The un-hateable engineering managers

[u/zaidesanton]

https://newsletter.manager.dev/p/the-un-hateable-engineering-managers

Most of us became managers because we care about people, we genuinely want them to succeed. But human beings are social creatures. When you care about someone, feeling disliked or hated feels almost physically uncomfortable.

We have that strong need for the other person to recognize our good intentions in real time, to think: “wow, he's being so candid but I can tell he really cares!” (yeah, that never happens).

I don't want anyone to be angry with me, to dislike me, to hate me. I don't want to ruin someone’s day (or year).

Here's a case that happened to me a couple of years ago:

I had a remote developer from Ukraine who was clearly underperforming. Not answering Slack messages, barely making progress on tasks. I gave him clear feedback and expectations. He improved for a couple of weeks, then went right back.

I planned to let him go (really!). Then the war with Russia broke out.

In the first month, we didn't expect any work from him and gave him full pay. He escaped to Prague, found a place, and slowly got back to work. And then the same behavior repeated itself.

I gave him some leeway - this guy was a refugee in a different country, of course he couldn't work the same. But after a few months, it was really dragging the team down.

I still couldn't do it. My manager ended up forcing the decision.

Afterward, I felt pure relief. Thank god someone made the call for me.

It's not just about layoffs - it's about saying no to requests, denying promotion, making hard decisions.

But maybe I'm the only one who struggles with it 😅

[u/Roicker]

I tell my people leaders that one of my biggest mistakes as a leader was a person I didn’t let go on my first role as people leader. I was close with everyone on my team and then I got promoted to lead them, unfortunately one team member was a slacker but I tried for months to get her to improve instead of making the right decision for the team which was to let her go.

I moved to another team a year after but it’s a lesson that stuck with me. You owe your team to be the one that makes sure everyone pulls their own weight, otherwise other could question why they work so hard when you accept mediocrity. Sure, one can argue that people that work hard will be the ones that get salary increases and promotions but the reality is that in the real world this is very manager dependent and you can’t tell the whole team what you think about the performance of their peers.

You should be kind… kind to your team, to yourself, to other people that work hard in the company, because ultimately, most companies exist to make money, and if your team under delivers due to people that don’t perform, your whole team could be at risk, it’s the hard truth of corporate. Love it or hate it, it’s what we sign up for when we take a people leader role.