Help Your Boss Help You

Track: Practices and Other Tech
Abstract

The conflict between technical professionals and traditional managers is inevitable because each side wants different things. Most employees feel that when conflicts arise with their managers, their only options are either to go along with what the manager wants, or leave. Neither option gets you what you want when you want it. This talk, based on the book of the same name, discusses a third option: how to build a relationship over time that makes your boss want to keep you around and keep you happy. It includes how to push back when your manager makes decisions you don’t like, how to provide good enough answers that build a constructive loyalty relationship, how to avoid common mistakes like believing your boss is actually your friend, and more.

Kenneth Kousen

Ken Kousen is a Java Champion, Oracle Groundbreaker Ambassador, and Grails Rock Star, and the author of the books Kotlin Cookbook (O’Reilly), Modern Java Recipes (O’Reilly), Gradle Recipes for Android (O’Reilly), and Making Java Groovy (Manning). He is a regular speaker on the No Fluff, Just Stuff Tour, and teaches training classes in areas related to Java, including Spring, Hibernate/JPA, Groovy, Grails, Gradle, and Android.