Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 352: Exploding manager and I hate computers

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My manager finally exploded. They screamed and insulted our whole team because one teammate had a 4 day delay on a 2 week task. Our manager Theo (fake name) was recently promoted and now on top of managing our team of 7 engineers, they also manage 2 other managers with 6 engineers each. I have noticed that Theo is under a lot of stress and as one of the two senior engineers in my team I tried to support him with planning and organization tasks. Sadly, it’s reached a point where if Theo doesn’t calm down, the whole team might implode. Last week, after one mid-level engineer in my team surfaced that the two-week project he was working on was going to be delayed by 1 week, Theo called the whole team up for an emergency meeting. There, Theo screamed at us for 15 minutes and insulted us as a team and our work in general. The gist of it was that we are not real professionals if our estimates can’t be trusted and that Theo has given us too much freedom. Theo said that if we keep on behaving like ‘[expletive] children’, then he will start to treat us as such and sit next to us while we do our homework. After their screaming monologue, Theo refused to hear any response and left the meeting. Chatting with my team members, no one felt very motivated by Theo’s rant. I would like to approach Theo with some constructive feedback, but I fear he might not be in a very stable state of mind. I’ve never had a boss treat me like this in my 12 years as a SWE. What should I do? Is this HR worthy? Should I document it in some way? Is talking to my skip level an option? Thanks At the age of 36 I am having what feels like a midlife crisis. After grad school, I fell into a well-paying job at a giant Fortune 100 tech company and have been doing well here. I’m a senior engineer on my team and have consistently good performance reviews, but, I have zero passion for the industry. I have never been that into computers and I just don’t care about making them run faster! My spouse and I have enough money saved that I could comfortably afford to not work for a year. I’d really love to take some time off but I’m paranoid that I’ll never be able to regain my earning power. I’m the primary wage-earner in my family and my spouse makes about a third of what I do, so if I never go back to work then it will be a severe lifestyle hit, like having to sell our house and stuff. What do you recommend? Possibly-relevant context is that we had our first child just a few months ago and so I now have much more angst about wasting hours on silly meetings when I could be with my daughter instead.

it takes more than understanding the soft skills engineering patreon pricing system to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 352 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jamison dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers who took the time who really invested the time and resources to understand our patreon pricing system there are only three prices which is according to all sass pricing pages the right number of prices isn't it three plus call us oh yeah yeah that's true we do need oh wait oh there's five levels they just show us okay they just show three by default i haven't looked at this page in like three years yeah i don't remember these anymore either the pricing levels have inside jokes embedded in them

that only the truest of true listeners will get because they are old, deep cut inside jokes. We need new inside jokes. I don't know. How will we have like a purity test if we don't have really old jokes that require tons of listening? We need the gate to be open for new people.

We need them to be on the inside too. Oh, right. I thought gates were meant to keep people out, but whatever. We can also open them, I guess. They're meant to trap us in together. That's what gatekeeping means. That's why gatekeeping means keep us together.

Yeah. All this time I had the wrong idea about what gatekeeping is. I've been accusing people of so much bad behavior. They were just being really kind and inclusive. Yeah. To a fault. Or you were getting really offended when someone said you were gatekeeping when it was really a compliment. Yeah, they were really...

I was like... You're really holding us together. You're gatekeeping so well. What? Yeah. shall i speaking of patreon shall i thank our patrons hit it thank you to systematic guy anthony ongaro kyle boss connie lee santa hopar noah frazier logg kensi dodds jenny kim owen charlotte craig motlin i love mavis the stochastic parrot alice jost canadian hooten ohio patreon.com

dot au we're hiring ira chan monkey face emoji jonathan king testing is documenting.org oladapo fadje will angel pronounce like that town in ohio scotland with an unpronounceable name ernga nick hathaway travis sanders braden canes john grant bartek tatkowski cody sale nick cantar and phil john basile thank you thank you for those who have made it through the oft inscrutable patreon for supporting the show for helping us pay for the costs that go into us into this and days long spa trips to make up for just the exhaustive stress that we incur every time jameson spends half an hour talking to me he has to go to hours and hours of recovery therapy yeah no thank you it it's uh it really does help keep the show it really does expenses

and you pay them i mean i know i'm not gonna pay him all right shall we read our first soft have i gotten sassier in the last year or two i don't know i feel like i have yeah probably a little bit but that's okay i like it i like a sassy dave all right do you want to read our first question yes this comes from an anonymous listener my manager finally exploded they screamed and insulted our whole team because one teammate had a four-day delay on a two-week task our manager theo fake name was recently promoted and now on top of managing our team of seven engineers also manages two other engineers sorry two other managers with six engineers each i have noticed that theo is under a lot of stress and as one of the two senior engineers on my team

i tried to support him with planning and organizing tasks organization tasks sadly it has reached a point where if theo doesn't calm down the whole team might implode okay so exploding manager imploding team got it all right last week after one mid-level engineer in my team surfaced that the two-week project he was working on was going to be delayed by one week theo called the whole team up for an emergency meeting i don't like where this is going theo screamed at us for 15 minutes and insulted us as a team at our work in general the gist of it was that we are not real professionals if our estimates can't be trusted and that theo has given us too much freedom theo said that if we keep on behaving like expletive children that's probably gosh

darn children that's probably the expletive then he will start to treat us as such and sit next to us while we do our homework oh oh after that screaming monologue theo refused to hear any response and left the meeting chatting with my team members no one felt very motivated by theo's rant oh that's surprising i would like to approach theo with some constructive feedback but i fear he might not be in a very stable state of mind i've never had a boss treat me like this in my 12 years as a software engineer what should i do is this hr worthy should i document it in some way is talking to my skip level an option thanks wow this is this is a big one i i have never seen behavior like this at work i've been around

especially when i worked at a mega co there was some there's some some grumpiness certainly that leaked out but i've never seen anything like grabbing the whole team and screaming at them and insulting them and and they just got promoted like theoretically they had been doing a good job in some way. Oh man. It's like, wait a minute. A two week software development task was late by four days. I'm like, have you ever seen a software development task be on time? Like what, what is the context for this? I, not only that, I have a bunch of tasks that are like management tasks and they're late all the time. The stuff I'm doing is late. That isn't like help this team deliver other stuff well i i know why your tasks are late jameson why you you have a significant

lack of getting screamed at ah i see i see you're deficient you have a deficiency in getting screamed at which has caused you to be late it looks like theo figured that out here the secret to productivity is scream at your team and call them children sit next to us and while we do our homework like that's not even possible that's i don't know this this seems pretty unhinged it's not like your estimates will be good if theo micromanages you did you get the sense this was an in-person screaming or a zoom screaming i don't know i just i don't know which would be worse yeah me either i mean in person you might be able to like band together and go kick theo in the shins or something snap him out of it everyone mob him

yeah there are seven of us and one of him yeah i wonder i i don't know it's crazy yeah this is this is just so this is a glimpse into the world that we ignore a lot of like yeah uh what not everything not everyone has great intentions that they're trying their best to execute on well and like sometimes bad stuff happens this is a bad thing suddenly i'm very i'm very happy with my current work employment situation yeah yeah the most frustrated i've ever been at work was like someone yeah just so far away from this not even close so here's what i think i think you will probably anything you do about this has a high likelihood

of you not working at this company anymore really i think so are you saying that because any culture that would tolerate a theo is not likely to respond well to feedback and promote him true but also yeah like anything you do is going to have to be going to some person above or outside of your boss yeah and that could possibly backfire or it could do nothing and either like the the the The safe pathway through this feels small. Small to non-existent? Like, eye of needle small? I don't know.

I mean, maybe, yeah, maybe... Theo just got promoted. They have a bunch more responsibility. And boy, are they screwing it up real bad. Like, the mitigating factors are, I don't know, they're not that mitigating. And, oh, what's my point? If you go to HR, HR will immediately dive into,

to like protect make sure we don't get sued mode yes that is that is hr's objective protect the company don't don't forget that yeah so if you have like a lot of that could go against you or for you or against your boss right if there's if there's like the whole team saying this happened and then then they might come down on your boss saying oh your boss is a risk to the company and they're doing this thing that might get them sued but never they would never say that in a way that it becomes apparent to you though because that would be a risk to the company yeah but they also might they also might turn it into like a thing you need to do now like you need to here's how you need to change your behavior to deal with getting screamed at better make it your fault so

that we don't get sued because theo is in a management role and a senior management role theo will have all kinds of time to share theo's side of this story and the kind of person who would scream at people like this, might not be the most, I don't know, forthright, totally transparent storyteller when it comes to HR. Yeah, I don't see screaming being followed up by an honest owning up to how bad their behavior was. Let's have a retrospective on my behavior. yeah i i would talk to my boss's boss 100 about it but just knowing it might result in me getting like blacklisted or or otherwise tarnishing my own reputation such that i need to leave yeah it also depends on you know maybe the person who promoted theo presumably theo's boss who you

now need to talk to do they know that theo is like this and behaves like this and if they do and they promoted Theo anyway, then probably not going to be the best route to go talk to that person because you might just get screamed out of the room, you know? Yeah, maybe they scream at Theo. Yeah, maybe this is crap flowing downhill, you know? I wonder if there's a way to do an anonymous tip.

I don't think that would do anything. I mean, honestly, I would like, what would I do? I think I would schedule a meeting with my boss's boss and tell them about this behavior and tell them i think this is completely unacceptable and the whole team is is way less productive because of it and see if they do anything about it and plan my way out of this team at the very least because i would not want to be around theo i would not like imagine if something actually stressful is happening not that a task four days late weeks long now takes three

weeks but like wait until there's an outage or something yeah yeah there's an outage and they're screaming at you on the call or there's like a a hard deadline that is going to be missed and fix it faster restore the website faster yeah you expletive children yeah would a children do this know how to restore websites yeah pseudo anything about do children know how to use the pseudo rm command because i do yeah hold on maybe we should really explore this maybe you the listener should explore this problem space a little like maybe deliver something even later and then take like create a spreadsheet where you track the level of intensity of theo's reaction and the amount of delay on a deliverable

and see if it's like linear, sublinear, super linear. You know, I think that there's some science that needs to be done here. Yeah, a Theo study. Mm-hmm. Theo anthropology. Let's just call it theology. Would you?

Oh, come on. I don't even get a groan? Sorry, yeah, I missed that. Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm glad you called my attention back. i'm like where's the crone it's i was not paying attention i'm sorry that was really good now it's just pity all right we can forget we can forget i said that chatting with team members no one felt very motivated by theo's rant weird okay that's weird i i have two questions for you

would you try to get the team together to somehow present some kind of shared like concern or evidence or grievance to your boss's boss or would you just come at it as boy was i very concerned and here's the impact that i am seeing that's one question and then the next question is in my mind this is like a if this doesn't change quickly i'm i'm 100 gone and probably others on the team are too yeah is that a how do you say that to your boss's boss in a way that gets the message across that does not give them an ultimatum because that's not a very helpful mindset to put them in. I mean, you could express...

So I have found that when it comes to reporting bad behavior to management, understatement is king. If you come right out and blow up a story, not even exaggerating, but just very passionately decrying bad behavior and then also asking for swift retribution, I think you'll find it puts management

into a defensive mode where they're like well it might not be that bad you know if you're like this guy needs to be fired they'd be like well maybe we could find a middle ground you know if what i found is that if you just bring facts as objective as you can be and then you're like james and what you're suggesting is trying to paint the picture of how what the effect on the team is and in this case clearly stating what you know which is our team productivity has gone down like we are now demotivated and we're going to deliver more slowly you know and that's just a fact it's just cold hard fact it's probably true too i mean i think it's i think it would be true yeah let the management

soak that up you know let theo's boss soak that up i feel like the corporate speak way to talk about the risk i feel like you could talk about retention risk too like i'm concerned it's a retention risk on the team because they're so people seem so upset by the way he he shouted at us or whatever. That's right. Just state what you think are the clear and likely outcomes of this behavior and let management take it on. Now, I don't know, man. I would be tempted, given how extreme this behavior is, I would be tempted to record it in such a way that anonymizes me. And I would be tempted to do an anonymous tip because I just don't trust this organization that put this person in this situation to handle it well. And so if it were me,

I'd probably want to give firsthand evidence of what I'm observing as recorded by, let's say the voice memo recording device or voice recording app on your phone, but not video. Cause then they can tell where you were sitting in the room, you know? Yeah. And just pass it along. What if they can tell by the rustle of your pants? Only one person on this team wears corduroy. so we talk about space law a lot and the reason is because we like to think at a higher level of abstraction and earth laws are so complicated they're different in many states and countries so maybe it's illegal to do what you just said where you are it might be but maybe not and you should check it's legal in space that much we know space lawyers yes but

sadly you're not in space sadly make getting yelled at probably a little bit easier yeah because no one can hear you in space in space no one can hear you call your team gosh dang children all those gosh dang children i yeah i feel like i would be pissed off enough by this to go talk to my boss's boss about it and also skeptical enough that i would be assuming it's not going to work out by theo's behavior changing radically or theo getting moved somewhere else yep i agree and my skepticism is strong enough that i would want to keep my name disconnected from this as much as possible while also trying to enact change on on theo through theo's boss yeah just makes me nervous would you talk to i approach theo i fear he might not be in a very stable yeah he isn't in

a very stable state of mind sure your fears are correct i mean maybe if you know theo really well and you feel like this is some kind of aberration but if they're yeah i don't know i wouldn't do it me neither theo has closed the door to feedback through his actions yeah yeah that's a really good it's not your fault that theo closed the door but it's closed yeah feedback does require some trust and there is none yep well have we answered the question i think so boy do i want to hear how this worked out will you please yeah please go back to the ask a question form after you've had some time to take action on this and just let us know how it goes i i want to write a book about your experience i don't think i've ever screamed at anyone in work but i feel like

i would scream at a theo type person oh would you really would you actually do it would you fight fire with fire at someone i'm thinking like what if this happened on my team i would be so mad at theo if i were like in the leadership around them i would too i i mean i would at this point in my adult life i've seen people scream at others a few times like this and when it happens i will not put up with it i will stand i would stand up and say i'm leaving this meeting and when you're ready to have a professional demeanor i'm happy to come back and return to work but we will not we will not sit here and listen to this that's what i would personally do i think sorry let me rephrase in my mind where i'm a courageous fully ethical strong individual

that's what i would do i've not had the opportunity to do so but i i feel like that's what i would want to do i just i don't have any patience for this work is already hard enough without people yelling at you yeah i guess i think i i don't think i would scream at them i don't think i think i misspoke there i think this this triggers the like mama bear yeah part of me where i'm like you are like hurting these people yeah that is horrible i just as soon as you said i would scream at them i immediately had this image of like a very soft spoken but strong jameson standing up to the bully and then afterwards excuse me yes and then afterwards jameson would be like did you see me scream at that guy like well i saw you speak you know calmly at that guy

yeah something tells me that you're screaming and theo's screaming are a little different no you're the gosh dang child theo let's let's get out of here okay next question yeah your turn i read it yeah go for it yes at the age of 36 i'm having what feels like a midlife crisis. After grad school, I fell into a well-paying job at a giant fortune 100 tech company and I've been doing well here. I'm a senior engineer on my team and I have consistently good performance reviews, but I have zero passion for this industry. I have never been that into computers and I just don't care about making them run faster. My spouse and I have enough money saved that I could comfortably afford to not work for a year. I'd really love to take some time off,

but I'm paranoid that I'll never be able to regain my earning power. I'm the primary wage earner in my family and my spouse makes about a third of what i do so if i never go back to work it will be a severe lifestyle hit like having to sell our house and stuff what do you recommend possibly relevant context is that we had our first child just a few months ago and so now i have much more angst about wasting hours on silly meetings when i could be with my daughter instead congratulations on the first child yeah that's the best one what just kidding i am a non-first child i'm allowed to are you i thought you were just complimenting me yeah

oh our first child is a daughter and i tell her and our only daughter and i tell her she's my favorite daughter all the time and my favorite first child oh yep that's heartwarming i love it she ah rolls her eyes i'm such a softy i love i love my kids uh yeah as does our question asker Yes. Which hints the dilemma. So they do. I mean, I'm assuming you've maxed out the parental leave already. Yeah, and if you're at a Fortune 100 tech company,

you probably had generous parental leave, is my guess. Yeah. That probably led you to this very situation. Like, oh, that was nice. What if I just did more? Yeah, if you haven't, for sure, do that. This is a tough one. I mean, this really is the essence of money versus happiness,

where they really are in direct opposition. If you're truly at a Fortune 100 tech company, I mean, there's not a ton of those. And the ones that I know of, they pay pretty well. Yeah. So if you're going to leave the industry and you're not going to be a doctor or a lawyer instead, probably looking at a pretty substantial pay cut.

Oh, you're thinking about leaving and never coming back to the industry. I'm thinking of career switching. Yeah. I know that there are people at fortune 100 tech companies that have really solid work-life balance But I think it is certainly not the default And I feel like that's part of the implicit bargain that is often made at those places is we'll give you a ton of money Yeah, and you're expected to deliver a ton of stuff because we're giving you a ton of money, right?

Sort of I don't know. I mean, I know you can They're big enough that you can't really generalize. There's there's ways to sure there's examples of everything at a company that large yeah but i feel like like carving out a very cushy low stress life where you can really focus on time with your daughter while she's very young is is not a path that they make easy yeah and i i actually read this question that a little differently i guess there's two ways to read it number one i hate computers which i think was clearly stated i've never been into computers i don't care about making them run faster okay got it so you're in the wrong profession but you're making a lot of money in this profession

oh did i hear sounds like a fine profession to be in hating computers but making money not hating zero passion okay i don't care about making them run faster okay okay so you're in a job that that doesn't inspire you and fill you with passion and desire to work yeah okay and i could interpret the rest of the question as either i want to stop working and be a stay-at-home parent or i want to switch careers to a job that i love more and will give me more time with my child but will come at both both options of which will come at a severe pay reduction so what do you do sadly your options are much reduced from a few years ago where i think it would be easier to look for a a permanent part-time type of role where you work 20 hours a week and maybe you make some

fraction of what full-time pay would be but you still get benefits and yeah yeah but i feel like companies have less fewer incentives to do that now because they can just not because the the labor market is yeah it's a little different more on the hiring side than the what is that the buyer side companies are the buyers right yeah supply side yeah supply is low demand is demand is sorry supply is high demand is less high so prices go down yeah and and consulting is another way to do that yourself but there is added stress there in finding consistent work and if the market is a little bit tougher then then that might be i feel like i would feel less i'm saying the word feel too many times. I would be less confident that I would be able to consistently find 20

hours worth of work a week as a consultant now than a couple of years ago. Yeah, maybe. I mean, what about, does it make sense to just get a job at a different company that might be much more focused on work-life balance and probably lower paying, but still probably higher paying than, well, certainly higher paying than not having that job at all. Like, I don't know. I haven't worked in government. I guess you have. Maybe there's some government job out there that is much more relaxed and chill. Yeah, could be. And your interpretation of the question, it seems to be focusing more on the demandingness and work hours. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I'm not thinking about not working for a period of time that's maybe forever and and also not not too much

commenting on the lack of passion and joy and i don't know i think it's worth a few words on that topic which is that to say that having a profession where you spend the majority of your waking hours that is something that fulfills you energizes you and brings you some happiness i think is a worthwhile goal, even if it means that your cash situation is worse off. But having said that, I believe that the majority of human beings do not have that. I think the majority of people I know do not go to work because it gives them a sense of fulfillment and joy. And most of them, when given the option of not working, they would just take it in a heartbeat. If they didn't have you? And they'd be like, yes, please get me out of this job. So I don't know. I, James, I think

you and I are both in the, in the same boat that we happen to be in professions that we just absolutely love. Yeah. And that puts us in a really privileged position, but also, boy, is it just great to have a job that you love to go to? And, you know, I've taken massive pay cuts in the past in order to work in a job that I love. Like to the tune of 60%. In the end, I think it's worth it. You know, day in, day out, feeling happiness, being good to be around and having fun and being pleasant. And I don't know, it's worth a lot of money to me. So I would probably seriously investigate a career change. Interesting. There's also the time. I mean, every moment in your child's life is a just happens once but there is something unique about those first couple of years

before they can talk and and like what do i mean by this you have a good like 15 16 years of of hanging out with your kid while assuming they they live with you that that whole time while they're more of a person but that infant stage is pretty short relative to how long you will be parenting them or even have a relationship with them like most of your most of the time you spend with a relationship with your children will be with them as adults presuming you live yeah normal human lifespan yeah so i think what i'm saying is what am i saying now does this even make sense Something about how kids are really cute. They're super cute.

And listen, if I was interviewing someone and they had a year-long gap and the reason was, well, my child was born and I wanted to spend a year with them, kind of just fully focused on them, I think that'd be an awesome start. The only feeling I would feel when I hear that is jealousy. Yeah. It could be harder because you do not have a passion for the industry so that you might be like fully out for a year you know um where you're you're not kind of keeping up with stuff or poking around with tech or building things on the side while you'd still be a full-time

stay-at-home parent but maybe you're kind of tinkering with stuff as a hobby so maybe that would make it harder to get back into but i don't think the act of taking a year off would necessarily look bad in an interview or on a resume that'd be fine just there's sabbaticals too maybe maybe you could call it a sabbatical company which is sort of like a yeah perfect like you most of the time it's it's we don't pay you but you get your job back yeah when it's over but again that's still not like never coming back i don't know i guess i just like money too much to think about i'm in the same boat you know i there was a point in my life where i had enough cash saved to take substantial time away from work and be with my family but there are significant

opportunity costs on the, on the backend of your life for taking cash impulses and spending like that, that I opted to just keep working. So as much as I envy people who are able to take time off and just be a hundred percent dedicated to their family, young, you know, especially young children, there is a substantial cost. And I feel the, I feel the obligation to not incur that cost. So jealous. I wish I could do it. I wish you would. I think it'd be great to do it. I don't know. All these recommendations feel so... I don't have any skin in the game. It feels really easy for me to say, sure, sell your house, quit your job for a year. Great. Drastically reduce your family's financial stability. It'll probably be fine. I think the thing that is least scary to

me is to think about this as a temporary period of a year. I don't know, some time box where you say i'm gonna do this full time keep my toes dipped in the tech water and then go back to it after a while so this is yeah this is this is a sabbatical i'm just i might come back to a different company yeah that feels like that preserves options for the future the most and maybe you do decide you love it so much that you're willing to drastically change your lifestyle and to preserve that but you still kind of keep the ability to to maintain that income open if that's what you end up doing or deciding to do yep well have we answered this question i think so there is no answer this question is way more fun to think about than the last question

by the way oh you have this cute baby what do you do about it you you do have a gosh dang child yes and you can sit by them while they do their homework yeah and you will have to do that at some point yes yeah yeah congrats again on the baby babies are cool he's got one of those right now he's he's good all right what should people do if they want their own questions answered go to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button thank you so much to everyone who fills out that form each week we love reading your questions and you keep this show alive by feeding the machine the the question input answer output machine it's a black box it could be like actually alive for all we know you call it a machine maybe it's a creature sentient yeah after we hang up

this call i'm gonna go see if it bleeds all right great on that note thanks for listening we'll catch you next week