Retired Amazon VP: How Corporate Politics Work And How To Win | Ethan Evans
Ryan Peterman · 2:50:45 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WaeGfLnRvc
Captured 2026-07-26 · auto-generated captions (en)
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[00:00] I have seen things, you know, that make me want to close my eyes for sure. You know, you want to talk about the dark side and that's okay. I hope no one would do this, but I know people do. That's my opening gambit for I want to take it over. After this conversation I'm a little more cynical. This is Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP, back for a second time because I knew he had a lot to share about corporate politics. We're going to put these people under you for 6 months, check the box, and give them back to the person we took them from. >> [music] >> It's almost like this hidden chess going on. >> Absolutely. He shared what to do if you have a bad manager. You could consider this as mutiny [music] if you went to them and you said, "Hey, my manager is bad." So, mutiny. Let's talk about mutiny. And he said he'd be transparent, so I really put him to the test. What are the attacker tactics? Wow, Ryan. When you said we would just go deep on transparency, you were not kidding. So, the best attack What is the

[01:00] >> leverage that an engineer has as they're getting fired that a company would want to pay for? And here I'll give you your last piece of your leverage. I imagine this would be useful even outside of your career. Now, there's some people watching this, engineers, who are like, "I hate you. I hate the politics." Do yourself a favor and get good at this. Here's the full episode. Last time we talked, I think one reason that people really loved the conversation was because of your unusual level of transparency. I've never met anyone who was in such a high level in tech, like in VP at Amazon, that was willing to say everything directly that could help both engineers and also managers know what's going on behind the scenes at those highest levels. And I know that we didn't get to cover everything. So, today I'm hoping that we can go over everything in terms of reorgs and all of the other behind-the-scenes things that happened

[02:01] in the management of tech. So, I'm hoping you can continue to be transparent, maybe even more transparent this time. Absolutely. You know, I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm not a perfect person and sometimes some of the stuff I did, I wish I had done differently. So, I can share what I did and what I saw others do because I'm comfortable with that and frankly I'm retired, so I'm immune. There's no boss over me who's going to be like, "You said what? You told Ryan what?" I'm free from that. The first topic I want to go over is empire building. Uh empire building, I think, is a bad thing. And it, as defined, it means focusing more on getting raw number of people than on what you're doing or the impact you're having. So, why does it exist? Empire building exists because it's rewarded. And it's rewarded because

[03:01] counting people is the easiest thing to do. And so, when a leader or set of leaders are deciding who's ready to promote, how much impact you had is subjective. One person thinks the project was hard, another thinks, "Oh, that was pretty easy." But no one can debate, "Well, Ethan has 42 people and Ryan has 17. Ethan is the bigger leader." is the conclusion they're making. And that encourages empire building because it's what's visibly measurable. And so, what I found is that drives leaders to want more people because that's going to be their tool. And some companies absolutely have written thresholds of to be eligible for this promotion, you have to have this many people. So, of course, if you give high performers a goal, they're going to figure out a way to hit that goal. And if that requires claiming

[04:01] they need people or seeking to take over other groups, they're ambitious. They're going to find a way to rationalize that to them to themselves, "I need those people." I saw that there's this this desire to change the incentive structure, at least at the company that I was at, um where managers could be promoted not necessarily just with the directly proportional to how many recursive reports you have. Is that possible to do? Of course it is possible. It takes more effort. Uh because impact is harder to assess, right? The impact an engineering manager has is somewhat fuzzy. What's most important? Is it operational performance? Is it new features shipped? Is it whether or not those new features resonate in the market and make money? And you end up with difficulties like maybe my product directly generates money. Whatever I'm doing gets directly sold and customers pay for it. And what you're doing is infrastructure. Well, now, how do we compare that? Like,

[05:02] you're keeping the systems up, but I'm actually the one bringing in all the money. Who has more impact? Again, that's where people get sucked into, "Why I have 42 people and you have 17? I must be a bigger manager." That's that's how that happens. It is, of course, possible to make value judgments, but then they're also harder to defend. I have to look at you and say, "Ryan, we love the work you've done and you're on the right path, but Ethan was more impactful." And that just makes you mad, probably, unless you happen to agree like, "Oh, yeah, that guy's a star." It's it's all these things make assessing impact difficult and dangerous and that's why it doesn't get done as much as it should. You mentioned the written thresholds for promotion and since you were a VP at Amazon, I know it's been some time, but off the top of your head, do you remember the rough

[06:03] written thresholds for how many reports you would need to be considered for senior management, director, and VP? So, interestingly, those thresholds did not exist while I was there. And they existed in whisper numbers, but they were not written down. They came about after I left and people I was coaching still at Amazon or talking to told me very clearly that the number that got established to become a director in some orgs was people and in some was 90. So, I became a director in the early days of the company with 22 people because it was different times and the company was smaller. And that crept up and up until when I was at the end of my career, we did have like a sense that the company wanted us to look for people with about 75 or 80 people. But it got written down as 90, at least in some organizations. And the thing that's funny about that is one of the Amazon leadership principles says, "There's no bonus for

[07:05] additional head count." But now that it's written down that I can't get to this very well-paying level without 90 people, there damn sure is a bonus. Right? There's like a several hundred thousand dollar a year bonus, quite literally, for accumulating 90 people. And I've talked to leaders who their boss trying to get them across the threshold was like, "We're going to put these people under you for 6 months, check the box, and give them back to the person we took them from." Because that's the game they have to play if they want to, you know, reward a person in their team. And of course, that's insanity where we're moving people around and changing their lives just to hit a number. But if you did that, let's say I'm I'm a VP and I have a very loud director or very loud senior manager who wants to become a director. And so, I got, "Okay, to retain them, I'm going to give them some reports from over here and now they're going to be eligible for director." After they get promoted,

[08:07] though, they need to sustain those reports to sustain that position, right? Like, you couldn't just move them back and >> you can. Again, it depends on the company, but you can play all sorts of shell games where um for example, at Amazon, if you drop below the number of reports, there's like a grace period, 6 months, 9 months, where if you can tell a story about how they're going to get back to that level or how future growth, it's okay if they're below it temporarily. The other thing is, no company no company I know of really systematically down-levels people. What they would do is they'd say, "Okay, well, Ryan, you're a director. Your team is no longer director scope. You're going to have to find a director level role." And so, then it's up to me if I can do that in my org or I move you, but I still achieved the goal for you. And you absolutely see, I have seen, not just in Amazon, but other places, when head count is the main issue, I've

[09:09] seen things moved around and I certainly when people normally come to me, it's with the complaint, "My boss actually told me that he's putting me under my peer so that my peer's team will look better. So, the reason I'm being reorged under this other person is not for any business reason, but because they don't have the scope to get the promotion. And so, I need to go be their scope." Mhm. That's what I'm being told. When I was an engineer and reorgs were happening, I think you don't know all the behind-the-scenes of how orgs are managed. And so, you're told there's a certain reason for the reorg. However, and which may be true, but there may be a secondary and ulterior motive of this person also needs to get promoted. Do you ever have a experience like that where you saw a reorg happening in another org? You didn't know the exact person who needs to get promoted or what, but you could just tell based on how it happened and

[10:11] uh what happened that oh, there's something else going on behind the scenes. Yeah, and I would say there's always something else going on. Meaning, all managers know all leaders know that too many reorgs cost you people. And so you don't want to do them too often. What that means though is like you wait as long as you can and then when you need to do one, you're asking yourself how do we get everything we want? How do we How do we if there's someone we don't like, how do we give them less so they'll move on? If there's someone that we really think is high performance, how do we set them up for success? How do we retain key people? And yes, hopefully the start of the reorg is how do we make the business better? But as soon as we figure out what we think we need to do for the business, then we're trying to figure out how much else, you know, this ship is leaving the dock. How much else can we throw on the deck as it's pulling away that's going to help us? I'm just trying to figure out the exact mechanics. Like maybe a

[11:11] past reorg that you've done where you tried to cram a bunch of different ulterior things into it. And how does that actually play out? Well, um a couple things happen there. First, there are usually multiple people involved and so sometimes you have to either get them on board with your second motive. You you know, you have to tell them like yeah, I want to help this person get promoted as a part of this reorg or I want to set them up. Are you supportive of that? Sometimes you have to tell a story like no, I'm not doing that. It's really this reason. And so there is some cleverness to justifying. Because even for a senior leader, usually a reorg is a big enough change that somebody will be auditing it and you've got to be able to explain it to them. So you're coming up with your narrative. You're a storyteller and you're coming up with your narrative about why this is the best possible reorg that rewards the deserving people and accomplishes the

[12:12] business goals and if anybody is suffering, you've made sure that that's people that aren't the highest performers. So if anybody does leave, it's okay. And when I think about specific reorgs I've done, they're very much about retention. If you're making a change, you're very much thinking people don't like change. Who is it I absolutely need to keep and who is it if they leave, I'll either be okay or even maybe happy. Um and I can't immediately think of a place where I personally put someone in a role where I'm like am I putting them there, they'll quit. But I can absolutely think of the reverse where people I really wanted to keep, maybe who I felt I was at risk of losing, I was using the reorg to give them something juicier. So then how does it usually get started? I mean a reorg. Let's say yeah, what's the the triggering condition?

[13:14] Well, usually the the triggering condition is a change in the business. So um something about the business has changed and the organization is not set up to address it. So it needs to take on a new market or you've acquired a company and you need to blend them in or you want to start a new project. That's the first reason for a reorg is change in the business. The second reason for a reorg is somebody else quit or got moved. So often reorgs come due to cascades and many times, for example, several times in my career, my boss either left or was moved to another job. And so I had to go somewhere else. I could go up if they thought I was ready, I could go under somebody different or they could choose to backfill. Uh you know, just leave that position open. But at least in my personal experience at Amazon, I never really saw the backfill happen.

[14:14] I always was moved under another leader. And several times I'm pretty sure I was put under them to stretch them. Uh when I ran the Prime Video team, my leader left and I was reorged from being under an engineering VP to being placed under a business leader. And that business leader, who turned out to be one of my best managers ever, some of his first words to me were I don't really want your team. Uh I don't want to run engineering. I don't know anything about it. And of course as an engineer, I'm like uh-oh. Um but he was a good leader and he said we will figure it out. And we worked together and actually had a great run. But I had that happen a couple times where I was put under people and it was they had never led engineering and it's like well, let's give him Ethan's team and let him figure out engineering. Which could be really demoralizing,

[15:14] right? Like okay, here's the person who's not technical and I'm their guinea pig. In conducting a reorg, you mentioned that you're the storyteller and you're building a narrative. And you said in some cases you'd be direct and you'd say we're trying to retain this person so we're going to move things around. And in other cases you said you you would tell a story that this is solving a problem for the business and that that other part would be hidden. It's really interesting to me cuz there's it's almost like this hidden chess going on Absolutely. You're aware of there's multiple things and you're aware of the messenger of this is what this person wants to hear and here are the things that I'm trying to achieve. What pieces of what I'm trying to do can I sell to them to make the reorg happen and also you'll get maybe other things as a result. And I think that turns off a lot of people, especially engineers. They go I

[16:14] don't I don't want to be managing all these. I just want to say it as it is. Is that just a inevitable thing that you have to deal with if you're in management? Well, inevitable, you can certainly work around it. Meaning you can just do a reorg purely based on business goals and not let any concern for people enter. But probably that's going to cost you people. Because some people are more ambitious than others or just more demanding. And there is some truth to the old saying the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This is another harsh truth people don't like. Sometimes, let's say two people perform roughly equally, but one of them has made really clear that they're thinking about leaving. Well, a lot of managers will ask themselves, you know, Ryan's this great guy always sticks with us.

[17:15] He'll wait another 6 months and I can use those 6 months to save this other guy who's also valuable. And and by being quiet and dutiful, sometimes I can make the decision it's not that I mean to screw you. It's more I'm focused on saving this other person and I know you'll put up with it. And so you can end up behind just because you're such a nice guy. And uh I often tell people when I'm coaching them, I will often tell my clients, you are a very nice person. And when I tell them that, what they don't know is I'm then going to say and that is not a compliment. In this context, right? That like this is Again, I don't think you need to be a jerk, but jerks up to a point, pushy people get more. Now they can push too far and then they get less because they've antagonized.

[18:16] But if you never ask for anything, you'll never get anything. And so in a reorg, you ask about what's inevitable. Well, what's inevitable is I have some people who have been more vocal about what they want in their career than others. Perhaps I'm arranging the reorg just because I know what some people want and I don't know what others want and so I assume they'll be fine. That's the most benign version. It may be even more that for some people I know they're very pushy and demanding and for some people I know they're not and so I'm serving the pushy people cuz then I get to keep my whole team. So it seems like almost always it's better to be pushy and forthcoming with what you want in your career, but there is an upper bound though where you go too far. And so to to empire building for instance, a concrete example. I mean, have you ever had someone who was a manager underneath you and clearly asking for reports and you could you

[19:17] could see immediately that you don't need these reports. You're pushing because this is going to lead to your eventual promotion. And how do you handle that as a manager or as a senior leader when you can see someone's being too pushy and it's obviously not good for the business and not defendable? Yeah, so I think of manager, if I'm in the leadership seat, first I better have a good trusting relationship with that person if possible where we can have a heart to heart and I can get in a room where they don't feel anybody's listening or watching and say look, let's talk for a minute why you really want these people. Okay, let's both be honest that you're empire building and I get that. You're trying to get to a goal. But this is a bridge too far. Let's talk about how I'm going to get you there or how we're going to get you there by some defendable path or some other path. And so as opposed to tell them just no you can't have this, which would be very frustrating and they'll probably argue, I try to bend the conversation to let's problem solve together. What's

[20:18] another way to do this? And um I won't say I'm always successful. Some people want what they want right now and they can't see or they have zero patience to wait. And at that point again, that's that fine line. Uh if I can, I'll share a related example that I know people resonate with where one time I wanted to tell my manager that I really expected to be promoted. But I wanted to do it in a diplomatic way that couldn't get me in trouble and and wouldn't irritate him. Not just couldn't get me in deep trouble but like would bring out his support even though I was threatening a little. And so what I did is with this manager I wanted to be a director at Amazon. I was a senior manager. It's when I had the 22 people I referred to earlier. I went to him and his name was Neil. And I said, "Neil I need to understand how important my career is to Amazon. Because my career is very important to me.

[21:19] And see that's a statement no one can argue with. No one can argue and say, "Well, your career shouldn't be important to you or it's illogical." So I said, "My career is very important to me. I need to understand how important it is to Amazon. Because if it's not as important to Amazon as it is to me I need to think about that." And you know, I need to think about that isn't a direct threat, but you laughed. Everyone understands that I'm kind of serving notice. But I'm not doing it in a way that is easily easy for him to push back on. See if I say, "Well, if it's not as important to you." Making it personal with him. "It's not important to you as it is to me then I might quit." That's a threat and all managers are going to be like, "Hey, you can't extort me." Right? That isn't how it works. So I came up with these words that clearly conveyed the message but in a way you can't argue with it's important to me. You can't argue really that if if

[22:21] it's not as important to Amazon, I didn't personalize it. You know, that that I have to think about that. That you know, so I was able to put it on the table. And you know, um he promoted me, right? He pushed the promotion through. And I think there's always a way to say things in that middle ground that makes clear what you want and makes clear that you're willing to consider your other options but without being a threatening jerk about it. That wording is um it's it's kind of in for I mean cuz when you say the wording, I feel I mean if I was in I feel the effects of extortion a bit. Right? But I couldn't I could not label it extortion. If I went to someone else and I I went to my management and said, "Hey, Ethan told me this." They would they would have probably also immediately get, "Oh, there's a there's

[23:22] a threat here." But I don't think anyone in any room would say "This guy's being mean with it or or we need to get rid of him." They'd say, "That's uh well done way to present yourself." Right. That's bold. He's clear on what he wants and that's, you know, one of the advantages do find a place where you fit. Meaning Amazon was a relatively sharp elbowed pushy place. It has that reputation today. It was true long ago. You have to tune your message to to the workplace that you're in. That message would be offensive in some workplaces. And it was totally not offensive at Amazon because there were people sort of pounding the table of I need to move up now and you know, so so part of it's just finding the place where you look like a wonderful sweet person in the mix. And you mentioned that there's this this uh dichotomy, I

[24:23] guess. There's these people who are um team players, I guess. And then there's these people who are more pushy with what they want and they're they're very forthcoming. And obviously that has benefits for their career. I've heard people tell me that when they want to express to their manager, "Oh, I want to um get promoted or something like that." They have this feeling that they don't want to be too pushy because it could irk the manager. Correct. Imagine you're a high performer is it keeps you're a high performer but also you keep demanding things of your manager. That could also go wrong depending on the manager. I'm I'm curious like your perspective as a as a senior leader at Amazon when you had these demanding high performers is that something that you were were you happy to service their requests or was this did ever irk you and you said, "I'm going to actually not give you what you want cuz you're a little too you're a high performer but you're also too demanding."

[25:25] So I want to tell you a couple things about that. Yes, first the great thing about the really demanding people is if they really are bothering you to the point where you decide they're a net negative if you just tell them no, they will quit. Because they they are so driven about getting what they want that if you deny them what they want your problem will go away shortly. They will even leave for a lesser job just because they believe "Well, at this place I'm going to have different results." So yeah, you you can calculate and say, "Okay, what There is some calculus that says what answer gets me the result I want." And if someone's too pushy and not enough value, telling them no you can't have that, they will then go away. The second thing though is I tended to try and make a deal. I'm a huge believer in deal making and I made these deals with my own leadership, too. And the deal essentially was, "Okay, you want this thing. I will help you get it. But you're a high performer

[26:27] you're going to show incredible performance on the things I need. And then I will deliver." And uh There are managers of course who make that deal and don't follow through. I can say with uh total pride that I feel I always followed through. There's actually one exception early in my career I've shared where I failed to do that and I still feel bad about it 20 20 years later. But um I make a deal where I say, "Okay, you want this. Here's what it's going to take. I need this and this and this." So as an example I can give you. My manager gave me a requirement I really didn't like. He was my vice president. I was a director at the time and he told me, "Your team is too expensive. We need to put a bunch of it offshore in India with cheaper labor. You need to open Well, he didn't even say India. He said, "You need to open a low-cost offshore dev center." And of course I didn't want to do any of that. Like that meant traveling around the world and having teams around the world and I didn't know how to do it and where to do it. He left it completely

[27:28] you know, he made the whole problem mine. He didn't say go to India. He said, "Go somewhere." And so the long and short of this is I found a senior manager I knew who wanted to get to director. He was Indian living in the US and I went and said, "Hey would you go back to India and start this dev center? If you can build me a dev center in India, I think we can use that as a platform to get you to director." And that's exactly what happened. He moved home to India. He got to take his son home to learn Hindi and see his grandparents. He moved to India for 3 years and during that I was then able to use his independent action there and the fact he was doing all this stuff remotely and to the point of narrative, I was able to create a story about how this was clearly a director level accomplishment and he was promoted to director. But I made that deal years before it happened. You go to India, I will get you to director. So that's what I try and do with the the demanding people.

[28:30] Well, I can imagine also that a lot of things could change over the course of a few years. Maybe you're at a at a different org and you had that guy went to India and then you're in and he's no longer reporting to you 2 years later and you can't deliver on that. But I mean you can't make decisions based off that. No, if I had been reorged or fired, you know, it depends. Right. Right? Like there are things that could have happened where I would have had to say to him "Look, I'll do what I can to support you from the new role, but it isn't I didn't do what I was saying. I it's that I no longer have the power to." And I could feel all right about that. I can't immediately think of a circumstance where that happened to me where I wasn't able to follow through for someone. Uh but I can see where that would happen. The good news is people are most leaders are professionals in that they under they can see the difference between

[29:31] you didn't come through and you know, happened. Those are two different categories. Yeah, it's interesting how much back of the envelope I guess deals there can be between managers and reports or I'm sure between managers as well, like maybe let's say you're trying to get someone promoted in your org and you're working with your manager on making that happen eventually and he says he or she says um okay, I have someone who's even more urgent now, but that one's going to happen in two halves. This one we're going to do next half and there's all this uh you know, back of the envelope stuff inside of the the manager and the leaders heads. There's absolutely a line. Meaning by a line I mean a line up, a queue. Uh where even HR has a policy in big companies to say what is the forward-looking slate is what we called it, the forward-looking slate of promotions. And they would track and say

[30:32] by halves, who's in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, maybe as far as 24 and you could list different names. And so there was a sense of like whose turn is it? We're going to do not that there was in my time a quota. I understand for example at Google today uh talking to someone I coached there, there's a strict quota, like this quarter or this half two people can get from L8 to L9 in this org. And you know, the guy I was coaching is like, I think I'm number four, I'm not going to make it. And again, that can be toxic a little bit, but people understand the idea of there's a line. And so absolutely you have those discussions. Now again for early in your career, there's usually no quota to go from like entry-level college engineer or whatever that's called where you're at to sort of regular, you know, engineer engineer, maybe even to senior engineer. Things

[31:34] get to have more of this quota system when the positions are rare and expensive and there is a question how many staff or principal engineers does this company need? How many distinguished engineers does it need? By the way, those positions cost a million dollars a piece, so we don't just want to hand them out like popcorn. So you mentioned when we were talking about um empire building, there's this notion that managers' career progression is tied to the number of their recursive reports. And so the on the one hand, there's an incentive for managers to say I want more new head count. But I could also see there being cases where managers want existing head count. So maybe someone underneath you is vying to take reports from someone else and basically steal scope for their own promotion. And as since you were such a senior leader at Amazon, I'm curious like how did you handle cases where you noticed somewhere

[32:35] in your org someone is trying to steal scope from someone else in your org? So first I would say this has become more common as growth has slowed. In other words, when a company is growing very quickly as Amazon was through much of my tenure there you see less of this because it's easier to go get new people than it is to fight with someone and it causes less bad blood. Uh not that I never saw that. But now that companies aren't growing, you know, if you look at the magnificent seven or however you look at them, most of them are flat head count, couple exceptions there's a lot more of this what I would call cannibalism. Since I can't go out and get new, I'm going to have to eat what's here and that that's very cannibalistic. You see a lot of maneuvering for that. How did I deal with it? You can't allow people on your team to go rogue and be pirates in your own organization, like capture somebody else's ship and

[33:36] >> [laughter] >> you know, kill the captain, sail away because of what it's going to do to your org. It it you're no longer in charge then they're in charge, right? They're raiding and pillaging and you seem clueless. So you can't allow that. But what you then have to do is either find them a path, convince them to wait or frankly, if they turn too septic they become your answer. Meaning they're going to leave or you get them to leave and you give their team away. So if it really is cannibalistic, what happens is if they don't pull off, you know, it's it's like any coup attempt, I guess in in like politics. If you attempt a coup and you win, you get to be president or you know, whatever. And if you fail, you get hung or shot. And so this is a little bit, yeah, it's not quite that bloody, but uh one thing that holds back the worst behavior is people do realize if I get caught being too obviously self-serving

[34:37] it's going to burn me here. And so they usually are pretty careful. Um but do they want it? Sure, people all the time are asking, could I take over this? Could I take over that? What I encourage people to do is I tell them, look, you never know when a reorg's coming, you never know when somebody's going to quit or get fired or laid off. So talk to your manager and say, hey if we have an org change and there's an opening, I just want you to know I'm ready to step up. I'm interested. And I will stand by you. This is one thing people want to know in a reorg is reorgs shake the ship and so some people are like, oh, this company's going down or it's not stable, I'm going to quit if I can. If you tell your manager what they don't want to do is put someone in a role who's then going to leave. And so you tell them, look I'm actually looking to stay. So when you need a stable leader, think of me. And then when that opening comes up, they're like, oh right, Ryan said he'd

[35:37] stay. Perfect. Ryan Ryan just became most qualified, not because he's best, but because he's most reliable. Right. I see. >> And that is best in in my situation. So that's what and what you just recommended there to me almost sounds like um a better narrative for asking for scope. Of course. >> Yeah, it's I mean rather than saying give Give me this >> Give give me this person's team. You can say I I want what's best for the org and if I need to step up, I'm here, but uh without being the pirate and you might actually get what you want. Absolutely. And that other piece of the messaging you stumbled on is really important. Which is of course we know you want this so that your org is bigger and so that you have career growth. But you there's a polite fiction that can be true, which is I also want what is best for the org. In other words, I understand that my best path up is to do things that are valuable to you

[36:39] and to the organization. And if I tell you look when a reorg happens, doesn't matter what the team is, if you have a need, I'll be there for you. That sounds very selfless and org-centric, even though the underlying message could be phrased as, I don't really care which team's available, I just want more scope, I'll take whatever you have. But the way I phrased it sounds so much better cuz one sounds like the pirate ship and the other one sounds like the selfless servant, but they're both really, hey, whatever's available, I'll take it. That that phrase you said, the the polite fiction. I feel like that's the thing that I could feel as while we're talking about it, too. It's like if it feels weird, it feels uncomfortable, it feels conniving almost cuz it's it's it's uh you have you secretly you have this and also everyone else knows you have this. But you say this, but you I mean both can be true. That's that's yeah. That's

[37:40] the key is it can be conniving. But it doesn't have to be. They can be honest. I can go to my manager and say, look, I want to grow and I will do whatever you need in order to grow. Like whatever's available, I will take it and do my utter best on it. And that that can be both things. One story, when I was a director working my way towards VP I once again had been put under a VP who had no other engineering leaders. But then they kept giving him more engineering stuff and I was the first and I built trust with him. And he just automatically came to me with everything, like, well, they handed me this, can you take it? And at one point I was managing, I think eight different functions. And they were as diverse all over the place. I'll give you three examples. I led the technical team for reverse logistics, meaning when people traded in video game cartridges, we had to grade

[38:41] them and sell them used. I was an advisor to the team that was grading returned video games or or used video games. I was selling new video games, like software downloads, video game downloads. And then uh I was um starting to build Amazon's Appstore. That's three examples. A fourth example is I also owned our B2B business where like Amazon was trying to displace and go into the market of Office Depot and like ship pallets of paper to people. And these all had ended up under my boss. I had this you know, you call it whatever you want, but this random mixture of stuff. But my boss loved it and over time that totaled 200 people from all these different functions. Um and that just came from saying yes to everything. Now, did I really want to work on grading video games or shipping pallets of paper to schools? Not really. So

[39:42] it was the win-win though. Well, this reminds me of the offshore India story that you had, which is your manager has work he doesn't want to do, and so he will pass it to you cuz he's identified you as the high performer that'll solve his problem. So, it is win-win for you because you wanted the larger org, and he's does not want to deal with these problems. >> Exactly. And so, someone I really respect, he's now a senior vice president uh at Walmart, he he said he was taught in turn by a a senior vice president at Amazon, the simple way to get promoted is quote, "Solve problems for your boss." Like, if you just need to get it down to five words, solve problems for your boss. If you're solving their problems, they will value you. And if they value you, if you then express what you would like, they don't want to lose you because not everyone's helping them that way. Most Most people are not. They're just punching the clock or fighting to do

[40:43] their own things. And so, even a so-called bad boss will often take care of someone who's helping them because even if their calculus is, "Well, imagine I'm evil and I don't really care about anybody but myself, but I've got this team of people, and some of them are helping me, and some of them aren't. Who do I want to keep? Even if I'm totally selfish, I want to keep the ones that are helping me. So, even then it can work out." What about the case where cuz in engineering, there are cases where we can create scope where someone goes off, they they find a problem that we didn't know existed, and they build a new system that changes the industry or does something really impressive, and then the impact they had is just incredible. >> Mhm. But they didn't necessarily solve a problem that that boss specifically came to them with. >> Sure. Um that could also work though as well. And the man- And that manager would push that promo through. Um but I guess that's a different Well,

[41:45] path. Um and I I recommend both of these. What I mean is, ask your manager what you can do, how you can help them, but also be thinking about what can you do on your own, or what can you go to your manager and say, "I think we should do this, and here's why." So, an example I'll give, uh Amazon now sells over a billion dollars a year of funny t-shirts, custom printed, you know, you can put your slogan on a t-shirt and put it up on Amazon and buy it or sell for or get other people to do it. I helped start that business, and specifically, I funded the initial team on it. And my manager was saying, "Hey, you run the Amazon's app store. Like, what does that have to do with t-shirt printing? This has nothing to do with it. Why are you doing this?" I said, "Well, I think there's a big business here. But, I need 10 people, and I have 800. So, if you're going to tell me that I can't spend basically 1% of my resources on this thing I believe in, we have another discussion to have cuz you're

[42:46] micromanaging me. Like, this should be within And so, he's like, "Fine. I disagree, but go do You're right, it's only a few people. Go do your thing." And then it turned into a big business. Um and of course, I'm simplifying a ton when I say, "And then it turned into a big business." There were like years of work in that phrase. >> But, I was thinking about what else can I do? What else makes sense that either with my own resources or with lightweight approval, I can go work on. And so, I think with your manager, of course you're trying to ask what do they need? And that's what I was doing with 790 out of my 800 team. And 10, I was doing something that he didn't think was a good idea, but I was able to say like, "Well, let me have my 10." He's like, "All right, that, you know, you're a big enough leader if you know, you're now responsible for making these people useful." So, he did.

[43:46] And if I failed, I started projects that also didn't work out, you've got to shut them down quickly, and, you know, have a good enough hit rate. But, I think there's multiple paths to the top. I tried them all, right? Be be the helpful person, but also be the inventor. We talked about reorgs earlier, and you you mentioned that it can be used to manage certain leaders out. >> Sure. What is that What does that look like in practice? Like, can you give me an example? Well, what it looks like in practice is you put them on something they don't want to work on, and you claim well, that was the only seat. That was the seat we needed you in. I mean, it's I I'd like to claim it's more complicated than that, but um I'll tell a story of someone who got reorged, and I thought they'd quit. Uh so much the the manager even thought they were going to quit, uh and was very upset with this. When I first joined Amazon, we had a few groups, and we organized ourselves, and I owned what was going to be Prime Video,

[44:46] and someone else owned what became Prime Music, and a third person owned what became the Kindle, the e-reader. And then there was a guy who had a clear ownership over the ingestion pipeline. So, the way to digitize movies, music, etc. was all a unified pipeline. And then there was one more leader, and he got given database maintenance, quality assurance, and like a couple small things. And even he joked, "Well, my group's other. >> [snorts] >> It's It's the garbage can, right?" And our our VP was like, "Don't call it that. You cannot call it that. What about the people in it?" Like, and I'm sure he was thinking like the leader who stuck with other isn't going to stick around. Well, as far as I know, that guy is still at Amazon 20 years later because he was one of those very calm, nice guys who was willing to do what was needed. He was the team player who was going to do what was needed. Um but the point is, if I wanted to get rid

[45:47] of a high performer, not a high performer, why would I want to get rid of a high performer? But if I wanted to get rid of a pushy, overly ambitious person, just give them other. Like, 6 weeks later, that's a vacancy. I can open the role right now, right? [laughter] Cuz like, I'm a bit of a confrontational person. So, when I needed to fire someone, I tended to just go straight at it. But this putting someone in a seat they don't like is classic. And there's even a um this is a widely understood You know, this isn't an Amazon thing. If you go to Japanese culture, completely other country, there's this concept called a window seat. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. Mhm. So, in Japanese culture, which is very collectivist, and I'm not an expert, so maybe someone from Japan will say this isn't true, but I don't think so. Uh you want to be in the center of the building. Even though window seats are very desirable in American culture, the hot You want to be in the middle of things there. You want to be close to the CEO and close to the action.

[46:48] So, actually being on a window means you're not that important. And so, ironically, what we would think of as great, being given a corner office, in Japan is a signal of you've been moved as far from what's happening as possible. You've been You've been exiled to the land of irrelevance, where you you know, you're not a You don't even co-workers on one side, you have glass. And that would be a way to signal to somebody like, "Your career here is now over. You're in a window seat." So, this idea isn't um you know, I don't think it's Some people would think, "Oh, well, that's only Amazon because they have a history of being combative." I don't think that's true. I think this idea is well known. You mentioned that that one guy who gets other, or the garbage can, he's uh the nicest guy, or he's he's the team player, and this and that. And I I guess I see the incentive structure that makes it that nice guy gets garbage can. But, why I don't know, some part of me is

[47:50] wishing the world wasn't that way. Sure. Is it possible to build an org where if you're you're nice, and you wait your turn, that the Because you're you could choose as like as the VP, you could say, "I'm going to reward the nice people that don't pressure." You can to some degree. Um first, note that the org I described where I had all those random things was also the garbage can, so I built the garbage can kind of opting into it. Like, I will take all of your junk, and that is my role. He was not doing that in the same way, but there was some of that. Uh the problem with only rewarding the nice guys is number one, sometimes the nice folks don't actually want more. In other words, ambition tends to come out, and if people are really ambitious, they do usually end up not always, but they usually end up more vocal. Second though,

[48:51] I have the problem that I do have all these vocal people, and what they're going to do usually is not become less vocal just because I have an example of play nice and you'll move up. They're going to look for where can I go that's going to reward me right away. And so, of course, maybe a better leader than I can build this culture where all the nice people are rewarded, and all the sort of less nice people see the see the error of their ways and become naturally generous, but I've just That isn't human nature. And so, I think there is some balancing. What I often do, as you heard from my coaching, and I'll be honest, is I tell the nice folks, "Being that nice isn't helping you. You don't have to be a jerk. You have to do what I did where you say my career is very important to me. It's okay. It's okay to have Where people fall down is they come

[49:51] particularly in tech from non-US cultures that are collectivist or have different mores and we're asking for what you want or speaking up culturally doesn't fit. I see this a lot particularly with women from Asia, different parts of Asia. At home they're expected culturally to take one role which is often more family oriented and supporting of parents and grandparents and so on. But then to get ahead in work they need to be a little bit more outspoken and it's a big contrast. Um I would just say it's okay to ask for what you want. That isn't that isn't wrong. And managers even good managers, they're not in the business of guessing. If you've never told me what you want sure in theory I should ask you but I'm very busy and so sometimes I get around

[50:53] to that and sometimes I don't. Meanwhile this other person, you know, every 3 days is knocking on my door. I'm super clear on what they want. When it comes to engineers, there's one one layer to think of and so if someone's low performing, they may be your peer. But if you have a low performing manager, there's this there's this vertical stacking that we have. You might be reporting to someone who you think is not great at their job and so the natural thought is go to their manager which would be your skip. Which I guess you could consider this as mutiny if you went to them and you said, "Hey, my manager is bad. I don't want to report to this person. Do you have any examples of of this kind of escalation coming to you or someone in your recursive chain was considered incompetent by their reports and they came directly to you and they said, "Please manage this person out or I just don't want to report to this person." All the time. All the time. One of the hardest things for people to understand is I've identified

[51:55] a legitimate weakness in my boss. I go to my skip, why doesn't he do something? Well, if you come to me with a weakness in one of my employees there is subconsciously this process that goes on that says, "I have two choices. I can believe that you're overly sensitive and high maintenance. In which case I don't really have a problem. You're the problem. And you know, you're two levels down for me so if you quit, the manager has to do the backfill. And I can tell the manager, you know, Ryan was here. He said this that and the other. Maybe you can work with him. And that's exactly what you don't want is me ratting you out but I can make it my manager's problem. On the other hand, if I agree with you and I'm like, you know what this this manager I have really isn't that good. Now I have three problems. This is really bad for me. One, I have to decide what to do with my manager. Maybe I have to manage them out. Two, if I do manage them out, I have to hire and train somebody else. And three,

[52:57] while they're gone, I have to do all their work myself. So you can see why even if it's subconscious, I have a lot of reasons not to listen or not to believe very easily. So, mutiny. Let's talk about mutiny. Uh if you want to see it as a mutiny, we've talked about pirates already. Never mutiny alone. If you want that to work, if you really want to say this manager is bad and we have a problem take two or three people or send two or three people in sequence. Find some of your coworkers who are willing to speak up because I will give you an example. It really bothers me. I had a leader who was treating the women on his team like crap. Now he wasn't doing that in front of me but it turns out it was true. Well, it took a long time for the different rumors to bubble up to me enough to where I'm like, "I'm

[53:58] hearing bad things." And then I went and talked to several of the women and like, "So, in working with this person I'm hearing" and they're like, "Oh, yeah." Well then I was like, "Oh, okay, I've been blind to a problem. I need to act on it." Had any one of them come to me early and said, "This person's a problem. They're doing this that and the other." I probably wouldn't have listened because it was a lone report. But when several of those reports came up then I'm like, "Oh, I've been missing something." So if you want to hold a mutiny, go together. Right? Like even if it's Zelda, like it's it's dangerous to go alone, take this. Take other people. I see. Okay, so if if let's say there's a high performing IC Yeah. >> who is reporting to a manager and say the fact is that that manager has some shortcomings in in their abilities. You would say don't go immediately to the skip. First build allies with some of the other

[54:59] people and say, "Hey, are you also seeing this with this person?" And If you can. Yeah, you want to talk to them and say, "Hey, do you see what I see?" Well, one thing is that's a way to sanity check. I'm really struggling with our boss in this area. Do you Are you having that problem? And if they say, "No, I get along with him great and here's how." Then maybe you can learn and adjust. That's the style thing. Whereas if they're like, "Oh, yeah." Then the hardest next hurdle is are they willing to speak up? Cuz a lot of people aren't. But if they know that you're going to go first and play ringleader. Like I will go and talk to our skip but I'm going to tell our skip they can verify my story by talking to you or and and also to Sally or Fred or Rajiv. Most managers, if you go to them and say, "Look, I know that my saying the boss is a weak link is uncomfortable and difficult for you but these three people are all willing to

[55:59] share similar stories. Would you consider at least talking to them?" Most managers will do that. Most, you know, not all. There's no There's no guarantees when you're dealing with people. I mean that's Yeah, that's the immediate thing I imagine is let's say I was that IC and then I went to other people and we all kind of knew that that person had a shortcoming. It there's the difference between that that water cooler talk and saying, "Yeah, this person is disorganized. Oh, yeah, he keeps doing that." Compared to hey, I'm going to go to his boss now and we're going to we're going to make take this up a notch because also there's this this delicate balance which is all these people still report to that person. So now if you were to get caught at any point in this process, you might worry about retribution or something if you're wrong. Um what about the path of cuz that this is a this is a lot. I mean your manager needs to be pretty bad if you do this. What about the approach of you say,

[57:00] "Hey, it's just me and him." And you want to go to the skip and say, "Hey, Ethan, um you know, nothing nothing personal with the person that I'm reporting to but I see uh better business case for me to go to another team or you know, something like that where you were to say I you know, don't don't think poorly of this manager but I'll be more productive somewhere else for your org." What about that approach rather than the the whole mutiny >> two approaches. Um the first is which is remember we talked about the story you tell versus the story that may be true. If you can actually make a strong case that you're equally valuable or more valuable somewhere else, a plausible case, don't even bring up the manager. Just say, "Hey, I was looking at this other role and I think I could do so much more for you in the org over here because of A, B, and C." And you try that run first and if that

[58:01] works, you're done. You never have to bring it up. The second thing you can say, you've just you've got to you've got to play chess not checkers meaning several moves in advance. You can totally say, "Look, candidly you keep it blame free. I'm not compatible with our leader. I'm not Maybe it's him, maybe it's me. Of course I naturally feel that maybe I'm doing good work and and he could improve but I'm not here to throw your manager under the bus. I'm just here to tell you I need a change." And I did this once with a leader at Amazon where I wanted to make a change. I was doing a good job for him in the role I was in so he wanted me to stay there. And what I had to help him understand is I said, "You are seeing this as I take this new role or I stay in this role and you'd prefer I stay in this role because that's good for you and I get that.

[59:02] But what I'm trying to tell you is either I take this new role in your org that I'm asking for or I'm going somewhere else entirely. So there is no choice keep me where I'm at. There's do you want me on your team or on someone else's team. Now I had both options available and it was really interesting because after weeks and weeks of resistance, I was in the new role the next morning. Like once he got the clarity of oh, I thought I had a choice between you stay in the role I want you in and you go to the role I don't really want you in. But the choice I actually have is I keep you in my team or I lose you. It was totally different the next morning. But how how did you word that in a way where that person you were reporting to did not feel upset that you kind of subverted their power and forced their hand. Um that's a good question and so I can exemplify that. I framed it in terms of what they would do. Uh this person was a vice president. At

[1:00:03] that point I was a vice president reporting to them. So I was like a smaller vice president, whatever, lower in level. And I had gotten a job offer from a senior vice president in a different organization. That was my other job. So I went to him and I said, "I have an offer from this SVP. Now you know that if I give my word to that guy, I have to go. Like that's what you would do. If I give my word, it's over. You know I really want this other role. I have to give this guy an answer. You've told me no on this other role several times. What do you want me to do?" Bam, the door like cuz once he understood, he understood he would never break his word to an SVP. So he understood that the moment I gave my word, it was done. And so that's the same like what would you do? If you can tap into the manager feeling

[1:01:05] like, "Okay, I don't like it, but I get it." That's what I was doing is he was like, "Oh, I don't like this, but okay, I get it." There were three roles that under consideration. >> was the one I was in, the one I really wanted, and the alternative I had gotten on the table. >> So you brought in a a new option that was better than your current and you said, "My alternative now is I may leave you unless you give me what I want." >> Yeah, but you didn't say that directly. >> what I want. Instead I said, I actually I'm very careful not to make it that threatening. I said, "You know once I give my word I'm I can't go back on that." Like that's The the the wording it I I mean as soon as you say I think I mean if I was that manager I got I there's I'm on your side even though I see the what was the what was the word there? The polite fiction, I guess. I see the polite fiction immediately, but and I laugh cuz it's just so And I think this is a skill I haven't

[1:02:05] figured out how to teach people, but maybe this talk can help. Several times I've given you these polite fictions, these careful wordings. I think a mistake people make that they can do so much better is think through your wording before you're in the room because most of these conversations are not spur of the moment. You either they're either on the calendar. This is my performance review or whatever. Or you at least know they're going to come up. And so spend the time to have that key phrase ready so that you can just with true sincerity say "Yeah, you know once I give my word, I can't go back on that." And I deliver that, I look like I did mean it. In no way was I lying. But at the same time I deliver it like I'm an angel just fallen from heaven. You know poor innocent victim. Both are true. And

[1:03:08] when I put the screws to that other boss long ago and said, "Well, I'm going to have to consider if my career is not as important to Amazon as it is to me, I'm going to have to think about that." Again, I said that with a warm smile like, "Hey, of course I'm going to have to think about that." And I just look like the kitten, you know, the anime kitten with the giant eyes. Well, body language matters because if I say that to you, see I can say that differently. I can say, "Well, Ryan, you know, if my career is not as important to Amazon as it is to me, I'm going to have to think about that." Then [snorts] they're like, "Well, screw you." Whereas I say, "Well, of course I'm going to have to think about what that means for me." Totally different delivery, same lines, same words. Now, there's some people watching this, engineers who are like, "I hate you. I hate the politics." I hear you, but this is human nature and human interaction. You're dealing with other humans and their emotions are at play and their defensiveness and their own stress.

[1:04:09] Do yourself a favor and get good at this. Well, and yeah, and to me that that is clearly your superpower. I mean I can imagine so many other people in these situations not getting the outcomes they want because they worded slightly differently and it doesn't come off you know, the the way they say it and and kind of the the the the interplay about what that person wants and you know, the things that you could say. And how do you do that? Like if we were to try to reverse engineer like coming up with those polite fictions so that people can get more of what they want out of their careers. I I imagine this would be useful even outside of Well, it's all through your life. >> Yeah, all throughout your life. >> it's all any any negotiation, any deal making um I call it I've tried to reverse engineer and we'll do some more right here right now. I call it being interpersonally warm.

[1:05:11] So being friendly, smiling, not getting agitated while being professionally firm. Saying what I need to about what I really want but in a way where I don't bring anger or you versus me into it as much as I can. And so um there are some key phrases. Uh a great phrase is help. Right? How How can you help me? I I want to get to the next level. How can you help me? Because everyone loves to think of themselves as helpful. And so if I ask you for help, you know, that that's just a as opposed to I ask, "What are you going to do for me?" It's that sort of phrasing. Um so part of it is the attitude. I read a book I really love. I can share the book. It's called Leadership and Self-Deception. Uh and it's written by some research institute called The Arbinger Institute.

[1:06:12] But what makes this book so interesting and what it taught me is don't see the other person as an obstacle to what you want. See them as a human being trying to do the best they can in their situation who has all kinds of problems. And what makes a huge difference here is when I start seeing my boss who I want something from not as well this person controls my pay or my promotion and I have to yank it out of them. That's seeing them as a thing. They're an obstacle like a barrier across the road. If I see them as a human trying to get by, then I can emote to them and say, "Look, here's what I need. What do you need so we can make this work? I want to help you because I want your help." And that's an honest offer most people can understand. And so it comes from that how do I see them? I think this is a huge thing is we objectify others. This happens anytime you're working with another team as an engineer you do this

[1:07:12] all the time. I just need them to do this thing. How can I your thought is how can I get them to do this thing? That's making them an object. I need to give you the right inputs and yank on the right levers so that the right thing comes out. I'm treating them like an API. I make the right call, I get the right result. What you want to do is treat them like a person and say, "Look, I know you have a busy road map and I understand you have a lot of pressures. But I do need this. So what can we do together? How can I help you so that you can make the time or let me make this change myself?" And the key is once people feel like you're caring about them as a person, they usually respond that way. Now, nothing works 100% of the time. And I can't instantly recall one, but I've probably rolled out these polite phrases before and not won. Like I um I was debating politics with my college roommate and I thought to

[1:08:14] myself, this is very recent. I'm going to use all I teach all day about how smooth I am and how influential I am. I'm going to use all my skills and I'm going to convince him of this point in modern American politics which is very contentious. I failed. But the best I can say is that we left the conversation nobody angry. Friendly. But I I kind of got nowhere because sometimes sometimes their motives and what's important to them just can't be aligned with yours. So I'm not My only point here is these techniques will get you way more success. I don't want to convince anybody that like I have some magic recipe that's 100% likely to always work out. You said a few things and it sounds like you had some high-level rules you could you could give, but it's hard to reverse engineer because it's it's not a recipe. Inevitably it's

[1:09:17] it's two people interacting and every single person's different and seems like the the unifying thing is to really imagine what is that person feeling and when you say things to them? What do they want and how will how you present yourself make them feel in the exchange and hopefully that goes in the direction you want. But obviously not always cuz it's subjective and you can miscalculate. So, I think an analogy that may work for at least people who know chess a little bit about chess is I think of this a little bit like I'm not an expert chess player. But I understand there's two pieces to playing chess well. One is of course knowing the board and how to move. The other is called a book opening where you've memorized a set of opening moves. And I think what you can do in a lot of these conversations is open with a set of pre-planned moves where you've thought about how am I

[1:10:17] going to make my first ask? And you've thought about uh when am I going to do it? Like don't catch your manager wanting to have a deep conversation about career 5 minutes after a high severity problem on a Friday. Like they're not in the mindset, right? If their hair's on fire and they're trying to get out the door to pick up their kids, this is not when you're going to get the best hearing. So in the play chess analogy, set up your opening moves, but then yes, at some point there are some general rules about chess. Again, I'm no expert, but like in chess you want to hold the middle of the board. Being towards the middle is So, if you have a chance to move towards the middle, move towards the middle. Well, with a manager or any leader that you want something from try to move towards that common ground where we can agree. But yeah, it's about learning how to play well. Um and I've spent a career learning how to play well in verbal

[1:11:18] conversation. And I think the biggest thing I used to have quite a temper. I actually got fired two separate times, put on layoff list because I was volatile and critical early in my career. I put the temper away and I I learned how not to go there. And that made a huge difference because people don't react well to anger or criticism, right? Even if you're right. So, I mean obviously you're very adept at this interpersonal uh way to influence people. >> Mhm. When you were working in corporate America and you met someone else who you identified had that skill set, let's say it's some manager underneath you or maybe managers in other orgs or could be an engineer as well. Yep. Is that something that in your mind that's a positive thing or is that something where you're thinking I have to be careful cuz that person can mold things around them strongly?

[1:12:19] Both. What you're trying to do next is assess what's their motive. People often ask me, what's the difference between influence and politics? Like when does influence become politics or manipulation? And for me the answer is the skill sets are the same, they're around motive. And so, one thing I teach executive presence. And one thing I point out about executive presence is Darth Vader had it in spades. Like he had tons of executive presence and so did Palpatine, right? They're these powerful commanding figures. These skills, being influential can be used for good or evil. So, with the example you're talking about, the thing I'm now trying to figure out is okay, this person is a skilled operator. You know, are they US special forces or are they Russian special forces, right? Like like which side, you know, who am I dealing with here, right? Am I am I dealing with someone who's got to like rescue me and get me out of a

[1:13:19] hostage situation or am I dealing with someone who's across the line and is about to drop a bomb on me? And so I'm trying to figure out motive. And um there's kind of three cases even there. There's people whose motive is to do good, easy to work with, great. We both have high social skill, we're going to be so effective together. There's people who are completely out for themselves. Now, you know, going back to Star Wars, it's very much like Sith versus Jedi. I've got to get my lightsaber up and I'm going to be fighting for my life. And then there's this middle ground though that's interesting which is well, this person has motives I can work with. They're not altruistic, they're not just trying to do well, but in this case they kind of want what I want or I can give them enough wins and I can negotiate I can be like, hey, you want this, I want that and that's the deal making of of we're never going to be best friends. I

[1:14:20] don't necessarily think you're the best person but in this limited scope we can both make money together or we can both ship something together. Let's say there's someone who is extreme high performer but you can tell they they will only do what will help them. And you see a path to aligning what you both want so it can be good. But you could tell that if this is ever off their path they will not be on your side or in fact if there's something that could get them ahead and put you behind, they would gladly do it. Would you still choose to ally with that person or would you kind of separate them from you and your org somewhere? Well, if I could separate, I'd love to. But remember at work we don't get to choose always the teams we work with. Like sometimes we need another team. Sometimes we need a team that's run by a terrible person, sometimes we need a team that's run by a

[1:15:21] self-serving person. I think if you want to succeed in your career most sure, get away or marginalize or or minimize contact with difficult or unethical people. But also learn to work even with the very unethical because sometimes you're going to have to. Now, of course there's a limit. I'm not saying break laws or do thing you know, but um but sometimes you don't get to choose who your teammates are or what system you need. And so, I do think it's worth being equipped. How am I going to do the best I can? And there are there's we don't have time. There's a lot of techniques to protect yourself. There's bring allies with you. For example, most slippery people they love to be slippery in the dark where they're not going to get caught. So, if you can bring a few allies so it looks like, oh

[1:16:24] everyone thinks this. Often suddenly they'll say, "Oh, I think that too." Because they you know, part of their power is slippery people usually can't afford to have everyone know that they're unethical. Because once we know once everyone knows someone's unethical, they do get shunned. And and so they have to keep it largely under wraps or defensible. Uh what there's a phrase from politics called plausibly deniable where they can deny that they were really as bad as maybe you're saying. What you want to do is put them in a situation where it's easier to go along with you than to fight you. So, construct a situation where they're like okay, this isn't the best for me. Like I'd rather stab Ethan in the back, but boy there's a lot of witnesses. Right? That's And so you And it's unfortunate, you know, again, I

[1:17:26] know many engineers will be frustrated, why do I have to do all this crap? Can't I just do good work? Why why? Sorry, humanity. Going back by the way, read any, you know, ancient text of philosophy or religion, humans haven't changed. They've been mean to each other since the first ape clubbed the other ape. This doesn't change. So, it's I'm sorry that it frustrates you, but you're going to have to do it. So, it sounds like the best way to prevent yourself from from backstabbing is to have a really strong, I guess, soft power in your org where there are people who will defend you or just the setup is that you would be too powerful for them to come after you. Not worth it. Not worth it. >> Right. It's it's uh it's like all the animals in the animal kingdom, you know, like porcupine. All right? Plenty of animals can eat porcupine if they're willing to get a mouthful of quills, but it's not worth it. Like, you know, uh and I'm sure there are many other examples, but

[1:18:27] you you you want to be not worth it. It's just easier. Because remember, this is important. Other than cartoons like a Darth Vader people don't wake up in the morning. That slippery person does not wake up in the morning and say, "I'm an evil jerk and that's all I ever want to be." Their self-narrative is more like I'm doing what I need to. I'm practical. Other people are wishy-washy and have all these optimistic things. I'm practical. And some people get upset that I'm so practical. Well, that's not my fault. That's what they're telling themselves. And so, what you want to do is help them with their narrative and say, "You know what? You're right, you're very practical. And in this situation, the practical thing is to go ahead and help me out because I've got a lot of support and you know, I'm a rising star, and it's you help me out and I'll remember.

[1:19:28] And and they're like, oh, that is very practical. You know, even [laughter] though and that that's just it's important to remember that the other person's narrative, we think of them as like that person is so unethical, they must wake up in the morning and think about how they can rob their grandmother. That's not what they say about themselves. They say, you know, grandma's getting old, and I need her funds because she's not really up to it anymore, and she doesn't need all that anyway. But that is what they tell themselves, right? It's not I'm a thief. What about I mean, I think a lot of what we talked about is kind of implying within your org. >> Mhm. Have you ever seen cases where other orgs were plotting to maybe take scope from your org or kind of you know, battling between the org orgs? Oh, jeez. I've seen this all the time. And you know, again the narrative people are telling themselves is not usually I'm going to

[1:20:29] pillage scope from that other org. It's they know their own org and their own mission really well. So, they have a really clear idea why having your scope would help them. Meanwhile, they don't know your mission, and they don't know everything you're really doing. And so, it's very easy for them to imagine that your org's not that important. A very smart engineering leader once said, respect between two engineering teams is inversely proportional to their distance. So, the further apart they are, the more they belittle each other cuz they can't see the work. And you hear this all the time. Like, I think of Amazon S3, right? This service that stores now hundreds of trillions of objects. I've heard it described as well, it's just a big disk drive. So, this is very belittling. Like Like, of course at some level it is just a big storage system. That's true. But the boy that I'm at, it's really just a big disk drive. It's so dismissive. And you see this all

[1:21:32] the time. And the closer you get to home, the more you've seen the work or worked with the people or seen the complexities and all the edge cases, you're like, oh, actually that is very complicated. Well, I see this with orgs. Sure, there are some leaders who are just like, yeah, we should take that org cuz I want it. But a lot of times what they're doing is like, well, we can do so much more with it. Again, that internal narrative. Very few humans wake up and say, I'm going to be evil today. What they do is they want something, and they construct a line of logic, which we're very good at, about why that's actually a great thing anyway. And and that's where you get the org versus org fights. Let's say I'm an engineering leader. Mhm. How do I protect my org from other orgs? Uh well, first thing is you've got to get all um Hmm, this is the skunk trick, I guess. We'll use animals here. The skunk trick is make yourself unattractive. So, trick number one is list all the things that they don't know about that you have to maintain that are

[1:22:33] unsexy and they don't want. And have the customers for those show up and say how important they are. Well, yeah, well, we actually run, you know, the Yugoslavian Yugoslavia is not even a country anymore, but we'll use it. We run the Yugoslavian tax engine, and so, boy, we get a lot of tickets for that, and it's going to have to be owned. So, are you guys ready to take on that? That's one thing you can do. The other thing is um you want to make yourself thorny. Again, there is a little bit uh who's the least attractive target? And so, they're out sort of do they really want your org or do they want an org? And so, one of the ways to be thorny, honestly, is to overreact and attack back and just make yourself like, oh, ouch. They They went public and volatile really soon. Maybe [snorts] I'll go for a softer target. Now, you have to be careful in how you do that because if you if you behave in a way that makes it

[1:23:35] easy to discredit you, then you're an easier target. Oh, see, Ethan's not a very mature leader. We should definitely move that under me. I'll I'll make sure we don't have this sort of unseemly behavior. That's weakening [snorts] myself. But if I can immediately say counterattack and say, you know, it's really good that you're thinking about merging our orgs. Your org is going to be so great as a part of our org, and I promise I'll take care of you. Then they're like, ooh, maybe maybe I, you know, messed with the bull and got the horns. So, you can So, there's I you know, I'm uncomfortable talking about sort of combative tactics because I see when you get to that, it's a failure in my opinion. But if someone's trying to maneuver, and you don't want that, it's a matter of shining a light on it and sort of exposing their motives if you can, while making a strong case for why the work you do is very important. Now, where you're vulnerable is if your work is behind if if you have

[1:24:37] weaknesses, if your work is behind, if it's not making a lot of money, if it's performing poorly, those are hard cases to make. Whereas, if you're on a strong platform of high performance, then you have a lot of arguments, hopefully, about don't distract us. Another great one is we know reorgs causes 6-month hit in productivity. We're killing it on profitability, new customers, whatever is valuable. We should you know, we shouldn't even talk about this for 6 months. We need to hit these goals and get the year end. Cuz you know, in 6 months they'll have moved on. So, one thing that's another delaying tactic. And I hope what you're really getting from this answer is how quickly I'm coming up with like here's three or four different things. You just have to look at the situation and say, how can I put this off, change it, scare them off, make myself unattractive, whatever I need to do.

[1:25:37] I'm just looking for what's, again, narrative. What's the best story? People love to think that facts make decisions. But but we know from psychology people come to an emotional conclusion and then rationalize it. If I am a better storyteller, I give you that narrative that you're like, yeah, that sounds right. That feels emotionally where you wanted it to go, and then you have a story. I've helped you wrap your own story around it. And then once it's your story, your internal story of how this should be, it's very hard for anyone to shake that. So, be the better storyteller. You mentioned a lot of tactics on defense. Uh-huh. What about the flip side? Let's say you're high-performing manager, and you you see there's a great reason for another org nearby to be absorbed into your org. What are What are the attacker tactics?

[1:26:39] Well, Ryan, when you said we would just go deep on transparency, you were not kidding. Uh attacker tactics. So, the best attack the you know, which I would argue isn't even necessarily an attack, but it has that effect, is a real story of how that's going to create more value. If you can make a point that, you know, whatever whatever metric you're using, this group puts out one release a year, I can get it to two. This group makes $100 million, I can get it to 200. And here's how. Then that's actually a very good argument. If we go to maybe slightly less good arguments, they usually have to do with seniority, efficiency, I can save costs. I can by consolidating this, we're either going to get more done with less, or

[1:27:39] um we're going to have simplicity in our communication, or you're going to have fewer direct reports, which is going to make your life easier. They're They're arguments that aren't necessarily false, but they're less directly about business growth, and they're more about making things smoother for the leader who's making the decision, or nicer, or cheaper. They're like second-order effects. Um I wouldn't I hope no one would do this, but I know people do. The third attack tactic is clearly to go highlight flaws in the other org, right? To go show, well, this leader has this problem, and this team has this problem, and they have high turnover, and they have high costs, and look at this outage. And you're basically trying to show, well, it's a dumpster fire, and you should let me put that out. But what if that's true, though? Okay, if it's true,

[1:28:39] again, if it's true it's a dumpster fire, then you're offering to make things better. It's where you're kind of highlighting things that maybe aren't as bad, you know, and just like only pointing at the bad. Yeah, if it's if it's true an org is struggling, the truth is you can talk to your manager and say, look, the way I would do that, though, is not say I should take over them, I'll fix them. I would say, hey, I go to whoever owns it or the common boss, and I say, hey, I can't help but notice that you're having a lot of trouble here. Is there anything I can do to help? That's my opening gambit for I want to take it over. Because I can go in there and start helping and then later they're like, "Wow, it's so much better under Ethan's leadership." And at that point I can casually mention, "Well, I you know, if it would really help you." >> [laughter] >> You know, we could just consolidate. Now that I'm here, I see all these efficiencies. That's That's like another way to go about the same thing. I feel

[1:29:39] like giving all these answers, people are going to think like, "Wow, that Ethan is a real sadistic." >> [laughter] >> I am telling the truth. >> is what actually happens though, I think, like what you're saying. So, it's kind of um I don't know. >> I have seen it all. I have seen things, you know, that make me want to close my eyes, for sure. I kind of want to talk a little bit about like uh some of that interpersonal stuff or maybe, you know, the backstabbing and the some of the politics. If there is someone within your org that is a people problem, they're doing something actually like I don't know. >> Mhm. You You can just immediately get them fired. Cuz they're in your recursive reports, talk to their manager or whoever. And kind of figure it out. >> the evidence, for sure. But yeah, you can absolutely You can move very quickly if it's clear. But what if it's someone in another org? So, another org, there's a person who is well-liked within their org that is a major problem for your org. Well, then what do you do? So,

[1:30:41] um one of my managers had this problem and he uh he literally put someone in a position he called a meat shield. >> [laughter] >> What? Where it's like, "This person is a huge pain for our org or this org. Your job is to keep them off of us. [laughter] And honestly, it's going to be a terrible job, but I'll reward you later. So, you need to like go be a meat shield till this project's over." And so, >> The imagery is just >> Yeah, I know. It's like it was, you know, like put your back into it and let them beat [laughter] you. Um Oh my god. And of course he had to He was very honest with them of like, "That's your role and I know it's a terrible role, but I'll make it up to you, you know, get us through this project. Like go take one for the team and I'll pay you back." Um But what else can you do when someone's in another org? The first thing, the most important thing if you want to try and make a change, is understand why

[1:31:42] they're valuable to their org. Because the reason they're that other org, what they're not doing is saying, "I know we have this evil person and as long as they're pointed at other orgs, we're okay with them being evil." That's probably not what they're saying. What they They either aren't seeing it or more likely that person, what they're telling themselves is, "Well, they have a little bit of sharp elbows, but they get so much done that's valuable. It's okay. And if people's feelings are hurt, well, they're soft." It's kind of how they So, you have to understand where they're being seen as valuable. And then what you have to do is go to that leadership and have one of a few discussions. Look, we're willing to give you this value without all this pain. Is there a better way? That's one way you can go about it. The other way you can go about it is, "Look, your guy is driving us nuts or is mistreating us.

[1:32:43] So, that's going to change. Either you're going to give us a new interface, you're going to You I I can't say you're going to fire them, but you're going to move them away from bothering us, at least. Or we're going to stop cooperating. Right? Like if If you're going to inflict pain on us, we're going to return the pain. Everything will be late, everything will be your fault, everything will be escalated, everything will require six document reviews. We'll put in place I'll spend the rest of the day asking Chat GPT, "What is the most policy checkpoints I could put on our next release?" Right? Like this You can express this How do you message that with the right narrative without, you know, pissing that leader off? >> mean, if I Okay, so that's that's my internal narrative, I guess. That's my [laughter] like, "All right, screw with me, I'll screw with you back." My external narrative would go something like, "Dear peer of mine, this person is really making things difficult You know, you have this person on your team. I know they're a valuable member to you and your team, but unfortunately, our

[1:33:45] team is really struggling with them. And I'd like to make a change. Option one, you can find a new interface person for us. Option two is we're going to have to adjust to distance ourselves for the sake of my team and I think unfortunately, that option's going to create a lot of friction between our orgs that really is going to take both of our time. And so, I don't want to take your time, but I have to to protect my people. Some of them are ready to leave. What would you do if people on your team were ready to leave? And so, I'm going to have to take some steps and that's going to increase bureaucracy and take a lot more of your time and my time. And I'm sure there's a better way." That's amazing cuz it's the same thing, but you didn't You didn't threaten or threaten All it

[1:34:45] just uh by circumstance, if you don't comply, your life will be harder. But I wish it wasn't, but that's just how it is. One thing people underestimate is most leaders at a certain level, they may not have expert social skills, but they're pretty They got there for a reason. They understand what they're being told. Even if they don't understand it consciously, you know, they they get They're sensitive to unspoken messages. And they understand that I'm giving them a chance to collaborate, but that there's a stick up my sleeve, right? That That I didn't come to this with no other plan. And part of this is also how I project, how how you If you look weak, like you're begging, I don't really care what you need. But

[1:35:45] you know, I'm presenting it as like, "Wow, this is This is really tragic cuz it's going to get hard for both of us." And what I'm conveying there is, "Look, you want to trade punches, that's okay. I play ice hockey and sometimes someone on ice will hit me or, you know, be a little rough with me and I'll just look at them and say, 'You know, two can do this. You This was your freebie, you decide.' But I'm like putting them on notice like, 'Hey, the next time, you know, I have two elbows also.' >> [laughter] >> Right? All this conversation makes me think that let's say you're an um engineer or someone who is reporting some You want your your leader to to be strong for your org cuz I can imagine if they're not, let's say they're they're very nice and and their org is getting I don't know, a lot of negative things are happening to it. And they just say, "Oh, that's okay, you know, we'll deal with it as it comes and

[1:36:46] all this stuff." The other everyone else is going to step on them and that's going to affect you if your manager can't stand up for the org. Absolutely. And I think remember your manager, I've tried to showcase that your manager doesn't have to be a mean person to be firm, to be professionally firm, to have backbone. They have to be skilled. A lot of people, this is important, a lot of people don't know how to be socially skilled and so, they can only say hard things once they let themselves get angry or upset. That's their fuel. Is if I need to give you a hard performance message and say, "Ryan, you know, you've missed three dates in a row." I can only do that once I get internally angry and like, "Ryan's missed three dates. He let me down." And so, now I'm coming at you. I've gotten my ability to speak to you and to say the truth because see, I'm afraid you're going to say, "Well, I

[1:37:47] haven't." Or "It was my mom was sick." Or whatever. And you're going to make it hard for me. So, I have to be ready to fight and some people can't do that without first allowing themselves to be angry. You want a manager, ideally, who can stand their ground because they believe in it and because they are willing to have confrontation. And I'm no master at this, okay? I plenty of friends will tell me where I've been a jerk. But I try to figure out how can I stick to what I believe without ever needing to resort to anger as a fuel. I can just stick to belief. To your point about what you want from managers, there's a graphic image that says, "Look, all managers are either an umbrella or a funnel." And when the poo comes down, they're either shielding their team with the umbrella or they're a funnel dropping it onto their team. And you were discussing

[1:38:48] the funnel, the the one who's just like, "Yeah, we'll deal with it." And what What are they doing? They're deciding that if you're the engineer, they have a choice between push back on the boss above them, which feels scary and dangerous, and push back on you being upset that you're being asked to do weekend maintenance for the fourth weekend. And you're an easier target. because I have rank, I have position, I control your performance review, I control your salary to some degree. So, they're making a choice, which is it's easier for me, safer for me. And what you have to do in that trick in that space is change that balance of safety. So, you either have to help them feel safe pushing back on their boss or help them feel not safe asking for your fourth weekend. Those are those are the only two choices, really, is you change the balance of safety.

[1:39:49] Well, that first one almost feels impossible to me. Like, if I was if I was reporting to someone and this manager just says yes to everything, has no backbone, I don't know how I can give them a backbone, but I can definitely do the second option. Well, you give them a backbone exactly by the the second option, but like this. You say, let's say I'm your manager. You say, "Hey Ethan, um this is there seems to be a pattern where we keep getting asked to do weekend work. I would love to help you push back on that about how that's damaging our team, distracting our team. I can give you some of the data. But, I also have to be clear with you that my family is very important to me and I can't keep working weekends. And so, what I don't want is for you to be in a position where you accept work

[1:40:52] that I'm going to have to decline and then you'll have the problem that you committed to it and it won't happen. And so, I don't want to see you in that position. How can we plan to push back next time? That's that's how you line it up in advance. And I've I've heard this exact situation from a friend. Their manager was a yes-man to manage their manager. >> Very common. And so, they were doing committing to all these unreasonable deadlines and you know, not protected at all and wasn't a big deal cuz there's turnover, but it's fine. Just hire new people and just keep saying yes to more and driving people as hard as you can. The narrative that you said there, it it felt slightly more threatening than the the other ones cuz I I could imagine I could imagine that that more directly feels like you're threatening not to do the work. So, number one, you're right. That

[1:41:54] wasn't as polished as some of the other lines I've given you. But, I think with 5 minutes I could create a more polished version. And one of the keys that you're getting at here is the wrong time to start setting this up is while the request is in hand. What you want to do, like if you're getting asked to work every weekend, the right time to have this discussion with your boss is like Tuesday or Wednesday. Bef- after the weekend's over and a little time has passed and before the next crisis arrives. And the second piece though is it's then how do you make clear that your tolerance is limited? And yes, one of the costs of that, this is important. If you're not willing for the manager to say, "Well, if you don't like it, quit." You can't say anything. [snorts] You've got to have enough confidence in yourself that if it does come to that, like when I went to my manager and I said,

[1:42:54] "Um I need to know how important uh my career is to Amazon." I was also looking for an outside job. Um like I had decided I'm going to do everything I can diplomatically to win this over, but I'm also okay leaving. I think that's a big difference between this situation and all the other ones, which is in all the other situations, you had leverage. The you could leave and they will they would feel pain. Whereas in this case, if you're the lowly person or engineer, maybe they don't see your value as much. If you leave, you say, "Okay, great. Goodbye." >> um I mean, if you really are that discardable, then you've not created much value. In other words, absolutely leverage is required, but good engineers are valuable. And teams that are total turnover factories

[1:43:55] are not that effective. Now, if there's a company that totally has a view of bring them in, burn them out, move them on, you're probably in the wrong place. Like, that is, you know, if you're at a place where you can't create any sort of value, the right answer is you will have to get out. Um And I think people get trapped believing there isn't a better option. There's always more jobs. And I'm not belittling long searches or the difficulty or all all the problems, you know, with maybe in engineering today of AI making it hard to get on entry level, but but there are jobs if you do enough work. So, one of the things you have to ask yourself is this being at the bottom of the funnel of bad work being rained down upon you, how bad is that compared to say doing the extra work to network and find something else or start your own thing?

[1:44:57] Uh don't be a victim. You have agency. Uh if you prefer, you know, you can look at ownership, the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, whatever. There's many ways to look at it, but in the end, you have to be willing to take control of your life. Um even if that does mean, by the way, that you weather the bad manager while you complete the training program or find the job. Uh what a lot of people like to do is complain about how unhappy they are, but not do anything else. I get it because it seems exhausting. Like, "Oh, I just worked all day and now I worked all weekend. When am I going to look for a job?" Um one of my beliefs is to work less, you often have to work more first. Right? In other words, to get to the place where you can coast or have a good situation, you have to have to do some ugly digging first. And this the situation you're setting up is one of those. You also hit on another point that's

[1:45:59] really important. Create leverage. If you create that leverage, you're always in the winning situation. And then, thing is, if you stick is long enough, if your lever is long enough, it doesn't take very much force, which is why I'm able to be polite about it. I can be very soft in my hints about what I like because the lever is so strong. People are like, "Oh, we want to make this work right away." And that's what you're trying to do is have a big lever. I guess on another topic, there's the skill of backchanneling, which is not in public forums, but one-on-one in different places Yeah. driving your message to the right people so that you get the right aligned outcome. So, how do you effectively backchannel? So, I think of backchanneling in two ways. There's good backchanneling and manipulative backchanneling.

[1:46:59] Manipulative backchanneling is where I'm trying to do something that I wouldn't be willing to say in public. So, that's where you're really undermining or painting the other other proposal or the other leader in a negative light. Um I don't think that's usually necessary. And I'd like to say never necessary, but you'll lose some cuz maybe they'll do that. Uh what positive backchanneling is is giving people a chance to ask questions and find out what their concerns are where they don't have to bring them out in public. So, maybe for example, I'm the CFO or I'm the financial person and I'm really concerned about the budget, but I don't want to just ask a bunch of budget questions in the meeting or I don't want to put you on the spot. Or maybe I don't realize that you're mostly concerned about the budget.

[1:48:02] If we have a backchannel conversation, I can ask, "Here's my idea. Is there anything you don't understand? Do you have any concerns?" And what I'm doing there is I'm giving you a chance to feel, remember, feelings and narrative. I'm giving you a chance to feel understood, to feel consulted, to feel listened to. Backchanneling doesn't just work because of information exchange. You do get data and that is good. But, it also works because you there's all this subconscious I made you feel important. I made you feel listened to. I made you feel heard. And that emotional buy-in, particularly if the other project leader doesn't do that, gives you a huge leg up because you're building trust. You're building trust that, "Oh, you take input. Oh, I can work with you." And so, even if the two proposals are equal or even if the other one's a little better, remember, part of

[1:49:03] my bet if I'm an in the funding proposals is who can I count on when the chips are down? Who can I count on to get this across the line? Who can I count on if there's a problem? This other leader I don't know as well. They didn't consult me. Ryan came to me and asked me my input and and showed understanding for my needs. Totally I'm funding that. Because even though the payoff's a little lower, I'm sure Ryan's going to come through or I can work with him. And so just realize we so underestimate emotions. As an executive making a decision on which project to fund I'm wondering how it's going to make me look. I'm wondering what happens if it goes wrong. I'm wondering what happens if there's conflict between you and me later. You going to resolve it reasonably? I have all these fears and worries and the back channel lets me quiet those down as well as address factual concerns. And so that's why it's so effective.

[1:50:06] I I think if you were to negatively back channel other people would see that you are a snake and then you would lose some rapport, I guess. People do negatively back channel and they have to be careful about how they get caught, right? Or or don't get caught. You know, this is what you would call a backroom deal. You know, the classic backroom deal is like the kickback where you support this and I'll make sure you're taken care of. It's kind of like, you know, a mafia movie or something, right? It's the It's the I'm coming you with a proposal that amounts to you should do the wrong thing because we're both going to benefit and I just want to make sure we're on the same page and you know that even though I'm actually a snake, I'm not going to bite you. We're we're snakes together. That's the essence of that offer. >> Oh, no. And you know, some people are up for that. Like because

[1:51:06] some people are selfish and ambition runs wild and there are absolutely people who look at the world and say well I had to pay my dues and I got screwed over when I was in the weak position. And so now that I'm in the strong position, it's my right to take all I didn't get. It's not really I'm screwing that See, they always tell themselves a story that makes themselves look better. It's not really I'm screwing those people. It's that I'm getting what I'm owed. Like this is only fair. And that's another thing that's really important is just when you're dealing with someone who seems to be vicious do at least realize that their story to themselves is not that they're evil. Their story to themselves is something else and if you can figure out their story, you have a better chance to redirect that story. We talked a lot about soft power and

[1:52:06] influence and it it it sounds to me like that's not necessarily directly proportional to how many recursive reports you have. Have you seen examples where there was a person within an org that had a disproportion amount of influence? Yeah. Well, the first thing I would say >> [clears throat] >> is I've seen soft power come from ideas a few times. So Amazon for a while built a product they called it Cloud Drive ultimately, but it was a storage system kind of like Box uh or Dropbox, either one. Um and that proposal came from an entry-level new college graduate engineer. He had an idea for it. And he did two things to get it heard. The first was Amazon had an invite-only engineering conference where only a tiny percentage of engineers went offsite to this conference, but you could get an invite by making a proposal. So he fought his way into this

[1:53:07] conference. Then he knew Jeff Bezos came and reviewed a idea poster session. And so he emailed Jeff and said, "I have this idea and I'm going to be at the poster session. Do you think you could stop by my poster?" Which is a very small ask of the CEO. Well, then he got an audience with Jeff and he pitched his idea. And what Jeff did was like it and email his triple skip. So my boss. So there was Jeff, then this VP, then me, then a manager then this new engineer. And my VP didn't like the answer the idea at all, but Jeff had said, "Look into it." And so you know, I and the project I funded. It got built. So outsized influence and I can I can tell another story about this. Whilst different people have different origin stories for it to some degree

[1:54:09] I worked with a slightly more senior person who created the Amazon Fire TV or helped put forward the proposal for it. And he also was not a super senior person but he did a lot of the legwork and had the knowledge and had the connections and managed to get that created. So um what works here how you get that outsized influence, I've seen it many times. You have to have an idea and again, it's that appealing storytelling. You're telling a vision. These guys were telling visions. Wouldn't it be great if we had a cloud storage system? Wouldn't it be great if we had a low-cost living room device where people could watch Prime Video? They were telling an understandable soundbite story that everyone agreed with. At least on the surface because wouldn't it be great if we had a cloud storage system? Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if we

[1:55:10] had you know, a living room device a low-cost living room device? Yeah, sounds great. Oh, well, look, here's here's a way we could do it. So I don't know if you have a follow-up question on that, but influence can come from anywhere. It usually begins with a good story based in some real fact. It can't be usually total nonsense. And then told with enthusiasm and told repeatedly and specifically told to people who have the power to do it. What about what are the the least discussed reasons that people get fired that you wouldn't see in in the performance notes, but they are there? So kind of the that that second thing that's actually getting someone fired when there's a upfront story told in the perf notes. There's a lot of rules about when you can and can't fire someone. And so almost always the public story is some

[1:56:12] sort of performance story because that's the one thing that's allowed. So the hidden reasons are often if they're not evil or the person isn't just doing wrong work, it's usually incompatibility. So the main reason I see people getting let go that isn't discussed is their style and the leader's style are very different. And that style can just be one person is very detail-oriented, one person is very high-level and this can be on either end. That's one type of incompatibility. Another one can be uh with engineers, it's often one person wants to be very tech-oriented and what's the best technology and the other person wants to be very business outcome-oriented of look, what makes the money? I don't care if it's a hack. And

[1:57:13] where the firing occurs is where that becomes a religious debate and the two are just sort of at each other's throats. And remember, what starts as a small thing often builds up where over time these become a label. That person is technically clueless. That person's only about money. And and they start labeling each other and then it becomes personal. And once it's personal I've decided you're a bad person and I see all these things that make you bad. And you've decided I'm a bad manager. And once you have this lens you're a bad manager, it really doesn't matter what I do. You'll see everything I do is bad because so many things are ambiguous and open to interpretation. That's where people get fired. But of course, it's always labeled somehow performance. Well, you mentioned it can be labeled performance, but you mentioned that you could get fired for performance, but there's also those other HR reasons like sexual harassment and those types of

[1:58:14] things, right? I've seen one of the most blatant cases in my opinion of sexual harassment. Uh I have to be careful even now what I share and that will make the point. There was an executive hired very high-level position a chief level position who immediately started harassing women. And he was so blatant that it ultimately when we asked one of the HR representatives on his team about had she gotten any complaints, she started crying because he had harassed her, too. So this is someone with the gall to harass a woman in human resources. Um but he disappeared. This the leader terminated him right away as soon as this came out. But I people ask me, "How did such a person get in here? Didn't we check references?" And the thing I want people to understand is

[1:59:15] we didn't have legal proof of this harassment. We had a lot of people who said it happened to them. We believed them, but we never took it through a court and got a judgment that said, "Oh, he's a harasser." So, even though that's true, if I name this person and say, "Don't ever hire Fred Smith, you know, he harasses women." Fred can sue me cuz I have no proof of that. I have no legal proof. I know it's true, he knows it's true. It So, that's why companies don't say it. So, when someone calls up and asks about Fred, I refer them to HR, and HR says, "Oh, Fred was employed here from this date to that date." And you know, they uh that's how they keep getting hired. I will say I've looked this person up on LinkedIn since then. And the the fact he ever worked at Amazon isn't even on his resume. We caught it quick enough, he just deleted it. No awkward questions there,

[2:00:17] no why were you only there a month. He just deleted it, moved on, and that's how they survive. So, yeah, I've I've seen and it's hard to stop that. Was the next place that that person worked more than 1 month? Or I guess they >> maybe he was more careful. You know, maybe because we caught it so quick, I don't know. Um I I don't believe that what he did at our workplace was a one-off. I don't believe that. Um but you know, of course I don't know that. Last time we met, you mentioned that you as a manager could fire any one engineer that you wanted. Is there ever a case where you want to fire someone, or let's say a manager wants to fire someone, but their skip says, "You can't." Because the skip sees it and goes, "That's clearly there's an ulterior motive here. That person's fine." Like has that Have you ever seen that overruling? I have. I've definitely seen a case where a manager floats the

[2:01:18] idea, "I'm not sure Ryan's the right person for us." And the manager knows your work and says, "Why don't I move Ryan over here?" Right? Why don't I I think Ryan and again, if I want to make you feel good about it as a manager, what I would say is I say, "You know, I see that you're struggling with Ryan. I've seen him do well in other environments. Let me move him to this other place. He'll be out of your hair, and I think he'll be fine there." I don't tell them that I think you're going to be great there cuz that's s- kind of hinting that they're bad. I just make it socially easy for them to say, "Sure, move him away." That's just as good as fired from my viewpoint. Um this relies on your skip, of course, knowing or having a sense of things. And again, sometimes it is just incompatibility. Your style I can see that you and your manager are cats and dogs in a bag. It doesn't mean that you

[2:02:20] can't get along well. It doesn't necessarily mean the manager is bad. It does mean they lack enough adaptability. So, I can work on that. But I may choose to save you in that time. Um because what gets forgotten is people have personalities and preferences and not everyone can work for every other boss. I certainly had managers that some people at Amazon loved. And they drove me batty. And I also know that for those managers, they knew I was a high performer, but they didn't like my way of doing it. And that's just style does matter. You know, you have music you like more than others. Some music you're like, "Get this out of my ears." And some you're like, "I can listen to this all day." There is some of that element in work. I mean, the more that we talk about the behind the scenes of how managers keep

[2:03:22] orgs together and retain people of feels like the orgs are they're like duct tape together with a bunch of like uh you know, well-worded phrases. Uh this person goes here. Oh, I'm going to get you what you want next half, and I'm going to move people, and it's all kind of back of the envelope accounting in the leader's mind. Is that an accurate assessment? Uh you probably saw me smile when you said that. I certainly feel that way. What I mean is managers start out like you would think. It's just like I would compare it to an engineer with an architecture. When the project begins, you've got your nice little lines and lines and arrows and boxes on a page of the system you envision. And when it ships, there is some resemblance to what you drew, but there's all these special cases you didn't think about and all these things you forgot that got like, "Well, what service can we put that in cuz we're out of time?"

[2:04:23] And the the thing is shipped bears a resemblance to the thing you designed, but it is not this sort of pure, beautiful ivory tower. Well, I think the same is true of orgs, where managers set out, of course, to manage only by performance and to have great managers and everyone happy and to develop everyone's career, and then reality hits of schedules and difficult people and locations and office changes and people out on leave. And by the time it's all done, you're just really happy that it's working, mostly. And uh you know, I I think that's um I happen to enjoy military history. There's a phrase from military history I there military strategy that applies here that says, you know, with your battle plan, the enemy gets a vote. Like it's all great you have a plan, but then someone starts shooting at you. Maybe if you heard it another way, the boxer Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a

[2:05:25] plan till they get punched in the face." Well, I think your manager has a plan for a beautiful org right until like deadlines and outages and whatever punch them in the face, and then that plan starts to become whatever gets them through the fight. We talked about individual firings for for engineers. I think there's a common sentiment that it's harder to fire a bad manager than it is to fire a bad engineer. When you had managers reporting to you that let's say they were low-performing managers, how do you manage them out? So, I think it is harder to fire managers. There are three reasons. Reason number one is they usually are somewhat more experienced, so they they don't have the obvious bad performance. Meaning uh the first time I ever had to let someone go it's because they stopped coming to work. Pretty easy. Like, "Well, it's Wednesday and you haven't been here yet. I'm calling you to let you know don't bother to come in tomorrow." Like

[2:06:26] pretty cut and dry. Managers don't usually make mistakes at that level. So, they're more subtle. Their their weaknesses are more subtle because they got made a manager for some reason. They were technically good, they were politically good, they were organizationally good. So, they have some kind of strength that got them there. That's reason one. Reason two is a manager's work is hard to measure. Uh how do I exactly measure a manager's work? Well, is it that they hired? Is it that they did their performance reviews? Is it that the feature shipped on time? Is it bug count? The manager's job, it's very hard to put a lot of metrics, which means when it comes time to fire or to consider performance management, we're in this he said, she said opinion problem. And I think the third reason it's tough to fire managers is managers are part of the system. And so,

[2:07:28] they know what it looks like. They know like, "Oh, my boss isn't that happy. How do I start positioning myself to be hard to get rid of?" Like they they have a quicker spidey sense. If that's what they want you know, if they want to stay, they have a quicker sense of how do I how do I make myself difficult to pin down? And um of course, it's still possible. Like I I terminated a large you know, not a huge number, but a large number of managers. It's just it's trickier. Yeah, it sounds really hard to terminate a manager. How do you do it then in in those cases? So, my ideal way of doing it, which I wasn't always able to do, is to talk to them and to surface the idea socially that maybe this isn't working out. And would they like to collaborate on finding a better place?

[2:08:29] So, I'm phrasing it as I notice I I have the impression that we're struggling. You know, I would say something like, uh "I don't think we've gotten off to the best start here, and I'm wondering how you feel about it. Would you like to work on that? Or, you know, do you also see that problem and you'd like my help finding some other option?" Very nebulous. Smart managers get the message, "I'm your boss. I'm not happy. I'm offering you a door where I give you some time to find a job or maybe a severance package. Do you want to do this the easy way? Many managers will be like, yeah, I do. Um, you know, and of course they'll never say, of course you're right, I'm failing here. I want a door. What they will say if they're equally smooth is they'll say, I'm so sorry that you're not satisfied. Of course, I'm doing my utmost. That's me telling you, remember,

[2:09:30] I can make this hard for you, so you're going to pay well for my exit. That's that's the counter negotiation. But, ultimately, I want you to be happy and satisfied with my work. And if you're not, of course, I'd like to discuss what changes we could make, which is my way of saying I'm open. I'm open to making, you know. So, I've never used the word fired or performance because that creates something legally called constructive termination. Where if I've said, you know, we might have to fire you, do you want to quit first? That is a legal problem called constructive termination where I anything I do from that point is then seen as I'd already decided to fire you and now I'm making up reasons. So, I very carefully avoided that. They very carefully avoided ever saying, acknowledging that there's an actual problem. What they say is, I'm sorry you feel that way. Right? Oh, I'm sorry you feel that way.

[2:10:31] That's your problem. You feel weird things. But, I want you to be happy. So, if you're not, of course, I'd discuss alternatives. And that's their way of saying, yeah, okay, I get that it's not working. What are you going to give me? So, that's one way you quote-unquote fire. The other way um, is classic performance management, in which case you have to try and write down clear goals and objectives. You have to start documenting. Um, you have to give, you know, there's a legal standard that Well, there's a legal standard and this is what HR wants, but you basically have to document a bunch of expectations and then document that they didn't hit them. And then you have a performance case. Almost all managers will quit before that. What they'll do is once you start the process, they'll be like, oh, okay, this is going to take him 90 days. I have 90 days to find a new job. And they go find a new job. You mentioned that when the manager, who I

[2:11:33] guess knows the system, is getting managed out or this conversation starting, they can sometimes switch to how can I extract more value for myself? And I think a lot of people who are less experienced or they don't know how the system works too well is when they're starting to get fired, they don't they feel they have no leverage. And the fact that severance exists makes me think that they do have some leverage, although I don't know if I fully understand it. What What is the leverage that, let's say an engineer has as they're getting fired that that a company would want to pay for? Because severance I mean, well, there's >> It's a cost. There's the optics of it. Like, it looks good, of course, but I'm after this conversation, a little more >> [laughter] >> cynical. I feel like they're paying for something for that report. So, that report must have some leverage in that conversation when they're getting Well,

[2:12:34] there's several pieces of leverage. The first is, this process, if you want to go through it, is going to take a lot of your time. And uh, you have to document things. You have to follow process. You have to follow a bunch of paperwork. HR is going to audit your paperwork. If you're a low-level manager, you know, they're going to write it. Um, there are things I can do to string things out uh, as a tactic. And so, the first offer I'm making you is, hey, I'll save you all that time. If you will give me some money so that I have money in my pocket to go look for another job, I will save you this time and frustration. That's the first level of offer. The second level of offer is the story I'll tell the team. Right? Is, look, I can either leave talking about what a terrible experience this was and what a monster you are. I don't say those exact words to you, but I I can show you how to say that. Um,

[2:13:36] or I can leave saying, you know, this just wasn't a fit for me and I'm so excited to be moving on to Acme Inc. And I can't speak highly enough about how Ryan treated me through this whole process. Ryan's amazing. So, which story do you want me telling my coworkers? And so, those are a couple of the pieces of leverage. And again, it's this um, what's that phrase of mine you like so much? The plausible story or plausible fiction? >> polite fiction. >> fiction. If I need to say this to you, I say, well, you know, uh, let's say I'm working for you. Ryan, so far, you've been nothing but supportive. And if I were to move on to a new job someday, I would, of course, explain how supportive you've been. But, if I if if we're discussing my moving on, you know,

[2:14:36] really, I would hope you'd want to support my transition financially so that I can tell that story. And that's how I'd be like, you know, >> [gasps] >> and even that wasn't maybe as smooth as I would do it if I had to. And by the way, let's say you you're starting to give me performance feedback and I need time to be in the right headspace to have this conversation with you, I would just say that. I would just say, you know, Ryan, um, I appreciate you're starting to give me some performance feedback. I know we need to have this conversation. Honestly, this moment, I can't have it productively. Let's have it tomorrow morning. Or can we have it tomorrow morning? Um, and most managers won't be like, no, I need to tell you how rotten you are right now. Because they're already on edge a little bit. And then so, if you're putting up this flag that says, I'm about to lose my on you, but tomorrow I'll be a good child, they'll

[2:15:38] be like, sure, come back tomorrow. Because they're sort of trained to. And I've put you in a really difficult situation. This is important. Where if I've asked for space and you say, no, we have to finish this right now, now I have a beef with HR. He was so mean to me. I asked for space. I asked if we could just talk tomorrow morning and he said, no, I've got to ridicule you right now. It's very empathetic to HR. And and now you're the one in the hot seat. Why couldn't you give her until tomorrow morning? Why couldn't you give him until tomorrow afternoon? Like, Because it So, again, I hope I would rather coach people on how to be in great high-performing situations where they're having different conversations. But, you know, you want to talk about the dark side and that's okay. I get that people want to know. Don't be afraid to buy time. You do have leverage. And you may not get anything. Remember,

[2:16:39] if your boss is starting to line you up to terminate you, you may not get anything. But, if you don't ask, you certainly won't. If you don't open the door and say, well, you know, what How could we make an amicable deal? And here I'll give you your last piece of your leverage. Remember, your manager isn't sitting across the table wanting to feel bad about themselves. They want to feel good about themselves. And if they have a chance to spend a little bit of the company's money, which isn't really their money, so that they can look in the mirror and say, well, it didn't work out with Ryan, but I took care of him. I gave him a cushion. They want to do that. And so, they're saving them hassle. There's the public story you're going to tell. And there's they want to feel good about themselves. Most managers don't like They hate firing. They avoid it.

[2:17:40] You know, as much as you might think, meaning you, the listener, you, someone, might think managers are just sitting around going, who can I [laughter] who can I pinch next? They're not. They actually hate it. When This is important. One reason people don't survive firings is by the time the manager actually decides, ah, I just don't I've I've tried to coach them. You may not feel this way, but in their mind, they're like, I've tried to coach them. I've tried to pair them with people. I've tried to give them all these chances. And they're still not getting it. I don't have any choice but to fire them. Once they've gotten to where they're going to act, they've told themselves they're out of options, which is why people getting back off the brink is very unlikely. You know, interestingly, right before I came here to talk to you today, I had lunch and I met a new executive. He owns a company that does half a billion dollars of business a year. So, it's a big company. He's built it over his whole life. And he was telling me

[2:18:41] how he's going to have to hold someone in his organization who's a who isn't performing. He's kept on his staff for 2 years. He's finally at the point where he's going to have to hold them accountable. And what I'm thinking is he's put off that hard message. When he finally gets to where he's going to give it, he's so decided that they don't meet the bar, they can't get out of that. And it's not because he's evil, it's just people delay. And so I coach people, people come to me all the time because I'm online. They say, "Ethan, I've just been put on a performance improvement plan. Can you help me survive it? Can you help me recover?" And I tell them honestly, no. You're most likely going to be fired and there's nothing I can do for you. But here's why. It's by the time someone gets around to giving you a form of formal performance plan, they've tried everything else they could think of. And at this point, they just want you

[2:19:41] gone as quietly as possible. And it happens again all the time. People write me back and they're like, "You don't understand. I'm going to Three months later, I get an email from them that says, "You were right. I was fired." Of course there are exceptions to this, but it's so common that I see this pattern of how can I survive this? I'm going to I'm a hard worker. I'm a good person. I'm going to show them. Three months later, you were right. I got fired. Even if people had the awareness cuz I guess they're going to listen to this conversation, I think they still lack that a lot of people lack that skill of creating the polite fiction. You know, how do you And I I we talked about it. We don't need to go deeper in it, but I I do think that even if I someone came to me and they said, "I'm in this situation." And I said, "Here's here's your leverage. Good luck." I think they would have trouble delivering that message in a an effective way of saying For instance, especially the team health one cuz the team health one is more of a threat. The

[2:20:43] saving time one is, "Hey, I can do something good for you. I'll leave quietly. Just help me get some severance." The team health one is, "I can make this hard for you unless you get me severance." I think delivering that kind of message as you're leaving, especially when they have such a negative bias on you already, that's going to take some incredible people skills. >> Yeah, um like yes, you're right. Okay, this is part of the message which is engineers in particular want to believe this is in fact maybe the most important message even if it's not the most exciting which is as an engineer, you want to believe it's your technical expertise that controls the fate of your career. And it's not only that, it's your people skills. It's well known, right? Sa has talked about this. Other leaders have talked about IQ without EQ, without emotional intelligence is a waste of IQ. And so having strong interpersonal skills

[2:21:45] is critical. You know, it's funny. There's a famous book you I'm sure you know it uh by Cal Newport called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And what I find ironic about this is it's all this stuff about how to be such a good worker you can't be ignored. Except this is a guy who has the social skills to both teach at Princeton and write books. He's not without the human skills to present his incredible technical accomplishments delicately and well. So uh I think it's a huge area of learning. Now, to exemplify this, how would I if I on the spot or here, you know, live had to construct a better way to say that? I would say something gentler like um boy, this is such a hard message and I have so many friends on this team. I just I don't want them to think badly

[2:22:46] of me. I don't want them to think this is an unfair environment. Can you work with me so that this is a graceful exit? And That's good. That works. You know, I I don't feel like starting it at all. And and you know, later if I need you, I say, "Well, for you to feel good, Yeah, [laughter] yeah, I mean, of course, you know, like I I rub if it you know, for you to feel good, I need enough security to get to my next thing. And I know you want that. I I know that you don't want anyone to suffer and I tie into you >> Right, right, right. It's the other thing. Um but it is possible and that is why I I said this is how you get the time to go figure out how you're going to deliver these messages. Something people overrate or I guess underrate is recognizing that a lot of hard messages you don't have to deliver cold. I mentioned this before, but you you can buy the time or make the time

[2:23:48] to pre-plan. Maybe not every word. It isn't memorizing a speech. It's more memorizing a few phrases and and how you're going to you know, say what you need to in a polite way. I want to pivot to promos and talking about promotions cuz I know there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes on alignment between managers and upper leadership on who's going to get promoted. You mentioned the queue earlier. Um and I think a lot of people they get they get stuck at this staff engineer which is equivalent to the front line manager level of how to get the promo to go further into those higher levels. Do you have any advice on how to break out of that that common level that people get stuck at? Yeah, I mean, this is this is my bread and butter, what I teach every day and kind of if I have a signature expertise, it's how to move up further. What generally gets people stuck is they're

[2:24:48] they're not learning the new skill of the next level. Instead, they're doing the current skill harder and harder. And so what gets you promoted early in life is hard effective work. It is hard work. It is delivery. It is shipping a lot or building a lot. But as you get further, you need different skills. You need to be able to delegate. You need to be able to communicate. You also need to be able to let go of your hard skills because if you're trying to micromanage everyone and tell them write it this way, write it that way, build it this way, you're driving your engineers nuts and they you're going to drive away your good people. And so the way to get to the next level is to figure out what do I need to let go of, step away from, and what new thing do I need to master? And uh there's a classic book on this. It's by a guy named Marshall Goldsmith. It's What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It literally shows a ladder with a gap in it. Like what got you this far isn't going to get you up

[2:25:49] there. Um that's kind of the classic book, but if you need specific advice to your role, it's absolutely talking to people a level or two above who've been through this and asking them, "What did you have to let go of? What did you have to learn? How do I do that? What do I need to let go of? What do you see holding me back?" I'm a huge proponent of getting advice. Getting advice is even better than getting feedback. If I ask for feedback, I'm basically asking you to do something that you may struggle to do which is criticize me. If I ask you for advice, everyone has advice to share. And they'll give you the same information, but in a more positive way. So to break through to that next level, it's identify what's different about that level and get good at that as opposed to just work harder. I see so many people working brutally hard, but

[2:26:50] ineffectively. When it comes to the most senior promotions, I think there's this idea of readiness which I feel like is what you just talked about which is developing the skills and being in the position where your manager would say, "Yes, this person fills out the tem But then there's also the case of limited number of spots and kind of positioning yourself so that you are put in one of those spots. And so imagine there's a case where I'm a senior leader and I'm maybe I'm going for the director position. I mean, I'm going the the principal engineer position and there's two of us both going for the same time, but we both report to you. How would I position myself so that I get the promotion first? Absolutely. Let's assume you're both equally qualified for a moment. So you're not going to win on skill. It's there in relationship and within relationship, trust. So trust trust is about do I have to look over my

[2:27:50] shoulder and wonder, are you doing things not the way I would do them exactly, but in a way that won't make me look bad, that will, if you prefer, make us both successful. Do I trust what you're doing? Or do I cuz as a senior leader, I don't have any time to micromanage you. I'm so busy myself. I need to be able to give you something and assume it will get handled. And trust, I often tell people, interestingly, trust is earned more in bad times than good times. My favorite analogy for this, which is a little bit violent, is when two people have been in a war together and I had to put my life on the line for you or you for me, we now have a lot of trust because if I trusted you, like if you came through when the bullets were flying, I know you'll come through the rest of the time. Well, what's the closest thing at at work? This is usually a crisis, a big outage, a big embarrassment, a lost account. If you jump on that and somehow fix it or show all the effort and it

[2:28:52] hurts you or it costs you, you cancel a vacation, not that I'm recommending doing that a lot, but if you make a decision that shows that you're dedicated, I will remember when the chips were down, when we lost the Acme account, Ryan came through. He flew back from Hawaii early and made it. And that's trust. Second thing is relationship. Relationship in this case, I'm honestly thinking of do I like you? And the point is, if I have two relatively equally qualified people and I'm going to suddenly spend more time working with one than the other, why would I not choose the person I enjoy? And again, I know some engineers are just if they were dead, they'd be spinning in their graves. They hate that idea. Look, one person's a little bit more difficult to work with or even just a little bit less fun, and the other one's more fun. I have to spend eight hours a day with this person or six cuz we're not in every meeting the same.

[2:29:54] I'm going to be drawn towards the person that's fun. And I know that seems unfair uh and it doesn't mean you have to kiss up to everyone. It does though mean it's a good idea to be friendly and happy, right? Like be be pleasant. Be be be that helpful, smiling person because I'd rather spend time with you. Um I heard it expressed this way by Amazon leadership, by Bezos, I think, which is when you come into the room, do you suck all the oxygen out of it? Like it you bring the room down where the room's like If you're that person, you're not going far. You're not going any further. Whereas if when you come in, they're like All right, like oh, Ryan's here. This just got better. They kind of want you in that room. And you know, it's it's a So if you want a simple rubric, do people want you in the room? If they kind of don't, you're in trouble. And if they kind of do, you're doing great.

[2:30:55] I I do agree. I think a lot of engineers are going to this is going to piss them off, but >> That's okay. See, It's true. what I would say to the engineers I piss off is I am trying to help you. I'm not actually here because you'll like me. I'm here to get you where you want to go and that requires you you asked me, could I be transparent? Part of the transparency is sometimes transparency is telling you things that I know you're not going to like, but that are holding you back and you're letting the fact you don't like it let you get your back up and be like, I'm never going to do that. Well, okay, but then you're never going to move up. And I'm not here to apologize for the way the world works. The way the world works sucks, but it does work that way. And I want people to know that. When I think of the most senior level promotions, >> Mhm. baked into the promotion packets is this idea that you need champions or sometimes known as allies, which is people at that level or higher that say

[2:31:55] that person is doing work that fits my my perception of that level. So because of that, I've noticed there's this artificial mechanism. Like let's say I'm a uh let's use management as an example. Let's say I'm a senior manager, I want to become a director. All of a sudden, if I want to get promoted, I need to make sure that that VP over there knows my work and will vouch for me in the promo committee and that other VP over there. And there there are cases where naturally I might need to be visible in front of those people, but there are also a lot of cases where it's just I I need to fill out the promo packet in the way um that that we need so that the promo will go through. How would you go about that? Let's say you are a senior a very senior engineer or a very senior manager in tech and you're trying to get those allies, but there's no at least as far as you can see, there's no natural collaboration with those people. How do you get them as a as a champion on your promo packet? So I'm going to tell you my favorite way and

[2:32:57] then I'll give you other ways. My favorite way is you have your boss on your side. You've got that team with your manager where your manager wants to get you promoted. And what I did in those cases is I would email my peers or my skips and I would say, you know, Ryan's going to be up for promotion in 6 months. And because your group is adjacent to ours, I'm going to need to ask you for feedback. So I'm letting you know that you've got 6 months to watch Ryan because I'm going to be coming to you. And number one, me asking doesn't feel self-serving cuz I'm talking about you. And number two, 6 months later when that VP I'm sure wants to say, well, I only saw Ryan twice. I'm not sure if I can write anything. I have they know that I'm going to say like, hey, I told you. Like I put you on notice. Now, sometimes they'll just say,

[2:33:57] I'm sorry, it didn't come together. I don't know I can't provide feedback. But that's that's the best way. And I did that when it when I got good at getting team This is important as a manager. I got good at getting my people promoted. And that allowed me to attract more talent because for example, I had a guy who didn't get promoted and I said, look, you know I'm good at this. I I will get this done in 6 months, but you've got to give me till the next cycle, but you know I come through. So you have to trust. And he later told me, he's like, yeah, that sucks, but I I decided I'd give you 6 months and we got it done. So that's the best way. Now, let's assume your manager's not that on board or they lack that skill or you can't sell them on it. By the way, if you have good relationship, I tell them like, would you consider putting them on notice that you're going to need feedback? If you can't, the next best thing is for you to go talk to them and say, hey, I'm up for promotion.

[2:35:00] I'm pretty sure my manager's going to ask you for feedback. You're a logical feedback provider. What can we do over the next 6 months so that you're in a natural position to give me you know, to give feedback? Or you know, how could I keep you informed of my work? What would And one of the keys here is if you need, you know, whatever four champions, you're going to have to ask six people or seven. Uh because one of them's going to leave the company and one's going to get reorged and one's going to say no. So you have to like over subscribe. It's like, you know, over capacity just like anything else you design. Um and it is awkward. Uh you know, to go to a like a another group skip. But the thing is, you can frame it to them as, hey, you know this is our process. Like you know, I'm sure you get requests all the time for feedback and you probably get a lot of late last minute requests. I'm trying to do it right and talk to

[2:36:02] you 6 months in advance. And so what you're saying there behind the lines is see, I'm already good. I'm like not causing you to get hit with no notice. I'm here you know, setting this up in advance, making it easy for you. Well, my immediate thought if I was that VP and someone came to me with that self-serving request, I wouldn't necessarily think that's bad or anything. I think okay, that's the process. But my immediate thought is this is not a high priority for me cuz I'm I'm a VP. I got I got a billion things on my plate and this random person from another org is coming to me uh to serve themselves, which not not necessarily something I care about, but just shows that it's low on my priorities. How do you get them to prioritize that? Well, remember, there is some truth it's low on their priority list, but they have people they need to get promoted where they need other VPs. See, you have a VP, too. And that VP this the VP you went to knows

[2:37:05] that they're going to need your VP's help with some promos. And so the leverage you have without ever bringing it up to them is they do know it's a system and it's kind of part of their job. So is it a high priority for them? No. Um the only way you can make it a high priority is if you're able to explain to them uh some relevance of your work. You're going to have to give them a so a what's called with them, what's in it for me. You're going to have to find some way to connect what you're doing to something they care about at least a little bit. How are you going to make their life easier, faster, less stressful? When these systems work as designed, those VPs do work with your area somewhat. And so they should have you you shouldn't be asking someone who like has no relation to your work whatsoever ever.

[2:38:06] It's just they don't really need your level of detail, but you you can try to find some way to give them a little bit of nugget. Uh I do think these systems work mostly though because vice presidents do know that this is how the system works and that they kind of need to do it. And if vice presidents are good at nothing else, they're usually good at understanding this is the grease that keeps the thing flowing. And by the way, I can write some mild approving verbage of you very easily. It may look, maybe because it was like I cut and pasted and replaced John with Ryan, but, you know, and replace, you know, whatever the ops org with the the, you know, the customer org. But, I've written a million of these and I can do it pretty quickly. I think a lot of those those champion the champion support is a little bit contrived and it's hard for me without my manager's support to

[2:39:07] get uh a You said, "What's in it for me?" Like a a legitimate case of what's in it for that VP cuz they're so far, they're so high up. I mean, I know some people who they're in this spot, they're very senior IC. Their manager is supportive, but they lack maybe that proactivity that that you have. And obviously the the engineer has the proactivity for their own case. So, they they debate, you know, should they go directly to that person? If so, how? Cuz it doesn't they don't have a great case. Yeah, and I think I think that coaching your own manager works pretty well in this sense. Your manager often knows what they need to do or at least is open to it and it just hasn't made their priority list because you obviously care more about your career than your manager does usually, right? Cuz it's like that's just human nature. And so, the manager means well and wants to help, but isn't isn't getting around to it. And so, if you just poke them a little bit. The other thing that is a middle ground

[2:40:10] is you can ask your manager, "Would you send a note to that VP? Like I know I need to go get them to support me, but I don't really know them. Can you send them a quick intro that says, 'Hey, I have a guy who's coming up for promotion. Uh he wants to come talk to you, you know, would you take a 15-minute meeting uh because we're going to need your feedback.'" It still gives you you still are doing most of the work, they're just sending an email, but it that's a middle ground. Um you've opened a topic though I really want to point out to all the engineers. You asked me if I'd ever seen a case where a skip level uh saved an engineer from being fired. And I said, "Yeah, I've seen people moved around." What I never really seen is an engineer or any other anybody else get promoted over their manager's objection. You have to have your manager's support because I can't if I'm the big boss, I can't

[2:41:11] promote you if the manager doesn't agree because I'm just creating a mess. I'm telling the manager they're wrong and now I'm telling them that they have to work with you more senior, you know, even though they didn't agree. I'm just creating a complete mess. So, if the manager isn't supportive, I think engineers envision like I'm going to do such incredible work and I'm so technically astute that I will be recognized even though this manager is a bozo. It's not going to happen. It just it can't. And so, you either have to get your manager on board or get out from under them and find somebody who is on board. Now, a plug for people like me. Go find the managers who I made a profession of getting people moved up, not undeservedly, but fast. And hell, that became a huge selling point, right? Go to Ethan's org, he'll make deals and get you promoted. That was my recruiting tool. Come work for me and I'll make it happen.

[2:42:13] Because it was known that I would back people and get the job done, I could attract talent. And I could keep talent. I had one guy in my my biggest star employee uh began as a mid-level engineer, what Amazon calls a level five. He went to a senior engineer, he moved to manager, from manager at an equal sort of lateral promo, he went to senior manager, then to director. And by that point he caught up to me. I was a director, too. So, we were out of space and he went to found his own company. Now, he was a top performer, but three promotions in eight years. We worked together eight years. You know, we're still close friends, of course, but he powered my career and I powered his. But, that example also brought other people. Like, "Oh, look at look at what happens in this org." We've been talking about politics for almost 3 hours now and I can feel it many at many points people listening are probably thinking,

[2:43:14] "I hate every single moment of this. I I hate this." I just some people are probably listening because they they feel like they have to, but they wish they didn't have to know how the system works. And I know it's inevitable a little bit that, you know, you can't avoid politics completely. But, let's just say for someone who really just despises politics for all it is, what could you do to avoid politics if you were working at a company? I think number one, it's about choosing your leader. So, if you can find a leader who shares your disdain of politics, hopefully, that maybe comes from a similar tech background and wants to reward they believe as much as you do it should be all about the work, find that leader. That's one thing you can do. The second thing is go work on the hardest area you can get into where expertise is really going to matter and you can stand out the most. In other words, if you're doing good solid engineering work, but that lots of people can do, it's harder to

[2:44:15] stand out. I remember Andy Jassy, he was CEO of AWS at this time, but in the past he had been uh I'm sorry, before he was CEO of all of the Amazon. And he was talking about principal engineers and he said, "Principal engineers are normally expected to like advise others and mentor and do architecture. But, these guys, these few guys working on AWS, we just need them solving the hardest problems and so, I absolve them of all of that other stuff." Well, for those engineers who just wanted to be "I don't want to review architecture. I don't want to give feedback. I don't want to promote I s- he was the perfect boss because he felt they're they were working on such hard problems he couldn't spare them to invest in the rest of the org and he didn't care. So, you're looking for that situation where your work is so essential. Uh because absolutely, look, you've

[2:45:16] asked about difficult people and I've given you all these rules about it's great that your boss it's important your boss like you. If you have a skill that no one else has, and that skill is valuable, you will get exceptions. I remember Andy again, when he ran AWS, I remember him talking about a high-level employee who a couple people criticized him and said, "That guy's not working that hard. You know, he's not really working at an Amazon level." And Andy said, "Yeah, I think you're right, but he's in a role where we need him and I think he knows we need him. And so, we're just going to have to live with it." Like, he does the one thing we really need. And you could kind of tell Andy was like Andy's one of the hardest managers I ever worked for. Just very demanding. But, in this case he's like, "Yeah, he's got the leverage.

[2:46:17] It is what it is." You know, and he was very like "Good on him." was kind of his, you know, like, "Yeah, he's kind of got us. We're just going to have to live with it." Uh that's what you have to do if you don't want politics is you've got to be you've got to have that essential skill. Um again, you have to have some kind of leverage. So, you have to literally live up to Cal Newport in So Good They Can't Ignore You. Earlier in our conversation you talked about how when everything's growing it's positive sum, when everything is kind of stagnant in an organization it's a little more zero sum where people are battling. So, I can also imagine a growing company is much less likely or will have less politics. I think some amount is um I like to give people an extreme to think about. Uh and my extreme I often point out is the post office. Like, what's going on good at the post office? And the only kind of roles are carry the mail or be the postmaster and

[2:47:17] there's one postmaster. And that until that person leaves or dies, you don't get that job. And so, it just feels like growth changes so much of that because it's not 25 people wanting one promotion, it's you know, lots of opportunity. And I point out during the 15 years I was at Amazon, the staff size of the company, I joined it was 14,000 people, I left it was 1.4 million. So, it grew a hundredfold, which is insane. As a result, I was able my first team there was six people and nine years later I had 800. That kind of growth opens up doors that in a more normal company that's maybe growing 5% a year or 10% a year, it's just never going to happen. So, I strongly believe find high growth. Last question is if you could go back to yourself at the beginning of

[2:48:18] your career and give yourself some advice specifically focused on this, I guess, navigating corporate politics, is there something that that stands out to you that you'd say? Yeah, I God, I wish I could go back to early me and share the idea that uh it's not just being right. It's It's not just being right. It's not just being technically astute. There's all this other stuff going on and wake up to it. I think I was blind or deprioritized it and thought, "Well, that's that's management stuff." And even as an individual contributor, understanding well, management stuff does control the world. I wish I had been more aware. So, I guess the advice to get it down to a single sentence is take it seriously that your relationships are what actually control your progress. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Ethan. I really

[2:49:18] appreciate it. Thank you so much for the chance to do this a second time. It's been so much fun and the time has flown by. Also, and do you want to plug um your your stuff [laughter] real quick? Well, I think if you've gotten something from this discussion and you want to know how to navigate your career, that's what I do all the time. I teach classes on it. I have a newsletter on it. So, if you want help, my goal is to help people succeed rather than bang their head against walls. If I've done some of that in this podcast, I can do more of it with more time. All right. 3 and 1/2 hours in the chair. Thank you. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> Thank you for listening to the podcast. It's a passion project of mine that I've really enjoyed building. Another passion project that I've been working on kind of in secret is building an ergonomic keyboard that I wish existed and I finally have a prototype. So, I'd love to show you what we've built. It's ultra low profile and ergonomic and I couldn't find anything like it on the market. So, that's why we built it. I'll put a link to the keyboard in the description. You can take a look and learn more about the project there. We could definitely use

[2:50:19] your support. Also, if you have any feedback for me about the show, I'd love to hear it. Comments on YouTube have led to guests coming on like Ilya Grigoric and David Fowler. I wasn't aware of them until someone dropped a comment. Also, feedback in the comments helped me learn to reduce the number of cliffhangers in the intros. So, your comments definitely make a difference. Please keep letting me know what you'd like to see more of in the show and I'll see you in the next episode.