This is sound advice. You have a significant amount of control over people's lives as a manager, and that should be treated with a level of respect. You have no idea how people feel, and it is quite possible that someone you manage doesn't know where they stand with you. At times that is more than enough to cause them stress and even convince them to look elsewhere. Work is stressful enough, and you don't need to add to it.
I should also note. If you're a manager, your job is to do things that make you uncomfortable. If you can't handle sitting there and telling them you're letting them go in person, it's probably not the path for you. Have the decency to look someone in the eye. Don't pass it off to HR, because that's more convenient.
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.
This is along the lines of "Ha, taking half the day off, are we?" when somebody leaves a little bit earlier than usual. It sounds like (just) a bad joke, but it has severe consequences for your working relationship.
I get that it's tempting to make jokes when you start managing for your old team members. Just accept the fact that you've switched positions and that your relationship will change. It will only make it more awkward if you don't.
> Just accept the fact that you've switched positions and that your relationship will change.
The key here, I think, is the relationship aspect.
I've seen and had so many terrible managers that had no idea how to create and maintain relationships with their subordinates. Every person responds to leadership differently, and needs different things from their immediate managers. A lot of people get into a management position and immediately try to bend people to their will.
The best manager I ever had was very hands-off from a day-to-day perspective, but knew every single one of his direct reports and how to manage them individually. Some people needed more frequent check ins and a stricter set of deadlines and expectations. Others needed the space and freedom to set their own schedule and have bigger picture goals. His ability to organize and assign the expectations and needs of the business to work for the person (rather than the other way around) is something I've always admired and look for in management.
This is why, if I ever manage, my focus will be on timely deliverables and not on time-at-desk. Give me a day when you think you can deliver something, update me as soon as you realize you can't ("manage expectations"), and do whatever you want with the rest of your time...
The basic rule of comedy, or making jokes, which is amateur comedy, is that you always punch up. It’s funny when you say “ha! you’re fired!” to your boss, but never when you say it to someone you can actually fire.
Same reason why parents (should) never joke about punishment or disciplinary action with their kids - when you have power and authority you also have a responsibility not to belittle it. People will take your power over them only as seriously as you take your responsibility towards them.
I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly - It’s easy for technical people promoted to a people management role not to realize that their words now have a significantly greater affect on morale.
The author did a good job expanding on situations that are now not funny, but here’s another one that I see all the time:
Butts in seats. As a manager, anything you say about the clock, the vacancy ratio of an employees chair, anything about time management really is not a joke. It is making the employee feel as though the work they do is not valued and that you expect them to be meat decorations prettying up an office chair.
I used to think that when I was promoted I could still be “one of the guys” - and I try hard to get quality time with the team, joke around, etc - but over time it’s become clear that I can never escape the new context in which my words and actions are perceived.
I can no longer shit on bad code like I used to - I now need to discover how we ended up with the deficiency, plan to correct it, and assure the rest of the engineers that we do have high quality standards we need to live up to.
There comes a point where you'll say something like "Huh, that looks interesting, I wonder what would happen if X", just because you still have some engineering thinking left in you, and three weeks later you'll get word that somebody spun up a working group to investigate X.
If you ever wondered why manager emails to a large team always look super-formal? We've touched that particular live wire, and would rather not do that again.
Another thing: don't compare people in your team to recently let-go people.
As a survivor after a series of lay-offs, I took over a project from someone who was recently laid off (let's call him Joe), got asked a really vague question about it and responded, IMO reasonably, that clarification was needed. All I got back was "That's a Joe-type of answer" (emphasis theirs).
I don't think it was funny, and it certainly didn't help my understanding of the problem. I brought this up in a meeting and was accused of being "too snippy lately" shortly after. It's the type of thing where if didn't already have 5 years of enjoying my role, I'd probably be looking for a new one.
I've always had a really dry sense of humor. When I moved into a management role, my director took me aside and said something to the effect of, "I have a dry sense of humor too. When I started managing people I had to build a filter between the jokes that pop into my head and the words that escape my mouth."
This was from my first year of managing when I had one screw-up that led people who overheard the interaction to report it. The joke was something like, "Oh hey, the start time for our meeting has already passed, and here we are still working. Why do you hate meeting with me?" In hindsight, it's now obvious to me that when there's a power differential, the other person can easily be left wondering, "Does my boss really think I don't like him? Oh my god, I can't ever be late to another meeting with him again!"
I'm now years down the road from that, and I cringe at some of the things I said when I was new to the role. I'm glad I've had time to learn some lessons in communication as a manager before COVID-19, because now that interactions have been scoped down to text chats, emails, and occasional video calls, people have to make inferences from a much smaller set of signals. I'm having to work twice as hard to be very direct and clear about what I want people to understand, and I have to go out of my way to deliberately ensure that interactions, both one-on-one and as a group, happen as frequently as is necessary to maintain the health of the individuals and of the team.
An experienced CEO joined a mid-sized company that I worked at a few years. His opening line, in his first all hands was a joke about firing the people who were a few minutes late to the call. It was obviously a joke, but you really can't make a worse impression and he was gone within a year.
I find that there are two aspects of good management that aren’t talked about enough.
First, power. Managers have explicit and implicit power, and you should understand both. Joking about firing someone is an abuse of your explicit power, but you should also be careful about excessive use of your ability to issue direct orders. Similarly, be aware how the implicit power of a manager affects conversations, and do little things like vote last to give others a chance to speak before they know where you’ve landed.
Secondly, good management is a lot of emotional labor. A portion of the emotional well being of your team is your problem, especially around things related to work itself. If managing is emotional labor, then do try to not make your job harder by freaking your directs out.
>In my opinion, that would be incredibly cruel and stupid.
Usually, it's more ignorance rather than (intentional) cruelty. If your office has a relaxed atmosphere, as a manager, it is very easy to make the mistake of thinking that you are just a regular part of the gang. But of course, you're not, and everyone (except you) is aware of your status and the fact that you control their continual employment, bonuses/raises and career advancement.
This view is reinforced in modern tech culture which is deeply uncomfortable with power and status hierarchies without realizing that a proper hierarchy with defined roles and responsibilities actually makes everyone more comfortable because everyone knows where they stand. The Valve case study of a fully horizontal organization is complete bullcrap because they replaced defined roles and responsibilities and chain of command with an ambiguous and implicit set of roles, responsibilities and chain of command. Nobody there believes that Gabe Newell is just a regular joe, regardless of what his title says.
Slightly related. My father owned a restaurant when I was growing up and employed local high school students as dishwashers. I was young, probably around 12 and I was at a summer camp that our dishwasher at the time was also attending and I made a joke to him about getting him fired. Ill never forget how mad my father was with me when he found out and how sternly he reprimanded me. He stressed early on with me that when you have control over people's livelihoods you never ever abuse the power dynamic that comes with that position.
As a non manager, from arm chair, when presented as an abstract concept, I can see it seeming incredulous.
The whole point however is that in the moment, in the context, with familiar people, as a new manager, there will be part of your brain that says "Do this". The advice is not even targeting the jerk-manager, who is ignorant and boisterous and does this consistently. It is targeting a manager in transition who may do this accidentally, as a misfiring instinct. It's the stereotypical best man / maid of honours making an inappropriate joke at a wedding with best intentions... but consequences.
To your question therefore:
Yes, there frequently is that part of one's brain for new team leads in some situations.
No, don't do it.
FWIW: To those taking a cynical view on such articles - There are any number of things, managementy or technical, that seem obvious when written down... but still get done wrong any day of the week :). In related but different context: my previous transition from hands-on to architect was similarly enlightening - all the designs and solutions that seemed so obvious and easy when presented with finished document; were so much more intimidating when faced with a blank slate, an empty sheer where any design pattern, infrastructure architecture can go :O.
It's scary to be a new architect, it's scary to be a new manager, and simple, actionable, clearly-good advice can be a good way to gain comfort and confidence, and provide a starting point to build on.
Describing a joke out of context can make a person sound very cruel indeed. I've been in situations where someone has made a joke about me dying, for example, and I found it to be funny and light-hearted. But if you strip out the context and say "he made a joke about me being murdered", it sounds far, far more cruel than it really was.
The reason the blog post was written is that jokes that would usually be fine among friends can take on a different tune as soon as the power dynamic changes, and that's not always obvious to the person with the upper hand.
I've had this happen at two jobs. Both times I immediately voiced that that was in poor taste, and next time they joke about it they'd best just let me go, because I don't want to work for someone who doesn't respect my livelihood. At the first job I was reprimanded for being "confrontational", which led to the second job where the manager apologized and took it to heart; we have a great working relationship now. It's the manager's responsibility to be the champion of good communication.
Only time I've seen a manager joke like that was with a senior engineer that also joked about quitting fairly often. It was banter and it worked for them. Same manager never joked about it with anyone else though.
There are a lot of tech blog posts to the effect of "Here is the obviously common sense business thing we learned" as a way of building a personal brand. I blame it on the fact that the tech culture starts in HS or College and then takes a worker straight into the industry; HS coder -> University -> jr coder role -> startup, but without the exposure to other contexts/jobs/roles/experiences.
But yeah, it's basic professionalism -- don't joke about firing people, quitting, pay cuts/raises, etc.
My manager does this. My managers' boss does it to him. One of the very few complaints I have about my management or my job.
I've sort of become inoculated to it though. Was tough at first though, especially since I have some (undiagnosed) manner of anxiety disorder. So the joke would happen and I would think about it for the rest of the day, if not longer.
It is probably a regional humor thing but with so much mobility these days it's hard to use your regional humor without offending people.
In some places you can ask "Are you smoking crack?" when someone suggests something silly or wrong. In other places that would be very wrong.
In some places certain words are insults and other places they're euphemisms.
Some places tolerate or encourage "harmless" sexual innuendo, others do not.
I have had employees that would appreciate a joke about performance or firing so long as it was obvious that it wasn't a veiled threat. I've had employees who that would probably have them working on finding another job. I'm not the type to joke about that, but I know who would appreciate it and who wouldn't.
> have you or anyone you know, joked about firing someone?
It can be a good joke if it is immediately obvious that it is a joke.
I would rather work with alright people that make stupid jokes than some of the more formally correct ones who'd mess up my salary month after month, drag me through stupid American-style personal-improvement-programs in hope of finding a firable offense etc. (And no, they didn't find anything, and I had my job until I was ready for something else ;-)
That said I certainly wouldn't recommend that sort of jokes and my guess is the people who come up with those kinds of jokes are mostly exactly the same people who shouldn't try them as it really isn't obvious at all.
I recall the game of thrones episode where this guy is telling a really old and well-known joke, and when he gets to the punchline, basically everybody in the room can't help but blurt it out before he can.
Or if you're in line and the cashier can't ring up your stuff for some technical reason, and you blurt out "well, I guess it must be free, huh?" But they have heard that one ever single day since they started.
Even I, paragon of ...uh... stuff... I once cracked a joke in the TSA line.
I would just imagine that most of this is human nature and I expect graduating to a higher level of power and responsibility has the same sort of well-traveled detours.
I've seen it a bunch in companies where the management was less formal - but not in IT, my impression of IT culture is borderline autistic - social interactions are very awkward compared to other industries I've worked in (manufacturing, marketing and newspapers) so this wouldn't go over well. Admittedly I didn't fit in well in those circles because I would put myself in the IT category, but I can still spot the difference. Even the tone of this discussion sounds so formal and alien to how people usually interact.
So I saw situations where it was said as a joke and taken as one, I wouldn't describe it as cruel or stupid.
The CEO of one of my previous companies at his birthday celebration joked at one of the employees that if he doesn't sing Happy Birthday song louder he will fire him.
And this is not the worst that has come out of his mouth.
Having to explain this out is pretty common or understandable. And I think it's less about the specific example not saying X, and more about new leadership role = same words now mean totally different things, especially if it's your first go at it.
Many think that leadership IQ is something innate, but some aspects definitely either have to be explained, or learned the hard way. That's totally ok though - it means most of us have what it takes to manage if we're willing to learn.
While we're on this topic, managers don't invite your direct reports for one-on-one meeting out of the blue with no agenda. I've heard multiple people tell me they assume they're about to be fired.
"I mean, you could just sack me if it goes wrong" is a personal go-to.
Built an emergency fund at age 20 and stopped giving a fuck, it's just business.
Obligatory "I'm not American, we don't die on the street if we break our leg whilst unemployed here" I guess.
I find dark humour amusing in general because it's just like, yeah, you actually could wake up tomorrow with a brick in the back of your head. Live as if it matters today. Important now more than ever.
Similarly, marriage protip: Don't joke about divorces. Even if you think your partner can handle it. Mine can and we still don't do it, as policy. It's a known policy, too; we mentioned it to each other before (briefly, a long time ago, not as some big event).
This is certainly far from "the one key to a happy marriage!", but it's a brick in the house.
It generally fits into the larger social IQ element of thinking about the worst way someone may take something you communicate. This is a particularly easy place to see how you may have felt it was a light-hearted joke, but someone else could easily take it entirely seriously, or as a passive-aggressive "ha ha only serious".
I know the tech community likes to hate on company policies and bureaucracy, but this is exactly why you need SOME rules - to protect employees from bad managers.
If you have a process in place that managers must follow in order to terminate an employee, employees don't have to be afraid of tasteless jokes about firing. If there is a process that involves the employee (like a PIP), you also don't have to be afraid that you'll be blindsided with a termination.
Same thing applies to "unlimited" vacation. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but when you get rid of your vacation policy, you are transferring all handling of time-off to your front line managers. My experience with unlimited vacation at Netflix was poor because I had a manager that made little comments here and there that made me feel guilty about taking time off. If I had days off that I accrued then I would know exactly what I'm entitled to take.
I wrote a blog post about why we got rid of our unlimited vacation policy at our company.
I have been passed over for promotion because of a complete joke remark like that made in presence of a person with whom I did not have very close working relationship.
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Making a joke about firing your subordinate would require perfect understanding of the state of mind of the person you are talking to. As a manager your job is to understand it is not possible to understand exactly how your words are going to be interpreted. Thus, telling a joke about firing your subordinate is a sign of bad judgment at best.
Another responsibility of the manager is to ensure his/her team is productive. This can't happen when people feel unsafe about their financial situation. Strike two.
There is absolutely nothing good that can come from telling a joke about firing someone. Even if the person you are joking about completely understands you are joking, somebody else might overhear the conversation leading to bad results. Another reason to treat it as a sign of bad judgement.
In general, as a manager, never say things that you don't mean. When people know they can depend on every word you say it makes every word this more powerful and better tool to accomplish your goals.
> Yeah. Also, don't joke about leaving the company.
One of my personal rules is to not even discuss leaving a company with any colleague. It’s far to easy for this information to leak back to your manager. Even if your colleagues had good intentions bring it up, the fact that you didn’t says enough.
I would add that anyone who is planning on moving into management should also avoid joking like this.
I once worked with an engineer who had a lead that would joke all the time about firing him. As a lead he had no authority to fire anyone but it was well known that he wanted to transition into a management position. Within two weeks of the lead actually becoming a manager, the engineer left the company for another job.
I remember speaking with the engineer about it after he left and he told me that he knew it was a joke but it still made him slightly uneasy. He wondered whether there was some grain of truth in the jokes. He wanted to make sure that he was leaving on his terms.
The take away that I took from that was if you're going to go down the management path, consider everyone a potential direct report and communicate accordingly. The joke that you're making as peers can take on a different meaning the day you become their manager.
I am going to be contrarian here, because this advice is misleadingly "obvious," and almost everyone is going to reflexively agree with it, because who wants to be the asshole making uncomfortable "jokes" about people's livelihood?
But.
Counter signaling is a powerful tool in the social toolbox, and it works exactly when uncertainty and discomfort may be present. The problem isn't the counter-signaling, it's the poor social models and actual lack of trust and common knowledge between the people.
I think this advice is practical because any given manager is going to create a mediocre-at-best environment, but in my perfect world there would be enough trust and common knowledge about exactly where everyone stands that a joke like this would be a nonissue.
That means in my perfect world managers would be better at creating that.
The reason I am saying this is that if you go away from this thread with the idea "joking about serious things is bad," then your job is done when you simply don't do the bad thing. But if the lesson is actually "you don't have the skill necessary to create the safety and clarity on your team to make a joke like this and have it be fine" then you have affordance to maybe be better at creating safety and clarity--at least you have a trailhead to start looking.
Perhaps the greatest reason why joking about job security is so bad is that it forces an irreversible wedge between the employee and the employer or team.
If a person believes their job is in peril they lose focus of their work and shift focus into matters of personal security. People tend to over emphasize the nature of their employment as a matter of personal identity, accomplishment, and life progress. When those things are in peril they become more important problem to fix than their assigned responsibilities, work/life balance, or even familial relationships which can snowball into further problems. While this is frequently more a matter of personal vanity than finances the problem is still there and it’s socially contagious, which is toxic.
Counter intuitively I have found many people are less emotionally troubled about losing their jobs when the harm is purely financial. That isn’t to say it is free of stress, but rather there are fewer panic moments.
> Counter intuitively I have found many people are less emotionally troubled about losing their jobs when the harm is purely financial. That isn’t to say it is free of stress, but rather there are fewer panic moments.
Exactly. I was at a job for nine years, ready for a change, and honestly hoping for a severance package. (Finding a good job is time consuming, so I didn't want to do it on the side and surprise the people I worked with for years with two weeks notice.)
When the higher up delivered the news to me, I had to reassure him! Fortunately, everything was done with dignity, I had plenty of time to finish my project and transfer knowledge.
Leadership roles mean some tasks become 'only you' tasks.
Part of that is a radically changed power dynamic. Asking someone to pick up a coffee for you suddenly isn't just a question they can feel safe saying no to - favors aren't favors anymore. Don't put your direct reports in that position, ever.
That Band of Brothers scene w/ Winters and Compton about playing poker with the troops actually covers this idea really well.
This misses the larger lesson: separate your personal and professional interactions, especially with people at different levels of responsibility.
Its a hallmark of a junior manager, someone who doesn't know where the line for their authority is. its trying to coax your subordinates into giving you power over them - but you already have it. its a form of cowardice, of uncomfortability. the opposite of this is the manager who gives all their power to THEIR manager, ie "idk man, this doesnt make any sense to me either but thats the way corporate wants it done." well if all you are is a mouthpiece for corporate, then what good are you?
[+] [-] kemiller2002|5 years ago|reply
I should also note. If you're a manager, your job is to do things that make you uncomfortable. If you can't handle sitting there and telling them you're letting them go in person, it's probably not the path for you. Have the decency to look someone in the eye. Don't pass it off to HR, because that's more convenient.
[+] [-] Non24Throw|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mjayhn|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CapriciousCptl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _gfrc|5 years ago|reply
I get that it's tempting to make jokes when you start managing for your old team members. Just accept the fact that you've switched positions and that your relationship will change. It will only make it more awkward if you don't.
[+] [-] protonimitate|5 years ago|reply
The key here, I think, is the relationship aspect. I've seen and had so many terrible managers that had no idea how to create and maintain relationships with their subordinates. Every person responds to leadership differently, and needs different things from their immediate managers. A lot of people get into a management position and immediately try to bend people to their will.
The best manager I ever had was very hands-off from a day-to-day perspective, but knew every single one of his direct reports and how to manage them individually. Some people needed more frequent check ins and a stricter set of deadlines and expectations. Others needed the space and freedom to set their own schedule and have bigger picture goals. His ability to organize and assign the expectations and needs of the business to work for the person (rather than the other way around) is something I've always admired and look for in management.
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowld|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudhirj|5 years ago|reply
Same reason why parents (should) never joke about punishment or disciplinary action with their kids - when you have power and authority you also have a responsibility not to belittle it. People will take your power over them only as seriously as you take your responsibility towards them.
[+] [-] binarytox1n|5 years ago|reply
The author did a good job expanding on situations that are now not funny, but here’s another one that I see all the time:
Butts in seats. As a manager, anything you say about the clock, the vacancy ratio of an employees chair, anything about time management really is not a joke. It is making the employee feel as though the work they do is not valued and that you expect them to be meat decorations prettying up an office chair.
I used to think that when I was promoted I could still be “one of the guys” - and I try hard to get quality time with the team, joke around, etc - but over time it’s become clear that I can never escape the new context in which my words and actions are perceived.
I can no longer shit on bad code like I used to - I now need to discover how we ended up with the deficiency, plan to correct it, and assure the rest of the engineers that we do have high quality standards we need to live up to.
[+] [-] groby_b|5 years ago|reply
There comes a point where you'll say something like "Huh, that looks interesting, I wonder what would happen if X", just because you still have some engineering thinking left in you, and three weeks later you'll get word that somebody spun up a working group to investigate X.
If you ever wondered why manager emails to a large team always look super-formal? We've touched that particular live wire, and would rather not do that again.
[+] [-] dfxm12|5 years ago|reply
As a survivor after a series of lay-offs, I took over a project from someone who was recently laid off (let's call him Joe), got asked a really vague question about it and responded, IMO reasonably, that clarification was needed. All I got back was "That's a Joe-type of answer" (emphasis theirs).
I don't think it was funny, and it certainly didn't help my understanding of the problem. I brought this up in a meeting and was accused of being "too snippy lately" shortly after. It's the type of thing where if didn't already have 5 years of enjoying my role, I'd probably be looking for a new one.
[+] [-] steelframe|5 years ago|reply
This was from my first year of managing when I had one screw-up that led people who overheard the interaction to report it. The joke was something like, "Oh hey, the start time for our meeting has already passed, and here we are still working. Why do you hate meeting with me?" In hindsight, it's now obvious to me that when there's a power differential, the other person can easily be left wondering, "Does my boss really think I don't like him? Oh my god, I can't ever be late to another meeting with him again!"
I'm now years down the road from that, and I cringe at some of the things I said when I was new to the role. I'm glad I've had time to learn some lessons in communication as a manager before COVID-19, because now that interactions have been scoped down to text chats, emails, and occasional video calls, people have to make inferences from a much smaller set of signals. I'm having to work twice as hard to be very direct and clear about what I want people to understand, and I have to go out of my way to deliberately ensure that interactions, both one-on-one and as a group, happen as frequently as is necessary to maintain the health of the individuals and of the team.
[+] [-] imsofuture|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbay808|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] why-el|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|5 years ago|reply
First, power. Managers have explicit and implicit power, and you should understand both. Joking about firing someone is an abuse of your explicit power, but you should also be careful about excessive use of your ability to issue direct orders. Similarly, be aware how the implicit power of a manager affects conversations, and do little things like vote last to give others a chance to speak before they know where you’ve landed.
Secondly, good management is a lot of emotional labor. A portion of the emotional well being of your team is your problem, especially around things related to work itself. If managing is emotional labor, then do try to not make your job harder by freaking your directs out.
[+] [-] subhro|5 years ago|reply
I am not a manager, but here is a question for managers, have you or anyone you know, joked about firing someone?
In my opinion, that would be incredibly cruel and stupid.
[+] [-] macspoofing|5 years ago|reply
Usually, it's more ignorance rather than (intentional) cruelty. If your office has a relaxed atmosphere, as a manager, it is very easy to make the mistake of thinking that you are just a regular part of the gang. But of course, you're not, and everyone (except you) is aware of your status and the fact that you control their continual employment, bonuses/raises and career advancement.
This view is reinforced in modern tech culture which is deeply uncomfortable with power and status hierarchies without realizing that a proper hierarchy with defined roles and responsibilities actually makes everyone more comfortable because everyone knows where they stand. The Valve case study of a fully horizontal organization is complete bullcrap because they replaced defined roles and responsibilities and chain of command with an ambiguous and implicit set of roles, responsibilities and chain of command. Nobody there believes that Gabe Newell is just a regular joe, regardless of what his title says.
[+] [-] aketchum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaNovak|5 years ago|reply
The whole point however is that in the moment, in the context, with familiar people, as a new manager, there will be part of your brain that says "Do this". The advice is not even targeting the jerk-manager, who is ignorant and boisterous and does this consistently. It is targeting a manager in transition who may do this accidentally, as a misfiring instinct. It's the stereotypical best man / maid of honours making an inappropriate joke at a wedding with best intentions... but consequences.
To your question therefore:
Yes, there frequently is that part of one's brain for new team leads in some situations.
No, don't do it.
FWIW: To those taking a cynical view on such articles - There are any number of things, managementy or technical, that seem obvious when written down... but still get done wrong any day of the week :). In related but different context: my previous transition from hands-on to architect was similarly enlightening - all the designs and solutions that seemed so obvious and easy when presented with finished document; were so much more intimidating when faced with a blank slate, an empty sheer where any design pattern, infrastructure architecture can go :O.
It's scary to be a new architect, it's scary to be a new manager, and simple, actionable, clearly-good advice can be a good way to gain comfort and confidence, and provide a starting point to build on.
[+] [-] dorkwood|5 years ago|reply
The reason the blog post was written is that jokes that would usually be fine among friends can take on a different tune as soon as the power dynamic changes, and that's not always obvious to the person with the upper hand.
[+] [-] disgruntledphd2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turdnagel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craftinator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blaser-waffle|5 years ago|reply
But yeah, it's basic professionalism -- don't joke about firing people, quitting, pay cuts/raises, etc.
[+] [-] vincentmarle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ylor|5 years ago|reply
I've sort of become inoculated to it though. Was tough at first though, especially since I have some (undiagnosed) manner of anxiety disorder. So the joke would happen and I would think about it for the rest of the day, if not longer.
[+] [-] projektfu|5 years ago|reply
In some places you can ask "Are you smoking crack?" when someone suggests something silly or wrong. In other places that would be very wrong.
In some places certain words are insults and other places they're euphemisms.
Some places tolerate or encourage "harmless" sexual innuendo, others do not.
I have had employees that would appreciate a joke about performance or firing so long as it was obvious that it wasn't a veiled threat. I've had employees who that would probably have them working on finding another job. I'm not the type to joke about that, but I know who would appreciate it and who wouldn't.
Edit: typo
[+] [-] reitanqild|5 years ago|reply
It can be a good joke if it is immediately obvious that it is a joke.
I would rather work with alright people that make stupid jokes than some of the more formally correct ones who'd mess up my salary month after month, drag me through stupid American-style personal-improvement-programs in hope of finding a firable offense etc. (And no, they didn't find anything, and I had my job until I was ready for something else ;-)
That said I certainly wouldn't recommend that sort of jokes and my guess is the people who come up with those kinds of jokes are mostly exactly the same people who shouldn't try them as it really isn't obvious at all.
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
Or if you're in line and the cashier can't ring up your stuff for some technical reason, and you blurt out "well, I guess it must be free, huh?" But they have heard that one ever single day since they started.
Even I, paragon of ...uh... stuff... I once cracked a joke in the TSA line.
I would just imagine that most of this is human nature and I expect graduating to a higher level of power and responsibility has the same sort of well-traveled detours.
[+] [-] rubber_duck|5 years ago|reply
So I saw situations where it was said as a joke and taken as one, I wouldn't describe it as cruel or stupid.
[+] [-] myth_drannon|5 years ago|reply
And this is not the worst that has come out of his mouth.
[+] [-] dogman144|5 years ago|reply
Many think that leadership IQ is something innate, but some aspects definitely either have to be explained, or learned the hard way. That's totally ok though - it means most of us have what it takes to manage if we're willing to learn.
[+] [-] DevX101|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esotericn|5 years ago|reply
"I mean, you could just sack me if it goes wrong" is a personal go-to.
Built an emergency fund at age 20 and stopped giving a fuck, it's just business.
Obligatory "I'm not American, we don't die on the street if we break our leg whilst unemployed here" I guess.
I find dark humour amusing in general because it's just like, yeah, you actually could wake up tomorrow with a brick in the back of your head. Live as if it matters today. Important now more than ever.
[+] [-] jerf|5 years ago|reply
This is certainly far from "the one key to a happy marriage!", but it's a brick in the house.
It generally fits into the larger social IQ element of thinking about the worst way someone may take something you communicate. This is a particularly easy place to see how you may have felt it was a light-hearted joke, but someone else could easily take it entirely seriously, or as a passive-aggressive "ha ha only serious".
[+] [-] rsweeney21|5 years ago|reply
If you have a process in place that managers must follow in order to terminate an employee, employees don't have to be afraid of tasteless jokes about firing. If there is a process that involves the employee (like a PIP), you also don't have to be afraid that you'll be blindsided with a termination.
Same thing applies to "unlimited" vacation. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but when you get rid of your vacation policy, you are transferring all handling of time-off to your front line managers. My experience with unlimited vacation at Netflix was poor because I had a manager that made little comments here and there that made me feel guilty about taking time off. If I had days off that I accrued then I would know exactly what I'm entitled to take.
I wrote a blog post about why we got rid of our unlimited vacation policy at our company.
https://www.facetdev.com/blog/posts/why-we-ditched-our-unlim...
[+] [-] lmilcin|5 years ago|reply
I have been passed over for promotion because of a complete joke remark like that made in presence of a person with whom I did not have very close working relationship.
---
Making a joke about firing your subordinate would require perfect understanding of the state of mind of the person you are talking to. As a manager your job is to understand it is not possible to understand exactly how your words are going to be interpreted. Thus, telling a joke about firing your subordinate is a sign of bad judgment at best.
Another responsibility of the manager is to ensure his/her team is productive. This can't happen when people feel unsafe about their financial situation. Strike two.
There is absolutely nothing good that can come from telling a joke about firing someone. Even if the person you are joking about completely understands you are joking, somebody else might overhear the conversation leading to bad results. Another reason to treat it as a sign of bad judgement.
In general, as a manager, never say things that you don't mean. When people know they can depend on every word you say it makes every word this more powerful and better tool to accomplish your goals.
[+] [-] woutr_be|5 years ago|reply
One of my personal rules is to not even discuss leaving a company with any colleague. It’s far to easy for this information to leak back to your manager. Even if your colleagues had good intentions bring it up, the fact that you didn’t says enough.
[+] [-] akamia|5 years ago|reply
I once worked with an engineer who had a lead that would joke all the time about firing him. As a lead he had no authority to fire anyone but it was well known that he wanted to transition into a management position. Within two weeks of the lead actually becoming a manager, the engineer left the company for another job.
I remember speaking with the engineer about it after he left and he told me that he knew it was a joke but it still made him slightly uneasy. He wondered whether there was some grain of truth in the jokes. He wanted to make sure that he was leaving on his terms.
The take away that I took from that was if you're going to go down the management path, consider everyone a potential direct report and communicate accordingly. The joke that you're making as peers can take on a different meaning the day you become their manager.
[+] [-] pmichaud|5 years ago|reply
But.
Counter signaling is a powerful tool in the social toolbox, and it works exactly when uncertainty and discomfort may be present. The problem isn't the counter-signaling, it's the poor social models and actual lack of trust and common knowledge between the people.
I think this advice is practical because any given manager is going to create a mediocre-at-best environment, but in my perfect world there would be enough trust and common knowledge about exactly where everyone stands that a joke like this would be a nonissue.
That means in my perfect world managers would be better at creating that.
The reason I am saying this is that if you go away from this thread with the idea "joking about serious things is bad," then your job is done when you simply don't do the bad thing. But if the lesson is actually "you don't have the skill necessary to create the safety and clarity on your team to make a joke like this and have it be fine" then you have affordance to maybe be better at creating safety and clarity--at least you have a trailhead to start looking.
[+] [-] austincheney|5 years ago|reply
If a person believes their job is in peril they lose focus of their work and shift focus into matters of personal security. People tend to over emphasize the nature of their employment as a matter of personal identity, accomplishment, and life progress. When those things are in peril they become more important problem to fix than their assigned responsibilities, work/life balance, or even familial relationships which can snowball into further problems. While this is frequently more a matter of personal vanity than finances the problem is still there and it’s socially contagious, which is toxic.
Counter intuitively I have found many people are less emotionally troubled about losing their jobs when the harm is purely financial. That isn’t to say it is free of stress, but rather there are fewer panic moments.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|5 years ago|reply
Exactly. I was at a job for nine years, ready for a change, and honestly hoping for a severance package. (Finding a good job is time consuming, so I didn't want to do it on the side and surprise the people I worked with for years with two weeks notice.)
When the higher up delivered the news to me, I had to reassure him! Fortunately, everything was done with dignity, I had plenty of time to finish my project and transfer knowledge.
[+] [-] dogman144|5 years ago|reply
Leadership roles mean some tasks become 'only you' tasks.
Part of that is a radically changed power dynamic. Asking someone to pick up a coffee for you suddenly isn't just a question they can feel safe saying no to - favors aren't favors anymore. Don't put your direct reports in that position, ever.
That Band of Brothers scene w/ Winters and Compton about playing poker with the troops actually covers this idea really well.
[+] [-] kryogen1c|5 years ago|reply
Its a hallmark of a junior manager, someone who doesn't know where the line for their authority is. its trying to coax your subordinates into giving you power over them - but you already have it. its a form of cowardice, of uncomfortability. the opposite of this is the manager who gives all their power to THEIR manager, ie "idk man, this doesnt make any sense to me either but thats the way corporate wants it done." well if all you are is a mouthpiece for corporate, then what good are you?