Every manager (as well as a few colleagues) has tried to get me to come back so far. A couple have recommended me to lead the tech side of their friend's (well-funded) startups long after I left.
I wouldn't ever do it again though unless it was explicitly asked for. Stressing about getting fired in the initial weeks after getting hired (or during a boss change) just isn't worth it.
Being able to be your "true" self is the observation, not "be happy". If your true self is a neurotic mess, "psychological safety" on a team would give you the space to do that without feeling judged or that negative consequences would arise (informal or formal) by acting that way.
You can improve "checked-out" engineers feelings by creating a way for them to express their concerns without worry that they'll be punished for it.
Those toxic teams I'm sure you've been part of, where everyone felt shitty and nobody felt connected to the work? They didn't have to be that way by leveraging "psychological safety", even if "reality" was immutable (also, it's not immutable but we can get to that).
My main point in writing the diatribe above was to deter the type of pleasant but dull middle manager who thinks that all they have to do to solve their teams’ problems is psychologize them. I’ve actually noticed this as a larger cultural trend: people blaming their own minds or the minds of others for what is an actual real problem in the world. If I can help clear the wool from a few low-level programmers eyes to help them see that they aren’t so different from an accountant or the fry cook at their favorite bar (and that this is not a bad thing!) I feel like my job is done.
The trick is to find people like you, get you engaged and feeling like you can actually fix the shit that's stopping you from being productive, while also getting you to give space for people to fuck up now and then, because people fucking up and feeling okay with that sometimes leads to really great insight when instead of fucking up they do something great.
Basically, "safety" is letting people feel not-terrible for taking a risk and having it blow up in their face. That should be allowed on a team, and Google's research seems to show that teams who allow people to fuck up without making them feel bad about it tend to make better shit than teams who punish people for fucking up.
...to a point. If all you do is fuck up, that also violates the safety, on the manager's side because then they're not feeling safe letting people take risks.
What it comes down to is a culture where decision making is transparent, questioning the status quo is encouraged and no one person holds the power to make / break a product. At the team level you’re always going to have good managers and bad managers, but with the right culture the bad managers blast radius will be diminished. A good manager can’t do a whole lot to overcome a shitty culture.
This is a utopia though. Every manager has their own manager right up to the company board. If you have to let people go, then how can you say you are not going to fire the guy who is the most checked out? If the person cannot deliver you cannot guarantee they won't lose their job.
It boils down to you really can't trust yourself to not be biased to those who are more open but more negative.
Simple, you cannot guarantee "they won't be punished".
Most checked out is not the same thing as can't deliver. In a well-functioning organisation one would hope that managers would assess people on how much they were actually delivering rather than how involved they sounded, and would have support from the structure above them in that.
I am in a situation where I actually have near absolute safety and nearly no control over the projects. It was even worse in 2020 regarding control after being thrown into a toxic project by a CEO who always touts the motto "no a**holes".
Well when pitching for the biggest budget in the history of the org reality is what counts. Not nice mottos.
So I agree. Everytime I hear this bs about being a team/family/safe place I just think: STFU and pay me. I do my work. Nothing more, nothing less.
The observation is if everyone feels comfortable disagreeing with one another, the project is more likely to succeed. That's it.
This is a productivity tool to make marginal projects more likely to tip favorably, and to keep good engineers around even when they're on bad projects, and hopefully make some bad projects less bad by giving everyone room to suggest improvements.
I would hazard a guess that most of the misunderstanding around the term is due to its ambiguity. I think it's so bad it’s counterproductive actually but that's subjective. It really feels like what they are trying to say is that everyone feels personal agency in their decisions, actions and communication, but the term evokes a concept of being free from threats or risk.
I would suggest that neither of these create high performing teams, they just tend to reduce the pathological behaviors that impede them. They still need to get past the observations of Andy Grove 'When a person is not doing [their] job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can’t do it or won’t do it; [they are] either not capable or not motivated.' After all, someone sleeping at their desk day after day could actually be experiencing maximum psychological safety.
It is both.
My decision to stay or quit is a cost-benefit analysis, and feeling happy or unhappy is a part of the equation. High employee turnover usually means lower productivity, because knowledge is lost and new team members need to learn about the project from scratch.
Maybe it would be helpful to use the term other than “safety”? Is there a synonym for a psychological safety that would get cross what you’re thinking about better?
Trust. Psychological safety is (real) trust between members of the team and the people who impact the team (e.g. managers or executives or whoever). It's trusting the people around you so you feel free to be yourself, to propose off-the-wall but potentially terrible ideas without being thought less of, to be open about flaws and failures, to try to stretch yourself beyond what you think you are capable of because you trust that the people around you will support you.
It isn't having a secure job or even a happy one. I was once on a team with a shitty director and severely understaffed in a very unsexy, low-paying industry. I did not enjoy my place in the organization. But we had psychological safety on our team. In our scrum team the tech lead/manager was amazing. He protected us from above, he trusted us, he was honest about the situation, and he had a passion for building a great team and growing his people. When someone made a big mistake in prod, he taught that person how to correct the mistake as an opportunity for growth while the entire team supported them (but didn't do it for them, because we trusted that person). The job sucked and within 2 years the entire team had quit. But not a single person even thought about leaving until that team lead left and the culture of trust left with him. Psychological safety is related to happiness in that teams with it tend to also have happy employees - but it creates happiness, not the other way around.
Psychological safety is often hard to have when the job is unstable (it probably feels unstable because of a lack of trust somewhere), but a startup is a great example of where you can have both trust and an unstable job.
"Happy" is a hard term to define, and I don't think you need to be happy to feel "safe". Another way of describing "safety" is "the ability to make mistakes/ask for help without negative consequences". You may feel "unhappy" that you made a mistake, but you won't feel judged for it if the people around you are comfortable with you taking risks.
You can be deeply unhappy, personally and professionally, and still experience that shared comfort with risk taking on your team, and benefit from what Google's research shows, I think. Perhaps you're all comfortable with the risks because the project is going so poorly and you need to throw some hail marys out there to try and get out of the bad situation. The focus is on everyone agreeing that making mistakes is expected and acceptable, because risks also come with reward.
I actually really like that example, where you're on a doomed project, and the natural "safety" that forms with the team who all knows it's a doomed project anyway, so why not take a few shots at something wild? The space you create in that environment where, "we were going to fail anyway might as well throw some shit at the wall to see what sticks" is exactly what I mean when I say "safety". Projects that have that attitude apparently tend to be more successful. Imagine having that level of comfort with your team and also working on a successful project!
This is not true. I don't need to be happy to want constructive arguments. In fact, the more unhappy I am, the more I need that constructive argument about what is bothering me - to deal with situation that makes me unhappy.
Whether I go into it depends a lot on whether I think/feel it is safe for me to open argument or join it. If I think I will be punished for saying stuff, I don't say that stuff, because I am not dumb.
And I can also be unsafe psychologically and subjectively happy. I can have interesting tasks, fun, I won't be expressing my opinions and there will be risk unsolvable situation will arise. But until then, I will be happy.
You know what? Most of the time they are right. But it's still important to have a culture where everybody feels comfortable presenting their own ideas and critiquing others - not because we're going to discard the sr. staff persons architecture in favor of the interns idea very often, but because the process is good for the ideas, good for the product, and good for the team members (whatever level).
"But when rubber hits the road most engineers do not have one of either security or control."
Well said
Does it always have to be dishonest? "We need to implement a bog-standard CRUD app for XYZ, so it's a good opportunity to try some new technology stack / make a really polished codebase / ..." ought to be the kind of conversation that you can have.
The point is that all members on a team may believe the work is meaningful and interesting, but still be unproductive due to group dynamics that penalize certain types of behavior that would constructive if they were allowed. It doesn't matter how meaningful or interesting things are if a co-worker or manager shuts you down every time you present a differing opinion on something.
The process is exactly the same as when on tech suddenly everyone talks about fluent api one year, then about other buzzword, just for those then slowly dying.
Unfortunately the adaptive thing to do here is go along with it. If a friend tells me they are being gaslit, I’m certainly not going to side with the gaslighters.
My favorite example of "marxist" style insults is claiming that someone lives "rent free" in ones mind. Admittedly, I find this uniquely insulting and if anything I've got to give credit to zoomers and the other forerunners of todays "wokism" for adding more interesting insults and accusations to our linguistic zeitgeist.
In an optimistic mindset, “psychological safety” boils down to feeling secure in one’s job and in control of one’s project. When people feel secure, they free up cycles to creative, sleep better, enjoy each other’s company more, etc. when they feel in control they have the energy to constructively argue.
But when rubber hits the road most engineers do not have one of either security or control. At a startup they may have some limited product control but there is no safety. In a large company they may have more security but no actual control of the product. Either way, to promote PS and get a more engaged team, a manager has to downplay the reality of the situation. This leads to management allowing complicated pet projects, rewrites, and feedback meetings that go nowhere all for the sake of appeasing egos. Engineers tend not to be overly people-savvy but we catch on eventually.
I think it’s no better than the “we’re all a family” rhetoric. Just another way of trying to eke out more work for nothing in return. My last employer signed all employees up for an app called “happify” where we would get daily challenges to pop bubbles with stressful words on them or write praises to our coworkers. That strategy was so bald-faced that I had to kind of admire it.
So why are checked-out engineers bad? They are worse than bad, they are counter-productive. They push shit code because who cares? They don’t question obviously bad designs because they know there’s no point. They quit or move on leaving the team in churn-hell. But these are symptoms not of psychology but of reality. Spinozas Ethics is a lovely look into how psychology and reality are just two sides of the same coin, and you can’t fix one without fixing the other. As stated above, the solution is engaging work, but most work is not engaging. So let’s just be more realistic, ok?