Non-Manager Assigning Work? Here's What This Dev Did

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I'm headed to the office here. We're going to go to the experience dev subreddit. This one is about some developer talking about uh I don't know if it's necessarily a split between front end and backend development but essentially they have a colleague that is uh not their manager and seems to be basically assigning work and creating what feels like a lot of friction where uh I mean we'll talk about this more generally but in sense they kind of feel like this person's overstepping uh their their role responsibilities and it's uh like I said kind of creating a lot of friction. Um so I want to talk a little bit about maybe their specific scenario. I'll kind of see if there's anything to to pick out from that. We'll talk about this uh kind of more generally and then I'm going to go really broad or maybe I'll do it the other way around.

But we'll we'll navigate this cuz I think it's an interesting one. I think that it's very applicable for a lot of people uh probably at different points in their career. And like I think what's cool about topics like this is like you might be on either side of this or you might find that right now you're not and in the future you find yourself on one side of this. So um I think it should be a fun one. Just a reminder uh this channel is primarily driven by the questions that you submit. So you can go ahead and leave comments on things that you want videos about. the more detail the better. Uh, and then of course you can go to codemute.com and you can submit stuff anonymously because comments are public. I can't do anything about that. But if you go to codec commute.com you can write kind of whatever you want.

Check the anonymous check box and then I get a message um from myself and then I can try uh making a video response uh for you. But obviously it goes on the channel. So, you know, hopefully the the response is helpful for you and other people that watch. Cool. Okay. So, in this particular case, this person's highlighting that um you know, the the person who's doing the task assignment is not the manager. Um sounds like they're potentially a more senior person on the team. When I was reading through some of the comments, some people were saying they've seen this with people that are more junior than them. Uh which I thought was an interesting dynamic. Um, and then so I think this is probably more of a common thing that you'll see where there's more senior people on the team that might, you know, be in this kind of position where they're assigning work.

And it sounds like there's a couple of levels of friction here. And one of them is just that like uh if this person is assigning work to individuals on the team and they're not sort of the product owner or the manager. I think this first level is like potentially conflicting priorities, right? And I think this is going to be an important theme as we talk through this because it sounds like say this person who wrote this Reddit post, they're probably in this position where they're like, I have stuff I'm supposed to be doing and then I have this other source of uh you know, someone assigning tasks that is uh you know perhaps not not aligned with what other priorities they have or maybe in some cases they actually are like we don't have full visibility into that. So, I think that's one layer is that there's probably conflicting priorities, but I think the second layer just based on how it's written is it sounds like uh like this has reached a point of resentment.

And so whether or not this person was already butting heads with uh the more, you know, more potentially more senior person who's delegating these tasks. So, I don't know. But the way that it's written, it's either there was something longstanding uh and they never really got along or uh something that's kind of just turned into resentment. Uh if I don't have it, obviously I'm driving, so I'm not going to like show it on the screen or anything, but um I the way it's written, that's really how it feels is like, you know, they're they butt heads a lot. So I think there's a couple levels to it. So I think this is a pretty common thing that happens right. Um I can say this as an engineering manager I can uh say this as you know when I was doing a lot more software development like actually delivering to the code base and like being an engineering manager and writing features and stuff as well alongside my team.

Uh I've seen this kind of thing come up. I've seen this happen with you know uh not my team and like kind of observing other teams and interactions there. So, I've I've seen this kind of thing happen a lot. We'll talk a little bit more about this after. Uh, and then like I said, I'll make it more generalized even beyond that. But, uh, I think what we're probably seeing here is, um, like misalignment and miscommunication. And I mean, those those go together, but I think it's a combination of these two things. And so, what does that mean? What's going on? I suspect what's happening is that uh there isn't clarity in terms of what the overall priorities are. So if it's one manager, product owner, whoever is kind of overseeing seeing this, uh there is a discrepancy in like I don't know uh the right surface area of like these are the priorities so that the people who are working on these things have clarity into them.

So I think that's one part of it. Um, I think that we have a misalignment in terms of like um I don't know the way that I would say this is like people focused on the goals of the team which again if we don't have that first part it's really hard to be aligned but focusing on the goals of the team versus like what they think they uh are supposed to be working on in more isolation and that can show up in different ways right it could be say there's a manager and like I'm I'm certainly guilty of doing this in in conversations where I'm working with someone, we're talking about what they're going to work on next. So, like between us, there's like pretty clear visibility and and their priorities and, you know, what to tackle next.

Um, and then if that is not totally visible to someone else outside of that conversation, they might be in a position where they're like, "Cool, I'm just trying to do the right thing here and like, uh, so and so would be a good fit for this. Um, I'm going to tap their shoulder to see if they can, you know, do this work. And again, the other side of it here is that the person who's doing the work assignment, I would, as much as this feels like it sucks when it happens to you, um, I would say try to remember that people are acting with best intentions. Uh, it's I feel like it's genuinely rare that people are just being to each other because they're I think it's almost always rooted in like just a misunderstanding. Not saying that don't exist.

I'm just saying like it's so easy for us to get pissed off, build resentment, and then not realize that someone was genuinely trying to be helpful and you just weren't seeing eye to eye on something. So this person who's doing the assignment is probably like either I I perceive this as the priority for the team, right? we're lacking clarity on maybe a unified version of that, but I perceive it as a priority. So, you know, I'm going to do the right thing, get this person involved, or maybe a little bit more selfishly and maybe it's not totally um conscious to them, but like I have this thing I'm working on. It is a priority obviously to them because they're working on it. I need support for delivering it. I'm going to get this person brought in, right? And in both cases, it's not a malicious thing.

It's like they perceive it as a priority, so they are getting someone involved to help with that. But as you can see as I talk through that hopefully um you could see that if people aren't on the same page for what the priorities are that that's easy to get some friction some misunderstanding and then you build in uh assumptions about um roles and responsibilities and expectations and I mean like this kind of thing can can get out of control pretty quick and that's why I think it's a common thing and I think it's important to think through these things understand them Um, oh, that is my turn. Sorry, there's a there's a detour, so I'm like driving in a completely different way. Um, I think yeah, I think it's important to understand them, identify them, and then that way like you get ahead of them before they get to a point where there's like resentment and things suck cuz once it's at that point, it's not that it's impossible to fix or anything.

It's just that it's a lot more uncomfortable to navigate it. Okay. So, when we think about this, like who's right and who's wrong, right? Is the person who's writing this Reddit post, are they right for saying it's not, you know, it's not the responsibility of this other person to be assigning things like they're they're the bad guy here. Um, is it the other person who's doing the assignment? Like, are they in the right because they're like, I know better. I know the priorities. I'm trying to make sure that we're we're staying on track here. Um, and it's the fault of this person who wrote the post who's like maybe like are they whining about it, right? And like they should just do the work or is it maybe somewhere in the middle, right? I think it's probably somewhere in the middle. I think that it's not necessarily a um a binary black and white kind of thing.

I think there's truth on both sides. And so my my suspicion is that it's it's a bit of both and that um you know like what is the path forward on this right I think that I think number one for the person who wrote this post is kind of important to understand where that friction is coming from at least how they wrote about it they're expressing their frustration right like so they're kind of pissed off they're at a tipping point like Okay, understood. Um, it's, you know, everyone's allowed to be frustrated by things. Like, that's not for me to say you're not allowed to be. But what do you do from there, right? Like, I think it's important to understand why you're frustrated. So, why are you frustrated? Is it some of the things I said or different things? You know, I mentioned, is it because your manager's told you here's what to go work on and you're feeling some kind of pressure and stress to deliver on that?

Meanwhile, someone else, maybe someone that you actually look up to and respect or you did or you feel like maybe you should because of their experience level or whatever it happens to be. They they don't have to be like I mean you could be getting frustrated by this from someone that you like actually look up to, but you're feeling a pressure from them too and you're like, "Okay, well like I can't do all of these things now. I have this competing priority. You've created a new problem for me. right? Like, is this person frustrated because someone has created conflicting priorities for them when they're already stressed out? And like, how the heck are they supposed to navigate this now? Man, I hate when they do this with the I don't even know if you can hear me when I'm driving over this, but the the grooved pavement where they rip up the highway.

Just terrible. Is it clear up here? I think we should go back to normal in just a sec. Hopefully that's a little better. Um, man, what was I saying now? Oh, uh, understanding frustration. Yeah. So, if they're getting this pressure, like is that the root of it? Right. Um, is it is it something else? Right. Like maybe that's the basis of it. But maybe um I don't know maybe maybe there's something else about the interactions with this person that were like I said maybe they were already not on the same page. There was already some type of like resentment before this whatever it happens to be and now this is just one more compounding thing where it's like the the final straw. So I think it's important to understand where that's coming from. And the reason I'm saying that is because my my recommendation when you have problems like this in a workplace is always like if you can find a way to just start the conversation with someone to talk about it.

So whoever is causing you the frustration, the friction, if you can have an honest open conversation with them, I genuinely think that this is one of the best ways to get started. Now, I realize what I'm saying is so much easier said than done and especially if you're at the point where there is resentment, there is friction. This is already so much harder to do because you got this guy Nick on the internet telling you, "Oh, just go talk to them." And you're like, "Dude, I don't even want to look at them, right? Like, I hate working with this person. you want me to go strike up a casual chat with them about it. Like I realize how crazy it sounds, but that's why my advice here is, you know, the more that we recognize this stuff, the earlier we do this, the less friction there is.

So, um, what like what would we hope to accomplish with a a more informal chat with this person? And I think it's genuinely just talking about sort of the if you understand where the friction's coming from for you, how can you surface that with them so that you're kind of like raising it to the surface, not to like not to fight with them, not to argue with them, not to tell them to screw off, but to say like, "Hey, I just want I'm just going to give you an example, right? just want to let you know like um if I've seemed like I'm maybe I'm frustrated lately or uh there's a bit of friction with some of the work that you've been sending my way. Uh it's actually because I'm just feeling a little bit overwhelmed with some of the other priorities that I've been given.

Right? So in this particular case, I've been working on this project. I talked to my manager and so we're trying to work on this timeline for it. So I've been working directly with them uh you know to report up on the status of this. there's milestones and like I'm feeling the pressure from that. Their expectation from when we've talked is like that's the thing I'm working on. So, um when you're coming to me asking for these things to get delivered, like that's just not in the scope of what I've been working with my manager on. So, um I'm I'm feeling a bit of friction on that and wanted to let you know so we can see like uh you know what kind of path we have forward on this. And I don't know, end it however you want. But the point is not to is not to dismiss them, not to say like, "By the way, like you're stupid for sending me work to do." It's not just to tell them to screw off.

It's just to like let them know from your side why there's friction and to kind of open up the conversation to invite them to share maybe from their side what's going on. Because in some world what you might hear from them is like oh man okay like I didn't realize that you were working on that or there were timelines like that or I thought so and so was driving that and you were maybe helping on the side. I didn't realize like how much you were carrying on that or they might say oh like um I knew you were leading that but I didn't realize um like how much scope was still left or something whatever right? So, some kind of acknowledgement of what you're doing. Um, they might share with you a a very similar story from their side, right? Where they're like, I'm under a lot of pressure.

I'm leading this thing, this other thing that they're trying to get help for. Um, you know, it's a large project. Uh, I I have the same kind of challenges where there's milestones and like need support and like, you know, you you'll probably hear something similar. So, like what do you do? Like I think the whole point of that conversation is kind of just like an olive branch to be like, "Hey, look, like I'm I'm acknowledging there's some friction. I'm not like I'm trying to be the bigger person and like, you know, not not continue to be an or cause more friction. Like I want kind of acknowledging like I want to be able to work together. So like I just want to let you know where I'm at. Now, that's not necessarily where it has to end. That's not to say like, "Cool, now you chatted about it.

Everything's better." What you might realize is like, "Oh crap, like it seems like there's a conflict in priorities." You might not still agree, right? You might say, "Well, you know, the stuff my manager told me to do is the most important." And they might say, "The stuff that I'm doing right now and trying to get you to help with is the most important." You don't have to agree on what the priority is. The point is just that you had a conversation about it to have a shared understanding of where each person is because now if you're like cool we don't agree on the priorities great what do you do about that I think that's where you can go continue the conversation bring it to a manager right and say hey look like um you know we're both working on these things we've kind of shared

with each other like the the the status the the urgency we're feeling the priorities the milestones and like you know we've heard from each why these things are important, but it it seems like from a resourcing perspective like either, you know, this person needs more help and assistance or like um or I need to be able to like continue to focus like basically they're competing with each other and like we need some we need either need to get rep prioritization around this so that we're all on the same page. This comes back to an earlier point I said about that shared uniform understanding about what the priorities are. It could be hey like uh in one of these projects it just seems like we need more assistance, right? Like uh maybe there's a partner team that I don't know like they're I'm just making this up.

They're not carrying their weight as much as maybe we'd hope for. So we're doing a little bit extra that's kind of dragging us behind. Cool. like can can the manager if it's a product owner whoever can someone help step in I've noticed that project managers can often really help with this kind of thing too especially if there's larger projects across teams but ultimately like I would say that factoring in the engineering manager to this kind of conversation is really important uh especially especially if both people report up to the same manager right there's probably uh maybe something like as an engineering manager, I want to take responsibility for this kind of thing. If I haven't been clear on priorities, um trying to make sure like, okay, cool. Like I see where you're both coming from. Yes, I've talked to you both individually about this. Uh now, to get everyone on the same page, like here's my thoughts on it.

Um I think that's important to do. It's extra tricky if it's not a common manager, right? And I've definitely worked in uh teams like that. I like I literally in all of my teams at Microsoft I have worked in teams like that where um it's not just like my my manager is only a manager of managers as direct reports could be a manager with uh like architects or engineers right below them as well. So effectively like those people are my peers right in terms of like a reporting hierarchy. Um, so on, you know, this almost six years I've been at Microsoft, every team I've been on is like that. So, you know, I could have uh engineers that are also reporting to my my manager. And, you know, maybe you get this extra this extra level of indirection where all those things I was just saying like they're also happening with the manager above the manager, right?

They're having side conversations going, "Cool, like these make sense on the priorities. Let's make sure we're doing that." And then there's one more gap in communication, one more gap and having an aligned front on what the priorities are. And so just like having having more moving parts like this can easily create this kind of situation. So again, instead of waiting until it's like, "Oh man, this sucks so much. Why is there so much friction? How do we get ahead of it?" Okay. I trying to do a better job of not talking in circles on the same thing. Uh so I don't know if there's more specifically on that I want to call out. Um I think at the end of the day, right, like to to summarize that part, I would say remind yourself people are operating with best intentions. Try to catch this kind of stuff early.

Try to have a conversation with the person early if they're delegating work to you and you feel uncomfortable about it or there's friction. And then finally, like this is a great thing to be able to bring up to a manager. And it does not have to be in like a, you know, throw someone under the bus kind of way, like you're tattling on someone or you're like, I have to go complain to their manager, my manager about them. It's it's literally like we're, you know, some acknowledgement. We're trying to do the right thing here and there's competing priorities. What do we do about it? Okay. So, that's what I'd have to say about that. Um, on so maybe some more general thoughts on this. Um, where's my exit at? I think I've definitely seen this happen plenty, right? Uh I shared a little bit earlier like I'm trying to do a bit more reflection on like parts of my career.

Um I generally see this with like more experienced people like the the person who's doing the the work assignment or delegation is generally someone that's more senior from my experience. Um, I think like I have I personally never seen it where someone was like maliciously like I'm just going to give the shitty work to the people on the team. Haha. Like make them go do it. It's like it's always it's always been with some motivation that I think is rooted in like, you know, they they believe they're doing the right thing and I think that's great. Um, it's just that that that right thing from their perspective might not be the shared right thing across the whole team. So definitely seen that happen a lot. Um I think the like we're I'm the topic I wanted to get to was like I genuinely don't even think this is like a a thing that just happens you know with engineers within a team.

And I wanted to talk about this part because I think that I'm hoping I haven't really thought it through yet, but I'm hoping that it kind of highlights that it's like a it's just something where people are trying to do the right thing and how it comes out in practice is maybe not um effective. So what does that mean? Um I've definitely worked before Microsoft in startups. So I did like internships at small companies and then the company I worked at before Microsoft was Magnet Forensics which was a you know started there as a startup um and grew to a decent size and uh I can remember in especially in the early startup days we'd actually have this kind of thing happen with um with sales people. So sales people on the engineering team with the CTO and the engineering team. And so like what what do I mean?

What does that look like? Right? Um essentially like when it comes to setting priorities for the team, the product areas to work on and making sure that people are progressing. For us at that time, it generally fell to uh sort of two roles working together and that would be the engineering manager and then the product manager. We didn't really have project managers until later. And just to differentiate for for us, product managers were sort of like the product owner, the customer sort of proxy, you know, customers want these things. Let's make sure that we're translating that into like cohesive priorities. And then like as the product owner, like I want to set what those priorities are. And then the engineering manager would kind of play the engineering side of that to figure out who is working on it to figure out um you know to work with engineers on technically how things get implemented.

And so definitely like a partnership across that surface area. So one of the challenging things was like like I said people like it's a startup people are trying to do the right thing. you know, a lot of moving pieces, everyone's going real fast, there's always something crazy or on fire going on. It's chaos, right? Uh you're trying to organize chaos as a startup. And so, you'd have sales people that are like, "Oh man, like you know, I can get I could probably get this client. That would be a huge deal." They're asked like they're on the phone with me asking about some feature like I'm I know our product does like X and I'm pretty sure we could do like you know a little bit more than X and I just want to like check with one of the developers on that. So they like side channel go to one of the devs.

They're talking about it. The dev's like I think I could probably do that. And then you know they're they're bought in, right? They're like I get why this is valuable right? if I I hear you salesperson. If we go do this thing that I think is pretty small and you can go get another customer like hell yeah. And I think that's one of the really cool things about being in a startup or at least an org that's like quite flat is like you get that kind of like I don't know like cross functional crossorg experience. I think it's super cool. One of the challenges though with that kind of thing is that the rate at which it happens and the amount of chaos that could potentially introduce is quite high. So for example, if that's a thing that's constantly happening and so in isolation saleserson talking directly to a developer, they're like, "Cool, we can go get this one deal.

Awesome." And like that could be a great deal. If that happens across a larger surface area and or more regularly, what that might mean is that the overall product, which hopefully is going to get more deals by being enhanced across the board, maybe that's being delayed, right? You're making decisions in isolation sometimes like that. And if there's not visibility into it and it keeps happening, it can really derail the entire alignment of a team. Right? So, if I gave you one example like that in isolation, you might be like, "Well, Nick, that that's kind of silly. It's a one-off thing." And you're right. And I I do think that's why when you have people that are very much aligned on what goals are. You can have that kind of thing happen more often. And it is less like sort of disruptive to the overall thing in a negative way.

And you can get some really cool wins by just being like flexible, pragmatic about what's going on. And I think that's really cool. When it's not when there isn't like really good alignment or there's not really good communication or combination of those things, you get all of these little side silos, these little channels of things happening and everything sort of on the on the wider scale seems like it slows down a little bit or gets a little bit more disorganized or a lot a bit slowed down or a lot a bit disorganized. And so what I recommend to people is like not that you're not allowed to have like side conversations like that. It's that I do recommend that you raise visibility of those things. So if you're in an org or a team setup where it's totally cool if sales people and marketing people are coming over and talking to devs about stuff like I encourage it.

I think that is so cool to have that kind of experience between these different roles. What I would recommend is that if there are asks about like hey could we go build this like get the other people involved around priority discussions right it you might be able to say like just to give you an example like hey you know sales sales guy Bob is saying like he could close this deal if we just had this and like I looked at the code and honestly it's like one line of code like that would be we could literally land this customer if we just shipped this one line of code like I'm for me me hearing that I'm probably more often than not with depending on what the other details are would be very much in favor of like cool like like basically what are we trading

to do that you're working on thing X right now cool like you know adding that one line of code testing it out doing whatever else like is that going to maybe derail us by like part of a day and like that seems like maybe it's a pretty good trade So like you know I just want to make sure that I'm involved in the conversation so that like as a manager in this case I need to make sure I understand what pieces are moving because if that one line code change turns into like well we thought it was one line but like actually that's going to take like a full week of work now and like sales guy Bob already told the customer they should be expecting it. like now I got a bit more of a storm to manage. And it's not that that's the end of the world or you did the wrong thing or you're a bad person.

It's just like it's all just about having awareness and communication. So when I've seen this kind of thing happen, it's not just with engineers. It's literally with could be any number of roles coming through and they're essentially not going through what I would consider like a common uh you know pattern for for prioritizing things. So I do highly encourage like new ideas, new things that like either I talked about tech debt the other day on a video. So uh whether it's like we need to service tech debt architectural changes, you have a new crazy idea we should try. um sales and marketing people coming to us with customer stuff, whatever it is, I encourage all the ideas. I think we should be able to have ideas come from anywhere. But what I think is important is that we have to be able to filter them down and prioritize them.

Because I've said this in many videos and I will probably continue to continue to find ways to express this in maybe I don't know like something that doesn't sound like as much of whining as it sounds like more like uh something you can transform into action. But like there's always going to be things to prioritize. There is an endless stream of things to prioritize. There is always something we could and or should be doing. Always. So if we accept that there is an unlimited of things to prioritize, the reality is that it means that we have to aggressively prioritize the most important things to make sure that we're like it just means that you're always working on something. So you always want to make sure that you're working on what makes sense to be the next priority. Okay? So ideas can and I think should come from anywhere.

Uh, I'm not trying to say that like me as the engineering manager, I'm the only one allowed to prioritize. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there needs to be consistency and some some type of like understanding of how things get prioritized. When you distribute prioritization, especially in isolated silos, you have problems. You have misalignment. you get some of these problems where people are having friction because people are delegating tasks, right? Um I'll use just a quick example of like um like I have a couple of principal engineers uh that report to me even well let's let's say over the past few years okay just for sake of conversation and so especially like within the team right like they're basically they're my tech leads they're the principal engineers in their feature crews they're the tech leads and so like when it comes to like technical things that need to be implemented.

It could be smaller bugs. It could be like they just have a really good understanding of what's going on in the space. And so I've absolutely had, you know, conversations where some of my other engineers reporting to me are like, "Oh, I'm doing doing this thing for soand so." And like they'll tell me in a one-on-one or a side conversation, right? It's not not a complaint, just a heads up like, "Hey, yo, I'm working on this thing with so and so." And like what's cool about that is that so and so whoever they're talking about, one of the principles reporting to me is also telling me the same thing in our oneon's or in side conversations, right? It's like there is no there is no I don't know like hidden thing that's happening. It's very much like you know I even have someone saying oh by the way I told you know told Bob on the team sorry for picking on the name Bob today.

um told Bob on the team like if they can pick up this thing and help out on whatever task like that'd be a good next thing for them. Just just giving you a heads up by the way if you disagree like we can we can figure that out. And so it's this understanding of like hey I'm just letting you know I'm trying to do the right thing here. Are there no good spots in this parking lot? This is awful, man. I'm going to have to go up to the next floor. Um, yeah, but this idea that they're trying to do the right thing, have visibility into what's going on. Man, I got to go up one more floor. And I I and I really appreciate that because it just creates consistency, right? They're I was trying to give you an example where they're kind of prioritizing without me being the the roadblock.

I think that's awesome. But what they're not doing is just like letting it go silent, right? And actually, it's both the person delegating and the person doing the work saying, "Hey, heads up. You know, uh we talked about these priorities, but um but actually here's what's happening in practice." And then this understanding of like if you disagree with that, cool. Like there's an opportunity to rep prioritize. Where do they put these little yellow things? Is this one full, too? I'm going to lose my mind. I'm never coming to work on a Tuesday again. Oh, come on. This one's worse. Okay. Well, so you don't have to see me drive around. Maybe I'll I'll wrap it up here. all the space. Just so you understand why I'm whining, all the spaces are compact and this is a coupe and the doors are very long. So, um, couple things wrong with that.

One, my doors open really wide. Number two, unfortunately, it seems like statistically people are very very very bad at parking and um staying within the lines is not in uh many people's strong suit. uh which is unfortunate for two reasons. One, they make the spaces even smaller for me to park beside. And number two, I don't trust them because if you can't get within the lines, I don't want you parking near me. Okay, we'll find you're staying around along for the the adventure. Now, at this point, let's do there's a pole there. Do we do it? Oh my god. I'm trying to find one that has like a little bit more. A little bit more. I'm not going to film me getting out of this spot cuz it's going to be a a nightmare. But we'll we'll get back in here. I would take my camera off and and show you like when I go to open my door how little space there is.

I just don't want to reattach it. Anyway, that's that. So, if you find yourself in a position where people are delegating work to you and it's causing friction, I recommend a conversation to to kick things off. But it's a very common thing that happens and I think that talking through it's one of the best ways to solve it. Like most things, communication. Take care.