
Breaking bad news - zdw
http://boz.com/articles/bad-news.html
======
endymi0n
This hits it right home. The other piece of advice I've learned about breaking
bad news, especially in the light of the _excellent_ management tips here I
always refer junior leaders to:
[http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html](http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html)

> 32\. Have difficult conversations as soon as possible. Waiting will only
> make a bad situation worse.

> 42\. Unless you’re a sociopath, firing people is so hard you’ll invent
> excuses not to do it. If you’re consistently wondering if someone’s a good
> fit for too long, have the courage to do what you know is right.

And specifically about this: It's really best to deliver bad news like this
not just as clearly as possible, but also as early.

If I'm in the dire situation of having to fire someone, I'm starting with that
news right away in the clearest words possible that are not hurtful. The most
important thing about it is to leave zero ambiguity.

It will hurt anyway, but it leaves the rest of the conversation to recovery
and solution-focus. Maybe it's possible to do a referral or an intro or just
giving some space and time to listen.

But if you have bad news, take the OPs advice to heart — and do it as fast as
possible.

~~~
dorfsmay
32 works both ways. You're a developer/sysadmin/SRE/other, you're stuck, going
to miss a deadline, made a mistake, tell your lead and PM as soon as possible.

Things do not get better when you wait. Every hour you delay telling them,
they lose a bunch of options to fix the issue.

This is not as obvious as it sounds, I find myself repeating these to junior
people and interns.

~~~
grigjd3
If there is a slack channel that I use to coordinate with my PM and other
stakeholders, if I am nearing an important deadline, I just leave regular
updates there. Make sure everyone who cares has all relevant information.

------
alias_neo
I recall an example from earlier in my career where an employer was looking to
prune bad apples in the company.

They failed to deliver the news correctly, and although many knew in their
hearts it wouldn't affect them, we were all professionals, majority engineers,
and used a logical thought process to resolve it internally;

The news didn't specify who wouldn't be affected, and although the intended
number was meant to be rather low (half a dozen people) in a ~100 person
company, everyone started looking for other jobs to cover themselves.

Everyone has bills to pay etc and it's unwise not to plan ahead. Logically
thinking, there was no harm in having a backup plan.

Well, come time to prune, the expected numbers are pruned, and then, the
unexpected (to the employer) happened, tens more people left.

The bad news had given everyone with the "get-up-and-go" a kick to look
elsewhere and realise actually we were all being mistreated. The company
quickly lost some of their best talent.

~~~
gvb
That is a good point that I didn't see in my quick scan of the 44 rules...

If you have a target audience, give a specific message to only that target
audience. Do _not_ give the message to a larger group than the target
audience.

I've seen (and been guilty of) giving a vague, non-specific message to
"everybody" when only one or two people were the actual target of the message.
This causes incredible problems with those in the audience that are not the
target of the message. Ironically, the one or two people that are the problem
typically remain oblivious to the fact that they were the target of the
message.

~~~
mistersquid
If the employee pool is larger than 20-30 but there are only "one or two
people [who] were the actual target of the message", the problem might be
bigger than those one or two employees.

Unless (or even if) those "one or two" are outright sabotaging team effort or
egregiously incompetent, management delivering a vague message to everyone
suggests broader problem in the company.

The problem may not strictly be a managerial one. For example, the team and
its managers may be driven by decreasing revenue, changing market, new
legislation, etc. In any case, it's hard to imagine a situation where "one or
two" non-malicious mediocre employees would merit a broad message to the
entire team.

EDIT: Change "an" to "a".

~~~
alias_neo
You're close to the truth in the second paragraph there. I don't want to go
into too much detail, the company is doing well now (I believe) and I harbor
no ill-will.

There were issues throughout the ranks, the company grew quickly and had
issues adapting. I think the exodus gave them an opportunity to begin again
without those that had been jaded by experience.

------
codingdave
One of the keys to breaking any news is that whether it is good or bad, most
people immediately translate it internally into how it impacts them. Bad news
makes that translation come out as "Here is what I just lost."

The loss of leadership credibility comes when you are dismissive of that loss
as part of the announcement, or you pre-emptively tell people they should be
feeling another way. Most change management education will tell you that
whether you like it or not, the process will happen the same way as any
personal loss - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The trick
in business is to speed the process to acceptance without being dismissive of
the people going through the change. The tools to do so normally are all about
communication: Listening, answering questions, replying with clarity so
everyone knows the path forward.

In fast-changing organizations, such as startups, there is also a question of
how often you change things. If you send your teams reeling with bad news and
changes before they have accepted the last round of it, you will trash morale.
One school of thought is not to make small changes, but instead to think out
bigger solutions to your problems, and lay out changes all at once. Trying to
fix one piece at a time, then rolling changes to smaller parts of the
organization every few weeks may feel easier to manage, but it comes at a
higher personal cost to the teams, and frequently saps productivity and morale
for a longer term.

------
DoreenMichele
The advice about how to handle it is spot on, but I feel like it is missing
something. That's not a harsh criticism because I'm struggling to articulate
it myself.

Two things come to mind. The first is "Don't kill the messenger."

This is now metaphorical, but was originally literal. The reason you don't
kill the bearer of bad tidings is because if communication breaks down, you
have lost all hope of a diplomatic solution. Now the war has to be fought to
the very bitter end of last man standing.

The second thing that comes to mind is an anecdote from raising my children.

My oldest had sleep issues from birth. When he was two, he often stayed up
later than me. I would give him a drink, a snack and put a video tape in the
VCR. He could come get me if he really needed me, but if it wasn't an
emergency, I encouraged him to let me sleep.

More snacks and drinks were physically accessible to him. He was both allowed
to get them and physically able to do so.

Inevitably, he sometimes spilled stuff. My policy was that he wasn't going to
get in trouble for spilling stuff. Spills happen.

But I needed to know when he spilled things. I also needed to know where it
got spilled and what he had spilled so I could clean it up properly. Some
juices are the same color, but have very different chemical properties. Some
can be easily wiped up. Others need special treatment.

Also, if you don't clean it up, it's going to mold or attract insects, etc.
Nothing good will come of it. It is all down side to make your kid scared to
tell you they spilled something.

He was a bit weirded out the first time because he was a little hellion who
got yelled at out of concern for his safety so much that when he first began
using the word _no_ , he said it at full volume because he thought that's how
it was pronounced. So he basically figured I would yell at him.

But he told me he spilled something and all I asked was where he spilled it
and what was it. He showed me and told me and I cleaned it up and didn't
punish him. After that, he was good. He trusted me. I wasn't going to yell at
him over it.

Keeping the lines of communication open is critical. If your people are scared
to tell you what's going on, then problems are being swept under the rug and
left to fester and grow worse. It's vastly worse to make it a problem to share
bad news.

~~~
MrGilbert
> My policy was that he wasn't going to get in trouble for spilling stuff.
> Spills happen.

That was basically the first thing I told my sister when she moved in after
our mum passed away a few months ago: "No matter which mistake you make, tell
us. We won't punish you for that. However, if you lie to us, there will be
some sort of punishment."

So far, it seems to work out, as she's getting more and more open, and talks
to us about her feelings, her day, etc. Something that wasn't possible in the
very first beginning. She also admits mistakes she does, and starts to ask for
help more often - not as much as we'd like, but... yeah. Hopefully, that will
be better over the next months.

------
sleepychu
One of my first ever jobs they announced minor redundancies on, say Tuesday
afternoon, 1M$ in EMEA (maybe 5000 people). Not too concerning. On Wednesday
afternoon the same person "corrected" themselves, 2M$ in this office (200
people). The environment after that was... frenetic.

Also enjoyed the same person later responding to suggestions that we could
save money across the board by some sort of pay reduction (so that we would
lose fewer jobs) "ah, well we already pay significantly under market rate so
if we do that then we're likely to lose our best talent"

------
quirkot
A practical and high stakes application of these same points:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-
tel...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-tell-a-
mother-her-child-is-dead.html)

Reading that NYT piece sharply impacted how I communicate undesirable
information

~~~
jamiek88
Wow. My wife often has to deliver the news that someone’s baby has died or
pregnancy has failed, she always has a bad time afterward particularly as it
happened to us twice too.

Reading this article really helped me appreciate more how much it takes out of
the person delivering the news. I mean I have had conversations with her about
it but she often can’t talk about it in detail.

Thank goodness her work is progressive enough to pay for monthly counseling so
she has someone to really open up to about this stuff.

------
dswalter
PSA for anyone reading this, the phrase is colloquially "burying the lede."

"The lede" is a journalistic term roughly meaning the gist of the story.
[http://grammarist.com/usage/lead-lede/](http://grammarist.com/usage/lead-
lede/)

~~~
ghaff
I'd argue this is a bit different. (Though one or two of the examples are
close.)

We're talking here about sugar-coating, spinning, etc.

Burying the lede tends to apply more to writing a story that goes into a bunch
of routine story details or a story that's only peripherally related entirely.
And then, after some time, a paragraph about news that's genuinely novel,
interesting, etc.

For example, writing about a bunch of routine speech contents and then 6
paragraphs down mentioning some major revelation.

~~~
combatentropy
But the commenter is right. The saying is "burying the lede." There is no such
thing as "burying the lead." The author of the article meant to borrow the
jargon of reporters, to add color.

Your comment is like this more extreme example:

    
    
      ARTICLE: I thumbled the plate and it shattered on the floor.
      COMMENTER: The word is fumbled.
      YOU: I would argue this is different because fumbling tends to apply to football.

~~~
timcederman
Both versions are acceptable, particularly outside the US. It is a deliberate
misspelling of "lead". [https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-
the-lede-...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-
versus-lead)

------
andyn
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
is a goldmine of bad examples.

------
jeroen94704
As an addition to this, if the bad news will have a big impact on whoever you
are delivering it to, just tell them the bad news and then sit back and wait
for them to start talking.

Reason: If you tell someone they are being let go, whatever you say
immediately after that won't get processed. Give them time to let it sink in
and get over the first shock. They'll start talking/asking questions when
they're able to.

------
teekert
Ok, good advice, but what if someone is just not good enough? Firing someone,
stopping a project, it is not the fault of the employee (not always at least).
But I'm currently in a situation where I (for my first time) have to tell
someone they work too slow and seem to never finish stuff properly. The guy is
just not good enough and it start to annoy me because he is not taking steps
to improve. I find it very difficult, it concerns an otherwise nice guy that I
have coffee or beers with from time to time.

I know it's best to just say: Hey this isn't working. But I want to find a job
better suited to him, I don't want him wasting my time anymore when I ask him
how he did something and it seems he never put it in our git repo.

~~~
sundvor
Have you tried communicating these concerns to him? Break down the
expectations, e.g. that everything must be committed in the repo, with
covering tests etc? If he takes it on board, win! If he ignores it and takes
offense, well at least you tried?

~~~
teekert
I tried setting dead lines "Ok, lets make sure this is finished next week".
But there is always an excuse, but it boils down to him being a poor
programmer, he gets stuck and then he works on the other project he is
employed in. The poorness is understandable in our circumstance and sort of ok
(we were driven into this kind of work and I happen to love it, he happens to
have no talent for it what so ever). I did offer other work (back to the lab
in stead of doing the bioinformatics) but he does somehow seem to enjoy it. I
know, time to be hard and honest indeed.

~~~
jrockway
Arbitrary deadlines rarely work. Psychologically they just encourage "student
syndrome" where people feel like they can slack off until the deadline
actually seems threatening. Then the deadline is missed. That is the nature of
human psychology, not your particular employee.

Avery talks it about a bit here (read the section where "student syndrome"
starts showing up):
[https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13](https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13)

Ultimately, your job as a manager is to keep your team unstuck. People get
fired all the time because their manager is bad at management, as it's
certainly a supervisor's privilege to fire people they don't like. But always
remember that your assessment "this guy is lazy and doesn't like the field"
could be completely wrong and you're just bad at management.

~~~
teekert
Thanks, this could certainly be it, the next conversation will be along the
lines of "what do you need to finish things faster?"

Don't misunderstand, this guy has sometimes been working on something for
weeks, and then I decide to take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2
days. He seems to be allergic to git and complains about errors of others that
don't even affect him. Still he seems unaware so a respectful inquiry seems
best indeed.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think it's possible to have an actual allergy to git, so some training
in that area would probably help their productivity. Make sure he knows how to
use git, and that he knows your organization's policy in regards to commits.
You can set a policy like "just commit everything at the end of the day" and
provide a shell script to do that. Don't make git the wedge that isolates you
from your employee; make it a productivity tool.

> take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2 days

People that you employ to work for you will ALWAYS do things differently and
probably more slowly than you. I have never had someone working for me, asked
them to do X, and then gotten a changelist to review that was exactly what I
would have done myself. Your employee is not a clone of you, he's an
independently-thinking person with different assumptions and experience.
(Certainly, if something is WRONG, don't accept it, but it's different...
that's the reality of having more that one person working on a project.)

Also... there is no really good way to estimate how productive someone is,
including yourself. You could be way above average and nobody that works for
you will ever be as fast as you. You also have to expect that someone with
less experience than you is going to be slower. For you, 2 days is applying
the sum of your domain expertise and X years of a software engineering career
to a cookie-cutter problem. For someone that works for you, that could be a
month of acquiring career skills necessary to solve problems in the future and
some subset of your problem domain experience, and then 2 days of applying
those skills. You do enough of those "my boss could do this in 2 days"
projects over many months, and then you're the guy that does it in 2 days.
That's what experience is.

> complains about errors of others that don't even affect him

Probably worth having a discussion about. I will point out that you're kind of
doing this here and in a public forum, hoping that your employee never finds
out.

~~~
sundvor
> I don't think it's possible to have an actual allergy to git, so some
> training in that area would probably help their productivity.

I was going to go back and add "does he need any training" to my original
comment then life got in the way and I promptly forgot!

Absolutely do run training; could for example set up a Pluralsight account,
run through modules on GIT and any other stacks that are needed. If someone
doesn't want to use version control in this day and age then I'd have to agree
that'd be my number one priority to get fixed.

Understanding feature branches would be a very powerful change. Not sure
exactly how applicable this is to your situation but on a general level I'd
recommend making them as atomic / small as possible as a way of starting. I.e.
by reducing the scope of an issue down to the MVP, then it becomes easier to
just get that done - add additional features/requirements as following issues.
And then get on to pull requests ASAP so that you can preferably sit together
and review / discuss the changes. This would reduce the feedback cycle down to
maybe a couple of days, which would greatly help the pace as well. Good luck.

------
gist
I am always amazed at how HN takes little morsels like this and votes them up.
The information presented is no more insightful or valuable than info found in
comments or from the views of less well known or important people. Yet
everyone seems to think that it deserves attention and some kind of added
respect (which is all based upon what the person has 'achieved' if you want to
call it that.) It's as if people seem to think that the knowledge is so
significant that the halo will rub off.

So the question is to what extent does it matter what someone says if it's not
their a) area of expertise or b) there is nothing truly remarkable about it in
other words they are not backing it up with really solid examples based on
long term experience?

Would love to be able to do a test. Take the exact same thoughts and unlink
them from the halo and see what happens. Would expect exactly the predictable
results.

I guess my point is also whether someone who is smart and has enough luck to
be able to become wealthy deserves more respect than someone who is just smart
and did not have the luck to have that success?

------
leoedin
I was once faced with the prospect of losing my job. The company wasn't in a
good place financially and they didn't have any projects for me at that
moment.

Far worse than the prospect of losing my job was my boss. If there was bad
news to be given, he'd just melt into the background and let someone else do
it, even though he'd hired me. (It was a rather dysfunctional company in
general).

That really stuck with me, far more than facing losing my job did. It's hard
to be honest and direct about bad news, but it's the only way you should do
it. Anything else is putting your own desire to not face fear above the needs
of the person who is going to have to deal with the news. That's a really
selfish thing to do.

~~~
scarface74
_If there was bad news to be given, he 'd just melt into the background and
let someone else do it, even though he'd hired me. (It was a rather
dysfunctional company in general)._

At the level I’m at now, I always ask the hiring manager how do they deliver
bad news and what is their theory on feedback. I’m usually responsible for
major initiatives even if I am 70% a heads down coder. I actually found it
refreshing when a senior manager told me straight up that I missed a
requirement and that it was a “big f-up”, after dealing with managers that
beat around the bush.

I’ve got work to do, initiatives to lead, etc. I don’t have time to be reading
between the lines. I want a manager who lays it on the line so I can course
correct. Working at a small company, major mistakes mean a lot.

------
makmanalp
Even the name "bad news", depending on the situation, can come off as a bit of
a deflection - if you're causing the bad news (e.g. firing someone), then it's
not bad news, it's just you! Not to say that that it's your fault per se, but
the wording is a bit weaselly, which often doesn't do much more than add to
the frustration.

------
Spectral
You say "Speaking simply, it just doesn’t work."

But from an everyday perspective, it works all the time? In recent light
companies like Uber, Riot Games, Equifax, etc. have come under huge criticism
but what do they do? They do "accept" responsibility in corporate speak but
just make bs promises and stay quiet and wait for the PR shitstorm to calm
down. Then to a good extent the people/the public forget about it and move on.
Obviously this is a really bad thing, but they know it's human nature that you
can only keep your attention on something (whether good or bad) for so long
until you have to move your resources on to something else.

------
ordinaryperson
This applies to almost every situation where you have to break bad news, like
being a manager or a parent.

When you want to provide negative performance feedback at work, be direct and
professional, Don't bury it in a "compliment sandwich" ('You're doing a great
job, except when you're not, but don't worry').

It's a hard skill to master (unless you're a non-feeling sociopath) because it
means accepting that you will (possibly) be disliked, maybe even hated.

Same for children. They are going to hate you (at least temporarily) for
criticism or punishment, but if you try to be fair, fact-based and direct
hopefully they will appreciate it down the road when they have more context.

------
dibstern
Great article! Loved it. Not sure if the author is posting this, but if you
are, one small thing - it’s burying the ‘lede’, not ‘lead’. Thought you’d want
to know :)

~~~
wl
Ahistoric nonsense. [http://howardowens.com/lede-vs-
lead/](http://howardowens.com/lede-vs-lead/)

------
debt
He should try replacing all the "we"'s and "you"'s with "I"'s and "me"'s as as
far as I can tell, he's the only one that had to really be dealing with bad
news recently.

Also, would drive his point home further as he'd be speaking from personal
experience of using those very techniques during the whole Cambridge Analytic
scandal.

------
JshWright
I think one important item missing from that list is "Use clear language"
(it's hinted at by a number of other items in the list, but that's exactly the
problem...).

People tend to use gentler sounding euphemisms instead of stating the
situation plainly.

------
flaviocopes
Side note: using Safari, with Ghostery enabled (which blocks the Twitter
widget), the homepage links do not work. The URL changes, but the content does
not.

In the console I get

> TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'twttr.widgets.load')

------
sorokod
With some slight changes this can be a guide for receiving bad news.

------
leowoo91
Oh, burying the lead has never been easier by closing an entire department
than terminating few employees one by one.

------
davidlartey
Great advice. I also think it will work in every situation - from leaders and
to leadership.

------
qubax
Anyone else thought this was going to be news about the tv series Breaking
Bad?

------
hguhghuff
Most people lack the courage to honestly deliver bad news.

------
scrollaway
I'm amused by the title which can be read several different ways:

Breaking Bad news: News about the TV series Breaking Bad

(Breaking) Bad news: Bad news, hot off the press

Breaking bad news: how to break (announce) bad news

Breaking bad news: Breaking (disrupting) bad news

Intended meaning is the third, btw.

~~~
aogl
I too initially perceived it as being Breaking Bad news. Tv show..

~~~
quickthrower2
I'm watching Breaking Bad while reading this. Better Cool Sole.

------
HHalvi
Minor rant: Boz's site still doesn't have an SSL.

------
msmith10101
Sorry to break the news to you, boz, but FB is a toxic waste of X. Fire
yourself, pls.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker
News?

------
pixelcort
I'm confused. Is this article announcing bad news or is it just describing how
others announce bad news?

~~~
baxtr
Reading the article actually helps sometimes...

