Punishing in public; managing via Slack; being a speed bump just because, all in service of preventing the "scope creep" bogeyman.

This is good management?

You can almost see how a toxic workplace experience seeped into OP's world model.

People just want to feel heard. Show up to listen, zoom out to be strategic, think about the mission.

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pingananth 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I appreciate this pushback. You are describing Leadership (Mission, Strategy, Listening), whereas this scenario is simulating Management (Protection, Filtering, execution).

In an ideal org, we wouldn't need to be 'speed bumps.' But in my experience, the 'Scope Creep Bogeyman' isn't imaginary—it is often the #1 cause of team burnout.

The intent wasn't to glorify 'Slack Management,' but to acknowledge that in 2026, that is the battlefield where a manager often has to stand between their team and a chaotic environment. It’s ugly work, but someone has to be the shield.

	▲	mvkel 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		All fair points, and agreed. Appreciate this context.

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scott_w 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Punishing in public

Honestly, the "praise public, reprimand privately" truism that people learn is, along with the shit sandwich, one of the most harmful maxims in management.

There are situations where, as the leader, the team needs to see you act. Let's take an example of someone speaking to another team member in an inappropriate way. If you reprimand privately, nobody knows you did that. Now, you have a team that thinks it's ok (or is raging that you think it's ok) to talk to each other in that way. If you call it out publicly, now everyone knows it's not.

It is a double-edged sword, though. I'd not put a junior on full blast for introducing a bug, or a team member for missing an issue in a code review. That would send completely the wrong message.

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mvkel 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's not one or the other, but should align with the culture. Like the old board chair of Starbucks said: if you're going to be an asshole, be a really good one.

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scott_w 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It's not one or the other

I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or not, given that was the gist of my comment.

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mvkel 3 days ago | parent [-]

Not disagreeing, but adding a cultural context. So if your culture is a trading floor like boiler room, sure, shame publicly, all day long. Maybe not at a cancer nonprofit

	▲	scott_w 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think there's more nuance to what I'm saying: it's not just based on your company culture but on the situation you're faced with. Let's make my example more concrete. Let's say a member of your team calls another team member stupid for an honest mistake, in a public setting (so was witnessed by the rest of your team). Telling that person there and then "that's a disrespectful way to speak to a colleague and is against our values" will: a) Demonstrate to all witnesses that the behaviour is not in line with your values b) Make the victim of the behaviour feel seen and know they aren't alone c) Make clear to the person receiving the feedback that you're unhappy To achieve this same result in private conversations is monumentally more effort, if not impossible. If you pull them into a private conversation, you're still publicly reprimanding them, just without giving clear communication to everyone. Do you wait until later to reprimand in private? Then you need to speak to everyone about what was said and repair the damage that the delay in speaking up caused. However, there are plenty of situations where calling out something so publicly would be the wrong thing to do, like pushing bugs to production, as you'd likely be seen to be overreacting. You still want to give the feedback if, say, the team member was ignoring processes. It's just usually better done in private.

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3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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cbeach 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Punishing in public

The junior dev is watching, and got the benefit of seeing that you value his time

> managing via Slack

Far preferable to arranging a face to face meeting over this low impact, simple procedural issue

> being a speed bump just because

Defending your team's finite attention and time from random direct requests from the business is a major part of your job as an EM.

> "scope creep" bogeyman

There's good reason scopes are defined and communicated, and deadlines and expectations are managed.

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mvkel 3 days ago | parent [-]

> far preferable to arranging a face to face meeting over this low impact, simple procedural issue

Whenever an issue involves people, slack simply won't suffice. There's too much good will lost on either side. "No worries if not [grumble grumble]!"

This isn't procedural, like sending an invoice to the wrong email address. This is a vp overstepping and threatening the success of another employee. They know what they're doing.

	▲	bhawks 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Id agree if it were a VP of Eng (total mess) or Product (should know and be bought in on the dev process) but this is a VP of sales. Depending on the company they can be much more operational and I would just assume that they asked the individual due to familiarity or happenstance and didn't understand the level of effort to deliver. Quickly understanding the urgency/importance of the ask while communicating the impact it is having on the deliverable is the right call. Good business people work like this all the time. Seeing the discussion is a good learning opportunity for a junior.