Most of these I read and am, like: "I wonder how the other person would've described the situation?"
For example:
> One of our servers needed to be rebuilt, so trying to be a team player and help, I started installing some basic packages. The senior dev on the team turned to me, straight faced and enunciated in a deep and cold voice: “don’t touch anything on it, this is my server!“
Is this because you're a junior-junior developer with an established history of fucking things up? Who has something else they should be working on? Then stay away from the guy's server.
Anyway, let me join the chorus of wondering what, exactly, is so terrible about most of these little stories. Especially when they're so vague as to be nearly useless...
I've been a developer for twenty years. I can tell you some actual stories of developers being treated poorly. They're generally a little deeper than, "Someone said something uncouth in my general direction."
Author here. Indeed I was the junior dev at the time.
I now regret not making a lot of the points clearer. In this case, I know I would definitely NOT treat my junior devs this way. In my view, using either aggressive tones, or public shaming, is not the right way to resolve things. I wish that senior dev at the time would've talked to me in a way that did not make me feel like I was worthless and intentionally fuck things up - at the end of day, most people try to do good things for their organisation, right? :)
So lets pretend you're the older developer in this case. You've been tasked with setting up this server and you have a way you like servers to be set up. You and your team will be working on it, you want it set up just so.
One morning before you arrive at work, junior dev Fred -- a nice kid, but definitely junior -- gets ahold of the server and starts monkeying around. It's not his job. It's not his server. And now you're either going to have to wipe the server and start fresh or get a debrief about what he has and has not done. And Fred's junior, as noted, so he doesn't always know the best way to do things (although, like many junior developers, he sure thinks he does!). So now you, senior dev, have this wild card that you just don't want to deal with because you're busy and doesn't Fred have other tasks on his plate? Why is he jumping all over your damned server?
So you snap at Fred. "Get away from that -- it's mine, not yours. Please do your job and leave me to mine."
This is a challenging post, you seem to be getting knocked around with it quite a bit here. Hang in there. As you point out in your since published comment, treat this (and all your vignettes) as a learning experience. To help start you on your path for this post, I'll offer my 2 cents.
First, try to write posts with positive messages (this one has an overwhelmingly negative tone despite your intentions). Perhaps recast the examples as learning experience. Think long and hard about the situations you describe and try to learn something. Then write a post on what you learned. Life's hard. Help others learn from your interactions (and learn yourself).
Second, keep your issues to the real ones. It's okay to make a long list like this in a brainstorming session while a post is in the early draft stage, but try to trim down the stories to a handful of substantive ones (each with a lesson and reason for being there).
In general, it seems you've been in some stressful situations (for yourself and others). People (even the most vaulted professionals) get cranky when things aren't going well - by whatever definition of well is for the context).
You do seem to believe that transparency is a fundamental right. Its not. Noble, sure, but not ubiquitous or even always a good thing. Many times management will shield their reports from the disaster unfolding above them. Some times this is a good thing. It might be very distracting if everyone had perfect knowledge. I find its very important to have a good working relationship with your manager. Understand what motivates them and deliver on the tasks you are asked to (things can get messy when you "help" others (especially at the expense of your assigned tasks)).
Much more to say, but I need to go deliver on some of my tasks now. Hang in there. Good luck. Write a second post with a positive spin on the major things you learned from this one.
Of course. There are some general lessons about communication that you can learn from these examples. But nobody will do the right thing in every social situation 100% of the time.
It's not that you don't have valid complaints here. It's that you've taken a huge number of examples that range from the simply ungraceful to outright exploitative, and combined them in one huge file that makes it look like you're seeking reasons for your grudges.
A good workplace isn't one that avoids mistakes and conflict. It's one where the team feels invested and supported in working through that conflict in pursuit of their bigger goal. That goal doesn't have to be some world-changing potential; it can just be doing good work, getting paid, and taking care of yourselves.
Yeah, I dunno, I think you missed the point. The majority of what I read there was pretty basic. This is how masculine (note, I didn't say male) professionals generally talk to each other. Is it the most optimal way? Probably not, but there is way way way worse.
Like, you know, yelling at someone in a meeting, swearing aggressively, etc etc.
I think what's missing is some resolution and reflection to each of the anecdotes. For many of them it's not clear to me what the point of the story was, or whether or not you thought you did anything wrong or not, or whether you understood the point of view of the (apparent) antagonist in each story. Context is lacking, too. When did these take place in the progression of your career? Has your perspective changed since the time the event happened?
Life is not roses, and people should learn to have thick skins.
That said, saying "Don't touch my server!" is not at all abusive, especially if there's a history of people messing things up they have no business touching.
You also need to be more situationally aware and/or humble. I'm a junior dev, I probably should ask for permission or guidance before mucking around. That's life.
Yeah if it was properly structured as a business you would never have had access to those resources to begin with. This kind of negative behavior is a relection of poor structure.
"what, exactly, is so terrible about most of these little stories."
That's exactly the point. Everyone hears this sort of thing and mistakenly infuses it with some significant meaning when really, it's just developers talking to developers.
Whether that was the original OP intention, I dunno, but it's the best lesson here.
Author here. I'm glad there are people like you who share the same view. :)
I do admit that I haven't explained things well in my blog post, but some comments here that suggest being aggressive/rude is okay and/or justifiable as long as there's another side of the story is really an eye opener for me and I'm somewhat shocked... Is being kind and decent to another fellow coworker (and a human being for that matter) too much to ask? :\
I mean, regardless of the justification, this is not a very professional way to talk to a fellow colleague. Something like, "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so I think it would be better if I took care of it myself, if that's ok with you" would have been a lot better.
> Something like, "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so I think it would be better if I took care of it myself, if that's ok with you"
This is worlds better than being rude. In my experience it errs a little in the other direction because it leaves the situation a little ambiguous (and thus invites more conflict) by implying that it is debatable. Especially the "if that is ok with you part"
I might try something like: "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so it would be better if I took care of it myself, I Appreciate the effort though!"
honestly this is not correct from a communication perspective. Literally this is a team lead educating a junior developer who completely oversteps his bounds and does not even understand why this is an issue.
In dissecting your statement, "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so I think it would be better if I took care of it myself, if that's ok with you"
clause one is ok, but does not provide a 'why'. clause two leaves too much leeway as to whether the junior developer action is acceptable going forward. clause three is actively negative as it opens up debate for something that is not up for debate.
a proper communication would have been to take the junior somewhere away from anyone else, made sure that the tone of voice was unagressive but authorative, and stated something along the lines that, this is not a major issue but we need to have an important quick conversation, first explain that number 1 what the issue is, explain number two the underlying why, and explain what will happen go forward, make sure he understands this is not a debate, this is you giving him direction on what will occur going forward, i would give him an oppurtunity to meaningfully contribute in the future if it made sense, finally make sure he understands.
being to flimsy or wishy washy is NOT good communication
Unfortunately I can very much understand the original snap. I know I've said things like this and I'm sure a lot of people here have, too, even if they don't remember. I'm willing to assume that the original speaker was in some way overstressed, overworked and had just lost patience at that moment. It's easy to know what the better thing to say is in retrospect but usually people just want to get their message across.
I think a lot depends on team culture and perhaps that's where these kinds of anecdotes fall down - without the context of the team and personalities behind them, they are just snippets with three sides to every story.
"It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"
What was the treated poorly part? Someone priorized some other work over his assignment, or something? I personally think overtime should be avoided, but often people do it voluntarily.
"A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."
Seriously? Everyone has a bad day now and then. This is of course not nice behaviour, but I wouldn't consider it worth remembering or mentioning as "being treated poorly".
"The general manager who is non-technical, asked me to investigate options to uplift our ageing bespoke ecommerce solution. Upon delivering my findings, I was told that “your findings are biased.”"
What would be the proper way to communicate this? If the manager thinks that the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it in some other way?
The "investigate options" one was one of the few situations that I could see a possible slight. I've seen managers who play this dumb game where they put people on a research problem, and the job isn't for the engineer to do unbiased research & prototyping, but it's instead to reinforce whatever argument they were originally pushing for (but your "job" is to actually bring facts in). I've heard the "you're biased" line enough from those kinds of people to just shrug it off and move on, but I've also seen engineers who become paralyzed trying to figure out "what the boss really wants". For my biased point of view, these managers fit into a category called "the worst" anyways, so getting worked up about it is probably not worth it.
As an aside on the not understanding front, what was the deal with the team lead scenario? In my experience team leads aren't managerial positions so I don't quite understand why the guy was so concerned with other employees salaries. There was also a lot of missing details there, the author could have been making significantly more, and so the raises were treated differently? That was definitely a peculiar one.
>> The "investigate options" one was one of the few situations that I could see a possible slight. I've seen managers who play this dumb game where they put people on a research problem, and the job isn't for the engineer to do unbiased research & prototyping, but it's instead to reinforce whatever argument they were originally pushing for
My manager asked me to interview a guy for our embedded software team. The guy was working for our internal customer and was already well liked by the team, but he wasn't creating software. I asked if my input would matter or he already had his mind made up, and he said that yes, this was a real interview. So I asked the guy a few questions and then decided to just give him "FizzBuzz" in the language of his choice. He spent the rest of our time and more trying to solve it but no full success. Then I was in the awkward position of taking him to lunch since everyone else had gone already. So I go back to the boss and say "the guy can't code, don't hire him". Boss hires him anyway. Kid figures out FizzBuzz later that afternoon - he's got determination, and people were ultimately happy with him being on the team. Lessons: 1)Boss's mind was already made up. 2)FizzBuzz is not necessarily a good test. 3) No matter what people think of you, if you fuck up that test your nickname around the office will be "Fizz" from then on.
To me, it seemed clear that he had nominal responsibility for salaries, but was being routed around and undermined. Whether a "team lead" should have responsibility for salaries seems beside the point--if you've told someone they have responsibility they should have it until you relieve them of it.
Yeah, generally at any company large enough to have a dedicated HR function, dev leads usually don't get informed or consulted in salary decisions. I was confused by that one too; his expectations were out of line on that one IMO.
The reason for this is that it's not at all uncommon for dev team members to make more than team leads if they have a specific skill set that the market values more.
> "It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"
The developer is being treated poorly and gave a response to indicate why s/he was being treated poorly. I don't see the problem other than the person coordinating developer recruitment should respect people's time more.
> "A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."
If I knew the person well enough, that one is actually a "I need to talk away from here" or a warning to not talk here. I've had friends go with that, but it really is not clear from the context what is going on or has gone on.
"If the manager thinks that the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it in some other way?"
Describe the points of the analysis that seem biased, without even using the word "biased".
"Looks like you only considered..."
"I don't see any mention of..."
"But you didn't mention [superior feature] of [other product]."
"Biased" is an accusation against the presenter, as opposed to asking questions or making comments about the analysis directly. Making a personal attack does not help in making a good decision.
Especially the last one I find interesting, I have the perspective that if someone did dismiss me and didn't say anything or gave me a clearly bullshit reason I'd find that much more offensive than telling the truth to my face.
Maybe the person wasn't biased, but obviously the manager thought so.
The "you're biased" line is a dismissive remark in a sense though. Everyone's biased, to certain extents, and keeping bias out of research is really tough sometimes. But:
1. A lot of times, this statement is used as a weak crutch by someone who had a different idea, but can't properly explain their side of the position and work towards why there was a difference in conclusion. Usually it's because the person that said "you're biased" is actually carrying a ton of bias into their viewpoints.
2. Even if someone was biased, do you think telling them that they're biased is going to bring resolution? Of course not. See point #1.
Author here, I can see why you have these questions. I tried to keep the moments short so left out some details.
For the first one, it was the passive aggressive tone and the fact that it was posted in a public channel. This person in one other occasion, stormed out of a meeting room whilst another colleague was trying to explain something.
For the second one, later on through mutual colleagues I realised that he essentially thought very little of me because at the time I was a junior developer so I made lots of mistakes in my code base. In my defence though, I was on my own and I had to learn Rails myself.
For the third one, I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my findings were biased. It was more so that he had his agenda and just wanted me to confirm his approach from the technical perspective.
To be honest I think you should give people a little slack and relax. You are taking things too personally. Everyone has a bad day now and then. Based on your descriptions to me it looks like "not treating people poorly" would require almost superhuman capabilities from managers and coworkers. They probably have also lot of other stuff to worry about as well.
This is mostly normal stuff from people who are stressed and work with each other all day. Being short is simply needing to get things done. I have seen things that are huge problems though.
Years ago at this little company I saw the CTO punch the CEO and basically knocked him out. The CTO walked out and we never saw him again. Keep in mind, these were grown men (I was still in college).
I've seen full on yelling and screaming with personal insult after personal insult. This was a normal occurrence on how IT and the business communicated. I never really got used to it, so luckily I worked from home 99% of the time.
I was in a meeting once with a bunch of contractors from different companies, all were yelling at each other about whose fault something was. The gov. PM could not get control and I finally stood up and said it was my fault personally so can we move on now.
And these only scratch the surface. One guy I worked with would always storm out of meetings saying he was going to get you fired if you disagreed with him on anything. That was almost comical though :)
It seems like you're attempting to form an opinion about circumstances based on knowledge you acquired past the time they happened.
At any rate, I don't see how either #1 or #2 constitute poor professional treatment. I can see how it can be a bad experience - I've been on both ends of such behaviour, frankly - but I don't think it's unprofessional. #1 actually points out a serious problem, too!
#3 and #4 from the blog post, however.. I would be livid.
Well to be honest, anytime people are asked to work on something new at 5pm it typically represents a monumental failure on management's part. If reviewing those code tests was important, you should have made time for them to do that during the day.
It sounds like they were constantly getting hit with new "top priorities" that needed to be handled "right away" on top of their new duties.
These stories kinda make it sound like you keep getting reprimanded for shelling into servers and installing random packages. If you aren't somehow resonsible, keep your chin up, not everywheres filled with those kinds of people.
> I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my findings were biased.
In what way were your finding supposedly biased? Why is it necessary for the manager to be technical in order to detect that bias?
Even presuming that you would need to be technical (a big assumption, non-technical people aren't necessarily idiots because they're non-technical), how do you know a senior technical person didn't already talk to them and warn that bias of a certain type could result in $YOUR_FINDINGS?
I thought the first one was the other way around: that he was being treated poorly, with people having him put out fires all day and not giving him time to do his real work. I see nothing bad in his response.
Im curious, if someone thinks very little of you and you try to start a conversation and that someone does not want to talk you ever - then what would be the correct behaviour for you? Because the "i need only coffee" seems to me quite neutral.
At the risk of a tremendous backlash, I have to say that with the vast majority of these I was left looking for the punchline. There were clearly some very upsetting situations, but in nearly every case I could potentially see both sides of the equation. It was hard for me to consider these examples of poor treatment. Rather sometimes just examples of poor judgement (also from the developer's side -- for example not leaving the premises after being dismissed).
This stuff is hard. In my experience you have to cut people some slack and be understanding of difficult situations. If you are able to succeed at that, you should find opportunities to help. This will, in turn, make you more valuable to your employers and also make you much happier.
Of course, it's hard to give good advice from the other end of a comment box. I wish you the best of luck in your current endeavours!
> There were clearly some very upsetting situations, but in nearly every case I could potentially see both sides of the equation.
Nearly, sure but not all.
From the article (emphasis mine):
"A new big shot executive joined the company as our new CTO. He had no agile background and our company was transforming and pushing for a lot of agile principles at the time. Two weeks into his new appointment, the new CTO published an internal document titled “Controlled Chaos”. After reading the document everyone immediately realised that he was describing waterfall. The document was shared as a Google Doc and was open for comments, so people started asking hard questions. Weeks later, many of us who were vocal about his document were let go."
Asking for feedback and shooting the messenger(s) is pretty up there on the "How to make sure you never get honest feedback again and screw things over the long term" scale.
The development team at the company was a hot mess. The company brought in a CTO who stumbled a bit out of the gate, and a few developers made it very clear that they were uninterested in working with him or following his lead. Because the company felt it needed to go in a new direction with the development team, they had to let most of those developers -- who were clearly a bad fit at this point -- go.
Yeah, it's hard to say. I can share one particular horror story from my past (because it is fun ;-) ). I worked on an internal tools team and did not get on terribly well with my manager. I was very critical of him when he made mistakes (which he did fairly often -- some of them really serious ones). When my yearly review came up, I submitted a list of all of my accomplishments for the year. He said, "Ordinarily if someone gave me a list like this, I would give them a very good review. However, I just don't like you." And he gave me the worst possible rating.
I actually hung around at that job for several months (I was young and stupid). We had a reverse review system for our managers and our team of 9 developers gave our manager the worst rating in the entire company (a company of 100K employees!!!). My manager was incensed and locked us up in a meeting room for an hour to lecture us on how disappointed he was in his review.
At one point he said, "The thing I am most disappointed in is that I had no idea things were this bad. Why didn't anyone tell me?"
I replied, "I've been trying to help you ever since I got here. That's why I keep yelling at you. Nobody else will open their mouth because they see how you treat me."
We looked at each other and I like to think that we both learned something very valuable. I quit my job soon after that and I heard that he improved as a manager (at least a little bit). After a lot of soul searching I realized that "helping" someone when they can't understand what you are saying is quite a bit like stomping on their face ;-)
Nicely put. I upvoted this story so I could see what you guys think in the comments. I read it and, and yeah, any combination of a) b) c).
One clue that poor communication might have been an issue, is that you and I are left here standing feeling like we are missing out on something in the story. That is not good storytelling, AKA it is poor communication.
Wu, more details! Maybe the "need to get a drink guy" was really ill and could barely stand up? For instance.
There are many reasons why the "need to get a drink guy" could have done what what he did, for example poor social skills (not his fault) or being socially drained (as somewhat of an introvert, I experience this)
I think the OP would feel better writing a blog post of gratitude: the same number of vignettes, except that they're stories were coworkers were extraordinarily kind or generous.
The way other people behave is often a reaction to how they perceive they're being treated. Perhaps the OP should introspect on how he appears to other?
Thank you, that inspired me to think about writing another "moments" piece for the kind ones. :)
In recent years I have started gathering feedback for myself from my peers, direct reports and managers. The issue I find is that only certain type of people are willing to be completely honest, for the rest it really depends on how much rapport you were able to build with them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I try, but it's hard. :P
Author here. Sorry you (and many others) felt that way... I was trying to put together these moments without rambling on too much.
To offer my perspective on the things you mentioned:
a) I absolutely agree, there's always two sides of a coin. I can only describe how I felt at the time.
b) Again, I agree, and communication is a two way art. Having said that, some of those moments I feel there were very little I could do in my end to turn them around.
c) I did not claim those to be stories either, my intention was to share these things that have happened to me in the past and made me felt uneasy at the time, and perhaps make more people (including myself) to be more aware of their surroundings...
These left me with an uneasy feeling of someone who is oblivious to their blind spots and has unwittingly placed themselves in difficult situations with little self-awareness. I suspect the fault for many of these incidents - if we are looking to place blame - lies largely with the author. Not getting a pay raise when everyone else on the team gets one? This may raise a red flag about management but it certainly raises a red flag about the employee in question. Going back to a meeting after being fired? Cringeworthy - it's something you may do early in your career before you know better, but this is clearly a senior dev who still lacks some fundamental understanding of workplace conventions and interpersonal communication.
I wonder if the author was raised in a very different culture, either because he or his family was of foreign origin, or he was simply brought up with an atypical set of cultural cues and values. These can be very difficult to uproot, and may explain the sense of bumbling through professional situations that the article conveys.
> I wonder if the author was raised in a very different culture, either because he or his family was of foreign origin, or he was simply brought up with an atypical set of cultural cues and values. These can be very difficult to uproot, and may explain the sense of bumbling through professional situations that the article conveys.
This is what I thought as well. The author's perceptions of reality seem a bit "off" and even naive in some cases.
Honestly, the constant hints at social naivety and how the author felt victimized by any negative comment like he lacks the proper empathy to realize that hey, sometimes people are just having a bad day, immediately gave me the vibe that he is somewhere on the spectrum.
I am not sure about the part where leaving the office as soon as you are let go is expected.
I am not in the States, but when re-structurings were to happen at my previous employers, the employers has to specify if you are expected to leave immediately or if there is some work to be finished.
At an earlier point I was changing jobs. I had asked to work a few days longer to finish my task at hand, which was granted. It only seems reasonable thing to me.
To me, communication is a very large value. I would not require, or blame, the developer in this circumstance. If the employer did not specify or have processes when letting people go, it is an unprofessional attitude of the employer, not misunderstanding of the developer.
- I was once asked to go to meet a customer with our sales manager and wasn't told why beyond, "we just need a techie there." The sales manager did his pitch and when it came to questions someone said, "you haven't shown us the proposed architecture," and the sales manager points to me and says, "that's why Phil's here." I had to invent one on the spot using a whiteboard and with a bunch of very knowledgeable people firing questions at me.
- One developer I knew was tasked with using a font that cost a lot of money. He was explicitly told by the directors to use the font anyway without paying for it, which he did. Later when the company was sold this came up in disclosure, and the directors blamed the developer saying they had no knowledge.
- Another developer, during their personal review, was told that they weren't getting a pay rise but that, "it's not because you're black." She was in tears.
While these are almost certainly bad, they are not all specifically related to being a developer. Mainly just poor treatment of an employee.
The article had instances where a developer:
- lost essential computer access privileges
- was forced to re-invent technology
- was denied chances to advance his/her careers through academia
- felt group shaming
- was expected to spend most of the day picking up pieces
- was fired without review
The last one is more general but these at least have a technological slant to them, and they do seem to be related to some kind of passive, cultural bias. And each of the stories might have some weak points but the point is that some developers feel they are being treated poorly, which is a big deal. This crowd is very analytical but a dismissive response is not really the appropriate way to address these claims. (Not saying you're being dismissive, just the general attitude of comments.)
Your comment also hints on another pattern which is, every time there are small problems, there are going to be bigger problems underneath.
- As a web developer doing mostly ColdFusion (early 2000s and I was in my low 20s) sent to a customer to "help set up some kiosks." Turns out they needed help running network cable. Did my best but it was such a strange experience, and I felt very unprepared. And as luck would have it, I had wrenched my back the night before, and ended up throwing it out while I was shuffling around under desks - I was very embarrassed by that!
Being treated poorly? Ha. Demand for our expertise has, as far as I can tell, always outstripped supply. Compared to most sectors, we are treated like royalty.
Funny war stories though, of course I have some.
One of the owners of the company I'm working for used to put his agreements with customers and other 3rd party contacts for the week or the month in his agenda for the last day of said week or month.
Every week, every single week, on Friday afternoon at 4:55pm he'd call: "Ah, good thing you're still at the office. Hey, I promised <contact> that we'd have <complicated thing> done by the end of this week. Can you take care of it? You're awesome, thanks! Have a great week end"
(The company has grown quite a bit, and got more organized, so this no longer happens)
Eh. About 1/3 of those seem bad, a 1/3 seem totally fine, and another 1/3 I'm just confused by.
Example: HR is a function, not just a department. The fact that you don't have a full time HR person doesn't mean that the job they would have done is going to remain unfilled; it just means someone else has to wear the HR hat, probably the CEO. If you're taking a week off and expecting to use sick days rather than vacation time, a doctor's note does seem appropriate, and I have no idea why it's relevant that its a startup with only 10 people. Being asked to go to lunch while sick seems much dodgier, but the story presents the lack of a dedicated HR person as the punchline, when that seems irrelevant. You can't abuse sick leave just because the company is small.
Similarly, having your head of network operations not understand the issue with your Cassandra cluster and just check the port responds to packets is...I dunno, I guess it's bad? Kind of? Assuming that his job description includes setting up Cassandra clusters, which it probably wouldn't be in many companies, so...
On the other hand, there were enough stories there to make me feel pretty smug about my current job. But overall, the stories feel more like zen koans than actual stories. You read it, you stop, and you puzzle over it. It's bad that the head of HR doesn't normally personally do exit interviews...why? Or is the problem that the head of HR taking an interest in you? Are we meant to be upset she isn't doing more interviews, or that she isn't doing fewer? Or is the issue unrelated to the number of interviews? Are we meant to guess? Or the ones about pay rises for team members; are we meant to assume that this would normally be the author's job? Or is the complaint that it wasn't the author's job, but should have been?
He said a day, not a week. And anyone who asks people with fevers to come to work is making a big mistake.* You're not allowed to send kids with fevers to daycare for good reason.
* Barring true "all hands on deck, no matter what" scenarios.
Readit News
For example:
> One of our servers needed to be rebuilt, so trying to be a team player and help, I started installing some basic packages. The senior dev on the team turned to me, straight faced and enunciated in a deep and cold voice: “don’t touch anything on it, this is my server!“
Is this because you're a junior-junior developer with an established history of fucking things up? Who has something else they should be working on? Then stay away from the guy's server.
Anyway, let me join the chorus of wondering what, exactly, is so terrible about most of these little stories. Especially when they're so vague as to be nearly useless...
I've been a developer for twenty years. I can tell you some actual stories of developers being treated poorly. They're generally a little deeper than, "Someone said something uncouth in my general direction."
Author here. Indeed I was the junior dev at the time.
I now regret not making a lot of the points clearer. In this case, I know I would definitely NOT treat my junior devs this way. In my view, using either aggressive tones, or public shaming, is not the right way to resolve things. I wish that senior dev at the time would've talked to me in a way that did not make me feel like I was worthless and intentionally fuck things up - at the end of day, most people try to do good things for their organisation, right? :)
One morning before you arrive at work, junior dev Fred -- a nice kid, but definitely junior -- gets ahold of the server and starts monkeying around. It's not his job. It's not his server. And now you're either going to have to wipe the server and start fresh or get a debrief about what he has and has not done. And Fred's junior, as noted, so he doesn't always know the best way to do things (although, like many junior developers, he sure thinks he does!). So now you, senior dev, have this wild card that you just don't want to deal with because you're busy and doesn't Fred have other tasks on his plate? Why is he jumping all over your damned server?
So you snap at Fred. "Get away from that -- it's mine, not yours. Please do your job and leave me to mine."
Doesn't seem out of line to me.
This is a challenging post, you seem to be getting knocked around with it quite a bit here. Hang in there. As you point out in your since published comment, treat this (and all your vignettes) as a learning experience. To help start you on your path for this post, I'll offer my 2 cents.
First, try to write posts with positive messages (this one has an overwhelmingly negative tone despite your intentions). Perhaps recast the examples as learning experience. Think long and hard about the situations you describe and try to learn something. Then write a post on what you learned. Life's hard. Help others learn from your interactions (and learn yourself).
Second, keep your issues to the real ones. It's okay to make a long list like this in a brainstorming session while a post is in the early draft stage, but try to trim down the stories to a handful of substantive ones (each with a lesson and reason for being there).
In general, it seems you've been in some stressful situations (for yourself and others). People (even the most vaulted professionals) get cranky when things aren't going well - by whatever definition of well is for the context).
You do seem to believe that transparency is a fundamental right. Its not. Noble, sure, but not ubiquitous or even always a good thing. Many times management will shield their reports from the disaster unfolding above them. Some times this is a good thing. It might be very distracting if everyone had perfect knowledge. I find its very important to have a good working relationship with your manager. Understand what motivates them and deliver on the tasks you are asked to (things can get messy when you "help" others (especially at the expense of your assigned tasks)).
Much more to say, but I need to go deliver on some of my tasks now. Hang in there. Good luck. Write a second post with a positive spin on the major things you learned from this one.
It's not that you don't have valid complaints here. It's that you've taken a huge number of examples that range from the simply ungraceful to outright exploitative, and combined them in one huge file that makes it look like you're seeking reasons for your grudges.
A good workplace isn't one that avoids mistakes and conflict. It's one where the team feels invested and supported in working through that conflict in pursuit of their bigger goal. That goal doesn't have to be some world-changing potential; it can just be doing good work, getting paid, and taking care of yourselves.
Like, you know, yelling at someone in a meeting, swearing aggressively, etc etc.
That said, saying "Don't touch my server!" is not at all abusive, especially if there's a history of people messing things up they have no business touching.
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That's exactly the point. Everyone hears this sort of thing and mistakenly infuses it with some significant meaning when really, it's just developers talking to developers.
Whether that was the original OP intention, I dunno, but it's the best lesson here.
Author here. I'm glad there are people like you who share the same view. :)
I do admit that I haven't explained things well in my blog post, but some comments here that suggest being aggressive/rude is okay and/or justifiable as long as there's another side of the story is really an eye opener for me and I'm somewhat shocked... Is being kind and decent to another fellow coworker (and a human being for that matter) too much to ask? :\
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This is worlds better than being rude. In my experience it errs a little in the other direction because it leaves the situation a little ambiguous (and thus invites more conflict) by implying that it is debatable. Especially the "if that is ok with you part"
I might try something like: "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so it would be better if I took care of it myself, I Appreciate the effort though!"
In dissecting your statement, "it's important that this server is configured correctly, so I think it would be better if I took care of it myself, if that's ok with you"
clause one is ok, but does not provide a 'why'. clause two leaves too much leeway as to whether the junior developer action is acceptable going forward. clause three is actively negative as it opens up debate for something that is not up for debate.
a proper communication would have been to take the junior somewhere away from anyone else, made sure that the tone of voice was unagressive but authorative, and stated something along the lines that, this is not a major issue but we need to have an important quick conversation, first explain that number 1 what the issue is, explain number two the underlying why, and explain what will happen go forward, make sure he understands this is not a debate, this is you giving him direction on what will occur going forward, i would give him an oppurtunity to meaningfully contribute in the future if it made sense, finally make sure he understands.
being to flimsy or wishy washy is NOT good communication
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"It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"
What was the treated poorly part? Someone priorized some other work over his assignment, or something? I personally think overtime should be avoided, but often people do it voluntarily.
"A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."
Seriously? Everyone has a bad day now and then. This is of course not nice behaviour, but I wouldn't consider it worth remembering or mentioning as "being treated poorly".
"The general manager who is non-technical, asked me to investigate options to uplift our ageing bespoke ecommerce solution. Upon delivering my findings, I was told that “your findings are biased.”"
What would be the proper way to communicate this? If the manager thinks that the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it in some other way?
As an aside on the not understanding front, what was the deal with the team lead scenario? In my experience team leads aren't managerial positions so I don't quite understand why the guy was so concerned with other employees salaries. There was also a lot of missing details there, the author could have been making significantly more, and so the raises were treated differently? That was definitely a peculiar one.
My manager asked me to interview a guy for our embedded software team. The guy was working for our internal customer and was already well liked by the team, but he wasn't creating software. I asked if my input would matter or he already had his mind made up, and he said that yes, this was a real interview. So I asked the guy a few questions and then decided to just give him "FizzBuzz" in the language of his choice. He spent the rest of our time and more trying to solve it but no full success. Then I was in the awkward position of taking him to lunch since everyone else had gone already. So I go back to the boss and say "the guy can't code, don't hire him". Boss hires him anyway. Kid figures out FizzBuzz later that afternoon - he's got determination, and people were ultimately happy with him being on the team. Lessons: 1)Boss's mind was already made up. 2)FizzBuzz is not necessarily a good test. 3) No matter what people think of you, if you fuck up that test your nickname around the office will be "Fizz" from then on.
The reason for this is that it's not at all uncommon for dev team members to make more than team leads if they have a specific skill set that the market values more.
The developer is being treated poorly and gave a response to indicate why s/he was being treated poorly. I don't see the problem other than the person coordinating developer recruitment should respect people's time more.
> "A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."
If I knew the person well enough, that one is actually a "I need to talk away from here" or a warning to not talk here. I've had friends go with that, but it really is not clear from the context what is going on or has gone on.
Getting offended because people have stuff to do dosent mean you're being treated poorly.
Describe the points of the analysis that seem biased, without even using the word "biased".
"Looks like you only considered..."
"I don't see any mention of..."
"But you didn't mention [superior feature] of [other product]."
"Biased" is an accusation against the presenter, as opposed to asking questions or making comments about the analysis directly. Making a personal attack does not help in making a good decision.
Maybe the person wasn't biased, but obviously the manager thought so.
1. A lot of times, this statement is used as a weak crutch by someone who had a different idea, but can't properly explain their side of the position and work towards why there was a difference in conclusion. Usually it's because the person that said "you're biased" is actually carrying a ton of bias into their viewpoints.
2. Even if someone was biased, do you think telling them that they're biased is going to bring resolution? Of course not. See point #1.
Author here, I can see why you have these questions. I tried to keep the moments short so left out some details.
For the first one, it was the passive aggressive tone and the fact that it was posted in a public channel. This person in one other occasion, stormed out of a meeting room whilst another colleague was trying to explain something.
For the second one, later on through mutual colleagues I realised that he essentially thought very little of me because at the time I was a junior developer so I made lots of mistakes in my code base. In my defence though, I was on my own and I had to learn Rails myself.
For the third one, I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my findings were biased. It was more so that he had his agenda and just wanted me to confirm his approach from the technical perspective.
Hope that clears things up a little bit. :)
Years ago at this little company I saw the CTO punch the CEO and basically knocked him out. The CTO walked out and we never saw him again. Keep in mind, these were grown men (I was still in college).
I've seen full on yelling and screaming with personal insult after personal insult. This was a normal occurrence on how IT and the business communicated. I never really got used to it, so luckily I worked from home 99% of the time.
I was in a meeting once with a bunch of contractors from different companies, all were yelling at each other about whose fault something was. The gov. PM could not get control and I finally stood up and said it was my fault personally so can we move on now.
And these only scratch the surface. One guy I worked with would always storm out of meetings saying he was going to get you fired if you disagreed with him on anything. That was almost comical though :)
At any rate, I don't see how either #1 or #2 constitute poor professional treatment. I can see how it can be a bad experience - I've been on both ends of such behaviour, frankly - but I don't think it's unprofessional. #1 actually points out a serious problem, too!
#3 and #4 from the blog post, however.. I would be livid.
It sounds like they were constantly getting hit with new "top priorities" that needed to be handled "right away" on top of their new duties.
In what way were your finding supposedly biased? Why is it necessary for the manager to be technical in order to detect that bias?
Even presuming that you would need to be technical (a big assumption, non-technical people aren't necessarily idiots because they're non-technical), how do you know a senior technical person didn't already talk to them and warn that bias of a certain type could result in $YOUR_FINDINGS?
This stuff is hard. In my experience you have to cut people some slack and be understanding of difficult situations. If you are able to succeed at that, you should find opportunities to help. This will, in turn, make you more valuable to your employers and also make you much happier.
Of course, it's hard to give good advice from the other end of a comment box. I wish you the best of luck in your current endeavours!
Nearly, sure but not all.
From the article (emphasis mine):
"A new big shot executive joined the company as our new CTO. He had no agile background and our company was transforming and pushing for a lot of agile principles at the time. Two weeks into his new appointment, the new CTO published an internal document titled “Controlled Chaos”. After reading the document everyone immediately realised that he was describing waterfall. The document was shared as a Google Doc and was open for comments, so people started asking hard questions. Weeks later, many of us who were vocal about his document were let go."
Asking for feedback and shooting the messenger(s) is pretty up there on the "How to make sure you never get honest feedback again and screw things over the long term" scale.
The development team at the company was a hot mess. The company brought in a CTO who stumbled a bit out of the gate, and a few developers made it very clear that they were uninterested in working with him or following his lead. Because the company felt it needed to go in a new direction with the development team, they had to let most of those developers -- who were clearly a bad fit at this point -- go.
Because there's almost no detail in that story.
I actually hung around at that job for several months (I was young and stupid). We had a reverse review system for our managers and our team of 9 developers gave our manager the worst rating in the entire company (a company of 100K employees!!!). My manager was incensed and locked us up in a meeting room for an hour to lecture us on how disappointed he was in his review.
At one point he said, "The thing I am most disappointed in is that I had no idea things were this bad. Why didn't anyone tell me?"
I replied, "I've been trying to help you ever since I got here. That's why I keep yelling at you. Nobody else will open their mouth because they see how you treat me."
We looked at each other and I like to think that we both learned something very valuable. I quit my job soon after that and I heard that he improved as a manager (at least a little bit). After a lot of soul searching I realized that "helping" someone when they can't understand what you are saying is quite a bit like stomping on their face ;-)
It seems like either
a) We're only getting half the story.
b) There are clues that poor communication was the issue.
c) There is no story to begin with, just some perceived slight in the authors head.
One clue that poor communication might have been an issue, is that you and I are left here standing feeling like we are missing out on something in the story. That is not good storytelling, AKA it is poor communication.
Wu, more details! Maybe the "need to get a drink guy" was really ill and could barely stand up? For instance.
The way other people behave is often a reaction to how they perceive they're being treated. Perhaps the OP should introspect on how he appears to other?
In recent years I have started gathering feedback for myself from my peers, direct reports and managers. The issue I find is that only certain type of people are willing to be completely honest, for the rest it really depends on how much rapport you were able to build with them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I try, but it's hard. :P
Author here. Sorry you (and many others) felt that way... I was trying to put together these moments without rambling on too much.
To offer my perspective on the things you mentioned:
a) I absolutely agree, there's always two sides of a coin. I can only describe how I felt at the time. b) Again, I agree, and communication is a two way art. Having said that, some of those moments I feel there were very little I could do in my end to turn them around. c) I did not claim those to be stories either, my intention was to share these things that have happened to me in the past and made me felt uneasy at the time, and perhaps make more people (including myself) to be more aware of their surroundings...
I wonder if the author was raised in a very different culture, either because he or his family was of foreign origin, or he was simply brought up with an atypical set of cultural cues and values. These can be very difficult to uproot, and may explain the sense of bumbling through professional situations that the article conveys.
This is what I thought as well. The author's perceptions of reality seem a bit "off" and even naive in some cases.
I am not in the States, but when re-structurings were to happen at my previous employers, the employers has to specify if you are expected to leave immediately or if there is some work to be finished.
At an earlier point I was changing jobs. I had asked to work a few days longer to finish my task at hand, which was granted. It only seems reasonable thing to me.
To me, communication is a very large value. I would not require, or blame, the developer in this circumstance. If the employer did not specify or have processes when letting people go, it is an unprofessional attitude of the employer, not misunderstanding of the developer.
- I was once asked to go to meet a customer with our sales manager and wasn't told why beyond, "we just need a techie there." The sales manager did his pitch and when it came to questions someone said, "you haven't shown us the proposed architecture," and the sales manager points to me and says, "that's why Phil's here." I had to invent one on the spot using a whiteboard and with a bunch of very knowledgeable people firing questions at me.
- One developer I knew was tasked with using a font that cost a lot of money. He was explicitly told by the directors to use the font anyway without paying for it, which he did. Later when the company was sold this came up in disclosure, and the directors blamed the developer saying they had no knowledge.
- Another developer, during their personal review, was told that they weren't getting a pay rise but that, "it's not because you're black." She was in tears.
The article had instances where a developer:
- lost essential computer access privileges
- was forced to re-invent technology
- was denied chances to advance his/her careers through academia
- felt group shaming
- was expected to spend most of the day picking up pieces
- was fired without review
The last one is more general but these at least have a technological slant to them, and they do seem to be related to some kind of passive, cultural bias. And each of the stories might have some weak points but the point is that some developers feel they are being treated poorly, which is a big deal. This crowd is very analytical but a dismissive response is not really the appropriate way to address these claims. (Not saying you're being dismissive, just the general attitude of comments.)
Your comment also hints on another pattern which is, every time there are small problems, there are going to be bigger problems underneath.
Now these are some legitimate complaints. You should write a post about real issues.
Did she end up suing? I feel like you can't say something like that and not end up getting sued.
- As a web developer doing mostly ColdFusion (early 2000s and I was in my low 20s) sent to a customer to "help set up some kiosks." Turns out they needed help running network cable. Did my best but it was such a strange experience, and I felt very unprepared. And as luck would have it, I had wrenched my back the night before, and ended up throwing it out while I was shuffling around under desks - I was very embarrassed by that!
Funny war stories though, of course I have some.
One of the owners of the company I'm working for used to put his agreements with customers and other 3rd party contacts for the week or the month in his agenda for the last day of said week or month.
Every week, every single week, on Friday afternoon at 4:55pm he'd call: "Ah, good thing you're still at the office. Hey, I promised <contact> that we'd have <complicated thing> done by the end of this week. Can you take care of it? You're awesome, thanks! Have a great week end"
(The company has grown quite a bit, and got more organized, so this no longer happens)
So infuriating.
Example: HR is a function, not just a department. The fact that you don't have a full time HR person doesn't mean that the job they would have done is going to remain unfilled; it just means someone else has to wear the HR hat, probably the CEO. If you're taking a week off and expecting to use sick days rather than vacation time, a doctor's note does seem appropriate, and I have no idea why it's relevant that its a startup with only 10 people. Being asked to go to lunch while sick seems much dodgier, but the story presents the lack of a dedicated HR person as the punchline, when that seems irrelevant. You can't abuse sick leave just because the company is small.
Similarly, having your head of network operations not understand the issue with your Cassandra cluster and just check the port responds to packets is...I dunno, I guess it's bad? Kind of? Assuming that his job description includes setting up Cassandra clusters, which it probably wouldn't be in many companies, so...
On the other hand, there were enough stories there to make me feel pretty smug about my current job. But overall, the stories feel more like zen koans than actual stories. You read it, you stop, and you puzzle over it. It's bad that the head of HR doesn't normally personally do exit interviews...why? Or is the problem that the head of HR taking an interest in you? Are we meant to be upset she isn't doing more interviews, or that she isn't doing fewer? Or is the issue unrelated to the number of interviews? Are we meant to guess? Or the ones about pay rises for team members; are we meant to assume that this would normally be the author's job? Or is the complaint that it wasn't the author's job, but should have been?
* Barring true "all hands on deck, no matter what" scenarios.
Sounds like the doctor's certificate was for taking the rest of the week off.
In any case, I agree completely about asking him to come in anyhow; it's just weird that it didn't seem to be the focus of the story.