[deanmoriarty]

I like to think I am extremely attentive to bug reports (I’m always paranoid about my code possibly containing bugs, so I err on the side of turning every stone), so I would probably not make Jerry’s mistake here, but sure as hell if a manager tried to humiliate me that much I would just quit on the spot.

In my opinion, there are ways to share feedback that allow another person to save face, letting them process it on their own terms instead of pounding them like this in a single session until they are “defeated”.

Such feedback can then be politely repeated, if the issue reoccurs later on, and formally documented as part of a performance warning, simply letting the other person know, once again without insisting, that this is a serious behavioral issue that will have repercussions if not actioned, and that you are there to provide any context should they want to talk about it more.

That is, in my opinion, a way for a leader to show that every team member is treated as an adult and responsible for their own actions and outcome.

[malfist]

To be honest, reading the communications, the manager backed him in a corner and then just kept hammering. There's no place for the employee to go besides to defensive.

If you're a manager and the employee can't give you anything but complete and utter capitulation to satisfy you, you're not taking to them, you're just making yourself feel better about disliking them

[Spivak]

> letting them process it on their own terms instead of pounding them like this in a single session until they are “defeated”.

When you combine this with a difference in authority, as it is in this situation, it's even worse to behave this way. If this person was a peer and wasn't forced to sit through this "meeting" I can imagine they would have hung up about 20% through it.

He treated his subordinate like a child and didn't even handle it well in that context. Even in the situation where the employee was is wrong it reflects poorly on the manager. It's wild to be bragging about it on the internet. Being the authority figure means you are expected to be the adult in the room and understand the other person even when they lack the words to express themselves. That's why you're paid the big bucks.

[weitendorf]

The manager was hounding Jerry because (at least according to their version of the story) he was still not accepting responsibility for his actions and acknowledging that what he did was wrong.

If Jerry was not willing to accept that responsibility, then him quitting would be the ideal outcome anyway, so I understand why the manager was pushing him like this.

OTOH the manager should have been smarter about acknowledging Jerry's thinking (technically Bermuda is not in the Caribbean) and in explaining why they needed to overrule that (vacationers searching for Caribbean destinations mostly want to see listings for Bermuda). Their messaging was pretty disempowering to Jerry, kind of like saying "shut up code monkey, dance when the product team tells you to".

> every team member is treated as an adult

Adults take responsibility for their own actions. If someone is lying like this and being difficult to work with you want them to either get it together or leave. It's not about saving their feelings or letting them save face anymore. Let them leave. You can replace Jerry, and you'd rather he leave than the people who aren't being difficult.

[from-nibly]

There is a difference between humiliating someone and driving a point home for sure.

But the world doesn't have time for people who need to "save face". That is a personal problem that needs to be figured out off company time.

[ludston]

Eh, even when you don't like it, managing egos is an important part of being an effective leader. We're social creatures, and nobody wants to work with somebody that is comfortable humiliating them.

[Herring]

Yeah, even just acknowledging the other guy's valid point, like "I agree with you, Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean, so yes it's deceptive to return it in the search results."

Sales is often deceptive. I think that's why the author was so defensive, notably about "honesty".

[kcplate]

>>> Jerry: But I made some good decisions about what shows up when. For instance, I don’t like the idea of showing deals for Bermuda when someone searches for “Caribbean”

While Bermuda not being part of the Caribbean might be true…it’s really not a valid point in this circumstance. It was an apparent dev assumption that this level of precision was desired even if it wasn’t requested or its absence as a requirement was a mistake. When it was reported as a bug, that should have prompted the developer to clarify with the PM the OG requirement so they were both on the same page. He didn’t, he assumed she was wrong…apparently twice.

The PM probably understood that to their lay users the terms “Bermuda”, “Caribbean”, and “Islands” all have a degree of marketing relevance to each other (There is a reason why you might dumb down search results for something like that). Judging by what was information given in the story, apparently dumbed down search results was known and required in the past.

Not sure there is any “right” way to gently coach an employee that disregarded proper protocol and requirements, lied about it, blamed a colleague, and initially refused to accept responsibility when it was brought to their attention. That would be damn frustrating. I know HN loves to blame the manager, but this is one of those instances where it seems every portion of the problem and its escalation appears to lie solely at the feet of the developer. It least in my opinion.

[Herring]

It’s super easy to coach an employee about this. I’ve done it many times, even once publicly to a director while I was a senior. Just acknowledge their train of thought extra generously, then explain why this case is different. ChatGPT has been trained to do this. I’d say your paragraph 2 was great, and yes the manager should have tried talking about “level of precision” or “marketing relevance” instead of defaulting forcefully to “because i/product said so”.

[kcplate]

Yeah I agree that the manager seemed to leap pretty quick onto the “you don’t get to have independent thought in secret” train. Of course we only see one side of the story too. But it kind of feels to me like this might not have been the first time there has been a need to coach this person either. Not sure that just one instance really gets you to lack of trust.

I’ve been in the business a long time in multiple roles up to senior leadership. I am at the sunset of my career and found a lovely tech role where I happily don’t have to manage anyone but myself and it’s glorious. In all that time I have encountered my fair share of the Jerry types in the last almost 40 years so I am probably jaded and know the frustration.

[Herring]

Yeah and maybe the employee has been asked to implement dark patterns before. Such is modern capitalism.

[kcplate]

I’d suggest that if the general populace that use your app sort of see “Caribbean”, “Islands”, “Bermuda” to a degree of equivalence to the general area that they are considering for vacation, it’s probably not a dark pattern.

[roenxi]

> I know HN loves to blame the manager, but this is one of those instances where it seems every portion of the problem and its escalation appears to lie solely at the feet of the developer.

Yeah, that is a tell that the manager is being unreasonable. What are the odds that every portion of this sits with the developer? Close to 0. That isn't how miscommunications generally happen. But it is a pattern that turns up when borderline abusive people report their interactions on the internet [0]. I don't trust this paraphrase of what Jerry was saying at all. It seems much more likely he led with something reasonable "Bermuda isn't in the Caribbean and we made a decision in the past to exclude Caribbean deals when that sort of search happens" then the manager fumbled the conversation in follow-up and managed to make it weird.

Though it does seem like the developer was making mistakes; I've seen scenes play out that I'd rate as similar. Part of the dev's job is to manage their manager when that manager is struggling. In this case the manager seems to have gotten stuck in the mindset of being a big monkey and the response to that is to let them monkey out peacefully and not make a fuss.

It could have been worse; but this looks like bad-to-average leadership on display.

[0] Big red flags in the "I wasn't sure he was working in good faith" and "Maybe he was feeling lazy" quote with no evidence. We're likely seeing misreported conversation; the manager doesn't understand what is going on conversationally if he got to that mindset in this sort of situation. What else did he get wrong?

[kcplate]

While it’s certainly written from the managers POV and will show that bias, but the behavior and attitude he is describing is not unheard of from SWEs and the personality types that are attracted to that vocation. Frankly it’s frustrating and a challenge that cannot be easily dismissed as “bad-to-average leadership”. It might be bad leadership, but it’s bad behavior from the employee too and that should be acknowledged.

When I managed technical people I used to describe the challenge to management folks outside of tech that in tech management you are managing a group of people where everyone is absolutely convinced that they are smarter than everyone else around them. Often not only just smarter but their other colleagues are bumbling idiots.

So my bias from experience is that this dev was wrong, because I have been through very similar scenarios with similar Jerry’s. I spent 2 decades managing engineers, but haven’t for a decade so I acknowledge that times change and perhaps stroking fragile egos is a management necessity in 2025 where it wasn’t in 2015. I also had the benefit of supportive executive leadership that allowed me to quickly cycle out those personalities like “Jerry” to build a team where even if folks were convinced they were smarter than their peers, they would at least communicate with each and be respectful of the entire team’s contribution that allowed us to minimize source issues like was described in this story.

[roenxi]

I might expect many managers to be in alignment with Mr. respectfulleadership.substack.com on similar logic to the principle that about half of managers are below the median manager in communication skills. Empathy is a rare and difficult ability. But if this manager was adept at it he would be doing a much better job of articulating "Jerry"'s actual concerns and reflecting on why he was failing to communicate with him instead of setting up and gloriously defeating the strawman we see in the article. While failing at communication so hard he felt he had to do the ticket himself; we might note.

There are engineers convinced that they are smarter than everyone else but that isn't what is happening in this vignette at all. Even with my grave concerns about how accurate the reporting is of what he said, half the story is the reportee trying to figure out what he's done wrong and how to stop his manager from beating him with a rhetorical stick. That isn't the action of a man convinced he is the smartest guy in the room. But it is the reporting of a manger who believes beating someone else with a rhetorical stick makes him look good.

I'm not even saying this guy is a bad leader overall; at least he isn't being especially passive aggressive and this doesn't say anything about him at his day-to-day. But if he understood what attitudes and behaviours he was displaying in this story he wouldn't have been so keen to publish it. People who've had to deal with abusive people in power positions are going to have alarm bells going off reading this. It looks like someone lying to themselves and the reader in order to feel good about wielding power. Although, reading charitably, it might just be ignorance and low-grade communication ability.

[kcplate]

> There are engineers convinced that they are smarter than everyone else but that isn't what is happening in this vignette at all.

It’s the underlying cause though. According to what was written, Jerry made an assumption without any real investigation, didn't clarify the problem by engaging in communication to Sonya, argued his “superior” knowledge because of his assumption of her mistake, then apparently was dismissive again after Sonya apparently developed enough detail to escalate the problem to the leader who had to investigate and fix the issue himself.

Remove the Jerry’s arrogance all the way to the point of that rhetorical stick is there even a blog post here? Perhaps frustrated leadership is the effect, but Jerry’s poor attitude, handling, and arrogance is damn sure the cause.