A comment on the first comment of the article: "This last part reminds me of something recently. Because management needs to feel like they have control over what's going on, as a technical person, you should do the right thing, but only 90% when you show it to them and make the 10% that is miss quite obvious. The reason is so that when you present it to them, they can point out the missing piece of the project and feel like they have contributed."
I hate this. I hate having to play these games and tricks. I want to work with people that are aware of [psychology and] how much time is wasted having to do such things. However, I realize most people don't know nor care about psychology and so I am the one that should adjust knowing the things I do. It just sucks because I still struggle with it.
I couldn't agree with your comment more! This is the same situation I am in with my job. I know I have to play these stupid and pointless mind games/tricks to get the right thing to happen, but I wish I didn't have to. It's a lose-lose situation, and this is definitely not the first job I have had that had this problem. I don't get what it is with people in upper management having to be right all the time. The reason you hire people in certain specialties is to trust them with the issues, just like I trust upper management to handle upper management issues. It's a very frustrating (and never-ending, it feels like) cycle.
Yeah, if you had an office populated with Vulcans and robots, I can see that strategy being effective for you.
Unfortunately, as a functioning adult, you have to take other people's feelings into account, even when they are (GASP!) wrong. The reality is even if you are completely 1000% correct, if you don't give the other person a way to save face, they will fuck you over given the chance. The solution is simple - be nice.
First, I'm not sure how the comment you are replying to has anything to do with saving face, it has to do with playing games and tricks like intentionally leaving work incomplete or adding ridiculous "ducks" to be removed. I fail to see how "playing games" is being compared to being nice. Perhaps you accidentally replied to the wrong comment?
I am a functioning adult, that's why I struggle with these issues instead of just cutting "the crap" out completely and causing relationship friction. It's just that as a mature adult who recognizes human irrationality, psychology, and short comings one would think we'd identify wasteful games and work to remove them. (Even I recognize I'm missing things and blind to my own biases. I don't mind if when people "call me out" on it so I can at least reflect on my behaviors and "short comings".)
Leaving outs and face saving opportunities is always a wise decision. I'm the first to defend someone when they choose to change their mind.
I couldn't agree more. Every time I read articles like this that suggest all these mind games and effort required to get simple tasks completed, I constantly wonder how nice it would be to work somewhere where none of that was necessary.
This can't be the most efficient way of doing things. I think it's also a strong argument for having a management and executive team that is actually technical.
Note: I find myself in this exact situation at my current job - multiple non-technical managers that don't realize how much they don't know and constantly make asinine requirements or timelines and reject advice from more technical experts.
Its unfair to group this article with your peeve. Your comment's parent is not about the article itself - its about a comment in the article's comment section. The article is well laid out and not talking about 'tricks' like 'leave obvious gaps' - its talking about general principles of negotiating and communicating with non-technical people.
>>"Note: I find myself in this exact situation at my current job - multiple non-technical managers that don't realize how much they don't know and constantly make asinine requirements or timelines and reject advice from more technical experts."
I'm surprised you did not find tips to apply in the article.
These are no more 'games and tricks' than having to expend more energy walking uphill than downhill is a game or trick.
I am horrible at inter-office politics. I want so badly for things to be "efficient" - but it is always efficient for me. My boss has me print hard copies of email and put them in a physical folder AND has me copy the email as a PDF and sstore it in a sub folder of the project folder. Mind-blowingly inefficient on so many levels. But it's his way, and it's his firm. And I fought him on it, and so many other things, for so long, really fought with both of us screaming, I have poisoned the well. He won't ever trust me because I handled our conflicts so poorly in the past. He's allowed to handle them poorly - he pays my salary.
Putting in intentional errors so someone else can catch them and think they contributed... that IS 'games and tricks'. Whereas your example (sending things in an inefficient way) is just a matter of accommodating someone else's way of working.
Accommodation is a good idea, game-playing may work in the short run, but it does not build long-term trust.
What you are describing isn't a game or trick. It's what your boss is asking you to do that you are complaining about. My boss and others aren't saying "leave it slightly unfinished so I have some input and feel in control" to us. The situation you describe is your lack of communicating and/or understanding why your boss wants the hard copies. If my boss simply said "because I prefer paper and it's easier for me and/or regulations/audit trails require it." I'd say, "Okay." Then I'd decide to choose to do as he wishes and work on my merry way. A stupid game or trick would be if you had to stop your momentum to go and ask him every time "What font should it be in" even if you know he "always" says Arial.
UPDATE: I agree, it may be stupid that the email has to be in PDF. If you got to the bottom of a legitimate/reasonable reason as to why or if it just came done to "Because I want it that way" then turn and focus on improving/automating the process as much as possible.
I was the one that posted that and I agree with you. It is frustrating to do, but I've just simply started presenting things that are just shy of being finished. Show them early, so they know what's going on and it smooths things out quite a bit.
There's some good advice in there, given with a horribly wrong intention.
The good advice is to repeat the manager's argument, the way you understood it. However, if you do it to "loosen them up" and make them "more willing to work with you", then you're doing it for the wrong reason.
The right reason is to verify whether you understood them correctly. Maybe they meant to say something else. Maybe the did something else and you misunderstood. Maybe they said exactly what they meant and you understood it perfectly, but there's more to it. For example, they might have a perfectly practical non-technical reason for their argument.
Here's an example from my own experience: at one point, a manager argued that we should do something that would risk defeating the very purpose of a rather big and complex software we've developed, by allowing a group of future users to circumvent certain of its restrictions that are meant to make sure their stuff can be used on more than one target platform. I pointed out this risk and argued vehemently against it. The manager explained that the cost of migrating their existing work to our software, while maintaining those restrictions, would drive the cost of the whole project to 150% (or higher) of what the project would cost if we allowed users to do what he proposed. That certainly complicated the whole equation, even though his argument was still "technologically horrible".
TL;DR: When non-technical managers disagree with you, it might be because they have a need to assert their power and be respected by their subordinates, but that's a conclusion you should draw only if you've made a reasonable attempt to discard the alternatives. If you do happen to have a manager that behaves that way consistently, then maybe you should consider changing the manager and/or the company, instead of wasting your time and energy by trying to manipulate them.
Agreed. If you're using a tactic to get your way and with the assumption that you are the expert (and the other person is wrong) then you are missing out. In my experience, the best solutions came after those discussions where you get the other party to explain their motivations. The result was always better than I could have come up with myself.
When in a position of authority, I had the opposite problem: I often couldn't get people to disagree with me. This made it impossible to get to that discussion. (Maybe my ideas really were perfect, but I doubt it.)
Good article. The part about figuring out your boss' motivations is the best part.
This is really the key to any interaction with another human being whether we're talking about speaking to an overseas technical support person, your boss, your mom, or your partner.
0. Realize your non-technical boss isn't some cartoonish, mustache-twirling villian with a fetish for poor technical solutions. He or she is picking them for a reason, possibly a misguided reason.
1. Figure out their motivations. Tricky, because most people are unwilling or unable to articulate what they want, even to themselves. Generally, your boss probably just wants things to run smoothly, make money, and look good to their boss. If they're choosing poor technical solutions, it's because they (correctly or mistakenly) believe those poor technical solutions are the best way to get to #2.
2. Figure out how both your goals and theirs can be met.
3. Communicate #2 to them.
None of those steps are easy, even though there are any a few of them. But it can be done. I'm not always successful at it, but here's an example of a time I did it right.
My boss employed ahem, "affordable" contractors who were basically "Dreamweaver jockeys" - they constantly sent us tangled 1990s-style HTML that I essentially had to re-write from scratch, taking me longer than it would than if I'd simply done it from scratch.
Instead of just telling him how that was a poor technical idea, I took the time to sit with him and show him (in a text editor) the difference between modern HTML5 and the horrible Dreamweaver spew, and how much more quickly I could change the modern code in order to respond to client requests. His eyes lit up at that point, because I was solving a real challenge he had - being responsive to change requests.
The icing on the cake was when I showed him some of the online galleries where we could purchase pre-made, high-quality HTML templates. Not only were they better-designed than the crap our contractors were sending us, they were easy to work with and were a fraction of the cost.
So I didn't just say, "Dreamweaver sucks! Everybody knows that!"[1] I demonstrated the wins a technically cleaner solution would give him.
______
[1] I realize it's probably possible to just use Dreamweaver in a disciplined way, and create very clean markup with it if you wish. No offense to anybody making good stuff with it.
The only thing I would say is that your boss, generally, has access to information about the wider department/company issues than you do. Even if their advice is the incorrect technical solution it could still be in the best interests of the company.
The most usual case is when the "technically superior" solution takes longer and there is looming work beyond the current project that the in-the-trenches person doesn't know about. Clients/customers pay for results, not for technical excellence.
When management picks "fast and dirty" over "solidly built" (not always wrong!) all we can really do is make sure they at least have an accurate understanding of the trade-offs and sacrifices they are asking for.
I am getting better at this all of the time, and at my current pace I expect to have this skill completely mastered by the time I am several centuries old!
Excellent point and, furthermore, not only figuring out your boss's motivation is essential, but finding an effective way to communicate is just as crucial. What you did by sitting down with him and showing the difference in a text editor is an excellent example of finding the lowest common denominator as a starting point for a demonstration. Well done.
| Realize your non-technical boss isn't some cartoonish, mustache-twirling villian with a fetish for poor technical solutions. He or she is picking them for a reason, possibly a misguided reason.
I believe Hanlon's Razor applies here:
| Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Also, it's probably better to think of one's boss's choices as due to ignorance rather than stupidity. The former is something you can help correct, and the latter is a poisonous (and usually incorrect) opinion which will often taint your feelings (and actions) towards them.
edit: How do I do italicized/blockquoted text? I've seen it done, but haven't found docs on how.
Just change your mindset. If you are an expert in your technical domain, what is obviously wrong for you may be difficult to grasp to a non technical. Imagine that your boss is very smart but that all you says looks like a foreign language to him. Maybe, the boss is smart enough to learn your domain in order to communicate with you, but the more obvious solution is to find an interpret.
Find someone who will translate your technical point into something that your boss will understand. Or improve your capacity to convince non-technical people.
In my first job, I had to convince a boss of how to fix some performances issues in database. He did not understood anything and organized a small meeting with someone he trusted a lot and who was more technical. This third person was really helpful to answer all the questions of the boss because I had difficulties to explain what was obvious for me.
This works with good bosses and after awhile you become the technical person that they trust.
Unfortunately, a lot of bosses are mediocre and no amount of explaining, even if you're really good at it, will reach them because it's all about ego for them.
Or they believe some nonsense falsehood they heard on the internet. And the internet is always right.
"Everyone has interests- why do they want to believe what they believe?"
One of the most common mistakes most people make when they're evaluating someone else's actions is to refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt and to overly assign negative drivers.
Assuming that managers are power hungry and desperate to be in control is the equivalent of assuming that the only reason a programmer would select a particular technology is that it would look good on their resume. Both of those can be true, but far more commonly they're not.
Neither managers nor programmers are generally stupid and they're not generally malicious. Most managers aren't even power hungry. Like most people they want to do a decent job they can be proud of, be surrounded by decent, contented people and customers, and be reasonably rewarded for what they do. If you assume any of these things to be false you're going to be wrong considerably more often that you're right.
What is also common between programmers and managers is that they are constrained by a range of factors and often have very limited control over the constraints placed upon them. Managers have managers. They're answerable to directors, to customers, to shareholders and to suppliers. As a rule the larger the organisation the more complex the web of constraints and constrainers becomes (hence why large organisations tend to react so slowly).
The thing to understand is what these constraints are. They're rarely technical, they're far more commonly budgetary or time based. When your boss says no he almost certainly isn't saying "no, it's a bad idea, I know better", he's saying "no, I can't do this without damaging / risking something else".
So work out what the limiting factors are and try and work with him within those. Often that will mean taking a longer term view - getting something changed within a period of weeks or months is often massively more difficult than if you set yourself a longer time frame. Short term commitments (deliveries, revenue over the next couple of months) are often close to immovable, things over a longer time scale are often more flexible.
One of the things bosses are often bad at is talking about the business to programmers. Partly this is because programmers aren't always interested, but a lot of it is habit. If everyone knows what the targets, deadlines and schedules are, then they're in a better position to work within them.
I don't really fancy negotiating with somebody that is objectively wrong and in a higher position than me. Instead I will move the ground that they stand on.
The best game to play in this instance is to gain favour with their boss and anybody actively competing with them while passively disagreeing with them. You must passively disagree with them because the aim is to form a situation where you re-inforce their political opponents while appearing to be neutral - eventually they will come to you for support, and at this point they will be pliable. Something which will also help you gain authority is giving certain good ideas to other people whose interests will be in fighting your battles, however this is dangerous and you must make sure that they feel indebted to you.
If you don't want to kowtow to an idiot or beat them at their own game then simply quit and leave them to their mediocrity. There are likely to be a few places around where people will listen and use advice.
Edit: I obviously prefer just joining somewhere else without these kinds of insecure personalities, but my point was that political battles shouldn't be played in the light. You need to wear a cloak, you need to gather forces, and you need to resist the urge to slide the dagger in until others ask you to.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I've seen quite a few people use this approach in an attempt to get their boss's job, irrespective of the boss's performance in their position. In general, I think that fighting your boss only leads to a draw, almost never to a win.
Regardless of the technological background of your manager this type of conflict arises when there is power struggle. Good managers will take advice and evaluate it giving their opinions/knowledge to arrive at the best decision available. Bad managers will seek opportunity to step over you to either appear bigger/better or to push you down.
I've seen cases of both and am glad I'm now working under the former but as for the bad managers, at times they just simply don't know any better. Its part of their personality to be commanding and feel that taking advice from others is weakness. Its extremely difficult to work with them because in order to have your thoughts considered you need to wrap them in a way that allows the strong-headed individual believe it was their idea in the first place; robbing you of any credit you may deserve.
Good managers will not have a fetish for making decisions, but will, instead, ask you questions that reveal the motivation for their concern about a given technical solution, such as, "I've been told that we need to do X, and that Y solution does X, how does your solution handle the X requirement?" Where X could be a business requirement or a need that some other team in the company has.
A good boss will bring his concerns forward and give you the opportunity to address them, and if you tell him this is a better solution for the X issue, then he'll trust you to do it and give you approval.
If it turns out that your solution was worse for X, then when he has to be more careful in the future, he can remind you that X didn't get met last time and that is why he's not sure about this time. You then have to prove it or shape up.
It's all about building trust-- with GOOD bosses.
The problem is, good bosses are maybe %30. To many of them are simply people who were promoted to management because they are ambitious and good at playing politics and in a lot of companies their incompetence (eg: knowing nothing about software despite managing programmers) is seen as an advantage (that was the case at Amazon where my boss had trouble operating excel and his background was in criminal justice.)
Hell, I once worked for an educational software company that higher ex-kindergarten teachers to manage programmers. They knew nothing, but they had been trained that "young ones" (eg us 20-30 year old artists and programmers) were not to be trusted.... we even got scolded once for stepping out of the office to have a conversation! It was a company run like a kindergarten class!
Trying to explain technology in both of these examples to profoundly technology illiterate people was taken as "back talking". What they heard from some cousin (or once, I kid you not "bill gate's investment group might make an investment, so we need to get rid of our linux mail and file server and replace it with windows") .... was always more compelling than what their employees, who actually knew the situation, would tell them.
I think their incompetence fed a need to put their foot down.
In both cases the team collapsed as all the talent walked out the door.
Well, one problem is that if you promote someone who is good technically to be a manager they can quickly lose track of what is sensible from a current technical perspective - knowledge of specifics of technologies can have a very short half life (say a year or so).
As a programmer doing more and more managerial work (but thankfully not 100% of the time yet), I try to keep my knowledge up-to-date by working on side projects. May not be the perfect solution but it sure helps.
The talents needed to be good technically are uncorrelated with the talents needed to be an effective manager. I've experienced both, and I'll take a good nontechnical manager over a bad technical manager any day. (Note, my definition of "good" and "bad" here has to do with my experience of working with the person, and not their ability to climb the political hierarchy.)
There are a hundred technical decisions that need to be made. A non-technical boss who trusts his best experts can farm that out to the entire team. A technical boss will often try to use their own judgement... but there is too much for one person to micromanage, so they end up failing.
Right? It is so frustrating that the easiest way to make more money in a company is by getting into the management track- so then you have non-tech experts overseeing projects that require sophisticated knowledge- startups have the benefit of letting experts do both the tech work and the management. But that starts to fall off as companies grow and start considering things like branding, financing, HR etc etc etc.
What if you want someone who is actually a good boss, though?
Most tech people I know make awful bosses, because being a good manager is usually about being the lightning rod for all the BS, so that the tech people can actually be productive.
Likewise, a non-technical manage who learns enough to technology to be dangerous is even WORSE.
You know the downside of all that? You can only put so much in your brain and learn so much things at once. So while you are in creasing your skills in inter-personal communication, bargaining and psychology, you are just losing your edge on the technical side. The more you're becoming able to convince people, the less your idea has a probability to be enlightened.
When you've crossed the whole spectrum and all your brain is focused on bargaining, congratulation, you're the clueless non-technical boss.
I'm always surprised that communication skills never seem to get any focus at companies like Google, Twitter, etc. where constant learning is promoted. Outside of managers, no one seems to be taught any of these skills that make entire companies operate smoother.
There definitely is some stigma about these sorts of tactics being manipulative or political, but I would compare it to learning how to write effectively - it's an optimization that improves clarity and is really a lifelong skill.
It's good advice, but it's focusing on the wrong problem. Rather than knowing how to solve difficult conflict it's far better to create a type of relationship between boss and subordinates where difficult conflicts are solved routinely and without drama. Resolving conflicts is a part of it, but a more important part is making sure you and your party have shared context all along.
As a contractor/freelancer/consultant, when my technical or non-technical client is wrong, I explain this to them and do my best to persuade them to do it my way. If they insist on doing it anyway then that's what I do.
They're going to pay me anyway. If it turns out later that their solution is unworkable, they'll probably pay me again.
Another approach that can work in big organizations: make sure that your boss knows that, if they ignore your advice, the responsibility for the decision is theirs, not yours. In a C.Y.A. organization this is often enough. Be sure to have written proof -- when it hits the fan, people tend to have selective memory.
just like with children, you need to let them know that they're wrong. more importantly, exactly like with children, you need to let them make their own mistake.
I think the fundamental problem is that non-technical people end up in positions of power and then feel they need to assert their decision making power or they will lose it. In fact, in my experience, it becomes an article of faith with some of them that the technical people are being short sighted in some way, and thus going with "industry standard practices" (eg: currently popular buzzwords) is superior to the "indulgent" suggestions of the technical person.
I worry that today's generation of hackers have cottoned to the need to start companies so that they can do great work, rather than being forced into mediocrity by non-technical middle "managers"... only to turn around and be hampered by non-technical investors making absurd demands. (Maybe VC meddling has declined precipitously in the last 5 years or so, I hope so.)
In my experience at many startups a few VCs mostly left us alone, but most VCs forced decisions on us that were bad decisions, often bad market decisions, but many of them bad technology decisions Just one example: "You're getting $4M in funding but you have to spend $2M of it on this other portfolio companies product that claims to do what you need." Even though that other product didn't actually do what we needed, targeted something else entirely, but the VC was not technical so he didn't understand this. It was akin to "javascript, java, whatever". This decision set us back 2 years and ultimately cut the exit return by about %90 of what it would have been (given the value of similar companies at the stage we were when we sold, even one year earlier.) Did the VC learn his lesson? Of course not, he never heard (or was willing to hear) that it was a mistake and due to liquidation preferences and other double dipping, they made out great. The employees, however, lost out.
I hate this. I hate having to play these games and tricks. I want to work with people that are aware of [psychology and] how much time is wasted having to do such things. However, I realize most people don't know nor care about psychology and so I am the one that should adjust knowing the things I do. It just sucks because I still struggle with it.