YOU'RE FIRED! - Balancing Coaching And Managing Out Developers

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all right it is Monday December 9th drive to work um we got another topic submitted huge thanks to I think the coding lifestyle is the name of the commenter I think it's a great question this one is about um sort of like the unfortunate reality of looking to let people go um so wanted to talk through this one this is a hard one to talk about um because The Situation's never easy but I think it's um it's really good to I don't know like avoiding difficult conversations I've learned is just like basically never a good thing so I think it'll be good to talk through this uh the focus is not going to be about layoffs uh so explicitly in their question they had said ignoring layoffs in terms of like budget and stuff like that when it comes to like an individual like how

much how much goes into keep someone versus managing the out kind of thing uh so I want to talk through that uh obviously um I'm not going to if I talk about examples everything will be completely anonymized uh I'd rather talk about um sort of approach if that makes sense uh yes in my career I have had to let people go uh it's it's super hard so I don't I don't I hope people don't have it in their mind that like people get excited about having conversations when people have to get let go it's a it's terrible like it is a really bad time um so I just want I kind of want to add that disclaimer cuz if you've had a bad experience and you have been let go or someone's told you a story where they were let go and you have resentment

for the company or the individual that did that um I have never spoken anyone nor have I been an example sorry been in a scenario letting someone go where that felt good um complete opposite so uh with that said before we get into discussing it just a reminder uh please leave comments below if you want me to answer questions about software engineering career growth career change anything like that uh happy to to kind of walk through different things um even if I've talked about it before if you want a a different perspective on it like want me to focus on something more specifically please just let me know and if you want things anonymized um so if you have a scenario and you want my perspective on it feel free look for Dev leader on any social media platform Dev leader is my primary uh

personal brand and my main channel so you can send me a DM provide as much detail as you want the more detail the more helpful it is for me okay um so when it comes to uh letting people go uh I'll start by saying my my gut is essentially pushing me in the direction of uh keeping people um so I want to do as much as I can to keep someone and uh almost like to a fault if that makes sense so that's the the direction I like to head in um it's something that when I reflect on any time and like anytime that I've had to let someone go um or been in organizations where I know that like someone is having conversations about being like go um it the the situation itself like going through it is never easy but afterwards um I

think that it ends up being better for basically everyone involved doesn't feel like that at the time of course because it's like someone losing their job so I don't mean to minimize that but uh I have seen many examples where like things have uh improved for both sides so I want to kind of chat through some of that um there's a couple ways to look at reasons for letting people go uh we could talk about performance we could talk about um people don't like hearing about like fit in a in a company because that's a very generalized way to put things but I'll walk through an example of that um we can also talk about and I haven't had to I haven't had to let anyone go for um behavioral issues so uh and same with like HR violations and stuff I have never had

to let someone go for that uh but something like an HR violation I would say is like much more straightforward so uh I think it and maybe I can't even say it that uh that succinctly uh obviously there would need to be like some type of HR investigation to to do the to to figure out like the right action to take um because it could be some depending on the situation maybe it's like a warning first versus action that has to be like termination that has to occur so that one I think is a little bit more structured so I won't focus time on that so that's certainly a thing but we have like uh behavioral issues one that comes to mind that I have not had to let someone go for is around um what's a good way to put this you probably heard

I don't know how much I can curse on YouTube and this Channel's not monetized anyway but the the phrase is intelligent um so or intelligent jerk you'll sometimes hear uh but this type of individual is generally very smart but they kind of have this bad habit of like steamrolling everyone else so like I'm the smart one and basically things are just going to get done my way and I don't think a lot of the time this this uh type of individual like uh intends to be malicious like I think they're actually acting what they believe is in everyone's best interest but the problem is that it's like outrageously toxic within teams like it's completely ridiculous because an entire team will grind to a halt um so if you've worked in teams within dividuals like this you will know what I'm talking about because it feels

like no one can get anything done unless it's like scrutinized by someone and then they might as well have written the code or whatever their way um in the first place and saved everyone time um so it's kind of kind of crazy but um I've never had to like anyone go for this but I can say firsthand when uh individuals like this I've seen them part ways from teams I have seen complete team transformations in positive ways every single time every single time um so around this one I would say again my my gut tells me work with the person first okay so if someone is an intelligent I don't think a lot of the time they realize the impact that they're having so this would be a coaching opportunity which can sometimes be challenging because in the first place I'm generalizing here but these

types of individuals generally feel and believe that they are like the smartest person in the room so coaching can sometimes be challenging because it's like like I don't I don't need your feedback or else they would be getting peer feedback already kind of thing so it's challenging but it's certainly doable um and if you've built up a lot of trust and respect with an individual like this uh I think that you can make changes uh in fact I have seen with individuals that they make changes but it's challenging right it's like it's truly it takes them being very willing and having a lot of awareness and that's going to be a theme uh based on this qu oh man got to let this person merge two people not letting someone merge um so a theme is going to be like willingness to improve okay that's

going to be something that I want to keep coming back to so with these individuals um coaching is challenging but if they're willing to kind of like listen and hear the feedback and then come up with like strategies for acting on it I think it's definitely possible um so I would say if people are willing in these situations and they have a manager that's kind of willing to you know put their foot down and say hey look like I want to be able to help you and clearly like I'm having observations or getting team feedback whatever that like things are challenging that they step in and try to work with this person I think it is uh something that you can transform it's just that it's difficult it's not like hey it's a skill issue we got to get you to work on some things

and ramp up it's uh behavioral right so people that are on the receiving end of this feedback have to have to be proactive and saying like I need to recognize when I'm doing these things catch myself have awareness and then try to make changes um so it's doable um but I would say if people are not willing to make the changes and we don't see like consistent Improvement I can confid oops I keep spitting what's going on here um I don't edit these videos so you're going to see me spitting apparently um I would say with confidence though that when I've seen individuals not move on this type of stuff that when they depart the team like I said uh just completely transformative for the team in a positive way um now with that said I I wanted to come back to things being positive

afterwards right so um I have heard of individuals like this when they go to a different team say different organization different team they actually find like I don't know and I don't know exactly what it is about their working environment but if they get surrounded by certain other types of individuals sometimes they like they can like positively feed into this and end up finding great spots to work so again I've never seen firsthand someone that is sort of like this intelligent type um move to a different team I have or something or have another team in close proximity and then seeing that transformation happen where they're like oh this is actually a good fit now um but I have heard this sort of like like secondhand that uh individuals have left companies gone to a different team and it's not like their personality changed that

they're the exact same they weren't you know the coaching efforts or whatever didn't really transform uh their behavior in the existing environment but they go somewhere else and all of a sudden it's a great fit team loves having them there they love it there and there's something about that team Dynamic that's now different um whether or not their behaviors change different story so maybe it's a matter of they have more people that are just like willing to completely push back right so just as an example I'm kind of thinking through this if you have someone that's like steamrolling conversations and everyone else is too passive and just letting things go maybe that individual actually needs someone to be more vocal push back and they will actually back down but when you have a team that's not confident enough to do that and it feels like

conflict and friction they end up being too passive and just letting this person steamroll everything so maybe that's what's happening just a thought um but this is one type of scenario that I have seen around like either managing people out um or uh or trying to coach right so willingness here if they're not willing to make a change um it's only having a negative impact uh to I don't think that it's necessarily fair to coach the entire team around them so based on my last statement if that was true uh I obviously like it's a work in progress for everyone to build up confidence but um I can't have one person on a team completely uh inhibiting progress for everyone else so when that person does leave if they do um that transformative team change I talked about is that people actually St uh step

up and take leadership positions within the team like almost instantly which is very interesting right so it's just like dynamics that happen within teams but anyway that's example one um example two that I want to talk about is um I think one that I would spend a lot more time uh coaching around and uh almost I don't want to say like never would manage someone out for this um but I I would I would be willing to invest a lot more of my personal time for someone is willing to make a change so for example it could be skill issue it could be Focus issue um so i' I've dealt with both um where uh individuals either are not skilled up in an area or uh like with a like a hard technical skill or they have challenges with like prioritization time management uh focusing

on the right priority so they get stuff done right they get stuff done but it it might be like they're focused on the wrong thing or they're kind of I don't know what a good word is like they're their attention is kind of just like wherever versus like on something that's going to be valuable um so man that sun is something holy so the big difference here or the Big Driver here is that when people are motivated I feel much more willing to pour as much time as I possibly can into helping someone uh and finding ways to support them right because if they're motivated and they're willing and they're engaged the point is you're putting energy in or you're getting someone else on the team to help Mentor whatever it happens to be energy goes in and because the other person's willing they they

want to try and drive positive change okay so you put effort in they will be trying to match that effort they want to match that effort because they want to do better um and again coming back to like trust and respect I've worked with individuals like this um and really tried to make sure that they they have trust in me that they respect me because then I can be honest with them I can say look like we're not we're not getting it here like we need to shift gears on this we need to re like readjust Focus um for skill issue stuff hey like you've been stuck on this for a while I need you to speak up sooner to get you unblocked um just these types of things I me it's always going to be very situational but um but when people are like

okay like I actually trust Nick Nick I know wants me to succeed I really want to succeed like I'm just I'm willing to kind of put in the effort here as long as I keep getting this guidance and this positive feedback um yeah I've absolutely seen people make complete 180s and that's I think that key ingredient is that they they are willing right so I've seen whether it's skill issue I think focus issu is probably a big one um I've absolutely seen people where like all the intentions are right but when they're not focused on things it's almost like just doing work and it's not sort of like not the right work not the impactful work or um or the quality of their work starts getting missed because they're trying to jump between too many things um and not having this awareness right they're like

I'm keeping busy therefore things must be good but it's like it's not like quality is a huge thing consistency and quality is also huge this person's got a signal on but they're not moving okay so that is the one scenario especially where I would put a lot more time and effort into um now I have seen counter examples of this like that that don't pan out and I wanted to share um an anonymized one for my personal experience where I did have to let someone go it's basically a focus issue and um they in a situation where like you know not nothing of like didn't have skill or anything like that but basically they were always just doing other things so they would go work on just other random stuff and we'd be like complet completely missing um like deliverables right so we'd have these

expectations that something would get delivered they'd agree to it and then we just be off like just just doing other stuff and then we would be like whoa whoa whoa like what's going on here like this thing we we were expecting it like 2 days ago and you haven't even started but you're creating this other work and that you haven't even talked about it's like uh the challenge here is like it's a business it's not like a it's on a hobby project so um having conversations with individuals like this to try and make sure that we can refocus attention but in this scenario and had repeated conversations about like like we you when we talk about the stuff that we're trying to ship the expectation is that you're working on those things because if not we need someone else on the team to do it

and then whatever else you're working on like that still needs to be a business priority we literally can't just go like it's not just about writing cool code like we can't just do that um and in the end for one individual I did have to let them go it was a really difficult conversation um like I said it always is but what I wanted to share about this situation right because it's never easy ever about for this situation I actually ran into this person later several years later um I'm not going to go into the details cuz it doesn't matter but um basically our paths had cross based on some other interests and I remember seeing them and being like like oh it's that person and thinking in my head like as probably many people would like oh great now now we're going to have

an awkward interaction here and what happened was this person came up to me and they said hey like you know good to see you I haven't seen you in ages and um just kind of like catching up briefly and then they brought it up they said I just wanted to I just wanted to say this cuz like you know we're actually catching up here but they said at that time it was It was obviously really hard but they said that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me they said I didn't see it at the time cuz obviously it's hard news you know you're losing your job but they said you know essentially like you were right and I ended up going to this other place and it was a better fit for the things that I was like sort of to

focus on in terms of their interests so they were actually thankful and they were like it was hard to see at the time and obviously at the time I'm not I'm not like planning this in my head like I have a master plan it's just like I tried and it wasn't a good fit and there wasn't change the willingness to change was not there so forcefully changed the environment and they found something that worked really well for them and they were thankful so you know I thought that was a very interesting one uh to basically come full circle and have someone say you know was a hard time for me but um I ended up finding something that really worked well was really align with me and they were like I said they were thankful that in the end it happened obviously at the time

I'm sure I'm sure they were not happy with me and I I could understand and why um so yeah just anyway wanted to wanted to share that because I think it's an interesting one uh but that was an example of change not occurring and having to kind of move uh move things in a Direction that's uh unfortunate right but positive outcome in the end I wanted to bring that one up too because I mentioned earlier that um often this kind of stuff can end in a better position for everyone it's just about when that happens right so this person realized much later so positive story in the end um I want to shift gears uh there's got to be some like pun with that right like I'm driving to work ranting about software engineering and shifting gears I I might lean into that one a

little bit more um it's like the all the tech Ling we got a double click on that one we Circle back double click on that like what it's a weird it's a weird one um I want to talk about the sort of opposite end of what I've been describing most of this uh talk which is when there's not a willingness so I kind of started bridging that Gap I would say for this last person I described I don't think it's necessarily fair to say like there there was no willingness I think they were hearing the feedback but they weren't making change I don't know if you would call that not willing or unable or maybe I did a poor job coaching like it could have been all the above so I don't you know can I take more responsibility on that one perhaps um but

I want to talk about when individuals are not um not willing so this one's ch in because well in particular for my style of managing it's challenging because I I want to put time and effort into people because when something's not working I I want to try and find whatever way I can to make things work um because I know I know inevitably if things don't work it's a really difficult conversation for me and the other person like it's two people that don't want to have to have that conversation right so I would much rather go invest time into making things good like I want to be able to help fix and improve things that's literally my entire role um but I I've kind of learned in my career so far that like I can't take full responsibility if something doesn't work I can't say

oh then it's my fault because it takes effort from both sides so one second um so because it takes effort from both sides it's going to mean that like I can't just put in tons of effort and it not be met on the other end because it won't succeed and conversely if that person was super willing and engaged and I wasn't doing my job as a manager to you know to meet that energy it's going to be challenging for them to succeed right so in these examples I personally struggle because I'm trying to look for whatever way I can and I will try to set up like hey we should try to do X we should try to do y um you know and I have to be transparent with them I have to say hey look like expectations are not being met and here's

why right so we're not avoiding the hard conversations we're trying to avoid the really big hard conversation but we have to have difficult conversations along the way but another thing that I've learned is like you can make that difficult conversation less difficult by structuring it in a way that's like I'm here to try and help put as much energy into this as necessary to help you succeed so you can try to make it like a positive thing and obviously it's a I realize that sounds kind of silly but I mean it's already not a great situation let's try to make it better at least um but when people are not engaged it's really difficult so one of the things when I notice that there's a lack of Engagement and I'm trying to coach someone on this stuff is taking a step back and being like

is there stuff going on outside of work is there stuff with your work that's just uninteresting like to me the first indicator is like when I don't see engagement I'm not going oh this person must not be qualified for the job they must be dumb or something like that my head goes straight to engagement like they must not be engaged so why is that right is it overwhelming like it could be any number of things but I need to have a conversation with them to understand it um and this is again why trust and respect is really important if uh if you think about a situation where you're talking with a manager or you are a manager talking with an employee when you want to have a conversation that's hard like this and it's like hey like I'm you know I'm noticing that we're not

you're not meeting expectations and to me it appears like engagement like what's what's up right if you don't have a good trust and respect relationship you can imagine that person's going to be like screw you man like I don't like I don't care what you have to say what is going on here it's taking a bike off a bus and blocking traffic let's go let's go that's a double whammy I don't like buses in front of me and I don't like bikes in front of me either you're going to put both um so I try to look for re-engagement opportunities like is it something that we can control right are you on a project that sucks for you um do you have stuff going on outside of work that like we can try to work around right like I think I talked about this uh

before uh one of the videos about like flexibility for people like especially if they're burning out kind of thing um just try to make some space for them to say hey look like if you you can't focus and like you got stuff going on like take a day off right like trying to just I don't know like lean into the more people side of things but the challenge here is that when people are not engaged and then not willing to try and drive change um like I can't make that happen right at the end of the day all that I can do is try and put as much support in place for them as possible and um if if if they're not going to be making changes like it's kind of inevitable unfortunately so if the question that was being asked was like how much

time and effort um these things are situational right um I don't have a a formula for it I don't think I have a repeat situation where I can say oh it looks generally like this um so very situational but at some point it like there needs to be this Tipping Point of like we've tried enough over a long enough period of time with enough like examples and we're not seeing movement um it it should I guess a gut feel for me kind of thing is like if I had to have that conversation with someone cuz like I want them to succeed right that's the that's why I'm able to kind of go down this uh this path here is like if I can think in my head if I have to go have this difficult conversation do I feel like I could honestly look at

this person face to face and say sorry we have to let you go and and feel confident that I tried everything that I could I think that for me is my litness test um because if I'm like oh like could I have uh and I think earlier in my career this would have been much more difficult to like rationalize but I think I've seen enough examp not enough examples like I'm an expert because whatever um can always improve but I think I've seen enough patterns to formulate this opinion where if I feel like if I go through that mental exercise of like if I had to tell this person today and I feel like I'm on the fence still like could I have done more then I will probably do more um and maybe to a fault honestly uh I would say if I were

at a startup now if I were at a startup I would probably um have a little bit no you're not come on you're not doing that you're not going to try to change lanes when you're going to be directly driving into me um if I were at a startup now um I would be a lot less lenient about that kind of stuff and it's only because from being at a startup and knowing kind of knowing how how important it is to have like everyone kind of moving full steam ahead it's it's critical um and the last part as I kind of get to the office here the reason why especially is like when these types of things are coming up I know the framing evolved this as I've been talking about it is very much between a manager and employee um except when I was

talking about intelligent uh and I want to bring some of this up again here to close off but it affects the whole team right when you have someone that's engaged at least like the team might not perceive that there's an issue because they're like I see that this person is trying to do stuff right at least um but when someone's not engaged and they're not they're just not doing stuff like they're completely underperforming because they're just not delivering um teams really noticed that what the heck was that sound I sounded like someone laughing inside my skull that sent chills down my spine um I must have driven over something anyway um teams really notice it and it has really bad morale effects so intelligent have really bad morale effects and um people that are just like clearly not getting stuff done um teams notice it

right then they feel like why am I putting in all this effort this person's not um so something else to watch out for but um I hope that covers a handful of samples they're all situational I don't have a recipe or a formula um for timing how much effort cost analysis but it's uh situational and I try as much as possible to lean into um finding engagement challenges trying to help people make adjustments But ultimately if people are not willing to drive change um this is one of the biggest areas of learning for me is like recognizing that seeing if I can do anything about kind of kickstarting that like hey I'm I'm observing that you're not really willing or you're not engaged if I can't get that to Kickstart um I might uh kind of shift my um approach to like addressing these these

types A little bit earlier because um it's impactful for the team and it's a lot of effort that could be wasted if people aren't willing to make change so um hope that helps uh I really appreciate that question I think it's a really difficult one to navigate that's some perspective on it so thanks and I will see you in the next video take care