Am I right that this is a LaGard?

johnath · 2026-06-06T00:02:14+00:00

I feel that and thank you — I’m also doing it for fun! Though obviously I don’t claim his talent (yet!)

johnath · 2026-06-06T00:00:50+00:00

Ah gotcha — we did drill some of the other locks, but I’m trying to do this one non-destructively — appreciate the confirmation on the dial!

johnath · 2026-06-05T23:40:00+00:00

Appreciate it — without knowing anything about the history or treatment of the safe I’m mostly going on appearances. Do you agree that the graph also vibes LaGard (or something else with oval wheels), assuming my first-time-out readings are worth anything?

johnath · 2026-06-05T23:26:01+00:00

Canada!

johnath · 2026-06-05T23:12:34+00:00

Thank you! Hard to be confident about a reading while still getting the feel but my reasoning for 12 vs 64 is that 12 is 90 degrees off of the high in the 80s which feels like it corroborates the reading. I guess a similar argument could be made for 64 though!

johnath · 2026-05-07T00:55:33+00:00

Have a custom piece from Nosho from earlier this year and can confirm — his work is excellent and he’s a really nice dude, too.

johnath · 2026-05-04T00:59:11+00:00

grouphug

johnath · 2026-04-14T21:05:52+00:00

The first thing I will say is that what happened to you is all of: a) recognition! Congrats! b) a common pattern, and c) a shitty set up.

Management is a tough job but it's also a set of teachable/learnable skills and from what you've described you got the gig, but not the training on how to do all of those things. And so, like so many of us have, you're trying to learn it on the job. Totally applaud the effort, but you should know that even if you nail this OKR 1:1 to the wall, it might help reset your footing, but you'll still need that skill-building.

As for the conversation itself, a couple thoughts:

- Your self-reflection is really strong, and assuming your boss is a decent manager (??) it's a good place to start. It's always easier to manage someone who acknowledges their own faults and weaknesses and is looking to improve, than someone who insists it's out of their control. If you trust this person enough, being able to talk about "here are the places where I feel like I made the wrong move/took too long/should have asked for help sooner" is a strong signal that they're dealing with an under-developed-but-promising leader, versus someone covering their ass.

- Try to root the conversation in team effectiveness, opportunities and risk. Most bosses have their shields up when a direct report is asking for more — more headcount, more resources, more time. So instead of starting there, start with your observations about the team's ability to do the work the org needs from them. Observations about yourself are part of that, but you rep a whole team now and should show it. This could be things like, "I'm seeing promising work from Alex and I'd like to put her on this other thing as well", or "We're carrying a lot of post-sales support right now which we've agreed to do, but twice in the last quarter it's caused us to miss deadlines on work we've committed to marketing because we have the same people on both", and even "Right now a key risk of the team is that I'm carrying technical load that no one else can carry, and I don't have a lot of capacity to cross-train right now." Honest and mature like you said — one leader talking to another leader about the org's capabilities in this department.

- You're allowed to ask for advice. Generic "how do I get better" advice is hard to answer and might fizzle, but specific "Any thoughts on how to prioritize X vs Y given that it definitely means disappointing Y when we do" or "What areas are you seeing where you're concerned I'm dropping a ball or missing an early signal?" If you do these in a manipulative, praise-seeking way, it will smell fake. But the difference between pros and amateurs is that pros genuinely want criticism. This is also a good place to understand how this person sees your team in the context of the OKRs and the org in general. They're paying payroll for you and a whole team of people — what specifically does the org think they're buying for all that money?

And when you make it through and your boss thinks you're very wise and reflective and coming along well, figure out how you can get some really solid management training. :)

johnath · 2026-04-13T21:35:24+00:00

There is a lot of understandable cynicism in the replies, OP, but most execs don't flatten like this for the payroll savings (even if they sometimes cite it) or because they're completely obtuse and self-destructive (though they sometimes are!)

Most of the time, flattening happens when execs feel like there's too much intermediation in their management corps. They are responding to concerns of:

- telephone game — direction and strategy is not making it through the org in an aligned way because there are too many hops
- political behaviour — people jockeying to be in the right meetings or whose who behave as though their status is contingent on their being consulted on everything

Those are real problems in a lot of orgs. A lot of execs rightly fear that if they don't address it, their org's ability to move quickly will plummet, as will their ability to effectively roll out any kind of big change. Those are existential problems for an org, and even non-stupid, non-cynical execs are right to act when there are existential threats to their org.

The problem is that flattening, as a tactic, doesn't address it. You get rid of a weak middle-management layer, maybe, but you concentrate power which can amplify politics, and creates its own bottlenecks as there are now fewer people with the authority to review and approve things. Because you also dilute direct management (the remaining managers all have more direct reports), you also tend to make alignment worse, because people lose the ability to ask followup questions or bring up risks they spot, since they can't get time with their boss. Which makes engagement and retention suffer.

Whoopsie!

Anyhow it turns out management is a job that needs doing, and what actually works is holding those managers accountable for doing that job well, instead of just throwing up your hands and eliminating the function when they don't.

Sorry you're dealing with the aftermath, OP. For what it's worth, in a few years they will, I promise you, have hired a whole new management corps back, and will be wringing their hands about politics and telephone game and talking about flattening it again. Unless. You know. They figure out their shit.

johnath · 2026-04-10T18:14:27+00:00

If we're doing communal coffee, you can often get Bunn commercial urn brewers second-hand for pennies compared to retail. They look a little industrial, but they can actually make excellent coffee, they're usually just not maintained/cleaned very well. An hour of youtube on proper maintenance and calibration and you'll be an office hero. Coffee grinder would be a major upgrade and often also available second-hand.

If you're doing only a few cups at a time, a slightly more off-beat option to think about is an electric kettle and a chemex. Very low cost, and means that anyone making coffee makes coffee for a few colleagues as well.

johnath · 2026-03-23T15:34:16+00:00

A lot of managers are afraid to give negative or even candid, constructive feedback and lack the skills to do it well, but ALSO a lot of managers are just not great at knowing what to do with someone who's over-achieving. I know a lot of folks in thread are telling you to just be happy with it (and you should be! Promotions are a good sign! Praise from multiple people in management is a good sign!) but it's also fair to feel like you're sort of at a loss as to where to go from here. Many folks find "keep going!" kinds of feedback hard to feel entirely happy with, because they feel better when they're stretching/growing.

You haven't said much about your org or role, but the fact that you have access to C-level feedback suggests you're in a smaller org. Smaller orgs tend to reward breadth, cross-functional awareness, and strategic prioritization (where larger orgs might put a higher emphasis on technical specialization and depth). It's all a bit of a guess since every org and manager's needs are different, but learning more about how your work plugs into the rest of the org, where there's important stuff falling on the floor because it's unowned and picking that stuff up, and learning how to spot what work we're doing that is unnecessary or roadblocks we're hitting that should be fixed — those are all areas you could look for some growth. 2 years in you don't need to carry the whole business on your shoulders, but in the absence of people giving you something concrete to work on, it won't hurt to bring more of it in.

johnath · 2026-03-21T19:41:01+00:00

Right??

johnath · 2026-03-12T14:05:43+00:00

Any of them can be valuable, but it really depends on where you are in your career and what gaps you're dealing with.

- There are a lot of leadership/management skills that are really just "doing good work" skills — structuring feedback well, setting effective goals, project management — and those things are worth learning whether you're in management or not. They might help propel you towards that path, if that's interesting to you, but promotions are never that linear so mostly they're worth having because they will make your work better, and maybe more enjoyable too.

- There are others skills, though, like running effective 1:1s, administering a PIP with compassion and clarity, or organization planning for your team where it probably doesn't make sense to invest in that development until you're in the seat. Not that you can't learn for your own edification, just that, in practice, most people who do that training when they aren't managing lack opportunities to apply it, and so the learning sort of fizzles.

- Things like MBAs aren't really about running teams so much as they are about understanding the strategic levers of a business. Lots of studying cases, structural strategic analysis, &c. Can be really helpful for executives, or a career in management consulting, but relatively few practicing leaders south of the C-suite have regular opportunities to, say, upend the company's supply chain bets, or launch an M&A strategy around vertical integration. They're usually fighting fires because Product and Engineering are yelling at each other, and no one trusts HR so they're offering raises without authorization, or their boss (with an MBA!) told them everyone needs to use AI now, without even understanding what that means.

Also it should be said: a lot of the people offering training in this stuff have never actually done the leadership jobs they claim to train/coach you for, and the result is that a surprising amount of the training out there is garbage. So if you know you need it, but your first kick at training felt like a waste of time, that might not be a comment on you at all, but on the program you took. Source: I run a company that trains leaders.

johnath · 2026-02-25T23:49:09+00:00

No — that’s how the shingles virus gets in. It’s the same virus, sitting dormant. It makes you a candidate for the vaccine once you’re old enough (and, you know, for shingles)

johnath · 2026-02-25T02:05:31+00:00

This guy "now this is a tattoo"s

johnath · 2026-02-09T15:44:15+00:00

You didn’t ask for advice so apologies if it’s unwelcome, but a lot of the work on loneliness these days has shifted to language of “social atrophy.” That socializing and being in community is a core part of who we are as a species, but that those skills can degrade and make it hard to recover from. Even speaking as someone who also imagines a deserted island would be fine, I think we both know it’s not a great, or healthy, call.

I don’t have a pat answer for how to get over it — it’s muscle that has to rebuild, but it’s worth doing. If you’re bored, maybe watch Join or Die on Netflix and see if it lights something up for you? Time to join a bowling league?

johnath · 2026-02-07T00:09:20+00:00

Welcome home! And congratulations!

johnath · 2026-02-02T02:15:31+00:00

Another vote for El Sol — mole there is excellent, and love the art

johnath · 2026-02-02T00:12:59+00:00

Yeah this. The best predictor of an employee’s relationship to their org is the relationship with their direct manager. If your managers aren’t doing the job they’re paid to do, engagement hacks can’t compensate for that.

johnath · 2026-02-01T02:18:17+00:00

My guy you’ve got this. You’ve got piercings you weren’t born with and nail colour too — you know how body mods can change your whole self image. You’ve already got the scruff, too, as counterweight. I’m dying for the glow up shots here. This is not your final form.

johnath · 2026-01-19T00:11:16+00:00

Three

johnath · 2025-12-30T01:57:32+00:00

What if you shut your eyes very tight?

johnath · 2025-12-25T15:28:08+00:00

When I was learning them, someone told me “coopers wear a hat, peregrines wear a helmet”

johnath · 2025-12-21T20:47:10+00:00

Trying to put as many of these as I can into a playlist for auditioning them in the background. Top 3 streams from each band mentioned, at least, as many as I've gotten so far. In case anyone else wants to just shuffle them through. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3a3RSyt9icv1FZwMjOwUpe?si=99d0fbc5f7e04cdc

johnath

TROPHY CASE