Stories of Good and Bad Feedback Dave Received From His Managers
A few anecdotal stories of times I received feedback from the senior leaders in my life
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice.
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For the majority of my career, I was a manager of tech teams. I started managing with a few engineers, and eventually had many senior managers reporting to me, with trees of leadership under them.
As my career as a manager grew, the one constant was providing feedback. Coaching people. Giving advice. Warning people about risky behavior. Suggesting future actions.
I’ve also coached my managers through providing feedback. Before their meetings with their employees, and sometimes by literally sitting in the room and listening to them talk. Which was probably something I should have done even more often, since it was so valuable when I did it.
But I know many people, particularly non-managers, don’t see a wide variety of feedback. Perhaps you’ve only heard feedback from a few managers ever.
I thought it might be interesting to switch things around briefly. I’m going to share feedback I received over my years at Amazon, and how it was communicated to me. These examples are from various years while I was at Amazon, where I was promoted over the years from junior manager to Director. And these feedback providers are senior managers, Directors and VPs. So they should know what they’re doing, right?
Holding that high bar for annual reviews.
It was a few weeks before our annual reviews were due. At this time at Amazon, beyond employee ratings (which were essentially number-based, and were a heavy influence in their compensation), you needed to write a review document.
Now, the general template of the review document was the same for everyone. Some type of overall summary, things you’re doing well, things you need to improve, and future guidance. But exactly how much people wrote, and how detailed, was extremely inconsistent across managers.
Part of the annual review process was also 360 reviews from members of your team, and your peers. You frequently got feedback from 10 or more people, and that feedback would be used by your manager to help inform them on what you should keep doing, and what you could improve. As a manager, considering my team size, I’d have close to 20 feedback providers giving input into my review.
As a writer, and a fast typer, I knew my reviews were better written than average. I’d seen some of my peers reviews occasionally, and helped a few of those who were open to coaching.
As a side note, if we could figure out how to get past manager’s egos, their performance would probably improve dramatically. I think a manager is always afraid someone will see that they’re clueless, and they’ll lose their job. So they share only the bare minimum with everyone else. Which means, at least in large companies, there’s a bunch of inconsistency outside of HR policies.
Still, I had 14 direct reports, and with a few hours per review, it meant that I had dozens of hours of work ahead of me.
I went into my manager’s office (Masuma) for my weekly one-on-one.
Masuma nodded as I came in.
Masuma said, “Number one item I want to go over are the annual reviews.”
I nodded back. “Sounds good. I’m just starting on them now. I’ll get everything done on time.”
Side note — communicating with confidence is still something I highly recommend and suggest employees follow. If you’re going to do something, say that you’ll do it. And follow through. None of this “I think I’ll get it done” garbage. That only makes everyone nervous. Act like it’s inconceivable that you’d miss this date, follow through, and you build trust with others quickly.
Masuma frowned. “There are only a few weeks left. This is one of the most important things we can do as managers. You need to spend serious time on these, and make certain that they’re getting your full attention. Details. Examples. Please do this well.”
“I will.” I said. “I know it’s important to do this well. I have time blocked off to work on this, and I’ll get it done right.”
I felt a bit annoyed. I’d worked for Masuma for at least a couple of years at this point. He should know that I put a ton of effort into these, and it felt a bit off-putting not to have that acknowledged. Not like I’d mention my annoyance. ‘Choose your battles’ is a good motto for work life.
“Sounds good. Well, unless you have something else, I have a lot of work to do.” he said.
And that was my one-on-one that week.
6 weeks later.
I went into Masuma’s office for my weekly one-on-one. He’d updated the agenda to say that he was going to go over my annual review. It was just a few days before the deadline to share reviews, so he was cutting it close.
Masuma pushed a document across the table as I walked in.
“Take a look at that when you have the time.” he said. “The main theme is that you’re doing a great job. There are a few small nitpicks mentioned, but I’d primarily say that you should keep doing what you’re doing.”
I nodded, and glanced at the document. “Sounds good, thanks Masuma.”
“Anything else?” he said.
And that was my one-on-one that week.
I looked at the document when I got back to my desk. It was all of my peer feedback copy/pasted into my review. To be clear, peer feedback is supposed to be read by your manager, and then summarized. Instead, Masuma had sent it all to me verbatim. Which meant I was easily able to figure out the feedback providers in many cases, based on exactly what and how they wrote. Awkward.
It was also interesting that Masuma wrote approximately 2 sentences in my review, something like “Keep working on sharing what your team is doing more broadly, and keep delivering on your goals.” Otherwise, my entire review was feedback from others. It struck me as particularly hypocritical of Masuma, when he’d made such a big deal out of review quality being critical.
But in the end, Masuma did trust me. He didn’t neglect me because he wanted to fire me. He neglected me because he had other problems to worry about. And if I can’t have a wonderful manager coaching me, I’ll totally take a hands-off manager letting me do my own thing.
Oh, and I did spend 40+ hours writing multipage reviews for everyone over those weeks because I’m that kind of guy. It was absolutely exhausting.