[roenxi]

> Whether it’s debates like the shift from master to main in git or deeper discussions around inclusivity in language (master/slave rename in redis), these things can shape team culture.

Well, that'll certainly do something to team culture. If an EM seemed to be significantly invested in this sort of decisions then I would form strong opinions about their ability to prioritise.

This is just not an issue that is going to determine the success of the company. If, in some amazing conjunction of circumstance, it does there are terrible terrible problems in the hiring pipeline or in who is being promoted to leadership positions because it suggests the company is a barely controlled powderkeg.

And, frankly, this is not what culture looks like. This is preformative name changes to provide a distraction from whatever the real cultural activity is - which is determined by what the EM rewards and punishes; not by what they signal in low-impact cosmetic policies. That is branding - which is important but not a fraction as important as culture.

[dijksterhuis]

You're seemingly presenting this as an option between two binary cases.

paraphrasing my impression of the vibe of your comment into the two distinct options:

> Your collective opinions about how we work as a team matter

> You're only here to work on things that are considered a priority

In reality, there is always some nuance/middle ground available

> Your opinions about how we work here matter. If this is something that requires a full rewrite it's probably going to be a no. But if it's not a major change causing a lot of work, we can possibly take a look at it.

If you've set up CI/CD properly, changing the name of the default branch can be done in less than an hour. Source: I did it at $last_company for circa 10x repos in about an hour. This was not related to inclusivity, but it did involve a discussion about whether we should switch or not: why; how; pros; cons.

Having a conversation about changing due to inclusivity is just a different meeting with a different why, how, pros, cons. One of the why/pros arguments might be -- that's now the accepted general default for most (external) repositories so keeping it as master would be kinda weird and might end up needing some explanation during onboarding -- i.e. more work somewhere else later on.

[twelve40]

i think this is actually good advice when rephrased as: you are now a low-to-middle manager (that is called out specifically), so you neither call the shots nor are you mainly measured on your daily tech contributions, so from now on you can no longer avoid whimsical, irrelevant BS that is a waste of time like debating the branch names, because fielding that is a part of your job description now, so you need to embrace it and handle these conversations with a happy smile on your face, so that the people who actually move the project forward are not distracted by it.

[dijksterhuis]

Sort of. I wouldn't call it whimsical, irrelevant BS though. From the article:

> I remind myself that my role isn’t to be the most skilled person in the room but to create an environment where the most skilled people can thrive.

If most people in the team think we should switch to main instead of master, why would I sit there and deny the change? How am I going to find out if most people on the team think this way? Ask the question, let a discussion in whatever forum ensue, make some notes, ask some "dumb" columbo style questions, see what comes out of it.

It's not about me being right anymore. It's about the team being right. Ideally, together.

[pas]

Usually these things are obvious, no? (If not then it's going to be very challenging to be a [people] manager.)

Depending on location and/or cultural composition of the team these things will be either no-issue (no one cares enough to voice either approval or opposition, if some change is requested by management or some platform introduces some changes it's just inconsequential for the team) or there will be someone who sometimes will voice suppport/opposition so their needs have to be weighted (but as long as there's no conflict within the team it's smooth sailing) and then, if there is conflict then there's obviously a cold war in the making. (And at that point either the manager has enough authority and agency to work out some lasting compromise, start removal of someone, or they are at least can recognize that it's time to look for a new job, as things about to get ugly.)

[dijksterhuis]

I find your comment interesting. You start by saying, well, this should be obvious, right? Then you list five cases where, to me, things are not obvious. Like, i have so many hypothetical questions about each case. I won't bore you with them, but the change being pushed by management one i find particularly interesting.

Usually these are things we don't want to do, or shouldn't do (else we'd probably have done it already or have a plan for it at least). But folks in "management" or "executive teams" usually don't listen to engineering arguments about complexity spirit demons :(

so there are a lot of political questions i'd be asking in my head with that. e.g. Can we use this as a negotiation tool to stop "management" pushing for this-other-thing-we-also-don't-want-to-do?

[pas]

I have trouble applying your comment to mine (and back to yours about master/main changes, or in general to issues relating to culture fit), sorry!

Can you give a concrete example?

[bilvar]

Oh my god, if my manager asked me to waste my time on such trivialities - or even worse, calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time, I would quit the next moment. During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving.

[dijksterhuis]

> calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time

it's not a dedicated meeting conversation. I would probably post it as a slack thread. If anyone wants to put their thoughts in, go ahead. If you don't, fine.

Number of people in the team who don't post by the end of the day ==> number of people who don't care.

Number of people in the team who do post by the end of the day ==> number of people who do care.

if number of people who do care > number of people who don't care, read the comments on the train home and have a think about what to do about it.

> During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving.

Well... that sounds like a good way to burn a reference.

edit —

> waste my time on such trivialities

in your own individual personal opinion this thing is trivial.

being part of a team means being part of a larger whole. whatever that looks like — including if other people on the team don’t share your opinion, or have similar but different opinions.

funnily enough the article explicitly mentions differing opinions being a good thing.

[bilvar]

Your job as a manager is to cut noise down for your team, so that they can focus on the signal. If you cannot decide on your own that some things are just plain silly and not worth their time to democratize the decision, then you’re not cut out for this job - sorry.

[fallingknife]

But changing the name of the default branch is not worth one hour of eng time, much less the annoyance of the other team members. I understand that the term "master" is offensive to upper class white people, but I just don't care. They need to stop acting like crybabies and get on with doing their jobs.

[dijksterhuis]

It was in our case, because of legacy working practices from the old team (who weren't there when we arrived). It was making everything more confusing for us, and annoying. We weren't working in the same way they did (which was completely nonsensical in my view).

So it made sense to switch things after putting up with it for 6 months. We were annoyed enough that the mental load of not being annoyed about it anymore was worth one hour of me changing it so we could show up to work free of being annoyed of this specific thing. Plus we were getting new hires who were very junior, so having things match "how to git" tutorials on the internet made way more sense. Plus it made every repo match, no longer did we have 10x repos doing things one way and another 30x doing things another way.

I legit just had to click a bunch of buttons in gitlab for an hour. It wasn't hard. I've wasted way more time sitting in meetings with executives talking nonsense.

The pro strat would probably have been to do this while in a meeting with executives tbh.

[twelve40]

Yeah if they have time for "deeper discussions" about this, just run. Apparently, it's higher up in the article than the "choose postgres" managerial advice lol

[rectang]

Fine by me. Tech companies can sort themselves into groups: those where such discussions are welcomed and those who run from them.

And I'm happy to see a manager put the "people" section above the section on "technology":

> As an EM, your role isn’t just about managing the technical—it’s about understanding the people behind the work.

[roenxi]

> As an EM, your role isn’t just about managing the technical—it’s about understanding the people behind the work.

Yeah it is a lovely sentiment, but it is a sweet nothing if someone doesn't understand the techniques to back up nice words with an appreciation for the people behind the work.

We discover in the follow up that to this EM it means engaging in endless debate (the GitHub issue may have more spilled ink than a Tolstoy work) over the appropriate default branch name. That isn't what prioritising people should look like in practice. In fact that sort of debate springing up and becoming a serious milestone is the sort of thing that should trigger a check for whether empathy failures are taking place. Why is a culture developing where the team is being focusing on such trivialities instead of something that promotes their success or the success of groups like the greater organisation or customers? People with empathy tend to focus on the actual success of real people; and anything more than a cursory aye/nay poll on branch naming would be a concern because it suggests that the real problems every team has aren't getting attention.

[fzeroracer]

> Why is a culture developing where the team is being focusing on such trivialities instead of something that promotes their success or the success of groups like the greater organisation or customers?

> People with empathy tend to focus on the actual success of real people; and anything more than a cursory aye/nay poll on branch naming would be a concern because it suggests that the real problems every team has aren't getting attention.

I think there's a bit of irony in your two statements because you're arguing that the EMs should lack empathy for changes you deem trivial, and have empathy for changes you don't deem trivial. This is how you destroy an organization because these small issues fester into something more poisonous for your org.

For example, the branch naming schema cuts both ways. You could have a mostly yay vote on the branch naming pass, but the nay vote interprets it highly negatively or vice versa. Which means it's the EMs job to try and defuse that situation both by being welcoming enough to address these trivial complaints and by trying to identify the root cause.

[roenxi]

> ...you're arguing that the EMs should lack empathy for changes you deem trivial

If an EM can't identify this change as trivial then they are going to be on the bottom of the spectrum of EM managers. It is trivial, everyone can tell that. Which side of the decision anyone comes down on is up to them, but if the issue of prioritising branch names becomes a subject of long talks, meaningful debate, inquiry and fact finding missions then the EM has done a bad job. OSS projects can tolerate that sort of thing because the entire OSS movement is ideological from the foundations up so they have to deal with ideological issues. But workplaces are for a different set of standards and ideally involve some professionalism.

If you have formed a genuine connection with someone, probed their emotional state and determined that the default label of the git repo is important enough to them that they are going to feel strong emotional disturbance over? And that it is the biggest issue in their professional life and deserves to be prioritised for follow up? The right thing to do is probably to send them to get some professional help. Or congratulate them on having achieved true joy in the workplace. Or reassess your ability to read people because you just probably got it wrong. Any which way such people are remarkably rare - generally more empathy will uncover that the default branch name is not the major issue that needs work.