Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 218: Referral underperforming and take a tech lead role

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Hey Dave and Jamison, really wish I found your podcast sooner as it has been a great insight into some of the challenges at work. Last year, a fairly close friend reached out asking for a referral for an entry level position to my work. Trying to help him out, I figured absolutely! What could go wrong? (Foreshadowing intensifies) About 3 months into his employment, my boss informally mentioned at a dinner how behind said friend was at a technical level. I brushed this off, and reassured him that he’ll catch up. 6 months into his employment said friend was written up a few times for a few different reasons: tardiness , performance (avoids taking tickets and calls), using phone too often during work hours, fell asleep at his desk. 7 months in brought in our yearly reviews, which he was denied a raise due to his performance history. He asked me if I thought this was correct, and I was brutally honest with him and agreed with that decision. He didn’t take this well, and resulted in an argument between us. At this point I was pretty frustrated with his performance, and it was definitely straining the relationship. 1 Year in (today), he was caught working on side-projects (paid) at work….. which resulted being put on a PIP / Final Warning. I got pulled aside by my boss and HR asking if I knew about it, I said I knew he had side work, but I wasn’t aware it was being done on company time. He’s on the verge of losing his job, but I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for referring him. All of above events have really hurt the friendship, to the point where I don’t think I would call him a friend. I’ve pulled him aside more than a handful of times asking what’s going on, or if I can help him in anyway but either resulted in a small improvement or a stubborn response that he’s fine at work. Am I holding him to too high of a standard? I don’t think the friendship will heal anytime soon, which I am fine with, but am I responsible for referring them? Thanks for your time guys, love the podcast and advice! I’m currently a manager and applied for a manager role at another company. I heard back from the recruiter that the manager role was filled, but they were still hiring for tech leads. I really want to work at this company, so I asked to interview for a tech lead role. But I really want to be a manager. I’m tempted to ask if they’d be willing to then interview me as if I were a candidate for the manager position I originally applied for. Should I try to show them my readiness for a manager role (even though they no longer have a manager role available) just so I can be top of mind when a manager role opens up? Or should I just be happy falling back into the tech lead ranks and try to prove myself over time? I really don’t mind starting out in the tech lead role and moving back up to management when I’m settled in at the company and an opportunity presents itself, but I can’t help but wonder if I could have passed the bar for the manager role I originally applied for.

it takes more than starting a new job and saying everything needs to be rewritten to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 218 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jamison dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about all the non-tech stuff like how to convince your team to rewrite everything hey i know that a lot of you put a lot of work into this but it turns out everyone does a bad job except me and once we rewrite it we will never have to rewrite it again because we'll do it right instead of wrong right like we did like you did before i got here now you were wrong before i got here we're not gonna do that anymore yeah have you gone through have you led rewrites before yeah one time did it go

well actually uh so at the time i thought it went badly but in hindsight it actually did i think go pretty well it was like a six week endeavor to rewrite the ui this was back in the days of brand new javascript frameworks coming out so let's rewrite the ui in the latest one yeah and it actually worked but i think it only worked because the old one was truly bad and no one on the team at the time of the rewrite actually wrote the original spaghetti nastiness uh so nobody was nobody felt ownership over it right you could all like insult it together right right no one's feelings were going to be hurt that was in the room yeah but i do remember it took a couple of extra weeks a couple extra weeks longer than we thought it would take it was like estimated four

weeks took six weeks which is to be fair is a 50 budget overdraw so it's kind of a big deal but i don't know that doesn't sound too bad compared to some that i've seen i i know i i think i was really hard on myself and i think my cto at the time i remember saying oh it's gonna be two weeks long oh it's so frustrated and he was just like okay cool i think he didn't want to tell me not to be disappointed like he's like yeah well you know four weeks would have been great but six weeks is really good all right i want to read a story from a listener okay i recently shared this podcast with my team including my manager now my team has begun discussing episodes on our weekly team meeting some questions are so close to our situation then a friend told me that our manager

thinks that some questions that were critical of management practices have been asked by me i haven't asked any questions though i've always been vocal at meetings often using sarcasm to address problems through humor and i feel that my manager listening to this podcast may get me an undesirable outcome we appreciate your sacrifice our listener numbers have gone up maybe you don't have a job anymore you'll be remembered you haven't thought about this before like yeah like what happens if someone else asks a question that like happens to strike right at the heart of my team yeah that is eerily close yeah and you've shared this with your team like anonymous listener a bob yeah yeah i mean it sounds like your manager has kind of a guilty conscience

yeah like if they thought everything was great on the team they wouldn't be struck by these questions so much okay i will offer a blanket statement that can be applied to anyone listening and any managers listening where their team listens no one on your team has ever asked a question that's right about you ever so it's not you that's right it's not you for sure yeah thanks for sharing that i hope it goes well yeah good luck sorry i hope it does not go poorly yeah i'm really sorry if anything bad happens yeah we need to get like a disclaimer you have to sign before you can listen or i guess before you can share it we'll stick it in the end user license agreement that everybody clicks through without reading

we'll just have to you know how in those commercials they'll sometimes add the super fast voiceovers of all the side effects of medication yes i'll have to stick one of those at the end of the podcast perfect all right do you want to thank our patrons dave yeah thanks to those that are donating on patreon that support the show at a level that gets them a shout out we have a one-time shout out to pavlo labediev and weekly shout outs to the following great folks They are Vinlock, Ragnar Hardison, Oleksandr, Microconfig.io, Nick, Travis, Evgeny Sladkowski, Denis Bogdanov, Brayden Keynes, Philip John Basile, Stephen Arman Lee, John Grant, Luke Bayliss, Ryan The Real McCoy, Stanley Tactical Radio, The Agile Ventures Charity, Nick Kantor,

and Sean. If you'd like to support the show, you can go to softskills.audio and click support us on Patreon. And if you contribute any dollar amount, we will send you an invite to our Slack community. It's not a cult. at the beginning of each month so thank you to those invites we will by the time you hear this invites will have gone out for july of 2020 so welcome to our new our new folks hang on i'm just changing the topic of the slack everyone channel it's not a cult the tagline yeah thank you so

much to everybody that supported the show financially you really do keep it going there are expensive to doing a podcast and you make it possible for us to keep going so thank you i also want to give a shout out to veteri veteri is a online marketplace for you to find your next great developer job we'll talk more about them later but for now you can go to veteri.com soft skills and hear more all right you want to read our first question i really do this is a long one but it's a good one and it's also from an anonymous listener so not hold on i think we just have to say this is for all the managers listening this is not your employee it's not you yeah it's not about you it's not from anyone on your team okay we're right most almost all the time disclaimer hey dave and

jameson i really wish i found your podcast sooner as it has been a great insight into some of the challenges at work thank you last year a fairly close friend reached out asking for a referral for an entry-level position to my work trying to help him out i figured absolutely what could go wrong foreshadowing intensifies about three months into his employment my boss informally mentioned at a dinner how behind said friend was at a technical level i brushed this off and reassured him that he'll catch up six months into his employment said friend was written up a few times for a few different reasons tardiness performance avoiding tickets and calls using the phone too often during work hours fell asleep at his desk seven months in brought in our yearly reviews

which he was denied a raise due to his performance history he asked me if i thought this was a correct decision and i was brutally honest and told him that i agreed with the decision he didn't take this well and it resulted in an argument between us at this point i was pretty frustrated with his performance and it was definitely straining the relationship one year in today he was caught working on side projects paid at work which resulted in being put on a pip final warning i got pulled aside by my boss and hr asking if i knew about it i said i knew he had side work but i wasn't aware that this was being done on company time he's on the verge of losing his job but i can't help but feel somewhat responsible for referring him all of the above

events have really hurt the friendship to the point where i don't think i would call him a friend i pulled him aside more than a handful of times asking what's going on or if i can help him in any way but this either resulted in a small improvement or a stubborn response that he's fine at work am i holding him to too high of a standard i don't think the friendship will heal anytime soon which i'm fine with but am i responsible for referring him thank you for time guys love the podcast and advice oh wow tough situation he's on the verge of losing his job i mean i think it's probably gone often pips get criticized performance improvement plan is what pip means often they get criticized as being kind of these hoops you jump through to get someone

fired i would say in this case it is a hoop they're jumping through to fire to fire your friend or former friend the clock has started ticking i don't know that there's a step on the plan that's like do not do paid side projects while at work and then you check that off and then someone's like you've really improved yeah you really met all your commitments to not cheat the company yes yeah i think i think they're probably gone yeah sadly i think so so what do you what do you think about the friend's reaction when after a bunch of bad performance reviews like being tardy and spending too much time on the phone at work and falling asleep at his desk the friend says yeah i agree that your performance hasn't been great and the friend is like no i'm

to argue with you about this like well i just want i wonder what his basis was for for for disagreeing with that it's probably the i am never wrong principle where tell me more wrong tell me more about this i would like to have this you can have it all it takes is an ego and an inability to critically examine your own behavior and the consequences of your own actions uh i think i have i think i have the opposite of that yeah i am it's i think it's called you're never right yeah i am never right syndrome yeah i think i have that too a little bit i feel like i'm pretty quick to like bend over backward and and fold so you know how like knights in armor are really cool you admire them for how good they are at defense i think maybe it's just like idolizing being really

good at defending yourself and it's made this person really defensive they like have some historical figure they really look up to like is there a well-known siege that was withstood forever or something like that and then like that was the victory yeah it happily worked out for everyone involved well this has been fun we're gonna retreat now yeah maybe they ran out of food or something okay well i'm not a historian it sounds like your friend is really defensive which i've seen plenty of people do and i've done myself where maybe in a less confrontational mode they might recognize and admit they have done some things wrong but especially if if if you're confronted by something it's it's it's just instinct to say like nah not my fault someone

else's fault who's not me yes because i am right and good but it sounds like they're taking it pretty far if they're getting fired because of their bad behavior and aren't willing to acknowledge it yeah i mean it sounds like you've been a good friend in multiple ways like you got them a job and you tried to help them do better at their job when they are failing i don't know that there's much more that you can do like at this point you could go and like throw yourself in front of the train and try to stop the firing and and but it doesn't sound like you want to yeah tell them about how you're in the same frat in college or like i don't know all the all the friendship details that don't matter about work performance right yeah i i admire you for for talking to your

friend directly and and kind of letting them know that it's a problem because this is my fear for referring friends what if it doesn't work out well on either side what if the company treats them poorly right for some reason or what if the friend is is not behaving well and then that reflects poorly on me in both cases which is really selfish right like well it's all about you jameson most of the time it is i indeed it's not selfish if i'm right that's right it is all about me yeah it's really selfish but i i don't know sometimes i'm selfish so i i kind of get scared of referring friends to work at the same place i do sometimes does does it feel like there's kind of this reputational risk escalation where it's like okay you refer someone maybe they don't get

through the interview and so there's like minor damage to your reputation but then if they do get through the interview no damage but then if they perform really badly it's like major damage to your reputation yeah you know like and it kind of just ratchets up yeah i think that's how i feel yeah speaking speaking of interviews like okay so now i'm kind of moving into like reputation damage mitigation at this point for you and i'm thinking like maybe you could deflect this problem to the interview process and say could we have caught this in the interview i have been guilty of i don't think i i think i think this experience cured me but i have been guilty of trusting referrals too much okay and just sort of like waving somebody through the interview process

because there was a really strong referral and and turns out it's good to see for yourself is i guess how i'll say it okay but i don't know if you know people you work with and you like them and you trust their technical judgment it can be really easy to just sort of defer any kind of evaluation to them and often they're right but not always i don't know it's possible that friendship is not the quality that makes someone a friend is not the same quality that makes them a useful employee in this context let me just say that is a hundred percent true and there there's probably not even a good correlation between those two things there might be an inverse correlation honestly like i don't know it might be really fun to be friends with someone who you would not want

to be like on a project at work together oh yeah be your boss or be their boss oh for sure totally true so am i responsible for referring them to a certain degree yeah i think so i don't think so oh what okay dig into that why do you think they're responsible well i don't know if the reality is that you are like if there was a court of law holding you responsible i don't think they would find you guilty for the actions of someone else especially if this was a big change in that person's life but i think in the court of public opinion where the public opinion is your co-workers and management they will probably think twice before hiring your next referral after this experience yeah this is a question i can ask they won't have an answer but

when you referred this friend did you suspect that they would struggle at all did you like is this a total shock to you i mean is it is it because i don't know maybe they got way into heroin since they joined the company or something like is it this is a question for you to ask yourself maybe before you do your next referral you can sort of objectively judge if they're good at if they would if they would succeed in this job right and it's fine if they wouldn't it would be weird if your only criteria for friend being friends with someone is like they would be a really awesome employee right at this job they would deliver on time and under budget and that's why we're friends i've got all these great friends that you know are exciting fun people

and love to listen but boy i'm just not satisfied with their delivery on our deadlines they didn't negotiate hard enough when we went out to dinner the other night they showed a lack of ownership am i holding him to too high of a standard no no no so if if i'm a friend and someone refers me to a job i think i am pretty conscious that my actions reflect poorly or well on them yes so i think your friend is is guilty of not only kind of sucking at the job but being a little selfish about it and not thinking about how the fact that he sucks at his job is is reflecting poorly on you sucks at his job is too strong i don't know he's not doing great though that's for sure

yeah and the fact the fact that your friend pushed back when you discussed the issue at that seven month mark after the yearly review gave him no raise and he was like arguing with you about it tells me that he is seeing the world in a very different way from you i mean the fact that at that point he had been late for work a bunch had been using phone making phone calls doing work too much falling asleep at his desk look there's probably good reason not necessarily good but there are probably reasons for this that are i'm kind of sweeping aside for the point of this comment yeah and just saying just the the bare facts here he should be aware of this and and you're probably the best thing he's got going in his life because you're someone who's actually

given it to him straight and probably you're like his closest conduit to reality i think about what's going on and he's rejecting that so you're not holding him to too high of a standard definitely not yeah it's i mean yeah i just want to go back to the defensiveness thing it's it's really easy to get defensive i think if you talk to most people who have been fired i feel like they would tell a story of why the company was wrong you know yeah why why why yeah why they were correct in the situation and and what happened to them was wrong and undeserved and sometimes that will be true but also sometimes it won't and it's we're just really good at telling ourselves stories that make us feel better that's right yeah i mean that's like the whole human existence is

yeah comfort narratives i was yeah about 10 a little over 10 years ago i had the opportunity to witness a wise manager who is well aware of this fact of the defensiveness that we can create for ourselves after having given negative feedback to someone i don't know how why i was privy to this but i was the the manager then said described how the person reacted and of course the person denied it all and you know was unwilling to accept the feedback and that's fine i mean that can go either way but what the manager said next is what really taught me a lesson and the manager said it's totally natural for him to be defensive in that moment and what what i took from that was that this manager was wise enough to let that slide at that moment and didn't hold it against

the employee but he did expect the employee to eventually come to his senses and acknowledge the feedback that he had received but in the moment he said look you know i give the feedback they say a bunch of crazy stuff and then later we can talk we can talk about it for real and i really appreciated that but here we have a situation where the feedback was given you as a friend told them why the feedback was valid and they're still not able to internalize this so really problematic yeah it's kind of sad it's a bummer it is it is a bummer and i think the best thing you can do for them is don't relax your standards but rather say you know try to be a good friend and maybe this means you have to stop discussing work with this friend and that's fine

like i think you can remain friends with them but maybe this is going to be a topic that has to be off limits for your friendship to be successful yeah like we all have people in our lives with whom we don't discuss politics right yeah just add this topic to the list with this friend yeah makes sense well sorry sorry this friendship has soured a little bit that's never fun but yeah i i think you're you're you are being a good friend that's how i would see it yeah me too first you tried to help him by getting a job and then you tried to help him kind of shape up and i don't know it's hard sometimes that's the advice it's hard sometimes it that's so true you can sum up life that way it's hard sometimes it's hard most of the time so i i will say that in a couple of

years you'll probably look back at this and not have the pain that you feel right now like right now you're you're kind of carrying this guilt about you know am i responsible for this did i create this terrible situation am i gonna have to financially reimburse the company for all the hours that they paid but i think none of those things will will end up haunting you for too long yeah all right if you've been a software developer at the same job for a few years it might be time to start looking around quit your job is our favorite advice but first you should probably find a new job trust me it is better this way check out a service called veteri which matches developers with employers based on what you want like your location

salary requirements and technologies you want to work with i actually signed up myself and within a week they sent me an opportunity that looked really good my current approach to job seeking is tweet dumb stuff and hope the company notices me so this sounds like an improvement i think yeah once you sign up you get a consultant to help you find opportunities i also like that veteri lets you specify your salary requirements early rather than going through the whole interview process only to find out want want your salary expectations were way off that actually happened to me in an interview would have been nice to avoid that you can start using veteri without reversing a linked list on a whiteboard too they don't have a coding test to sign up

If you are thinking about taking our advice, the soft skills engineering patented advice in quitting your job, check out Vetteri. Go to Vetteri.com slash soft skills to sign up. That's V-E-T-T-E-R-Y dot com slash soft skills. If you use that link, you will help support the show. And if you get a job through Vetteri, they will send you $300. Thank you so much to Vetteri for sponsoring the show. Well, should we answer our next question? Do you want to read it, Dave?

You bet. This comes from a listener named Jake. I'm currently a manager and applied for a manager role at another company. I heard back from the recruiter that the manager role was filled, but they were still hiring for tech leads. I really want to work at this company, so I asked to interview for a tech lead role, but I also really want to be a manager. I'm tempted to ask if they'd be willing to then interview me as if I were a candidate for the manager position that I originally applied for. Should I try to show them my readiness for a manager role, even though they no longer have a manager role available, just so i can be top of mind when a manager role opens up or should i just be happy falling back

into the tech lead ranks and try to prove myself over time i really don't mind starting out in the tech lead role and moving back up to management when i'm settled in at the company and an opportunity presents itself but i can't help but wonder if i could have passed the bar for the manager role i originally applied for so there are kind of two questions here one is if i want to be a manager somewhere is there a path to join as a tech lead and then from there kind of internally move into management and this is heavily situational dependent but generally yes i think so the other one is should i be a crazy person should i do something very weird and which is what hey will it help me if i do something really weird and awkward what's the weird thing

here so in get into a tech lead interview and then say like hey you know how interviewing for tech lead why don't you just give me that manager interview too just so i can like show off just so i can get my score back yeah let me just flex really quick yeah don't do that that's weird that's really weird okay so you're saying go all in on the tech lead thing and just forget about the manager role maybe for the purpose of the interview i'm saying i'm saying it's weird to interview for a tech lead and then try and say like try and pivot it into an interview for a manager when they explicitly said very clearly it's filled but we have openings for a tech lead yeah that to me says it's not that they have an opening they just don't think you would do

it and even if they did being weird in the interview will not convince them right it it tells me that they literally don't have a team for someone to manage right now so it's not like if you just talk about the five dysfunctions of a team very fluently they'll say oh let's shuffle some pieces around let's let's move a bunch of people so that there's a team for this clear leader to run yeah so i mean the listener says that the outcome that they're that jake is hoping for by doing this kind of bait and switch interview situation is that everyone will have such a great impression of his management skills during the interview that it will help accelerate the transition from tech lead to management after hire yeah still weird yeah okay it's still weird

it's still weird what wouldn't be weird is to be very clear in the interview process and say hey i'm happy to work in a tech lead role i really want to move into management there's a lot of overlap so hopefully in my work as a tech lead you can you can recognize my management skills and keep me in mind for those opportunities and then like repeat that to your boss when you join and kind of keep it top of mind and show it in your work. But just saying like, let me give a performance. Let me give you a little taste, just a little taste of what you'd get

if you made me a manager at your company and you'd perform a magic show for them and, I don't know, play some background music because you give a rousing speech, all that management stuff, you know? Right, classic management stuff. Yeah, that's weird. I would not do that.

And if someone did it to me, I'd be like, they show the lack of self-awareness that makes me concerned about them being a manager. Okay, so you're saying not only will this not help your cause, but it might actively hurt you. Yes, it would hurt you if you were interviewing with me. I will say that in all the interviews I've done, very rarely have I ever used the interview data points as a reason to make a role change, say, six months into the job or one year into the job. It's like, well, you've got six months under your belt here with the company acting in a tech lead role. you want to do a management position and all i can remember is that fantastic management interview

that you did just remember remember that powerpoint that they put together oh gosh i can't remember anything they've done at their jobs right they joined but it really it really eclipsed the six months of work that i've observed directly from you yeah yes yes i agree 100 if you get the job how you perform in the job will matter way more um the thing that yeah you just have to keep reminding people that you are interested in management if you don't say anything then it's much harder for someone to look at work you're doing in a different role and say oh this this kind of work this this person would do great in this other role unless there's like an active shuffle happening somewhere and they're kind of racking their brains figuring out who can we put

in this management role right but even then you're better off if if people already know that's something you want to do oh yeah for sure so yeah those first six months to year will be so much more valuable than the interview do you so we sort of skipped over this idea of joining as a tech lead in order to move deliberately to management do you think that's a good idea actually yes i think this will give you a leg up and give you a big advantage once you are a manager as a tech lead you'll get really close to a lot of the technical details and that could serve you in your management capacity. I could see a downside of this where the team perceives you as sort of mercenary. You're just sort of in it to climb the ladder. You don't really care about being a tech

lead. That's not why you're here. That's not why you care about just, I don't know, biding your time until this other position opens up. Do you think that's a thing? I think that's going to depend on the size of the company. The bigger the company, I think the less of a thing that that will be because everyone knows that big companies that you know people move around change roles and sometimes they get in the front door yeah that they didn't want to come through but that's the way they got in very common but at like a little startup where it's like well we only have two managers and you came in this door and now you're thinking more about your career than about our startup i think it might be seen a little mercenary yeah i'm just thinking through how i would approach

it if i wanted to do that i don't know if i have anything useful to say here i'm just babbling What do you think about just sitting tight and waiting, rather than interviewing at all, just wait for a manager role to appear at this company? I don't know. It's hard to predict the future. Yeah. I mean, they seem really motivated to work at the company. And so maybe being at the company in a role they're not as pumped about is better than waiting a potentially infinite amount of time for this specific role to open up. Plus, the sooner you get in the company, the sooner you can plant some drugs on the other managers to get them fired and take their position. Ah, yeah.

It is much easier to sabotage from the inside. Yeah. That's true. I can't believe I just said that. Yeah. I don't think it would be mercenary or gross as long as it wasn't a constant topic of conversation with the folks that you worked with on the team. if if you say something that could sound negative or sort of backhanded about the tech lead role then that could rub people the wrong way like if it's clear that you don't like it and

you don't want to do it and you're just sort of biding your time i think people might pick up on it but if you see it as a way to prove yourself and and if you do a great job at this then it'll reflect well on you in other roles i don't think that's gross or mercenary that's like what companies want to use incentives to motivate people to do do good work and you'll get promoted or move into a role you want and that's sort of how it works yeah and i like that because if i hire a tech lead who i know has management aspirations i know that they now have a built-in motivator to do a really good job as a tech lead and to stretch their wings and do more than i would get from any other tech lead who doesn't want to move into management yeah and it's sort of a

retention thing too like you know yeah if they want to work at this company and move into management then it's it's unlikely they'll just jump ship right away right they're kind of in it for the long term now yeah which now the other side of that coin though is that they might do a crappy job as a tech lead because they're just thinking about management stuff and constantly like ruffling the feathers of my other managers you know yeah that's probably a question for jake to consider is like could i do a genuinely good job at this at this tech lead role or would i be so concerned about moving in into a manager role that i would sort of be going through the motions until a potential change right now and you mentioned retention as a possible benefit but

there's another side of that coin too which is that if a management position doesn't open up jake is a flight risk you know it's like jake's got a ticking not not a ticking time bomb but basically got a clock that's running yeah and at some point jake's gonna stop waiting for a manager role yeah if it's like two three years four years and it hasn't happened then yeah but at the same time four years is an eternity in tech 10 years so yeah true it's probably probably fine i mean you'll be the ceo by then anyway yeah i'm so sick of these two-sided coins why can't there just be a one-sided coin it doesn't depend everything is clear there's no trade-offs or downsides so you flip the coin and it always comes up heads yep got it i'll do this thing and nothing could

go wrong because i chose the right thing i considered all the downsides and it turns out there aren't any with this decision in fact there aren't even sides yeah this is all sort of colored by the the broad industry trend where it's relatively easy to get a new job for certain people especially more experienced folks so i think the the risk is low to trying stuff if you feel like you are in the point in your career where it's relatively easy to get a new job the biggest risk you face then is like opportunity cost of taking something that doesn't work out or that you don't like but it's the risk isn't that you will go hungry yeah that's not true for everybody certainly but some people are are lucky enough to be in that situation so

i think what i'm saying is i would probably go for it if i were jake i would just try and make sure that my plan was to do a good job as a tech lead and and feel like i could honestly succeed there instead of just sort of wait until i had i've been anointed with this role that was promised me right yeah i'm on board with that i would probably go for the tech like if i really want to work at this company i'd probably go for the for the tech lead but definitely not the weird interview bait and switch thing and definitely keep it top of mind for your manager all right Have we answered the question? I think so.

Good luck, Jake. Good luck. Let us know how it ends up. What can people do if they want their own questions answered? Go to softskills.audio and click the button, ask a question where you can fill out as much or as little information about yourself as you like. Thanks to those who submit questions. They are the lifeblood of the show.

All right. We'll catch you next week.