The stress comes from people who are bad at what they do and are trying to make it someone else's problem. They don't have vision for how they will accomplish what is asked of them. In their imagination, there is not a clear set of steps that can be burned down over the coming days and weeks to arrive at something of value. In their minds it is all chaos and uncertainty and they are desperate for the assurance of someone who knows what's going on.
The relationships that one develops with each category of person are fundamentally opposite. One is about enticing repeated interactions: You really get it, how do we work together in the future? And the other is about keeping a polite distance to prevent repeated interactions. How do I avoid meetings, projects, shared responsibilities, and future employment opportunities that involve this person?
Lots of assumptions here, obviously the reality is much more nuanced than this.
Pre-emptively, I'm not saying anything below applies in your case :-).
A mismatch in the threshold of "they should already both know and have internalized" is where much of the friction in high-stress organisations comes from.
I see a lot of people expecting, as the parent post put it, "a clear set of steps that can be burned down [to get to a good result]", but entirely oblivious to the fact that the people they expect it from:
1. Don't have the organisational authority to organise it -- they can do "their part" but they can't tell people on whose work they depend what to do.
2. Don't have access to the same task-specific information as the person who expects it of them, and don't know who to ask because teams are heavily compartmentalised and/or hierarchical.
3. Don't have access to the same kind of organisational information as the person who expects it of them.
Much like responsibility, deflecting blame comes from above. In my experience, what the parent poster says is true: people who are bad at what they do and try to make it someone else's problem is probably the most common source of stress. But it is also my experience that the middle leadership layers of companies where this is a chronic problem is almost entirely populated by managers who try to make everything other people's problem, and whose teams end up having to deflect everything by proxy whether they want it or not.
I think this is part of the nuance that's lacking in the parent post. It's very hard for someone to work significantly above their organisation's level.
But it's always an uphill climb because there is an internally-consistent manager-brain line of thinking for the workspace they've created, and it's really good at Uno-reversing any criticism of workplace norms as a problem with criticizer.
"Oh, you don't like working with people that are bad at their jobs? Sounds like someone's just not senior-ing hard enough."
So where you work everyone works on the same things every day and the same patterns?
Sounds pretty circular if everyone just lives by the subset of understanding you prefer.
This is what smacks truest from my experience; companies stagnant because of workers like you focus on memorized maintenance routines. Internal evolution comes to a stand still as attention is put on memorization of existing process not evolution.
Again just anecdotally coworkers like you describe could be put to evolving process they seem to not connect well to. But patronizing seniors who just know codified routine, hold orgs backs.
I'm always willing to work with people on code/system design - in fact it's my favorite part of my job when someone says "how can I do this beter?" - but it is excruciating to have to handhold someone through a basic diagnosis routine for or provide the same basic feedback about logging or security the nth time.
The stress is just not that apparent in environments where projects tend to fail anyway, or environments that provide lots of job stability.
You basically get paid for being present instead of actually produce something useful.
I don’t understand why one would want to work in such an environment, except when you’re soft-retiring / soft-quitting
I'm not saying don't socialize and just work ; you just need to balance the two.
or, the other is about providing them the vision and the clear set of steps. Then checking their progress along those steps. (including revising the steps when the original plan diverges from the evolving reality).
Training and mentoring the people so they can become rock stars.
Some incompetence is a known quantity, and when it is known it will not produce stress. The junior dev on the team might not know how to do something. The team leadership should already have priced that in, and have a plan to help them if need be. If the junior dev's incompetence is creating stress, the root cause is leadership incompetence.
The kind of incompetence that produces stress is incompetence that is too impolite to mention. It can't be addressed through "mentorship" or "working together" because that would call the legitimacy of the role and the person filling it into question. Engineering managers who don't understand engineering, product managers who don't understand the product, etc. The list is long, and examples are common. The organization is built around the assumption that these people can do things that they are unable to do. That mismatch is the origin of stress.
Investing time in the 1st kind of incompetence is a good investment because you will get a good return on your time invested. The junior dev with potential becomes the rock star. The 2nd kind of incompetence is often "Throwing good money after bad". These situations are not worth your time. There is unlikely to be an improvement, and you risk it backfiring especially if the problem is above you in the org chart.
You can't ignore people who bad at what they do and are trying to make it someone else's problem, but you can find allies who are good at what they do and want to take some pride and ownership in the same things you do.
If someone doesn't have a vision for how they will accomplish what is asked of them, that's an opportunity for mentorship. They might not take it from you, but you can offer it.
I actually think the really dangerous people are the ones you encourage people to seek out: those who think everything is easy. That to me is a sign of Dunning-Kruger. I'd rather sit down with somebody who says "I don't know yet how to solve this, but we'll work it out", than somebody who says "it's easy we don't need to think too hard about this" or "it's hard and so I won't even try".
Also, meetings, shared responsibilities - they're part of getting stuff done as part of a team. Instead of trying to avoid them, try to improve them. Learn the people skills needed to help a person change their habits towards being the productive ally that adds to a team rather than takes away from it.
It's not easy, it's hard, but you will figure it out. If I was working with you, I'd say "we", not "you" but alas...
I agree with your overall sentiment, but there’s another dynamic which doesn’t always lend itself well to a mentorship role: when the leader has no vision other than some vague concept. Sometimes we can politely corral them, but it’s extremely frustrating when that “vision” is predicated on some magic, black box operation that they think happens and they won’t listen to any technical advice on why their vision may not be feasible.
To the OPs point, we have limited resources in time, labor, patience, etc. It’s worth consciously deciding where those are best spent.
The type of person in question can be understood as somebody who equates technical skill with "not needing help." It's implicit in your post. Your mythical rock stars are extremely talented individuals, while what sets the incompetent apart is apparently their need for assurance from others.
Professional competence is literally the set of the things you can do without needing help. That doesn't mean you never ask for help. It just means there is an expectation that you can accomplish some things on your own. If you need help with everything forever, then you are fundamentally not useful and not coachable (which is worse). When needing help is anticipated and transient, that's a non-event. When your job is mostly things that you are expected to do yourself, but you need help with all of them, that creates stress for your peers and subordinates.
People who are currently bad what they do have their own work struggle, go home to their issue, have their hobbies and ambitions.
I think the article strikes a very good point when it says you don't want to be remembered as that guy but I would go even further in that it's not only about your reputation. When you are that guy, you are actually making everybody life slightly worse including your own.
I think there is more value in acting and being remembered as someone who can lift up rather than as someone who is distant and self-interested. It's not that you should always be mindlessly helpful but you can be assertive, give honest feedback, help people realise when they should take responsibility and define directions without being a pushover or exploited. In my experience, that's how you make people actually want to work with you. These are obviously hard skills to develop (at least they were and still are to me) but they are how so valuable.
To go back to your conclusion, for me it's more about "How do I convince the people I want to work with to work with me?" than about cutting people. After all, you will probably be the sole constant in all the work environments you will be a part of in your life so you are the biggest factor into making them work for you.
There's some irony in the way you try to pin the blame on a third-party, and while trying to denigrate it too. I think it warrants some soul searching. I mean, would you feel stressed if you had to endure a team member who threw blanket accusations at your competence and in the process blamed you for causing grief to other team members?
> They don't have vision for how they will accomplish what is asked of them. In their imagination, there is not a clear set of steps that can be burned down over the coming days and weeks to arrive at something of value.
There's a lot to unpack there. Only a highly disfuncional team would throw a team member to the wolves and leave them out to fend for themselves on a task that is relatively complex. No wonder people would feel stressed in that environment.
having been the guy fixing the third party's bugs at almost every position, i side with the parent.
One is people / process stress; related to the steps needed to get work done, including approvals and negotiations to decide what to do.
Another is operational stress; related to keeping a service running; some of that can be people or process stress, but if your service is growing rapidly it might just be organic operational stress.
There's also the stress of getting the work done in a reasonable time.
Some people are better at managing the different kinds of stress.
Anyway, I think the moral of the post is when you rage quit, say "fuck this shit, I quit" rather than "fuck you all, I quit" ... keep the rage pointed at the system rather than the people :P Unless it's just like one person who is really intent on making your job hell. You might be able to get away with singling out one person, rather than doing the Oprah thing and "everybody look under your chair, you get a fuck you" :P
Work is certainly not my top priority, but I spend a ton of my time on my job, and I would like to feel fulfilled and happy doing it. Have capable colleagues that you can trust to pull their weight is a big part of that.
In general, I’ve found that the clock-in, clock-out types seem to take their mediocrity as almost a badge of honor, with this feeling that by not working hard or accomplishing a lot, they ensure the business is not getting overmuch value out of them.
This is so sad, IMO. If at all possible, work should be fun. As programmers, we have more opportunity for that than most, and should take advantage. Is that perspective “Live to Work”?
Software is for people (end users/customers) to use, and is made to work for people.
Learning the people side of building, and delivering, and helping people with it is key.
Of course, some people in any office environment will play work in pursuit of achieving a daycare or high school for adults.
Relationships can also help you mitigate the dysfunctional environment while you're there, with huge benefits to your health.
(Don't underestimate when people say stress kills you: it's not a video game health meter that recovers quickly and fully at the end of of an encounter; that bad stress is damage from which you never fully recover.)
But also be aware that supportive relationship oases in a dysfunctional environment can also slow leaving a place where you really-really should.
Some people need to be told to be more loyal than they are, but some people need to be told when loyalty is killing us and not doing any good. (Seriously, your supportive colleagues are probably bittersweet glad to see you escape, and you leaving might even give attention/leverage of management to help fix org problems, or encourage colleagues to expedite their own escape.)
You want the shitty PHB megacorps to reject you so you don't win to lose by getting a job you are going to hate.
Companies would much rather miss out on growth than have employees who have any kind of leverage over them.
Only when talking to people beneath them. When talking to your superiors, you should be deferential and circumspect.
American society is more hierarchical than a feudal aristocracy. It's just based on money, skin color, and gender instead of family name.
In the US context, you should refrain from blaming specific people and if you possibly can you should explicitly leave open the possibility that everyone involved was trying to do their best (even if you really don't think this is true). Project an assumption of good faith even if it's not deserved.
But that said, you are looking for a new job and no one is going to be surprised to hear that there were things you don't like. More importantly, it's valuable to surface those things because you want to know if the things you didn't like are commonplace in the place you're interviewing.
The insistence on hearing only pleasurable falsehoods is not healthy.
The harder case is when your performance is lagging and there is a reduction in force.
Most jobs are pretty shitty, the idea that you need to demonstrate toxic positivity about how shitty it was is just so inauthentic.
Honestly, I get much better along with malcontents than with these "annoyingly positive" people. So, tastes differ.
> An interviewer can assume that most quality candidates are also aware of this dynamic and will wisely choose to represent the positive aspects of their job history.
Many highly qualified candidates are bad actors and/or bad self-promoters.
In Silicon Valley that is called a Founder.
Otherwise you will be forced to reject him because there might be a possibility that the problem was him.
Seems like you are hiring the best liars. Or at least the best at playing an arbitrary game of saying and not saying the correct things that won't trigger a rejection.
At this point, are you even needed? Maybe we could replace the interview process with a lottery system. Same result, less expensive.
This is a toxic framing of an essential test. Constructing polite fictions is an essential skill for collaboration - no less essential than coding. Saying you're leaving in part because "your vision for the product has drfted from leadership's" tells me you probably think they were a pack of moronic baboons and that if you feel that way about some of your future team mates you can keep it under wraps.
Even if the complaints are about things which are individually valid, the pattern is toxic.
Imagine a sports team. After running around for 45 minutes you're all probably tired. Would you rather work with someone who says "I'm tired, it's hot in here" or someone who focuses on encouraging those around them and talking about the team's accomplishments?
Part of the interview is proving you can avoid griping and focus on positives for at least 30-60 minutes, which is an essential skill anywhere.
This is what literally makes tech workers go dream about farming.
When interviewing people, it’s usually possible to identify both extremes.
I’d prefer to hire someone who is not toxic. That goes for both extremes.
I'm sure there are people out there who do have a toxic positivity problem, but my own anecdotal experience leads me to prefer to err on the side of rejecting unnecessarily grumpy people, because they tend to more frequently be a problem.
Maybe it works out in big orgs but if it infects the team of a small org your work environment will be ruined when you are all laid off after months or years of overworking to make a blind optimist happy. Unemployment coincident with burnout is worse than some negative feedback during the process.
I think that may be a very cultural thing. I love gallows humor (I understand, enjoy, and cultivate it myself), but some cultures don't even understand it.
This is an important skill, because this job sucks too :P
Maybe, but I think there's a piece where you can be genuinely demonstrating in the interview context that you know how to reflect positively on an experience which obviously wasn't that all great or why would you have left it.
As an interviewer I'm not looking for IT WAS THE BEST WOO but rather "these were the elements I most appreciated, these were where I had opportunities to grow and push myself and here's what I ultimately got out of it." Yes, the "what went wrong" will be discussed too, but that's a different question, and as interviewee I look to pitch the downsides less in terms of "I had the worst boss/colleagues/projects/clients/whatever" and more of a circumspect kind of "elements A and B that had been really good early on were less of a priority later in my tenure, and I felt that management and I had differing priorities which was increasingly leading to unhelpful compromises in how things were done; although I stuck it out for some time to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, ultimately I came to feel that my seat would be better filled by some more aligned to the company goals."
If everywhere smells like shit, it’s time to check under your own shoe. I’ve had shitty jobs, snd while nowhere is perfect it’s definitely a stretch to say most jobs are shitty.
> the idea that you need to demonstrate toxic positivity
Nobody is asking you to do that. When I’m interviewing a candidate I’m assuming that this is a situation that they’re trying to impress/show themselves and if you’re shit talking your previous jobs then what are you going to be like if we disagree, or when you are interviewing for your next job? All I’m asking for is don’t shit talk your previous jobs and managers. If you can’t do that for 45 minutes I’m not going to hire you.
LOL, are you kidding? The human condition is mostly shitty.
This has been scientifically proved wrong. Sonja Lyubomirsky writes that people come with innate levels of happiness, and apart from temporary swings (in either direction, in response to life events and activities), and apart from hugely intrusive, foundational trauma, "level of happiness" tends to remain constant for any given person's lifetime, and said level covers a huge spectrum, when viewed across people.
You can train your mind and habits to increase your happiness, but still, in her famous book, she assigns 50% weight to what level you are born with, and says that, however you fine-tune yourself only amounts to the other 50%. And, since her book was published, more recent research assigns an even higher weight to the innate level of happiness (i.e., higher than 50%). The sun does shine differently on different people, and it's not a mental health issue, it's just a given.
Think about it: if someone is born with 100% happiness, and never thinks consciously about their own happiness level, they will still be more happy (1 * 0.6 + 0 * 0.4 = 0.6), roughly speaking, than a person who is born with 0% happiness, but does everything in their power to improve (0 * 0.6 + 1 * 0.4 = 0.4).
> If you find yourself unable to be consistently at least /neutral/ in a first world country[,] that tends to be a mental health issue worth addressing.
I do agree about this; just know that the playing field is not level at all, and people who are less than moderately happy most of the time are not outliers; they are frequent.
I agree and resent that work is just a place where I go to get lied to and lie right back. We've found that lying is a highly successful workplace strategy. But the point of the lying game is to never admit we're lying.
The pretzels people will twist themselves in to avoid the cognitive dissonance of lying all the time and not wanting to be a lair is maddening. I find facing it head on is a refreshing frame.
A bit of clarity taken from "The Complex Problem Of Lying For Jobs"
> But over the years, I have broadened my definition of a lie, and I have realized that most of my interlocutors (including my younger self) had actually narrowed our definition of lie into uselessness in an attempt to feel better about our behavior in the job market.
> If we set aside pedantic obsession over the technicalities of whether the exact words you said were a lie, as if we're all capricious djinn [...] If you have a good idea of what impression you are leaving your interlocutor with, and you are crafting statements such that the image in their head does not map to reality, then you are lying.
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-complex-problem-of-lying...
in many polite circumstances people don't want to hear a truth, they want things to go smoothly and easily.
They... kinda are tho. We even have a term specifically for that: "white lie."
Sometimes, like in your "how are you?" example, various patterns of white lie ossify into social protocol where both participants are saying things they don't literally mean, but both participants know the game.
You've probably heard of cases where anglosphere people go traveling, ask people how they are (or use any of our other non-literal pleasantries), and are surprised when a real answer is given.
A lot of people can’t, and a lot of companies try to avoid those people.
Conversely, when upper management fucks up, and refuses to take responsibility (for example: admit to making the wrong decision, or even reverse the decision), that's when cynicism runs rampant among the rank and file. And gee, what a surprise, VPs and CEOs try to avoid underlings that speak up about the screw-ups of the brass.
In my experience most companies work with a wide distribution of people. This "we avoid hiring people who have defects" reads as disconnected from reality. Nobody is perfect, and most companies are average and have average people.
I honestly tend to get much better along with cynic people (and find them much more pleasant). In other words: tastes differ.
Someone who is going through the pain of looking for a new job is not going to like their current job.
If when asked, their answer is satisfaction with your current job, when most jobs are miserable, then i m thinking you're being dishonest with me.
https://rework.withgoogle.com/en/guides/understanding-team-e... https://archive.is/fFEgI
If you just want to hunker down and do your own thing you might survive, but the best thing to do is probably move on from such places (or work with your team when it gets bad to get out of it ya rite lol it goes on forever)
And it’s true about the “fuck yous”. It instantly reminded me of an old coworker that was let go and was trying to joke about it, but the F U sticks aside from anything else he accomplished while there.
- Want a promotion? I hope your manager likes you
- Need collaboration from colleagues? Better not be a dick to them
- Want to look for new opportunities? Better have a network
We are social beasts at the end of the day.
So, many of us are doing just good by being really really minimal social beasts. I think the key is to not being a dick, but that doesn't require being a social person in my experience.
I think I've been nice to my coworkers for over a decade. If I had felt the need to tell them "fuck you", I absolutely would have. Choose who you work with, and perhaps you won't have to say "fuck you".
The job felt disposable, but that small human moment stayed with me.
And the reason is, I'm a lowly engineer and that's all. I have zero clout, HR and hiring managers couldn't give a shit of whom I recommend. So if you "prioritize relationships" with an ulterior purpose (get hired eventually by some "relation"), then make sure you relate to the right people :)
i'm 'that guy' prety much everywhere, and one reason is that I really just like what I do and am usually committed to the mission over the org. defying pournelle's iron law plays out predictably though.
another reason is Pfeffer's triad, where power in any situation is a local weighting of Performance, Credentials, and Relationships. I trade on performance and cred, where my relationships are often polarized because of the imbalance being heavy in those other weightings.
a friend once described it as the relative skills of an indoors cat vs. an outdoors cat, where an outdoors cat catches all the mice and keeps off some larger animals but will probably scratch the furniture and cause a stink once in a while, whereas an indoors cat keeps the house mostly mouse-free, uses a litter box, but doesn't survive long outside, and if you don't empty the litter box often enough you get toxoplasmosis gondii and become a zombie.
managing indoors and outdoors cats together is an art.
Even though they are probably your manipulative narcissistic manager or coworker?
Yes: do not snap, blow your top, yell, throw temper tantrums, act like a child.
However, no: in many places and industries, you do not have to rely on the good recommendation of your former boss or coworkers to get your next job. In fact, it may even be illegal for employers to disclose more than your dates of employment and job title. So, check the norms and laws in your region before staying in a toxic job, if you're there only hoping things will get better enough for a decent recommendation.
sent from my iPhone