How to Lead When Tech’s Vibes Are Off

Tech’s vibe has shifted from optimism to anxiety due to AI disruption, RTO mandates, layoffs, and a harder-edged executive focus. Leaders should publicly align with company decisions but privately validate their teams, avoid false promises, and use discretion to ease rigid policies. Quiet honesty and small, humane acts of flexibility build trust and stability while the industry rides out this turbulent period.

Key Points

• AI, RTO mandates, layoffs, and a financialized C-suite have shifted tech from optimism to anxiety and distrust.
• Leaders should publicly align with company decisions to preserve credibility, while avoiding public contradiction of executives.
• Privately, managers must acknowledge realities, validate emotions, and avoid gaslighting their teams.
• Don’t promise fixes you can’t deliver; advocate behind the scenes and push for change in appropriate forums.
• Use discretion to create small, humane workarounds that demonstrate trust and maintain morale during instability.

Sentiment

The overall sentiment is heavily mixed and polarized, leaning towards cynicism and criticism of the article's core advice. While a significant portion of commenters pragmatically agree with the necessity of the approach for career survival and limited impact, a strong counter-current views the advice as unethical, hypocritical, and complicit in problematic corporate behavior.

In Agreement

• The article's strategy is a pragmatic and often necessary approach for middle managers to survive and support their teams in difficult corporate environments, acknowledging the limitations of their power to influence macro forces.
• Private honesty, validating employee emotions, and creating a humane buffer (e.g., small workarounds) are crucial for building trust and loyalty, even when public alignment with company policy is required.
• Managers must choose their battles; publicly undermining leadership can be career-limiting and ineffective, while quiet diplomacy and internal advocacy are more realistic avenues for change.
• The advice is about finding the 'least bad thing' to do in less-than-ideal circumstances, not about outright lying or being two-faced, and is vital for managers who need to maintain their employment ('bills to pay').
• Line managers play a critical role in decoupling leadership's 'delusion' from employees' realities, tolerating necessary deviations from strict rules to preserve employee value and well-being.

Opposed

• The advice promotes hypocrisy, cowardice, and a lack of integrity, turning managers into 'C-suite sycophants' or 'yes men' who merely parrot company lines while privately complaining.
• Managers who follow this advice are not truly on their team's side but are complicit in harmful corporate policies, manipulating employees by creating a false sense of alliance.
• True leadership demands publicly challenging idiotic or unethical decisions and pushing back against leadership, rather than quietly enabling them.
• The article's framing of 'macro forces' and 'efficiency' obscures the underlying malice or incompetence of top leadership, and managers are part of the problem if they don't actively resist.
• This approach ultimately demoralizes teams, as employees see through the pretense and feel unrepresented, leading to burnout and decreased productivity.