If you want to escalate, we can escalate

Since they want to talk to bosses, we're all talking to bosses. Let's just make this work. Matter of fact, don't you talk to the CEO directly? You should have went there first. Oh, you want to escalate? We can escalate, EM. We can escalate.

You're listening to Off of VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech.

What's up, Allison?

What's up, Jasmine? How's it going?

Honestly, pretty good. I actually I have some very big, very, very big news for you. Okay.

I'm scared.

Why would it be? Why would you be scared?

I don't know. I feel like I should. I feel like I should know whatever this is already and not be learning about it as we are recording the pod.

But I have finally done the thing I've been wanting to do, which was buy a home sauna.

Oh my God. Apartment sauna?

You've lost—

yes, tell me everything, tell me everything.

Listen, it doesn't come in for another week. TBD on if this was a good choice or not. My bank account is sure leaning one way, but I don't know, I feel like we keep talking about it over and over and it lives rent-free in my head. Every time I go to bed, it's like the last thing I think about. I'm like, man, wouldn't it have been nice if I went into a sauna before I went to bed? And so I finally did it. I said, you know what, I clearly want this thing enough to make this purchase. I always I just try to like give myself— if I'm still thinking about it 3 months later, it means I actually really do want it. And so I did make the purchase.

We'll see.

I've been making room for it. I'll give you a sauna tour one of these days.

Oh, please.

I'll let you know. It's decked out. It has apparently— it has like speakers in there and it got a cup holder.

It connects to Bluetooth and you can bring drinks in there? Okay.

There's a window, so I was thinking of like putting my— I don't know, putting like a tablet in front of it to watch Grey's Anatomy in there. And I think I might be living my dream. Honestly, you probably won't hear from me for a while.

This is the last episode of the pod for 2025 because I will be in her sauna from here on out. Yes, actually I'm going to do the pod from the sauna.

You'll see me through the little pane of glass.

Wait, this is so exciting. Okay, I thought this was going to be like bad or scary. This is great news. And I really, I would just like to point out. That this is the power of manifesting. Yes, because here we are. You did it. I'm very proud of you.

Thank you, thank you. I'm proud of myself too. This is— it's—

I—

my era this year is do whatever I want.

I've known you for like, like almost 6 years, and I feel like that's a, that's a thing I've, I've picked up on every year for you. I don't know if that's new.

We're pushing the limits. Okay, so we're even further Sarah, when I mean do what I want, I mean do it. Like, oh, okay. Unapologetically. Yes.

All right.

Do what I want 2025.

Yes. Let's make t-shirts. I want that on a t-shirt. Great.

What do you got for me today? I know you have a story.

I have a classic story today. What do you think I mean by classic in this software engineering technical space?

Classic? I don't know. Are we talking just a common kind of like thing that happens, maybe some consistent tendencies or tensions that exist in like different dynamics. Am I getting there?

You got it. You got it. Yeah. So am I Oracle?

You are. About Oracle? No, I'm just kidding.

Maybe. I don't know. Everything's been anonymized. Who's to say it's not about Oracle? But no, you are spot on. Yeah, it's a classic story about sort of the tension that tends to exist between product and engineering. Today we are flipping the tables a little bit because we're going to hear from the perspective of a product manager. Oh, not somebody who's an engineer.

Yeah, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

Yeah, so this is a classic, you know, I hate to put it this way because it doesn't have to be this way, but it is a classic PM versus PM type of situation.

Ooh, I love this.

And I'm gonna skip to the end here. It's a bad outcome for the PM.

Oh no.

PM, PM loses. PM loses. So we'll unravel the story here, but I gave away the ending. Today our story is told from the perspective of the PM, product manager, as I mentioned, and we're going to call our PM today, Deb.

Deb.

Deb. All right, Deb, let's hear from you. Deb, give her whatever nicknames you want.

I will. Diabolical. I don't know, I don't even think that's a word. Diabolical. Diabolical. But I was like, diabolical.

Oh, huh? You were trying to make a pun.

It was— I was— I didn't quite hit it. Sounded better in my head.

You know what that just reminded me of? You used to be like pun person, like on the daily.

Those are dark times.

Those are dark times. You've changed. You really don't, you're not making puns anymore.

I know. I know. I just, we move forward.

We grow.

My humor is different now. I don't know how to quite describe it.

Um, Diabolical Deb, whatever pun you were going for, I appreciated it. But all right, so here's the situation. We don't actually know a ton about the company that they're working out, working at. So like, let's, let's keep that in mind. But basically one day Deb shows up to her team standup and is like, hey team, I have a big customer call coming up tomorrow or in the next few days. And this is actually our biggest customer and I would really like some technical support on this call. Does that sound like a normal, reasonable thing for a PM to ask their dev team of?

Yeah, I think I'd like to know more about what they mean by technical support, but I think having an engineer or someone or a lead on a call for anything, if there's like an escalation or if they wanna explain something depending on the context of the call, it's reasonable to have some backup. I also think it's good that they're acknowledging that they can't answer all of the questions. Also good if they know that like maybe there's something out of their expertise.

That's exactly the case. Debbie's like, listen, I do customer calls all the time. I can handle this shit on my own. Like most days I haven't asked for technical support from my dev team in 9 months. This just happens to be the biggest customer at the company. They're having some data trust issues where It's specific to the product that team has worked on and they're actually a few weeks out from launching like some improvements and like a whole new set of features related to that specific product line. So the PM is like, listen, big customer, we're actively working on a thing that's gonna make this better for the most part. And like, this is just like a high profile situation. They're going to ask technical questions about trusting the data, where the numbers come from, all that stuff. Could I borrow, could I have an engineer on this team? There's like 5 or 6 of them. Can I have an engineer on this team?

That makes sense. Little white glove service. Make sure that they feel like they're getting the answers. Make sure you get that renewal. Get that cash in the bank and keep your job.

Yeah. It's like a win-win. It's a win-win. There's like a little bit of pushback here. Yeah. And who's pushing? I don't know the specifics, but there's some like, like, ugh, like, why are you asking us that?

Yeah, I mean, devs don't wanna do it. Let's be, let's, let's be honest. No one wants to do that. If you're like just full-time engineering, you don't wanna do that. You wanna talk to computers, not people.

Sure.

Yeah.

That's very well said. But it's also your job.

Yeah.

And to your point earlier, this PM was like, I know when to bullshit and when to not bullshit. And this is a situation where I'm not going to show up on a call and bullshit my way through this. This is too important. So like they understand the line of let's bring in a dev from this team who can speak more to the technical stuff. Like that's how important this is. So I feel like if your PM isn't, if your PM is giving you air cover, right, for most of the time that you've worked with them and they like one time ask for something, like it seems like it's probably pretty important for your job. That's how I would look at it. Yeah. But so, whatever, there's some pushback. I think ultimately what ends up happening, it's a little unclear, but ultimately what ends up happening is some dev does join the call. But more importantly, like the next standup rolls around and they are now 2 weeks away from delivering a whole new set of features that are related to what this team works on. That Deadline was set by the engineering team, mind you.

Okay.

They're 2 weeks away from this thing is supposed to be delivered and engineers tell the PM, the thing that we've built is not scaling to meet the needs of our current customer base. It is not performant and we are not going to be able to deliver it in 2 weeks. What, what is going through your mind right now?

I'd be wondering like, how long has this project been going? I see if they were like doing like a short and I think it's a good call to recognize that you're doing testing and maybe you found some stuff that needs to extend the line. Mm-hmm. I think though that it totally depends who's riding on this. Is that very important customer waiting for this and like this could, you know, have business impact that's negative or are there like marketing stuff around this or I don't really know what the, what this means for that. I would have a lot of questions. And I would also be surprised to learn this if this was unexpected. How did we end up here? There could be just something that's a surprise. This happens to development teams all the time. There's probably some retrospective to have, but yeah, I'd be just thinking about business impact and how to kind of move around. All right. It's not scalable, but do you mean, can we roll this out for a couple of special white glove customers that really need this? Or is there a slow rollout plan? What needs to happen? Do we need to de-scope something? Like, how do we make this happen for the people that it needs to happen for? Or is probably, that's, that's where I'd be thinking about.

Yeah, which I think sounds super reasonable. And Deb is a kind PM. Deb's not freaking out. Deb's just like, so because a lot of internal and external stakeholders are relying on this, I would like to just make sure that we've talked through all the trade-offs and talked through, you know, what are some opportunities to remove scope? Can we just like map all of that out? And like, can we have a conversation about it? Because apparently the CEO at this company is very like feature-oriented. They call them a feature factory CEO. So basically the PM wants to be set up for success to go and have a conversation with the CEO and say, hey, this thing that you've been tracking is not going to be delivered on this day. Here's sort of why we have good reasons for basically pushing this back. Here's a new timeline, that type of thing. Some other weird thing that happens on this team is there's a data scientist that works with the devs and the PM and the EM. And the PM and the data scientist, like, frequently have one-on-ones to just talk through all sorts of ideas. Like, they're informal. They're like once a week. They're meant to be like, hey, let's catch up, but also let's do some brainstorming together, that type of thing. And they actually have a really good relationship. While all of this other stuff is going on about bumping timelines, like the PM just asked for a dev to come help with a customer call. EM starts poking around and is like, why are you meeting with this data scientist every week?

Why are you looking at my calendar? Who are you? That's question number one. And Dev sounding like they're like, she's too nice. I don't think she said that, but like, what do you mean? Oh, what, you wanna see who else I meet with? 'Cause I'm a PM. That's why. That's why. I need to know what's going on in the product. That's why.

Yeah, I gotta talk to mad people.

That would be insane.

Yeah. And the data scientist on the team reports to that EM. So it's like also a little extra weird because Deb here is like, me and this data scientist have a really good relationship. Like this data scientist has opened up to me and has mentioned they don't feel like people appreciate the work that she puts in and like, ooh, has an opportunity for me, like to work with me, Deb, as the PM every week to like explore ideas. And so like—

She was getting the download on this EM this whole time. Oh, this is getting spicy. Hold on.

Doesn't this feel a little bit like, not like retaliation, but it feels a little bit weird because Deb here is, I have a good relationship with the data scientist and yet like, why is their manager getting upset that I'm meeting with the data scientist? It's just so—

I mean, I want to hear more, but I'm wondering, and this can happen with like political kind of stuff, it really comes down to power dynamics and control. And so when things are— first of all, this is really negative, right? Two people can't speak to each other at a job. That's actually really good to have those relationships. You can have new perspectives, you can have support as a coworker, like having some way of collaborating and cross seeding ideas. These are all good things, especially when it's multidisciplinary and you're doing this across like departments, right? This is a positive thing, but I think it can seem like a negative thing when you're looking at it as like a place of control or like influence, like this PM now has influence on your team. And so don't give them these little ideas, like you need I don't know, recognition. Don't get these little ideas in your head from this PM that we're too late all the time. Don't get these little ideas in the head that like the CEO's really pissed that we're 2 weeks late. I don't know though. I don't know this PM, but that, that I feel like when it comes to stuff like this, it's really a, it's like a hit to your ego and like a factor of control or feeling like you need to control a situation and You're losing control because, uh, people aren't acting as you assumed, right? I'm psychoanalyzing with like barely any context.

That's my best guess from my experience. That's what we do here on Off the VPN.

We do.

We have anonymous content, zero context, and we do psychoanalysis completely. We don't— what do we know about psychoanalysis? We're the wrong people, but that's what we do.

Everything, everything is from movies and CIA. No, I mean CSI. CSI.

Everything we bring to the table here is from CSI in our expert opinions. You bring up a really, really good point. And the perspective of the EM is important to consider because we don't have it here. But I think what you're saying is sometimes that need for control will exist, and it's also not necessarily coming from a bad place. Like worst case scenario could be like, this is not at all what's happening, but worst case scenario could be like, Deb is going around and telling all of the devs on the team that some of the stuff that you said, right? CEO is pissed about this and is like creating like a little bit of a panicked environment. And so the EM's job is to help alleviate that situation. And I think starting to look at someone's calendar, being like, why are you talking to them? Why are you going there? That's obviously not the right way to do it at all, but like, there could be something rooted there that is actually meant to learn more or figure out exactly what's going on that isn't necessarily bad. But we don't know because we don't get to hear from the EM in this situation, right?

The EM came in hot by being like, why are you talking to this person? Rather than thinking about what patterns are they really trying to establish, or talking to the PM and saying, hey, I heard this thing, like you said, and saying it's causing Your intention was this, which was to inform, but I think it came out of this panic, or like a conversation needs to happen to adjust that tension. But you need both, right? I think even in the case of team health, I stand by this. I think managing people and making sure that people are emotionally safe is good, and making sure you're doing this all. But I don't think sheltering from like all types of pressure is good either. I think making sure there's a balance, like I need to make sure no one's burning out and stuff like that. But at the same time, like, yeah, if you guys messed up, like we gotta talk about it and like, or we need to say like, we can't repeat this and you should know that the outcome of that late thing was bad and we should talk about how we can be better, right? Uh, you don't need to be doom and gloom, but sheltering or trying to minimize the downstream impact of an engineering team can never be. Good. Again, assuming, but anyway, I'm curious more about what happens next.

Oh, I can't wait to deliver this news to you. It will be so disappointing because we don't really know a ton more because this is from the perspective of the PM. Here's what's— here's what happens next. The EM sort of goes on a spiral and obviously we can assume is having one-on-ones with all of the devs on this team, gets it in their head that this PM needs to be removed from this team. EM goes to their manager, goes to their manager, goes all the way back to this quote, feature factory CEO, and says that this PM has completely destroyed all psychological safety on this team. And essentially it becomes a, like, this person's word against mine. Who knows what this org is really like? There could just be like some hierarchical, like, true power structure type of things. And mind you, Deb has been a PM for over a decade. Like, this is not Deb's first rodeo and Deb is like, how is this possibly happening to me? This is by far the worst working relationship I've ever had with an EM. But even still, like, from all of my years of experience, like, this is a conversation that you have one-on-one before you, like, try and escalate this. Deb is just like— feels completely like everything. Never even speaks to Deb about this as far as we know and what we've been told. No.

That's wild. That's some grimy stuff. The old— it's not even just grimy. I just feel like that's just, in my opinion, weak. Like, you're just weak. You're not like— just escalating that to the highest degree and be like, I'm telling mom, without even having a conversation is nuts to me.

I—

you're not even getting intention or working as a team. You're looking at this person as like a Yeah, you're not even valuing their input or their job, basically.

Yeah. The only conversation that we know about that happened between the EM and the PM was about the one-on-ones with the data scientist. Apparently the EM called that out and was like, what's going on here? Why are you doing this? I don't understand why you need to be doing this. As far as we know, that's the only conversation that happened. And then it just escalated from there. So basically the way that this story ends is that Deb basically gets removed from the team and starts working on just like whatever side strategy projects and is, and the plan is to do that for the next few months before she goes on maternity leave. Damn. Yeah, I, I wanna know so much more than this story gives us.

I'm pulling from like things I know, or even there's like so many memes online about the PM engineering dynamic and yeah, it's totally dependent on the org. There can be such an imbalance of power either on product or engineering side. This one, it sounds like engineering has the upper hand, maybe products not as, I don't know. I, I do think product can often be like, their value can often be diminished because often product managers are non-technical, or even if they are technical, they can be annoying because you're like, you don't actually know, you're not close to the code, please don't make assumptions type of thing. There's just like a constant, like, tension between those things.

Yeah.

And I think when the balance is struck correctly, it can be really great. You have a very good team, you're getting good customer input, you have someone to do some of the, like, non-technical work is so valuable where you're actually collecting feedback, you're making decisions, you're doing stuff. But I think you can be in a case where on one hand a product manager has too much power and they can like, push on, I mean, we had stories too about like setting arbitrary dates with no technical input.

Yeah.

Oh, and that's just, that just sounds terrible. I would never, I'd quit day one. I can't do that. No, I'd talk to them first. Then I would tell mom. But you have that and then you have the other version, which is engineering just doing what they want without any input of what's the actual business or customer impact and what's needed from them. And so that's not good either, but because of that existing tension, it's like constantly, yeah, if you don't have good relationships, this is not uncommon for this to happen. Someone gets booted because their work styles aren't going right or people fail to communicate. I say like on the EM, just the fact that no conversation was happening with those two, like they should be having a standing meeting, right? They should be having conversations.

1000%.

And working together. And if they don't have a good working relationship, this thing, this team was failed They were doomed to start.

Yep. Yeah. We didn't learn much about them or see anything from their perspective other than clearly there was something taboo about asking them to join a customer call. That's the only like sort of snippet that we got. But yeah, no, you're absolutely right. This is again, a classic story of just an imbalance and I'm just like, some things are legitimately hard, but when you don't talk to people and when you don't communicate, you make it like like 30 times harder than it needs to be. So that's like my takeaway here is like, you know what, Deb was probably like, whatever, F this, I'm out. This is the most difficult situation I've ever been in. But like part of me is like, oh, Deb, put a meeting on that EM's calendar. You know what, matter of fact, add the data scientist. Just like be like, let's talk this through. What happened here? I don't know. It's just super, it's just super weird.

Or go to the EM's boss since they wanna talk to bosses. We're all talking to bosses. Let's just make this work. Matter of fact, don't you talk to the CEO directly? You should have went there first. Ooh, you want to escalate? We can escalate. Yeah, we can escalate. My name ain't Deborah the PM.

Diabolical Deb here.

Yeah. No, if you're crashing out, I'm crashing out. We're all crashing out.

I will absolutely one-up you in this case. Do not even play.

I'm introducing story points tomorrow. Don't play with me.

That is the ultimate punishment, isn't it? Story points.

What's the t-shirt size on that?

When t-shirt sizes become a threat, that's when you know it's bad.

Yeah. Bad! Keep playing with me. I'm gonna make sure I announce an arbitrary target in front of the whole company. Keep playing with me. I'm gonna start promising things. Don't make me a PM, guys. Don't ever make me a PM.

Yeah, I think we pretty much both just got disqualified from that job forever.

I know exactly how to threaten an engineering team. I know their weaknesses.

It comes from experience, though.

Okay.

I feel like that's better than not. Who's diabolical now?

Damn. I always have probably the worst ideas ever. What's important is that I don't act on them. Yeah, most of the time.

Apartment saunas. Well, great. I think we said all we need to say about this.

Yeah.

PM knows what they need.

Shout out to our PMs, the unsung, the, I don't wanna say heroes. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go that far. We like you. I know, just kidding. Shout out to PMs, the really good ones that protect the team, share the context. And are really good team players. And shout out to the engineering product teams that know how to do it right, cuz they're a few and far between, man. There's not a lot of 'em, but when they exist, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. It is bringing tears to my eyes.

That tears to my eyes, joy, just living in harmony. That's what businesses need. Yes. Agree. All right. Go enjoy your sauna.

And I have to wait. I have to wait. I just have to sit here in, in, in suspense for the next week.

You're going to be checking your email like every 5 minutes for like the FedEx.

1000%. Yeah. No, it's— yeah, I might glue it to my wall.

Actually, I'm going to get a tablet. Glue it? Oh, the tablet. I was like, you're gluing the sauna to the wall?

I'm already been making space and thinking of like, I want to put little plants there. I'm— listen, it's all going in my head. There's a lot I'm thinking about. I'm like looking up stuff. Can I put like little—

anyway, no, I, I'm pulling up and I want pictures immediately once it's set up. Because did you get, did you get like a— is it bamboo? What's the deal? What's it made out of?

You know what, I think it's like Canadian hemlock.

All right.

Oh, what?

Yummies? Someone out there knows what that is.

I think it was that one or it was a different one and I can't remember, but okay.

Because it is going in your office. Oh man, anytime Jasmine has video off now on Zoom, I am going to be like, this girl is in her sauna. Yeah, I'm happy for you. You deserve it.

I do. Thank you.

You're welcome.

I got you. Thanks for listening to Off the VPN.

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