Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 41: Management Snobs and Two Bosses

Episode Date: December 28, 2016

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: How do I deal with someone who says their job (management) is so much harder than my job (engineering)? How do I deal with a two-boss situation where I am one of the bosses?

It takes more than great code to be a great engineer. This is Soft Skills Engineering, the podcast, episode 41. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I am your host, Jameson Dance. It's another great day. Every day is great when we record. It's my favorite day. It's good to know.

Yeah. Well, so far, I guess. I mean, all things come to an end. No pressure on this episode. uh we have a wonderful sponsor that we want to talk about yes we do and they are dev mountain dave i think you you had something you wanted to say besides like thanks for the the money right yeah i uh a few months ago i had a sit-down conversation with the founder of dev mountain and i was asking him you know tell me about some of the stories of these people that go through

dev mountain and what happens when they're done because honestly i was a little skeptical about the outcomes and he he's like well let me just pull up my notes and he just had all these notes written down of all these people that had gone through and the stories were actually really really impressive um there are tons of jobs for developer boot camp graduates that aren't like necessarily the you know working at the googles or the facebooks of the world um but there's still a lot of really great jobs and a ton of people had upgraded their income and i was super impressed so anyway if you're considering it it's something you should definitely look into um he basically took me and converted me from a naysayer to a supporter so check out dev mountain and where

can people go to do that they can go to soft skills.audio slash dev mountain i think we have some questions yeah uh i will read the first one is management really harder than engineering this is from an anonymous listener on more than one occasion i've been told be glad you don't have my job dealing with people all day or software is so easy the computer doesn't lie it just does whatever you say managing people is an art it's so much more rewarding it's so much more rewarding i think that's how i think that's how they say it usually this kind of comment comes across as a subtle put down or some sort of self-praise it's also presented as a false dichotomy between interacting with people and doing a technical job i don't know any technical people that work

in complete isolation and i split my own time between coding and managing an offshore team i guess my question is less about a correct answer and more about a correct response to these statements right now i just smile and nod silently you're right your job is harder than mine i think that's a very valid answer you should just say how do you do it it's just incredible everyone has war stories about their job and i i spend a lot of time on chairlifts listening to like rich old dudes talk about their jobs and they're all so they're they're so boring oh my gosh their jobs all sound so dumb do you ever tell them like your job is so much easier and dumber than mine well i i guess it's just like everyone because you know the most about your

job you know about the difficult things and other people don't see them so i think this is a pretty common feeling also so if you haven't heard there's this thing called betterage's law of headlines which is any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no so is management really harder than engineering no it's not according to this law if you can't trust the law what can you trust sometimes i get the impression that philosophers throw the word law around a little bit casually oh this isn't a philosopher this was some blogger people and and he didn't call it like my law like someone else gave it that name but that happens all the time where it's like pithy phrases that people like they just put the

word law afterwards and then it sounds more official that's jameson's law so what do you say to someone who's like oh gosh your job is just so easy you should be grateful you're not in management consider asking them if they are aware how insufferable they're being right now yeah you could just be like yeah because in management you don't have to deal with people telling you your job is easy let me tell you a story about something that makes my job hard oh my gosh maybe you just just start laughing just like grab your belly and just start cackling right in there like oh that's a good one i get it uh you could try and give a modified version of the speech from blade runner and just start monologuing yeah like talk about

the prod outages you dealt with and be like i don't remember there having to be a pager for managers you know yeah what if oh yeah be like yeah your job would be really hard if anytime one of your people had an issue at home they could just call you you know hey my pipes froze uh hey i've got a i've got a plumbing problem or i've got a child raising problem i need your help with it that sounds like a great manager someone who's really willing to give their all if you look really like sweaty and red-faced and just out of breath every time that this person talks to you and they're like sipping their their iced soda like oh such a hard day doing all these one-on-ones and you're like wiping sweat off your brow you just got done

like carrying the data from one server to the other on your back so i think based on the fact that jameson and i just came up with like eight jokes um there is no good response to this comment right like what could you possibly say to a manager to convince them that they just said a completely false thing i don't i don't know they need some like friends that work physical jobs that's what convinced me that my job is super easy it's like i hang out with people that are mechanics and they talk about how in their interviews like they ask people if they can work 12-hour days and if they are fine having no lunch break and they don't get paid very well and they're like cranking tires all day and i think that's that's what's inside the hood of the car

right there's just more tires but basically those jobs sound actually hard and i like sit in my desk and think and then get sad when i don't think well enough and i'm like oh i need a break i'm so burnt out from thinking and then i go home you're like i'm so tired yeah i'm all this hard thinking um so maybe maybe the correct response is hey manager you and i both have incredibly easy jobs compared to so many other people why don't you get a little perspective or i mean software is so easy it sounds like they have volunteered to fix the most pressing technical issues at the company like oh i'm glad you're looking for a challenge because i've got this bug that's i just can you please just do this yeah it really just sounds like this person

kind of lacks an understanding of what other people do and and to be perfectly fair this kind of comment is the opposite of what i hear most of the time um throughout my career people will say things like oh my gosh the engineers they're wizards i could never do that job i can't believe it's so amazing you know what i mean like have you heard that before from non-technical people or from management i i've heard it from people that just are completely non-technical like i say software and and they don't know anything about it so they assume it's like a beautiful mind type of stuff where i'm just like staring around at numbers flying all over like no let me tell you about css it's more like nudging stuff around

and having to go the opposite direction yeah but but i have had people that have said oh that that's so hard i could never do that like you could but have you had a manager say that i sounds like maybe not not had a man well yeah probably it's a lot of i mean some of it's just like flattery like appease the nerds tell them their job is hard i don't know if i've ever had a manager sincerely say like i understand software fully and i know that it is hard it's just like gotta keep them happy i don't know how to do their job oh yeah it must be hard so i think in this case honestly the best thing you can do is agree with them and just be like yeah that is hard and um you know it's a tough job to deal with just basically reinforce that

their feelings that their job is hard are valid because it is being a manager is hard being an engineer is also hard like they're both hard in different ways um and no the computer doesn't lie to you but a lot of times i think it's lying yeah um but yeah i mean i think there's just no way to convince this person how does the old phrase go a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still is that dave's law no i that's dave's plagiarized uh quip okay i like that that sounds great it sounds like something benjamin franklin would say very likely very likely um yeah i think i agree with you especially if if all it costs is like you fume a little bit about how clueless this person is then that's that's not that big of a deal if it's causing

a larger issue where you think they're putting the team down where it's like why can't you get your act together this thing's so easy and like then that might be worth addressing more directly but if it's just like water cooler talk and someone's like you software people have it so easy i have to deal with budgets and like yeah i don't know i i personally hate that kind of it can turn into like one-upsmanship and yeah yeah i hate that crap so maybe the best thing you can do in the situation is just make a note you know if you're ever in a position to tell someone that your job is harder than them just don't you know just make a note for yourself learn this lesson the easy way yeah yeah that sounds good also fun fact that quote actually

comes from mary wallstonecraft a feminist from the 1700s wow yeah in a book called a vindication of the rights of woman huh there you go cool on your reading list james and i know that yeah something you would like to read actually mary waldstonecraft okay i will look her up all right question answered question answered with 1700s trivia for just a little extra bonus point the listener was right we agreed with them all right okay my turn uh yeah well actually this isn't this question is not from me i just realized i may have given the wrong impression this is from an anonymous listener and it says i work on a small team with a flat organization structure i'm not the most experienced member of the team but when i was hired it was to lead the development

of our product we recently hired a senior developer and my boss who is non-technical has told me that he sees the senior dev as the technical lead but wants me to still lead the team in more of a management capacity this feels like a weird two bosses scenario especially with a flat organizational model do you have any tips for dealing with this kind of situation bonus points if it doesn't require me to leave my comfort zone have you tried waiting to see if it goes away awesome uh that's a good point though this is like uh it's like investment because if you don't ever leave your comfort zone then you could be forced out of it potentially but if you do some potentially less uncomfortable things but still kind of uncomfortable then you

might might avoid future pains you could you could justify it like that maybe so it's like one way or another i'm gonna be pushed out of my comfort zone i can either choose to do it myself or wait yeah i can spend like 10 awkward points to talk to somebody now or be charged a thousand awkward points like a year from now when when bad things happen and i'm penalized by having to like dance and sing a song in front of the whole company i don't know hey remember that awkward conversation you were supposed to have a year ago well now you have to have it in front of the whole company while you're dancing uh two bosses so so your concern here is there you go There are infinity bosses and zero bosses and also two bosses because it's a flat organizational model.

Oh, yes. The classic flat organization. Yeah. I used to be such a big fan of the flat organizational model. I was when I thought I was smarter than everyone. And so I didn't want anyone telling me what to do. That was yesterday, right? No, that was a younger Jameson.

i just didn't want people telling me what to do because i thought it was cool to be able to do whatever i wanted i'm my own engineer no one tells me what to do yeah bosses were like the man holding me down you can't hold me down i'm gonna blossom into a beautiful rose yeah with swimming in ambiguity yeah yeah i'm not a big fan of flat cultures so i've been at i've done super uh hierarchical i've done super flat and now i'm back to super hierarchical and i can tell you that the clarity of hierarchical is actually pretty refreshing like it's always pretty clear whose job is to do what so and there are definitely upsides but it also is a more expensive organization to to pay for so you know trade-offs yeah some of it

could just be scale too i mean this person talks about a handful of people and if that's the whole technical team then there just isn't a lot of room for a lot of hierarchy so in this situation i see like a little bit of a a triple play going on here we have the senior dev who's supposed to be the technical lead of the team we have the boss which i think is like who's who's a non-technical person yes and then this the question asker um is technical but supposed to be doing management stuff like checking in with the other developers i'm reading some details here leading the weekly meetings uh things like that um that seems like something you would want to hear the boss say out loud to the whole team you know like i want wendy to be your manager you know like let's just

come right out and say this out loud and i see no problem with having two bosses if the division of labor is very clear so in this case the senior dev is a technical lead your boss needs to write down what are their responsibilities you know maybe like technical architecture design decisions things like that um prioritizing bug fixes and technical debt fixes and stuff like that manager your job is weekly one-on-ones with everybody performance reviews um giving peer feedback to each other or to your to your team these are the division of labor now make darn sure you don't have two check boxes on every decision where both of these two leaders have to check the box yeah i saw that episode of the office wait what i didn't see that oh there was

one where yeah i'll explain it and sorry if you've never seen this show uh jim and michael are both co-managers of the branch and they're over different areas but really it just means like two people have to make a decision instead of one person so there's like two check boxes on everything and you wouldn't believe it but hijinks ensue what the fuck yep so yeah um there definitely is a risk of two bosses and i've worked in exactly this organization at my last company where we had teams that had a technical lead on the team but then everyone also had a manager that we called an advocate who was responsible for your career progression for giving feedback to you from your peers for doing your annual reviews meeting with you in

one-on-ones and things that a manager would do but we tried to make it so that they were not a member of your team your technical team they were still engineers though right yeah they were yeah in my case they were but they wouldn't have to be like you could imagine sometimes people call this a matrix organization where you have like a grid and the columns of the grid are managers and people people are in each cell and so they have a manager based on who's on the top of their column and then the rows are technical teams where there's like a technical lead on the left hand side of the table in front of every row and so if you look at a single cell you trace to the ones to the side and you see their technical lead and you trace upward and you see their manager

and they do different jobs um but that's a pretty common scenario and it's it's not insurmountable and i think it can work pretty well i'm trying to think i think i've been in situations where there there were two people responsible but their responsibilities were pretty clearly divided up between product things and technical things kind of happened a lot manager and a technical lead yeah yeah in fact there's probably three bosses in many cases right because you also have like this product manager yeah a technical lead and like a manager yeah some yeah sometimes some of those get smushed into the same person but i think there is room to divide those things up uh in that case it doesn't seem horribly uncomfortable to ask

well here's what would make it potentially uncomfortable the idea that the flat organization thing throws a wrench in these in this a little bit because there might be some resistance to the idea of hierarchy and having a manager or someone doing things in a management capacity yeah but not calling it a manager i don't know just it just seems like it would add more fuzziness to a fuzzy situation so your suggestion of going to the boss saying hey if you want me to do this tell people so they know what i'm doing and it and it's clear i don't see how that uh how that reconciles with having a flat organizational model it really it really doesn't and that's because flat organizations don't actually exist yeah i mean you already have a boss and there's

already a senior dev yeah like it's not flat you're already not flat yeah um my question for them is is it flat because um no structure was imposed or is it like they read that stupid holacracy book and we're like we want to be a flat organization uh and and are trying to do it because i think that would affect how you approach it if if this is like going against the the will of the company or whatever then that might be a little trickier but if it's just like i don't know we haven't needed managers yet then yeah yeah two different very different situations yeah the pattern of like adding structure to something that doesn't have structure is is easier than the pattern of changing the structure yes if it was intentionally put in place right yeah um i would

also if you're willing to do this i would go to your boss and say hey i am willing to step up and do this job and i am i need your support because i'm worried about a two boss situation or a three boss situation and i want to sit down with you and divide up the responsibilities and then i want to have you present that to the team to make it really clear to everyone whose job is what um and see how they respond to that because the chances are as soon as you say a two boss situation they'll be like oh no no no no we definitely don't want that you know and they'll probably work with you to make it clear we're thinking more of a middle management role that sounds great yeah how do you that's another concern i have how do you avoid being just like

this person's surrogate where what you do is tell the team what your boss says and then you tell your boss what the team says yep and every time someone asks you a question it's like i'll ask my boss and get back to you yeah that's actually very easy to fall into that trap and so i think if this is probably down the road a bit but as that starts to happen you need to now define responsibilities that are distinct from your boss not just distinct from the senior developer but from your boss and say hey what decision making authority do i have you know um and try to get them to say very clearly mark that off and then tell them like i don't want to just be a pass-through and just pass questions up to you and then be a messenger um i want to you know i want to be responsible and i

want to be accountable and i want to be autonomous but show me show me the sphere that i can act in yeah that's what i would ask for from the question asker saying uh bonus points if it doesn't require me to leave my comfort zone i'm very much an introvert it makes me feel like they're worried about some kind of like power struggle or something and that's i think that's one thing that dave's suggestion can help avoid if someone else clearly outlines the responsibilities then you don't have to worry about like going up to people who you were formerly just like another developer on the team with and saying like hey time for our one-on-one come come tell me all your problems like wait what who are you no you tell me your problems i'm the manager yeah no i'm

the manager okay what would be amazing is if the boss actually went to everyone on the team and in private and and then just watch oh it's flat everyone is a manager you all have equal accountability and responsibility i can see that phrase coming out of some someone's mouth and then feeling like so proud about what they've accomplished here everyone is responsible everyone is a manager good you're fired well this sounds like a solvable problem and i think with some non-awkward conversations it can be done i don't think this will be too hard but you're gonna have to tell your boss you want clear clearly defined roles and responsibilities i love how you said it doesn't sound very hard

like you know it's hard doing our job yeah geez at least you're not at least you're not making a podcast that's hard Hosting a podcast is truly difficult. Resolving this two-boss situation, that's easy. You don't even have microphones. My fingers bleed from editing. Oh my gosh. It's all connected.

I can't believe that just happened. I know you didn't mean it like that, but it was too perfect from the first question. Oh, I've got a tear coming down my cheek. So beautiful. that means we made it one more episode without it being horrible question answered question answered where can people go jameson to connect with us and ask questions they can go to our website softskills.audio there is a link to a google form to to ask a question um if you don't like the link or the most of the internet but you like the part of the internet that's twitter you

can also go to uh soft skills eng on twitter and follow us and and chat with us there and we'll accept questions through that medium we also have all of our other episodes on the website if you want to check out stuff and there are comment threads on them now and people are saying insightful things on there i'm actually really enjoying reading them so it's been really cool yeah there's there's a lot of insight and perspective that i that i appreciate so thank you if you're commenting on those well that does it we'll see you next week bye