Giving pushback to leadership

Saying no to leadership is sometimes necessary when you’re at the helm of a project. Whether they’re proposing a timeline that can’t be achieved, or asking for something that’s technologically impossible, adopting the word “no” into your regular vocabulary is your responsibility as an engineer.

But, pushing back against leadership has high stakes. Doing it well can actually build your leadership team’s trust in you, even though you’re telling them something they don’t want to hear. Doing it very badly can have serious repercussions for the success of the project or your own career.

The short version: you can’t avoid having to push back sometimes (or your projects will fail). You need to know exactly what and who you’re pushing back against. Make sure you’re helping your manager make a decision, not making one for them, and prepare to sometimes get totally shut down.

On April 1, 2025, I’ll edit this post to contain the full article text.

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Crushing JIRA tickets is a party trick, not a path to impact
Don’t be a JIRA ticket zombie! I think a common experience among ambitious juniors - certainly I did this once - is to get frustrated at the slow pace of a team and decide “screw it, I’ll just burn through all these tickets”. On many teams, it’s not that hard to do 2x or 3x more tickets than the next most productive person. But this is a dead end. You’ll get a pat on the head, told “nice work, don’t burn yourself out”, and no progress towards a senior promotion.
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