> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics.
Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the next paragraph.
In my experience, during this "wartime" the author discusses, management knows the ship may be sinking/is sinking and are making their way towards the lifeboats. They still need to be seen as doing something though, so they string along the ICs hoping they can keep being "productive" even though management is completely checked out, and a lot of the ICs will be laid off or not survive the upcoming aquihire/turn down.
Absolutely this - management will do whatever it takes to help management get through whatever problem they currently have, and if that's outright lying to IC's, or stringing them along for a few months they will do that, and not even regret it for an instant.
A really solid engineer I know was working with a failing mobile payments company, got an offer somewhere else and like a fool took it to his manager, who matched the new offer and the guy accepted... for 2 months until the company went bankrupt and he was back at square one looking for a job.
on average, everyone will follow the path of maximum reward/lowest risk. Management has a job to do, but is aware that they may lack any choice or path to success. They still have a job to do in e.g. allocating engineers work, managing performance, promotions, and morale... so they do it, meanwhile they may also be looking for the exit.
As an IC, never believe a manager at face value - they will promote you if it's good for them, they will pacify your concerns as it's what they are paid for, and they will fire you if its good for them. This is the nature of the relationship.
Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit.
I had one manager like this after an acquisition, he literally threw his head back laughing when I said I was up for a promotion and raise (documented prior to the acquisition) and said a number which was what everyone at $ex_company with that title made. He said no, and that he was the one who got to decide if I get a promotion— I quit less than a month later for an actually good manger.
They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained.
> Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit.
Nothing is infinite and managers are both people and have their own constraints. In my experience, expecting otherwise will just select for either managers who work really hard but fail to get you much (due to lack of political skills), or those that are very good liars that say they're helping you but never do (and you never realize otherwise).
> They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained.
In my experience, pay increases linearly with soul drainage. As I started working for larger and larger companies the amount of nonsense and pay increase by the same order.
Responsibility decreases by the same magnitude, so while I was responsible for the whole IT operation/decisions of a small company for the lowest pay I ever had, I’d now be able to coast for half a year without anyone really noticing. BigCo is fucking weird.
Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the next paragraph.
In my experience, during this "wartime" the author discusses, management knows the ship may be sinking/is sinking and are making their way towards the lifeboats. They still need to be seen as doing something though, so they string along the ICs hoping they can keep being "productive" even though management is completely checked out, and a lot of the ICs will be laid off or not survive the upcoming aquihire/turn down.