alt Hacker NewsThe best managers I've seen would turn this situation into a headcount request.
The problem is leadership has priorities 1-5. Your team works on 1-3, but the PM keeps getting hassled about 4 and 5, so they look for levers to get them to happen.
In this situation, the PM scrounged up headcount from elsewhere, but if you present the option of adding headcount to the existing team, then you create a more harmonious option of getting these lower priorities accomplished.
Of course, this guy was taken fully by surprise by the suggestion. It's much harder to present a better option after the fact, and I agree that letting leadership feel the consequences of its decisions is a reasonable thing to do in this case.
> letting leadership feel the consequences of its decisions is a reasonable thing to do in this case
In this case the consequence of leadership's decision was a permanent solution to the CX problem with no permanent increase in headcount.
"Sometimes when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."