One approach to react to ridiculous behavior is to simply ask the other person something like "so you're telling me to repeat that I'll be fired if I don't do X".

This technique is called mirroring.

It's a tacit reminder to the other person that what they're saying is outside the boundary of your immediate comprehension - forcing them to be more conscious of their behavior.

This disregards the power imbalance -- lots of employees (especially junior ones) are not comfortable being so firm with their managers.

Part of life is tactfully dealing with people who have power over you. It’s not very comfortable for anyone.

Turning this into an issue of mere comfort betrays a great deal of privilege. Many, arguably most, people are a firing or two away from poverty and misery. In tech, this can be especially true of people early in their careers, and especially those from less-advantaged backgrounds. If you get fired from your first tech job, and your manager talks a bunch of shit about you, that may be your last tech job.

Even in the current climate employers are desperate for (good) developers, at all points on the experience spectrum.

If you live in a city you can probably get an interview the day after you get fired. Sooner if you're willing to use a recruiter.

While this is true, saying "I got fired from my first and only job in tech. Also I can't provide any professional references because my manager has a grudge against me" can be a red flag for your next employer, or even next few employers (whether justified or not).

Is this still true during Coronavirus? I know my company at least has raised our interview standard

A lot of life is determined by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have, one way or the other.

I'd never really thought about this idea explicitly but it really does apply to an awful lot of situations. I can think of countless experiences that would have turned out very differently if I had or had not brought up a tough conversation. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

This is such an accurate and profound statement.

And now that I think about it, one trait that I’ve witnessed in CEOs and successful entrepreneurs again and again is an almost inhuman ease with initiating and engaging in uncomfortable conversations. They don’t hesitate with them either.

I always assumed it was just something they all naturally develop as a consequence of being bombarded and put upon constantly, but maybe there’s more to it than that.

this a thousand times

Wisdom is realizing no one really has power over you.

You are voluntarily & temporarily handing over that power to someone else in exchange for money.

The moment you renounce your desire for money from that company, you get back that power you handed over.

And that was, is, and will, always be your decision. Thus, the power never left your hands.

> You are voluntarily & temporarily handing over that power to someone else in exchange for money.

The thing you're missing is that money is required to live. If I "voluntarily" decide to stop earning it, or if I end up in a job where I earn substantially less, a state employee with a gun will eventually show up to my house and evict me from it. If I am hungry and take some food from a store, a state employee with a gun will put me in a cage. The idea that there's no power dynamic at play here is absurd.

You're missing the point.

There is always a power dynamic as long as you have desires.

Even the state employee with a gun has someone else he needs to answer to, or that someone else with a bigger gun will show up at his house.

To the saint/monk/yogi who needs nothing but a fruit a day from a nearby tree, no power on earth has a "power-dynamic" over him.

> you renounce your desire for money from that company

All well and good if you can afford it. If you can not, then the existential wisdom is a lot less useful than, say, worker's rights.

I've always found the power dynamic issue troublesome. So often it can be turned into "Well they might have consented, but they really didn't truly have the power to because of the power imbalance."

There might be some truth in that in a purely psychological sense, but it also is a massive legal issue. Do you really have agency as an employee, and what are those limits?

Say a manager gets into a relationship with a subordinate. Yes, it's a bad idea, of course, but both of your emotions get away from you and you say you love each other. If things go south, could the subordinate say he or she didn't feel like they had a choice?

Heidi Matthews is a Canadian law professor who asked this in relation to the metoo movement and Monica Lewinsky. During the 90s, the debate was over Clinton lying, but no one ever challenged that Lewinsky consented. But today, people retroactively look back at that time and ask if she had the ability to consent.

Maybe if US unemployment was setup like other countries where you could leave a job and still get on the dole, there's less of a dynamic because you could "just leave" (even though it makes it more difficult to get hired later).

I dunno; there are a whole lot of deep factors here. Life is about learning from doing things that are uncomfortable and asserting agency when you feel like you have none.

It's not the employee's job to try to make their manager a better human being or a better manager.

Also, many people would be terrible managers and avoid that career path, so it's kind of weird to expect them to "manage up".

I don't think I'd make this "Joke" in the first place, but if I was a 3rd-person observer to this scenario my honest first reaction would be (1) that's a weak attempt at humour, quickly followed by (2) that person is really sensitive.

I suspect the manager would interpret that sort of feedback as #2 as well