Thread by @mipsytipsy

In 2023 we saw several rounds of quality conversation around engineering productivity, thanks to McKinsey, @GergelyOrosz and @KentBeck and others.

It moved the industry forwards. 🙌 But it also felt fairly inside baseball to me. Deeply technical, lots of metrics.

It felt, to me, like those participating were stepping very cautiously around a few of the third rails Jaana just tripped over. (💜)

"Work-life balance"
"Working hard vs working smart"
"Meritocracy"

The intersection of company tech cultures and expectations and performance.

These are hard, complicated topics, and there are some very good reasons for speaking carefully. People can pick up a sentence and run in the wrong direction with it, and do a lot of damage.

I have abandoned god only knows how many drafts on this topic, for that reason.

When I first came to SF, I was 19, and the cult of the overworked tech employee was in full swing.

People slept under their desks. Companies put shit like "don't come work here unless you're prepared to make this job your life" in their hiring ads. People read that and applied!

Times have changed. If you posted something like that nowadays, you'd get shamed for it. This is a good thing.

But the discourse seems to have calcified, at least in my corner of the internet, in a way that makes it very difficult to honestly talk about the hard parts of work.

There is a reluctance to talk about the ways in which hard work and perseverance contribute to success, because it echoes the siren song of meritocracy where hard work and perseverance are ALL you need to be successful.

I used to do this thing at work where I would urge people to relax, take time off, go on vacation. During all hands, for example, or in public slack channels.

I don't do that any more, for the most part. I stopped because managers began privately begging me to.

Our company got big enough that at any given point, there would be some people for whom that was a useful message, and others for whom it would be actively detrimental to their own success and that of their team.

We tend to give to others the advice we personally need to hear.

By broadcasting the same message to everyone, I was flattening it, robbing it of its specificity and power. I was making it much harder for our managers to do their jobs.

In general, I think good management must be outcome oriented, not overly concerned with the pathways.

Ho boy. Yes. Vacations are good, rest and rejuvenation are healthy, etc. But as a manager, if your only response to your directs is that they should take a vacation, you are _failing_ them.

The problem with telling managers to just be outcome-oriented, of course, is that it only works when things are going well.

When things aren't going well, the manager needs to get down in the weeds to try and help figure out why, and how to fix it. Otherwise it's negligence.

Eugh, where am I even going with all this. In trying to be careful, I end up saying hardly anything at all. 🙃

I guess I just feel like there's a lot of dishonesty in how we talk about work and companies and culture, and a lot of room to do better, be clearer.

It's like how almost every list of company values contains the exact same bullshit about "Excellence, Hard Work, Integrity, Customers First, Teamwork, Passion." Gross.

But each company has its own unique character, culture, reputation, conventions. Vibes. That shit is real.

And at every company, there are times when culture must change in order to meet some new challenge or phase.

Let's say, purely hypothetically, you were a cofounder or exec at a company making the shift from finding PMF to years of growth stage (rhymes with "Shmypo Steadiness").

This calls for changes. A different attitude towards timelines, revenue, efficiency.

But almost everything execs can do directly comes out horribly and leaves a bad taste in people's mouths. Like talking about "raising the bar", or "urgency", or stack ranking... 🤮

Sweeping statements are too dangerous. No company is a monolith.

Even at companies like google with a reputation for work/life/retirement, some folks are busting their asses and burning out. Even at companies with a reputation for overworking, some are not pulling their weight.

That's why I think line managers are the key to driving culture changes in a healthy way.

If you want individuals to be motivated to do what's best for the company, you have to have managers who they trust to evaluate them and their work through that lens.

Line managers, not execs, are the ones closest to the work. They are best equipped to understand the intersection of the work being done and the people doing the work.

But you have to equip them with clarity -- about what the strategy is, and what your values are.

These days, most managers have the language to cope with scenarios like a team member making sexist comments, or someone needing time off for mental health.

Hopefully they know where leadership stands on these issues, and don't have to guess whether anyone will have their back.

These days, managers have ready scripts (at least in my bubble) for urging people to take time off, to take it easy.

Where I see them struggle much more is the reverse: when a team member isn't pulling their weight, or is phoning it in, or can't consistently meet expectations.

There is rarely a black or white answer, which is why it's hard -- and why managers need so much more clarity from the company than they typically receive -- about how many second chances are too many, or exactly which extenuating factors can excuse how much underperformance.

People can talk about psychological safety all day. These concepts are real, and they really, deeply matter.

But they can be wielded just as easily by someone who is doing no work, gossiping viciously, and lashing out at any desperate attempt to hold them accountable.

You *have* to be able to trust your managers.

You have to be able to trust their judgment, that they know what good work looks like, that they will hold their teams to a high standard, with empathy and humane understanding, and that they will not quail in the face of threats.

I know I just said a bunch of stuff about high standards, but honestly, I think we also have to demystify and destigmatize the reality that nobody is crushing it all the time.

Life happens. Even the highest performers have off periods. It's normal.

Companies change. Any time they change, not everyone will be happy about it.

What matters is transparency and honesty, treating people like adults, equipping them as you can so they can exercise their agency. Not pretending like everything is always going to be fun or roses.

And...don't make the company your life. Capitalism and work relationships are fruitful, profitable, & often enjoyable.

But we were built for more. We were built to love and accept each other, perhaps not unconditionally, but for reasons beyond how useful we can be to each other.