Ask HN: What lessons did you learn from your best or worst colleagues?

If you were placed in a situation where everything feels like it’s on fire and falling apart, don’t go complaining to your manager. There’s a good chance your leader ship already knows, and that’s exactly why they put you there. Because they trust you to get things back on track. But this isn’t necessarily great for your mental health. So you have to prioritize and strike a balance on what matters and what doesn’t. Don’t let small things get to you.

I learned from my best colleagues: success is about trust. Nothing pays better dividends than being humble, being right a lot, and doing good work. This builds allies and allies build careers.

I learned from my worst colleagues: don’t assume that anyone will protect you from toxic or abusive people. You must be willing to protect yourself. When people come for you and your project, either be willing to throw down (metaphorically) or be willing to walk. Bad people often don’t have bad careers, and there is no justice.

Best: if it's complicated, it's wrong.

Worst: almost no business deliverable is one tenth as important as the people telling you to give up your time, strength and sanity in order to achieve it will tell you that it is.

Best: Trust is a two way street. When people trust each other and build on top of what others have built magical things happen.

Worst: Giving the benefit of the doubt for more than a few times will inevitably end in a disaster if the person is beyond redemption. The easiest way to recognize somone who cannot be helped and their work cannot be salvage is to look for persons that don't accept help and act like their work is perfection.

Best: Good research is about the quantity and throughput of ideas you can test, not the quality of individual ideas.

Worst: Code should be designed for users, not any individual engineer's philosophical preference.