Are you a shit umbrella?
Apr 10th 2025 | leadership | culture
Most managers and tech leads consider an important part of their role is being the "shit umbrella" — standing in the storm, catching all the crap from the wider org so your team can “just focus.” It sounds noble but it's a huge mistake that's going to prevent your team from really excelling and growing in their careers.
That “shit” you’re shielding them from? It’s not always clean, coherent strategy. Sometimes it’s noise, politics, panic. But there’s always signal in there — priorities, objectives, context, product knowledge, user needs. And if you keep filtering it all out, your team never learns how to find that signal themselves.
You’re not protecting them — you’re holding them back.
Worse, you start building a little fortress. A loyal, tight-knit, insulated team who sees the rest of the org as them — irrational, chaotic, maybe even hostile. And sure, they love you, their heroic umbrella manager. But that kind of us-vs-them culture is a bug, not a feature. It quietly erodes trust, slows collaboration, and eventually poisons the org.
The ability to handle ambiguity, navigate conflict, and interpret messy context isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a senior/staff engineer and someone who tops out early. This is their growth path. Support them - don't protect them.
So stop being an umbrella. Be a conduit. Get them into the conversations. Help them ask sharper questions, see broader context, work across boundaries, handle conflicts and remove ambiguity.
This is how your team kicks more ass and gets promotions. Put the umbrella away.