The Secret To Better Feedback At Work!

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I'm just driving to work here and I don't have a a question, I guess, but I have a a topic that I wanted to go through because I think it's pretty interesting. It's uh sort of like an anecdote and I will I'll summarize it and we kind of have a general thing to think through here. that this is going to go back to like feedback and uh you know really building what I would call like a good working relationship with your manager because I think that this is an example I like to think where it's worked effectively from a couple different sides here. So, um I think it's pretty common and at least I'm saying this based on my own experience. Um maybe a little bit less common. When I was at a startup, people seem to give less of a about this, but certainly in big tech.

Uh and I haven't really worked too much in between. It's it's like one end of the spectrum or the other. Um the for context the startup it was like from the beginning of the startup to growing to like 250 people but that was like a growth phase and not like we didn't I wasn't there while it was sustained from like 250 to 600 kind of range for years right so I kind of missed like that period but at least in startups people seem to bring it up less where it's like what's my promotion look like what's my promotion look like a lot of the time it was like if they were interested. It's like, am I performing well? Because it's not going to be promotions all the time. It's going to be like, I don't know, what's my compensation going up by? Like, is that on the right track?

So, it just seemed like there was less attention put into that based on my experience. Whereas at big tech, that's like a it seems like the number one motivator for everyone is everyone is very driven by like what does my career path look like? Am I moving forward? And I'm not here to say one of them is right or wrong. Just kind of sharing this as a bit of background. But um I find that my conversations in 101 ones and stuff before being in big tech used to be they just used to look a lot different. Whereas now people will ask questions about like how am I performing in terms of like am I on track for being promoted?

And I wanted to talk about this because I feel like people dance around it a lot or there's like it's awkward or they don't know if they're allowed to talk about it or maybe you have a shitty working relationship with your manager and you're like if I bring it up it's probably going to be I don't know he might get he or she might get mad. like it's just people. It's weird for people and um I I just want to kind of get into this conversation where I feel like it doesn't have to be. Um but it takes work, right? So if we take an example of like say you're working, you know, with your manager and like you guys never talk about anything except like your to-do list, like what things are you working on this week?

If that's all that you're ever talking about, like I got a pull request going up or, you know, just like very tactical things, if that's the only topic of conversation you ever have, I could imagine that a lot of the time it would be weird and uncomfortable to talk about like anything else, right? Could you imagine if this is what you've been doing with your manager for a year and then one day they start the oneonone and they're like, "Hey, how was your weekend?" You'd be like, "Uh, what do you mean what my weekend was like? This is my status update session, right? Um, the point being that like if you're very narrowly focused on only status updates and 101 ones, like any topic of conversation becomes a little weird, right? So, it doesn't matter if it's about promotions or feedback, like even just something casually like how your weekend was.

It could end up being a weird conversation, but it doesn't have to be. And I think one of the first steps is making sure that you are talking about other things, right? And I'm not saying that every 101 is then okay, like you know, let's talk about your weekend for 30 minutes, but like rotating through topics where you don't just need to have like I don't recommend status updates in every oneonone, but also like career conversations every oneonone every week could be a little overwhelming in that direction. Balance these things out. Mix them up. It's kind of step one here. But the other part to this is that ideally this is going to help you build trust and respect with your manager both ways, right? Your manager has to put in work to make sure that they are someone that you trust and respect, right? Um it's like it's not really fair to just be like, well, they have the title manager.

I must trust them. I must respect them. Because there's plenty of people that are like, I hate my manager. I don't trust what they have to say. I'm kind of stuck with this person who's my manager. I wish I could show you this car that I'm passing because it is more silly than my modified car. And it's so unfortunate that I can't turn the camera around. I haven't recorded in my TT for you guys, so you haven't seen it, but whatever I just passed was even sillier. So, it's pretty cool. the wing uh was a very big wing on the car, but it was also on mounts that were like 2 ft tall. Like it just looked really silly. Um anyway, the trust and respect thing is a huge part because it's it's foundational, right? If you don't if you're going to your manager and you're like, I want to have feedback from my manager, then you're like, I don't even trust what they have to say and I don't respect them.

Like, you don't want feedback from someone like that. But that's a shitty spot to be in because guess who's going to be sort of having a lot of input on your promotion and progression? Your manager. So, like I think that you need to work on this kind of thing with your manager. And I'm not trying to say that it's a one-way street. Like this is all on you. Um it certainly requires that your manager puts an effort to this. And I'm very sorry if you're working for someone who doesn't seem to give a because that's not really fair to you. But like that is also a reality of some people, right? It's it's just the unfortunate truth. Hopefully, you find a manager who is putting in some effort. And if you're like, I can't really tell. They kind of seem like they're in the middle. If you put in more effort and see if they match that, that can be a good gauge, right?

You might not be putting in effort from your side if you're being honest with yourself. And if you start to, do they start to match it? If they do, that could be a really good thing. and then you can lean into that more. It's like what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is like for example, um I might have people on my team and there are some individuals where I'm like, "Hey, like I know that they need uh you know, specific help in certain areas, whether that's being focused, uh finding the right things to work on that are going to keep them engaged." Like that could be someone who like who who needs help more obviously and then I could have people at the other end of that spectrum that are very high performers and it's like I want to make sure they have really big challenges that keep them engaged.

Um things that are going to have high visibility, high impact, that kind of thing. And then there might be people in the middle where it's like everything is like pretty good. They're, you know, making good progress. They're I would say on track for, you know, for being promoted in the sort of average period of time that I might expect someone at that level. Like they're doing good, right? Not it's not just like okay and like there's some obvious things to improve. It's like they're they're doing generally pretty good, right? Um the the challenge is like at least for me as a manager and I would assume this is the case for a lot of other managers is like we then have to start trying to pick apart and see like okay well how do I understand this individual further to see how I can help

more right and we should do that as managers we should try to dig in try to understand our employees make sure that we can find better opportunities for them to be engaged to grow but like you can you can lean into that as well from the other side. So if you start doing these things, you might find that your manager is actually getting more actively engaged. And I I wanted to share the sort of the anecdote now, which is that um I was having a conversation with an employee. I won't say when this was I won't say who the employee was. This could have been 8 years ago. This could have been yesterday. It could have been could have been next week. You don't know. Um but in this conversation with an employee we were talking about um sort of like general feedback from a performance cycle.

So we gone through this had the conversation you know things things look good you know kind of left the conversation I think both sides like myself and this employee included like hey you're doing a good job um you know hopefully the per hopefully what you're seeing in the rewards matches that and like keep up the awesome work right this isn't like a um this is the conversation where the rewards are being delivered it's not uh the conversation That's like a a direct feedback session, like this is sort of the result of of the performance. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but so I feel like we both left that conversation feeling like on the same page and then the next time we had a one-on-one, we were kind of uh wrapping up topics and they said, you know, anything else you want to go over?

And they said, yeah, actually like I want to talk about that conversation. And you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, oh crap, right? because did I did I misunderstand and this person's actually uh feeling like they're not happy with rewards or or or what right like and the reason that's my first instinct just to kind of you know share transparently is like I thought if the conversation went well then perhaps there wouldn't be followup like nothing more to like we closed out on it I thought so instinct you know like my first kind of reaction is like oh crap and so I was like sure okay you know like you know, what's on your mind regarding that, right? Like, absolutely, let's make time to talk about it because we should.

And um really all that they said was like, okay, well, I heard what you said in that meeting and so like made sense, but like I want to understand more clearly about like if I'm on track for promotion, like what does that look like, right? And I think that the way they this is what I wanted to touch on. The way they were able to approach it and the way that they did approach it was like they were pretty I'm going to use the word blunt. They were pretty blunt in their question. And I don't mean that in like a condescending way or like it was awkward or weird, but this person was able to be very straightforward with their question. They didn't take 15 minutes to kind of dance around it and, you know, finally get to like, well, I'm just kind of curious if maybe it was like, here's what I want to talk about and here's the question.

And I I wanted to bring this up because I think that it was it was pretty awesome for a couple reasons. One was that this person was comfortable in the first place to even talk about it because like I hinted at the beginning of this, I think a lot of people are very uncomfortable talking about this kind of stuff, right? They they will avoid it and then they'll wait for promotion cycles or reward cycles and then they're disappointed and then and then it never really gets addressed and it's kind of shitty, right? So that was the first good sign is that someone's like, "Hey, I want to talk about this thing." And this is generally a pretty uncomfortable thing for people. So in my mind, awesome. Let's go. Number two, not only that, but they didn't beat around the bush, which tells me that well, two things.

one that they have confidence in themselves which I think is really good because based on the level of this person I would this is kind of a phase in someone's career where I'm like I don't know if they're yet building up that confidence in themselves right like if you were very unconfident in your own abilities you know self-esteem issues and that could be whether it's personal or like strictly in your career you would have a very difficult time trying to talk about promotions because you'd be like, I don't even know if I'm like capable or like you're second guessing yourself. So, they were confident, which is a really good sign. Like, I like to see that. Uh, you know, they've developed that for themselves.

But the other part, which is a feel-good moment for me, was like they were comfortable enough to do it with me because this wasn't a situation where someone was like blowing their top being like like I'm fed up here and like you know I'm sick and tired of how you're managing me and like this is my last straw. Like we need to talk about this. It was just this awesome experience of someone being like, "Hey, here's what I want to talk about. I want to understand if I'm on track for promotion more clearly and like uh what I need to be focusing on next for what that looks like and just being like very blunt and straightforward about it and it was awesome and that meant that we could go talk through that.

Now that meant in that situation I was able to give them uh you know some tangible things a little bit more clarity around like uh I I told this person I never promised promotions uh like at a certain time but I can tell them if I feel like I'm you know building confidence in terms of like you know off cycle or next year kind of thing like at least my intentions and I will briefly share this other anecdote um where there was once upon a time a situation where I had uh fought for someone to get an offcycle promotion. And when I say fought for them, I mean like I had to go through cuz there was some budget and I was like this person I'm ready to to kind of push through and make a case.

And I had to go talk with other engineering managers one on- one and sort of like prove my case why I felt more strongly that my employee should get that position because there was only so much budget. and I had to go talk to multiple engineering managers and I had sort of like I'm gonna say like one uh not that not that it was really like battling them but I had to go make my case and so I put in a lot of effort to that was able to to sort of get the the case made for it and so I told the employee I said you know I we got the budget I was able to do this so there's a promotion coming and then What happened was that the budget got cut after that.

So what went from being a very awesome like happy conversation about someone getting a promotion uh I had a have a very difficult conversation with them which was like look like I and I shouldn't have done it in the first place right that was my mistake um that was me being too eager trying to lean into something that would be like engaging for the employee because it felt like a done deal but it's not it's not done until it's done and so I I refuse news. At this point, I will never tell someone until I have the official like the result of it in my hand. I will never promise uh any type of promotion or anything to to employees. So, I told this individual, going back to the first example, uh I told this individual, hey, like I can't and I won't make promises, but here's like here's my outlook on the progression here.

and basically saying like I don't I don't think that at the current cadence and sort of the with the work ethic and everything. I don't think that that takes a like in my mind a full year to have to wait for for promotion. So um you know I think that you're on track for something before that. That's what I would like to push for if this keeps up. And and they were very honest with me. I said, "Hey, like you know, um I'm not I'm not asking you to, you know, promise promotion or uh you know, wouldn't you know, wouldn't hold that against you because I understand those types of things change." They just and this was a great part of the conversation. They just said like, "I I appreciate that you're open and honest with me and like that's what I ask of you and I will do the exact same thing." And the whole conversation was just like this brutally transparent open honest conversation about performance between a manager and the employee.

And I think again I think we left that conversation being like okay like we are in we are aligned. This person has more clarity now for like what my expectations are how they're performing. Like do do they still have questions? they might and they know that they can come to me and we can talk through that. But I was very clear about the particular projects that they had to work on and how I thought that those projects aligned with things. So overall, I feel like we left that conversation on uh a very happy happy note. I don't know. Happy is not the right word. Very clear. Uh I when I was reflecting on it, I was very happy the conversation happened, I guess, is is what I want to say. Um for all of those reasons, right? Someone hopefully got clarity out of it.

I felt like it was a good reminder that sort of the the time and effort that's going into to working with the team is paying off because there is trust and respect and uh I was really glad to see someone lean into that. So, I wanted to share that with you because um I I just think that's a really good example of someone that was like, you know, I'm I'm going to work with my manager on this kind of stuff. And, you know, the door has been open for these types of conversations and I'm going to do it. And they did. I have to switch lanes here and this is awful. Here we go. I'll just pass everyone instead. There were people do this funny thing where they like to switch lanes, they slow down to like try and get in. And there was like five people back to back that were trying to slow down to get in.

There's plenty of room ahead. Just keep driving. Um, so that's what we did. But anyway, that's I think where I wanted to to wrap up this video. Um, just to give people a reminder that if you're struggling with like transparency and understanding like performance and that kind of stuff, like it it does go both ways. I'm not trying to say that like it's all on you. Like unfortunately, you might have a manager that's kind of crap. Um, I can't I can't control that. And the only way you can control that is by going to a different manager. that the part that you do have control over is sort of the the effort that you put into it from your side. And I think that um sometimes if you try to put in a little bit more, you might see that it does get met by your manager.

And um I think I think it's really important to form that really good working relationship with your manager. Otherwise, you'll likely feel like every year or throughout the year like I don't really know if I'm on track. I don't know. Like, and then you get to rewards period and you're like kind of disappointed or surprised like I I don't know. And I think that's uh I don't want to say it's like 100% avoidable because there's always room for communication gaps, but I think it's something that we can reduce. So, just wanted to talk through that. So, hope that was helpful. If you have questions that you want answered on software engineering or career topics, just leave them below in the comments. And uh otherwise, if you want to be kept anonymous, you can go to codemute.com. There is a contact form. You can check the anonymous box.

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Take care.