Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 225: Stuck on the ladder and can't say no

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions I have noticed the majority of the managers get stuck at a mid-management level and never move to C level. And, there are a few who experience astronomical growth. For example, I know a C-suite executive who has moved to his current role from a Web Developer role within 9 years and changed job only thrice. One more C-suite guy I know has gone to that position within 8 years in the same company. Unfortunately, I don’t have the rapport to ask either of these folks what I’m going to ask you, so here it goes. What makes some managers move very quickly up the management ladder, whereas the majority remain stuck in mid-management? Also, at the mid-management level, how detrimental is job-hopping to quick growth. Looking at my small sample size of 2, both have not hopped around much. Hi, love the show. I have a history of working as a Voice Engineer but since I got my last job I have migrated towards more Sysadmin/Devops type job. This was on purpose as I absolutely HATE the voice stuff. The problem is that I still have a bunch of people coming up and asking me to help with Voice related issues or projects. I have tried to very subtly express I am not interested but it doesn’t seem to work. I am probably also guilty because I am a yes man and want to be the nice guy so I don’t say no to these requests. So the question is, how do I get away from my past and stop people from coming up to me with questions about a domain I dread/hate? Show Notes https://lethain.com/career-narratives/

it takes more than a haiku in your git commit message to be a great engineer this is episode 225 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show where we answer all of your non-technical questions about the technical field of software development we also accept haikus are we still sending out stickers yeah you know we haven't mentioned it in a while but yeah sure yeah send us a haiku i think probably dm it to us on twitter at soft skills eng and we will send you a sticker a haiku related to software development we are configured to send stickers anywhere in the world really that is a challenge yes okay cool yeah i'm looking at

you arctic research scientists it's summer they're probably outside storing up happiness have a long cold dark winter exactly do you want to thank our patreons dave our patrons yes i do this week we'd like to say thank you to those that are contributing at the level that gets them a weekly shout out they are oladapo fadiyi kajarans vanesan ragnar hardison olexander microconfig.io nick travis sanders evgeny sladkowski dennis bogdanov braden canes philip john basile steven armand lee john grant luke bayliss ryan the real mccoy vinlock stanley tactical radio agile ventures charity nick kantar and sean if you'd like to support the show financially you can go to softskills.audio and click support us on patreon and if you do we

will send you an invitation to our slack community where you can participate in the goodness that is chatting with all of the other soft skills engineering listeners i think soft skillets was the collective noun yes they arrived at i want to thank veteri veteri is sponsoring this show they are an online marketplace where you can find your next great developer job you can go to veteri.com soft skills and you'll hear more about them later do you want to read our first question dave yeah i was about to ask what do we do now okay same thing we do every week try to read the question yes okay this comes from an anonymous listener who says i have noticed the majority of the managers get stuck at a mid-management level and never move to c level

and there are a few who experience astronomical growth for example i know a c-suite executive who has moved to his current role from a web developer role within nine years and changed jobs only thrice one more c-suite person i know has gone to that position within eight years in the same company unfortunately i don't have the rapport to ask either of these folks what i'm going to ask you so here it goes what makes some managers move very quickly up the management ladder whereas the majority of them remain stuck in mid-management also at the mid-management level how detrimental is job hopping to quick growth looking at my small sample size of two both have not hopped around much i'm glad we have the rapport where you can ask us this question

yeah although we're both in the c-suite of this podcast yeah that's true it's pretty top heavy actually jameson used to be an archduke that's true i was the archduke of computering for quite a while uh-huh so you've come to the right place is what we're saying the c stands for cool right i'm the cool executive officer yeah so these are two separate questions why do some move up quickly while most remain stuck in mid-management why do you think dave well i can only imagine that there's a ritual that they failed to pass where they have to walk on hot coals collect a feather from an eagle's nest and i can't remember this sorry i'm making this up on the fly slay the mightiest beast in the land it's a quest you're saying yeah only very few people

could do those three things yeah i guess middle management is your punishment for not slaying the beast or something yeah yeah it also depends a lot on the size of the company there's a very different skill set and path for being a ceo at a mega gigantic company versus at a small business true they've got the same title that's true that's true also we probably need to define some stuff here i think one of the things that's funny about this terminology is the word c level homonym it could be either the letter c or the water the body of water c spelled s e a and it's pretty funny because c level also also is a homonym is that the right word am i saying the right word homonym that's the thing where it sounds like another word right yes same sound

different meaning so you could be like the dude who rides rad jet skis all day and be a sea level executive right on the ocean yes okay i wasn't even thinking about that yeah you want to define the terms here sure so i mean c-suite is the letter c and typically refers to people whose title is a three-letter acronym that starts with a C. CEO, CTO, COO, CSO, which I've often heard said CISO, which I think is pretty funny. That's Chief Security Officer. CIO, CPO, so many C something O's. Oh, is CPO Chief Product Officer? Yeah. I've also heard CRO, Chief Revenue Officer, aka head of sales huh i haven't heard that yeah cmo that's another oh yeah marketing sometimes marketing officer anyways before we pivot to a fascinating episode of just listing all the

different possible c-level roles there are what about middle management what about it do you have a definition for it oh uh so yeah okay so middle management i think that means you manage managers but there are managers who manage you yeah yeah that's how i define it too it's like you're not the head node or the tail node in a linked list no wait two levels up from the bottom of a tree from the leaf nodes but you're also at least one level away from the root yeah two levels away from the root it's crystal clear now so okay there's only one root note of the tree like we were talking about this before the show uh and and some of it is just math right like there are fewer ceo roles than manager roles

because there are i mean that's just how it works unless you have some weird like hippie destroy the system everybody's a chief yeah of your own work executive officer thing but yeah so some of it is just there's i don't know you can't have as many ceos as mid-level managers by a long shot i mean the numbers are off the charts different right i mean you think about a tree a binary trees or no sorry that's that's the thing it's not even a binary tree these this is a tree where every node has like 10 children and so when you move down the level in the tree you multiply the number of nodes by 10 so just going three levels down you're like a thousand times more people than the level you came from and so that means that if there's a thousand people

vying to occupy that position in the grandparent node spot or great grandparent node spot then your odds are one in a thousand yeah then it turns the quest you're talking about from do this quest to how fast can you do this quest because probably a lot of them will be able to do it right there will be several dozen people with the skills to grab a feather climb a mountain was that the other one i don't say a beast yeah i get i know i cook an omelet the question is how fast can you slay all of your quest mates yeah there's a reason it can get a little political and competitive and cutthroat if you're trying to climb the ladder because there are there are probably some people at your level who don't care but there are probably enough who also care that you're gonna

all realize you're vying for a limited resource yeah so the numbers are against you there's this blog post i like the title of the blog post is career narratives but in the post they talk about this i don't want to call it principle the i don't know the the climbing the ladder is hard thing and they say that if you're still interested in growing like you can't directly control or guarantee that you will get promoted to a higher level but you can just try to be more effective and kind of gather responsibility and spread your influence wider and that's a more productive thing to focus on sometimes because it's more directly in your control than kind of placing all your hopes towards beating out the other 999 people yeah and then you know if you do fail which you

will statistically uh then at least you have a nice good job where you don't feel terrible all the time so is that maybe a principle so okay here's something i've observed just in terms of career development in general i highly doubt that it applies to c-level growth but in my experience if you focus solely on career growth especially if you're just trying to check the boxes to move to the next level at your company as defined by your company's HR department it becomes more elusive but when you focus instead on doing a good job being effective you know growing your influence leading then suddenly the promotion comes whereas if you're obsessed with just getting to that next level it doesn't and I wonder if this advice falls on its face when it comes to

sea level stuff because the people i know who worked up to that level are extremely ambitious and clearly focused on that yeah it's kind of like you're saying don't be a try hard that is a phrase that i learned from my 14 year old son last year okay during football season was it him telling you he was you were a try hard no it was no it was him telling me that the kids on the opposing team that they were playing in football were a bunch of tryhards and that's why they beat them yeah i was wondering if you like put on pads and were out there laying waste to a bunch of a bunch of ninth graders or something oh man come on dad you don't have to pick them up and body slam them

yeah try hard they also call them sweats you heard that one yeah no bunch of sweats like huh i've never heard that one i think it means the same thing try hard has this kind of dorky connotation too though like maybe you have an excessive amount of wrist bands and sweat i don't know sweat bands on and stuff okay yeah like you're trying to look the part yeah like kind of like fawning and yeah okay so don't be a try hard unless you want to be a c-level executive right and even then the numbers are against you yeah i just want to say that the the real answer to this question is a basic arithmetic answer you know why do so many people get stuck in mid-management because there's just not that many sea level spots compared to them so that's the answer but

i don't think that's the useful answer they're looking for in this question the real question is what differentiates those that occupy those spots versus those that remain in middle management right yeah i don't know do you i have no idea that's the thing like i have no idea i have no experience with this but and again my sample size is also very limited but i have a few sneaking suspicions about it. And one of the things mentioned here is, does job hopping hurt that growth? And I think it does. In a large company, one of the features of all the executives that I know is that they have a long, continuous tenure in my company. Yeah. Same. Minimum five years, more likely 10 to 15. And it's like all their eggs are in that basket. However, another thing I've

notice is that once they achieve that executive level boy the world becomes their oyster and they just hop around like crazy i mean you look at the various ceos of companies they are moving around so often like they may have stayed at one company for 15 years to get to that level but once they get there it's like they're gone every three years yeah have you noticed that i think so yeah it does seem like if you're trying to go from mid-level to senior engineer it's definitely possible for you to go get a different job and you're a senior engineer there yeah but it does seem pretty hard for you to go from being like a i don't know director or senior manager or something and then you go get a different job and you're like the cto that that

does seem less likely unless it's a startup yeah all the rules are off on startup i mean yeah true if you want to be a ceo just go start a business yeah exactly yeah i'm thinking through the executives most of them at my current company have very long tenures the one who has the shortest tenure was an executive at a different company uh yep theory proven yeah that's it so job hopping doesn't work if you're trying to climb the ladder yeah probably not that makes sense because i mean the levers you have to pull as a mid-level or higher manager are much larger and take much longer to show results yes like you can't just go in and crush it for a year and like launch this cool project and then and then leave and and see the impact of that yeah i watched a really

interesting interview with a spacex engineer who works closely under elon musk and i promise this story is going to make sense but the interviewer asked the engineer how does elon musk make decisions. And the engineer said, in the context of SpaceX, Elon always asks one question anytime he's faced with a decision. And the question is, will this move us the date for having a manned colony on Mars closer or further away? And he says every important decision that he makes for SpaceX is based on the answer to that question. And this makes me think that that kind of laser focus is probably what it takes to get into the executive level in a large company or medium-sized company. And I think it probably takes a focused intensity based on the people

that I've watched climb that ladder, an intensity which I think most people just can't afford to have. You know what I mean? And honestly, also a clarity that most people just can't find either because the question now becomes, will this move me closer to being a VP or C-level executive at this company or not for every action of every day. And I think for most people, the answer to that question is just super foggy and unclear for most decisions you make. But I think those that manage to rise to that level have had a string of successful answers to that question and were able to just focus most of their intensity in answering that question. Honestly, in most cases, it's because they actually have really impactful stuff to do in their day-to-day job. Like I haven't seen

in my company, there is a surprisingly high percentage of high functioning leaders, you know, like no one got there by being the cousin of the, you know, the CEO or something. No one schmoozed their way to the top. No, no, definitely not. Like it's, it's surprisingly good. But anyway, long story short, as I've watched them rise, they seem to just be laser focused on that. And also they have this opportunity alignment where the things that they can afford to work on day to day also support that trajectory. Well, have we answered the question? Almost. I do have one more crazy hypothesis.

Okay. This is completely unverified, but I'm using my own life as the basis for this. This is not based on observing others. But as I have aged, I have found it harder and harder to maintain the levels of intensity that I had when I was younger. But when I interact with people who are executives in my company, they have what looks to me like the same level of intensity that I had when I was 24 and just absolutely laser focused and on fire intense with my job. I think a lot of people just cannot maintain that level of intensity

for the number of years that it takes to get into that kind of position. So it is kind of like a quest. And you lost. I dropped out. That makes sense to me. The limited interaction I've had with folks at that level has been pretty wild, I'll say. What do you mean? oh i mean yeah lots lots of energy and intensity yes that most people i interact with about their

job do not have right right maybe it comes with the territory i don't know maybe you get special ceo shots or something right maybe and and i think jameson and i have both had very limited experience because everyone's had limited experience with this because there's only so many executive people that any individual interacts with in their day-to-day but this is definitely discounting all the people who nepotism their way into executive positions yeah which is a completely viable alternative track yeah i'm thinking through all the ceos that companies i've worked with of wildly differing sizes from dozens of people to millions of people and i think all but one of them i felt like they were i don't know if i agreed with everything

they did but they seemed pretty competent and they seemed very very intense yeah in a way that nobody else seemed maybe that's the secret just it's like the trope of the ceo you know just this high intensity in hollywood they're always doing drugs yeah several of them were tall white guys with really good hair yeah i don't know it doesn't hurt so they're they can't hurt all right so there you go the proven recipe for success at the c level yep we can only get you there but we can't help you once you're there sorry the double c level 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 vettery 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

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stuff the problem is that i still have a bunch of people coming up and asking me to help them with voice related issues or projects i have tried to very subtly express that i am not interested but it doesn't seem to work i'm probably also guilty because i am a yes man and want to be the nice guy so i don't say no to these requests so the question is how do i get away from my past and stop people from coming up to me with questions about a domain that i dread slash hate so we had to look up what a voice engineer was i i assumed it was some kind of like recording studio thing yeah but it's not it's someone who works with like telephony systems boy stuff kind of like maintenance and configuration of that stuff okay now i just have to poke a little

bit of fun at how you pronounced telephony is it telephony i think so all right well i accept my role as the person who says words wrong i love it i love it when people mispronounce words because they've only read them all my kids are like that and it's just my favorite thing but i still have to poke fun at you a little i'll take it i can take it i always struggled little bit that one because i saw it written for years and i was like how you can't possibly say telephony telephony is that how you say it i think so okay telephony someone will write in and correct us i'm sure okay anyways you hate this but people are still coming up to you for it i assume that this is in the same like company because it would be weird if you you switch jobs and someone was

like i heard through the grapevine that you know how i can set rock me like a hurricane to my telephone ring sound oh man although that would be cool yeah i think that's how you get out of it every time someone asks you to do a thing you change their ringtone to a fart noise or like maybe apply some vocal filter i don't know somehow sabotage them and make them sound bad so you do what they ask you to do but you also walk away with the side effect that they'll hate Yeah, upgrade the operating system of, I don't know, whatever VoIP servers you have or something. But also, now the COO's voicemail is just like, I'm the COO and I love poop. Poop, poop, poop.

Perfect. Got him. And when they ask you to fix it, you're like, oh, man, I've never seen that before. No idea. Weird. Change it. Now the ring thing changes. You replace their phone with like a ladybug phone.

every time they call you back it just gets worse more and more problems they'll stop they'll stop calling you well bad advice is out of the way got it we're done what should they do i mean this is a testament to your effectiveness in this role you apparently you were a pretty good voice engineer because if you weren't they wouldn't keep coming back to you yeah i've actually seen this happen where someone is the go-to person for a particular task or or set of things they get moved off to something else but everybody still knows if you want something done on this thing you got to go talk to yep former voice engineer andre that's right so i mean jameson you have a problem with saying no to people i know this about you yes are there any tips or tricks you have accumulated for

getting out of saying yes yeah actually i have a post-it note stuck to my monitor right now that says don't say yes that sometimes helps the other thing that helps me a lot is the easiest time for me to say yes is like right after someone asks me okay if i give myself some time to think and kind of like figure out all the other stuff i have to do and weigh and compare and stuff it's much easier for me to say no later so if i can just change it from yes to let me get back to you then that makes it easier for me to be more deliberate about it instead of focused on like is this person going to i don't know i don't even know what they would do is this person going to steal my lunch money if i say no right so you have to debounce the requests exactly well yeah i don't know i have

to slow them down i gotta do a set time out do you wait for them to ask a second time no that's my prioritization strategy okay so not a debounce you you just come back to them later with a no and it's easier to say no a few minutes later or days later i had to sleep one day to the request then decide yeah that's been the most helpful thing for me that's cool i tried having a co-worker just yell at me not to say yes every time someone asks me a thing you know how okay you know how in ancient rome clearly everyone knows this um yeah go on i mean i'm sure i already know the answer but go on yeah obviously you know so when people had these grand feats or accomplishments they would throw a what was it a triumph for them this like amazing parade and they would have one person

whose job it was to sit next to them and whisper like you're still mortal so that the giant parade wouldn't go to their head oh i kind of had that but it was a person saying look at our roadmap in every meeting right with me that's awesome it was helpful but temporary i have found that one technique that works for me to say no is rather than just saying no redirect them to someone else and say i think so and so could help you with that better than i could and that way it doesn't feel like you're rejecting them you're helping them along in their journey but you're not doing the work for them yeah but you still get credit for the work because it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't redirected them so basically you did it you write that down in your annual

performance review about how you helped all these people yep perfect yeah i like that too so the thing that ended up working with the person i've seen who struggled with this the most was their manager just explicitly asked everybody like hey do not bug this person about old thing they used to work on oh that's cool and that helped because without fail if you went to them they would say yes and be spectacularly helpful but they just needed to have somebody kind of remind people what their current responsibilities were that's way cool i wonder if if something is broken about how voice engineering works like maybe maybe the people who replaced you are not very good or still learning or something like that so this is a sign of some kind of failure in that org but how are

they going to get better if you keep covering for them yeah yeah you just got to do your part and let them learn and grow that's right let everyone's phones not work while that happens that's right and that means short-term discomfort short-term pain but long-term awesomeness for everyone another thing you could try is if if these are sort of like unofficial kind of back channel requests presumably you have other work to do that isn't this in your new role and you have enough normal work to do already you could kind of point to the responsibilities you have and say i i can't because i have to do important thing x you know yeah that's easier than saying like no and then the implication is because i hate you right you say i don't have time to do that because of this

thing right and every reasonable person would agree that that thing is more important than the problem that is confronting them right now exactly that'll go great try it's not my job that goes over real well yeah well have we helped them i think so i think a good first step is acknowledging that you are doing this even though you hate it and isn't it weird that we do things we hate because there's other things we hate even more such as being perceived as unhelpful in this case but i think you've correctly identified the problem and that will go a long way i feel like we actually gave some pretty good advice here which is unusual we did it we achieved the dream of the show give good advice this will be our last episode well with that we better end it yeah

yeah before we mess things up more we gotta end this episode where can people go if they want to find out more about the show or ask their own question people can go to softskills.audio they can click ask a question on there and submit a question you can follow us on twitter at softskillseng you can climb the tallest mountain and find the eagle feather yes on your way to the Z suite as well. Yes. All right. We'll catch you next week.