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I put together a set of questions on corporate politics that get increasingly darker. I was aiming for the questions to test Ethan’s unusual level of transparency since he retired from being a VP at Amazon. For instance, I asked him if he had burned people to get ahead or if he was empire building at Amazon. He shared a story of how he did and Jeff Bezos caught him. It didn’t go well for him. He also had some interesting stories about unusual HR situations. One guy got fired for pooping underneath a girl’s desk to show interest in her. As you can see, these conversations with Ethan are unusually candid and since he’s a great story teller I hardly realize I’ve been sitting in a chair for hours while I’m interviewing him. Very few people enjoy corporate politics, but in many cases it is a necessary evil. Hopefully this episode can be educational on what can happen so you can protect yourself. Check out the episode wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Timestamps 00:42 - How to receive credit for your work 19:18 - Ways for quiet people to get visibility 21:32 - How to be trusted for top projects 29:52 - How to defend from others taking your project 36:13 - How to reject bad projects 44:10 - How to be first for promo 55:35 - How to handle managers that dislike career growth talk 01:06:30 - What if your manager is in the way 01:15:43 - Did he ever have overly political reports 01:28:06 - How to fire a bad manager 01:35:16 - What gives you leverage 01:43:41 - How to defend against peers undermining you 01:50:24 - What if everyone is good at politics 01:55:11 - How Jeff Bezos burned him for empire building 02:03:27 - How to retain your headcount 02:07:31 - Career recommendations for the current landscape 02:15:11 - How to avoid negative layoff optics 02:18:39 - How to develop executive presence 02:29:25 - How to network in a natural way 02:33:30 - How to network with powerful people 02:41:01 - How to learn hidden incentives 02:44:43 - What happens behind the scenes with HR 02:50:13 - Did he burn people to get ahead 02:53:24 - What he says to people who hate politics 02:59:03 - Top book recommendations on power dynamics 03:00:45 - How he would speedrun career growth today Transcript 00:42 — How to receive credit for your work Ryan: [00:42] I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but with all the latest advancements, it seems like these models are able to do the technical work of tech workers. And in that case, it feels like the non-technical work may become more important in the future. And at the same time, this is a theory that a lot of people have, which I hope isn’t true, but it’s reasonable, which is if these models can do the work of tech workers, maybe there will be fewer roles in tech. [01:19] And in that case, I could also see politics becoming more important because there’s the same number of people competing for fewer roles. So what I want to do in conversation today is ask you everything in terms of soft skills, corporate politics, to try to help people in these potential future scenarios. And to start us off, I put together a set of questions about corporate politics, which are dark and get darker as they go on, but they’re also common scenarios that people experience. [01:55] And I’m hoping you can answer transparently about how people should handle these and your experiences in these scenarios. Ethan: [02:03] Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know what you have in mind, but I’m always game for hard questions. I like questions that push my thinking. And if they’re dark, well, sometimes life is dark, so let’s go for it. Ryan: [02:16] First question, how do you make sure that you get credit for your work when there’s a collaboration and people are competing for visibility? Ethan: [02:25] Yeah, so I think recognition, particularly in a collaborative sense, is tricky. One of the good things is it’s easier to claim more recognition a little later. At the moment, people are very sensitive to it. I say, I helped start Prime Video, or I was the first engineer on Prime Video. Well, now that’s long ago. There are some other people who would be like, well, I was part of that team too on that day, but they’re not here right now. [02:53] So, and they probably, even if they see this, what are they gonna do? They’re gonna be like, hey, I was there too. Maybe there’s a comment. If you scroll down in this video years later, maybe there’s a comment that says, hey, I was there too. It’s not really a problem. So to get your credit, number one, realize credit is easier to take a little bit after. You wanna get credit in the moment, but there’s also later, and it’s easier. [03:15] Second, the way to get credit is to be the first to speak if you can. It doesn’t mean you have to say things that aren’t true, but those who speak first or those who speak up first, if you say, hey, we shipped this, I want to, I’m excited to share, we just released this feature. Whether you’re sending that internally or externally to a boss, to a product manager, you can include the we and say, oh, I did it with Ryan and Fred and Sarah and Rajeev. [03:45] But if you’re the one saying it, you’re the one who gets the lion’s share of the credit, even if it looks like, and you are sharing that credit because the speaker gets it. Now, if someone else speaks first, what you need to do at that point is figure out a way to add on about what you did. So if you speak first and Ryan sends out this message that says, well, we did this project, whatever, I can at least chime in and say, yeah, this was a great project. [04:15] I really had fun solving blah, blah, blah, or claiming your piece. I really had fun coming up with the algorithm that doubled our sales. And you find a way at least to say your part. What doesn’t work is be silent and hope your part will be noticed. That’s what never works. Ryan: [04:39] Yeah. And I think a very common pattern of this, and this is just the way the teams are laid out, is your group of engineers and then there’s a product manager, and the product manager is often doing the upward reporting, or maybe it’s an engineering manager that’s doing the upward reporting. And so the people who actually do the work may not be as visible. What would you say in that case? Ethan: [05:04] Yeah, so one thing you can do is you can talk to your manager, product manager, about remember to share the credit with the team, remember to highlight some people. I’ll give you an example. When my team finally launched that first version of Prime Video, I was a senior manager. I had a vice president, and I went to that vice president and I said, today’s the day now you write the congratulations message to everyone. [05:31] So I prompted him. He wasn’t the sort to give out a lot of praise, so I said, “Today’s the day. You should write the message saying good job, team.” And once I sent that to him, I don’t think he’d have done it, but about 10 minutes later out comes this great job team, blah, blah, blah message. So you can actually somewhat direct people because a lot of people intend to give credit, but they’re not thinking about it. [05:57] So that product manager, they’re thinking about, I need to report the news. They’re not thinking it’s important to note what Ryan did. So just giving them that prompt of, hey, this is a big accomplishment for the team. It’s a big moment for me. Can you make sure when you report this up to mention what we did or mention us, not just what happened? And usually they’re willing to do it. If they don’t or they won’t and you’ve tried that, find a way to share the news yourself. [06:31] It may not be in the announcement to leadership, but share a technical note and say, follow on to the product manager’s note and say, I don’t know if all of you in leadership are curious, but I thought you might want to know some of the technical underpinnings of how we did this. And then you can talk about whatever you want. No one is going to come back to you and say, we don’t care about how any of it works, because that makes them look bad. [06:57] So you’re finding a way to talk about things in a way that’s hard for people to not like or to at least shut down. And so let the product manager share the fact it happened, but then you share the color. Think of it if you watch any sports of any type, they always have 2 people in the booth. They have the play-by-play announcer who’s like, so-and-so hit the ball or kicked the ball or caught the ball. [07:26] But then they have the color guy, and the color guy is there saying, yeah, and he’s the great receiver out of this university in his fourth year. And that’s a really tough play. When I was a player, it was really tough to run that pattern or whatever. You can be your own color guy. If the PM is the announcer, you give the color. And those are two jobs, and everyone welcomes the color guy. Do that. Ryan: [07:58] There’s often these forums for leadership reviews where you put yourself down and you say, “Oh, I’m trying to get steering on this. So I’m trying to get some headcount or something.” And I noticed that actually the real outcome they wanted was to put the project in front of leadership. So when that person’s promo’s coming along, then it’s visible and that person’s aware of their work. And so if everyone takes this advice, everyone’s competing to speak but not have impact. [08:30] It feels like that’s not healthy for an org if everyone’s clamoring for visibility with no value. What would you say to that? Ethan: [08:41] So first I’d say you’re right. If everyone’s clamoring for visibility with no value, you’ve got a very political organization. But here’s some truths that will set you free. Number one, most people never say anything. Most people take no action, including, by the way, half the people I’m speaking to right now who are watching me. They’re like, I’m gonna do something different. And the fact is tomorrow they’re going to do nothing different. [09:07] So I’m challenging you, be in the half that does something. Second, you can choose to add value. I was describing how to share news or share detail, but when I said share some of the technical detail, you can do that with a purpose. You can be like, what should I tell leadership about what happened or about how this was built so that they know? I can tell them it either is built for scaling and it’s ready to go, and you can trust it. [09:37] Or I can tell them it’s important for you to know this is launch ready. But if we have a lot of success, we’re going to need to invest in scaling. You can make it somewhat useful. I understand the worry. And there are some orgs where too many people are talking just to get visibility. You don’t want that. But I would say if you have to have a problem, first be one of the people who’s talking, then figure out how to add value. [10:08] Because so many people listening to this are like, I don’t care what Ethan says. I can’t stand the idea of I’m talking for no reason, so I’m not going to do that. And that’s the person who’s sitting in their cube contemplating either quiet quitting or rage quitting because they can’t get ahead. Because they’ve decided to opt out of the system. And I get it. I get what you’re feeling. [10:32] But you’re telling yourself you’re this bold martyr for honesty, and all you are is a martyr. And so don’t do that. Instead, take it as a challenge and say, okay, I’m going to talk, but what I say is going to be worth hearing. I’m just going to raise the bar on myself, as opposed to I’m going to get mad at all these other people I see just flapping their faces, and I’m not going to say anything because to talk puts me in the same bucket as them. [11:03] Don’t do that. Don’t get in the bucket with them. Make yourself a new bucket that’s better. And if you’re as good as you think, if you’re sitting there about how hot shit you are, then you’ve got to be able to find something useful to say. And if you can’t construct something worth hearing, then go back and revisit that. But I’m so hot shit, right? That’s the challenge I have to you. Ryan: [11:25] Is the best thing to do generally be as loud and outspoken as you can? Ethan: [11:33] First, I don’t think there’s ever a perfect best thing. And second, I would answer that no, because the way you phrased it, you’re gonna be seen as a blowhard, right? You’re gonna be seen as claiming falsely. If you rephrase what you said slightly to make sure you claim everything you legitimately can and stretch legitimate a little bit against the limits, then yes. Example, I always say I was the first engineer on Prime Video. [12:01] Now, the truth is, and I’ve had one guy come back and challenge me on this, when I worked on that product, it was Amazon‘s first video product, but we hadn’t named it Prime yet. So when I worked on it, it was never called Prime. It became that. So I could explain, well, I was the first engineer to work on what became Prime Video. That’s just a lot of extra confusing words. So I’m ballooning up my claim. [12:29] It’s not false, but it is how you look at it. And I’m simplifying my messaging as I’m the first person who worked on that. The guy who’s the first guy who worked on it when it was called Prime thinks I’m claiming too much. Well, fine. You push those boundaries a little bit because people’s brains can’t hold that much. You’ve got to make your message simple. So claim as much as you reasonably can. [12:54] Don’t get caught out. Luckily, that guy isn’t like, you never worked on Prime Video. He knows what I did. He just doesn’t like how I label it. I can live with that. If he was like, hey, that’s bullshit. You were never on the team. Show me the proof you’re ever on the team or you ever did anything, then I’d be in trouble. So you want to push those limits, but not to being false, more to just being really simple, because it’s a lot easier to believe, to remember Ethan started Prime Video, than this more complex story. [13:24] And it’s close enough to write. Now some people are like, well, that’s not really close enough to write, you’re embellishing. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s simpler and simple works. Simple messages work. It’s like all marketing messages are very short. Ryan: [13:42] And I hear what you’re saying, but it seems like there’s a gray area there. How do you find the right place in the gray area? Ethan: [13:50] Yeah, well, okay, so you want to talk about soft skills today. One thing you’re going to have to accept on all soft skills is they’re gray. Right? You’ve asked me a couple times stated like the best is this, the best is that. That’s a good challenge for me, but best is almost always context dependent. Who are you talking to? What do they care about? So you have to move in that gray area. [14:14] And what I would say is get comfortable in the gray as opposed to we as engineers, we’re trained in binary. It’s 0 or it’s 1. We love black and white. Soft skills and these kinds of things are gray. Never verge into the black where you’re lying, but also don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to the pure white of facts not a single person would argue with. Because on a team project, who had the contribution and who had the idea? [14:48] Let’s take another example. I hold many patents. A lot of those patents have other inventors on them. Sometimes I feel that I’m the inventor and some other people’s names got added because of social circumstances. And sometimes, to be honest, someone else was the inventor and my name kind of got added. In those situations, I just say I have 70 patents. I could try and divide it into, like, I have 70 patents, 25 of which I feel like I was the inventor. [15:20] Or I could just say 75 patents. So answering your question about gray areas, my advice is read the room. And what does read the room mean? It means understand your audience and figure out how to explain what you did in a way that the audience is like, okay, you did that and it was good. You have to adjust. I can tell most of my resume accomplishment stories many different ways, right? I say I was the first person working on Prime Video. [15:53] I can also say I was the first person working on Amazon Video. I can also say I was the first manager and I hired a team, and they built it. They’re all true. And that’s the gray area: every one of those is true, but they’re a different way of looking at it. Push me. I see you want to push me. Ryan: [16:10] Yeah, look, because I’m thinking, so there’s a spectrum here: complete, no one will push back on it, 100% truth. And then there’s outright lie. If you had to say where on the spectrum you should place yourself on average for the fastest career growth, where would you be? Ethan: [16:33] More is better. More is better until it starts to damage your reputation. You can’t back it up. More. Why do I say more is better? Because most people say too little and claim too little, and they have this faith which is misplaced. The key is what I’m fighting against is not on the table in your equation. What I’m fighting against is all the people who are hoping to be noticed. They’re waiting for someone to go look at the check-ins and count check-ins or go look at all the code and decide who had the real—and that’s never going to happen. [17:12] They’re looking for this deep evaluation that will create this cosmic fairness. That’s natural because we came through university where you took a test and it got graded and every question got a score. And we’re trained to think that’s going to happen in life, and it’s not. So what I’m pushing back is imagine you took an exam and you were back in college, but the score that was going to be written down was what you could convince the professor your effort was worth, because that’s how your work is actually scored at a job. [17:45] You fill out the same exam. Theoretically, it could be graded and give you a point score, but it’s really going to be 6 months later. The manager, the professor is going to sit down in a room with all these exams and think, what do I think about Ryan? I feel like he probably got about a 75 on this exam. They’re not going to reread it or grade the questions. They’re going to be like, I know Ryan, he’s about a 75. [18:10] You want to have told a story where it’s like, I know Ryan, he’s definitely a 97. I get why some people’s skin is literally crawling right now. They’re like, it’s so wrong. This guy, I hate him because he’s telling me these things that just shouldn’t be. And I’m with you, but I’m telling you the real world. And it’s how well you manage that relationship and describe your work and surface it. They’re like, man, Ryan is my 97. [18:41] And that does mean, by the way, the dark side is that someone else who was a 75 is like, oh yeah, Alfred. I don’t remember much about him. That’s an F. Alfred’s the guy who’s sitting and hoping for the fair grading. And now he’s in his cube contemplating rage quitting because he got an F. This is the world. The world is a social world with short memory, and you’ve got to claim what you really did. [19:11] And why I tell people to claim more is so many people are Alfred sitting quietly expecting a fair grade. 19:18 — Ways for quiet people to get visibility Ryan: [19:18] These behaviors come more naturally to some people who are louder. But what about some people who are more quiet by nature? Do you have any ideas on how they can get this visibility? Ethan: [19:30] Yeah, absolutely. There’s a few ways. Look, the world favors extroverts. It’s done that for at least 100 years. There’s some evidence it was different in the past. But getting your point, what someone who’s quieter should do is, number one, can you write about it? If you’re not the sort of person who wants to talk about it or speak in a meeting, can you write about what you’re doing somewhere? Can you email it? [19:55] Can you put it in Slack? Can you publicize it somehow? Second, if you can’t do that, can you get someone else to publicize it? So can you put it somewhere where it’s going to get reviews? Can you let your work speak, but not in a vacuum? Can you share it out? If you only want to talk to other engineers, can you turn something you did into a shareable component? Can you turn it into a talk for whatever, a white paper, a brown bag? [20:26] What are the ways you can let your work truly speak for itself, but not in isolation? The way to succeed totally quietly is build something everyone else uses. If that happens, they will eventually, they will truly come looking for you. Who built this? A story here that’s fun is there’s a long-gone Amazon engineer. His name was Matt Round. I never met him, but he built something called the Matt Round Tool, or MRT, which was our interview tracking system for over a decade. [21:06] Everyone used MRT. Well, it was the Matt Round Tool. So I never met this guy, but I can tell you a little bit about him because his tool became used by everybody and it was named after him. That’s a way to be famous without ever saying a word. Or I guess you had to say three letters, right? He had to call it MRT. So that’s the silent engineer’s publicity method. 21:32 — How to be trusted for top projects Ryan: [21:32] One situation that I’ve heard people talk about, or my friends have encountered, is competitions over scope. So let’s say you find an incredible opportunity and you know it’s going to be impactful, it’s going to be great for your career. This is before you tell anyone about it. How do you make sure that you get that scope? Ethan: [21:57] There’s a few things. Number one, for me to give you a project as a manager, I have to believe a couple of things about you. First, I have to believe your work’s good enough. If you have a good idea, I have to believe, okay, you’ve had a good idea, but are you the one who can carry it out? And you don’t have to be the best person, but I at least have to believe you’re not the worst person or someone who’s a risk. [22:19] So it’s a trust in your ability. You have to establish that. The second thing is I have to believe you can make the free time, or that you have the time, or I can free your time. I’m going to be able to let you do it. And that means if you have other work, being able to hand it off, having it well documented, automating it, whatever it is you need to do in order to get that work to a point where you have the time to do this project. [22:49] So what you want to do is think through how am I going to make the case to my manager that this is, or to whoever, that this is a valuable addition and that I’m the right person, both ability and time, to take it on. The key is you do start with an advantage. If it was your idea, then you’re the one who understands it best. You’re the one who’s thought about it most. So you should be in a leading position for that role, as long as you don’t screw it up, as long as you don’t have a bad track record or have a bad relationship or have something else going on that’s super critical. [23:28] The other thing is be clear to ask for it. Say, I have this great new idea. You don’t have to say, and I want to make sure you put me on it. You phrase it as, I have this really valuable idea I think is going to change our business or change our team. And I am excited to bring it, to build it. I’m excited to make it happen. That messaging sets in people’s minds that you’re the person and that they have to choose to disappoint you if they’re going to give it to somebody else. [23:59] Which most people will shy away from. If you don’t say anything, it’s like, “Oh, it’s a good idea. I’ll give it to Fred.” But if you’ve said, “And I want to do it,” then they have to decide, “Oh, well, if I give it to Fred, I’m going to tell Ryan that,” and get them just to think, like, is that worth it? This is another rule I tell people. You do need to be a little thorny. One of the traits I think great leaders have, and this includes great engineers, is disappointing them comes with pain. [24:31] Not that they’re jerks, but they’re not just gonna be, oh, that’s fine. Oh yeah, no, don’t worry about it. You gotta be like, what? What did you do? No, my idea. If this is how it’s gonna be, I just won’t bring any more ideas. What the hell? And then you gotta put that little pushback in there of like, this is not okay. Again, if you’re good, the threat is I will take my good ideas somewhere else. [25:01] And this is important. Again, remember poor Alfred? He’s sitting there with his F and he’s mad. He has a good idea. If I can take away his idea and he’s just going to sit there in his cube and be mad again, Alfred gets abused. Why he gets abused? Because it’s free to me as a manager. I have to make a trade-off between Ryan, who’s pushing me for stuff, and Alfred, who’s always just willing to suck it up. [25:29] Well, maybe I actually think you’re a little bit too pushy, and I’d like to help Alfred out. But I do have an ugly triage to do, which is, well, if I don’t cater to Ryan, he’s outta here. Whereas if I don’t cater to Alfred, that guy is solid as a rock. He’ll be here two years from now. I’ll give him some free lunch coupons and movie passes, and he’ll be so grateful. Don’t be Alfred. You’ve got to be a little thorny. [25:59] And again, those same people are like, why do I have to do that? Why should I? Why? They love the word should. Why should I have to do that? Well, okay. In cosmic justice land where the god of your choice is making everything just, you shouldn’t. But we don’t live in that land. We live in reality land where managers have a choice. They have some pushy people that are still good, and they want to keep on their team, and they have some pretty easygoing people that are kind of going to go with the flow. [26:30] The fact is, the right decision for me as a manager, not the just decision, but the practical one, is take a little from the people who are going to be all right about it and give it to the ones that aren’t, because that’s how I keep my whole team. And yes, for all of you who don’t like it, I have just said a little bit screw the nice people for the bad people, but I have a job to do. And so of course I also never tell myself how I just said it to you. [27:01] As a manager, I never say, oh, I’m gonna screw all my nice people to help these 2 jerks. But subconsciously, I’m making this trade-off. And what I’m telling myself is I will get back to them and take care of them. The problem is you’re back around asking me for more stuff, and I never quite get back to them. And I meant to, and I had a good heart about it. And it just didn’t happen. And nonetheless, you got everything you wanted, and they lived with what was left over. [27:29] And if you’re in this leftover bucket, it’s not that I meant bad things for you. It’s I had, there was this person always talking to me and I needed to get them outta my office. So I gave them what they wanted ‘cause I’m human. Ryan: [27:42] When I was a manager, I used to think about what’s the optimal team composition in terms of the personalities of the people? And I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Would you rather have a team that’s full of these super ambitious, pushy superstars, or would you rather have pure role players? Ethan: [28:04] Yeah, so I’d love to tell you I’d like all pushy superstars, but you can’t keep that many people happy unless your business circumstance is just dropping choice projects in your lap. That can happen in a high-growth scenario where everyone is against their growth limits. But absent that, and particularly now when there’s a lot more flat headcount scenarios, those people just eat each other. [28:31] They turn cannibal and they turn cannibal toward you and each other. And it’s very ugly. So a few of them, though, the reason you don’t want all role players or all people who are very easygoing is you need those sparks of change, of ambition. You need people who are agitating for changes and ideas, I think, because in this world of very easygoing people, the team may be calm, but no one is pushing. [29:12] And so it’s peaceful, but it’s not high impact. There’s a quote I love, or a saying I love, which is, reasonable people conform to their environment. Therefore, all progress is due to unreasonable people. People who are like, but why? But why? Why does it have to be that way? Why does it take 3 clicks? Why won’t the customer pay $1 million? Why can’t we all have hovercraft? Those are the people who push things. [29:43] You need some of them. Too many though, and you just have chaos because everybody’s pushing in different directions. 29:52 — How to defend from others taking your project Ryan: [29:52] In the situation where you have a project and you haven’t unveiled it yet and you really want to work on it, I actually think a lot of engineers, they don’t worry about the manager giving it away. They worry about other engineers getting excited about their thing, the thing that they’re excited about. So in that case, how would you defend against other engineers coming in saying, oh, I want a piece of that, oh, that looks fun, oh, that looks impactful? Ethan: [30:20] Well, number one, that might be a good thing. The first question I would ask myself is, if my fellow engineers are excited about what I’m doing, how do I make it big enough or tricky enough or hand pieces out so I’m kind of the kingmaker? Right? So I’m like the person holding the cookie jar, handing out cookies. That’s a great role to be in, or could be. [30:42] Now, if you’re really worried about defending, one thing, of course, is don’t tell them until it’s too late, right? Work on it, keep it to yourself, or until it’s assigned to you. The other thing is, if you had one good idea, you’re probably smart enough to come up with multiple good ideas. So can you go to your manager and be like, I have this great idea. I’m gonna work on this th
I put together a set of questions on corporate politics that get increasingly darker. I was aiming for the questions to test Ethan’s unusual level of transparency since he retired from being a VP at Amazon. For instance, I asked him if he had burned people to get ahead or if he was empire building at Amazon. He shared a story of how he did and Jeff Bezos caught him. It didn’t go well for him. He also had some interesting stories about unusual HR situations. One guy got fired for pooping underneath a girl’s desk to show interest in her. As you can see, these conversations with Ethan are unusually candid and since he’s a great story teller I hardly realize I’ve been sitting in a chair for hours while I’m interviewing him. Very few people enjoy corporate politics, but in many cases it is a necessary evil. Hopefully this episode can be educational on what can happen so you can protect yourself. Check out the episode wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Timestamps 00:42 - How to receive credit for your work 19:18 - Ways for quiet people to get visibility 21:32 - How to be trusted for top projects 29:52 - How to defend from others taking your project 36:13 - How to reject bad projects 44:10 - How to be first for promo 55:35 - How to handle managers that dislike career growth talk 01:06:30 - What if your manager is in the way 01:15:43 - Did he ever have overly political reports 01:28:06 - How to fire a bad manager 01:35:16 - What gives you leverage 01:43:41 - How to defend against peers undermining you 01:50:24 - What if everyone is good at politics 01:55:11 - How Jeff Bezos burned him for empire building 02:03:27 - How to retain your headcount 02:07:31 - Career recommendations for the current landscape 02:15:11 - How to avoid negative layoff optics 02:18:39 - How to develop executive presence 02:29:25 - How to network in a natural way 02:33:30 - How to network with powerful people 02:41:01 - How to learn hidden incentives 02:44:43 - What happens behind the scenes with HR 02:50:13 - Did he burn people to get ahead 02:53:24 - What he says to people who hate politics 02:59:03 - Top book recommendations on power dynamics 03:00:45 - How he would speedrun career growth today Transcript 00:42 — How to receive credit for your work Ryan: [00:42] I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but with all the latest advancements, it seems like these models are able to do the technical work of tech workers. And in that case, it feels like the non-technical work may become more important in the future. And at the same time, this is a theory that a lot of people have, which I hope isn’t true, but it’s reasonable, which is if these models can do the work of tech workers, maybe there will be fewer roles in tech. [01:19] And in that case, I could also see politics becoming more important because there’s the same number of people competing for fewer roles. So what I want to do in conversation today is ask you everything in terms of soft skills, corporate politics, to try to help people in these potential future scenarios. And to start us off, I put together a set of questions about corporate politics, which are dark and get darker as they go on, but they’re also common scenarios that people experience. [01:55] And I’m hoping you can answer transparently about how people should handle these and your experiences in these scenarios. Ethan: [02:03] Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know what you have in mind, but I’m always game for hard questions. I like questions that push my thinking. And if they’re dark, well, sometimes life is dark, so let’s go for it. Ryan: [02:16] First question, how do you make sure that you get credit for your work when there’s a collaboration and people are competing for visibility? Ethan: [02:25] Yeah, so I think recognition, particularly in a collaborative sense, is tricky. One of the good things is it’s easier to claim more recognition a little later. At the moment, people are very sensitive to it. I say, I helped start Prime Video, or I was the first engineer on Prime Video. Well, now that’s long ago. There are some other people who would be like, well, I was part of that team too on that day, but they’re not here right now. [02:53] So, and they probably, even if they see this, what are they gonna do? They’re gonna be like, hey, I was there too. Maybe there’s a comment. If you scroll down in this video years later, maybe there’s a comment that says, hey, I was there too. It’s not really a problem. So to get your credit, number one, realize credit is easier to take a little bit after. You wanna get credit in the moment, but there’s also later, and it’s easier. [03:15] Second, the way to get credit is to be the first to speak if you can. It doesn’t mean you have to say things that aren’t true, but those who speak first or those who speak up first, if you say, hey, we shipped this, I want to, I’m excited to share, we just released this feature. Whether you’re sending that internally or externally to a boss, to a product manager, you can include the we and say, oh, I did it with Ryan and Fred and Sarah and Rajeev. [03:45] But if you’re the one saying it, you’re the one who gets the lion’s share of the credit, even if it looks like, and you are sharing that credit because the speaker gets it. Now, if someone else speaks first, what you need to do at that point is figure out a way to add on about what you did. So if you speak first and Ryan sends out this message that says, well, we did this project, whatever, I can at least chime in and say, yeah, this was a great project. [04:15] I really had fun solving blah, blah, blah, or claiming your piece. I really had fun coming up with the algorithm that doubled our sales. And you find a way at least to say your part. What doesn’t work is be silent and hope your part will be noticed. That’s what never works. Ryan: [04:39] Yeah. And I think a very common pattern of this, and this is just the way the teams are laid out, is your group of engineers and then there’s a product manager, and the product manager is often doing the upward reporting, or maybe it’s an engineering manager that’s doing the upward reporting. And so the people who actually do the work may not be as visible. What would you say in that case? Ethan: [05:04] Yeah, so one thing you can do is you can talk to your manager, product manager, about remember to share the credit with the team, remember to highlight some people. I’ll give you an example. When my team finally launched that first version of Prime Video, I was a senior manager. I had a vice president, and I went to that vice president and I said, today’s the day now you write the congratulations message to everyone. [05:31] So I prompted him. He wasn’t the sort to give out a lot of praise, so I said, “Today’s the day. You should write the message saying good job, team.” And once I sent that to him, I don’t think he’d have done it, but about 10 minutes later out comes this great job team, blah, blah, blah message. So you can actually somewhat direct people because a lot of people intend to give credit, but they’re not thinking about it. [05:57] So that product manager, they’re thinking about, I need to report the news. They’re not thinking it’s important to note what Ryan did. So just giving them that prompt of, hey, this is a big accomplishment for the team. It’s a big moment for me. Can you make sure when you report this up to mention what we did or mention us, not just what happened? And usually they’re willing to do it. If they don’t or they won’t and you’ve tried that, find a way to share the news yourself. [06:31] It may not be in the announcement to leadership, but share a technical note and say, follow on to the product manager’s note and say, I don’t know if all of you in leadership are curious, but I thought you might want to know some of the technical underpinnings of how we did this. And then you can talk about whatever you want. No one is going to come back to you and say, we don’t care about how any of it works, because that makes them look bad. [06:57] So you’re finding a way to talk about things in a way that’s hard for people to not like or to at least shut down. And so let the product manager share the fact it happened, but then you share the color. Think of it if you watch any sports of any type, they always have 2 people in the booth. They have the play-by-play announcer who’s like, so-and-so hit the ball or kicked the ball or caught the ball. [07:26] But then they have the color guy, and the color guy is there saying, yeah, and he’s the great receiver out of this university in his fourth year. And that’s a really tough play. When I was a player, it was really tough to run that pattern or whatever. You can be your own color guy. If the PM is the announcer, you give the color. And those are two jobs, and everyone welcomes the color guy. Do that. Ryan: [07:58] There’s often these forums for leadership reviews where you put yourself down and you say, “Oh, I’m trying to get steering on this. So I’m trying to get some headcount or something.” And I noticed that actually the real outcome they wanted was to put the project in front of leadership. So when that person’s promo’s coming along, then it’s visible and that person’s aware of their work. And so if everyone takes this advice, everyone’s competing to speak but not have impact. [08:30] It feels like that’s not healthy for an org if everyone’s clamoring for visibility with no value. What would you say to that? Ethan: [08:41] So first I’d say you’re right. If everyone’s clamoring for visibility with no value, you’ve got a very political organization. But here’s some truths that will set you free. Number one, most people never say anything. Most people take no action, including, by the way, half the people I’m speaking to right now who are watching me. They’re like, I’m gonna do something different. And the fact is tomorrow they’re going to do nothing different. [09:07] So I’m challenging you, be in the half that does something. Second, you can choose to add value. I was describing how to share news or share detail, but when I said share some of the technical detail, you can do that with a purpose. You can be like, what should I tell leadership about what happened or about how this was built so that they know? I can tell them it either is built for scaling and it’s ready to go, and you can trust it. [09:37] Or I can tell them it’s important for you to know this is launch ready. But if we have a lot of success, we’re going to need to invest in scaling. You can make it somewhat useful. I understand the worry. And there are some orgs where too many people are talking just to get visibility. You don’t want that. But I would say if you have to have a problem, first be one of the people who’s talking, then figure out how to add value. [10:08] Because so many people listening to this are like, I don’t care what Ethan says. I can’t stand the idea of I’m talking for no reason, so I’m not going to do that. And that’s the person who’s sitting in their cube contemplating either quiet quitting or rage quitting because they can’t get ahead. Because they’ve decided to opt out of the system. And I get it. I get what you’re feeling. [10:32] But you’re telling yourself you’re this bold martyr for honesty, and all you are is a martyr. And so don’t do that. Instead, take it as a challenge and say, okay, I’m going to talk, but what I say is going to be worth hearing. I’m just going to raise the bar on myself, as opposed to I’m going to get mad at all these other people I see just flapping their faces, and I’m not going to say anything because to talk puts me in the same bucket as them. [11:03] Don’t do that. Don’t get in the bucket with them. Make yourself a new bucket that’s better. And if you’re as good as you think, if you’re sitting there about how hot shit you are, then you’ve got to be able to find something useful to say. And if you ca
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