Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 81: Unwilling To Grow and Forced Out During Two Weeks Notice

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: A developer on a team I lead doesn’t seem interested in growing. How do I help them engage more? I gave two weeks notice, but was told part of the way through to not come in any more. I still had work left and this made me feel bad. Is this common? Did I do anything wrong? Jamison talks about the Khan Academy engineering culture. He kinda misquoted it though. They don’t explicitly say they lay people off who don’t progress.

it takes more than outrageously well-developed biceps to be a great software engineer this is episode 81 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is a podcast where we talk about all of the non-technical things that go into being a good software developer like biceps technically those are not technical that's right and just because you have giant biceps doesn't mean you're a great software developer so no but nothing i said it is like the first step right yeah i mean you gotta clearly you have to walk before you can run and you have to curl before you can lib curl oh oh my goodness i'm just gonna bask in the pun afterglow for a while

the after curl yeah yeah oh man uh well we've got some questions should we read them i don't even know if we need to we could just end the episode now it's a short one see ya no we'll we'll throw in some bonus questions okay yeah these are just purely bonus yeah do you want to read the the first question yeah sure this comes from an anonymous listener who says i was recently hired as a tech lead at a product engineering company. I used to be a senior developer, so I'm still learning how to bring value to my team as a lead. One of the things I'd like to do is to help everyone on the team grow and learn how to make good technical decisions. However, one of the mid-level developers does not seem interested. His mindset, as he's said multiple times, is he likes

to get very clear specs for tasks and do them without any decision making. I don't think that's good for his career but he doesn't see it the way i do because he's been in the industry for two years and i've been in for 20 years what do you think a tech leads role should be in this situation this guy is the bad guy in every management motivational story about how you need to empower your people and you can't have them feel like just cogs in a machine this guy's like i i want to be a cog and the machine needs to be more efficient so i can be a better cog i love being a cog what are you talking about yeah i bet i wonder if i bet this guy's happy honestly like it sounds pretty great to just be like i just do my work and i do what people tell

me and then i go home like probably lives a satisfying life to another day another dollar well we've agreed with him yeah you know there are days that i crave just having someone give me a really well-defined task do it and then having them say good job doing that task yeah and i'm like okay give me the next one let's do that again it's comforting have you have you tried telling him he has to do what you say or he's fired but he's like i want to do what you say you have to engage more with your work or you're fired hmm i mean we did kind of joke about it but it might be okay for this person to do that well yeah he's

been a software developer for two years get off his back yeah dude just wants to sling some sweet code yeah if he's happy doing it and if this the work he's doing is is good i don't know that it's ideal but it might be okay ideal from what perspective like measured by so i know for example con academy has is as part of their engineering culture it's that people develop and grow and if people fail to develop and grow then then they get laid off so the expectation is you will improve you'll become better you'll take on harder things as you spend more time there but not every place is like that i mean it might just be the same person that does all the kind of mid to low level tasks the

whole time instead of that rotating through people as they come in with less experience yeah or maybe they leave yeah yeah yeah oh i have you ever known anyone with about i don't know 10 plus years of experience who's still able to maintain this cushy lifestyle i have not worked with someone like that i know of people like that i have worked with one person like this and on he you know it's crazy he was really happy with his little rut that he had carved out for himself and when his this is i may have talked about him on the show before but i remember one time his manager came to him and said we want to give you a raise and he said stop that stop giving me these raises i don't want the extra responsibility that comes with the extra money and they were like

oh sorry sorry like he literally just wanted to do his job he has hacked the matrix the real world yeah and he had literally been doing that for 20 years and this was like five or six years ago that i worked with him so so i don't know i think if you could be happy doing that they'd go for it there is absolutely a place for you in this world if that's what you want to do as a software developer for the rest of your life there are a lot of cog-shaped holes everywhere usually you have to get crammed into one but this person might just fit neatly but um i do think that it is limiting in certain aspects like there is a limit to your compensation you will eventually be compensated uh for what you can be compensated for which is lower

than if you were to take on leadership responsibilities or take on more responsibility for the product direction um but honestly you know i this is a funny story but i asked my manager no my manager's manager at this company where i worked with this guy who had been doing the cog thing for 20 years and i said i said hey i i'm just curious what's the difference in pay between this guy and this other guy this other guy had been like super influential big-time leader in the company and lots of work and he says to me 30 and i was like that's not very much money yeah like i was like 30 is all you get probably does a lot less than 30 less effort exactly exactly exactly because i was thinking it was going to be like double at least right

yeah but no it's like no if you want to like just absolutely drive yourself into the ground be a huge leader big and impactful take on tons of responsibility and stress you can make 30 more than the cog guy you too so that was just one company one data point from several years ago but boy i sure was envious of the cog guy at that point yeah so we've we've taken his side a little bit too much i feel like yeah i think i think question asker your desire to help your team grow is admirable and and right and i think that's one of the one of the responsibilities of being a tech lead you also have 10 times the experience of this guy literally 10 times yeah so 20 years versus two years it's possible that he just he or she i guess you didn't say that this person is just not

that far along in their career development and what you know at 20 years about how to contribute technically they don't know yet and it's taking more than you saying hey you need to contribute more to make them do that so it might just take some time yeah it could i think this is a big challenge because you know that you're right in wanting to help this person grow and develop and become better and maybe even against their will and that's the part that makes it so hard right because you have to convince them that they need to change and grow but boy is it hard to do that yeah you ever heard the phrase a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still yes i heard it on this podcast oh yeah oh crap i've started recycling material

time for me to hang it up i i remember when i was a more junior developer that clarity was very important to me and i lacked the ability to work in environments of uncertainty i would just get paralyzed when the task involved i don't know figure out what to do so i i think some of it might be not wanting to grow but a lot of it might just be inexperience they just don't have the skills maybe you need to help this person become comfortable with ambiguity and the way you do that is the way you do anything is practice so maybe hand them tasks that have a certain just a small level of ambiguity maybe maybe just a single decision like in the jira story you just write you need to decide between

tool x and tool y to do this job that's your task you know and make them venture out a little bit into the water make some decisions but not too much don't give them too much rope and see how they do and maybe they'll go wow that was fun like i made a decision and now i own it and now the rest of the team is benefiting because of something i contributed that's cool well have we answered this question well i there's one more thing i want to say about it which is uh i wouldn't feel too bad if you don't sense that you're able to reach this person and help them achieve what goals you think they should have for themselves sorry i was a little snide but remember that as team lead depending on the company you probably have one main goal which is

to deliver the product that your team is responsible to deliver and that is probably the number one goal and if you can do that with this person with their skills and the level of development where it is then mission accomplished so don't you know don't completely beat yourself up if this person is not really coming around to your way of thinking if they're still delivering the stuff that they're supposed to be delivering you know at least they're doing that yeah yeah that makes sense that's uh you might feel like you're failing but your broader goals might be being met exactly yeah okay well it seems answered enough awesome good luck good luck yeah you want to read our next question jameson i do yeah this

one's a little bit longer but the detail is important so we'll read a lot this is from an anonymous listener i recently quit my job at a large corporation i was unhappy with management and the culture which i told my boss a few months before quitting after giving my two weeks notice i spent the first week getting some last minute work done and transitioned over to my team. But at the start of my second week, my manager called me in for a one-on-one and told me that they have no more work for me. Told me to turn in my equipment by 6 p.m. that day. I would still get paid for the final week, but I felt like he was pushing me out of the office. And talking with a friend of mine who works at the same company, but on a different team, he told me this happened to three of his

workmates. My questions are, what is typically the motivation behind managers who do this? is it normal practice at companies should i chalk it up to poor management or did i not handle something correctly hmm i think you just got five free vacation days how would you like some paid vacation yes please yeah that sounds that sounds great i could see how it'd feel bad if you you sound like you're pretty engaged in your work if you still had this strong of a desire to finish out strong from your two weeks so that that could feel bad but there is an upside to it yeah why would a manager do this what do you think Dave I honestly have no idea I the only time I would push someone out the door quickly would be

if they had done something really egregious and needed to be fired immediately I would never let it go halfway through their two-week period and then push them out the door it's like if I have a reason to push them out the door i'd do it on day one i wouldn't let it sit for a week and then push them out and since they didn't push this person out on day one then i don't see any reason not to let them finish out their two weeks and help get everything transitioned so this is a puzzler to me i do not understand the motivation here i mean i could see it if you feel like the team member is kind of dragging the team down maybe they're they're getting a little lazy they just like kick their feet up on their desk and laugh at you as you feverishly work on your

story points there is no next sprints i can do whatever i want i could see that draining the energy of the team a little bit and feeling like okay we'll be better off if they're just not here even if we pay them for doing no work at least they're not doing negative work it doesn't sound like that is the case with you you sound like you were pretty engaged in all your tasks but what exactly did you say every day during stand-up you know well no blocking my linkedin yeah uh can i expense linkedin premium it would really help me get this button moved i mean oh go ahead i was gonna say i'm gonna latch on to the word large corporation here

in the question and say there's probably some messed up slow bureaucracy effects that are taking place here i have heard of companies that have a policy to push people out as soon as they say they're quitting to say okay get out as soon as you can and maybe there's just some like bureaucratic latency where that that message took a while to percolate through the slow meat-based communication mechanism that they have and finally the boss was like oh crap i'm supposed to push you out but it took a week to figure that out yeah i mean it sounds like you're right about the culture you met with your boss several months before quitting about how it wasn't a good fit and and it turns out you were right so you made the right decision congratulations

so yeah to specifically answer those questions what is typically the motivation behind managers who do this i have no idea is it normal practice at companies no i don't think so i've quit i don't know like seven companies now and i've never had this happen should i chalk it up to poor management yes yes i think you should yeah i don't know that it's malicious but it feels a little bit careless maybe now there were some other details here that we uh summarized over but um this person did have an exit interview with HR and explained why this person was leaving. And I think that if you told the truth about how you're dissatisfied with the culture and management, it's possible that that news traveled back to your manager. And maybe they have a policy that once a person starts

disparaging the company or in any way that's perceived as disparaging, then they need to rush you out the door faster. Maybe it's a protection mechanism that they've developed over the years and i think the lesson that could be learned here is that hr exit interviews you have absolutely nothing to gain by bearing all at that moment it can only it can only hurt you so it's good to have some discipline in that moment and just share the things that you think will benefit you or your team and i have a really funny story about this hit me so one of my friends was leaving a company that i worked for loved this company but we were a small office in a bigger company so we had kind of big company stability with small company perks and culture

and uh one of the things i was a little unhappy with is i felt like we should be paid more i felt like i didn't really know for sure but i felt like we were under market and so one of my buddies decided to quit for unrelated reasons and went to another company and he sat down with me and he said i'm having my hr exit interview tomorrow what do you want me to say and i was like this is awesome yes tell them that the only reason you're quitting is because you aren't paid enough and he was like no problem and he did so he came back from his hr interview and he goes i sang like a canary he said i mentioned it like four times you know and they would say is there any other reason anything else you'd like to share with us yeah you just don't

pay us enough the only reason i'm leaving is money and sure enough it was a few months later they did an office-wide salary adjustment and everyone got a small raise and i was like thanks buddy so yeah like that was a chance for him to make a difference for us and he did but i'm sure he had some frustrations with the company and sharing those would not have done any good for him but instead did you construct a statue in his honor because oh what a guy you it was so nice yeah i mean it was great that's amazing alternatively how much money did that guy cost the company this is a like a two hundred thousand dollar exit oh yeah i mean it was like it was like a five percent across the board raise for like 80 people so oh my goodness

uh i mean if they were below market so just some quick math i'm gonna say that that was a quarter million dollar oh geez that's amazing okay i i see your point i uh i haven't really had a disgruntled hr exit interview ever but i almost did once in my very first non-academic programming job i i had some grievances i told my dad i was gonna let him have it and he was like nope under no circumstances do you do that he talked a lot about burning bridges but he he also politely brought up what you said that the time when you have the least power ever is when you don't work there anymore so it's not like they're gonna fix all this stuff that you told them are are problems it also underscores the common trope that hr's job is

to protect the company not necessarily serve your interests bingo yeah in this case it doesn't i mean getting asked to leave work a week early still getting paid that's not a drastic consequence but no it's fine yeah uh companies aren't really set up to take great negative feedback through hr it's not a great way to enact change um yeah and and you're basing that on some of the stuff we've read over the last couple years right like where people report stuff to hr and then it actually gets worse for them at that point yeah basically every tech company workplace scandal that involves hr that i can think of now however there is a little bit of a sample bias there which is where you only read the blog articles about the people who for whom it went badly you know no one ever

rights i took a complaint to hr and they fixed it and now i'm publishing a think piece on medium yeah and i got my severance that has a non-disparagement agreement and i'm gonna spend it all on this medium think piece so i and and i haven't really taken a lot of uh issues to hr myself but having known a few hr people pretty well i gotta say i think they would work pretty hard to make my complaints uh get attention i really do the ones that i've known yeah that's true they just have i think it might be more about the incentives than the people they they work for the company yeah and the company pays them money and it can be hard to feel like how do i balance the concerns of this individual with the health of the company

exactly not to mention my own job so i'm gonna say in my final conclusion on this is 99 chance you didn't do anything wrong but you may have shared a little bit too much detail in your exit interview that that may have motivated this weird move yeah not so i don't think that means there's no mechanism for feedback i think i think if you have well in this case it sounds like you didn't love your manager either i was gonna say if you have a trusted manager that's a great way to share feedback if you don't though then i don't know you don't necessarily want to just like gossip with your former colleagues what do you do you just suck it up well if you don't like the culture of the company and there's no way to change it you leave the company and find one that you do

like which is exactly what this person did so yeah but you just i think the only tiny modification of behavior is to slip out the door without you know airing your grievances and yeah even that's questionable i don't even know if anything really went all that wrong here and yeah you know frankly if i could quit a job give two weeks notice and only work one week that'd be great i'd make up some grievances yeah it would cover cover some grievances um you know the lacroix just that you didn't have enough flavors i don't know that reference flat oh you don't know the startup water LaCroix no it's it's like sparkling water but for some reason tech people like it okay I don't I don't I have no it doesn't taste good wait so this is a real product yeah it's it's

like in every startup their fridge is stocked with LaCroix they have their kombucha on tap and also the fridge full of LaCroix I don't know what that other thing is either kombucha is like hipster tea i'm so out of touch yeah you old fogey you know i can't even remember the last time i've been to silicon valley dave how do you acquire and attract talent and retain people if you don't have hipster tea and startup water i don't know uh charm okay that's my slicked back salesman hair that everyone trusts look at his hair what a straight shooter all right i think we've answered the question how do you feel yeah i think so too i think all in all this could have gone a lot worse it could have gone a lot worse yeah

yeah and it sounds like it'll get a lot better yeah absolutely good job and congratulations all right um we actually we we haven't had a lot of questions recently we would love to get more questions we're working through our backlog but we also love fresh ones if you have a question you would love to get answered how can how can they do that dave they go over to soft skills dot audio which is our website and click the ask a question button it's very easy you can fill it out on your phone or even on your computer with the keyboard thing that you type with two hands you may be familiar with that it looks like a typewriter and oh yes you those of you have had your questions answered on the show you may have

noticed that we definitely have a bias for newer questions i don't know why but we tend to focus in on those and after they've sat in the backlog for a little while they kind of tend to get ignored so apologies if it's been a while maybe you want to resubmit we've noticed that it's feast or famine sorry go ahead maybe spice up the language a little bit throw in some adjectives work on your pitch yeah yeah uh anyway yeah go to softskills.audio send us your questions we'd love to have them we love hearing about your woes um even if you just want to tell us about an outcome from a situation we would love to hear about it maybe you had a crappy exit interview with hr and tell us about your horror stories there was a great or a good

one yeah maybe you had a great exit interview yeah if you had a good hr experience i really really enjoyed the dozen or so stories people sent in about uh bad interview experiences over the last year or so those were awesome yeah so if you have bad exit interview experiences or bad you know giving your notice experiences we would love to hear about them we feed vampire like upon your suffering so keep us nourished give us all those bad experiences give us all those tricky situations yes we will give you wisdom in exchange and it feeds us but it also helps you with catharsis and you can release all these bad feelings so consider us your therapists and we'll send you an invoice all right i think that means we're done absolutely catch you next week