, your friends, your spouse.
Giving feedback is definitely an art and a thin line between getting your point across in a clear way vs running up against ego or impatience.
If you care about your org's success it's critical to know your audience, their approach and value system, and how to tailor your message to account for what will resonate with them. It's really tough stuff.
I absolutely hate having to say stuff in between the lines or trying to interpret veiled intentions. There's def no need to be pointlessly rude when giving criticism, but to me, beating around the bush is exhausting and often frustratingly ineffective.
- ChatGPT, give me a few ideas on xxx
- These are a few points for you to use
Write an article with that. Get mentioned on HN.
Once I got fired because commented when boss smoked weed at work and liked to be intoxicated at workplace by other means as well. Who can beat that
Actually you just don't give feedback to your superiors. But you really may/should plant the seeds of ideas in their brains. You discuss concepts, fundamental stuff that will grow into their brain and make them change. This takes time, patience and repetition, like educating a kid. It's actually the same, nothing has changed there.
And you remain modest and ready to learn and listen. Especially because your superiors always have information that you don't have and which might explain decisions which you don't understand, and won't without this information.
And you don't "tell", you ask about topics, and show interest.
Then you might be able to propose real help to your boss, and suggest him to delegate some responsibility to you. And that's where you have some agency to create meaningful change. Bingo.
> Actually you just don't give feedback to your superiors.
Concur. In hierarchical organizations, with power over your job security and prospects held by the person above you, bad news does not travel upwards.
Without getting fired? "That's a brilliant idea! The only reason we won't execute is incompetence."
Deviate and your career will stall at best
What an awful title and premise. Senior leaders who can't take feedback without firing you should be fired immediately.
Br, CTO
If I'm gonna be fired for being honest and trying to do a good job, then I'm quitting.
What about the simple, "may I talk to you for a minute in private?" And then clearly state the information that you need to share.
Back pressure is an important characteristic of a functional system. Don't dress it up.
Just don't. It will never work out in your benefit. Just dont.
There are a lot of comments about the up vs down hierarchy thing, but I think it's not really the most important factor for "giving feedback", which here seems to mean more "advocating for change".
The important factors are
- do you have a good understanding of where your goals and priorities differ and where they overlap? Maybe you want to reduce tech debt and your manager wants to hit q3 goals. Then saying "spending 1 week addressing this issue will allow us to implement features a,b,c in 2 weeks instead of 4" is stating your goal with an emphasis on how it helps manager get to theirs.
- do you have an existing relationship of trust? Humans are pretty tribal. If person you're talking to up or down defaults to "this is an ally who usually says competent things" then you can be much more direct and blunt. "Your idea is stupid because of these flaws that you didn't consider". If you don't have that trust, then some of the sugar coating "fluff" is necessary to avoid emotional reactions.
This is entirely the perspective of an abusive CEO. As we say here in Australia, get fucked. What an entitled grub.
Why on earth would someone deserve to be fired based on mere "feedback"? As long as it's not an outright offensive rant, it should be handled sensibly. But even if it is an offensive rant, firing should be a last resort. The amount of toxic subordination that's assumed to be normal is sickening.
It's exaggeration. You might not get fired but it will absolutely affect your raises & bonuses.
pretty interesting. i think i fall on the blunt end of the communication spectrum, so this gave me some things to think about.
I agree that bluntness is often mishandled, but the sort of language in this article just reads as wildly disingenuous. Obfuscating your actual point (and visceral, human feelings/opinions/experience!) to hopefully confuse your subject into compliance. Makes me think of that brain-dead article a few years back about how you should dodge offering support in close personal relationships. “I don’t have capacity,” “I’m not paid to perform emotional labour” etc. Sad! Promote humanity!
I used to be able to tell my bosses to “fuck off” (usually ones I got well with) when asked something absolutely absurd; or just tell the plain truth. Now in this hypercapitalistic world, you have to fluff your feedback so you don’t hurt their fragile egos.
Should be renamed: "How to not offend people with fragile self-esteem"
Jesus, most of this is just tip toeing around feedback, turning 3 words into 30. Just be direct but say it in a friendly, yet humble way.