[zelon88]

From the article;

> Hold managers accountable: one of the key responsibilities of leaders is to create positive change for their teams. Once you notice a situation where you think everyone is in learned helplessness mode, make sure to notify your manager and follow-up until the problem is addressed.

"Hey boss, I noticed that Bob and Joe are really helpless at their jobs and that you just kinda watch it happen."

Yeah what could possibly go wrong with that?

I'm not saying the thinking is wrong, but a little idealistic. Not everyone works at BigCo where it is impossible to get fired and you only ever get transferred. Nevermind most of the people in this position are going to have extremely short tenture.

[ineptech]

I don't know if that was intended to be snarky, but yes, that's exactly what you should do, and people do in fact do that, and it often does work (although probably not as quickly as you'd like).

How else am I supposed to know Bob and Joe are doing bad work? Should I count their LOC/day? Pore over their code and rely on my own (10 years out of date) opinion of it?

In my humble opinion, there is one (1) good way to measure developer productivity, and that is to ask their teammates, and if you won't tell me your teammate is awful, you can't really complain that I don't act on it. Of course it's possible that you tell me and I don't do anything, but at least then it's my fault and not yours.

[zelon88]

It is somewhat meant to be snarky, but then again the original quote is exceedingly naive.

It describes very well the phenomenon but gives advice that I can only see ever working at BigCo. Where your team is huge and if you screw up there's another one down the hall.

The truth is most places that exhibit this level of helplessness often include a small team of 5 or 6, each with plenty of tenure. With no other lateral teams to move to.

Now you want the new guy to walk up to the boss and tell him that his drinking buddies for the past decade are the reason things are falling apart and he's an ineffective manager for not noticing it. You can play with the wording but that's the message.

In the real world we have political factors like seniority, favoritism, nepotism, tenure, and nevermind external factors.

In the real world the boss doesn't actually care if the team is working well or not. He only cares that the perception of the team is positive. If the new guy threatens the perception, he's gotta go. Nobody cares if it gets fixed. If nobody knows it's broken there's no need to fix it.

Let's have less articles like this one where we basically fire ourselves ostensibly for virtue signaling and more articles about how to socially engineer your way to the fucking top. Because let's face it, that's what it actually takes.

[ineptech]

Why do you want to "engineer your way to the fucking top" of a broken organization with a bunch of teams full of bad engineers managed by stuffed shirts who don't give a shit?

You may think I sound naive; I think you sound burned out. In my experience, it's pretty common for someone to say, "hey boss, Joe is really phoning it in these past few months, it's dragging the team down and you need to do something about it" and for the manager to either help Joe improve or fire Joe. And given how cynical your attitude is, I think you'd be very surprised at how often Joe actually does improve. Everyone will have the worst year of their career at some point, and it usually isn't the last one.

[BeFlatXIII]

> Why do you want to "engineer your way to the fucking top" of a broken organization with a bunch of teams full of bad engineers managed by stuffed shirts who don't give a shit?

Because it’s easier than socially engineering your way up a competent organization and the paychecks are similar.

[therealdrag0]

I’ll plus one this. I have also talked to managers about coworkers (and have them ask me about teammates). Maybe it’s luck if the draw but it’s possible to have healthy managers and still have dysfunction that needs dealt with. There never won’t be.

[groby_b]

It has nothing to do with "BigCo" or not.

If you work in a small company, pretty much any boss will be happy to hear feedback like "Hey, it looks like there's an impediment to smooth work, and the team has gotten used to it, but it's costing us". Bonus points if you propose a solution.(If your manager isn't happy to hear that, it's time to leave, because small companies closing their eyes to this have a tendency to go down in flames)

But you'll definitely need to learn to take the blame out of your communication. Learned helplessness is a technical term, it doesn't mean "Bob and Joe are helpless". And your manager not noticing a problem is hardly "you just kinda watch it happen".

Frame it as a possible improvement to what the team can do - because that's what it is. Yes, you might get turned down. And if you repeatedly get turned down, you have a choice to make.

[molsongolden]

Another possible approach is "model, document and share"[1]:

> Imagine you’ve started a new job as an engineering manager, and the teams around you are too busy to use a planning process. You’ve mentioned to your peers a few times that you’ve seen Kanban work effectively, but folks tried it two years ago and are still upset whenever the word is mentioned: it just doesn’t work here.

> Your first reaction might be to confront this head on, but it takes a while to build credibility after starting a new job. Sure, you’ve been hired for your experience so they respect your judgement, but it’s a hard sell to convince someone that your personal experience should invalidate their personal experience.

[1] https://lethain.com/model-document-share/

[afarrell]

Whom do you talk to if you notice it in the CTOs?

[kuu]

To HR of the next company...