I think back to my experience being promoted to an Engineering Manager and getting great access to the HR side of the business. Time off, budgets, salaries, etc… A big responsibility! It’s exciting to have that privlege, but requires you to change your perspective. You’re no longer responsible just for your own success, but now you need to be the representative of your reports. Their increase in standards of living is heavily influenced based on your advocacy. Thinking through that is another blog post. Today I want to share a few stories of my time with HR professionals in leadership positions and how you can best advocate for your team, yourself, and your future dignity.

A few companies ago, I had a pretty miserable CTO (my direct boss). As an example - he liked to debate variable naming in pull requests and questioned fundamental architecture with little context. He was commuting up and down the east coast so it made having conversations about architecture, standards, and feedback hard to have. And I didn’t know how to put this type of perspective into words as this was a first experience for me. I ultimately left for another company and on my way out I still didn’t have the words for why I was leaving. He ultimately made me leave and I wasn’t able to articulate why to the HR team. If you’re having trouble with someone further up the chain, talk to others in the reporting structure to help you articulate what is bothering you. Maybe you have a bad perspective or maybe they can help you find the right words. Exit interviews are a great chance to be 100% honest with your insights and feedback, so come fully prepared. Draft it up and perhaps outline the conversation.

From my time at another company, I think about doing performance reviews and relying on HR to be the first reviewers of my inexperienced writing. It was my first time doing a large quantity of performance reviews (from 5 to 15) and I wanted support to ensure the feedback I was giving was clear and actionable. For one Senior engineer (at the start of covid) I felt they talked to much in meetings. Looking back, such a mess I created. Instead of going deeper with that engineer and finding a solution, my performance review focused on them listening more and talking less. I had politely told them to shut up and had HR review my feedback before giving it to them. That individual left the company within 6 months. I made a huge mistake in the feedback that I gave to an individual, but felt validated because I had this feedback reviewed by HR. Be kind and think about how you might perceive feedback; listen to others and ask for their opinions, but trust your gut.

Lastly, in a company where I was laid off, I over exposed my opinions to HR. I think this led to my opinions being lest valued and perhaps led to an easier opinion on my dismissal (the company went through 5 more layoffs, so who actually knows). It’s easy to think HR is someone who wants to hear your complaining, but rarely are they there to resolve the issue in a 1-1 meeting. Coming full circle - create an agenda, gather perspective from others (perhaps HR too), and come prepared. Perhaps true for any meeting, but very true for meetings with HR.

I didn’t use AI for this, but did plug it into a word counter/spell checker. Surprizingly no words misspelled