Working With Your Manager Q&A and Videos

In the by Ethan Evans, there's a mention of an app that can show personality & communication style results of a manager. What's the name of this app?

I’m currently working as an L4 Machine Learning Engineer at a mid-sized public company, and I’ve recently finished L5 SWE interview with Google and am now in the hiring committee stage. The recruiter told me that my interview performance was mixed, so the chances for L5 are small, but L4 is possible. According to , I’m expecting around a 20% salary increase (and, of course, Google’s other benefits are much better than those at my current company). However, the new position is for a SWE role working on hardware products, which involves writing C++, a completely new technology and field for me.

Reasons for wanting to stay:

1. I have a good relationship with my manager and teammates, and the work is more interesting and aligned with my strengths. If possible, I still want to continue working as a Machine Learning Engineer in the future.
2. I’m working on software side projects and writing a blog, and I’m worried that after joining Google, these external projects might be restricted.

Reasons for wanting to leave:

1. Better salary and benefits, and a higher salary ceiling (it’s almost impossible to reach FAANG L5-level salary in my current job).
2. I was previously a Googler, so I’m familiar with Google’s culture (though I was laid off in 2023).
3. I have a poor relationship with my current skip manager. We have many technical disagreements, I don’t adapt well to his management style, and he has a negative impression of me.

This position is not in the U.S., so the chances of being laid off again should be lower (but who knows).

How should I evaluate these two options?

And, since my skip manager has a negative impression of me, should I actively look for other jobs, even if it's not Google?

Hello I joined a new company as a senior swe earlier this month and have met everyone on my team but I'm new to big companies so not sure how to approach a skip level meeting?

The reason I'm asking is I've seen a lot of people and posts talking about skip level relationships.

1. Am I supposed to set up a meeting myself or wait for them to set it up?

2. Should I tell my manager I'm talking to my skip level ie his manager?

I have weekly meetings with leadership, and they consistently ask more about our timelines and engineering work, which I understand we need to provide.

Having said that, what are some of the questions we engineers can ask leadership/product to hold them accountable for some of the requirements?

What are some of the customer-centric questions we could ask?

Hello Everyone, I have 16+ years of Software Engineering and 6+ years of Engineering management experience. I have worked in 14 different companies (ranging from startups to FAANG --> ). And I really enjoy helping engineers grow, building teams and fostering the team culture.

Currently I am an Engineering Manager at Meta and I am interested to prepare a course that will benefit the highest amount of people on this platform.

Could you please pick the course (just comment with 1-10 number or suggest your title) from this list that you would like Taro to have:

1. Top 10 secrets of becoming an engineer managers like
2. How to be the top engineer of the team?
3. How to become an engineer that grows faster than anyone?
4. How to be an ideal engineer that manager wants to promote?
5. Top 10 mistakes engineers are usually doing in communication with their managers
6. The Hidden Pitfalls in Engineer-Manager Communication (and How to Avoid Them)
7. What Your Manager Wishes You Knew: Essential Communication Tips for Engineers
8. Cracking the Code of Manager-Engineer Communication: Common Mistakes and Solutions
9. How To Transition To M1
10. How To Be A Strong M1

How do you build relationship with skip manager (executive) when you do not have any meetings with them and you are working remotely?

If I do carve out an opportunity, I'm also afraid that my boss might question why I am trying so hard to build a relationship with his/her manager given I have nothing shared to work on with the executive. If there was, I and the executive would be atleast in some common meetings where I would get the opportunity to build relationship and demonstrate impact.

Put on an exciting Staff level project for the last 6 months. Now, asked to make a tough choice - move out of Org or stay in current Org and give up scope.

Pros of moving:

• Scope: getting multiple jr level engineers to carry out the scope I created.
• Exciting product.

Cons of moving:

• Current manager turned down the scope expansion.
• Have built relationships within current team. Enjoy working with them (more familiar)
• Less depth AI/ML work but more product heavy (which is high impact as well but slightly less interesting from ML standpoint)
• Lots of unknowns with new team - unknowns beyond staff scope IMO

TLDR; What would others in the same situation recommend? From taro courses, Option 1 seems better. But there are unknowns especially with current manager refusing the offer.

I’ll be finishing my internship pretty soon and I think I feel like I’ve done a good job. I checked in with my manager every 2 weeks (didn’t check in with them for the past 3 weeks expecting this final conversation). Wondering what I should bring up with them in my last conversation with them? I am interested in a return offer (RO). What should I ask them about?

Despite my seniority and recent promotion, I am being excluded from important meetings in favor of a younger employee who is a yes man and close to the engineering manager (EM). This employee, with less experience than me, has significant influence over the EM and is always considered first. This situation is disturbing, especially since our lean team has a Slack channel named product_name_planning_committee, which includes only the EM, tech lead, this employee, and two other product and business people, excluding me.

Though I am part of a common Slack chat with the tech lead, EM, and this individual, it is mainly for update requests from the EM. I fear my role may be at risk due to my introverted nature, despite my skills. I worry that my reportees will be reassigned, and I may be laid off. I've considered quietly quitting and changing teams.

I’ve requested to be included in meetings to feel part of the decision-making process directly to the EM, but he has still not called me to any of the meetings and even today did one without me. The rest of the team no longer sees me as a lead. This exclusion has left me feeling depressed and anxious about being removed from my position. While I was previously involved and got promoted, my reduced communication has led to my exclusion.

I’ve decided to focus on maintaining my self-respect. I no longer work late nights and offer family health excuses when necessary. I used to handle multiple roles, including writing code for others, filling QA gaps, and developing SDKs in different languages, but I no longer feel part of the core team or the engineering leadership.

Despite being fed up and feeling left out, I believe my skills are relevant and beyond what the role requires. How can I effectively navigate this situation and ensure my contributions are recognized?

I have a weekly 1:1 with my manager. I want to share the 1:1 doc I've been keeping, but I'm embarrassed that I feel like my onboarding (I'm in my 6th week on the job) has been slow and I haven't hit the 1 month target we set in our first meeting.

Should I share my 1:1 document with my manager given that I haven't hit this target? My guess is I should bite the bullet and do it, because the logic is he already knows.

The argument not to share would be "no need to remind him of my failures".

I know that 1:1s should be awkward, so I guess I should share this info.

Thanks!

Hi team, as per my current situation there are cycles for promotion in August and in Feb. I am targeting the Mid-Level title and was told to wait until next Feb for Mid-Level instead of coming August.

I asked for data points and was told I needed more time to mature. I actually would have appreciated some actionable data points if there were any, so that I and my manager can track progress.
I have the following 2 pointers :

1. On a personal front I want to aim for the promotion in Feb and want to let my manager know my intentions and pick up work accordingly however I don't know how to put it across.

2. I would have liked if there were some actionable data points to nail promotion since my manager didn't mention anything explicitly, and I have read and watched guidance about your career is in your hands so wanted to know how can I extract these pointers from my Manager?

I ask these because 1:1's currently . And would have appreciated it if there were actual data points /action items

Would highly appreciate insights from folks on the platform . Thank you :)

I am starting to realize that my manager might not be the most competent engineering leader. While he's a nice guy and has been very good to me, I have noticed recently that:

• he does not get much respect from his XFN coworkers
  • a data scientist on the team has confided to me that he does not think that my manager is technically capable
  • other stakeholders (e.g. PMs) do not seem to value his opinions
• he has not been able to show business impact and value for the team, and it's likely that my team will receive additional scrutiny as a cost center
• he always seems to over-promise and under-deliver every quarter, with the excuse that he can always move the goals/timelines around come review time
• my manager also mentioned that he did not get a great perf review rating in the most recent round of reviews, and I'm worried that this might percolate down to my own reviews

In short he seems to be doing the opposite of what Taro advises (both as EM and IC). What do I do at this point? Jump ship to a different team?

[Another recent question asked about toxic managers -- to be clear, my manager has been anything but toxic and I am on very friendly terms with him. I am just worried that continuing to be on his team would hamper my own career growth if he doesn't know what he's doing.]

I'm struggling with my engineering manager's low emotional intelligence. The product he has been building for two years is barely generating revenue, and the outlook for the next six months doesn't look promising either. Recently, he insisted we fix a small bug on a Saturday night, suggesting we'd have to give a party if we didn't do it immediately. After we fixed the issue and pushed a production release late at night, other developers praised the effort on Slack. However, instead of acknowledging our hard work, he responded with a :expressionless: emoji the next morning.

This behavior has been demotivating and has affected my own emotional well-being. I want to avoid reacting negatively and lowering my EQ to his level, but I'm finding it difficult to navigate this culture.

Additionally, the team leads receive high ratings because people appreciate the timely pay, despite the lack of substantial work. These leads earn significantly more than senior engineers, yet they lack skills and are easily influenced by those who are close to them and act as yes men.

Our product is plagued with a lot of technical debt and frequent changes. In two years, our team built a fintech product that was supposed to generate significant revenue. However, we only have one merchant and two lenders, and our 20,000 customers generated just 30K INR in revenue last month after 1.5 million INR in transactions. The cash burn for this product is incredibly high, running into crores. I don't see this changing within the next year due to fierce competition and the difficulty of acquiring customers with good credit scores.

Given this environment, I am concerned about the sustainability of our efforts and the future of the team. The founder might shut down the product within a year due to the lack of revenue, and I'm unsure what will happen to the leads and the team. I want to keep an attitude that is unfazed by negativity and develop a thick skin while focusing on high-level engineering efforts. How can I effectively navigate this situation and maintain my motivation and professional integrity?

If you receive an offer from a different team, how do you communicate to your manager that you plan on moving to a new team / opportunity at Microsoft. What if you don't have the best relationship with them?

At Microsoft, the current manager does not need to approve team switch, regardless of whether it's a software role or not.

Right now I have 25 min per week in our 1:1 and after quick top of mind exchange it is usually 15 min left. So I am getting only one hour per month of quality time to discuss what is important. I feel it is not enough, and my manager has 11 reports.

My new manager, my old manager, and the broader team have been managing the on-call rotation for the platform of my company's flagship product, which we launched two years ago. Initially, the rotation included just 3 engineers, but after discussions with my directors and acknowledgment from the rest of the organization, we increased it to 8 engineers to form a healthier on-call rotation.

Despite having 8 engineers, I've noticed that many team members, including our principal and staff engineers, are still not familiar with the on-call procedures. I have compiled a support run-book log documenting the steps for handling each issue/alert, so the on-call team understands the severity and business impact of different issues. The issues can range from low priority to business-critical.

However, the support run-book documentation is not entirely reliable as the ultimate source of truth because our production system support behaves more like triage than a debug system.

Additionally, the nature of the on-call rotation can vary from simply acknowledging alerts and following documented steps to collaborating with business owners. Sometimes, issues are caused by other teams or third-party vendors, making them unsolvable by the on-call engineer alone. I noticed that Production Issue happened almost daily, and the on-call issues have impacts to company's revenues and customer facing experience..

I am interested in learning more about how others view a healthy on-call rotation.

What are the key factors to consider when forming a healthy on-call rotation?

I work in a high-growth, scaled startup where my organization builds revenue-generating platforms and forms small teams to create new verticals. However, we face challenges such as fast-tracked, inexperienced engineering managers (EMs) who disrupt work-life balance and often expect overtime or weekend work.

Feature requests are typically communicated via Slack messages or one-liners, with frequent status updates focused on completion. There is significant bias and favoritism, yet I can operate in such an environment. Although I know the best long-term solution might be to move to big tech or a more stable team, I’m seeking advice on how to behave in this current setting.

I avoid responding to negative remarks within the team because the EM’s typical reaction to any request is dismissive, suggesting that bugs shouldn't happen or that tasks should be managed independently. I was down-leveled upon joining this team from a similar toxic environment but have since been promoted to SDE 2. My senior, an SDE 3, also struggles emotionally, which makes me question whether this is common in leadership across companies of similar scale and situation.

How do you handle working in such an environment? I am currently taking a course on managing up, which seems relevant. I focus solely on my tasks and avoid reacting to negativity, which is appreciated, but I’ve stopped working weekends due to shifting priorities and deliverables. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.