The Software Developer's Career Handbook

Chapter 19. BAB

My management team was bickering. Two managers in particular: Leo and Vincent. Both of their projects were fine. Both of their teams were producing, but in any meeting where they were both representing their teams, they just started pushing each other’s buttons. At every meeting on some trivial topic, a variation of the following would occur:

LEO: Vincent, are you on track to ship the tool on Wednesday?

VINCENT: We’re on schedule.

LEO: For Wednesday?

VINCENT: We’ll hit our schedule.

LEO: Wednesday?

Endless passive-aggressive verbal warfare. Two type A personalities who absolutely hate to be told what to do. My 1:1s with each of them were productive meetings, and when I brought up the last Leo ’n’ Vincent battle of the wills, they immediately started pointing at their counterpart: “I really don’t know what his problem is.”

I do. They didn’t trust each other.

On the Topic of Trust

There’s a question out there regarding how close you want to get with your coworkers in your job. There’s a camp out there that employs a policy of “professional distance.” This camp believes it is appropriate to keep those they work with at arm’s length.

The managerial reason here is more concrete than the individual reasoning. Managers are representatives or officers of the company and, as such, may be asked to randomly enforce the will of the business. Who gets laid off? Why doesn’t this person get a raise? How much more does this person get? Professional distance or not, these responsibilities ...