I manage a friend, and he’s not doing well

A reader writes:

I became a software developer in the pandemic by taking an intensive code bootcamp, and I love it. A year after I started at my current company, a friend I made from the code camp was hired. About 18 months after that, I sought the new senior level position on the team, which would involve supervising my friend. Your stance on this is clear, but ultimately the only way to contribute at a higher technical level was to take the position as configured. After several discussions with the bosses about conflicts of interest plus conversations with my friend setting expectations for both of us, I accepted the position.

The first year as a manager was a whirlwind, though it came with support. I met with my boss regularly so we could work through items as they came up. Then came the annual review, where my opinion of my friend’s work diminished as he put in little effort into the self-evaluation portion of the review and presented no goals for the next year.

It’s commonly understood that software developers need to be constantly learning. My organization does not pay for that learning in any capacity, unfortunately. My friend thinks that arrangement is crap and does nothing to improve his skills outside of work. Were I still his peer, I would feel okay pointing out that learning is a smart investment even if it comes out of your own pocket, which is what I did. That advice can’t come from me anymore though. As his manager, I can’t and won’t ignore how power dynamics make that sentiment gross.

We work for a consulting company and are compensated as salaried workers, though we are expected to account for every 15 minutes of our 40-hour work weeks with short notes indicating the purpose of spent time. This feels pretty normal given my previous consulting experience in my former career. My friend disagrees. For him, a defining characteristic of all salaried jobs is sometimes you get to work less than 40 hours a week. Right or wrong, that will never be the case at this organization. Completing your current task means picking up the next one, not leaving early. If you happen to do it faster than was allocated, great, we now have flexibility to spend budget elsewhere. My friend finds this setup highly unmotivating.

When I seek out opinions on his work, the overall impression is he’s either incompetent or not fulling engaging mentally. I know from the code camp he can excel! On the one hand, I continue checking for entry-level mistakes and watch my friend stagnate. On the other, there are chances for real improvements and seeing my friend excel as I believe he can.

My friend’s stance on work falls somewhere in the realm of “I work so I can live” and “I don’t dream of labor” and “Working sucks and this company’s policies are crap.” Manager-me tends towards, “I’m not here to tell you how to feel about work, but I do need you to stop making basic mistakes to keep you in this role.” Friend-me agrees with “I work so I can live” and “I don’t dream of labor,” but my lived experience tells me action, even in unfair or unreasonable circumstances, is better than stagnation.

This entire situation looks like a mentoring opportunity for both of us. My concerns are:

* Yes there are problems, but his stances on those problems aren’t doing him any favors. I wonder if I’m reading the situation correctly.

* I want to ask, “Are you sure you’re in the right career? If you’re sure, then it sounds like you’re not at the right company, in which case why are you not doing what you can to build your resume and find a better fit elsewhere?”

* I worry about his ability to find work elsewhere because if asked today my response about his work would be lukewarm.

* The Ask A Manager ethos of being straightforward as a kindness completely resonates, but I am too tangled up with my managerial responsibilities to my company, my loyalty to my friend, and looking out for myself to see the path clearly. I have no expectation that there is a magical phrase that satisfies all three.

What do you see in this situation, and what would you recommend to a newly minted manager trying to (impossibly?) do right by all involved?

Your friend/employee doesn’t need to dream of labor, but he does need to do his job if he wants to stay in it. That’s really what it comes down to.

You don’t need to convince him to see things the way you do or to be excited about improving his skills, but you do need to let him know that he’s making a bad impression on others in the company, and you’re still having to check his work for entry-level mistakes, and if he wants to stay in the job he’ll need to do XYZ to improve.

Your belief that he could excel is not the same thing as him actually excelling.

Seeing potential in someone means that it’s worth it to support them in improving — if you are seeing evidence that they are working to do that. It means offering coaching, asking how you and the company can support them in getting better at what they do, and giving them some time to work on progressing. It does not mean keeping them on endlessly because in theory they could be doing better. Ultimately you have to judge based on what’s actually happening.

I’ve written ad nauseam about all the problems with managing a friend so I’m not going to belabor it here (although you can find some of it here, here, and here) but those multiple discussions you had with your bosses about conflicts of interest before you took the job? And the conversations with your friend about how it would need to work? What’s happening now is what those were supposed to have addressed. You presumably agreed that you’d manage him objectively (which is important regardless, but if you’re also managing other people who are seeing him get special treatment, it’s really important) and you presumably told him you’d need to act as his manager, not his friend. Now’s the time.

You’re at the point where others’ impression of him is that he’s incompetent, and it sounds like you don’t disagree that that’s fair. It’s going to reflect on you as his manager if you don’t act more decisively to resolve this, fairly quickly. Otherwise, people’s respect for you and belief in your competence is likely to be the next casualty.

Your responsibility to your job and your loyalty to your friend both demand the same thing here: that you lay out for him very clearly what he needs to change, and that you’re honest about the consequences if he doesn’t. From there, he can make his own decisions, but let him know what the stakes are so that he’s fully informed as he makes those choices.

Your idea to ask if he’s sure he’s in the right career can be part of that conversation, but it’s not the main conversation (and I think the fact that you’re thinking of it as the main conversation is a sign that you you’re approaching this disproportionately through the lens of a friend, not as the person who is also his manager). The main conversation is “here’s what you need to change to stay in this job.”

One more suggestion: talk to your own boss about what this process should look like and what kind of timeline to offer your employee for showing improvement, since (a) that will help assure your boss that you’re seeing the situation clearly and working to address it, and (b) this process can be tough for any new manager, even without the friendship complication.

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