Good manager, bad manager - tasty drink, bland drink

Published December 20, 2020

In our last episode, we talked about leaving a job, and one of those reasons for leaving was due to a bad manager. In this episode, we follow up our discussion on what makes a good manager.

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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to another episode of the front end happier podcast. In our last episode, we talked about leaving a job and one of those reasons for leaving a job was due to bad managers. In this episode, we will follow up our discussion on what makes a good manager and even possibly what makes a bad manager. Before we jump into today's topic. Let's go around our nice virtual table and give introductions of today's panelists. Augustus you want to start it off.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, sure. My name is ECOSYS Yun. I'm a software engineer at Twitch.

Mars Jullian
Hi, I'm Mark Julian. I'm a senior software engineer working in the Bay Area at an undisclosed company that everyone knows whoever

Ryan Burgess
undisclosed I love it Stacy.

Stacy London
Stacy London is senior front end engineer at Atlassian Brian Holden,

Brian Holt
I'm every managers worst nightmare.

Ryan Burgess
Surely Hi, I'm

Shirley Wu
Shirley. Whoo. And I am an independent data visualization designer and developer.

Ryan Burgess
So you're you your own manager at this point.

Brian Holt
She's her own worst nightmare.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, I really am. We can talk about that. I'm a horrible manager to myself,

Jem Young
Jamyang Senior Software Engineer at Netflix.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager who's ready to hear all your thoughts on bad management and are really open to hearing this feedback. Before we get into today's episode. Each episode, we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the episode, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is? Ah, boss. So like Stacy said, We'll drink like bosses. All right, well, let's hop in. I mean, this is this episode. I don't even feel like I have a ton of questions for you all. What are the qualifications that make a good manager? We're all like, we

Stacy London
have so many bad managers. Yeah, I was ready. I mean, we can start there. I think some of the best managers I've ever had have been there to like help you and to be a resource for you. Advocate for you. That's the word Mars use before we started the show, which I really like. Yeah, like advocate for you try and promote you and be like, you know, if they think you're doing a good job, they try and help you and your career and move in. If you want to move teams, I'll help you with that, like just that kind of like there to remove things, barriers and obstacles. And then that kind of thing. I think those are some of the best managers for sure.

Shirley Wu
I like the removing barriers and obstacles part. So I was I was trying to think of it before this episode. And I think one of the things that I really appreciated when I was at full time jobs, and I had managers, I was quite Junior. So one of the things I really appreciated was how my manager really shielding shielded me from a lot of the politics from like, above. And that just, he just like, let me concentrate on my icy job. And so I was thinking about that. And someone also said something that really stuck with me that a good manager should not be too transparent and tell everything. And because then you're just like a like a glass to passing information along from like upper like, above. But then it shouldn't also be like, there should be some amount of transparency and a good manager will kind of filter out the noise and kind of just concentrate on what the most important signals are. And then I was kind of talking to my husband and he's a he's been at full time companies and he's like more senior now. And he also made a really good point of when he was more junior as an IC, he really appreciated like the being shielded from politics, but now that he's more senior, he actually appreciates like, kind of getting to know more of what's going on above and so kind of even with that kind of filtering noise in the level that's noise is really dependent on the person and so I think like a good manager knows how to balance that from like, team member to team member

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, like what you said there surely even on the individual basis is like I think how you interact with each person. It's a little different. It's not it shouldn't be one size fits all. I think that's also what makes a good leader is like thinking about what works for surely what works for Mars. What works for gem is like, those may all be different and what's important to them. And so it's like important understand that.

Mars Jullian
I mean, I mean, I think a big part of like what makes a good manager too, is just the ability to empathize and listen and that that's involved. Like there's, there's multiple things going on, there's many hats that that managers have to wear in general, and good managers wear them well. And one is like being able to have that human connection with your reports, I think to be able to connect to them. And then also sort of all the other logistical stuff that we've already been talking about, like being a mentor, being an advocate, like, you know, being kind of like a point of contact to the rest of the company. It's a lot going on. And I don't know that we give enough credit to good managers, we can complain about the bad managers as much as we want. But I think a good manager kind of goes unnoticed. And in a way,

Brian Holt
the thing that surely said, that stood out to me is I've had managers that are shit funnels that just funnel all of their shit directly onto the report. And I've had managers that are good shit umbrellas, right? Like they, they shield you from the shit that comes from above, right? Yeah, like, the shit funnel is like, like, if I have a problem, you have a problem kind of person, right? Rather than trying to solve the problem. They're just passing the buck down onto the reports, when I was really early in my career, had a manager just like that he's like, wouldn't take responsibility for mismanaging the team. And instead was constantly blaming his reports. And so I also appreciated what Shirley said, which is there's different levels of purview that some developers or or engineers or PMS or whatever you want into the upper echelons of the company, and some of it's appropriate, right, like, if you're, you know, doing some political action that that needs purview and so that those upper echelons of the company, you need to know the politics of it, which is, you know, shitty to continue the analogy there. But other times, like it's just pointless, right? It's just pointless for you to be worrying about which CVP is, is taking another CVPs pie or something like that. But what is the VP? Corporate Vice President, it's Microsoft isn't? I'm sorry,

Jem Young
it's just your change.

Brian Holt
I wish I could disagree with you. I'm drinking cheers. Like a boss.

All
Cheers, cheers.

Augustus Yuan
I think that was like a super good point. But I also kind of want to caveat that in that, I've had managers that originally, I've always thought, oh, wow, they're just like passing all these problems to me. But I feel sometimes like, it is a good thing, like trying, like, there's a right way of doing that, you know, there, there are certain things that you should delegate and have ownership in the ICS feel like kind of like, it doesn't make sense for you as the manager to solve all the problems. So I feel like there's this like balancing act of like, knowing what things should be passed down to ICs. And other things that you can kind of shield the team from, you know, they should be focusing on whatever projects they're working on.

Shirley Wu
The great point, sorry, the part that I forgot about was when it's not transparent enough that the ICS don't feel empowered. And that's, that's a really good point that someone made that I forgot previously.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, and I think like, delegation is hard, even from like a manager standpoint, if there's things like I remember, even when I first moved into management from an engineering role, there's especially things that I could just jump in and do like in the codebase. It's like, I knew it really well. But it was like, Wait, should I be doing this? Or should I be leaning on others and and helping them grow into these areas? So I think like delegating, and also empowering people to make those decisions is super important.

Shirley Wu
Actually, I have a question for people that are managers or have been managers, which is kind of when you were stepping into that role. What were like, words, were there things that you wanted to prioritize, were the things that you were kind of intimidated by? I'm just asking this from like, A, trying to understand the other side of a good manager, or hopefully, there's no bad managers in this panel. But that's where the question is coming.

Stacy London
I was a manager for a split second. And it wasn't very long. I think, like, eight months have a small team. One thing I was excited about was that I thought that I would be able to have, I don't know, like maybe more influence or be able to be able to advocate for trying to create like a design system. That was something that was I was kind of asked like, oh, you can maybe try and make all the products have like a similar look and feel and like oh, cool. We can like create a design system. Here's what we need. We need X, Y, and Z. and like try to be I thought that I would have more resources at my disposal as a manager to make that happen. And I think that's sometimes true. Like depending on what company you work for, you have more like you have access to budget or you have access to meetings with people who can give you budget, that kind of

Ryan Burgess
thing. Yeah, for me, I feel like you're expecting a grand plan. I feel like I was just thrown into the role and it was like, sink or swim. And I think that's how it started. And then it's you know, as I started to figure it out, like that's when I started to build Little more thoughtful on, you know what's important for what role do I play? What role does the team play and be a little more thoughtful around that? Augustus can attest to this because I feel like he was early in my direct reports where it was like, yeah, it was just kind of thrown into that and figuring out like, how to balance being an engineer plus a manager. And that doesn't work that well, I think that was my biggest struggle was like, I had to quickly let go of the code, and realize that it's not efficient for me to be a manager, as well, as an engineer. At that point, I'm not doing any job well, and then I'm not really doing my job as a manager, who would, which is the more most important piece of that. So that was something I had to like quickly pivot. Without really much planning, it would have been nice to have more planning ahead, but it didn't happen.

Jem Young
I've managed people, I think I've managed people poorly, because I think it just wasn't mature enough at the time. This is like, I don't know, mid 20s, or something like that. I mentioned, a few people. I think I was too Cavalier with it. And to not understanding people take what I say seriously, which is like a weird thing to say, but you know, I'm just used to like, oh, yeah, you all of my friends, you and our listeners, like understand my personality, my sense of humor. And that's not necessarily true when you're talking about, like, actually, people's careers and their jobs. And yeah, I probably wasn't the best manager back then. Like just being honest. You know, I just didn't take it seriously enough. I'm just like, oh, yeah, I mean, I'm in power down, I can do whatever I was, like a boss, like, I'm

Ryan Burgess
like a boss. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers gem. To that point, though. A manager role is a different role. Like I want to make that clear, too, is that it's like, everyone always talks about, Oh, I'm getting promoted to be the boss. But it's like, you were an engineer, and you were good engineer. And then it's like, Guess what, now I got to figure out this whole other role. And it's not the exact same. So I think like, it's fair to say that you're not going to jump into it and be like, solid manager right off the hop, you have to learn it. It's a different role.

Jem Young
It's increasingly as I become older and more mature, mature inquiry, you mature. You can't see it, but I'm doing it I faithful listeners, what, like management, or leadership is about service. Like, that's just the core of it is you are there to serve other people that we will talk about characteristic of bad managers, because we've all had plenty of those. But what I've seen is overarching theme of poor managers is it's about them, about them getting their stuff done, rather than now you're there to serve other people. You don't get credit for things anymore. Like you didn't push that feature. You didn't release that giant bug, fix and crush all these stuff. Like, if you look on the outside, it looks like you're doing nothing. You're like What do managers do all day, they sit in meetings, and like, that's what a good manager is. And I think a lot of people might get to manager and move no further and maybe drop back or drop over to the IC. Because it's not what they do, which is like, on big in charge. And I'm if I'm a shot caller, and I'm making decisions and just talking to people like Ryan, and my current manager and other leaders at Netflix, I learned that no, actually, the answer is opposite of that you lose a lot more control as an ICF a ton of control over what I do and how the code ships and like what it looks like. But as a manager, you have no control over that you can only try to guide people in the right direction. And I think that's important for anybody considering being a manager is you actually have less control. And you have to be okay with that if you're going to be good at your job.

Shirley Wu
I wish that every IC that wants to get promoted to manager or gets promoted to manager hears what you just said. Because, like, I think you will say so much pain. My biggest pet peeve, my biggest career pet peeve is somehow we assume that a good IC will become a good manager. And I'm like, where did this this come from? It's a completely different skill set. And I like how you put it as it's essentially a service job. Which I'm like, I've never thought of it that way. But you're right.

Stacy London
Yeah. Like some people go to school for four years studying computer related things to be that I see. Whereas, do people spend four years studying human psychology? Understanding like that? No, I've never heard of such a thing. Like, yeah,

Brian Holt
organizational psychology. So there we go.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, that is a thing. Yes. But how many how many managers have a degree in that?

Shirley Wu
I was actually just gonna say that. I studied business and undergrad and and then it was and then I had a C as minor, but when I was studying in business, and I think this is like a typical weird ego thing of, I guess, like more technical people, I was like, Oh, this Organizational Behavior class I have to take because of my business requirement is so fluffy, like, what am I even learning from this, it's so soft and fluffy, like, you know, like, I'm not learning anything substantial from this is the attitude I had the entire semester. And then after that semester, like to this day, it is one of the like, just that one class I learned so much from it is one of the classes that I've taken the most amount of value from, and they taught us things like interpersonal, like interpersonal communication, and trying to empathize with the other person and, and how do you talk to the other? Like, how do you kind of, like communicate across, and I guess, across the table, and things I was like, Oh, this is useless when I was just a dumb college kid. And now as an adult in the workforce, I'm like, this is the most valuable thing I've ever learned. And I am so glad I had it before I entered the workforce. So yeah. And I guess there's like, maybe this is an interesting topic subtopic, as well, of how we intake kind of kind of looked down on more soft skills. And I wonder if that contributes to kind of the potential bad manager or the toxicity? of, I guess the industry?

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think when you when you Yeah, I think yes. And I think when you compare it to code is like, things are a lot more binary, they work or they don't versus as leaders, managers, boss, whatever you want to call it, cheers. You're dealing, you're dealing with people. And that's a big difference is like, no individual situation is exactly the same. And granted, not not code is always exactly the same. But a lot of the problems you're solving are similar. And I think about it is like back to what I said it's an individual thing is you're dealing with people from an individual level, someone may have the very similar problem, but they're dealing with it completely different, and you're there to help support them. And so it's everything is very unique that you're dealing with, and can surprise you in so many different ways. So I think like that is an important skill set. And if people don't bring that to the table, that's where you get some other poor managers,

Brian Holt
bosses,

Ryan Burgess
bosses. Can I also say that I hate that word, like boss, like I don't really like being called a boss I think about it is like a manager's a better word. Because it's like, no, I'm just doing a different job. I'm not like here to dictate, like what you do or how you know what your responsibilities are and stuff that's like, I'm just taking a portion of like, what the role is, I'm doing something a little bit differently than what you're doing. But I've always hated that word. Cheers. You know,

Stacy London
that's the chair shares. The origin of boss is a it's early 19th century word from Dutch ba S, which I think translates to master. So oh, that kind of

Ryan Burgess
ooh, I don't like it. Now. Okay, that's my new title.

Shirley Wu
Wait, like you guard the corporation's interest? Is that what that means?

Brian Holt
Up to your interpretation?

Ryan Burgess
Or are you guarding? Yeah, you could also be guarding like, your direct reports from the corporation.

Brian Holt
Or you could just be like smog guarding like your, your pilot goal.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, we've already alluded to it a little bit. What makes a bad manager? I mean, we've had them I've had some like horror stories, but I'm curious to some of you like what makes a bad manager? The in your experience?

Brian Holt
I mean, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like the individuality of the people that you're managing my worst manager? Actually, that's not true. A second worst manager. I had their worst. I wasn't gonna say it out loud care. That's okay. Right. That's cool. No, this my worst manager will talk about that person later. This other person which was well meaning but not a good manager, and earlier in my career. I'm worried this damn podcast. No, I thought first of all, I'm not gonna talk about Ryan. Man. Ryan was a good manager for the for the record. And then I'm not gonna talk about Chris Dias, my current manager, because I like my job. So and I also like, nothing about any of these people. So So going back to the point of individuality, I had a manager that applied the same blueprint, I feel like this particular person just read a, like a business book, it's like, okay, you manage people's in this fashion. And it was a, it was a high level of control, right, it was very much in the details, we're gonna do this, it's gonna take this long, you're going to solve it this way. But I am a person that does not function well in that kind of environment, like I thrive a lot more with, like, here's a high level problem, you know, my charter right now is to improve JavaScript experience on Azure. That's a enormous charter, but it's very amorphous, right. But that's how I thrive is those kind of give me the problem direction, and I will go figure out the problems to solve on the flip side of that I've worked with people that like, if you don't give them a, like a highly structured environment, they don't, they don't function super well. And like, I'm not saying one of those is better than the other, right? If, if you give me a highly structured problem, I'm going to get bored, I'm not going to like it, I'm not going to do very well. But someone else might like go in there and just crush it, get right through it and do an amazing job. And so every person that you're managing, deserves this kind of individual lens of like what they're going to do, because you can have two people on the same team, that one's going to need, essentially, a high level of guidance that's going to be very effective, another person's gonna be like, don't give me too much guidance. Just give me a problem and leave me the fuck alone. Right?

Ryan Burgess
I like that, though. It goes back to the individual too, right? Like, that's kind of what your point is.

Shirley Wu
I knew what Brian described as his second worst manager being extremely controlling. It's precisely the reason why I'm too scared to be a manager. Because I know that I have such perfectionist controlling tendencies, that I'm like, I knew it's something that you practice that like, Brian, you said, like, you're not going to be perfect right away. But I think that's the reason why like, as an independent kind of like, self employed person I've considered maybe like expanding to a small team and running a small studio. But for the past four years, the reason why I've never done it is like the kind of cloud of having had both a good manager and the like, and a less than ideal manager, I am so aware of the good and bad that it just is very intimidating. And so that's what keeps me from kind of making that leap. And this year was the year that I was like, okay, like, I have this dream, I want to expand like, but I think it's still something that's stopping me because I'm like, I don't want to be that like controlling person that's like, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? Actually, this I feel like it's gonna turn into a therapy session for me, because that's my biggest insecurity for, like, my, I guess, like my work going forward.

Stacy London
Thanks. But the fact that you're self aware, is probably enough that it you wouldn't do those things. And I think that's a characteristic of a good manager versus a bad manager is self awareness. And, and like being able to recognize, like, Oh, I'm actually being too controlling, or micromanaging, or whatever it is, and you're you can be, yeah,

Shirley Wu
software, but then I'm scared of coming across insecure being like, I like have this tendency to want to be like, am I being too much? Can you give me feedback? Like, like, please tell me if I'm being too much.

Ryan Burgess
But I mean, hey, surely that's actually a good thing is like you want people to feel comfortable giving you that feedback to like, I think that is so important. Like, I really want people to tell me is like, Ryan, this is a terrible idea. I think that is important. So I think it's like, also, I don't think we highlighted this in the positives. But I think a good manager is also vulnerable. I think it's important for them to recognize we aren't perfect, we are going to make the so many mistakes just as much as like anyone is going to make mistakes. And so also like admitting when you've like made a mistake, or didn't listen to someone when they gave you that feedback. And I think so I think I think just like what Stacey said, for you to say surely you're just more self aware on that. That is important. It's like just being open on that as hey, I might be overbearing, please let me know if I'm going to be overbearing, and like that, that goes a long way. And

Jem Young
surely I in my opinion, as your friend, I think you'd be a great manager, I think you'd be a great leader. One of the characteristics, I believe, of a great leader is that they don't want to be a leader. No, seriously, right. Like leadership is a burden. Anybody who's ever been in charge of anything like pick whatever you want, whether it's party planning, or organizing a family or union or anything like that, you know that organizing all these things and pulling people together is a burden. It is much easier to sit back and have someone tell you what to do. You do it. You go home you sleep at night And like knowing there's someone who's paying attention to the details. So like a good leader understands that it's a burden and they don't want to do it, they do it because they know it's the best use of their skills. And they know that they can bring out the best in others. But yeah, like, I think given the chance, all the great leaders we know, they probably love to sit back and just be like, Nah, man. So someone else do this, like, I'm gonna go chill for a bit, I'm tired. Felt like, as a leader, you can't say that. Like, you can't be like, I'm tired. I'm burnt out these things like you can you can be vulnerable. But but to a degree. i There's the old saying like heavy is the head that wears the crown, which is just the the weight of leadership is is really heavy. And I don't think most people can bear that. And the best leaders understand that going in. I get there's so many good analogies about leadership, because I think it's like this story in human history that we've been telling each other over and over and over again. But it's still just people view it as just power and being in charge and things like that, when it's just not there. So many fables about what leadership actually is. Another favorite one, and I promise I'll shut up after this. The Sword of Damocles, which is an old, old believe it's Greek myth, but it's subdued. He's like, man, it'd be so great to be the king. And he's talking to the king. It's like, I bet it's so great. And he's like, Yeah, but what happens is I'm sitting on his throne and above me his sword that's hanging above me all the time. It's on this micro thin strand, and anytime can fall and kill me. And that's what being a leader is just like you don't know, you're always on the edge. You can't ever relax, essentially, same thing for Game of Thrones, like the Iron Throne. But it's the Iron Throne. It's not so sweet, comfortable is made of swords, you're not supposed to relax. And like he cuts you if you relax and like that his leadership in a nutshell, it's it's a burden. And yeah, so by saying you don't want to be a leader, I think that is like a good step in being a good leader saying like, I don't want to do this. But if I do, here's how I'm going to do it. Here's how I'm going to be most effective. Thank you. So I believe in you surely.

Ryan Burgess
So getting back to like bad managers. I gotta share this one. But it's like, it is not my current manager. It's not a manager that I've had for many, many years. If he's listening, yeah, well, he'll learn. I used to get called on like Friday and Saturday nights to like, just randomly do work. And I was like, Nah, I mean, it never worked. I had to learn, though, to set boundaries. And like, that was something that I quickly, I didn't last long at the job. I just always remember that of wow, this guy like truly doesn't respect any boundaries. These weren't critical things like, hey, our site is down or application is out. It was literally like some new idea. I don't know. Maybe he was also getting it from the top down, too. Right. I empathize a little bit. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm not doing that

Shirley Wu
guy is a power trip. That's my worst nightmare.

Brian Holt
Yeah. And that kind of goes back to like the the ship funnel stuff I was talking about, right? Like, my problem is now your problem. Like I'm in trouble, because this isn't done yet. So Friday at 5am coming to your desk, it's like this has got to be done by Sunday night, right? Yeah, that's a bad manager.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. Unless you just taken like, Yeah, well, what might like, my team's not gonna do that. So, you know, too bad. Like we're not delivering or like, it's kind of like them absorbing some of that shit instead of like dropping it down to you. Yeah,

Jem Young
I think a bad manager fails to set expectations. And I actually got this from a director at Netflix, who I was talking to the other day, he was Ryan's wife, please shoot. But I fronted this today, not necessarily a bad manager, more of a ambiguous manager, I can say if they're good or bad, but it's just something happened. Like some project I was leading, it didn't go quite as well as it could have. And they're like, Jem, I'm really disappointed in you. I was, I was really hoping you do X, X and X and do better on this. And I'm like, Well, if I knew that's what you're looking for, then like, I could have stepped up my game, but I think I did as well as was expected of me. And if you didn't set expectations, that's kind of on you. But like, it comes down on me ultimately. So a bad manager doesn't set expectations. A good one says, Hey, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do like Brian Holt said, and I'm going to be the crap umbrella. I'm gonna keep the politics and all this stuff off your plate. In return, I need you to execute and deliver on the things when you say you're going to do it. And we agree on this and like, cool, and like, that's a good manager. And you know exactly what you say all the time. And if someone's unhappy, they know about it. If the manager is happy with you, you know about it, and it sounds easy on paper, but in reality it's it's very complex.

Ryan Burgess
Well, I think it's like you said being clear with those expectations, but also making sure people understand that too, because like I may say something that was guy at GM totally understands this at walk away, but it's also making sure that that the communication is clear and that we're both on the same page, because I do I do agree with you, Jem, that that's unfair, where it's like, wait, I wasn't even aware of these expectations, and you're holding me to these expectations. But he didn't let me know that. And so yeah, I didn't live up to what you were thinking because like, nobody I didn't even know, that's what you were expecting.

Stacy London
One thing that I think, is, I've, I haven't seen a lot written about this, but just that the words that you use as the manager are so important, and you can create an entire atmosphere on your team by how you speak. And, and your communication style. And you can really quickly and easily in, like, you can create a bad environment that's like, doesn't feel safe for a team just by by words. Like, you know, one time I witnessed someone new or on the team asking for help in a Slack channel to like, do something. And the manager was like, Oh, I don't know why you're having all this trouble, like for the people figured it out, you know, like, but I'll let me let me see if I can help you. And you're like, Oh, that's not a good approach at all. You just like shamed someone. Yeah. You know, for asking questions. Just a few words, and you can almost destroy your team feeling safe. And so I think, yeah, your words are very important.

Ryan Burgess
I couldn't agree more like it's like those words, just like, what what was the productivity there for that person to or the rest of the team? It's even worse that the rest of Team heard it. But it's like, yeah, what, what motivation is that? It's like, cool. Even if someone made a mistake, it's like, thanks. What does that help them grow? Or say, like, Oh, great feedback. I want to work on that. It's like, wow, now I'm really demotivated. Thanks. Thanks for that.

Shirley Wu
I feel like the safe space comment, you may Stacy's, like, so important. And I think that I was also thinking beforehand about trust, the trust that you develop between, like you and your manager, because when I was kind of reflecting back on the less than ideal experience I had, I think it ultimately led to a lack of trust. And so it was a very interesting situation, I was in where I was at the company before the manager came in, because it was like a startup. And so, like, you know, they had the ICS before the management. And then I think, because I was on a relatively high profile project, I already had all of these relationships with all of the other kind of VPs and a lot of the other stakeholders and so I think, at the very beginning, what didn't happen very well was kind of the onboarding of the manager I had where I was kind of like, hey, as Nic, like, I mean, I was young, I think I was like, just kind of like, I was like, Hey, I'm too busy to like onboard right now. And because I just had so much on my plate, I think then snowballed into the rest of what happened of because we never kind of got to establish that like beginning common ground and trust one of the things that really stands out in my mind without going into too much detail is that with the good experience I had, um, I one on ones with my manager was like super casual. And he he was like, hey, like you can tell me about you know what you want out of your job out of like your career growth or like you know, in these like one on ones like weekly one on ones if you have like nothing to tell me about like your you know, like your job so far or, and then you could just tell me like whatever is going on in your life that you feel comfortable sharing, actually, I think I mentioned to him in my in our last podcast episode, and funnily enough, because I was like, oh, yeah, that manager I super like and he like reaches out once in a while. And he actually reached out again a few few weeks ago and I was like, Oh, this is amazing. Anyway, so that was a good manager and I think like one on one I looked forward to my one on ones with him It just felt like talking to a mentor friend and then contrasting that with the other experience I had of like I felt so on edge with in the one on ones with that manager like he barely spoke in the one on ones and kind of like typed and took notes the entire time but like he would not share with me what he was writing but he would say that he was sent that to like the VPs and stuff and but would not again share why he was writing so like it was and then when I die there's a whole saga that we don't need to get into like there's there was a lot of drama and

Stacy London
a bad boss

Shirley Wu
years I was I felt gaslit because I was like, Am I in the wrong for asking him for the notes of our meeting? Because he was like, that's an unreasonable demand. Like, if you want notes of like our meeting, then you should take the notes yourself. I don't know, to this day, I don't know what happened. I think maybe like, looking back, maybe he was just really awkward. That's,

Ryan Burgess
here's how I would take the notes of that situation is like, my manager is refusing to share what he's writing about me, I find it really uncomfortable. I'm going to be sending this to HR. Like, I mean, the one on one is like yours in that person's like, personal time, like I don't understand. So no, I don't think that's unrealistic for you to be like, What are you writing through, I

Jem Young
love your product, the one on ones because that that's a good signal, if you drove your relationship with a manager, if you have a sense of dread going to every single one on one, with any leader at all, then that's not a good relationship, you should know exactly what you're going to talk about. Or just like, you've talked about nothing, just talk about nothing and have the list of problems you're going to bring or just issues. But I've had that I've had that so many times just like dread going into a one on one where you're like, I don't know what's going to happen in this. Am I getting raise? Am I getting fired? Yeah, terrible, terrible feeling

Brian Holt
that the tournament is going in my head, like appropriate transparency, right? Like you're like, if your managers like knows that you're in trouble that they you know, that they're gonna come to you with that information? Right. Like, I was like, the advice I was give junior developers notice never surprised your manager. And I think managers I'd give them the same advice is like, never surprise your reports, right? Like, if you send a message and you say, hey, and their immediate reactions, like, am I getting fired? Right? Or if they can't log into their email, they're thinking, today's I'm getting fired today. Right? Yeah. So being willing to have those difficult conversations and like, having that confidence that when difficulty is about like is around you that that that's going to come down like that? Like it goes back to what surely same as trust, right, like those trusts that you can have those difficult conversations that my worst manager that I had was is exactly what I'm talking about right now is that there was trouble abound. And this this person was too much of a wuss to have a difficult conversation with me. And so the entire team suffered for it. Right?

Shirley Wu
Sorry, I don't continue. So many, like comments on this thread on that thread of like, a manager has a such a difficult job. Because like, I think the most difficult job a manager has is like having to fire someone. And, and I think, not doing that, when it's apparent that it should be done. I think so. The context of where I'm coming from is, I've also had relatively good, you know, bosses. Cheers, not not like a direct manager, but like, managers, manager cheers. I've had, like, you know, like, an experience where he was really good when the things were going well of, he was extremely supportive. And he was like, very thoughtful, but when things weren't going well, it felt like he wasn't as quick as he I would have liked him to be in terms of like, letting go of someone, it's, it's the whole, like, you know, when there's like, a few bad, like people in the team, and it like rinse experience for everyone and that one like, and that leads to like the good people leaving. And I wonder about your opinions on that of like a manager that like, is great when things are great. But like, when you need them to do the difficult thing. It takes them a while. And, and in my opinion, it takes them too long.

Ryan Burgess
Like from your perspective, surely, when you've been like around that, maybe it's a fellow engineer, and you're like, Oh, why is this person still here? Like you think it takes too long?

Shirley Wu
In that, like, um, I guess, without going into too much detail, a pattern where a good engineer left because they're like, after, you know, like many like communications with upper management, like a good engineer left, because nothing was being done about the bad team, make sure. And then as soon as they left that badge, teammate got like, go. And so like, you know, the connotation is that they knew that this was a problem, but they didn't pull the trigger until something drastic happened. All right, let

Ryan Burgess
me share the manager's perspective a little bit here. Because I think it is. I mean, letting someone go is a really hard decision. And oftentimes you will say, Oh, should have done it shouldn't sooner like that is oftentimes I've heard many men and say that because they start to like recognize that, or there's even been times they've let someone go like in that situation surely where there there has been times where someone brings down a team, I think I've ever had to let someone go where that's happened. But I, I've been the engineer on the other end where there was that brilliant jerk that got let go. And you're like, the team is like almost celebrating and happy because they actually feel better because of it. And I think those leaders at the time, realize, like, Oh, I didn't realize how bad it was. And so sometimes it can be hard for someone to really see it, but then they do realize very quickly, wow, my team's so much happier because of this, or like, I should have done it sooner type mentality. But it's also on the same vein is like if if you weren't performing well, you also want to be given some time to to improve on that. And I think it's always harder from the outside where you're like, I've seen this problem. Why is this person not being let go? And it's like, it can be hard. I've been on both sides of the fence on this one. So I'm like, Yeah, I totally know what you're saying.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, I think it's just tough all around. Okay. All right.

Jem Young
Cheers. It's not necessarily a characteristic of a bad manager, per se. But bad leadership is when people start leaving, they start blaming everybody else like, oh, it's the environment. Oh, they wanted more money. Oh, they weren't. They wanted. Excuses. I have been there when half an engineering team quit. And like the excuses were, oh, they're leaving for this or leaving for that they're leaving for this. But like, never once they look in the mirror and be like, Is it us? Or are we the bad guys?

Brian Holt
The bad guys?

Jem Young
Are we the baddies? No, it's definitely not us. It's other people, I then continue on. And Silicon Valley is rife with these, these leaders, because if they finally get let go or something like that, they just bounce to another job. And they bounce to another job. And like, look, people are looking at the resume like, oh, look like the company did better after you left or whatever it is, like, Oh, it wasn't me. It was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the best leaders. And I'll say, Ryan is an excellent example. This is like, yeah, you know, things weren't going well, and I wasn't paying enough attention. It wasn't giving them the right, whatever. And so they left or something like that. And like they take personal accountability, even cases where it's not 100% their fault, but 100% sign of bad leaders, they don't take responsibility for the things that are happening with their direct reports. And it's not always their fault. But you should you do bear some responsibilities manager that's part of that burden you carry.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, it takes to right like at the end of the day, I think that's a great way to put it gem is like it takes two it's never one side. It's all that one person. I did nothing wrong. I mean, that's my mentality. But you know,

Brian Holt
hopefully short question for the rest is like, what makes a good skip manager or boss's boss? Take Turing?

Ryan Burgess
Good question. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. So I think what makes a good skip level, because I think that is an important one. And what I think about it is like, they need to build trust with you. So if I'm the engineer, and I'm, maybe I have a manager, and then a director, unlike the director, I, they need to build trust with me, they need to make it so that I feel comfortable to go to them, say I'm giving feedback to my manager, and that manager is not listening. I want to be able to go to them and feel trust that I can that they're going to hear me out. I want them to build relationship with Me too. Because I think that's important. It's like they're invested in the team. Yes, they're not talking with you as much. But like, it's important for them to really build that trust and relationship. I think that to me is a really important aspect of it.

Stacy London
Yeah, sort of, it's a follow on to that just the tip by building that trust some of the best sort of skip levels or director types that I've ever worked with. They're proactive, like, they'll they reach out to you. And they want to get to know, like everybody on the team. And I mean, some teams perhaps are probably way bigger than others. And maybe that's more difficult depending on their schedules and stuff. But they set up the meeting to be like, I would like to talk to you and get to know you and understand like, what is you know, what are you struggling with on your team? What's positive, like, how can I help kind of thing they initiate it and they because it shows like they're interested in they care. If you if you don't never do that, and you're kind of holed up in your in office somewhere and you never reach out to anybody. It just seems like maybe you don't care about what's happening with everybody.

Brian Holt
I just totally agree with what Stacy was saying. I'm going to show my skip right now. Shout out to Amanda silver, Microsoft. I've all the scripts I've had and I've had I've had great skips before as well but she has an enormous organization and yet she's she knows more or less but everyone's doing and talks to everyone on a regular basis. She, she gains a lot of trust with all of her organization just by by method of that. And I think that makes her more effective. And in general, just having like a loose grasp what the entire organization is doing. And having trust that like, like, for example, if I had a manager now getting into like dangerous territory here, but I like Chris, but if I had a bad manager, I would feel comfortable going into a man and talking to him about that. And, and I think that sort of trust in the organization beyond your just your immediate manager, I

Stacy London
think is really important. And if you tell them something, that they do something, so it's not just like, so actions, speak, you know, louder, I guess, than the words. But yeah, if you see that, if there's like a big problem on a team, and then that person listens to everybody and actually doesn't think about that's huge.

Augustus Yuan
Actually, to kind of build on that, like, leaders of leaders, I guess, is what we're going for. What I really appreciate is providing those forums where we can communicate with them. So like something that I like that Twitch does, is they have like these open office hours, where we can ask leaders like anonymous questions and, and skip level directors will like respond to them. And that's like, something I really appreciate, because my day to day definitely doesn't interact with them, like at all. So it's really cool to ask them questions, and then see their perspective. And it's like a, an opportunity for them to kind of communicate what problems they see in the organization and how how aware they are of like, the problems like even at the IC level?

Mars Jullian
Yeah, I think I kind of also goes back to something Jem said earlier about expectations, because I think skip levels are great for dealing with and also noticing large organizational problems, but they're also very good for disseminating context, like from higher up and like to their employees. And I do think it goes back to trust of like, can you trust you're getting the right information? And can you trust it, if you give them information they're going to do the right thing with that information is pretty important. But also like, skip levels are sort of, I think they're there for more than than just problems. So if they are also correctly setting those expectations with you, as your direct manager might, it could be a really, really productive relationship, because you've got insight at a different level to different parts of the organization.

Shirley Wu
This is something I wanted to ask. And I feel like I'm opening a can of worms. But on the topic of bad managers, I feel like there's a unique set of experiences we have as women with misogynistic managers, I've definitely experienced being put down for being young. And not explicitly because I'm a woman. But the comments were implied. A

Mars Jullian
really interesting point you brought up Surely, I don't think it's just like a gender thing. But I think from sort of like any minority group in tech, sometimes when you have a bad manager, it's really hard to tease out what's bad management and what's potentially like unconscious bias coming into play. If you think it's the unconscious bias, it is really, really hard to bring that up with the manager, or even the skip level or even anyone at the company. But I hear what you're saying, because I've seen it happen. And I've experienced it as well. And it's almost like one of the most toxic relationships you can have. Because it's very gas lady, and then there's power dynamics involved and stuff. But anyway, like a lighter note that

Ryan Burgess
I love that you brought it up, because I'm like, Yeah, this is a problem. And like, we all have our biases that exists.

Shirley Wu
I really appreciate all of the efforts that are being made in the tech community. I think awareness really

Stacy London
helps. I think there's additional, there's this additional layers as a manager for Brian, you brought us you mentioned it before, like humans are very complicated. And this is just another point that kind of feeds into that like, it's not just humans, it's every everybody is coming from these different experiences and I think the one thing that we don't do enough of and maybe anywhere is give managers actual training and like and time at work to become better and to learn and so like have like, you know, the unconscious bias training or read more about that or read more about diverse perspectives and there should be so much more of that and I don't I hardly I don't know if it exists even I hardly ever see it like yeah, we have some like diversity training at work but like, not like that like something deeper and more meaningful after to grow managers into positions where they can they can leave diverse teams,

Ryan Burgess
I wish there was more. There's a lot of great material out there. Don't get me wrong. There's tons of great material. But I wish it was more mandated that it's like that, that leaders are held more accountable to that. Because like, it's something that you can go read all this stuff, but like, if no one's telling you that, are you doing it? I don't know. Like, I mean, I think it's important to read all that to be a great leader is like to think about, like, all these different cases, and how do you approach them and think about that, if you're not being held accountable to that, like people aren't going to be doing it? And that's unfortunate. So I'm glad you brought it up, surely because I think it is a very, very important part. And of course, like we're not going to solve that problem on here, unfortunately. I mean, we can cheers to the bad bosses all day long. Cheers.

Stacy London
Cheers. They do a bad boss.

Augustus Yuan
Bad because of a bad boss bad drink because

Ryan Burgess
of the bad boss. Yeah,

Brian Holt
to their demise.

Ryan Burgess
On that note, let's let's leave on a happy note of sharing some great pics. In each episode of the front end happier podcast, we'd like to share pics of things that we found interesting. We'd like to share with you all. Stacey, you want to start it off. I know you've always got some great, great music picks to set us off.

Stacy London
Oh, thanks. I try. I've got yes to two picks for music. The first one is black trees by Indian Wells. He is an artist that is on the mesh label that I've done before Max Cooper, and he runs that label. So if you like Mexican bro, you probably will like Indian walls. The song in particular was quote, written as a cathartic expression stemming from the rumination on the short termism of our contemporary way of life. And its potentially disastrous environmental consequences. So you can take that out of an electronic song that has no words and then the next pick is the upward spiral. Overlook remix by overlook and Nicholas Boogie F Pugachev. It is heavy synth techno very good headphones, bounce your head to it bass heavy. It's a fun track. Alright, Augustus, what

Augustus Yuan
do you have her so I have two picks. One was something Sara Dresner actually posted a while ago, and I saved it. And I thought it was really cool. It's this SVG path editor. There's a GitHub page. And it I think, though, yeah, okay, Brian, Brian knows all about it, then. You can literally edit an SVG, like on the path level. And it provides like a pretty intuitive, like, web page for you to do that. So I thought that was just super cool. This is like something that I've definitely wanted when like I've been tweaking, like very minor things in SVG. So that was a cool pic. And my second pick, is this anime. It's called the Yeah, yeah, surely, the rising of the shield hero. It's a really funny anime. Basically, it's about this guy who's reading this book. And he's like, Oh, wow, there's these four heroes. There's a spear hero of sword hero. And oh, there's this lame shield hero. And all he does is he defends who wants to be that guy? Well, lo and behold, he becomes the shield hero. He gets sucked in whatever. And it's about a story about how he kind of paves his own kind of tale of you know, not being a useless like because the whole city thinks he's a lame useless defensive character but he paves this like jeopardy of being actually pretty awesome becomes a really becomes really badass. So that's all I really say. That was really good.

Ryan Burgess
Brian, what do you have for us?

Brian Holt
Well, my first pic hopefully it's not too controversial is wearing a fucking mask. That's the whole crow mask.

Ryan Burgess
Pitch by freedom. Boss cheers. And you know what? On the front end, Happy Hour story you can purchase at front end Happy Hour mass Brian,

Shirley Wu
My God,

Jem Young
why? You are You are good.

Brian Holt
Merchandising, yeah, it is giving Tuesday when we're recording this. So I feel like the next two picks are gonna be have to be charitable for mine. So I'm going to pick my two favorite charities. I've picked them before I will pick them again. I'm going to pick any cannons. They teach human trafficking victims how to code and help them break the cycle of being human traffic because the most likely person be human trafficked is someone that has been human trafficked before. So I just I can't say enough good things about the the organization. The other one is, is a dear friend, drum hardware organization, which is vets who code who's also teaching. That's how to break into the tech industry. While saving their GI Bill, which is a huge deal, if you know anything about gi bills, there's just a ton of statistics about how vets are most likely to become homeless, most likely to have all sorts of issues, posts deployment. And so this is really helping a very vulnerable population, take their skills and apply it into a new way. So I again, I just really can't say enough good thing about Jerome's organization and with batsu code, so my pick is to donate to those two organizations. If you have a few dollars to spare, even, you know, even five bucks really helps.

Ryan Burgess
Maurice, what do you have for us?

Mars Jullian
Yeah, my picks are not at all developer related and have you spending money in completely different, not unproductive ways. The first one being like I don't have an app. We were talking about advent calendars before we started recording, and I don't have an advent calendar for myself, but my cats have one. So if you love

Brian Holt
on brand from Mars,

Mars Jullian
as we record I've covered in cast you can't see them. But they're here. If you love your Furbabies as much as I do, Trader Joe's sells advent calendars for dogs and for cats, and they've got treats in them. So, so bad. And then the second one is it pains me to see how like Ziploc bags paid me to no end. Like there's people use the ones and they throw them away. And they're always buying new ones constantly. So I have these bags I love called stasher bags, which they're silicone reusable bags, you can, they've got good sizes, they're great because you can cvwd with them, you can freeze them, you can microwave them, you can use them as a traditional Ziploc bag, they go in the dishwasher, and they're just overall great. But also if you don't spend your money on those things, I'm just putting those out into the world. Listen to what Brian said.

Ryan Burgess
Like it, Charlie, what do you have?

Shirley Wu
This is my second episode as an like as a panelist for the first episode. One of my picks was my own project. And today, I also have something of mine. And I absolutely promise that this is not going to be a trend. Like I'm not trying to I'm not trying to do this every episode. It just that the last episode, I had something exciting to me personally launch. And then today, I also had something exciting launch. So the first thing is I wrote a book, what

Stacy London
do you sleep, I feel like I don't understand how you doesn't do everything. I actually want the

Shirley Wu
last two days, I have not slept much. And that's why I had to take a nap before this. But I do sleep regularly. The secret is that I work for myself. So I do a lot of unpaid hours. This is a book based on a project that I've had for the last four years with my really good friend naughty Bremmer. It's a project called Data sketches. And essentially, the project is one where we chose 12 different topics, and then we each visualized it from from scratch. And so and then, um, and so we created a data visualization project from scratch. And then we wrote about the whole process of where we got, where we got the data, how we cleaned it, how we analyze it, how we designed and, you know, sketched in it and then implemented it with code. And so that's a project that we started four years ago. And ever since we first launched the project, and we've had this dream of turning it into a book because what we didn't realize at the time before we launched the project was how much people love behind the scenes looks of process. And so today, we finally announced the book. It's been in the works for the last two and a half years, it's been an extremely arduous journey, we've spent like 1000s of hours on it. But we've finally gotten to kind of create the book of our dreams which is this kind of like hybrid of a beautiful copy the coffee table book with like very, you know, indulgent images of our work side by side with very technical write ups of our process. And it's now on pre order. And all of the details are on our project website data sketch dot e s, and I hope that like for any listeners that are interested in data visualization, interested in kind of the thought process that goes into it, or just want like, I don't know, images for Have what a dare I say beautiful images, I hope you will consider free ordering the book, it will be published next February. And along with that announcement, we completely redesigned our website. And I just have to say I'm so like, every time I see our landing page, I weep because of how beautiful I think he looks. The cover is, by my amazing studio may Alice Lee, who we're supposed to eventually have on this podcast. But that's my first pick. But my second non personal pick is a game called going under, and I think it is on the switch. And I think various other platforms, I don't play video games, but my husband does. And going under is this video game, where the premise is that you are an unpaid marketing intern at a big tech company, based out of the Pacific North West. And you are part of a big conglomerate that have acquired many successful startups that have been failed, thus going under. So that's my second pick. Jem, what

Ryan Burgess
do you have for us?

Jem Young
So I have three picks. The first one is, yeah, it's fronted Happy Hour itself, which is weird. So a few episodes ago, I picked my user pick was the choice xx, which is a makeup mix up of Notorious BIG and the xx. And it turns out that the creator of that actually listens, the front end, happy hour, everyone's like, shout out to you, Joe. I love that mix. And I'm like, Oh, my God, I love your mix. Right? Like, it's just awesome. It's cool to be on podcast. It's cool, connecting with people and like people that make great things. So that's pretty cool. My second pick is a show I just happen to come across and I was watching with my wife. It's called Auntie Donna's big old house of fun. It is. This one is controversial, because you'll either find it really really funny. And you'll be or you'll be like this the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And it's not really there's not a middle ground here. I like Chappelle Show universally considered pretty funny. It's it's just a good sense of humor. This is not that this is very specific. However, we found it hilarious. Not every episode, but there's just moments of brilliance on the show. It is now streaming on Netflix, Spotify, Netflix, myself. Second pitch is, you know, every part of the show, I picked something where, you know, these products shouldn't exist, but they only exist because people in Silicon Valley make just way too much money. And we call it Valley silicon. It's a fairly silicon pick. I gotta ask you ask you all know, how much how much would you pay for a pillow? Should you pay for one?

Brian Holt
Don't ask me that. Gem.

Jem Young
$50 5050. important sleep is important.

Stacy London
Maybe 100?

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I

Ryan Burgess
would say 50 to 150 to 101 50.

Brian Holt
I think I paid just under 200 for a pillow before.

Jem Young
Hmm. All right. Well, I know what I'm getting everyone for Christmas when I hit the lottery. So there's this company called cuddle down, which is adorable name. Their price is not adorable. For the low price of 1499. That is $1,500. You can get one king size pillow. Let me read the description. It is the ultimate pillow. It's the world's rarest down paired with the world's most luxurious fabric. That means

Stacy London
poor bird. What is it an endangered species?

Brian Holt
Yeah, it's it's dodo feathers.

Mars Jullian
Terrible,

Jem Young
I swear these things exist only because someone's like, I want the best that money can buy. Or I just want to spend a lot of money on something like this is literally the cost of a good mattress for one pillow. But hey, that's why I felt so good if these things don't exist, because people out there make far too much money.

Brian Holt
Yeah. Those are my picks.

Ryan Burgess
Right on I just have two picks to follow. One I'll go along a little bit of surely is a little self promotion. But it was so aligned with this episode is I have a list of resources on GitHub for engineering managers and I think it's applicable to you don't have to be a manager or leader. I think there's a lot of really good material, whether it be podcasts episodes, or blogs or articles or books. I think it's it has a lot of really good resources for people who want to learn more and invest more in being a stronger leader. So I highly recommend checking that out. I'm trying to continually add to it. So I'll keep doing that. And then my second pick is a podcast episode. It is a new podcast. It's seeking the truth in networking. And I listened to the one episode, which was the insider stories of early Silicon Valley of Ethernet. Their guests that they had on was Bob Metcalf, which he's one of the main creators of Ethernet. So it was this really interesting like super interesting story that they are talking with him about networking and how Ethernet has evolved and it's just super interesting story, I highly recommend checking it out. So that is my final pick. Thank you all for listening to today's episode. You can find us at front end Happy Hour comm you can follow us on Twitter at front end ah, any last words like a mouse, like a

Augustus Yuan
mouse

Brian Holt
Cheers. I love it.