My Manager Made Me Cry at My Desk (and Other Stories)
That was a tough story. Unfortunately, everyone breaks something every now and again, and that impacts other projects negatively, which ends up with unexpected requests for assistance from colleagues, clients, or managers. However, there is a difference from a &quot;request for assistance&quot; and a &quot;call-out&quot;; it seems that the author was called out. Call-outs are never helpful and are always aggressive [1].<p>There are three important techniques I use to never end up in the author&#x27;s shoes after I receive a call-out from a client, manager, or colleague. These tactics work phenomenally well for me, and perhaps they will help someone else. (I also don&#x27;t want to say they would have fixed the author&#x27;s problems, as I wasn&#x27;t there; perhaps the nasty manager truly was just cruel.) However, I have good working relationships with people from other companies who my colleagues have described as &quot;screamers&quot;, and on several occasions I have received thanks and complements from clients who have been nasty enough to drive other colleagues to quit. (I am nowhere near the most competent on my team, so this is not a talent problem.)<p>THE FIRST TECHNIQUE I use is admitting whether or not my actions leading up to the call-out are perfectly defensible.  If the call-out is a response of a shortcut or non-conformance I took to cut corners, I immediately admit responsibility and acquiesce to helping, prioritizing them over my normal job duties. However, if I believe that any rational actor in my position would have mirrored my actions, or my actions are in lockstep with established process [2], I don&#x27;t budge and instead demand escalation to the next-highest position in the chain. If they don&#x27;t budge and continue to demand or call-out, I start requesting everything they say in writing and begin CCing my colleagues. If you can stand in front of the CEO and say &quot;I did exactly what someone in my position should do, and will bet my position here on it&quot;, then you can stand in front of a dumb manager and imply the same thing.<p>In the case of this author, I do not think what they did was perfectly defensible. Managing a major rollout while simultaneously on-call for another team is the type of situation that demands immediate escalation to your line manager before any requests come in. It doesn&#x27;t matter whether or not you get any support; you have to have rung the &quot;I am totally f*cked for time&quot; alarm bell way before any problems manifest. Other people don&#x27;t care about your internal processes, they care about their project working.<p>THE SECOND TECHNIQUE (and my favorite) that I use is to always give the requester much more attention than their call-out implies. If they write a single, unhelpful sentence, I write back a structured paragraph with numbered questions for them. If they write a paragraph, I write back an indexed, multi-paragraph response with sources and links to other threads. If they go ballistic or are nakedly aggressive, I get on a call with them, record the whole thing in front of them, and offer to read transcripts later when they inevitably contradict themselves. [3]<p>In the case of the author, I do not think they overloaded the requester with attention. The author did not offer details on how they were &quot;asking two engineers to at least give me steps to reproduce the problem&quot;, but I suspect that the message logs would not reveal prompt replying and large walls of useful structured text from the author. [4]<p>THE THIRD TECHNIQUE is to check in constantly with team members over how I handle problems. It is as simple as sending a DM with a screenshot of the message logs and asking &quot;do you think I handled this correctly?&quot; Despite the magnificence of human endeavor, work can still feel like a bunch of apes competing over berries--it&#x27;s as much a big social status dance as it is a technical project. The more like your colleagues you can behave, the less likely you are to be singled out for non-compliance.<p>So--if you can always admit whether you&#x27;re <i>really</i> in the right, be willing to work way harder on explaining the problem to the client than they are in asking for your help, and make sure your team always has your back, the number of times you&#x27;ll be in a stressful, lonely position over your work will reduce.<p>[1] &quot;Hey, I think this change might have broken something, can you help us investigate&quot; is a request; &quot;your new version broke something, please fix it&quot; is a call-out.<p>[2] There is a difference between &quot;paperwork compliant&quot; processes and &quot;reality compliant&quot; processes. Quality departments can only invent processes that are paperwork compliant; it&#x27;s up to the actual workers to know what&#x27;s compliant in reality.  My brother used to get fired from jobs because he&#x27;d adhere to the letter of the law and not the spirit (i.e. he&#x27;d call in sick but leave a voicemail instead of actually reaching a manager, and then tell me it was unfair that he&#x27;d been fired--since he called, he&#x27;d followed policy.)<p>[3] They will always contradict themselves. Anyone who takes their anger out on subordinates or colleagues is fundamentally flawed and is not thinking clearly. There are three possible states of employment; either you are a good fit for your role, you&#x27;re a good fit for the company but a bad fit for your role, or you&#x27;re a bad fit for the company. All three of those states are ultimately your manager&#x27;s responsibility. Anyone who is angry at you should actually be angry at your manager for hiring you into a role you&#x27;re not capable of performing, or at themselves for hiring you. For more information, read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, specifically the section where they whip and expel a young soldier for punching his superior officer.<p>[4] I do not mean to blame the author; they seem to have their heart in the right place. However, after finding myself &quot;on blast&quot; many times in the past after people assumed I broke something, what I have found is that belligerent, angry colleagues&#x2F;clients&#x2F;customers do not need to be placated by empathy, but rather intimidated by competence.