Quality Conversations
You’re in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike
The state of the art in online computer gaming circa 1976 was a game called Adventure, which consisted of typing short instructions into a computer terminal and getting terse responses, which you had to interpret to complete a vaguely-defined mission. The only graphics were in your mind’s eye. I spent many hours playing that game between tasks at my part-time college job at a mainframe time-sharing service.
If anything in those three sentences rings a bell for you, you’re old. I prefer to think of myself as highly experienced; my career in tech has certainly been a long and interesting one.
Three years after receiving my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in computer science from UCLA, I found myself working in a rapidly growing start-up, short on managers. Because I seemed the least likely to resist, I was drafted into a management role at the age of 26. The director I reported to was a “seasoned veteran” of 29. I got no training and very little coaching.
I turned out to be a really terrible manager at first.
Despite my naive confidence, I turned out to be a really terrible manager at first. Not surprising, in hindsight. I now know that managing is an entirely different career than what six years in a CS program and three years of being a software engineer had prepared me for.
I’m not quite sure how or why I stuck it out. I did a lot of reading and eventually got some company-provided management training. I also learned from negative role models, including myself. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was under-prepared to succeed when thrust into management.
In more than thirty years as a manager, I’ve had quite a variety of experiences. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that my passion for quality was even greater than my passion for development, so I moved into the quality engineering path. I’ve been a VP of Engineering in a small company, and acting General Manager for a short time. I’ve managed teams as large as 300. I’ve been responsible for development, QE, technical publications, technical support, IT, release engineering, globalization engineering, product marketing, and program management. I’ve managed centralized teams, distributed teams, and matrixed teams. Onsite, offsite, outsourced and offshore. Start-ups, mega-corporations, and everything in between.
Eventually, I came to realize I was still playing Adventure. No well-defined objective, and not a lot to go on. In that game, if you got to the spot where the feedback was “you’re in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike,” you weren’t in a good spot.
Changing the way people listen
I had the good fortune to be able to take career breaks of more than a year, twice. During the first one, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my true passion was. I eventually determined that while there are fulfilling things about giving Powerpoint presentations to execs and board members, that wasn’t my main passion. And while I dearly missed the hands-on aspect of being an engineer, I had grown to love management.
I particularly wanted the opportunity to build high-functioning, diverse teams and to help each team member develop and grow in their careers while feeling fulfilled and motivated in their current role.
During my second career break, it dawned on me that retirement was no longer an abstract concept, and probably no more than 10 years away. It became clear to me that I want to spend the rest of my career enjoying what I’m doing, getting fulfillment from it, and feeling that my experience and skills are being utilized to maximum effect. That meant finding a company where I could lead a small- to medium-sized QE team, where I could have an impact and enjoy the working environment.
That’s how I came to lead a QE team at Pandora.
It all starts with our approach to performance reviews.
What I didn’t anticipate was the joy I experience managing people within a culture I feel closely aligned with. In all these years of managing people, I’ve learned a thing or two about what works well and what doesn’t. It’s great to feel free to manage people in the way that benefits everyone, rather than serving bureaucratic interests. Many components of the culture contribute to this, but for me it all starts with our approach to performance reviews. The Pandora training materials for performance reviews, which we call “Playback and Discovery” and “Year in Review,” make it clear that the key objective is to have a quality conversation.
But wait! What about ratings and rankings, complete with quotas, forms to fill out, and all that? Nope, we don’t do that. Thank goodness, because I’ve lived the hell of trying to explain to someone in my team that even though they did great work, I could only give 10% of the people an “outstanding” rating, and their work, because it was less outstanding, received a rating of “meets expectations.” And why it was OK that this is an input into a matrix that determines their raise, which is therefore limited to a much smaller number than they were hoping for, and that I knew they deserved. And why this should motivate them to do even better next year.
Engineers are smart people and very good with calculations. They quickly figure out that if you’re competing with your peers for a limited number of good ratings which determine your compensation, you have to think strategically when you give peer feedback. Therefore, how to “damn with faint praise,” or couch criticisms as compliments, thereby hopefully keeping the top ratings available for yourself. Even to the point of being careful not to spend too much of your time and energy helping peers succeed.
Oh, and take risks? Not wise. If you try something new, and it doesn’t work out, your peers and your manager will be sure to list that out when they need to find a justification for why you didn’t or shouldn’t get that top rating. Does this sound good for employee motivation and development? Does it sound good for the company? I think not.
Oh, and there’s one other thing. At Pandora, we’re not a bunch of technologists trying to find a business problem to solve. We’re a bunch of music and spoken word enthusiasts, looking to use technology to further our corporate purpose of “Changing the way people listen.” Using your skills in the service of a passion you share with tens of millions of people is a rare opportunity.
Inclusion starts with humility
The other huge lesson I’ve learned in all those years of leading teams is that the best teams are made up of diverse individuals. There are plenty of studies that can do a better job of explaining why than I can, I’ve just seen it in action. Managing diverse and inclusive teams actually takes more work than managing homogeneous teams. Not doing that work is the easy way out for managers, and it results in inferior teams. Diverse teams require coaching and assistance to learn how to appreciate each other’s viewpoints and skills, and how to collaborate to utilize the strengths of each team member, while filling in for each other’s weaknesses.
True inclusion reaches all the way to the level of unique individuals and how they blend into teams.
Yes, at Pandora we put significant effort into expanding the pipelines for talent from under-represented and under-served groups of people. And we think every day about how to create a workplace that allows each person to bring their authentic self, and feel welcomed and appreciated. But in my view, true inclusion reaches all the way to the level of unique individuals and how they blend into teams. In other words, regardless of your demographics, you’re a unique individual, with unique strengths and perspectives, and we want to give you the opportunity to contribute and grow your career utilizing those unique traits.
So how can managers build teams around that concept? Studies have shown that despite best efforts, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate subconscious biases. Where we get into trouble is when we place value judgments on them. There’s a simple way to overcome that, embodied in another of Pandora’s key company values: learning with humility. If you start with the assumption that your way is the best, or that you have the most or best experience, you’re susceptible to falling down the path of treating others as if their viewpoints and perspectives aren’t as valuable.
Humility starts from feeling safe to expose your weaknesses, and asking for help from your teammates. To do that, you can’t be in fear of what that will mean for your rating in your annual review. You can’t worry that others will bring that up in 360 reviews. And you have to value learning and outcomes over proving you’re right. Managers can build that culture in their teams, and they can model it themselves. When everyone on a team can focus on utilizing their strengths and offering support to their teammates, and in return calling upon teammates to help with their weaknesses, amazing things can happen.
Winning the game
Just as I thought I had found my ideal way to maximize enjoyment of the remaining years of my career, something unanticipated happened. I was recently asked to move out of QE, into a new role. Two of the most important responsibilities I now have are creating programs to mentor and support engineering managers, and creating an apprenticeship program to fuel a talent pipeline for promising software engineers coming from non-traditional educational backgrounds.
I have an enduring motivation to help managers avoid the unpleasant experience I had transitioning from an individual contributor role into management. And I have passion for explaining to them why the culture at Pandora enables them to be an amazing manager, which isn’t true everywhere. I’m also excited to increase the flow of unique individuals with a wider variety of life experiences, perspectives, and traits into Pandora Engineering. And to learn how to support them in their growth and development, while valuing their contributions.
My relatives in the Midwest are fond of saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” High tech is similar. You can never anticipate what you’ll be doing in the near future, but in the right environment, you might find the opportunity to do something amazing and fulfilling. So maybe if you feel like you’re caught in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, you just need to find a new Adventure.
Pandora is hiring! We have open positions in Engineering, Product Management, Technical Program Management, and Data Science.
