On the bare necessity of psychological safety
I just can’t help but think of this movement as a kind of gaslighting. Your reports are either engaged because the work is interesting or the product is meaningful, or they are not. Attempts to sugar coat will fail just like how construction workers making a bridge to nowhere out of Popsicle sticks will inevitably start asking reasonable questions. Maybe my experience at some relatively cutthroat teams at Amazon color my opinion, since I have been in an environment where this kind of PS “happy-argumentation” was actually rewarded instead of just talked about.<p>In an optimistic mindset, “psychological safety” boils down to feeling secure in one’s job and in control of one’s project. When people feel secure, they free up cycles to creative, sleep better, enjoy each other’s company more, etc. when they feel in control they have the energy to constructively argue.<p>But when rubber hits the road most engineers do not have one of either security or control. At a startup they may have some limited product control but there is no safety. In a large company they may have more security but no actual control of the product. Either way, to promote PS and get a more engaged team, a manager has to downplay the reality of the situation. This leads to management allowing complicated pet projects, rewrites, and feedback meetings that go nowhere all for the sake of appeasing egos. Engineers tend not to be overly people-savvy but we catch on eventually.<p>I think it’s no better than the “we’re all a family” rhetoric. Just another way of trying to eke out more work for nothing in return. My last employer signed all employees up for an app called “happify” where we would get daily challenges to pop bubbles with stressful words on them or write praises to our coworkers. That strategy was so bald-faced that I had to kind of admire it.<p>So why are checked-out engineers bad? They are worse than bad, they are counter-productive. They push shit code because who cares? They don’t question obviously bad designs because they know there’s no point. They quit or move on leaving the team in churn-hell. But these are symptoms not of psychology but of reality. Spinozas Ethics is a lovely look into how psychology and reality are just two sides of the same coin, and you can’t fix one without fixing the other. As stated above, the solution is engaging work, but most work is not engaging. So let’s just be more realistic, ok?