Are any of these examples concrete/factual, or are they all exclusively opinion based?
Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#12First two of these examples may be on the religious or yak shaving end of debates, where the best practice is probably not an absolute.
1. There are code bases and PRs where coalescing many small changes into one "this changes how we do this" commit is encouraged when it's a semvar level change requiring coordinated edits to keep working, rather than a purely iterative change.
2. Most research shows universal unit test coverage is lower ROI than judicious coverage of intefaces and risks.
If many of your discussions fall in this zone, it's possible you, yourself, may be taking guidelines as too black and white.
Meanwhile ...
3. That one is just bad.
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#13The chunk of code copied from SO is a legit legal risk for the company, not a code quality issue — you need to either revert that or escalate it quickly.
The rest of it, I’d follow Galxeagle’s advice. Lay out the standards, lay out the consequences, have empathy, do not argue with them. Humane, but firm.
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#14> The person said things like "how would anyone find out", "what does it matter", "everyone does it"
To me, this reads as a toxic person who would try to get away with these things if they hadn't been caught, and who could lead to a massive shift in ethics and morale if allowed to proceed unchecked. That's really alarming. Imagine if a person with this attitude was in a position where they were responsible for code safeguarding PII or other sensitive data (and arguably, this may already be true, e.g. if they were to introduce a security hole in their component). It's essential that you document everything contemporaneously (or as close to that as possible), ensure the person's manager first knows your concerns in private - and if they don't take any action, give them the heads up that you'll need to escalate to your manager about potential ongoing legal risks. It will be annoying to navigate the politics, but it will be much more annoying if the wound festers.
Frankly, there's a lot of talent out there right now with great ethical compasses and experience with large codebases, and allocating headcount to a toxic person simply isn't optimal in that context. And even if you're in a situation where a dismissed team member won't be replaced e.g. due to hiring freezes... this person may very well be having a negative effect on the team. Just first make sure that they're not someone's kid... and good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#15“Never wrestle with a pig because you'll both get dirty and the pig likes it" - the source of disagreement here is about whether or not policy needs to be followed, not about the details of the policy, so stop trying to argue the policy on it's merits. You need to do a quick review of roles and authorities, clearly lay out (ideally mutually agreed upon) standards, and identify the implications of not following the po…
This is great, to add to "it seems" is also the "It feels". So for OP it's something like:
It feel like you think this policy doesn't apply here. It does and we're looking for Teamwork. These policies are for the Team, skipping them disrespect everyone (not just OP)
Then PIP and boot of you have to. The bad attitude spread and bring everyone down.
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#16[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#17In the end it comes down to “don’t negotiate with terrorists”. If they disagree with the policies that’s fine, they can bring it up at a meeting. Call a meeting even, showing you’re willing to listen to their input is important. But you‘ve got to make it clear as day that there will be no going rogue if they disagree.
In the ideal world you would be their manager. Right now responsibility and accountability are separated, which is most likely causing you stress. Bring this up with your manager: tell them your plan to deal with the situation, ask for input and their backup. That way you now have a bigger mandate, and you don’t get in trouble for being tougher than you have been so far. Managing up is as important as managing down.
It might sound odd to have to lay down the law of the land, while simultaneously advising you hear them out. It isn’t. People generally want to be heard more than they want to be right. Show them you hear their concerns. Let them bring all their frustrations out. Tell them you’ll try to improve the situation for them. But also say that you cannot have somebody on the team who doesn’t abide by the policies set, and this behavior cannot continue. The content of the policies is irrelevant to that point, it’s a clear chain-of-command issue.
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#18> Some examples: - Sending a large PR that changes many files at once because their changes kept growing in scope as they were trying to figure out how to do something.
I'm the most senior developer in my team. Normally I block the PR with a change request and say exactly what I want, i.e "Please commit X and Y, in a new PR" and I give exactly the commands that this developer must run. Then, after this small PR is merged, I ask the developer to rebase the huge PR with the master, and do that until the initial PR get as small as possible. If you are not the manager or not team lead, the easiest way is to lead by example, mostly by doing together. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but I'm sure I bring those stuff up when I'm negotiating my salary raises...
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#19If this is happening consistently and the person has been told consistently but still doesn't do it, then it is time for management to step in.
If they start getting their performance reviews taken down a rung or two explicitly due to not doing what was expected of them and communicated to them (repeatedly) then they might get the message. "You didn't get a pay rise this year because you didn't do what was asked if you on , which led to extra work for the rest of the team. This was discussed several times with you on . You can improve by following the coding standards and listening to your TL when they ask you to do something multiple times. If you don't, then we may need to think about formal pip."
Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?
#20Get this person off your team however you can. When the sh*t hits the fan over one of their own special exemptions (like something fails in production that should have been caught in a unit test) it will NEVER be their fault. They will point the finger at everyone else and complain about how someone else should have done something, etc. Fortunately for you, this person is probably going to leave on their own soon anyway, because they know better than everyone else how things should be done and they'll jump ship.
Short of that, manage up - tell the team manager that this person is a drag on the team by not following standards, demanding special treatment, being generally disagreeable. it hurts team morale even if the junior team members don't say so (they may not even realize it themselves, but it is a real thing).
In the shortest term, as others have said, don't engage. Pick the rules you enforce, and enforce them. Request the additional changes on the PR to meet style guidelines and don't take no for an answer. Don't get into discussions or arguments about the merits of the standards, just say "These are the standards and we're all expected to follow them." If the standards are written down (and if they're not, then they aren't really standards) then cut off any discussion on the merits of the standards with links to the written standards. Use a "chore" conventional-comment (https://conventionalcomments.org/) to indicate that it's just a thing that has to be done.
If you can, make it someone else's problem. Refer them to the standards committee or whatever senior architect is responsible for guiding the standards, and let them handle the argument.