This Is Why Developers Leave Good Companies

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, we are going to go to the experienced dev subreddit. There's a topic about dealing with shitty managers and I thought this one would be fun to talk about. So I think it probably is something everyone can relate to and if not now that at some point in your career at least. So this person obviously with topics that come from Reddit like I don't know all the details, right? um we only get one side of the story, so we can assume different things and we'll talk about different angles of this, but the person is basically complaining that their manager is shitty and um in particular like things like their uh they're not competent. Uh they don't really understand some basic software development things like it seems like I think they were calling out like they don't understand really like what Git is or what you use it for.

Um, some stuff you just might expect are like even if you're not coding, you probably if you work with software teams, you probably know what's going on. So, calling some of that stuff out. Um, endless meetings, pointless meetings. So, pulling people in just to talk and then like there's no actions, nothing gets done. Um, and then overall just sort of like, you know, stuff that they bring up in one-on- ones, like nothing actually happens with that. And so, you know, the side effect of all of this is like I'm sure it leaves people wondering like what the hell is this manager even doing because clearly there's nothing beneficial, right? Like no no feedback in 101's taken, so they're not helping me grow in my career. They don't seem to be technical. So, it's not like they're off disappearing and coding things. Um, and then, uh, you know, in terms of meetings and coordinating, it's like there's no actions being taken.

There's no follow-up. So, like, isn't that just wasting people's time? So, overall, when you get a picture like this, that's like, you know, none of the boxes are checked for like sounds like could be a good manager. So, um, they also go on to say there's three managers that are like this. So, it sounds like it's not just like a one person thing. I don't think we have an idea how big the company is. is like is it just that they're calling out there's out of I don't know out of a 100 managers there's three like this or is it like there are only three and all three are like this so we don't really have those kind of details but anyway they go on to say at the end like so you know starting to interview uh starting interview and then I think they

they also said like you know what do you do or how do I how do I make improvements here and I think uh you know overwhelming number of comments like right where you're like, well, like there you go, right? Like you're move on cuz there's nothing you can do. Um, you know, people don't people don't quit uh jobs, they they quit managers, right? Like you're not working for a company, you're working for a manager. You could be working at the best company in the world, but if you have a shitty manager, you know, your your life's going to be So, lots of comments like this, and like fundamentally, I don't I don't like uh I don't disagree with that. personally. And by the way, if you're new to my channel, like you're going to be getting a lot of uh obviously my perspective on things.

I will try as best I can to talk about things from different angles so that it's not uh totally just I don't know me word vomiting a whole bunch of personal opinions on things, but mostly you'll get my bias coming through. So I I do think that uh that makes sense, right? that you know that a manager's influence directly on your career and your interactions with work like is is significant and um I I have found myself in my career where I'm I'm working somewhere and like there are many things that I love about where I work and then based on the manager you know that can be transformative the other direction. Um, I'm trying to think if I've worked at places that were the opposite and I was like, man, this place is garbage. But like I had a really good manager. And I I think the answer is no.

I haven't worked in places like that. I I definitely worked at places where at points in time I was like, "Oh my god, like what are we doing here?" But, you know, it was very fortunate to have a good manager. Um, for context, for those of you that don't know, I used to work at a at a startup for uh got there pretty early and then worked there for 8 years and then after that came to Microsoft and I've been there for about 5 and a half years now. Um, coming up on six. It's coming up on six. And so, yeah, I've had different experiences like that, but I don't think I've ever worked at a place where I was like, this company is terrible, but thank god I have a good manager. But definitely had managers. I've had many good managers. So been fortunate that way.

So even if there were tough times or uncertain times or lols or whatever it is, having a good manager, I definitely think uh fits uh you know what this person's saying the inverse way where it's not just a company, it's it's the manager really that's going to have an impact. And so this suggestion of like, hey, like you're not going to things aren't going to change, so like get the hell out of there. like stop wasting your time kind of thing. This is where I start to have a bit of a disagreement, but only because I don't love that it's black and white. It's a it's a binary onoff kind of situation. Um, I don't love that. Uh, even though I I mostly agree with it, right? I just don't like looking at things as like always or never. So, if you're in a situation like this, the answer is always jump ship.

I don't love that. Um, and then when I see comments coming in that are basically everyone's, you know, piling on and agreeing the same way, I'm like, I just I really feel like we have to share some of the potentially other side of this, right? So to give you an example, if I had at every point in my career, any time that there was a manager that I thought was either stupid or not doing a good job or not listening, if every single time that that ever happened to me that I just was like, well, time to go uh, you know, leave an interview or, you know, get out because there's nothing I can do. I definitely wouldn't be where I am today. And I'm not saying that that's a, you know, therefore like I have had the best career path that could have been imagined.

Uh, not my claim. My claim is that like I I have had situations where I did whatever I could to work around it. Uh, or to try and get improvements or whatever else. And I'm glad I did and didn't just kind of run and jump ship. So, I do think that based on the comments and stuff coming in, like I don't have data to back this up, but if I had to guess statistically, it's it's probably more likely that you're not going to have uh the time, the energy, the influence to even want to entertain that. And if you did try to go drive changes like that, if you're already at a point where you're burnt out, you hate everything going on, uh you're resentful of your manager and other people, like odds are at that point piling on, well, let's go fix it. And that, by the way, that's all on you.

Um it's probably not it's just probably not going to be a recipe for success. Not impossible. I just think that you'll probably be like, why the hell am I doing this? So, I think I've talked about this a little bit in the past. Maybe not this uh exact scenario and maybe not like this I don't know like explicitly calling it out, but I I genuinely think that there's a like a balance to be struck. And what I mean by that is I I can probably talk about it in ways that like if I exaggerate then we can kind of fill in the gaps. So if you worked at a place that you hated and you had a shitty manager, it would probably feel pretty damn obvious that like you just want to get out, right? You don't even like being there and your manager's Time to go.

Uh if you worked at a place that you love and you have a great manager, like check, check, right? Everything's good. good opportunities. You love being there. Good stuff. When you start mixing these things up, right, when you start having because it's not it's not always going to be either the the worst of both worlds or the best of both worlds. Reality is often somewhere in the middle and not necessarily even. So, imagine that you're at a place and you love the place, right? You love working there. You believe in the company. You believe in the opportunity you have there or you should be able to have there. uh you love the the products and the services that are being built. You love the people you work with, but your manager right? Right. Let's assume that's the case for this person, right? They they didn't give details like that, but let's assume they love everything else about their job and they have a shitty manager.

Now, what you might say to me is, "Well, Nick, that's that sounds like kind of ridiculous. It's impossible, right? How could this person, first of all, like who even likes their job, right? And then second of all, um, how could you have a person that loves everything else about their job, but happens to have a shitty manager, right? Like, how does that happen? It doesn't make sense. If the manager was so shitty to begin with, obviously, they wouldn't like their job. And what I want to maybe toss into the mix, and this is why I don't think this is always black and white, is imagine the manager is a new manager. Imagine this person's been at this company for several years. In this case, they haven't, by the way, because I think they added that detail, so they're pretty new. But imagine they've been there for several years.

Imagine they've been part of seeing that company grow and they've been part of building it up. They've been part of the success and they really do love working there. and now you have a shitty manager that's been put above you. I don't think that it's unfair to say and agree with the people in the comments and say, "Well, what luck are you going to have influencing things and how much effort is that going to be?" Just get out, right? Like, stop wasting your time. Go on to the next thing, right? You don't work for companies. You work for managers. That's a shitty manager. Get out. Right? I I I'm not saying I like disagree that that's an option for total transparency. I think that is a totally valid viable option and probably most people could and should lean into that. However, what I'm trying to get at here is like if everything was good, if you loved everything about what you were doing, right?

You can have not only bad hires that are software engineers, you can absolutely have bad hires that are engineering managers or product managers or project managers or VPs or seuite. You can have bad hires. You can have people that on paper people were like, "Hell yeah, this is good." In interviews are like, "Hell yeah, this is good." And then in practice they're like, "Holy what the hell is going on?" And unfortunately, sometimes that happens in ways that not everyone sees, right? Maybe the people who did the interviewing are like, "Yes, we have this great person. They're brought on board. Everything's good." But what's actually happening in practice, they don't see the details of that. Right? So the idea being that you know that the people that were decision makers in that process, they have a different viewpoint of that. They're not aware of the crap. And it could be you you could argue the inverse, right?

Like I don't know, uh people that say it's a manager and everyone loves the manager, but the manager is actually not effective at getting anything done, but people love it for some reason that report to them. So you can have this discrepancy in understanding when people are brought in. But my point here is that this is one example I'm trying to illustrate that you could have someone brought in that fundamentally changed the dynamic for the worse. So then the question I would ask instead of just like prescribing well start interviewing which by the way I feel like in general I don't live by this advice but I feel like in general it's probably good to periodically be like trying to get some interviews because in my career I found that because I interview so infrequently that anytime I have to I'm like holy like I am not I'm not good at this.

Um, that point aside, if instead of prescribing go jump ship, you instead pose this question of like like how important is it to you? Because I I think the thing that you want to start there's a bunch of things to weigh out here, but I think one such thing is like how much time and energy do you want to put into it? And this is why I was saying if you're already burnt out and feeling resentment like odds are the amount of time and energy you want to put in ain't so great and I don't blame you. Right? But if we start thinking how much time and energy do we want to put in? What other support systems do we have? Right? Is this your boss and they own the company or is this your new manager and they report to uh your previous manager that you have a really good working relationship with?

Uh is it a new manager that reports to, you know, the the CEO or someone else and you're like, "Okay, like maybe they would support me if I had to to talk through this, but like I don't have a good working relationship." Like what does that look like? Right? What do your support systems look like? Now, that's support systems in one direction, which is up. Another thing to figure out is like through your peers, right? Because I my take on this kind of thing, it's like if this manager is actually a bad manager, right? We we don't know. We get one side of the story. Maybe they're the best manager in the world and this person writing the Reddit post sucks. probably not, right? I think it's more likely that this person's doing a great job or at least at least a okay job at least and they happen to have a manager that they're not aligned with.

Now, is this manager actually terrible? I don't know. Like, I wouldn't just jump to that conclusion, but it they're at least not aligned. That's for damn sure. So when you have this, if you have peers that are also experiencing the same thing, that's probably a good indicator like it's not specifically a you problem. But if everyone else if everyone else is having a great time and things are more productive overall uh and people are content and h like I I think that sometimes we have to to pause and be like I don't think anyone would ever admit this but like is there some there's something about how I'm operating here that's not fitting right. Um, but I think it's a good opportunity to actually figure out with peers, colleagues, whatever. Like, like are you observing the same types of things here? And there's different ways to approach that.

I don't think you want to get in the business of like, hey, our new manager Bob sucks, right? Like, yeah, I hate him, too. Like, we should talk about Bob. but instead having conversations where like I don't know maybe you happen to observe someone has a particular situation because of the manager and you're like hey like um you know I had you know how did you kind of navigate this I had a similar issue uh not you know trying not to assign blame but like at least get the conversation start I had a similar issue like how did you you try to navigate it like what kind of solutions did you come up with um just like trying to get the conversation started so that you can understand uh more that what's going on around you. Um it sounds kind of weird cuz it sounds like I'm suggesting like gossiping which kind of but at the same time it's not gossiping to talk It's gossiping to understand like what's going on.

So gossip isn't the right word but I think you get what I'm saying right? Try understanding is this something that's being observed. The reason I say that is because um say you're trying to get more support from someone in a leadership position, right? Say you're going to your skit manager, whatever that looks like, and you're like, "Hey, I want to talk about this cuz I'm having some challenges." Um, ideally, ideally you try to make it evidence-based and not just like this is how I feel about it because it's really hard to like try and drive towards solutions just based on feels. And I'm not saying that your feelings are invalid. Like that's that's not my point. Your feelings are very valid. My point is that in terms of like taking action, right? Say, say you're like, I don't know, like I just don't like this person.

And your skip level's like, okay, like, uh, have you tried talking to them? Have you tried like instead of having like what seems like a runaround conversation? If you're like, hey, like I've had some challenges and like here's some evidence to back that up. By the way, some other people have had similar things going on too in these situations. Here's some evidence. Right? It's building a case for it. And that way, you know, say like your your skip level, maybe it's a conversation they have to have with that manager about, you know, uh, but almost like a pip where it's like, hey, we're having some challenges. This is what I want to see. Is this person going to switch lanes? No. It's one way to be stupid, that's for sure. So, there's a a lane on the left side which is we're in the the fast lane or the the HOV and that was an on-ramp to the highway.

So, people have to not merge into the slow lane on the far right, they're merging into the the fast lane. And this person was going significantly below the speed limit to try and merge in and running out of room. And they had, sorry, running out of room in front of them cuz their lane's about to end. And uh I slowed down so they had lots of room in front of me and they decided to not use it. So basically they're about to go drive into nothing or end up cutting me off. So, and they left their signal on after, too. So, I just feel like maybe they're not a a fully aware driver or something like that. That's okay. So, yeah, you want to be able to have evidence to bring to have a conversation about it so that you can move away from just this is how I feel to something more evidence-based and I think that'll be more helpful.

Um, keep in mind too that kind of what I was saying earlier, there might be different perspectives, different viewpoints on this kind of thing. So, you know, you you need to kind of go into that assuming that maybe some of the things you're trying to share there just isn't visibility on, right? Like to give you an example, if we it's going to sound very exaggerated. Imagine. So this person wrote this Reddit post and they're saying this manager just like holds meetings that go on for too long, invites people in and there's no actions, right? You might suspect that their manager if they were aware of that and that was like normal behavior, they would be like, "Well, what the hell, man?" Like obviously that's not okay, right? like uh or if uh if they were aware that in 101's people were giving feedback and being very clear about things and nothing was changing that obviously their skip level manager or sorry your skip level their manager would be like that's not okay.

Um so it's like it's probably not just that also your skip level is like malicious and terrible. It's probably just that there's not visibility into this kind of thing. Now, it's entirely possible. Yes. Also, the skip level manager is shitty, right? I'm not I'm not telling you this to say like things are impossible or it has to be one way. It's quite the opposite. I'm just trying to say like generally speaking, I think that things line up this way. Okay. So, you can get some feedback from peers. You can talk to skip level manager, whoever, someone in leadership to be able to try and get some some assistance from this. But again, like even just to give you an example, like what what are your expectations, right? Are your expectations you go talk to your skip level manager and they're like, "Cool, let me just let me just go call up Bob and fire him right now." We're like, "Probably not.

I don't know." Like depending on how much evidence and how terrible it was, uh, and how like if that person was still in a probationary period, maybe maybe their skip level is just like, "Yeah, well, we're not dealing with that." That's overwhelming evidence. Like, we'll get Bob out of here. Sorry if your name's Bob, by the way. Um, but I just suspect that's probably not the case. So, there's probably some type of conversation. Um, that's a different thing to navigate, right? Cuz I can imagine for people that are in situations like this, you want to share to provide evidence to get support, but you're like, "Well, I don't want to do that." And then have my manager be worse to me.

But this just goes in like back to the question of like how much time and effort do you want to put in because if you do really care and by the way it's not a not like a a moral or like I'm not judging your values or anything like you you're allowed to literally not give a and like that's okay. Um but it's a genuine question like how much do you care about working for that specific company? Because if you do really really really care, then you probably will really really really put energy into trying to to make this better. And if you're like somewhere in between that and like I couldn't give any less of a then odds are it's probably not worth it for you, right? So, I'm just going back to like that original, you know, set of comments in this Reddit thread.

Like, yeah, I think I think for most people that's totally valid. So instead of continuing to go on circles on that part, I wanted to also talk about um with the one-on ones, right? So again, what we don't know from the Reddit post um because none of us were attending one-on- ones with the person is like this person's saying, I'm giving feedback in one-on- ones and nothing happens. Okay, so we legitimately get one side of the story. That's how this kind of thing works. And so I don't I don't want to read that and just assume like well this person's full of I would like to assume the opposite ideally, right? Like I'm assuming that they are genuinely giving feedback and unfortunately nothing's happening. But like part of me is like okay well there's at least two sides to every story, right?

So, like for example, if you were if we could if we could go call up this manager right now and say, "Hey, tell me about so and so and tell me about the 101 ones, right?" Like, tell me why you're not taking action on some of the feedback. I think I'm just going out on a limb here. I think we would get a different story. And so I like what this leads me to believe is that it's not purely just like I have a shitty manager that doesn't even listen. Um it's maybe you know maybe you do have a shitty manager and maybe they're bad at listening and maybe they're bad at understanding, maybe they're bad at taking actions. It could be all of these things, but like how is this being communicated? What expectations are you setting? like what does that look like? We don't know.

So, when it's self-reported like this, one of the challenges is that of course I think most people would say like, "Hey, man. I'm doing everything I can to to make this visible. I'm reporting this kind of stuff to my manager. They're not doing anything about it." Like, I've I've done my part. It's on them, right? of of course we would like most of us would try to articulate things that way otherwise we wouldn't be writing an article or not an article a post you know attacking someone like this and then being like oh yeah by the way I didn't actually do anything oops like you'd probably be like oh maybe I should go do this so my point is that we don't actually know how those conversations happen how they're articulating these things um is it you Is it that the manager is like very much acknowledging and they're like, "Look, I'm trying my best here and we have different timelines for this stuff, but uh here are these blocking issues, blah blah blah.

I'm trying to work through them, trying to make this happen for you." Like, is that happening? And then this person's just reporting it back to a Reddit thread being like, "My manager doesn't do anything." Like, I don't know. That's one option. Another option is truly like this manager is just completely incompetent. Um, I don't know, right? It's like there's so many so many uncertainties with something like this, but I I have a really difficult time believing that like a story is completely one-sided like this and there's nothing valuable to learn about the other side. So, the reason I bring this up is not to get a bunch of you upset with me and you're like, "Oh, it's just cuz you're a manager." It's not to do that. It's to just get you thinking about different angles of things. That's all. It's uncomfortable, right? Like I I ag I I would agree with what this person's saying is probably true, but like I legitimately don't have evidence of that.

I simply don't. I want to, you know, agree with them and believe what they're saying. I want to because I think that they're frustrated and they want to they want to get help. But at the same time, I'm like, I I don't have the opportunity to get the information from the other side. So like we we must acknowledge that we're missing part of this. And so something that I would recommend to you is like when you're navigating these types of things, it's very easy for us to make assumptions, right? like I I told my manager this action didn't happen and like I've done it twice now and like there like therefore they don't listen or they're incompetent or they don't care but like what do the details of that look like? You I'm just going to make try to make up an example, right?

like you you told your manager about a scenario that like you weren't happy with and they they sat there and they heard you and they they acknowledged how you felt about that and then you know you can continue on your one-on-one and then in you know a a couple weeks a month similar thing right you're telling them about a scenario you didn't like and they're kind of acknowledging you and go through your one-on-one and then you end up leaving that going like okay man this is twice now and my manager is not doing anything about So like people that watch this channel a lot will know that the next kind of phrase that's going to come out of my face is like level setting expectations, right? Like your expectation of your manager in those moments, I'm assuming based on that example would be something like, oh, I'm hearing someone having a problem with something, right?

They've clearly expressed this and so the expectation of the manager is therefore to dig into it more and then propose solutions and then uh not only propose solutions but I suppose like exercise said solutions right like thank you for identifying the problem I will go fix it for you and then uh in some timely manner whatever that is right like that might be your expectation And I I didn't mean for what I was saying to sound facitious because it wasn't, but like that might be your expectation, right? And so you're not that expectations not being met by your manager. So then you end up becoming frustrated. You build resentment because you're starting to now build a narrative around like, well, if they're not meeting my expectations, they must be incompetent or they must not care or whatever else. But like legitimately, I I'm just gonna say it.

Like did you explicitly ask for help? And when you did, what did that conversation look like? Did they acknowledge you or did they brush you off? If they acknowledged you, what was the followup? Did you say, "Cool." Like, "Can we talk about a plan for how we're going to do this?" Did you come up with a timeline for that? like did you do that? And I'm not saying that like has to happen always for things to be successful. I'm just saying that like if it's not happening and things also aren't happening like you're not doing those things and then there's no results to to me I'm like are you surprised? Is anyone surprised? Like where was the accountability? Where was the where was the agreement? Where was the level setting of expectations? Like you had a conversation, but did you both leave that oneonone with actions?

Maybe maybe that manager thought that, you know, you were talking about a problem and you're just raising awareness and you're going to go fix it. Maybe that was their expectation. Now you're wrong. Like You know what I mean? It's not and the point is not who's right and who's wrong. The point is that like if you're not on the same page, you're going to be frustrated a lot. So get on the same page. Um and I say that genuinely because I I think that people very often find themselves in frustrating situations with their manager and uh or it could be peers, other people on different teams and stuff like that. I think that happens a lot. And the reason I say level setting expectations and talk about communication so much on this channel, there's over 400 videos on this channel, and I don't know how often this topic comes up, but it's a lot.

And it's because I think it's one of the biggest factors in software engineering that causes storms. Everyone's focused on what language is the best or how AI is taking over. And I'm sitting here going, if you can't figure out how to talk with other people, work with other people, level set expectations with people, you will be frustrated for the overwhelming majority of your career. So, I hope that helps. Um, I thought it was a great uh great read, great topic. Uh, I'm not saying that my presentation of it was the best, but I thought it was a really good one to be able to talk about. Um, so I I'm hopeful that there was something useful in there, some different perspective for you. Um, and yeah, I would honestly I mean it genuinely would love to hear from you either in the comments if you have challenges with this kind of thing and there's some followup or uh if you can go to codemute.com, you can submit questions anonymously that way.

They could be related to this, they could be related to something completely different. Um, I'll try my best to make a video response for you. And like I said at the beginning of this, it's uh this is just my experiences, my you know, my perspective. Um I don't think that I am right on everything or wrong on everything. Somewhere in the middle, right? Um then yeah, I just hope that there's something valuable that you can take away. So thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one. Take care.