I don't usually judge articles by their "form", but this reads like the posts people share on LinkedIn and I don't like it. I'm glad I don't have to resort to some of these shenanigans in my org (point 2, 3 and 5). I try to make the best case based on the reality, stay open to compromise and usually the outcome is fair. I understand it could be different in an org where there are strongly divergent interests including some that go against the company. I feel my opinion of a colleague would be diminished if they pulled some of these tricks on me, I'd expect someone in sales to do these but not our tech department.

These aren't persuasion methods but techniques to exploit common cognitive biases. One thing I learned by reading Cialdini's "Influence" book is to call out such tricks when exposed to them. Hopefully, none of this is required when working in an organization which hires for cultural fit and shared vision.

> which hires for cultural fit and shared vision.

I suppose Facebook hires for cultural fit and shared vision, and I suppose that working there must require lots of manipulation.

As a former freelance graphic designer I also had to think about Cialdini, but his book "Presuation".

You don't want to manipulate anybody, but man are customers stupid sometimes (cue "clients from hell"). E.g. a pattern I noticed was that especially self-important customers always wanted to change "something" if presented with one draft — not because that change made sense, but because they felt the need to be in control. And if you know that is going to happen irrespectively you might as well just control the context within which it happens.

This is why I switched to presenting multiple drafts after each other with the first one being the "lightening rod draft". This way all the self-importance could be channeled there and they would (empirically) be far less likely to make destructive proposals on the later drafts which they then also liked more.

That is certainly manipulation. But manipulation done with the intent of saving customers from making stupid choices that fall back on me after a while, because of in the heat of moment paychological needs. If I was someones customer I'd like them to do the same for me.

If someone really didn't like all drafts I'd recalibrate and figure out what they want, I can be wrong and my ideas are not holy. But if you hired me, it was very likely that I know more about the craft than you did.

> customers always wanted to change "something" ...

> multiple drafts after each other with the first one being the "lightening rod draft".

This reminds me of something I learned in a developmental psychology class (many) years ago. It reflects the "terrible twos" when the toddler learns they can disagree with their parent and answer almost any question "No!" in order to exercise their newfound power.

The suggestion in the class was to phrase questions in a manner to give the toddler a choice between two reasonable options rather than a yes/no query. For example "Do you want to play inside or go outside?" rather than "Do you want to go outside?" [1]

It seems that the choice could be manipulative or could offer reasonable options depending on how it is cast. (Of course there is a continuum between the two.)

[1] Our two boys never wanted to go outside and play but once outside, didn't want to come back in, claiming "Do we have to? We're just starting to have fun."

The first one, Nemawashi, is not cognitive bias. It is very useful to discuss and to listen to feedback in an informal and safe setting (which fosters trust and honest discussion) to get buy-in in advance of formal presentation. This is change management, and not a sign of a disfunctional organisation but, on the contrary, of good, effective leaders, including on the purely technical side.

The cognitive bias here is in the mind of each person you meet with, who has different values that you can more easily address individually and/or who is more approachable in a small, informal setting.

This is not what "cognitive bias" means, though.

From Wikipedia: "A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Example: Boss #1 has an irrational fear of short deadlines, so you meet with them ahead of time to assuage them that the deadline may seem short to them but it's actually quite normal because [reasons]. Boss #2 likes lead devs who keep their opinions to themselves, but your lead dev on the project is known to give unsolicited advice, so you meet with Boss #2 and tell them you'll try to switch to another lead dev after the project gets underway.

Yes, that's not at all what Nemawashi is about... neither are your examples, really.

It is sad that being an engineering manager in the vast majority of tech companies is about politics not about engineering. A lot of engineers who opt for the management root learn this the very hard way.

The big persuasion missing from the list is persuading, both upwards and downwards, who should work on what.

It sounds super cynical but it is important to park the unproductive people on the unimportant work else nothing works. It is usually counterproductive to actually release people (the EM is rewarded for number of reports above all else) etc so you have to put the good people on what is important and somehow lend the bad people to the projects and competing teams to hamper them etc.

Sad but super true.

This is a strange take to me. What do you think engineering management _is_? It's fundamentally a political role. This reads to me like "it's sad that most football managers never get to kick a ball".

I'm sure there are places where that job is primarily about engineering... But that's just a place that doesn't actually need EMs! Maybe you are saying this is the ideal org, and yeah I probably agree. So I guess this is just a semantics thing.

This is why it's essential for any enterprise that wants to keep long term growth going to build processes to catch and weed out stakeholders and employees that prioritize playing politics over actions that will further the progress of the company.

This is the biggest difference between companies that fade out, and the ones that keep being innovative as they grow.

Inaction in this regard leads to the company becoming top-heavy with people that have no clue on how to drive the company forwards, they only know how to climb the ladder.

I saw a team of misfits being assembled and "parked" this way on a project everyone expected to fail. To everyone's surprise they dragged the thing to completion and an unexpected revenue stream.

most,if not all of underperformers are because of their subpar managers.Seen that and been there.

that's a movie i want to see

Are we talking about the colonization of Australia?

BTW I think that most misfits are such not because they're bad engineers, but because they're put in the wrong role with the wrong people. By sending them to a completely new project with completely new people under completely new rules, you give them "a second chance".

"It's only called politics if you're losing"

So to sum up the "methods" listed:

1. Curry favour with stakeholders separately in advance of a big joint decision

2. Lie about estimates

3. Use filters like "falls for reverse psychology" to find subordinates that are easy to manipulate

4. Many engineers hate conflict, so you can just make decisions for them

5. See point #1

edit: clarified my takeaway for #3

Some people see the world as dark and gray and full of ill intent. That does not mean the world is like that.

More banal than ill intent, it's just self-serving hubris, lack of self awareness and lack of empathy, that sort of thing

Indeed. This is Mr Master manipulator drinking his own Kool-aid.

LinkedIn noise indeed.

I am very tired of managers thinking they outsmart anyone with such tricks. I've heard other "tricks" too, like "intentional intimidation of subordinates", "being brutal in 1:1s and pretending to be a saint in public"[0], etc. They are often left unchallenged because no one feels equipped to handle the fallout, defensiveness, and retaliation that usually follow when a controlling personality is challenged. Not because they outsmart everyone.

The real "trick" is honesty, consistency, integrity, wisdom, and other golden virtues. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. At the very least, you'll live a life you can be proud of.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18001634

> The real "trick" is honesty, consistency, integrity, wisdom, and other golden virtues. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. At the very least, you'll live a life you can be proud of.

This describes the boss / owner at my very first real computer store job (sellin' office machines) way back when the local Radio Shack was still sellin' the Tandy TRS-80 to home users. He treated all us employees with the same respect he expected of us, and he recognized and rewarded hard work and good ideas, and it really showed in how we all treated customers as well, which of course led to lots of happy customers buyin' stuff, which led to lots of free "word of mouth" advertising, which led to lots of sales, which led to happy boss, which led to happy well-paid employees ... Everyone wins. Funny how important "the little things" can be sometimes.

He was also the only boss I've ever had tell me "The customer is always right ... unless they're wrong ... Then you send 'em straight to me." (Usually so he could tell 'em why they're wrong and then either make the sale, or tell 'em where else they can take their money to. :)

I do wonder if they think they are fooling anyone, or if they are just that shameless.

One repeating issue we have had with our managers is they will try to label missing features as bugs, to put the blame on the product team when they have sold something unfeasible to a customer.

Another one is that they pretend that the feature was decided on long ago, when it was only briefly discussed and then decided against.

If you'd ever tried this you'd realize quickly that it simply doesn't work on a large part of the population.

Humans aren't rational.

> Humans aren't rational.

Ergo, you are not rational?

That decoy pricing trick is not a good strategy. It's very easy to see through, and will seriously annoy whoever you try it on. Somebody once produced a build vs buy analysis for me, and it was so obviously biased towards their preferred option (build, because it's more fun and expands their personal empire) that I knew I couldn't trust them with anything else after that.

Just do the task honestly and well.

It is misrepresentation, basically.

For persuasion to work effectively, trust is the foundation. If there is no trust, any sort of persuasion will fall flat. For managers, it is about creating psychological safety where people can easily share their ideas, opinions, and disagreements.

Think about it, if your manager asks you something, do you feel comfortable sharing exactly what's on your mind? If not, then whatever your manager says, you will take it without fully embracing it. It goes the same way with your team.

True persuasion comes with an open, honest, and candid dialogue.

> I often use Reverse Psychology during hiring. My favorite part of hiring sell-calls is listing reasons why the candidate shouldn’t join my team! This always leads to some superstar hires who join because they are eager for the challenge!

The author calls honesty in interviews "reverse psychology". The broken clock is right twice a day and all that.

Now that we have this list, we should pay close attention to its use. If someone uses these especially for personal gain, and especially at the company’s expense, it should be addressed. A company should value truth. We should not rely on persuasion tricks.

Sadly the cookie banner is impossible to get rid of on Safari (mobile). Makes it very hard to read the content.

This is the case for me too for every Substack page in the past few days. I'm on desktop using Vivaldi as a browser.

Fuck. That article gives me a real feel for working at Google and what it takes to succeed. It's a full time job to game the system!

It's pretty much inevitable that every organization at some point pivots away from its core mission towards politics. As soon as the first actor who doesn't care about the mission but cares about their position enters the organization, the game is on, and others will either play the game, or be outsmarted. Same shit happens in literally every field, and made me feel extremely cynic about putting actual effort into anything that doesn't benefit me.

Me too. Seen mini versions of this at smaller companies.

> As soon as the first actor who doesn't care about the mission but cares about their position enters the organization

... they should be fired. The company can add "evidence of manipulating the team politically (outside of job requirements)" as gross misconduct in their Charter ahead of time, because it will cost them reputation, money, and staff health. The problem is solvable.

Ah yes, the classic. If you don't want to be discovered as corrupt, simply create an institution that fights corruption, have a seat there, and use your powers to eliminate all political opponents by accusing them of corruption. By the time anyone realizes what's happening, everyone who could potentially question you is gone. Many of world's dictators rose to power using this simple trick.

Next time please do a more elaborate bait, this one was insulting.

I don't understand why any of these except hiring is persuasion. Engineering managers don't pitch projects. They shouldn't be persuading leadership to give them resources, they just lay out timelines for what is possible with now, with more. Maybe even with less.

As an engineer and engineering leader in my career I've never had to persuade or be persuaded to do the tasks I'm assigned. They're the job. Sometimes they're boring. I think about that during planning and make sure people get some variety and ask them what they like working on.

Why would you need to persuade a cross team lead to help you? Are they not doing their job? I've never asked and been told "you have to persuade me" and if I was told that I'd ask leadership for clarification on priorities.

This sounds like organizational dysfunction and fiefdom building.

> Engineering managers don't pitch projects

when you work among 180 thousand other people, a good chunk of you energy will be spent on justifying your existence.

in a top-heavy, cutthroat place like a FAANG, people will fight fiercely for promotions (that's half a mil extra cash in your pocket this year!), and for managers that means getting into the newest hypest shiniest projects or fall behind and eventually get kicked out. The way you join hyped-up projects (or even hear about them before it's too late): you invent one if you have the balls and the energy to pull it off, or persuade someone influential to let you join an existing one. So, strong disagree on "managers don't pitch projects".

This makes me so glad I quit FAANG to run my little lifestyle business. It's so much less stressful.

For some reason, whether that be scale, or dysfunction, you tend to end up with disparate silos even in relatively well run orgs.

I did a stint with a large US org where my SOW was to do azure (hashicorp) vault. The org already had about 20 aws vault clusters, GCP was a likely new target.

I sold k8s. That was seen as risky despite being less overall work, so I delivered direct on azure clusters, then was given a SOW to do k8s POC ( with a view to doing GCP ).

POC delivered a fairly production like service in ~a week using the most junior person on the team, only to spark outrage that I ( a person with about 10 YOE with k8s ) had delivered a POC without discussing with the core platform team ( which was intended to be POC 2, separating the issues of concern ).

Now I get why people do platform teams, and this platform wasn't bad ( more work than rolling my own equivalent; but the processes in theory ensure the less experienced people don't do terrible things ).

End result was pretty much a blocker on GCP vaults because we were awaiting said platform team to deliver for us, and me ( a contractor that delivered several at risk SOWs ahead of schedule ) cut loose because we're blocked by the other team.

In such an org, it's the job of the EM to advocate for their delivery stream, mine didn't quite manage it that day.

However, this org was probably the best ran at scale I've ever seen ( usually you can nuke an org in like 10 minutes after they give you access to the SCM & CI/CD ).

> This sounds like organizational dysfunction and fiefdom building.

So like, applicable to 98% of all organizations?

I think you might reading this strictly. Persuation is always in play. If you don't need to persuade someone actively that just means they are already persuaded in some way. Maybe that way was purely organisational (e.g. part of the normal operations) or it was by some higher up.

As an engineer I agree that an organisation should work as you described. But depending on where you are and what it is you need to do you might need to persuade somebody to do something. Or if the doing is implied you might need to persuade somebody to do something faster (means: they should priorize your thing above other things) or with a higher quality than usual (means: they should use more time, put their best hire to work or whatnot).

I agree that this isn't optimal, but each department may see other things as important. For accounting that audit might seem more important than getting your order done quickly, because for them it is the bigger, scarier and more complicated thing. So persuation sometimes just means reminding people why the thing you're doing is important.

Oh wow, I appreciate this post as vivid reminder for how I grew to loathe being an EM at Google. Folks like this are pervasive in the org these days.

For me it was a vivid reminder why I decided to quit. Nothing like thinking "I wish I was part of the layoff round cuts" to give you clarity regarding where you actually stand.

The fifth point is the same as in 'Ask for no, don’t ask for yes'

https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3518

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144611

What is the point of being great at persuading if one is persuading peers, reports, and leaders to do the wrong thing? Persuasion is necessary but it should be second to the suggestion actually being a step in the desired direction.

The more time I spend in engineering roles the more I think too many people are great at persuading but suck at the underlying thing they're persuading _for_.

Any direction is the desired direction if one can be persuaded so.

What is the point of knowing the right thing to do if you fail to persuade peers, reports, and leaders?

Like I said,

> Persuasion is necessary

If you're persuading people to do the wrong thing you're still proving how great and influential you are — if things go sideways you can still move to the next place /s

There are people whose entire careers are built on this!

Counterintuitively this is precisely why the people who care more about things being right than about winning need to work on their persuation skills: Otherwise the wrong thing will get done and guess who will have to deal with it.

The only method that works long term is being honest about what you want from people and honest about the diff between your expectations and their output.

In a previous company many times new managers asked me how to approach a subject with their reports and usually they wouldn't consider just saying it exactly as they described it to me. Just say what you mean, it'll help all your relationships, not even just work ones.

It's hard enough trying to convey what you mean clearly, adding shenanigans that you'll also be bad at on top is not going to help.

> Just say what you mean

This greatly depends on work culture and ARL's - adulthood readiness levels.

Many people are not graceful with open criticism even if done privately and constructively.

Without falling into stereotypes culture still matters specially in an international setting. Some cultures expect a lot of innuendo and indirection, for example in British or Japanese work environments. West coast US typically expects a lot of positive praise even when pointing out negatives. Whereas others like the Dutch expect more direct or even literal speech.

As a Brit I’ve had to unlearn a lot of this (IMO nonsensical and obstructive) innuendo, and it’s made a huge difference in my work and personal life.

Yep. And some people just aren't receptive to bad news, no matter the style used or the culture.

So you might see someone who's very matter-of-fact and direct, critical of everyone, but that crumbles at the smallest feedback that isn't praise.

So instead of speaking to the point and saying what I mean I should instead tailor speech to each individual based on my stereotypes of the country they come from?

People are obviously different from each other, you should still say what you mean instead of reading "5 ways to manipulate people at work" blog posts. Be honest and respectful, whatever faux-pas you do will be 1000x better than someone feeling like you're trying to have them do something while saying another and lose all trust forever.

Here here to not losing your humanity just because you work in a corporation/organization

This is total self-help drivel, engineering management is

1. Focus on and understand the details. 2. Compromise in the right way.

The rest is just some art of the deal crap about empire building and getting headcount so you feel safe because someone else is there to do the work and take the rap.

Uhh, yeah, you can do this, yes, this works, but I wouldn't do any of this.

Life is not about scores. It's about living it like you want it. If you want to get the scores, that's fine, but not everyone are like that. If I learned that my coworker stalked me into the plane I'd move away ASAP.

Sure, it's a game, but I rather lose and stay human, than game the system. And those who do - there are many more social hacking techniques one could use.

There's this last "conundrum" on pulling the offer for that completely weird scenario, where new hire comes in next week, there's no contract, they quit and then offer is withdrawn. Outside of complete absurd context there's one solution - bite the bullet. Either by free lunch for 6 months or so, or just taking hire in. Reputation damage from doing this kind of stunt would be much higher than a single salary.

But in such management as a game context, score can be given for "sucks to be you, make sure to sign the contract first".

One more to the list: We persuade reports to tackle tasks that they know are useless but will need to get done to appease some moron with power.

Working at Google (and similar companies) seems to be such a chore is what i got from this article.

I worked in a company where the author was brought in as fractional CTO and later advisor for a few months. The company was small size (about ~40 developers, total being around 200).

There was hardly any "politics" in the workplace before, but there many instances my manager had to do so, to get the work done. Worst part was he was being appreciated for gaming systems. (I find it worse, I don't know how my manager felt it)

to add, as a fractional CTO, the author was just terrible. Lacked vision, foresight or could offer anything on technology. Just a glorified manager who could smooth talk with management and the investors

thankfully, we got a CTO later, but soon after I left the company for different reasons.

so yeah, I wouldn't take anything seriously about the author. Pretty much a grifter

As a previous EM at a FAANG, I'm very conflicted by this post. On one hand, it is quite useful and representative of some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that I wish I was aware of at the time that would've made my life easier. On the other hand, it is representative of the time and effort wasted on political bullshit at big tech that could certainly have been put to better use. TL;DR: Thanks, I hate it.

I think it helps to accept that manager is a political role and that politics is intrinsic to human groups.

Most of it is bullshit, but "I'm going to do X unless you tell me not to" is really good even at companies with a minimum of political shenanigans. It lets you politely and safely take ownership of stuff off of busy people.

> Some may see this as manipulation

Because it is the dark art of manipulation for middle managers. This art boils down to creating a false reality to everyone who matters: you tell one set of lies to Bob, tailored to his personality, another set of lies to Jon, yet another set of lies to Jim, and when they come together, their vision is blurred by the lies you've skilfully created and they arrive with the decision you want.

You can up your game with tricks such as: backroom deals (give me what I want and I'll give you what you want) and blackmail (here is what I can do to you, so give me what I want). This dark art is an endless pit that to fully master you need to descend to hell.

Something irked me about this post as a long term EM, and then reading the final part actually provided the clarity: The author is a sociopath.

Stalking your superiors is insane. Most of the behaviour here is insane. Decoy cup size? Present the option that is best for the business and be done with it.

This is a sign of a sick company.

The part that irks me is the sense that this person advocates these methods always, as though it's a cheat code for success.

I think we've all had to deal with difficult people or organizations that might need methods like these to allow them to come to a mutually beneficial decision either faster or at all.

A common technique I've heard of is "hairy arms". This is from the graphic design world, an area that practically everyone thinks they are qualified to judge or comment on. Some stakeholders will always give a comment or request a change, no matter what is presented. So the technique is to put hairy arms on the mascot, the lady, etc. A small flaw so that stakeholders can feel that they've given feedback, been heard, but avoid large changes that often cause multiple rounds of feedback.

Should you use that technique on everyone and every project? I think that's a bit disrespectful. Should you use that technique when dealing with a client that always has feedback, even on excellent work? Probably.

> "hairy arms"

A duck: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/#:~:tex...

That's probably what it takes to get promoted to Director of Engineering

> silence is consent

This is so wrong on so many levels. At its basic, it’s exhausting to speak up about process improvements and see things turn to shit each time one comes up.

yep, calling that "persuasion" is seriously wrong.

Different strokes for different folks and companies.

It's kind of fascinating to see how persuasion in American professional culture can sometimes come across as borderline manipulative or sociopath. Wouldn't it be better if things were approached with clear planning, mutual respect, and a bit more order?

"let's schedule a short 1:1 pre meeting to get on the same page before we waste our team's time with a bigger thing"

No, it's better to find their flight schedule and wait at the gate.

I see a lot of people here saying "be honest" etc... but that simply doesn't work in real life.

I suspect that all of those "be honest" people never actually did this in real life: if they did they would realize that once you get to ~10+ people in a company it simply doesn't work.

There is a reason that politics exists: we humans aren't rational. We are emotional and "exploiting" the biases in the article is not manipulation, since the human who is being "manipulated" isn't rational in the first place.

So who is it to blame? The one doing "manipulation" since that person sees that actual benefit can be had or the "poor manipulated target" who actually can't see past his biases and that his stuborness and blindess is having a negative effect on the company?

If the "just be honest" and "actually being heard" worked there would be no need for politics etc..

From my experience and what I heard from others in real companies at least 50% of people aren't "rational" enough for this to work.

They also have their own reponsibilities and stress and now having to reimplement someones idea (which might be good or totaly shit) is the last thing they want to stress out about: they want to go home to their families.

Even if this "great idea" works will they get a increase in salary and a bigger bonus? In 95% of cases they won't. So why bother?

Humans are incentive based creatures.

One underrated trick? Listening without trying to solve right away. I’ve seen engineers open up more when they feel heard rather than redirected. That alone can shift team dynamics faster than most “leadership frameworks.”

Yes, but also "feeling heard" is different from actually *being* heard — feelings work short term, being heard makes more of a difference the longer the time horizon.

I distinctly remember working at a company where management were very good at making you feel heard. But with time, it was clear that’s all they were doing.

Too often I flipped this around. I would hear what people had to say but did not put an effort into making sure that they felt heard. I process information quickly and would not pause and move quickly through a conversation. The results were not as good as they could be.

I learned how to make people feel heard and it worked wonders.

I don’t know how I could make someone feel heard without hearing them out.

A few years ago, I pitched an internal developer tool that would've saved hours of manual QA work. I had data, a working prototype, and even initial support from a couple of engineers.

It went nowhere. Why? I didn’t do any pre-alignment. I presented it cold in a leadership meeting and watched people nod politely… then forget about it the next day.

Reading about Nemawashi and Engineered Serendipity now makes it painfully obvious what I missed: those informal 1:1s, quiet pre-chats, and planting the seed before the meeting.