Can you discuss a particularly challenging situation you faced as a manager and how you navigated it?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Recently after RTO policy I had a lot good employee attrition in my org across
multiple team. Also lost a manager in the process. Which had a cascading impact
on the team workload as we had to still deliver on our committments and also
team morale was low as the operation load like oncall, etc went up. I worked
with the managers reporting to me to evaluate all the projects in flight and
worked in leadership and PM to prioritize the projects based on
customer/business needs and tradeoffs. Decided to push stall few projects and
opportunistically improve operational load till we hire and rampup new team
members. Also decided to do re-org within the team to co-locate manager with
employees between multiple locations. Setup a recruiting drive along with the
recruiting team to create interview PODs and weekly reviewing number of
resumes/PS/Onsite we were having per week to accelerate the hiring.

Anonymous · Answer

Yeah, so let me talk about the problem which was frustrating for me in
particular because essentially I joined this organization, <company name>, where
we were a series A startup where growth is really important. So I was the head
of growth and I had to lead our engineering team to build products for
product-led growth. And it was really frustrating for me because I had to
essentially onboard myself. There was a very big issue with the documentation.
So our CEO in particular, obsessed with note-taking, we're building a
note-taking app for developers. As you can imagine, he targeted himself for that
use case. And then he produced an overwhelming amount of information that was by
and large not particularly useful. When you're onboarding a new role, it's
really important that you get the right information that enables you to do the
work. The point of documentation isn't to produce text for the purpose of having
text lying around. So I talked with our most recent hires in a series of
one-on-ones to essentially clarify what we believed and what we saw the problem
as. Then I set up a series of meetings to get buy-in from, well, to understand
my CEO's point of view and be empathetic to where this process came from and
what he figured were the requirements of it. So once we spec'd out these
requirements with the new onboardings and the CEO, then I was able to go and
talk to my laterals, get buy-in from all the relevant stakeholders because our
entire company essentially was subscribed to the same documentation process. So
once I got the buy-ins and I was able to spec out the problem, then essentially
I began working on formulating those solutions, a series of one-on-ones with key
people who were involved with writing the documentation or the CEO, again, in a
series of meetings in terms of as we iterated on the solution, what he felt like
was missing to get his acceptance of the solution. Then I called a meeting with
all my laterals and the CEO as well in order to present this new solution and
essentially get everyone on board. Everyone essentially was happy with it, so
then we were able to take that solution and distribute it to my reports and then
other people actually to their reports as well. And then the result seemed to be
pretty resounding success. So essentially I added a little bit of work at the
beginning where people were consolidating important information into this
front-facing summary documentation page instead of just whatever random files
were lying around. We put all the most important information into one document
and that took a little bit of front-loaded engineering time sometimes. But we
had two new hires, two new engineering hires, and actually that was pretty
useful immediately for them. They would ask me like, oh where is this and where
is this? And I was able to point them to these docs and they were able to
unblock themselves by and large for the most part, which took a lot of time out
of my hands. And they were able to write their first diff in the first two or
three days actually. And then this process not only was accessible for the
entire organization but we were able to take it further and essentially iterate
on this process where all these people would come to me and they'd be like, hey
I noticed that these people kept asking me about this process or this process.
So I was able to point out, I was able to develop, I was able to add to our
process this idea of creating backlinks and prioritizing adding backlinks to any
relevant information so that people would be able to self-service and unblock
themselves to find the relevant adjacent articles.

Anonymous · Answer

Couple of weeks in a new job, before establishing trust and relationships with
my team, I noticed that the throughput of one of my reports is well below
expectations for his level.  He was committed to the company and team and showed
some really good thinking in the ideation stage. He was still in probation -
basically hired at the wrong level.
I set some time up with HR partner to understand our PIP and options. We aligned
on slightly different terms for this particular situation, extending PIP from 4
to 8 weeks and if the clear goals were not met, we wouldn't part ways, he would
be offered to move to a more junior level.
Then, I clarified the details of his PIP, setting out clear goal and stepping
stones between his current performance level up to the average at that level in
the org, with weekly check-ins to ensure we're on track.
The challenge was in getting him to commit to the process, and understand that
it is indeed a performance improvement process, a sort of a ramp-up process,
where we try to replace a year of experience, rather than the last step before
exit. I shared this with the report, pointing out what we're working towards and
why, that the company and I believe in him enough to invest the significant time
and effort into this process to get him onto that level. Then, I gave him space
to process the news, and asked him to choose when we kick it off (within
reason).
He has committed to the process and managed to hit the mark by the end of it. We
needed some work to rebuild the relationship and trust after this, and make sure
that he understand I am there to support him and help him grow and thrive, but I
am happy to report that one year later we are talking about the gaps towards the
next level up and he is seen as a top performer on his level.

Anonymous · Answer

Problem: the company had a massive reduction in force in early 2023. My team
lost a few good engineers. I faced 2 challenges at the time: some projects need
re-prioritization or timeline changes; I feared that the uncertainty from layoff
would lead to attrition or morale issues. Actions: project re-prioritization
with PMs, reviewed and reset some projects’ timelines; meetings with director
and other EMs, HR to get a list of pre-approved narratives. I then set up 1-1s
with the remaining engineers to get their feelings and address potential
concerns. My strategy is to understand the problem, trying to resolve it using
pre-approved narrative; escalate otherwise. I Explained the reason for layoff,
strategy, and future plan. There was a common concern about the company’s future
plan so I circled it back to director and suggested leadership / CEO to share
the vision and plan directly with ICs. Results: the team got back on track in 2
weeks with re-aligned priorities. No attrition for the remainder of the year and
with a clear understanding of the company’s goals the team moved faster.

Anonymous · Answer

At XYS, during the execution phase of one of the key project - a sr. eng from
the team left the company. Since hiring external was out of question - I had to
be more creative - we were the lead team for AWS migration - this presented an
opportunity as other teams had their projects for migration in the pipeline. I
knew a Sr. Dev on another team who had working knowledege - so I apporached the
other manager and proposed a solution where in I could borrow this Sr. Dev for
this project - this also gives the Sr. Dev  AWS knowledge they need any ways
down the road. I proposed this as a win-win situation and after getting an
approval from my manager, I could plug in this Sr. Eng with a 2 week transition
period - as a result I managed to deliver the project still on time. The lesson
I learn was resource planning is not just about allocation a person to the
project but also have plan B options to plug in other devs when needed.

Anonymous · Answer

I had 2 managers and a technical program manager reporting to me. The challenge
I faced is unclear definitions of roles and responsibilities across these
individuals and general blame game of the other party not doing their job. We
were trying to arrive at our milestone plan and deliverables through the next
year which was launch.
I talked to each of them individually and understood there was expectation
mismatch on who is accountable and responsible and hence general frustration all
around. I asked the TPM to come up with a RACI matrix which we will then review
with the group and talk about mechanisms to ensure these are being followed. I
did serveral revisions of this with the TPM and then brought the whole group
together.

Anonymous · Answer

At Auctane, while we were working an critical project, one my key Sr. Eng left
the company. This put the project in jeoprady. External hire was not feasible as
they needed system knowledege and the project would be understaffed. I had prior
knowledege that another dev had worked on this system before and I came up with
a approach of borrowing the resource for some time.
I convinced that manager that by borrowing this is a win-win for both of us as
the Sr. Dev would learn new web skills as they had projects in the pipline to
move their projects as well. After that I talked to my manager and borrowed this
resource, I took two weeks time to do the KT and could deliver the project on
time and within budget. the lesson i learnt was to have plan B an antiscipate
any changes and plan for continegency.

Anonymous · Answer

Shortly after I joined the company, lead engineer approached me with the
resignation. We call  the engineer F
My task was to understand the reasons for that and find a creative solution. 
It turned out that the engineer needed extended time for personal reasons and
they did not think it was possible within the company.

I wanted to learn more about the situation so I explored F's interest in
projects, technology. I asked about F's friendship with colleagues, peer
environment, stress level etc. After several (2?) conversations, I was able to
conclude that there is no different agenda and F indeed needs time to be out of
the office.

I reached out to my manager and HR outlining the situation. As F was a strong
and committed engineer , I was confident that we can trust F's offer to work
reduced hours in a different timezone.

I learned about extended leave that required complex approval. That was the
solution that would keep engineer at the company while allowing F to take needed
time.

Working with HR and management we were able to accellerate approval and balance
PTO with approval cycle.

As result the engineer stayed at the company. We were able to prevent loss of
engineer and were able to offer comfort level to F of being employed.

Anonymous · Answer

There were certain type of clients called aggregators who were advertising on
our platform. Business team came with a request that to remove them from ranking
since they believe that they don't perform well in the long term. What we saw
from the data was they have certain place in the market where they will
advertise in the segments where nobody will advertise and when we remove them it
hurts our revenue. So we decided to keep them on the platform. The conflict was
I got two directions from my direct manager and manager's manager where the
directions are tangent to each other. My manager says to keep them until there
is measurable way to prove that they will hurt the platform. My manager's
manager said it's up to business if they want to keep or remove them. 
 With the help of my team I came up with a plan that 
(1) if the predicted loss is less than 5% then we remove them from our listings 
(2) if they are abusing the platform by exploring the bottom then we limit them 
(3) we come up with a parameter called advertiser quality index which utilize in
ranking

The above helped to solve the conflict so that the presence of aggregators were
limited and we selectively suppress them when there is minimal loss. We
experimentally proved the theory. In the end the conflict was minimized was both
parties got what they want to some extent.

Anonymous · Answer

For full 10 years of my Nike career and for everyone else in Nike was a
stressful time when Nike had big layoffs in few years back.
It was challenging to keep everyone in the team to keep them motivated and
continue the work. During that time I had more frequent 1:1s to listen to
people. That time even just lienting was also just sufficient for people.
During that time, even my peer EM got laid off, that means my team size got
doubled. Managing other team and balancing the work, means I need to come up
with startatgey on how I can support the team well.

Anonymous · Answer

Discuss with the team about the situation and understand the needs and concerns
of the team. Ensure that needs and concerns are not conflicted. Motivate the
team with all possible ways.

bhargav · Answer

1) if there are conflicting priorities , then identify the priorities which are
approved and funded in the organization AOP .
2) the One that is approved takes highest precedence, if there are multiple
priorities then the one which has significant legal impact takes precedence.
3) if there are no legal concerns then the one which has biggest customer impact
or the one which will realize lot of revenue for the org will take priority.

Can you discuss a particularly challenging situation you faced as a manager and how you navigated it?

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