[HN Gopher] It's now your fault they don't know about it
___________________________________________________________________
It's now your fault they don't know about it
Author : zdw
Score : 273 points
Date : 2022-03-03 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rachelbythebay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rachelbythebay.com)
| omgJustTest wrote:
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I have been the unreasonable coworker at certain times throughout
| my life.
|
| There's a huge difference between taking the time to learn the
| internals of something widespread and useful, and being expected
| to spend hours or days performing (literally) exhaustive searches
| of random internal repos in order to find the documentation for
| some bullshit internal tool that only one person knows anything
| about.
|
| We have products to ship. If my options are: - Work weekends -
| Delay a product - Annoy the one guy in the company who knows
| anything about Ultrabuild
|
| I'm going to pick C every time.
| KerryJones wrote:
| This follows a pretty simple pattern for me: "people don't want
| to be wrong"
|
| They have a certain vision for themselves, they know what's
| important, they spent time to do it the right way. If something
| is wrong, its clearly because something else failed, in this
| case, you. It breaks their idea for themselves.
|
| I think it is less about rationality as I've seen just about
| everyone do this at various points, and more being humble and
| willing to own up to when was had an oversight, letting go of the
| ego to be able to say,
|
| "huh, I completely missed that you wrote this. I understand that
| you said you have brought this up before, even if I don't
| remember it, I believe you. I will dig into this and listen
| better here on out."
|
| How rare is that behavior?
| pugworthy wrote:
| I learned the hard way long ago that if your manager does this,
| pack your desk before you are fired and have to do it with an
| escort.
| kleer001 wrote:
| pc86 wrote:
| No reasonable person would think that, so I'm curious what
| your point is.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I believe it was a joke, based on an alternative
| interpretation that was funny to picture.
| mikestew wrote:
| Jokes are supposed to be funny, and they become
| especially unfunny when one explains the pun right after
| making it.
| mmcnl wrote:
| I usually try to avoid this by adding a question mark as early as
| possible to the conversation. It happens way too often that
| people are trying to answer a question without even knowing what
| the question is or solving a problem without knowing what the
| problem is. That leads to confusing conversations.
|
| Regarding the example:
|
| > There are no docs for <X>
|
| Respond by: "What do you want to achieve?" or "How can I help?",
| and don't assume that you know what the other person wants to
| know.
| vba616 wrote:
| It is infuriating on nearly a daily basis when I search for how
| to do something, find my question on stack overflow, and the
| responses are all arguing that it's an X/Y problem or insisting
| that they should do something different.
|
| Whereupon the asker gives up, or it turns out they really did
| want the answer to "Y", but _I_ want the answer to "X".
| TillE wrote:
| A phenomenon I've never stopped seeing online is people asking a
| simple factual question ("what is X?") instead of just using a
| search engine which would get an answer instantly.
|
| Or people who, when given documentation, insist on asking a
| series of questions which are all directly answered if you bother
| reading the clear, concise documentation at all.
| torbTurret wrote:
| I can't stand that.
|
| The worst I've seen so far: people posting trackbacks, no
| comments or anything, (the sort of lack of effort that would
| get flagged even on stack overflow), in a massive slack channel
| asking for help.
|
| I don't get it.
| m3047 wrote:
| I'd counsel caution.
|
| Simple obvious questions can be natterings about the "known
| unknowns". 1) Where do I order a beer? 2) Do they serve food?
| 3) Which tram do I take to get there? Progressively these three
| questions tell us more about the querant's location or context.
| But this can be quite unconscious. What about asking for
| summation: You've asked about beer, food and tram info, can you
| sum up for me what would make you happy? (Really want uncle
| Owen's fish and chips. Want a companion to eat with...)
|
| Simple obvious questions can also be testing for "true facts"
| as opposed to "documented facts", although I would expect that
| behavior to subside with increasing acquaintance.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I used to think this myself. I even got in trouble from my
| university professor when I complained about other students
| using our internal forum to ask simple googleable questions.
|
| Now I think of it as a different style of knowledge seeking. In
| life, some people get answers themselves via physical artifacts
| and other people get answers by talking to more knowledgeable
| people. One involves more socialization than the other.
|
| I think both styles are valid and have different pros and cons.
| I find it less annoying when I think about those interactions
| like this.
| swills wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
| salary depends on his not understanding it."
|
| - Upton Sinclair
| rglover wrote:
| Thank you for this. This is why I tend to work alone. There has
| been a slow, steady cultivation of the perpetually helpless,
| antagonistic weiner personality over the last 10 years that is an
| absolute _teeth grind_.
|
| That said, it's good to learn how to differentiate between people
| who are being genuine and just need guidance/attention and
| someone who's a wet noodle. It's easy to accidentally discourage
| the former mischaracterizing them as the latter.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Yea, here's how what you observed in your coworkers changed my
| behavior. I used to share my free time projects widely with
| coworkers. Stuff like arduino robotics projects, fun sites I
| would build for silly reasons, etc. Some coworkers wouldn't
| enjoy it and instead pick it apart for any reasons that usually
| starts with "why didn't you just..."
|
| It wasn't everyone, but I started to realize that I was
| triggering negative feelings in some people.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| ...although it does sound like you found a low-politics way
| to find out which of your coworkers are worth listening to.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| That why question sure is haunting isn't it.
|
| For example, I invented a programming language for board
| games and the #1 question I generally get is "why isn't that
| a framework".
|
| The hard part in life is learning to embrace your quirks.
| RangerScience wrote:
| > programming language for board games
|
| Go onnnnn? :D
| Tomte wrote:
| It took me three or four readings to understand your
| request.
|
| Go happens to be both a programming language and a board
| game, so I promptly forgot about it also being a verb.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I will!
|
| I even have a video:
| http://jeffrey.io/AdamaPlatformInTenMinutes.mp4
|
| And I'm building it as a SaaS which I've made available:
| https://www.adama-platform.com/ for "early access".
|
| I'm still trying to figure out how to explain it.
| Basically, take an IDL like proto/thrift. Then add in the
| ability to transform the data. Then add in a sense of
| privacy of who can see what. And boom, the foundation is
| laid for a document transform language.
|
| The reason to do all of that is because the state of the
| board game requires a great deal of care. For instance,
| wouldn't it be great to offer Undo? What if you hook a
| socket directly up the document and then differentiate
| state changes after privacy checking?
|
| Right now, it's a mess, and I'm forking efforts to work
| on a board game web ide where people can build board
| games online. Adama is the foundation for the IDE such
| that it starts collaborative from the get-go.
| ramses0 wrote:
| With a little experience in this area, I think that a
| replay-log is the best way to go, possibly with some data
| "encrypted until revealed".
|
| eg: chess has algebraic notation and that allows replay,
| undo/redo, save/load, etc.
|
| If you were to come up with some notation for chinese
| checkers... blammo, same concept.
|
| The "replay log" doubles as a relatively expensive save-
| game format (re-run the steps).
|
| If you're doing something like texas hold'em, you might
| do:
|
| Deal @ 1 => "XX, YY"; Deal @ 2 => "AA, BB"; Flop "AH, 2H,
| 3S" ; Bet @ 1 => $12.34 ; etc...
|
| ...and then "materialize" the XX,YY things at the end,
| while maybe keeping individual + central records.
|
| eg: 1.json => (XX==4S, YY==5H) // 2.json => (AA==6H,
| BB==7H) // central.json == union(*.json)
|
| ...multiplayer is hard, but some sort of replay-log of
| the messages is my current thinking of the only rational
| outcome. If you're looking to make an online boardgame
| IDE, then focusing on devising a game notation (which may
| include privacy) would be helpful.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| My language generates document changes that go inside of
| a replay log.
|
| I basically translate document layout + transformation
| logic into JSON changes which can be joined under JSON
| merge.
|
| The neat thing about basing everyone on JSON merge is
| that I have a way to deal with buffer bloat very easily
| with flow control.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They had a Show HN a few hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30542230
|
| It looks like that's what they're referring to.
| castratikron wrote:
| I think the author is referring to a somewhat different
| personality type. While wet noodles will ask you to basically
| do their job for them, there is another personality that has a
| confrontational, zero-sum perspective where they are constantly
| trying to dominate other workers.
|
| I've experienced it firsthand, and I eventually found a term
| for it: a "high conflict" personality [1]. There are a few ways
| google says you can deal with these personality types, the main
| one being: do not interact with that person.
|
| [1] https://www.highconflictinstitute.com/hci-articles/who-
| are-h...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If it's a persistent pattern and not just a result of stress
| and poor culture - not always easy to tell - they're likely
| on the Dark Triad spectrum.
|
| Or at the very least they don't like you personally and are
| trying to bully you.
|
| It's not usually about the presented issue. The relationship
| dynamics are the real truth.
|
| Everyone has bad days. But if interactions consistently take
| this direction - especially to the point where anticipating
| them causes anxiety - it's time to consider moving on.
| floydian10 wrote:
| > It's not usually about the presented issue. The
| relationship dynamics are the real truth.
|
| Absolutely. I was on the wrong side of such a dynamic until
| recently, by the end of it (thankfully I switched teams) it
| was a straight up bullying situation. And much like an
| abusive romantic relationship, it escalated slowly in a way
| that was difficult to notice. My point is, yes, do whatever
| you can to stay away from these kind of people.
| YeezyMode wrote:
| It seems so unlikely to me that large swaths of people who act
| this way can make it to a place in any industry where they're
| surrounded by more resourceful peers. How does this even
| happen? I just want to make sure that I'm not creating a view
| out of reading exaggerated anecdotes, and that this actually
| reflects reality.
| uoaei wrote:
| College degrees or plain salespersonship conferring an
| inappropriate amount of merit. This is the unfortunate
| corrolary of impostor syndrome: some people really are
| impostors.
|
| I think if we want to start pushing more people into trades
| and de-emphasize college education: (1) we make it much
| harder to graduate college and (2) make college much cheaper
| so that pursuing that risk isn't ruinous. Then a student can
| explore a college path and pivot to something more suited to
| their attitude and skills to remain a productive member of
| society if it doesn't work out.
| rglover wrote:
| Worth reading this book:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
|
| Combine that with the Pareto Principle and you start to get a
| fairly accurate picture of "why the world is the way it is."
| And this applies to all industries, not just tech.
|
| If you look at it through a nihilist lens, it can bum you out
| _quick_. But, if you look at it like "I was given the
| gift/responsibility to do this well" (sans God-complex,
| elitist "useless eaters" attitude), it makes it a bit more
| fun/tolerable.
| thinkr42 wrote:
| I've personally encountered this quite a bit circling around
| tech, in most of the cases I've seen it was due to _deeply
| seated_ insecurity more than anything else. Usually it
| corresponds with folks who find themselves in a position that
| they're a poor fit for but for whatever reason can't move on.
| They bounced into a position they can't exit and their 'value
| add' is applying this sort of tactic under the guise of being
| helpful externally.
| draw_down wrote:
| bo1024 wrote:
| related paper: "Are disagreements Honest?" by Tyler Cowen and
| Robin Hanson.
|
| Coverage:
|
| https://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/12/agreeing_to_agr.html
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3766
| sdoering wrote:
| I instinctly want to agree. I remember quite a few examples of
| that.
|
| On the other hand. This post can be weaponized as a argument
| towards: 'I did enough documentation. If you disagree you are
| unreasonable.'
|
| Or from people that don't do documentation but spam. With that I
| mean people who do not think about what to put into the
| documentation, but throw in everything, mostly unsorted. Like:
| 'It is in there. On page 756, section C, subsection 1.3.3.4. Easy
| to find. Just look.'
|
| In the end I think it all comes down to the question how
| reasonable people work together and with respect for each other.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _On the other hand. This post can be weaponized as a argument
| towards: 'I did enough documentation. If you disagree you are
| unreasonable.'_
|
| I don't think that's what she's advocating. Her point, as I am
| reading it (and her post aligns quite well with some of the
| worst experiences I have had), is that a reasonable person
| isn't going to come with "there's no docs" or even "there's not
| enough docs", they'll do a reasonable amount of searching find
| the docs, and instead approach with something concrete like,
| "Hey, I have $question about $system. I did see the docs here
| $link, but they don't seem to answer that." "Oh, yeah, not
| clearly enough. $answer" "Thanks! Do you mind if I send a PR to
| add that to the docs?" "Please, by all means!"
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I feel like the whole 'docs' angle of this story is kind of a
| distraction. The bottom line (IMHO) is that reasonable
| coworkers, with a reasonable interest in coming to an
| amicable decision quickly, will not engage in this kind of
| behaviour.
|
| The anti-social person can be the consumer of the docs, or
| the producer of the docs. In both cases they will find a way
| to pick a fight. The important thing is for the reasonable
| person to learn to recognize what is reasonable behaviour,
| and not fall into the trap of making protracted concessions
| in a futile attempt to be reasonable themself.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| I think the point being made is that you will encounter
| unreasonable people at work over the course of your career, and
| this is an example of one particular type of unreasonable. The
| examples you mention are very real as well! At some point even
| if you act in good faith, there will be situations in which you
| absolutely cannot bridge the gap.
| autokad wrote:
| you see that a lot on hacker news. you make a comment and they
| attack you without taking a position of their own. This way they
| can pivot to anything that suits them and continue attacking you.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I can't say I've noticed that.
|
| But more generally, why would we require someone to put forth
| an alternative view as part of criticizing one that's already
| being discussed?
| Veuxdo wrote:
| On the other hand, if nobody wants, is asking about, or cares
| about Important Thing You Want To Do, that's a sign you probably
| shouldn't do it.
| fifticon wrote:
| I see it differently. At work, we have several bothersome but
| sorely needed issues that needs doing, but no one is
| volunteering to do them, because they mostly consist of loads
| of thankless work, that may drag on, and will distract you from
| tasks that earn easier praise. Eventually, one or more of us
| get sufficiently annoyed to clean up whatever the issue was,
| but that no one volunteered to work on it, does not mean they
| are not grateful someone eventually did. I have botb been the
| volunteer and the feetdragger at times, and have seen
| colleagues i appreciate in both roles too
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is excellent knowledge about human nature. The only thing I
| would add is that it's usually the same person in different
| circumstances.
|
| There's a concept of someone "tilting" or "going tilted" (analogy
| to an old pinball machine; I wonder if we need to update it? Do
| people still play pinball?). Essentially, as a software engineer,
| your job is to make order out of chaos (where chaos is defined as
| "Everything that doesn't work the way you think it should"). Some
| of that involves changing your reality to match expectations. A
| _lot_ of it involves changing your expectations to match reality;
| that 's usually the fastest path (though you'll get paid for the
| first).
|
| But changing yourself takes cognitive energy. When someone has
| had enough of that for a time, they're tilted. There isn't any
| reasoning with them because they're in a mindset where they are
| _demanding_ reality conform to their expectations, and every
| deviation from that will just make them angrier. A person Rachel
| 's describing in the first scenario has tilted and until they un-
| tilt, it's unlikely there'll be anything that can be done to help
| them solve the problem they were working on when they tilted.
|
| Some corollaries / consequences of this model:
|
| - some people have, in some contexts, nearly zero patience with
| surprise before they tilt. We often call many of those people
| "users." ;)
|
| - a manager or project lead prone to tilting can be a real
| problem because they have the authority to try to solve the
| situation by putting _other people_ on bending reality. Be
| sensitive, as a team member, to whether a manager is tasking you
| with a project because it 's a good idea for the company's goals
| or because they're grumpy about something and taking advantage of
| their position to change it without actually _fixing_ anything
| other than their mental model not matching current consensus
| reality.
| CTmystery wrote:
| I don't like this one bit! In many cases, finding the right docs
| in an org is like finding a needle in a haystack. When someone
| asks a question that's in the docs, I default to assuming they
| looked and they couldn't find it, not that they are lazy or
| trying to put down my work. FWIW with this approach I have not
| had people needling me like the author here, and I have a ways to
| go but I have been in this industry for 17 years now.
|
| I think the people that could use more effort in communication
| will see this post as relatable, and will justify their behavior
| when interacting with other teams / team members. In my
| experience infra teams are particularly bad at this, which I
| attribute to lack of building up a "customer first" muscle that
| feature teams tend to build by necessity. Of course this is
| wreckless speculation. I do know that it's annoying when other
| teams are short with reasonable questions, and have this self
| righteous attitude that what they work on is obviously perfect
| and that I'm an idiot for asking these questions!
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| The difference is in intent. Sometimes, the docs actually suck.
| Sometimes, the docs are fine and the person complaining is just
| trying to find something to complain about. It depends on the
| situation, and isn't necessarily possible to distinguish from a
| single interaction.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I've been, I'm afraid, on both sides of this.
|
| Being on the unreasonable side is usually due to stress, which
| could be because of the topic at hand or, unfortunately,
| something completely unrelated and you're taking it out on the
| topic at hand.
|
| I guess the best advice I have if you're on the receiving end is
| to weather the storm, and hope for better dialogue (maybe even an
| apology!) later down the line. It's been my experience that you
| can shorten the storm by expressing empathy for the unreasonable
| person's situation.
| antiterra wrote:
| The real issue here is how much information is shot at you when
| you're working at a place like this. You're likely in a number of
| groups where people are posting design questions, specs,
| announcements, new team joiners and leavers etc. Then there's a
| wiki and a chat thread or two, and there's probably even an old
| wiki page that's still used for specific aspects that haven't
| been migrated to the new one.
|
| Bonus points if the group posts are just mixed in to a newsfeed
| with some kind of non-chronological algorithm.
|
| Oh, and, you know, don't forget to check email. And do your
| actual work.
|
| 'I posted it to the group' is as bad an excuse for not properly
| informing as 'It wasn't on the wiki' is an excuse for not finding
| the info. The real culprit is just the disorganized firehose of
| information from all the teams and people you're supposed to keep
| tabs on.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| This hits home really hard. I'm currently in my 2 weeks notice
| period after 6-7ish months at a company where this was (is?) a
| regular occurrence. At some point you have to chalk things up to
| willful ignorance and move on.
| m3047 wrote:
| A rambling comment.
|
| "Talk therapy" (in one of the other comments): yeah, I think so,
| maybe. But I don't know if "have you discussed the underlying
| issue with a trained therapist?" is in order in a professional
| relationship. I /do/ believe that if the person is otherwise
| reasonable there likely is an underlying issue, and that they're
| unwilling/unable to articulate it. It's dangerous to try talk
| therapy yourself and goes off the rails in entirely unexpected
| ways. Plus, I'm not being paid for this, and as an employee I am
| at least arguably putting my employer at risk (not that that
| would dissuade me if I thought it would work, because results);
| as noted it encourages people to share things at work that I do
| not want to know about; you will get projection and your role as
| therapist will confound your professional relationship.
|
| I'm sorry, does this sound like I lack empathy? Because I do not.
| That's exactly what I'm afraid of.
|
| A long time ago when I was management, my manager sent me to a
| Fred Pryor seminar about building and motivating teams. I dunno
| what your experience with Fred Pryor seminars is, they're usually
| pretty pedestrian but the facilitators often have amazing
| experience and know it too. I can't remember much of it, but the
| instructor went on a 15 minute tear about what he called "don't
| wanna" which I will never forget. This is exactly it. The upshot
| is that when for whatever entirely "rational" reasons a team
| member has decided to oppose something, they will use your
| resources to do it. Have you considered asking management "person
| X seems to be spending a lot of effort opposing Plan 0.9, do you
| think we should review or move forward?"
|
| (Something obvious about spotting internally consistent
| psychopaths was pointed out to me while working in construction,
| but I won't repeat it here because I don't want to piss them
| off.)
|
| It's insane that we think that technology choices are rational,
| or that "rational" is the same for different team members,
| especially when for example "management doesn't think we should
| focus on security" always comes up as a post facto
| rationalization: I've never seen it stated as a nonfunctional
| requirement when I took the job, in fact almost invariably people
| blow smoke about it during the courting process.
| RangerScience wrote:
| I recommended talk therapy to the person who was worried that
| their (perceived) lack of social skills would make them appear
| combative / argumentative, as a way to get tutored/coached in
| those social skills, in a safe setting. I _do not_ recommend
| telling a combative coworker "have you tried therapy?".
| allisdust wrote:
| Ya totally soul sucking people like that exist in a lot of
| companies. And it's mostly due to these two reasons they do it 1)
| To get a ego boost when you acknowledge your mistake. Till they
| get their boost they keep finding loopholes. These are the kind
| of people who didn't get enough hugs as children. 2) To showcase
| themselves as all knowing and superior to management or
| leadership. They don't care about you or your work. You are just
| a peg in corporate ladder for them. These are the kind of people
| who would have been certified as sociopaths if there was a
| universal mental screening.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't have any advice on dealing with either of
| those two. Both weigh heavily on the general happiness in the
| workplace and make it a hellhole fast.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i work in consulting and you run across a lot of your number
| twos. I knew a woman in leadership who was very professional
| and i would dare say kind. However, when crossed by one of
| these people she would very quickly and purposely cut off their
| balls, put them on a cross, and force all the other #2s to look
| and watch. It was a very effective way to manage sociopaths.
| It's like managing a pack of fighting dogs, they only know
| death either giving or receiving. To treat them otherwise is
| almost unfair as they're not equipped mentally to handle it.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I read these posts on rachelbythebay.com so that indicates that I
| think the content is OK. But every time I do, my most visceral
| reaction is "Please serve your website over TLS."
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| Writing the bottom line first
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom...
| alexk307 wrote:
| The biggest difference between junior devs and senior devs is the
| ability to dig for answers and information and only ask when you
| are completely blocked. It seems like you've surrounded yourself
| with junior engineers and aren't interested in mentoring them
| into doing better. You should talk to your manager, or find a
| more technical place to work with fewer people to mentor.
| CTmystery wrote:
| Hard disagree, but obviously our mileage has varied. I find
| that junior devs are the most hungry and will comb through
| endless poorly organized docs and source code before asking a
| question that makes them look like they "don't belong".
| williamdclt wrote:
| Yeah I agree. "Only asking when you are completely blocked"
| definitely isn't a sign of seniority: it might mean losing a
| lot of time for little benefit. Maybe the person with the
| knowledge would be very happy spending 10min with you rather
| than you spending hours figuring things out by yourself.
| projektfu wrote:
| I didn't see this as a hostile student, I saw it as a hostile
| co-worker who is trying to accuse you of something you didn't
| do.
|
| A junior dev may ask a lot of questions but that would be like,
| "Where is that documented? How do I read that? I don't
| understand what it's saying." A senior person might have
| already grokked a lot of it but didn't realize there was hidden
| context somewhere else, so when they say they couldn't find the
| documentation you show them and they go back to read it. A
| hostile student (someone who wants to be force-fed info instead
| of reading themselves) would pepper you with questions showing
| they didn't in good faith read any of the docs, but they
| wouldn't lie and say the docs weren't there. This is someone
| who thought that you were slacking off or wasting time and want
| to show that, and they'll keep at it until they can find
| something to stick. And if they can't, they'll make you have
| two mutually exclusive things to be true in order to satisfy
| them.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| I read this through a completely different lens. The people
| I've seen with this type of behaviour have been bitter or
| incompetent leads or managers. I too wished they would take a
| long hike of a short bridge, but chose to leave the company
| instead. Entitled and demanding people who offered very little
| value and had built their careers by trampling on others. No
| thanks for me.
| alexk307 wrote:
| There are certainly exceptions to every case, but I when I
| was first starting out my career, I was super guilty of doing
| this. Always asking my coworkers for help or information,
| even though I had all the access to information that I
| needed, or could just ask Google. It wasn't until the lead
| engineer kindly sat me down and told me that I need to be
| more responsible for my interruptions and only ask when
| you're completely stumped. Some of the best career advice I
| have gotten in this industry.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| That is good advice! I got the same from my first manager:
| Research and try to find the answer first before reaching
| out for help. I had in fact already done that in the
| particular situation in which he commented, but he was
| right in principle anyway, so no harm done.
|
| I have a very different feeling about the OPs situation
| though. This is not about junior people asking too many
| questions or being lazy or incompetent, it is about a
| personality of people who are just entitled and demanding
| and just generally bitter assholes. Not typically seen in
| juniors!
| ajford wrote:
| My last two positions have followed the exact opposite
| philosophy, and I prefer their take.
|
| The general consensus at these places was that getting to
| the information faster is preferable. We have a team chat
| channel for a reason, ask their. Don't stop your search,
| and don't ask first thing, but after a cursory glance, ask.
| Then continue to search on your own. If someone knows the
| answer and sees the question, they should respond. If you
| find the answer first, update the thread and answer your
| own question in case it helps anyone else.
|
| That said, I agree if the answer was easily found in a
| google search. That's the kind of basic info an
| engineer/developer should be able to answer on their own
| with research and self-exploration.
|
| It's key to be able to tell quickly whether the answer/info
| you're looking for is likely to be a common/general piece
| of info or a company/industry specific piece of knowledge
| that might not be found widely.
| Kluny wrote:
| I doubt that's the case with this particular author.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Pareto principle - 20% of the people will be 80% of the arse-
| pain!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Recognizing these types of interaction early is a useful skill.
| It does seem pretty obvious most of the time, I can tell based on
| the first question whether the person I'm talking to is
| interested in a good faith discussion or not.
|
| Conversely, I try _hard_ to exhaust all available documentation
| before I finally go to someone and ask for their assistance. I
| want them to know I 'm serious, so they don't just blow me off.
| And when I do ask for help, I try to make it clear I'm just
| trying to clear a blocker to my understanding, not wasting their
| time.
| hysan wrote:
| What I find scary is that if you work in a sufficiently toxic
| environment/culture for long enough, that very behavior that you
| try to fight against and change begins to seep into your everyday
| actions. I've seen myself go from "positive and helpful" to
| "apathetic and helpful" to "not caring at all" to "chippy,
| negative and unhelpful" before. You hope that this is something
| you can pickup on, but when the culture of a work environment is
| like that, there isn't really anyone to give you feedback and
| catch you from sliding down this slope. Then when you do notice,
| the climb back up just feels so much more overwhelming.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > if you work in a sufficiently toxic environment/culture for
| long enough, that very behavior that you try to fight against
| and change begins to seep into your everyday actions
|
| It can carry through a person's career, too.
|
| I worked for a company that hired a lot of people out of a big
| tech company famous for being a grind, having a lot of PIPs,
| and generally keeping employees in constant fear of losing
| their jobs.
|
| Some of the ex-employees of that company were wonderful to work
| with and appreciated working with us as a breath of fresh air.
|
| However, a lot of them were clearly scarred by their experience
| at a toxic company. The worst of them were constantly in fear
| of being perceived as ranked lower than their peers (even
| though we didn't rank!) and would make a lot of dumb moves to
| try to sabotage other people's reputations. One guy went so far
| as to keep a long Google doc of what he saw as mistakes and
| missteps of his peers and managers, which he would then pull
| from as leverage whenever he thought someone might be a
| candidate for getting promoted past him. Another would have a
| emotional meltdown any time there was an issue with something
| he was accountable for and would rapidly write up a "post-
| mortem" that was really just a narrative that blamed someone
| else for the failure and demonstrated how he fixed it.
|
| We didn't have these problems with high performers we hired
| from anywhere else. It was something about this company that
| chewed people up and left some of them scarred and defensive.
| sneak wrote:
| Which company was it?
|
| Based on what little I know it sounds like this could be
| Apple or Amazon, but I am not in California and don't have
| any direct experience.
| BoonToobies wrote:
| This was definitely a part of why I left my previous job -
| after enough time that stuff really started to leak outside of
| the office too. After a day full of this type of "support"
| where nothing was enough ever the smallest request at home was
| a big challenge. I thought it was burnout (and it probably was
| a bit) and I needed to change careers, but after a few months
| at a new company things are going much better.
| dxuh wrote:
| I can relate so much. I have a coworker that is a lot like the
| coworker described in the submission and I notice myself
| behaving very similarly towards that coworker and it bothers
| me.
| ianai wrote:
| Yes, it's not a great situation and no body's perfect. But so
| long as we're alive we can change for the better, and change is
| arguably a constant in this universe until well off into the
| future (i.e. trillions of years, heat/entropy death of the
| universe stuff). What's even weirder, though, is surviving
| toxic situations can require all sorts of odd "contortions." So
| go easy on yourself and try to identify toxicity early.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| How the conversation also could have went:
|
| Coworker: There are no docs for [this thing you're doing].
|
| You: Yes there is, see this wiki page and the design plan I
| posted in the group.
|
| Coworker: Sorry I missed that, thanks!
| wccrawford wrote:
| I used to answer forum posts quite a lot, and I eventually
| realized something similar:
|
| If the person doesn't tell you what they've already done to try
| to resolve their issue, they probably didn't do _anything_. And
| it 's a waste of my time to try to answer them.
|
| That isn't _always_ true. Sometimes they 're just too lazy to
| type it all out, but that's another uphill battle. It's not my
| job as a random forum viewer to pull all that information out of
| them. It's their job to provide it if they want help.
|
| I answer a lot fewer questions now, but I'm a lot more satisfied
| with the results.
| upofadown wrote:
| There are a surprising number of people in high tech endeavours
| with a very particular form of illiteracy. They can not learn
| things very well by reading longer documents. They always seem to
| get lost along the way. So it is possible that the sort of
| behaviour described in the article is really a cry for help. They
| might need someone to hold them by the hand and lead them to
| understanding.
| Abimelex wrote:
| I'm pretty confident, what it's described here, is a symptom of
| the so called "Halo Effect".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
| fifticon wrote:
| In german, this is sometimes referred to as 'bessermachen', i.e.
| this must/should have 'better made', in some arbitrary way. It is
| all about 'which monkey is in charge here'.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Wow this was timely for me. Literally in multiple versions of the
| described interactions this morning. Two thoughts:
|
| 1. I don't think it's helpful to categorize people. Humans will
| be varying degrees of reasonable/unreasonable for a variety
| reasons and constantly in motion on that spectrum. It's more
| productive, for both selfish and altruistic reasons, to try to
| understand the why of their behavior.
|
| 2. Getting that understanding is hard. Especially over mediums
| that leave out non-verbal communication. But it's really worth
| your time to discern if there is any area where you've
| communicated poorly, so you can improve, AND it's really worth
| your time to recognize when a person has already made up their
| mind and not waste anymore effort trying to change it.
|
| 3. Even when a person has made up their mind beforehand, it might
| be worth your time to try to understand where they're coming
| from, depending on whether you are in a position to simply ignore
| them or not. If you can't ignore them, digging deeper can open up
| your options to get buy-in, or lead to workarounds. Of course,
| very relationship, and situation dependent.
| Azsy wrote:
| I would simply start with: "You have to be more specific" and
| go from there.
|
| And as a warning to your approach: don't take on the job to
| make dysfunctional people function for free. Either communicate
| that you are taking on a burden, or escalate to those whose job
| it is.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Totally agree. Both very good points.
|
| In one instance (literally this morning) "You have to be more
| specific" was exactly my approach and immediately got to the
| core issue. In this case there was nothing to be done about
| it. Our differences are irreconcilable and he's not my
| responsibility.
|
| In that case trying to understand his deeper motivation was
| still helpful. It allowed me to have empathy and us to part
| amicably instead of getting into a shouting match. I consider
| that the best possible outcome.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| I've noticed this as a general pattern, when someone doesn't like
| plan X or doesn't want to do X, but the reason they give is
| bogus. And when you point out why it's bogus, they offer a series
| of other bogus reasons. Sometimes they are ultimately persuaded,
| and sometimes they land on a real reason, and sometimes they just
| wind up saying they just don't like it.
|
| But no matter what, the series of bogus reasons (bogus German:
| vielenscheingrunde) is a waste of everyone's time, and I wonder
| why people do it. Are they just doing it to stall while they wait
| for the hamster wheel in their head to offer up their real
| objection?
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I've seen this with people in my life. Generally, I think it's
| because people have an emotional reaction and cook up some
| reason to justify their feelings. They may have no idea why
| they feel the way they do. Even the people who pride themselves
| on being "logical" do it too.
|
| Other than that, people can also do it because the real reason
| is objectionable and it would make them look or feel bad to
| reveal it.
|
| I've come to the conclusion that there are lots of times you'll
| never get the real reason for someone's choices/behavior
| directly from them.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > Coworker: There are no docs for [this thing you're doing].
|
| > You: Yes there are.
|
| > Coworker: You could make a wiki page.
|
| > You: There _IS_ a wiki page. [finds page, sends link]
|
| Maybe this is just an exaggerated exchange for humour.
|
| But if not, then this would be a very unprofessional way of
| responding to a coworker, even one who is being
| annoying/ignorant. You have to hold yourself to a higher
| standard. An exchange like this only increases toxicity - and, in
| fact, I think that "You" is the more toxic person in the
| exchange.
| draw_down wrote:
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _An exchange like this only increases toxicity - and, in
| fact, I think that "You" is the more toxic person in the
| exchange_
|
| The person acting like a helpless baby is clearly the more
| toxic person. This is someone if, they aren't spoonfed
| everything, will slow down the entire engineering team.
| Secondly, why is "coworker's" assumption that "you" isn't
| acting responsibly? You should start from there, if someone is
| going to treat me like a teenager, why am I the more toxic
| person for spoonfeeding them?
| chasd00 wrote:
| the first line doesn't end with a question mark. If there's no
| question then why respond? Someone saying "there's no docs for
| this" wouldn't get much of a response from me, i would probably
| think they were talking to themself. Someone saying "where's
| the docs for this?" is much more helpful to know what response
| to give.
| steve76 wrote:
| ac50hz wrote:
| +10
|
| An unwillingness to participate fully, or no active awareness or
| experience of actions and consequences can be frustrating and
| potentially dangerous.
|
| In a previous life I employed a type of 3-strikes and you're out
| strategy. A trivial example... Instead of relenting and
| responding to questions of, "What is the URL for xyz?" I reminded
| people that by asking me, they had probably not bookmarked the
| page and that they were now using me as their bookmarking
| service. As a bookmarking service, I offer 3 free URLs then I
| start charging.
|
| Pedantic? Of course. Annoying? Probably, although no less
| annoying and unproductive as asking me.
|
| The result? Some people understand the process, whilst others
| don't. Until, of course, they are the target for these types of
| lazy question.
|
| Life and situations are rarely as simple as this trivial example
| of course, although the introduction of some value payment,
| monetary or some other exchange, sometimes has a surprising
| elucidating effect.
|
| Patience and understanding are clearly essential, irrespective of
| the situation. Perhaps I can gain some insight into their
| apparently unhelpful or destructive behaviour if I can see it
| from their perspective too.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I mean, ok. Sure. But I had a really bad vibe reading the article
| too. Maybe the tone of voice, maybe the "jump off the pier"
| valediction ... My gut feeling is I wouldn't want to work with
| either of the two.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Some people try too hard to be nonconfrontational instead of
| speaking their mind and it can play out like Rachel describes;
| they don't really want to work on or engage with something but
| won't say so. "no" is always fine to say, and they should.
|
| And I agree with her point that if people won't say "no" but
| broadcast it with their actions then it's wise to treat it as a
| "no". "Maybe" is often "no" as well.
| twodave wrote:
| So, sure--there are people who will drill you down into an abyss
| of perceived inadequacy because of something totally unrelated.
| It may be that they don't like you. It could also be that they're
| just having difficulty communicating their values. I find it
| productive in these situations to take a step back and ask a
| question along the lines of, "What are we trying to solve here?"
| I.e. let's cut through the minutiae and call out what the actual
| problem is. Once we've done that, let's work on solving that.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| > Short of fully supplicating yourself before them, you will
| _never_ please them.
|
| Servant leadership is the best tactic in these kind of work
| situations, I believe.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Ehhh. Servant != Supplicant. It's a workable tactic, sure, but
| I would not expect it to actually resolve anything (only
| alleviate symptoms, temporarily).
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| https://workcompass.com/the-cia-guide-from-1944-on-how-to-sa...
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is just somebody blowing you off who probably isn't allowed
| to just ignore you, and they're buying time by sending you on
| errands.
|
| edit: the solution is probably to make clear to others that
| they're blowing you off, maybe by publicly requiring that they
| follow up on the next errand they're sending you on with some
| sort of deliverable on their end.
|
| edit2: and if nobody else cares that they're blowing you off,
| look for another job.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| > Coworker: You should put it in the wiki.
|
| > You: If I put it in the wiki you would have said to put it in
| the group, and if I put it in the group you would have said I
| should have put it in the wiki.
|
| .. Yeah.. It should be in the wiki...
| ilaksh wrote:
| Humans are political animals. That's why most technical
| criticisms are basically just reflections of personal problems
| rather than anything truly rational.
|
| For example, someone who keeps coming up with reasons your tool
| won't work for a particular application, when the real reason is
| that it makes their previous tool less important or replaces it.
|
| I have a client who has a 'trusted partner' (programmer) who does
| not have the skills or time for the scope of the current project.
| Yesterday he was telling the client my new tool doesn't work and
| that there was only three weeks left, so I needed to create a new
| hook to bypass the tool entirely and run a script on my server
| that he writes. The problem is that was nonsense, so I
| demonstrated the whole thing working last night. They require my
| API so they need to use my tool which configures the API (the API
| has always been a way to trigger the tool with certain inputs).
| We discussed this long before.
|
| But basically the guy has done nothing but say that my tools or
| approaches won't work, because they are supplanting his own.
|
| But everything comes down to political BS in this world. That's
| the main thing holding back technology. Idiotic primate
| manipulations.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Manager: You didn't do <x>.
|
| Me: Yes I did, <searches> here it is.
|
| Manager: But you didn't keep me up-to-date that you did it.
|
| Me: Yes I did, here are my weekly (as requested) progress
| e-mails.
|
| Manager: But you know I don't read my e-mail.
|
| Me: #%#&$@#
|
| ----------
|
| Me: Assigns one of my team members task X before I go on
| vacation.
|
| Manager: Reassigns my team member away from doing task X while I
| am on vacation.
|
| Manager: Docks me for task X not being done right after I come
| back from vacation.
|
| Me: #%^!$!@
|
| ---------------
|
| Co-Worker: I don't know how to do <X>
|
| Me: Have you tried the documentation on <X>?
|
| Co-Worker: No.
|
| Me: Well, here it is.
|
| Co-Worker: But it doesn't explain how to do X.Y!
|
| Me: The 2nd line of the documentation for X is a link that has Y
| in the title. Did you try clicking on it?
|
| Co-Worker: I can't find anything!
|
| Me: Did you try clicking the link?
|
| Co-Worker: No.
|
| Manager: You're not helping <Co-Worker>!
|
| Me: #$%@^!&
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I offer my condolences. People shouldn't have to work in that
| kind of environment.
|
| I've been in a place like that. I quit without having another
| job to go to. Such a course of action may not work out for
| everyone, but it worked great for me.
| ukraineally wrote:
| Recently had a co-op who would argue with you about literally
| anything; even if they were literally just wrong.
|
| Something went down, contact X.
|
| Coop: X isn't the same company. It should be Y.
|
| No seriously, same person. Contact either will be same person.
|
| Coop: Same name, different people. I need contact information for
| X.
|
| No seriously, same person.
|
| Coop: I called some absolutely third party and they didnt know
| who I was talking about.
|
| So what are you going to do now? You really need to contact X.
| The sooner the better.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Sometimes people do this subconsciously. Like a manager who's
| been mostly made redundant by other managers, so they roam around
| doing random "managery" things like poking holes in people's
| work, redirecting work, refocusing work, planning pingpong
| championships, rearranging desks to improve the feng shui, etc.
| joshu wrote:
| some people are stop-oriented and some are go-oriented.
|
| i realized that there were a lot of the first at a company i
| worked at when i had a ready-to-go release shut down by legal,
| pr, and some other group all in the same week. if we were
| successful, they get nothing, but if we messed up, they would
| have to stay late.
| motohagiography wrote:
| You're being managed and hustled, that's what managing is in flat
| organizations.
|
| The mistake in the example is that when Coworker (the antagonist)
| came to You (the protagonist) and presented a problem by saying,
| "there's no docs for this," the protagonist answered the question
| in the context of the problem and not the context of the person
| and the relationship.
|
| The Coworker in this case invents problems not because he wants
| solutions, but because he wants You to solve them, and to report
| the result back to _Them_ , and as soon as you tacitly accept
| that relationship by giving them an answer, you have accepted
| that you are obligated to satisfy them, and then they can take
| that to your colleagues and boss and say you aren't satisfying
| them. This is what people mean when they use the term "leverage."
|
| If you are technical, you solve problems, so if you have an
| answer, you give it, and you've solved the problem. What a
| natural manager does is find problems and uses them as leverage
| to extract value and power from them. They aren't problem
| solvers, they are managers, it's a totally different kind of
| mind. Important, but also often predatory and bullying, so take
| care.
|
| When someone comes to you and says, "can I get a status on this?"
| If you give it to them, you have set the precedent that you work
| for them, and they now have leverage and power over you, even
| though the org chart doesn't say they do. It's a pure tactic.
| Since you are generally an agreeable person, it doesn't occur to
| you to treat their question as an act of aggression, and that's
| what they're counting on, because their entire toolkit is based
| on exploiting peoples agreeableness for leverage.
|
| The ability to have the sense to respond to "can I get a status
| on this?" with, "I'm updating my boss with it, and we can loop
| you in after," is a skill to be practised. Sometimes the person
| will just escalate their aggression, and repeat the request, and
| that's when you know you're dealing with an asshole hustler. The
| best way to deal with them is to talk to your boss and say you're
| glad to work on the team, but given the reporting structure, you
| don't make ad hoc commitments across teams because it breaks up
| team alignment and if you are a team lead, it rewards other
| people for interrupting your team members and starting fires.
|
| Short version is, "when I work for you, I will work for you, but
| until then, that request is out of line." The art is in how you
| finesse that sentiment and while making it clear. Antagonist
| Coworker will probably make a scene, try to find people who don't
| like you and complain about how you are "hard to work with," and
| encircle you to push you out, and really, navigating that
| bullshit is 80% of most senior roles that deal with cross
| functional team competition in any mid size org. It's what I
| don't like about "flat" organizations, where it really means that
| this kind of politically aggressive type gets an option on
| everyones time and attention and then gets rewarded for starting
| fires. When we moralize weak leadership skills, we reward
| bullies, and then wonder why our orgs have toxic culture
| problems.
|
| As a consultant who has worked in dozens of organizations,
| there's always one of these people, and you have to deal with
| them as the new kid in school dealing with the insecure bully who
| creates chaos that always seems to put themselves in the center
| of it. Sometimes it's the only tool they have, so they don't
| realize they're doing it and it's just their "personality." It's
| not. It's a tactic they've practised, and to survive in an
| organization, you need to actively respond to it, imo.
| codezero wrote:
| This is a good reason to establish clear written communication
| and to use that as documentation to cover yourself when someone
| is being insidious.
|
| "Let me confirm, you would like X, and that I should post in Y
| for X purpose. Can do!" then when they try to say you should have
| done Z, you just show them what they said and say, I did what we
| agreed to, happy to make adjustments in the future but let's make
| sure to establish a common ground/set expectations up front.
| setgree wrote:
| non-violent communication [0] _and_ sales culture [1] both teach
| us that when someone makes a request, we can either take it at
| face value, or try to understand the underlying need. In Rachel
| 's case, the requests kept on being red herrings, because
| whatever this person's underlying need, it wasn't for the design
| doc to be in the wiki or whatever. A process of discovery might
| have been a better track than continually trying to hit a moving
| target.
|
| Then again, when I've been on the other side of a moving target
| -- when a supervisor kept coming up with things I was doing wrong
| that never quite jelled together -- it was because a decision
| about my continued employment had already been made in principle,
| but no one was acknowledging it head-on for political/legal
| reasons. In that situation, I don't think there's any way to get
| off-script except just to quit, which is exactly what your
| supervisor and HR department are probably hoping for.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263894
|
| [1]
| https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2001/12/03/smallb3...
| michaelbarton wrote:
| +1 for non-violent communication
|
| The "bad" example in the blog post makes me think that the
| persons need might just to be validated about unhappy or
| frustrated they are at work. Someone to listen to them for a
| just few minutes. When I've seen this kind of behaviour in
| others or myself, it's usually because of deadlines, multiple
| blockers, not being able to get forward momentum, along with
| some time pressure.
|
| The difficulties with non-violent communication I've found are:
| a) it's hard to do well. b) you have to be pretty calm and
| grounded yourself. c) it feels like a lot of extra work.
|
| I think it's worth it for important interactions such as with
| partners, family, and good friends.
| RangerScience wrote:
| "When someone makes you the villain, the only thing you can do
| is leave the stage."
| stocktech wrote:
| There's a tangent behavior where people are difficult because it
| gives them power/control. You add just enough interpersonal
| friction and people will do it your way. It's similar to the
| described scenario - nothing is good enough and there's always a
| justification.
|
| I've found it an incredibly hard behavior to manage with no good
| outcomes. People acting in good faith just need to align on the
| allowed variance and the issue's done.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> There 's a tangent behavior where people are difficult
| because it gives them power/control._
|
| Another common one, which I've hit a few times, is that people
| who are being difficult are doing it mainly to get out of doing
| what they've been asked to do, or at least one particular
| detail of it, because they see it as a chore or they are simply
| incapable. They hope that by badgering you for every tiny
| detail, you'll eventually get exasperated and do that step for
| them because it is quicker and easier than dealing with them as
| they do their best not to get it done.
|
| Sometimes management is quite savvy to the problems this causes
| and when reported they deal with it. Though in one example they
| didn't take the matter seriously at all until I was actively
| interviewing for other positions, because one way or another I
| was going to stop having to deal with that person (and the
| overtime I was doing to get my own work finished having spent
| large chunks of time trying to stop him make the project fail).
| This was far from his only flaw as a colleague: having
| massively lied about both ability and experience on his CV
| (which I didn't know about at the time, I was not involved with
| the recruiting) being the big one that was cited officially
| when they got rid of him.
| batmaniam wrote:
| This seems pretty common in our field. There will always be
| people who put down others to try and make themselves look good
| because that's how every corporate culture is incentivized to
| run. I have not seen any serious attempts to address core issues
| like this at any company. HR only reacts to protecting the
| business, and that means retaliation for speaking up usually,
| especially if the bad coworker is a boss favorite.
|
| Also, managers will blame you even if you bring up an issue, but
| it's not slated into the sprint. Then when the issue blows up in
| production, they'll say you should have worked faster to address
| it previously when it was noted, or that you should have placed
| more emphasis on it during the sprint planning when really, the
| final decision wasn't in your control in the first place. I've
| seen this happen on my teams in the past.
|
| Tech is just all around toxic, and these things happen quiet
| frequently at larger companies.
| hangonhn wrote:
| I totally know that feeling. This is why I really cherish my
| current, by now 3 years old, job because sort of the opposite
| exists here. In fact, if I forget sometimes or make a mistake, my
| coworkers are more likely to fix it for me in the wiki or docs
| than they are to use it to complain or stop me from doing
| something. Working in a helpful and collaborative environment has
| had an enormous quality of life improvement for me. It is also
| the most productive teams I've ever worked on. I'm not writing
| this to gloat or anything but offer up something I didn't know
| before working here: Don't just hire for talent; do not hire
| jerks no matter how good they are as individuals. Software
| engineering is an inherently collaborative venture. When building
| an engineering team, really do build a team instead of a
| collection of individuals. It's fine for engineers to be critical
| but don't just stop there. Find fault but also offer up a
| solution to help the project move forward. I can't work in the
| type of environment the author described anymore. Now that I know
| functional, collaborative teams exist I will always want to be on
| one.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Agreed. A brilliant jerk is definitely worse than a below
| average good person. I can deal with lazy, I can deal with lack
| of skill, I can deal with lack of education. Jerks or liars,
| though, they're net negatives, sometimes greatly so.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| I think programming attracts a certain type of perfectionist
| and controlling personality that has trouble admitting that
| nothing is ever going to be perfect. It's basically narcissism
| where the only source of truth is whatever this person says it
| is, and they judge other people for not doing things the same
| way they would.
|
| In reality no documentation is ever complete and all code has
| major flaws. Using that to tear down other people and raise
| yourself up is counter productive to everyone.
| uoaei wrote:
| Colloquially those people are called "bullshitters", mired in
| _rationalization_ that is dressed up as _rationality_.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Should add that this sort of character may or may not be a
| competent engineer, so not only the competent type who makes
| stringent demands for perfection, but also the incompetent
| type who fights tooth and nail to maintain the status quo
| that they have a grasp on and feel empowered by.
| switchbak wrote:
| That sums up pretty well how I acted right out of school.
| Immature, controlling, impatient and off putting. It took a
| lot of humble reflection to see that I was being a pain in
| the ass, and to take the steps to be a better team mate.
|
| In my case it didn't help that our Dev manager was
| insufferable himself, but that's no excuse.
|
| Now people complain that I'm not assertive enough, go figure
| :)
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Indeed, perfect is the enemy of good! Once worked with a
| purist (think uber-perfectionist) and there is just no way to
| handle that. Somewhat related, managers often think things
| are more simple than they really are, it takes a lot of
| effort to make them understand.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'm painfully aware of this type of developer. Usually they
| really are very smart and talented, which is what allows them
| to act this way. In my experience, they are initially
| respected, then they eventually lose that through constant
| conflict and then leave with a bad reputation.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Attributes of developers always include Hubris and Laziness.
| There are lots of startup-born developers who are not
| perfectionist by any means.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I tend to think people like this are just looking for an excuse
| not to work. My approach is to either facilitate them or force
| them to do more work.
|
| If I decide to facilitate their not doing work, I would say
| "Yeah, I think there are docs for this. I'm in the middle of
| something, but give me an hour or so and I'll email you the
| link." Then, I'll forget about it. If they really need to know
| they'll come back and ask again.
|
| If I decide to disincentivize them by making it more work for
| them to ask me for work I'd go along the lines of - "That's great
| feedback. Why don't you take notes of all the issues you have
| with the wiki while you're working on your thing. When you're
| done, update the wiki so the next person to use it can benefit
| from what you find. Thanks."
| phamilton wrote:
| I've been thinking a lot about "Yes, and..."
|
| For anyone not familiar, a guideline in improv is to avoid saying
| `Yes, but...` and instead say `Yes, and...`.
|
| While maybe not using those exact words, I find that when I
| disagree with someone at work I can either set myself up in
| opposition with them or I can work with them to get to the
| desired state.
|
| "Is this the doc you are looking for?" "Yes, but why isn't this
| in the wiki?" vs "Yes, and let's add a link to it in the wiki".
|
| It's a very simple shift, but it really makes a difference in
| collaboration.
| omoikane wrote:
| Sounds like: "I have a specific protocol for interacting with me,
| and you did not follow my protocol."
|
| Some possible responses to that:
|
| - "How was I supposed to know this the only way to get your
| attention? It's your fault for not publishing your protocol."
|
| - "I have tried to get your attention in exactly the ways you
| prescribed, and it's your fault for not responding to any of
| them."
|
| - "Your protocol is unreasonable and I have escalated to
| management to discuss better means of interaction."
|
| - "Oops sorry, let me try that next time."
| bombcar wrote:
| This sounds a lot like the difference between communicating with
| a subordinate and with a superior (and those "on your level"
| often behave as superiors).
| macksd wrote:
| This is therapeutic to read - I've been on the receiving end of
| this a lot. Once I even had someone go about 5 levels deep.
|
| "We should have a doc for this process."
|
| "We do - here's the link."
|
| "I couldn't find this - it should be linked more prominently."
|
| "It's the first link when you go to the docs page."
|
| "It didn't warn me about this tricky part."
|
| "There's a warning at the top."
|
| "It should be more prominent, bold and in red."
|
| "It is bold and in red. [sends screenshot]"
|
| "Oh okay, thank you..."
| nomel wrote:
| What's a good way to handle people like this? I generally put
| them on my "shit list", and actively minimize interactions, but
| this doesn't seem ideal. Does anyone have a more positive
| approach?
| macksd wrote:
| It could come off as a little snarkier than I would like to
| be, but as soon as someone says something should have been
| documented better I ask them where they think I should have
| put said document. Then I ask them if they looked there
| before asking me. 9 times out of 10 the answer is no, and
| it's then obvious to them that if I had already done exactly
| what they're asking of me, they still would have come and
| asked me.
|
| Sometimes people have a point and something should be
| documented better. Especially if I've been asked twice, it's
| worth documenting better. And I would welcome their input on
| where and how that should be done. But those are the people
| are being constructive.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > It could come off as a little snarkier than I would like
| to be, but as soon as someone says something should have
| been documented better I ask them where they think I should
| have put said document.
|
| I think the point of the article is that for these people,
| the answer will always be "whatever I can find that shows
| my opponent is wrong." So, if the doc was supposed to be in
| the shared drive, they will say "the shared drive." If it
| is in the shared drive already, they will say "It also
| should be linked in the Wiki." If it is linked in the Wiki,
| they will say "You should also have sent an E-mail to the
| team-announce@ list." If you did do that, they will say "It
| would be helpful if it were listed in this Team Resources
| doc." and on and on and on. And, when they finally find
| some thing that you didn't do, you say "OK, I will do [that
| thing] too." and they will come back with the passive
| aggressive "Well, don't do it because I told you to do it.
| I want you to understand why!" I worked with a manager like
| this and it was infuriating. Every conversation's goal was
| to conclude that I was wrong in some way, no matter how
| much prep I did.
| renewiltord wrote:
| "That's a pretty good idea. Would you mind fixing it?"
|
| Assuming you mean that in good faith you'll be okay. It's all
| tone, so believe it first.
| ok_coo wrote:
| I will often ask them to do/assist in, the thing they think
| is missing or needs to be done. Sometimes this actually works
| and you can work positively together, often not though.
|
| Typically, asking them to do any additional work gets met
| with silence and a few days/weeks of being left along by this
| person. i.e. minimizing future interactions.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| What? A coworker did these things? Saying that information is not
| clear, whatever you try? How 'bout if your project manager
| behaves like this. Because of a combination of being incompetent
| and trying to cover that up by shifting blame. Well that's the
| situation I'm currently in right now and it is very stressful, it
| feels there's nowhere out, apart from updating your LinkedIn
| profile...
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| I was in this exact situation together with many colleagues.
| Just leave. It sucks that you have to leave what you've
| invested, but it's a fallacy to think that it will get better.
| The project manager needs to be punished and you need to find a
| better job.
|
| Take it slowly and rationally though. Do not give them any hint
| that you are leaving at all and start a slow powerful search
| for your next adventure. My number one tip? Make sure you get a
| good manager which is both good to you as well as in control of
| their immediate environment meaning so that they make sure you
| can keep your sanity as well.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Indeed you are right! A month ago or so I had a one on one
| talk with him and explained that i felt targeted by him. I
| also gave him some examples of why I felt like that. He acted
| as if he had no idea, and said I was mistaken and gave some
| explanation that did not fully convince me. But it helped for
| a while though... he was more friendly up until a few weeks
| ago when things got rough. People's true nature doesn't
| change. I'm now convinced he is not to be trusted and does
| not have the courage to stand up for his people towards
| higher management, who seem to be using him as a puppet. I
| have to thank you for your tips! Thing is, you might start
| out with a good boss but positions can change quickly within
| a company. Luckily the job market is on our side. At least
| all the hard work resulted in new knowledge and skills.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| Get out while you can!
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Thanks! I will be dusting off my resume this evening and pimp
| it to the latest status. It is so sad, since I get along with
| most coworkers really well, and enjoy working with them. They
| even vouched for me but management seems not to understand
| the situation.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| I mean, it's kinda always been that way. There's this skill cliff
| you get to between power user and operator where you know enough
| to solve easy problems but getting all the information you need
| to put it together into something useful requires non-trivial
| effort. And you go through that cliff every time you take on a
| new project.
|
| If you want to put together a self-hosted Spotify alternative,
| for instance, one of the first and most attractive things I found
| was mpd. I put a whole bunch of time into working out how to
| containerify it so I could run it on my cluster in order to find
| out why nobody else put in the work, mpd isn't designed to and
| has no functionality to serve music over a network. It's there to
| run a local music player. It was written in an era before Spotify
| and had no idea that was going to be something people would want
| to do.
|
| And you can find online thread after thread of people asking how
| to do this with mpd and getting answers that aren't satisfying.
| It leads them to get on a forum themselves and ask themselves, in
| order to get the same unsatisfying answer.
|
| It takes time and experience before you can figure out such
| things at a glance just by seeing other conversations about it.
| Time before you learn you need to read the available docs
| _carefully_ because the answer you 're seeking is very very
| probably in there already.
|
| Nobody's born with this kind of patience but working on tech
| stuff long enough will eventually beat it into you.
|
| It's just that more and more people are starting out and so
| online is simply dominated by these people.
| [deleted]
| ankit219 wrote:
| Posts and comments like this scare me.Not being a social person,
| while talking to others, my worst nightmare is when I ask someone
| a question, and they already have some presumptions about why I
| am asking that, and I would occasionally end up being scolded and
| not even know why.
|
| In this case, because I asked about not being able to find the
| docs, I am already a hater because of the line of conversation
| others have had already.
| evandale wrote:
| The easiest way to not be that person is to tell people what
| you've done already followed by your problem. Instead of
|
| > Coworker: There are no docs for [this thing you're doing].
|
| Say
|
| > "I looked at company.xyz/wiki/app/docs and don't see the docs
| for [this thing you're doing]. Can you help me find them?"
|
| I'm way more understanding if someone has given an attempt to
| solve their problem but failed and are now coming to me. If you
| come out the gate with "facts" I know aren't true like [x
| doesn't exist] or [y isn't working] I'm more likely to be
| annoyed at you.
| sneak wrote:
| Asking for docs, or where the docs are, is not the same as
| asserting that there are no docs (which implies the author has
| not done their job).
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| Not at all! As I take it, the sentiment being expressed is
| against an individual who repeatedly, over the course of time,
| critiques and accuses without making an attempt to bridge the
| gap of understanding on their end.
|
| For instance, in the article "There are no docs for [this thing
| you're doing]" would be significantly better posed as a
| question. "Where can I find documentation for [this thing
| you're doing]?"
|
| You can tell the author's frustrations aren't one off, from: "
| Basically, with them, something's always wrong, and if you
| refute their points, they will pivot to find something else.
| This will go on for a while" and I think this is the general
| sentiment.
|
| Everyone takes an accusatory tone now and then, or has a bad
| day, or whatever, but if you're doing it consistently and
| refuse to be pleased that's when it becomes "hater behavior"
| RangerScience wrote:
| One large tip, one small tip:
|
| 1) Talk therapy can also just be "social interaction tutoring".
| 10/10 would recommend
|
| 2) "There aren't any docs" is accusatory and aggressive because
| it's about them / their work. "I couldn't find the docs" isn't,
| because it's about yourself. (Edit) ""Where can I find
| documentation for [this thing you're doing]?" (thanks @
| rattlesnakedave!) then goes the next step by actively inviting
| assistance.
|
| 2a) Tone definitely matters / helps, but that's a lot harder to
| coach / communicate over text.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I appreciate that on point 2 you add the question "Can you
| help?" I find it upsetting when people make a statement and
| you have to infer that it's a request for help.
|
| I had a boss who would often send Slack messages stating
| something like "[Coworker] is on vacation today" or "The
| release is out" or "Our sales are down today". It was always
| some statement with no reason for me to think that he wants
| me to do something. Of course, I assumed he wanted me to do
| something or else he wouldn't have contacted me. Then I had
| to dig out of him what he expected of me.
|
| For everyone reading this: If you want help, please make an
| explicit request and make it as specific as possible.
|
| It may interest you to scroll through your chat logs with
| other people to see how much you or other people do what my
| old boss did (i.e. make a statement and expect someone to
| know what you want done). I just review the logs with my
| current boss and was pleased to see none of my previous
| boss's behavior from me or him. I did, however see that kind
| of behavior from one of my coworkers.
| ttymck wrote:
| I did not read that same interpretation of the article. The
| first question was not the problem, but the sum of the
| incessant questions. Sure, the first question can be a good
| indicator for what is to follow, but I would politely suggest
| not letting this article stoke your confirmation bias.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It's one thing to be trying to act in a constructive manner but
| lack some social graces. It's another thing to be a person who
| expresses hostility by being unreasonable and difficult.
|
| I think this article is about the latter, not the former.
| Consider that a person with highly polished social skills can
| still be hostile and difficult. In fact, they can be worse
| because they can use those skills to create the illusion that
| they aren't doing anything wrong.
| mrexroad wrote:
| > "expresses hostility by being unreasonable and difficult"
|
| Sadly I've seen well-intending ASD/Asperger's folks be
| written off as hostile. It's a tricky balance to build
| culture of positivity without blocking neurodivergent folks
| from amplifying a team with their unique gifts.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to tell when someone is genuinely
| curious/unknowledgeable/whatever vs. when they're just hunting
| for something they can complain about (or something they can
| use to fire you, if that's the power dynamic). Another comment
| here brings up a waiting tables analogy which I think is really
| great. Asking for 3 things at once (parallel) is much different
| than asking for 3 things separately (serial).
|
| And truthfully, any question that shows you've actually looked
| for whatever you need helps 99% of the time.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I notice a difference in response from
| the author that I personally try to avoid. To me these two
| things:
|
| > There are no docs for [this thing you're doing].
|
| And:
|
| > Coworker: I have (specific concern) about [thing you're doing].
| I couldn't find anything about it in that group post or on the
| wiki.
|
| Would receive a somewhat similar response. Sure it's annoying
| when people can't find something, or when they don't bother
| looking, but we also work in a field where someone might ask you
| something in a very hostile sounding way simply because they
| aren't very skilled socially.
|
| Telling them "yes there is", sort of escalates the conflict in my
| book and while it's totally understandable (and I'll do this
| myself on my less good days) it's also just asking for things to
| go south. Which is something I have learned not to waste time on.
|
| If they continue being hostile after you respond openly, helpful
| and defusing, then sure, they can go fuck themselves. Just be
| sure that you use the corporate-speak fuck you instead of what
| you actually want to say to keep your hands clean.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Valid, but thats not the point of the article. The point of the
| article was broad vs specific and people having a predefined
| outcome for a conversation.
|
| i.e. Q: There are no docs for home page redesign. A: They are
| right here
|
| Q: I have question about the color choice of the header on home
| page redesign. I couldn't find anything about it in that group
| post or on the wiki. A: Ah, yeah sorry, it is buried here. If
| it's still not clear, let's have a chat about it.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Telling them "yes there is", sort of escalates the conflict
| in my book and while it's totally understandable (and I'll do
| this myself on my less good days) it's also just asking for
| things to go south. Which is something I have learned not to
| waste time on.
|
| no kidding. if you're going to be that abrupt, then just send
| them a link to the docs as the sole response.
|
| i usually also ask "where did you try looking for it, so that i
| can put links there?". and then i put links there.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| > i usually also ask "where did you try looking for it, so
| that i can put links there?". and then i put links there.
|
| This is a seriously helpful move. When I remember to, if it
| takes me a while to find a link I will go back to the first
| place I looked for it and then add a link there.
|
| And similarly, if I forget the password to something, after
| going through the password reset process I set the new
| password to the first thing I tried to guess initially, since
| apparently that's the password I already have in my head.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I learned a similar lesson in a simpler form when waiting tables.
|
| Some people will run you ragged, asking for more napkins, then
| when you return with them, more ketchup, then when you return
| with that, there's an issue with the food, then so on and so on.
|
| If you don't check yourself, you will actually leave your other
| tables without any of their basics, or their food will get cold
| waiting in the window, because you've developed tunnel vision to
| please this one needy table.
|
| Sometimes things really do stack up, but there are strategies to
| avoid or deal with that. These strategies will fail with the
| Truly Needy table. And then they won't tip well, or at all.
|
| I learned it's better to deprioritize that table and pay the
| normal amount of attention to everyone else. Better for those all
| to tip at a standard rate and give them a good experience than to
| let one group drag down the whole floor.
|
| That super needy table didn't need half the things they asked for
| anyways. Those napkins are sitting there unused when they leave.
| The glass of water they asked you to fill at halfway is still
| almost full. Life goes on.
| endymi0n wrote:
| This resonates a lot with me. Early on, I had a good mentor
| when going into a leadership position who basically told me:
| "Screw the biblical saying about the sick who need the doctors.
| Try to spend 80% of your time with the good ones. You'll have
| more fun and be more productive"
|
| It sounded very harsh and emotionally wrong at the time, but
| I've learned the hard way that at least for the purpose of
| building a working team and business, he was spot on.
|
| As a lead, I've learned my most precious resource is my time
| and attention and one thing I didn't realize until very
| recently is that I'm rewarding the high performers by spending
| it on them.
|
| But negative attention is attention as well, and if my team
| gets the impression I'm rewarding the ones who don't pull their
| own weight with excessive nurturing and pampering, they will
| get demotivated and eventually move on.
|
| This is still distinct from abandoning, as I try my best to
| give everyone an equal chance to get started. But I've
| regretted more than once investing heavily into employees who
| ended up quitting anyway over their perceived complaints.
|
| Wanters will always find a way. Not-wanters will always find a
| reason.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > I learned a similar lesson in a simpler form when waiting
| tables.
|
| This is something everyone should be required to do. Try to
| last a month at it. I sure couldn't. But I'll be damned if it
| didn't make me 1000x more considerate towards just about
| everyone. We all have a choice whether to cause a fuss over
| stuff that hardly matters, or whether we blame someone for
| circumstances outside their control. There's no clearer way to
| see these problems and decide what kind of person you're going
| to be than there is from the ground level.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I'm of the opinion that everyone should work a bottom level
| customer facing role at least once.
|
| In high school I worked at a pizza place and it would not be
| an exaggeration to say it opened my eyes to a _lot_ of
| things.
|
| I'm very glad I worked there.
| duxup wrote:
| I worked at a place that had a customer ... it was Walmart.
|
| They bought some equipment, captured the imagination of the
| sales team with stories of massive purchases, bought one
| moderate purchase and then for over a year RAN OVER the support
| team in an effort to get what they wanted. Problem was they
| wanted the world and bought an island of equipment, and claimed
| we should provide them free the appropriate equipment because
| they might just buy more.
|
| Their IT staff was so unprofessional / prone to delivering
| insults rather than providing data I started hanging up on
| them. Fortunately my boss was supportive. This was an
| environment where we never had abusive customers, stressed
| customers but no personal attacks.
|
| Finally someone got in the CEO's ear and demonstrated how much
| time and money we were throwing at a customer who was not
| happy, would not buy the appropriate equipment, and had never
| paid a dime on their support contracts. He cut them off.
|
| Total waste of time and money dealing with Walmart. Nearly 20
| years later now when old coworkers get together folks say they
| still won't shop there because of the calls they took...
|
| If the customer is always angry, sometime the best thing is for
| everyone to move on.
|
| We actually had some other customers we did that with where
| they were invited to move on (we supported them in the meantime
| of course).
|
| For some of those customers after they realized the lay of the
| land moving to other systems, they came back and things were
| good (not Walmart).
| derac wrote:
| Hah, I had exactly the same experience with Wal-Mart when
| working at an enterprise software company about 2-3 years
| ago. They scheduled a weekly meeting with a top support
| member and constantly asked for changes to the software.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > If you don't check yourself, you will actually leave your
| other tables without any of their basics, or their food will
| get cold waiting in the window, because you've developed tunnel
| vision to please this one needy table.
|
| _o /~ I guess it's true what they say about the squeaky wheel
| / always getting the grease o/~_
|
| -- James Taylor
| winternett wrote:
| > I learned it's better to deprioritize that table and pay the
| normal amount of attention to everyone else. Better for those
| all to tip at a standard rate and give them a good experience
| than to let one group drag down the whole floor.
|
| The correct business response is to petition management to
| staff more accordingly so that no table has to be de-
| prioritized (going by the book on customer service)... Also
| other measures can be taken, like stocking napkin dispensers
| and condiments on tables so that trivial requests don't over-
| burden staff.
|
| Applying attention rules to customers is a hallmark of bad
| customer service environments, while people are already paying
| a set price on the goods and/or service a restaurant delivers
| that should be planned for by management properly. A bad
| customer service environment only serves to ruin business.
|
| If we create rules like this for how to deal with customers,
| based on assumptions about them, it can also wrongfully
| reinforce bias and discourage customers from returning which
| often drives even some of the most popular businesses (Denny's
| for example) down.
|
| Management too often plays the training tape for employees
| without reading their own training book properly.
| Permit wrote:
| You have misunderstood the article. The problem wasn't the
| lack of napkins, the lack of ketchup or a problem with the
| food. The problem is with the customer. Even if you got all
| of those things correct, they would be upset with some other
| aspect of their service. If you had brought everything out
| ahead of time they would have complained "Why have you put so
| many things on my table? I never asked for any of this!"
|
| This isn't a staffing issue.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Nah, working with the public enough shows you some people are
| never satisfied. The "Correct business response" may be to
| completely cut people like that. Your definition seems to
| rotate around your personal morality rather than profit
| motives or even other people's wants and needs.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Some customers are actually just really awful and you don't
| want them to come back.
|
| As management "staff" are also your customers and you want to
| serve them as well.
| cassepipe wrote:
| As a former waiter I agree with both OP and you. Yes there
| are people that are difficult to deal with, and yes a system
| ought to account for that possibility. It's funny how that is
| playing itself all over again over a varieties of issues
| where people seem to be holding opposing views where in fact
| they don't have to be. Proponent of better systems can
| acknowledge indivual's flaws without renouncing to reforms.
| Morals-oriented people can acknowledge that shaming and or
| moral postures do not actually work without having to
| renounce to their feelings.
|
| Of course here, it's about economics. Better overworking
| employees rather than paying one more salary. That is the
| economic incentive is stronger than the "aim at the most
| efficient system" one.
| giaour wrote:
| > Also other measures can be taken, like stocking napkin
| dispensers and condiments on tables so that trivial requests
| don't over-burden staff.
|
| Condiments and napkin dispensers on the table are hallmarks
| of fast casual and otherwise down-market restaurants, aren't
| they? Last time I waited tables, I had a few customers like
| the ones the GP described, and the best you could do was give
| them whatever time you could spare _after_ giving your other
| tables the attention and service you would normally give. If
| I had asked the chef /owner to put ketchup bottles on every
| table, I would have gotten a long lecture on the joys of fine
| dining and the importance of maintaining a luxurious
| atmosphere.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The correct business response is to petition management to
| staff more accordingly so that no table has to be de-
| prioritized (going by the book on customer service)... Also
| other measures can be taken, like stocking napkin dispensers
| and condiments on tables so that trivial requests don't over-
| burden staff.
|
| Not so sure. Trying to accommodate the worst case customer
| seems a fools game. You're suggesting escalation, from
| running the server around to running the management around
| (and more work overall). Adding napkin dispensers at the
| tables may go against the entire aesthetic they're looking
| for, while not doing anything about the ketchup, water, and
| other frivolous requests.
|
| >> If we create rules like this for how to deal with
| customers, based on assumptions about them...
|
| There is no choice but to make assumptions about them (even
| just a generic model of a customer) unless you want to form
| some kind of relationship with them, which is not really
| possible in a restaurant setting (with the exception of
| regulars). Besides, the idea of simply deprioritizing them is
| quite sound - keep the other customers happy but don't
| deliberately insult the difficult one. You can not please
| everyone, so have rules that allow you to please the majority
| and let the others go.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The correct business response is to petition management to
| staff more accordingly so that no table has to be de-
| prioritized (going by the book on customer service)... Also
| other measures can be taken, like stocking napkin dispensers
| and condiments on tables so that trivial requests don't over-
| burden staff.
|
| Nonsense. Such customers are a huge cost and will always find
| reasons to overburden services.
|
| The correct business response is to find ways to identify and
| eliminate them as customers, but that is rarely possible, so
| barring that you absolutely have to limit them to avoid their
| power of nuisance.
|
| They are _not_ people you can satisfy, or even want to:
| doubling staffing requirements in case one of those head
| cases swings by is not affordable.
|
| > Applying attention rules to customers is a hallmark of bad
| customer service environments
|
| That's exactly what you're advocating for, and what GP is
| advocating against.
| throwmamatrain wrote:
| There is theory, and there is practice.
|
| If you do this kind of work, sometimes you will meet people
| that are completely unreasonable and there is no satisfying
| them.
|
| Try working at a Toys R Us at Christmas and get shouted down
| by a parent because you ran out of the hot thing that season.
| For a concrete example, it was Tickle Me Elmo for me. It is
| not your fault, or the business' fault, but you can reset
| assured you will be the lightning rod for this.
|
| As for serving, you can bet the people causing the most
| trouble are the least likely to tip. And at BEST they will
| tip nominally. There is some division that I don't understand
| between certain diners and servers that these diners consider
| their servers to not be their peers.
|
| The customer is not always right, the entitlement of
| customers is off the charts in the past ten years.
| Expectations of online shopping applied to real life are very
| extreme. "I just want to have a good experience" style
| reasoning, when sometimes, things just don't go your way, and
| that is life. Deprioritizing a table is a survival strategy,
| to keep the plates moving.
|
| How we solve this, I don't know, but I would say top down
| thinking is assuming that customers are 100% rational all the
| time, and I can assure you from the trenches it is not.
| edude03 wrote:
| I upvoted your comment however I disagree with the first part
| of your statement - it's not an assumption when you see
| "abuse of service" happening already.
|
| If you had a client that insisted on uploading terabytes of
| data to your small "unlimited" text storage app, you'd likely
| tell them to knock it off, instead of buying more servers.
| This is a similar case
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Without attention rules you're constantly rewarding people
| who seek out unneeded attention. You need to give employees
| an out when they perceive someone is abusing their
| attentiveness.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| I really have a hard time believing that you have actually
| worked in a job that requires customer service. The way you
| frame your argument is divorced from the reality of these
| kinds of jobs.
|
| This poster isn't doing bad customer service.i have no idea
| how you got that idea. What they're doing is stoping one bad
| customer from ruining other customer's experiences!
|
| The customer is not always right.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> The customer is not always right._
|
| One of my favorite daily visits, is a site called "Not
| Always Right," and it has many stories like this:
| https://notalwaysright.com/newest/
| sumtechguy wrote:
| 'acts of gord' was always amusing too.
| winternett wrote:
| People who deal effectively and positively with difficult
| customers often find the best success in business, and
| endure best through bad economies.
|
| If you understand human nature, you also understand that
| sometimes people are just having a bad day, or feeling
| ignored, or on their last leg.
|
| Ignoring, or being dismissive to, any paying customer is
| simply bad business. If a company does that as a practice,
| they're probably in the wrong business.
|
| An employee that thinks ignoring customers is a good
| practice likely ends up working in customer service at
| Comcast as the pinnacle of their career.
|
| Those are not just my words, they're words from the bible
| of doing good business, and a lot of successful CEOs and
| business people would agree, except for the CEO of comcast
| perhaps.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| > If you understand human nature, you also understand
| that sometimes people are just having a bad day, or
| feeling ignored, or on their last leg.
|
| A more thorough analysis of human nature reveals that a
| double-digit percentage of humanity suffers from a
| serious personality disorder. Some of these disorders
| involve taking perverse pleasure in ordering others
| around for no good reason.
|
| Most experienced wait staff that I know can tell the
| difference pretty quickly between someone having a bad
| day and a bully. The latter do not deserve good customer
| service.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| While it's true that putting up with overly-difficult
| people can be good for business, this creates a race-to-
| the-bottom situation and there's no reason it shouldn't
| change. Someone's bad day is never an excuse for abusing
| service workers.
|
| For what it's worth, I was a service employee who
| deprioritized these people and I can tell you I'm
| certainly not working customer service at Comcast now-a-
| days... which is a reference I don't even understand (I
| know what Comcast is but ya...).
|
| Tangentially, I feel that there should be a form of
| conscription where everyone is forced to work at year or
| two of customer service in their teens. While I'm sure it
| wouldn't discourage everyone from being a prick, it could
| certainly help.
| leetcrew wrote:
| different tiers of restaurants come with different implicit
| SLAs. you don't get to monopolize the attention of one out of
| three employees working at a pizza place just because you
| spent $3 on a slice of pizza. the restaurant simply can't
| afford to appease this kind of customer. if it's a fancy
| restaurant where you're paying $100+ per person, things are
| different.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Another solution is "fire the bad customers". You can't do
| that in a literal restaurant while a party is eating, but in
| most businesses, there's a slice of your customer base that
| isn't profitable to serve, never will be, and when you find
| them rather than staffing up to serve them, consider sending
| them away.
|
| If you can gift them to a competitor, you can double the win.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Another solution is "fire the bad customers". You can't
| do that in a literal restaurant while a party is eating
|
| You can absolutely do that in a literal restaurant while a
| party is eating, though that's normally for customers who
| harass and disrupt other patrons, not karens.
| dspillett wrote:
| The super needy table may not be likely to tip well no matter
| how much you bend over for them anyway. Though they are
| unfortunately also the most likely to leave exaggerated (or
| even half or more completely made up) bad reviews over the
| smallest detail that they see as having been wrong.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Which is why people who know people know that reviews are
| largely useless.
| sneak wrote:
| Unfortunately for restaurateurs this isn't most people, as
| reviews are prominently displayed on search results.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I disagree - but negative reviews certainly almost always
| are.
| rhacker wrote:
| Well, if you're talking about a 4.4 restaurant, they are
| probably meaningless. There's probably a couple of TRUE
| negative reviews in there.
|
| If the restaurant is a 3.1, then yeah, try to find a
| different place - there IS hair in the food, the
| cockroaches are real and the waitress DID stick the
| hotdog up the you know what.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm talking about actually reading the reviews, not
| looking at the average.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I find the negative reviews the most useful, not
| individually, but in aggregate. If several people
| complain about the same thing, it might actually be an
| issue. A well written and thoughtful negative review can
| also contain useful information. If the negative reviews
| all seem to be random bitching, however, I know the
| place/product/service is probably fine.
| ivberrOg wrote:
| Is this really a thing? I know that I'm much more likely
| to share a negative experience and completely forget a
| positive.. I'd always assumed we were all like that!
| mst wrote:
| I suspect it works out kinda like wikipedia/reddit/etc.
| being mostly written by a small number of people with
| high output volume.
| gnicholas wrote:
| As a startup founder, I've realized that people who send very
| angry missives are usually people who can be very strong
| advocates. Although it can be tough to bite my tongue and not
| respond sharply to someone who sends a profanity-laced email,
| it's definitely the right thing to do.
|
| Nearly everyone who curses in their first email will
| apologize upon receiving an email from the founder. They were
| probably just having a bad day and assumed that $Company was
| some corporate powerhouse trying to nickel and dime their
| customers.
|
| There's about 5% of people who persist in nastiness.
|
| But almost everyone ends up being happy about the
| interaction, many end up renewing their subscriptions, and
| some will even email other companies asking them to integrate
| our technology. Sometimes the root of the frustration was
| that our service didn't work better with other platforms,
| which is something we can't control on our own.
|
| So having these very excitable folks sending emails on our
| behalf can be a powerful thing. It just requires biting your
| tongue instead of replying in the heat of the moment!
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Having worked in a few startups and waited tables, I'm
| confident the angry tech customers are not the same people
| who are demanding in a restaurant. It sounds similar but
| you're talking about entirely different people.
|
| The angry tech customer generally cares about a problem
| they're trying to solve. The demanding restaurant patron is
| focused on the feeling of exercising power over someone
| subservient to them.
|
| Any overlap between those groups of people is random.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > There's about 5% of people who persist in nastiness.
|
| The thing with real stores is that all the assholes are
| from this group. The ones that are having a bad day may
| react badly to something, but do not go out of their way to
| create problems.
|
| What means that real stores have many fewer problem
| customers. But they can't count on them changing either.
| Talanes wrote:
| Yeah, the population of angry people that public-facing
| workers have to deal with is different than the group who
| writes angry emails that reach the founder. Immediate
| reactionary anger vs focused and articulated anger.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yeah, change is harder when the timeframe is limited. I
| can reply to an email a couple hours later, when someone
| might be in a different mood. In a store, there's much
| less time for a change of attitude.
| trimbo wrote:
| I've been in food service so I know the pain of horrible
| customers (pizza delivery!). But, IME, that situation where a
| waiter must go back and forth is sometimes of the waiter's own
| doing.
|
| Ex: The waiter only hears the first person at the table and
| then runs off before anyone else can speak. Or, they only bring
| one thing asked for and forget the rest. Or, they outsource
| bringing the things to someone else and those people do not
| bring them, and the waiter never checks again.
|
| From the waiter's perspective, the customer seems unreasonable,
| but when making that assessment, they are _missing
| information_.
|
| Tying this back to the article, people aren't perfect at
| expressing things. When this design doc situation arises, it
| really is on the author to figure out why that person objects
| no matter how it's approached. Fresh ideas are often hard to
| express and for people to process. Sometimes the objector just
| has a lingering sense the design isn't right but it's not quite
| identifiable yet. Obviously, sometimes they are unreasonable,
| but starting there unless they act like the perfectly logical
| person in the second example is a bad idea.
|
| TL;DR: in all situations, it's best to try to identify the
| source of whatever's going on, not immediately assume a person
| is unreasonable.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > When this design doc situation arises, it really is on the
| author to figure out why that person objects no matter how
| it's approached. Fresh ideas are often hard to express and
| for people to process
|
| Sure, I think I would do that for one or two rounds. But at
| some point I realize this is just someone who is being
| willfully ignorant or lazy and trying to make it seem like
| it's my fault.
| mst wrote:
| Also, somebody starting with "this has no documentation"
| rather than "where's the documentation?" is probably a
| fairly reliable heuristic as to where things are going to
| end up.
| Kluny wrote:
| Plus, you're not getting a decent tip from them no matter how
| hard you try.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Not necessarily true. I know people who are like this when
| they are out because they just like attention and they are
| willing to pay for it.
| prpl wrote:
| as a curveball, however, I would imagine those who are most
| self-entitled are also more likely to be yelp elite or yelpers
| in general
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Fortunately, for restaurants and perhaps for everything, I
| don't seem to notice anybody caring about yelp reviews or
| ratings anymore, and that's been the case (in Austin, Texas
| where I live, anyway) for years now. I mean, how often do you
| check on Yelp before deciding to check out a restaurant? I
| think it's been over a decade since I did such a thing, if I
| ever did. It may be precisely the tendency you mention, that
| is the reason people stopped caring about yelp reviews.
| edude03 wrote:
| Yelp specifically I check very in frequently, Google maps
| however shows the reviews upfront and center, so I take
| those fairly seriously
| aklemm wrote:
| Seconding Google Maps for ratings.
| switchbak wrote:
| Ever since Yelp started excluding my (2 or 3) useful
| reviews of fraudulent businesses, I no longer trust them.
|
| I asked them why they were filtering my reviews, and got
| the old "sorry, the algorithm has decided you're not to be
| trusted, nothing I can do" line.
|
| So much for trying to warn people, I suppose. Though I've
| seen similar behavior with Google too.
| 121789 wrote:
| Yelp is still plenty good as a rough approximation for
| quality for me. Anything under a 3.5ish is buyer beware and
| anything above a 4 is a pretty safe bet the restaurant is
| good enough.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| 6 or 8 years ago I used Yelp often. But when they began to
| insist on showing me e.g. 12 McDonalds when I searched for
| $Specific_Local_Burger_Place, showing sponsored results up
| top to obscure the restaurant _I just clicked on_ , and
| tried to force me to use their app instead of their web
| site, I began walking toward the exit.
|
| When I found out later how they were running a protection
| racket to shake down restaurants, I _ran_ for the exit.
|
| Nice restaurant review service you have there, Yelp. Be a
| shame if something happened to it. Especially if that
| something was your own damn fault.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| The tyranny of the vocal minority. Surely one of the worst
| unintended consequences of everyone being on the internet
| Kluny wrote:
| Nobody cares about Yelp.
| xwdv wrote:
| I care about Yelp. It is still the best place to find
| businesses and restaurants. It is an app I rarely think
| about, yet use it almost everyday.
|
| I just don't give a fuck about Yelpers.
| digisign wrote:
| They won't let you see much without the app. I've never
| been back.
| xwdv wrote:
| I have the app because I'd rather be a first class
| citizen.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Ehhhhh maybe not for local restaurants, but I think Yelp is
| a lot of people's go-to source for finding restaurants when
| visiting a new location.
| acdha wrote:
| Yelp is the default restaurant rating display in Apple
| Maps. Between that and Google Maps, a lot of people are
| going to see those ratings and it does have some impact
| even if people don't trust them absolutely -- otherwise
| businesses wouldn't feel that they needed to pay Yelp to
| hide bad reviews.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I search on Yelp when looking for a restaurant to go to.
| I'm more likely to go to places that show up higher in the
| search ranking, and the rating seems to be a big component
| of that.
|
| Other the other hand, I don't actually read the reviews at
| all. I do sometimes look at the user-uploaded photos.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Amusingly you derived loadshedding from first principles. I
| think that's really neat!
| mst wrote:
| My first thought was 'the utility monster problem' but your
| metaphor is better.
| nickff wrote:
| _The cheapest customers are always the most expensive._
|
| I don't remember where I first heard it, but it's rung true for
| me.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Reminds me of http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| Instead of pointing them to check a specific email or providing
| specific wiki link, would not it make more sense for letting them
| do "some work" in trying to find the resources on their own? Like
| one could say, "ohh I think you have it in your email or you can
| search it on internal wiki and let me know once you read
| everything if you still have any questions?"
| dt3ft wrote:
| I see this pattern at every company I work at:
|
| You're the new guy. You look for documentation, you find
| something outdated, untouched for 6 years with a note that the
| page was migrated from some other system and is "work in
| progress".
|
| If that thing was untouched for 6 years, it is logical to
| conclude that it no longer contains correct information. You read
| a few lines, see dead links and wrong information, you conclude
| that it is no longer useful.
|
| The person that wrote the original wiki, still works at the
| company, but they now work on a different system and have no
| responsibility for that legacy system.
|
| See, the issue is always the same: transfer of knowledge
| deteriorates with every person that quits or gets promoted. The
| system is now maintained by someone else, who has their own
| "wiki" on their own machine. The original, now useless wiki,
| should have either been deleted or updated. This doesn't happen.
|
| This creates such waste on a global scale, that it is beyond
| comprehension. Whoever solves this issue, will surely help the
| human kind.
|
| In summary, when a transfer of ownership for a wiki occurs, there
| should be a mechanism to make sure that it gets either deleted or
| maintained. Having new hires hunt for information, benefits no
| one, especially not the organization. Get your documentation in
| order, and you will save a ton of hours and improve productivity!
| notdoingthework wrote:
| I would do the exact same thing if I were her co-worker.
|
| She clearly states that this is a project she came up with that
| no one else on the team wants. If no one wants it, or is engaging
| with it, why would you expecting your colleagues to get excited
| to work on this?
|
| There is nothing more annoying in corporate that co-workers who
| start trying to give you projects and tasks you didn't want,
| didn't ask for and micro-managing you horizontally.
|
| Some of my worst job experiences came from people like this. They
| come up with a dumb project, then "clear it with management" then
| come and try to make me do it for them.
|
| Your co-workers are not your friends, especially not if you try
| to start assigning them work. Because who gets the credit?
|
| You do, not them. Suddenly they have another layer of management.
|
| I would both avoid and add friction to anyone doing what she is
| trying to do in this situation. I'm not paid to help my co-
| workers get promoted into management or do their pet projects for
| them.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I guess you're really notdoingthework. Someone needs to be
| assigning you work, and she never presented it as if she just
| came up with a project and threw it at another co-worker. If it
| wasn't her project, where did the documentation come from, and
| group discussion?
|
| This attitude sounds at least as toxic as the person who is
| unable to help themselves before reaching out for help to
| others.
| watwut wrote:
| No, the article is not demanding that co-workers are excited
| about the project at all. Nor is the author giving tasks to
| anyone.
|
| It literally starts with coworker complaining about lack of
| documentation, being given documentation, complaining about
| lack of wiki, being given like, complaining about missing info
| on wiki and then being shown it is there.
|
| Author is asking people to ask for docs before complaining
| about lack of docs and to read existing wiki before complaining
| about missing info on wiki.
| drewcoo wrote:
| There is the management career track and the individual
| contributor career track. Advancing along either of them should
| depend on growing scope of influence. That means ICs need to
| drive projects across larger and larger groups of people.
|
| Of course the people who show they can do that get promoted.
| Try it!
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Nowhere in the post does it mention the author asking anybody
| to do any work. Their coworker showed up asking questions about
| something they're working on.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| It sounds like the coworkers don't care about this project,
| though:
|
| > You've mentioned it multiple times in different venues with
| very little uptake from the rest of the team. It's pretty
| clear they are more concerned with other things.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| That's ok, and happens frequently. "I don't have time to
| fully comprehend everything that's happening over there,
| but COWORKER is handling it and I don't see any obvious
| problems with their approach. :+1: and moving on".
|
| Maybe some teams don't work this way, and require more
| direct participation and signing-off from members, which is
| fine too.
| kodah wrote:
| If you were on my team you actually do. I'm a senior+ engineer
| and other engineers work on the projects I lead. They get to
| pick their day to day work, but most projects are driven or
| approved of by me. We also have a manager which has a totally
| different set of responsibilities.
| bob66 wrote:
| blinded wrote:
| help vampires. the worst
| root-z wrote:
| As an engineer I meet one of these people with the the just-feed-
| me mindset once in a while (luckily not too often). They are
| never very good at their job, because they lack perhaps the
| single most important ability for an engineer, to research on
| their own. An example is when an engineer could find the API doc
| with a 5 min search but choose to bother their co-workers for it
| repeatedly. They will also often complain about the lack of
| documentation but when they actually do projects the
| documentation are not more accessible either.
|
| I also find people with this mindset hard to coach, just because
| it's a very passive attitude, and simple words of advice couldn't
| do much to change the passivity.
|
| There is always a limit to guidance or documentation. Code
| changes every day in any decent software project and docs become
| stale quickly. Even if the docs are there, it's always a good
| idea to take a look at the code, do some research on your own and
| see if you find any discrepancies.
| jmclnx wrote:
| My work life these days.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Not having knowledge disseminated through your organization well
| is a huge issue at larger organizations. I left my last company
| because no one was on the same page. There was rapid turnover,
| new people come in and have no clue how things are supposed to be
| done. It got so bad that the company had all 400 members of the
| engineering department redo the new hire orientation for a week.
|
| <shameless pitch>I created https://gainknowhow.com/software-
| companies.html to solve these issues by structuring
| documentation/skills as a tree. Currently, all documentation is
| stored in a flat data structure, which does not have knowledge of
| documentation dependencies. When documentation is structured as a
| tree, you know who to notify when their relevant skills change.
| I'm trying to solve this exact issue. I'd love your feedback on
| the idea</shameless pitch>
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| You've invented the wiki.
|
| Knowledge management is not a technical problem, it's a nobody-
| wants-to-do-it problem. People will see poor management of
| knowledge, and assume that if they just used this one weird
| trick, the problem would go away. See also, maintenance work vs
| greenfield work.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| This wiki knows when you've passed a skill and notifies you
| of the exact changes made since you've passed it. It also
| lets you know of new documentation upstream in your
| documentation tree.
| RangerScience wrote:
| FYI; I think you meant: decimate -> disseminate
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Good eye
| RangerScience wrote:
| I think the only place where knowledge decimation is an
| active need and/or concern is https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I once worked for a manager like this for some fraction of a
| year. He was the deputy director of systems engineering, but it
| seemed to me that part of his brain was missing. During that
| time, the attrition in our group was over 50%/year. I got the
| worst performance review of my career from him and I was happy to
| move on to a better position elsewhere in the company.
| juice_bus wrote:
| > At the time, I was mostly referring to the open sewers that are
| certain web forums on certain days of the week and certain hours
| of those days
|
| Any ideas which forums they're referencing here?
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Probably HN. She wrote this post in November:
|
| http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2021/11/06/sql/
|
| That got this response on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29139902
|
| And followed up with this post:
|
| http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2021/11/07/select/
|
| Turn on "show dead" in your preferences here on HN and check
| out the second page, in particular.
| Macha wrote:
| So the comments that were disagreed with enough to be
| downvoted to obscurity or sometimes even moderated out of
| sight entirely represent the entire community?
|
| This happens a lot with comments like "HN is toxic" or in a
| more mainstream sense "gamers are toxic", and it just makes
| me sad.
| robocat wrote:
| Please don't misrepresent what she said. She said "At the
| time, I was mostly referring to the open sewers that are
| certain web forums on certain days of the week and certain
| hours of those days. For some reason, when the regular
| people are out doing whatever they do, the haters have
| nothing better to do than run unchecked on the web. With no
| sensible people there to set them straight, they feed off
| each other, and pretty soon you have some straight-up
| nuclear waste in those forums."
|
| I think that is saying HN is usually a good forum, but at
| some limited times it is not.
| ianai wrote:
| "You: If I put it in the wiki you would have said to put it in
| the group, and if I put it in the group you would have said I
| should have put it in the wiki."
|
| I learned this the hard way in a corporate setting. If someone's
| going to damn me for doing (A) and doing (not A) then they're
| really just attacking me.
|
| OP's point is, tersely, a good faith coworker needs to do a bare
| minimum of work to show genuine interest outside of hostility.
| That's definitely a thing, too - few situations get to be one
| sided. Further, the example she gave sounds like a coworker who
| only makes demands or criticisms. When it's 100% demands or
| criticisms then it's actively destructive. This I learned from
| family who claim to "just be contrarians".
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