The Hardest Career Lesson You May Ever Learn

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hey folks I am going to LinkedIn for a question SL story this is my second time recording this because I forgot to turn on the receiver for my microphone which is unfortunate um this story is a challenging one because it doesn't have a happy ending yet um I'm hoping that as we go through this and after some feedback we can turn this around for this person um but there's some really good parts to it um and like I said where it's left off is not NE necessarily in a good spot but I think this is a really good one to go through because I I think that it's it's a hard lesson to learn and I think that it'll be relevant for many people um so if you're new to this channel I try to answer people's questions that they either leave in the comments

so they write into me so you can look for Dev leader on social media Nick centino on LinkedIn Dev leader is my main YouTube channel and um again if you don't know who I am or why I'm trying to offer advice and stuff I've been an engineering manager for just under 13 years now in big Tech and startups um so I try to share my experience my perspective and call biases as much as I can uh to try and share different perspective even if it's not one that I necessarily hold try my best to help that's all that I can really say um so I'm not going to read this story verbatim because it's pretty lengthy and that's not a complaint I actually really appreciate when people offer a lot more detail it's awful um I just don't think that it's helpful if I read

it a word for word um but this person has contacted me before we've chatted and I think that um I think there's some really good stuff that's going on here in the beginning of their story so uh basically what had happened was they were stepping up to do a lot more informal leadership so that means helping on board new Engineers driving collaboration uh you know with with engineers and also cross functionally so getting Engineers to work closer with product management and um they like this person said that alone made a huge difference in our workflow helped improve our onboarding process I it I felt like I was making a real impact and honestly I loved doing it powerful statement and then they said and people noticed so other Engineers some folks on the product team and then uh they're all like noticing which is cool

like they're giving feedback to this person and they even say that up to the CTO there was feedback that the CTO recognized that this person uh was starting to do more of this so all of this is like awesome on so many levels right someone saying I'm stepping up right depending on your situation you may have encountered something like this where you're kind of looking around and you're like I I feel like things could be better and like you see opportunity for improvement you're kind of getting frustrated by it and you're like like someone's got to step up and start saying something or start taking some action and um and this person did it and they say that it felt good they noticed the impact in other people notice it like these are all like everything about this is like boom boom boom awesome awesome

awesome okay so then a companywide announcement came up about an open Team lead position they encouraged Engineers to apply if they were interested but I didn't not because I didn't want it but because I felt like it was too early for me I thought let me get more experience first you know I also kind I'm going to say this part slowly I also kind of assumed that if they saw the work I was doing they'd at least consider me for it I mean I was already doing the job anyway and plus people already saw me as the team lead so I figured it was only a matter of time can we guess at what happened here companywide announcement they encouraged Engineers to apply if they were interested but I didn't I kind of assumed that they saw the work I was doing and they would

at least consider me for it they go on to say but they ended up promoting someone else someone who wasn't even from our team and the reason I didn't get it it was because I didn't apply so we're going to come back to this okay but this is extremely hard lesson to learn number one and it sucks when I was reading this it it like it was a roller coaster for me like I don't I don't know this person personally right it's not like we're buddies or we hang out but I have talked to them before and it was so awesome to hear the first part of this where I was just like hell yeah love to see this and then I got to this part and there's a lot more written down here and it was almost like once I read this I was

like I know exactly where the rest of the story is going like I I knew maybe it was obvious for some people I knew that someone else was going to get this position and then I knew what was going to happen with the rest of this which we'll get into right now then it got worse they assigned one of the newly promoted team leads who wasn't from our team to lead us and they had no context of everything um or acknowledge any of it instead he just kept pointing out things I needed to improve on my communication skills visibility being too focused on my team which made no sense because that's what I was supposed to be doing it really felt like gaslighting at that point and it's wild because the the feedback from the team was the opposite they were telling me how much

they wanted to get that help helping them Thrive how smooth everything was yet my new team lead was making it sound like I was underperforming it felt or it was honestly insane okay so what's next after that I started checking out mentally I stopped going above and beyond I stopped pushing for improvement I just told myself if they can't see my value now they probably never will I started being quieter less engaged and then after a while after a after a while oh sorry and then after a while of me Noti he stepping back the CTO Finally checked in with me okay so we're going from someone who was probably performing let's say normally to then going we're kicking it into high gear now let's get it going let's start informally leading let's step it up a notch and having impact right they're doing the

next level stuff all for it to go completely South and now put them in a worse off spot than where they started and now it's noticeable the CTO said that he was shocked I didn't apply for the lead role I started praising my leadership technical communication skills it was genuinely it was such a weird conversation because if he genuinely thought I was excelling in those areas why didn't they promote me or at least acknowledge my work when it actually mattered I just told him I got tired even though that wasn't really the case I just didn't have it in me to open up that can of worms I feel like I've been overlooked and undervalued it's hard not to feel bitter about it this person's completely destroyed like mentally and emotionally so I don't I don't I don't know exactly where to start on this

um I have some thoughts um I want to go back to the first part um around this hard lesson to learn it's hard to talk about like this like I said this person doesn't report to me and it it like it bothers me not let me be clear it doesn't bother me that they wrote this in to ask for some guidance and stuff like I very much appreciate that it it bothers me because like this is someone who basically tried to step up and and got to see like have a taste for the impact right that they could potentially have and then have a complete 180 where they're like nothing matters and that's what bothers me so the hard lesson here is that they actually they as in leadership told the engineers what to do they said if you're interested apply and this person didn't

and the hard lesson here is that I if I I don't have radical cander with this person right um it's not some this isn't a person that I've worked with for a long time and I'm like I know they have a ton of trust and respect in me we don't have a working relationship like that like I said I've never met this person but what I would want to tell them if we had radical cander and I could just be very blunt and honest with them is I would say that you don't have anyone else to blame in the situation except yourself which is like probably not helpful feedback to hear in this moment when they're already down but this is the hard lesson which was they told you if you were interested to apply the person that cares most in the world about your

career progression is you not anyone else you had everyone around you telling you how awesome you were doing they of course want you to be successful and succeed but not anyone else in the world cares as much about your career progression as you do and we cannot go through our careers hoping that when opportunities present themselves that they like fall onto our laps and this is like really a difficult thing to tell someone right because I get it I understand where this person's coming from where you're like if you give me all this praise from my peers to colleagues on other teams up to the CTO if you're giving me praise and there's visibility about this impact why would you not consider me for it and then the easy question back is why wouldn't you consider yourself for it right this person had wrote I

want I'm going to read it out again I thought let me get more experience first you know this person didn't not because I didn't want it because I felt like it was too early for me so if you did not feel like you were ready for it and you wouldn't put your you wouldn't put yourself out there and now the expectation is that others should have this is hard to talk about right it's like I I totally get where this person's coming from but this is this the hard lesson here is like if you want something you have to go for it you cannot wait for other people to do it for you it's just like the the shittiest lesson to learn and like for many reasons of course one of which is like hey this is a cool Opportunity by the way it's not

the last time this will ever come up it's not like this is over this person's very early in their career to be able to have more opportunities like this so it's certainly not over but this is it's like I get this is a missed opportunity and that's really crappy the part that's even worse than the missed opportunity though is that this person is completely in shambles as a result so let's talk about trying to turn this around because I wanted to deliver the hard lesson but like like I said I feel like that's probably not useful in the moment I want that to be something that we can take away and digest you know it's not something to dwell on this is something that happen happened and there's a lesson here which is if you want something and the opportunity is there go get it

because other people will not get it for you do not rely on that as a strategy it just it it's a recipe for disappointment at least if you put yourself into it right you are doing everything on your side that you possibly can if you don't get it at least you did everything you could you can't beat yourself up for that okay let's move on from this though this person's in a state now where they've completely lost all of their motivation said I've feel lost about it have you been in a situation like this or seen it happen to someone else do you know when it's time to move on versus keep pushing through I'm really struggling with it then they said honestly just writing this all already feels like a bit of a relief there's some silver lining okay so what do we do

in a situation like this all right I said it's not the end for this person there will always be more opportunities that come up in the future we can take this lesson right so now with this in mind if we want things and there's opportunities we need to go for them okay so I hope I hope that lesson will now stick with this person so we're not going to like I said we're not going to dwell on that but now let's talk about the fact that this person's in a state where um they were kind of riding this wave of like holy if I take a little bit more initiative if I take some action here we can really have a transformative impact they got to experience that and not a lot of people will do that because it's extra or because it's uncomfortable or

because they're they're nervous to take the first step there's so many reasons why people don't take that that little step sometimes it starts like a little step and then you get some momentum and you're like holy crap this actually works and this person got to do it and now they're in a state where they're saying you know I got this person who's kind of above me now feels demotivating I don't know why I'm bothering with any of this I don't know the person's reporting structure which makes this kind of challenging um they're talking about a team lead from my perspective and places I've worked a team lead well it's not true I when I was originally a manager I was a there were no managers I was a team lead with full comp view managing teams so I was a manager um I don't know

in this person's situ ation if they have a team lead that's kind of like I don't know more handson with people on the team and then there's like a manager that talks about career progression stuff or if that's the role of the team lead in this case it's not totally clear but um couple things one is that I want this person to remember what it felt like to be in that position where they were having positive impact because that's what informal leadership was all about in the first place they didn't need the title they didn't need anything official they just got to be part of driving positive change by acknowledging where there's areas to improve and taking action and they said that felt good and they said it was noticeable from other people but also noticeable in terms of the just actual impact it was

having so how do we get back to that right if that felt good do you give up on that and say guess it's gone like I realize this person's beaten up from the experience but if we park that because there will be more opportunities in the future do you give up on the current experience overall and say like guess I'm done here and it's time to look for something else maybe if you're if you're so demotivated from the current circumstances Andor the person who is the team lead is actually causing such a Negative experience for you I'm not going to rule that out it's not I would say it's probably not my recommendation I don't think I have enough actual detail to say but if this team lead like I want to call out there's probably a bias here that this individual probably feels negatively

towards their team lead and it may be entirely possible on top of that that the team lead is a bit of a jerk right or maybe they they're not good at communicating things or whatever they're too abrasive I don't know but I think there's probably a little bit of bias against this person understandably so I just want to acknowledge it so is that enough where it's not worth being in this situation and to look for something else because that will always be impacting this person in the current situation maybe but I my recommendation would probably be if this if this person was reporting to me I would probably encourage them to explore that a little bit more right they were able to rise up against other challenges before with a lot of success what about this one right this is a a difficult situation where

they feel uncomfortable around another individual someone giving them feedback that is maybe something they don't agree with or something that might be hard to digest maybe the feedback is actually valid maybe in some situations this person was saying uh getting feedback about their communication maybe their communication with their team lead is actually crappy because they're resentful of their team lead maybe we don't know that I don't know that I could imagine that's possible so maybe the feedback is warranted in that context from the perspective of the new team lead we don't know but if this person was reporting to me I would say this is another challenge how do we rise up against that not to fight the team lead it's not like we're battling the team lead so when I say Rise Against I don't mean like to take down the team lead I

mean to take down this challenge which is that there's friction and frustration between another individual on the team how do we address that I would recommend going that route first right so are there things with the team lead that this person could sort out and get some clarity on so they're getting some feedback they might be able to say hey I hear you're saying there's uh you think they need to improve communication they might be able to say uh could you elaborate more on that or give me some more specific details um I'm I would like to improve I'm always trying to grow and get better I have had other feedback in these situations that my communication has been good so I just want to understand from your perspective where you see opportunities for improvement you can do the same thing with all of the

other feedback if you feel like you're getting a conflicting perspective and be targeted with it ask for specific scenarios and it's not because you're saying I'm going to disprove you that's not the goal the goal is not to go into the conversations and say oh buddy I'm going to screw you over I got so much evidence that says the opposite don't do that I think the goal personally you can do whatever you want by the way this is just my perspective so if you're like I don't agree with you Nick I'm tuning out now thank you so much for watching but my recommendation would be to not go into it trying to argue it and battle it it would be to understand it so if this person's providing feedback that feels like it's at odds with other positive feedback you've been getting seek to understand

and be very specific about it could you give me the examples could you give me the specific feedback on how you would like to see this changed and then provide some counter examples again not to say look you must be wrong but you could say I have these other examples where people are saying this is helpful so could you help me understand how you would like me to navigate this because if that feels like it's at odds I would like to make sure that I understand and there may genuinely be something that you're not seeing we need to keep an open mind it's easy for me to say this being completely on the outside I understand but this is my mentality here seek to understand not seek to like battle I don't think that's ever a really positive thing personally um you know the overlooked

and undervalued feeling um I I would like to encourage this person to remember that everyone that they were mentioning was not overlooking them and they were not undervaluing them they were saying you're doing awesome right they were surprised you didn't apply so they do recognize you the end result of what happened is a different story but if you're saying you feel like people aren't noticing how good that was it's not true they absolutely did right so it's not I think you had different expectations in this case instead of being recognized I was just made to feel like I wasn't enough it's not what the reality was the reality was that you did not apply that's all you might have had a different expectation that by not applying you would automatically be a candidate and that's just maybe not the reality of the expectation like it

it is as simple as that people were surprised that you didn't so they absolutely recognized the impact that you were having so again I'm not bringing this up to make you feel bad about it I'm bringing it up to say people did recognize you if you stop doing those things that they were recognizing you for then now they're going to stop recognizing you for sure that's why they're concerned now because they did recognize you for it so my recommendation in general here would be to to try and get some understanding and alignment with the team lead seek to understand I know that's really hard this is a new challenge new sort of maybe thing in your career to explore it's going to mean some probably difficult awkward conversations but keep an open mind try not to escalate things and genuinely be curious right try to

understand their perspective that doesn't mean that you caved everything saying you don't have any backbone or you don't have an opinion on things it's not what I'm saying I'm just saying don't go into it where it's supposed to be an argument or a fight try to understand next up was the reminder that like if this is all stuff that felt good and it was having a positive impact and people were recognizing it you didn't need a title to do that I'm assuming the only thing stopping you from doing it again is the mental block that you put up for yourself and I'm saying that recognizing that you're in a sort of demotivated State I I understand I get it so there's that plus probably some friction with the new team lead which is why I said started suggesting that in the beginning get that kind

of figured out but I think I think if you've done this before you can absolutely do it again I would not give up on this personally if you're if you're finding it too overwhelming I can understand that but I uh you know if you were reporting to me if this was our 101 on a Monday morning and you said Nick this is what's happening I would strongly encourage you to get back into it because you've already proven not only to yourself to your peers to your colleagues to your CTO that you can do this so go do it and do it again because I would love to get a message in a few weeks in a few months in a year that the happy ending to this story that was written here so I think that's what I got for today huge thanks to this

person for writing this in um I'm sorry if that's not the most uh the most like helpful oneliner here's what you got to do kind of thing but um I think that's the advice I would give this person so thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time