Early in my career, a manager once had me repeat to him that I would be terminated if I failed to do X, like I was a 5-year-old.
X was referring to a technical implementation detail that he had zero understanding of. He read something in a blog post I guess.
My reaction was to act like it was a fun joke or something. But inside, I absolutely loathed him every second of every day until I quit, and now I take great satisfaction knowing that I’ve surpassed him and would never do a thing to help his stagnating career. (In other words, I’m holding an extremely petty and lasting grudge.)
But my point is, he probably thought I was fine with all his joking. I always laughed.
To expand on the article’s point, I think the biggest thing young managers don’t understand is that people are going to be insincere to you as a basic showing of respect and a basic desire for career preservation. They’re going to smile and appear to enjoy you and laugh at your jokes and seem ok with everything, much moreso than they otherwise would. So don’t make the mistake of using their reactions to define your boundaries of what’s acceptable or what’s funny, because it’s not a typical relationship, and you will invariably believe that you are funnier than you are and that a wider range of unacceptable behaviors are acceptable.
> To expand on the article’s point, I think the biggest thing young managers don’t understand is that people are going to be insincere to you as a basic showing of respect and a basic desire for career preservation. They’re going to smile and appear to enjoy you and laugh at your jokes and seem ok with everything, much moreso than they otherwise would.
I know it's hard and it took me until my 30s with a long career behind me but I really wish people would be more vocal about their issues to their managers, even if it's about their management style or them burning people out, etc. There is a huge chance that you're not the only one with those feelings and there might be people newer to the team or career that are afraid of speaking up for things that they really truly disagree with, or just the people who get anxious with confrontation.
Your perception of the risks associated with providing that feedback isn’t the same as everyone else’s.
When you’re young, and especially if you come from a lower income background (where authority is treated as an absolute, and abuse of authority is generally more common and accepted), it can seem very risky and feel very unacceptable to give this kind of feedback to your manager.
It’s easy for me to agree with you now, but there are very different feelings about this across different backgrounds and cultures, and there are plenty of managers who would react harshly to this.
That is a good feeling but it is career suicide. Adulation and compliance is a sweet currency and if you dont use it (it is OK) other people will and they will be moved ahead of you time and time again.
There's just no upside in this approach. Educate your manager? It wasn't asked for, won't work and is not appreciated. Make the world a better place? You're better off making your world a better place by leaving or changing positions.
> There is a huge chance that you're not the only one with those feelings and there might be people newer to the team or career that are afraid of speaking up for things that they really truly disagree with, or just the people who get anxious with confrontation.
There's a huge chance that, if you are actually working in a toxic environment, complaining about it will result in blowback directly targeted at you.
All the other comments note how risky the approach of giving feedback to your boss is, and they're right.
As a manager, it's on ME to setup the environment for candid feedback. It's something I have to emphasize over and over again and demonstrate very clearly and publicly to everyone that it's ok and it's what I expect.
If the boss isn't creating that environment, then it's a risky, uphill battle for any subordinate to create change. Not impossible, but it's difficult to recommend it.
One approach to react to ridiculous behavior is to simply ask the other person something like "so you're telling me to repeat that I'll be fired if I don't do X".
This technique is called mirroring.
It's a tacit reminder to the other person that what they're saying is outside the boundary of your immediate comprehension - forcing them to be more conscious of their behavior.
Turning this into an issue of mere comfort betrays a great deal of privilege. Many, arguably most, people are a firing or two away from poverty and misery. In tech, this can be especially true of people early in their careers, and especially those from less-advantaged backgrounds. If you get fired from your first tech job, and your manager talks a bunch of shit about you, that may be your last tech job.
While this is true, saying "I got fired from my first and only job in tech. Also I can't provide any professional references because my manager has a grudge against me" can be a red flag for your next employer, or even next few employers (whether justified or not).
I'd never really thought about this idea explicitly but it really does apply to an awful lot of situations. I can think of countless experiences that would have turned out very differently if I had or had not brought up a tough conversation. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
And now that I think about it, one trait that I’ve witnessed in CEOs and successful entrepreneurs again and again is an almost inhuman ease with initiating and engaging in uncomfortable conversations. They don’t hesitate with them either.
I always assumed it was just something they all naturally develop as a consequence of being bombarded and put upon constantly, but maybe there’s more to it than that.
> You are voluntarily & temporarily handing over that power to someone else in exchange for money.
The thing you're missing is that money is required to live. If I "voluntarily" decide to stop earning it, or if I end up in a job where I earn substantially less, a state employee with a gun will eventually show up to my house and evict me from it. If I am hungry and take some food from a store, a state employee with a gun will put me in a cage. The idea that there's no power dynamic at play here is absurd.
I've always found the power dynamic issue troublesome. So often it can be turned into "Well they might have consented, but they really didn't truly have the power to because of the power imbalance."
There might be some truth in that in a purely psychological sense, but it also is a massive legal issue. Do you really have agency as an employee, and what are those limits?
Say a manager gets into a relationship with a subordinate. Yes, it's a bad idea, of course, but both of your emotions get away from you and you say you love each other. If things go south, could the subordinate say he or she didn't feel like they had a choice?
Heidi Matthews is a Canadian law professor who asked this in relation to the metoo movement and Monica Lewinsky. During the 90s, the debate was over Clinton lying, but no one ever challenged that Lewinsky consented. But today, people retroactively look back at that time and ask if she had the ability to consent.
Maybe if US unemployment was setup like other countries where you could leave a job and still get on the dole, there's less of a dynamic because you could "just leave" (even though it makes it more difficult to get hired later).
I dunno; there are a whole lot of deep factors here. Life is about learning from doing things that are uncomfortable and asserting agency when you feel like you have none.
I don't think I'd make this "Joke" in the first place, but if I was a 3rd-person observer to this scenario my honest first reaction would be (1) that's a weak attempt at humour, quickly followed by (2) that person is really sensitive.
I suspect the manager would interpret that sort of feedback as #2 as well
The issue aside, you’re simply chastising a straw man that you’ve constructed by assuming the worst possible interpretation of every aspect of your opponent’s position, seemingly without ever having spoken to one of them. This is not an effective way to communicate.
It’s just sanctimonious grandstanding. This is how you get lots of internet points while even further exacerbating the very same problem you’re railing against.
And that’s coming from someone who agrees with you.
I have a theory about this. I think the song format is conforming to the needs of advertisers.
That’s why every top song is just a person talking over a beat, usually with the same kind of vocal style, usually the same kind of beat.
It’s really hard to sing the word “Lamborghini” and have that fit into the lyrics and be heard clearly and have the brand image positioned correctly.
It’s also a waste of advertising space to have any duration of a song not include clearly spoken lyrics.
Taking this example, DaBaby’s “Rockstar” sounds basically identical to hundreds of other recent songs that follow the same format of a person talking repetitively over a simple beat (every Drake song for example). Five possible instances of integrated advertising in the lyrics: Lamborghini, Chevrolet Suburban, Maybach, Glock, and Apple FaceTime. 2 of them in the chorus.
So what kind of music will people accept, that maximizes spoken word duration, speaks those words clearly, provides brand image maneuverability within the lyrics, doesn’t distract from the lyrics, and won’t have a fatal loss of integrity as a result of obvious product placements?
That list of requirements leaves us with basically one style of one genre, and it’s this style of rap / hip hop. To any extent that a song deviates, it becomes less effective as a channel for advertising.
I think the most convincing piece of evidence in support of this is this lack of differentiation among artists, even in terms of vocal style. In ‘90s hip hop every artist had a completely unique style, all present-day hip hop fans love all of those legendary artists... and yet, every modern artist is just mimicking the exact same cadence as Drake or Kendrick Lamar.
None of this can be reconciled with the notion that songs becomes popular purely because people like them.
I think it comes down to the allure of spoken accents. Since the times of at least John Lennon's apologetically English elocution in the '60s, or perhaps Sinatra's brutish crooning decades earlier, popular music has been dominated by artists who affect a peculiar accent. This sets the artist apart as distinct while sounding new and exotic to the listener.
In hip hop, we have a genre which strips away almost everything except the vocalist's accent. What you really have is an audio sample of the interesting way a person pronounces words.
I believe the benefits of this are two-fold. First, I believe listeners from the same region subconsciously identify with certain key signifiers in the vocalist's pronouncation, providing a core fanbase. Second, I think other listeners who are high in openness are intrigued by the new way of talking.
I think this model works for both hip hop and country music. Other types of pop and indie music also seem to feature bizarre forms of singing. For instance, that dance monkey song that was #1 for a while. Contemporary indie-rock and new-folk musics seem to focus on sounding like an alien.
Advertising isn’t just about getting the audience to purchase the product. Convincing young people that a product confers high status will increase the perceived value of that product for every potential buyer whether they listen to rap or not.
And these aren’t impulse purchases. Nobody buys a Lamborghini the same week that they’re playing with Hot Wheels, but many will a few decades later.
There’s also indirect demand through rentals. Anyone with a credit card can rent a Lamborghini for a weekend. Most of the luxury cars you see on the roads in Miami are rentals, for example.
It’s amazing to me how different the reality of that era is from depictions of it in entertainment.
For example, I recently read that wars during that time were fought mostly by peasant hordes, and they didn’t have the resources to train and equip them, so mostly they all just beat each other to death with wooden clubs or whatever blunt object happened to be available.
Thousands of starving and diseased peasants covered in dirt and potato sacks clubbing each other to death with sticks isn’t exactly the story we want to see or read about, though.
We want skillful knights with swords, archers and trebuchets, chainmail and plate helmets, etc. But most of the violence was peasants, and most of the wars were won by peasants.
And somewhat ironically, a lot of the shiny equipment and weaponry we love served its most significant role in allowing the ruling class to subjugate their peasant hordes into fighting those wars for them (knowing that an even worse fate awaits them back at home if they refuse to fight)...
Peasants were then mostly written out of history, one common exception being peasant revolts, presumably because stories of revolt are more sympathetic to the ruling class than stories about peasants winning all of their wars for them...
I’m writing this because I think it’s interesting, but also because you seem like you might know whether it’s true or not haha. Do you think what I read is mostly true, or is it more theory/fantasy?
I would suggest looking in to the origins of the “company” for professionalization of the military in the renaissance. Before that it depends on where you were, but lords were generally responsible for raising and arming vassals for the kingdoms campaigns. The level of equipment and training varies, but there are interesting examples like english yeomanry.
Re peasant revolts these were almost never popular class uprising AFAICT. It looked a lot more like a commoner or minor noble taking on a warlord position against the local rulers. Think of afghanistan or parts of NE africa for equivalants.
Consider the fact that if Ammon had fully considered this rollout, it would be very obvious to him that this would be the response. The legal ramifications would also have been obvious.
I think the only reasonable explanation is that it wasn’t fully thought through. I think his business being hit hard by the pandemic is a reasonable explanation for that. There’s no way TripleByte isn’t hit hard by this. Rushing a major feature out is exactly the kind of thing he’s supposed to be doing right now. It seems he just thought too much on making the business and tech side of the feature successful, and didn’t give enough time to the human and legal side of it.
Personally I thought his email was way more introspective and revealing than it even needed to be, and I think he’s being genuine.
Succeeding despite a lack of education, or despite significantly disadvantaged birth circumstances, will always be the most impressive quality I find in a young person.
In terms of things you can actually apply without having said disadvantages, I would say anything that displays a kind of economic maturity, or a bias for long-term thinking. These are very rare and valuable qualities in all age groups, but are especially rare in younger people.
You can display that conversationally, by for example asking pointed questions about a company (or any kind of system) and its relevant external factors, and then extrapolating to possible future directions and outcomes. Or you can do any project that interests you for its long-term implications, and talk about future outcomes, anticipated success or failure scenarios, the potential impact of known unknowns, etc.
Not according to your own FAQ[0] on public profiles:
> Your public profile includes any badges you've earned, your basic info (current job title and company, current location, and years of experience), and the tech experience & resume section.
This information can very easily be used to identify a person, especially at smaller companies.
> ... to provide us the canvas to release badges. That’s it.
So before you were taking on LinkedIn, but now it’s just a place to release badges?
Unrelated but I really struggle with this kind of double and triple negative wording.
It WOULD seem UNLIKELY that he WOULD NOT have the proper advice to make a deal like this AND NOT be ripped off.
“He probably has good advisors that made sure he wasn’t being ripped off.”
It honestly took me 5 minutes to figure out what you were saying. I feel like I uniquely struggle with this, like I have some kind of undiscovered form of dyslexia. Maybe it’s just late.
Even if this decision is cited as case law in another case (i.e. somebody leverages the precedent) and a judgment is made, that judgment can be appealed arguing that the lower court was wrong in this instance, and then it would be up to the 9th Circuit to decide.
After the 9th Circuit makes their decision, it could still be appealed to the Supreme Court (which I think is the country’s overall direction the root commenter was referring to).
This kind of issue will come up very frequently in court because everyone has a phone, and it’s very easy for a lock screen to contain incriminating notifications. That kind of evidence is often decisive in court, which makes it an attractive/persuasive argument for appeals. Very likely this will end up in Supreme Court, which means decisions in lower courts are less consequential. The lower courts aren’t going to get to decide this one.
Nice to see a comment like this, I feel the same way. Google is the exception to all these other comments. The tools available to Google engineers make working outside Google feel painful and inefficient by comparison even with their unfettered access to all the third-party tooling.
It’s so good that it would actually be a factor if I were ever considering working somewhere else. Getting to work with Google’s in-house dev tooling is probably worth 15-20k to me. A lot more than 20k if the other company has a reputation for horrible tooling.
X was referring to a technical implementation detail that he had zero understanding of. He read something in a blog post I guess.
My reaction was to act like it was a fun joke or something. But inside, I absolutely loathed him every second of every day until I quit, and now I take great satisfaction knowing that I’ve surpassed him and would never do a thing to help his stagnating career. (In other words, I’m holding an extremely petty and lasting grudge.)
But my point is, he probably thought I was fine with all his joking. I always laughed.
To expand on the article’s point, I think the biggest thing young managers don’t understand is that people are going to be insincere to you as a basic showing of respect and a basic desire for career preservation. They’re going to smile and appear to enjoy you and laugh at your jokes and seem ok with everything, much moreso than they otherwise would. So don’t make the mistake of using their reactions to define your boundaries of what’s acceptable or what’s funny, because it’s not a typical relationship, and you will invariably believe that you are funnier than you are and that a wider range of unacceptable behaviors are acceptable.