Holy macaroni batman, I was not expecting that post to ignite a shitstorm. It felt like a pretty straightforward observation: you were hired to do a job, you should do your best to do that job.

Interestingly, the response was almost universally positive for the first 8 hours or so. But then the tide began to turn as the 🔥hot takes🔥 began rolling in (oh god 🙈) and then began pingponging off each other, competing for and amplifying each other’s outrage. 😕

When something touches a nerve like this, it swiftly becomes less about your actual words and more of a public event, or maybe a Teachable Moment. (🤮) Everybody has to weigh in with their commentary, and while it’s not super fun to be on the receiving end, I have mostly learned to distinguish the general pile-on from the few engaging in bad faith. I just keep telling myself that public discourse is how we create shared consensus and shift the Overton window and industry norms. So that’s all fair game, it’s done in good faith and it’s the price of change. I can take a few days of shitty twitter mentions for the team, lol.

The one comment that did worm under my skin was a woman who said she believed my post would give an abusive former boss ammo to use against people like her in the future. And that, more than all the hatertomatoade, is why I wrote this epic followup.

Two responses i’d like to foreground

First, I’d like to link to something Terra said about the importance of ERGs for marginalized workers, especially during times of duress.

So this is great if you exist in a position of privilege where you can view something like an Employee Resource Group (ERG) as extracurricular. As a trans person, the viability and strength of an ERG that speaks to our needs is critical to my employment. (1/x) 🧵 https://t.co/9sG0FrGN6i

— Terra Field, UNIX eunuch (@RainofTerra) March 7, 2021

Thanks Terra, I stand corrected — I can totally see how that work counts as part of one’s core job, and managers should understand this and define it as such.

I still don’t think it means you promote someone purely on the basis of that work; I don’t see how you can promote someone up an engineering ladder until they can fulfill the technical requirements of the next level. It could certainly mean expanding the core requirements of your role to include your ERG labor, though perhaps not replacing the technical work entirely (over the long term).

This goes both ways, fwiw. Nobody should be promoted without doing their fair share of the emotional labor and glue work it takes to keep the company going. A successful career in sociotechnical systems means leveling up your social repertoire as well as your technical skills. Your job descriptions and levels must reflect this, spelling out both the social and the technical requirements at each level.

🔥🔥🔥Tip of the Day🔥🔥🔥

If you want to know what your company REALLY cares about, take a management gig for a while and listen closely to the debates over whether or not to promote someone to the post-senior levels, and why or why not. You are LITERALLY witnessing as your organization decides, over and over, what it values the most, what it wants to reward, whose footsteps they want you to follow in, and where to spend its scarcest, most inelastic resource: staff and principal engineering titles. Fascinating shit.

Secondly, please go and read Shelby’s excellent thread, written from the perspective of someone who has been “Susan” for a number of reasons.

having been a Susan in a couple different roles:

sometimes it's that my priorities as a sharp-end practitioner differed from what leadership thought was important, and they didn't listen to my feedback
1/

— one spees, please (@shelbyspees) March 7, 2021

 

These situations are complicated, and managers should always, always try to listen and understand the subtleties of each unique situation before coming to some mutual understanding with their team member about what the core responsibilities of the job are. Jobs are living documents, and it doesn’t hurt to revisit them and clarify from time to time. <3

Objection: “Nobody has Just One Job”

Completely true. I was trying to be funny by referring to the “You had one job!” meme. I apologize. Yes, everybody has a basket of responsibilities. I DO think that a well-written job description and clarification on the priorities of the job is a good thing, and will go a long way towards helping you figure out how to spend your time and how to not get burned out.

Also: am I prone to hyperbole? Yes ma’am, sweeping statements are LITERALLY ALL I DO. (Sorry ☺️)

FTR, I don’t think your core responsibilities should be overwhelming, and there should be plenty of time in your normal 40 hour work week to devote to so-called electives and extracurriculars. I’ve said many times that I don’t believe anyone has more than four hours a day of real, focused, challenging engineering labor in them. So maybe 15-20 hours/week of moving the business forward in your areas of ownership?

Most of us have about ✨four hours✨a day of intense cognitive labor, the kind where you are learning or creating something new.

You can spend more hours than that "working", meaning emails, meetings, docs, etc — some of which may be important, but still less taxing. https://t.co/IEPwE7VQ4F

— Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy) December 18, 2020

Everyone should have cycles free for participating in the “squishy” parts of work. It’s an important part of taking a group of random individuals and connecting them with meaning and a sense of mission. That isn’t HR’s job, or the managers or execs’ jobs, that is everyone’s job, the more the better. Everyone should have flexibility, autonomy, and variety in their schedule, and should feel supported in using work hours to support their peers. Nothing I am saying contradicts any of that. But sometimes something’s gotta give, and usually your core responsbilities are not what you want to sacrifice.

Objection: “Interviewing isn’t optional”

Sure. But you weren’t hired to interview. It’s just part of the basket of secondary responsibilities that come along with being a member of the team. If you’re an engineer, you likely weren’t hired to write blog posts or mentor folks — unless you were! were you?? — which makes them similarly in the bucket marked “valuable, but secondary”.

We aren’t talking about “steady state”, we’re talking about what to do when you aren’t able to fulfill the core functions of your job. This should be a temporary state of emergency, not the status quo. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s totally normal to ask to be excused from the interviewing rotation for a quarter or so, or any of your other secondary responsibilities.

Objection: “How dare you not promote someone who is getting good peer reviews”

I said she was getting some compliments and rave reviews. If you’re getting compliments from HR, marketing, and other people sprinkled across the company, but you aren’t delivering for your own team; if you’re holding back core initiatives for your closest peers, then you aren’t doing your work in the right order.

I’ve seen this happen when an engineer’s public persona becomes more important to them than their actual work. When they get hooked on the public adulation of giving talks and writing posts and going to conferences, meanwhile their output at work drops off a cliff. This isn’t fair to your coworkers. Maybe you don’t want to do this job anymore, maybe you want a job where your core responsibilities are writing and speaking. I don’t know. All I know is that if I’m the manager of that team, my responsibility and loyalty is to the well-functioning of that team, so we need to have a conversation and clarify what’s happening.

Again, all I am saying is that your commitments to your immediate team come first. Not following through affects way more than just you.

Objection: “You are hating on / devaluing glue work”

I really wish I had thought to link to Tanya Reilly’s invaluable material on glue work in my original post, but I didn’t connect those dots, sadly. Yes, it can be hard for engineering managers to recognize or reward glue work, and yes, glue work is an invaluable form of technical leadership. I don’t have a lot to say about this other than I completely agree, and it is not what I am talking about.

Objection: “All these extra-curriculars should count towards promotions”

Well, yes! Duh! I am all for promoting people not based on raw individual coding output, but on overall impact. People who perform a lot of glue work are invaluable to any high functioning team, and people who run internal ERGs, do lots of DEI work, etc — that SHOULD factor into promotions. In my original post I said that sadly, when someone isn’t performing the key parts of their job, you don’t get credit for these wonderful positives — they are not enough on their own (unless of course you have an understanding with your manager that your core responsibilities have changed), and can even be evidence of time mismanagement or an inability to prioritize.

I cannot honestly understand why this is controversial. If you were hired as a database engineer, and you spent the year doing mostly DEI work, how does it make sense to promote you to the next level as a database engineer? That’s not setting you up for success at the next level at ALL. If this was agreed upon by you and your manager, I can see giving you glowing reviews for the period of time spent on DEI work, as long as your dbeng responsibilities were gracefully handed off to someone else (and not just dropped), but not promoting you for it.

However, if you ARE competently performing your core responsibilities as a database engineer, and are performing them at the next level, then all your additional work for the company — on DEI, ERGs, mentoring, interviewing, etc — adds up to a MASSIVELY compelling body of work, and a powerful argument for promotion. It certainly ought to be enough to push you over the edge if you are on the bubble for the next level..

Objection: “You hate DEI work and demean those who do it”

It does not make me anti-DEI work to point out that you were hired to do a certain job, first and foremost. If you want your first-and-foremost job to be DEI work, that’s great! Go get that job! If you want your first-and-foremost job to be engineering, but then not do that job, I … guess I just fail to see how this is a logically defensible position.

As someone else put it: “Your One Job is the cake, the rest is the icing”.//TODO citation You can often negotiate a job that has a LOT of icing — but you should negotiate, no surprises. DEI work is absolutely valuable to companies, because having a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage and increasingly a hiring advantage. But that work isn’t typically budgeted under engineering, it comes from G&A

I can also understand why you might want to keep the (unfortunately higher) engineering salary and the (unfortunately higher) social status you have with an engineering role, even if engineering no longer feeds your soul the way doing diversity work does. I know people in this situation, and it’s tricky. 😕 There is no single right or wrong answer, just a question of whether you can find an employer who is willing to pay for that configuration. But I should think clarity and straightforwardness is more important than ever when your heart’s desire is unconventional.

Objection: “You’re letting managers off the hook. This is entirely a management failure.”

You might be right. This is often a consequence of negligent, unclear, or biased management. But not always. I’ve also seen it happen — close up — with engaged, empathetic, highly skilled managers who were good at setting structure and boundaries, deeply encouraging, gave tons of chances and great constant feedback, tried every which way to make it work … and the employee just wasn’t interested. They volunteered for every social committee and followed every butterfly that fluttered by. They just weren’t into the work.

YES, managers should be keeping close tabs on their reports and giving constant feedback. YES, it’s on the manager to make sure the role is clearly defined.

YES, managers should be clear with employees on what the promotion path is, and YES, no review should ever be a surprise.

YES, if people all over the org are heaping requests or responsibilities on the Susans of the world, it can be difficult to prioritize and it is not fair to expect them to juggle those requests, the manager should help to shelter them from it. Yes yes yes. We are all on the same page.

But I am writing this post, not to managers, but to engineers, people like me, who are confused about why they aren’t getting promoted and others are. I am writing this post because good managers are in scarce supply, and I don’t want your career to be on hold until you happen to get a good one. I am trying to provide a peek behind the curtain into something that frustrates managers and holds a lot of people back, so that you can take matters into your own hand and try to fix it. If your manager hasn’t been clear with you on what your core job is, they suck and I’m sorry.

Is any of this your fault? Maybe, maybe not. But it is something you have some control over. You can at least open the conversation and ask for some clarity.

You shouldn’t HAVE to do their job for them. But why let a shitty manager hurt your career any more than you must?.

Objection: “This is a gendered thing. ‘Steven’ would have been promoted for this, while ‘Susan’ gets scolded.”

A surprising number of people thought I was writing this as advice specifically to and for women, and got mad about that. Nope, sorry. It was not a gendered thing at all. I’ve seen this happen pretty much equally with men and women. I had planned on writing three or four anecdotes, using multiple fake names and genders, but the first one turned out long so I stopped.

Confession: I put zero thought into constructing a realistic or plausible list of activities “Susan” has at work. This came back to bite me. A LOT of people were doing a super close read of the situation (e.g. “She’s on three ERGs, so she must be a queer woman of color, which means she’s probably the most senior person at the company along all three dimensions of marginalization…”) — which, AUGH — this isn’t real, y’all —

✨This is Not A Real Situation✨.

— it was MADE UP! Totally! I just listed off the first several things that came to mind that people do at work that aren’t things they specifically got hired to do. That’s it.

I rather regret this. I should have put more time and thought into constructing a scenario that was less easy to nitpick. But I didn’t want anyone to see themselves in it, so I didn’t want it to be too recognizable or realistic. I just wanted a placeholder for “Person who does lots of great stuff at work”, and that’s how you got Susan.

TLDR — yep, Susan probably has a tougher go of this than Steven. I would argue that Steven generally wouldn’t be promoted either if he wasn’t adequately performing his core responsibilities, but who knows. This isn’t a real person or scenario. Women and nonbinary folks have it tougher than men. Your point? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Objection: “Why do you hate collaboration” and “This doesn’t apply to me because my job isn’t just writing code”

I never meant to imply that your “One Job” was only work you could do heads down on your own. Lots of people’s jobs involve a ton of force multiplying, mentorship, reviewing, writing proposals… typical glue work. If you have a manager that thinks you are only doing your One Job when you are heads down writing code with your headphones on, that’s a Really Bad Manager.

The more senior your role is, the more your One Job involves less “write feature X” and more “use your judgment to help fine tune our sociotechnical systems”. This is natural and good.

It is also MORE of an argument for making sure you are in alignment with others in your org about what is the most important thing for your time and energy to be spent on, not less of one. Communication and persuasion are what upper levels are all about, right?

Objection: // Placeholder

I reserve the right to add to this list of objections after I go catch up on twitter, lol.

In conclusion

Finally, I want to call out a perceptive comment by @codefolio, where he said this:

You're describing a trust exercise with your manager. Many, many people have had managers who are not worthy of that trust exercise.

— Noah Gibbs (@codefolio) March 8, 2021

Ouch. Truth.

This speaks to something I should probably be more explicit about, which is that my writing and my advice generally assumes you are operating in a high-trust environment. That’s the kind of environment I have been tremendously fortunate to operate in for most of my career — an environment where people are flawed but compassionate, skilled, and doing their best for each other, with comparatively low levels of assholery, sociopaths, and other bad actors. If your situation is very unlike mine, I can understand why my advice could seem blinkered, naive, and even harmful. Please use your own judgment.

I only write because I want the best for you — even those of you who very openly and vocally despise me (and yes, there are quite a few of you. Start a club or something). 🥰

All said and done, about 95% of the people who replied said that my post was helpful and clarifying for them, about 3% had very interesting critical takes that I got something valuable from, and only 2% were hurling rotten tomatoes and reading and interpreting my words in ways that felt wildly detached from reality. I try to remember that, when I get discouraged and feel like the whole world hates me and wants me to shut up. 🍅🍅🍅

I am not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s alright. 💜 My advice is not relevant or helpful to anyone, and that’s okay too. Hopefully I have cleared up enough of the misunderstandings that anyone who is reading my words in good faith now has a clear picture of what I was trying to say. And hopefully it’s helpful to some of you.

PSA: I will be your rubber ducky advice buddy🐥❤️🐣

I have posted this on twitter a few times, but if you are struggling with a career conundrum, sociotechnical growing pains, or management issue, I am generally happy to hop on a phone call over the weekend and talk through it with you. I have benefited SO much from the time and energy of others in the tech industry, it’s nice to give back. (I like giving advice and I think VERY highly of my own opinions, so this also counts as fun for me 😂)

I 💜 talking to women and enbies and queers.🌈 (I love talking to guys too, but if my calendar starts filling up I will rate-limit y’all first to leave space at the front of the line.) If you are a white dude who hasn’t been following me on twitter for at least a year, this offer is not for you, sorry. If you’re a marginalized person in tech, otoh, I don’t care if you use that hellsite^W^Wtwitter or not. And if you hate my blog, you are not gonna like me any better live & unfiltered. 😬

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Things I am generally well-equipped to discuss include startups, observability, databases, leveling and promotion issues, management, the pendulum, senior and staff levels, new manager issues, team dynamics, startup executive teams, and some complex workplace situations.

Things I am not equipped to help with include how to improve diversity at your company, how to get women to want to work for you, or why only men are applying for your jobs online. I cannot be your personal DEI coach or guide to women in the workplace (there are great consultants out there doing the lord’s work, and you should give them all your money). I can’t find you a new job, help newbies find their first job (sorry 😕), give advice on raising venture money or tell you how to found a company (answer: never found a company, it’s the literal worst). In general I am not very well equipped to discuss early career issues, but if you’re an URM and you’re desperate i’ll give it a shot. I am not a therapist. And if you’re going to ask should you quit your job, I will save you a phone call: yes.

charity.