How to deal with a-holes. Even better, how to make higher ups realise who the a-holes are and deal accordingly (which might not happen for a couple of reasons)
Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
21–30 of 438 posts
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#22Don't be an asshole. I can't stress this one enough. I don't care how smart you are, if you are an asshole, your career is not gonna work out. Try really hard not to be negative, even when there is reason to be. Try not to be openly negative about the company or a particular employee. It's poison for you and your teammates and makes you feel worse. Don't get defensive when someone makes suggestions to your code (I st…
Keeping behavior professional/separating colleagues and friends is on the top of my list these days. I have recently had numerous conversations with younger attorneys in my firm about this - they think “oh, our managing attorneys are great, we can be open books with them! We can talk freely about our massive hangovers and romantic dalliances...” and I try to explain how much things are exaggerated and gossiped about. Not just in the office, but in the professional community. It is a sad but true state of professional work and all human interaction. Most people are simply not your friends and will go out of their way to tell stories about you. It is baffling.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#23Don't be an asshole. I can't stress this one enough. I don't care how smart you are, if you are an asshole, your career is not gonna work out. Try really hard not to be negative, even when there is reason to be. Try not to be openly negative about the company or a particular employee. It's poison for you and your teammates and makes you feel worse. Don't get defensive when someone makes suggestions to your code (I st…
> Don't be an asshole.
It's really hard to know when you are one though. Hardly anyone thinks they're an asshole, even when they are, right?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#24I wish I could figure out how to evaluate a team while being interviewed. Signing up with a bad team has proven to be a costly mistake.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#25Not that far into my career, but this one really burned me. Understanding what people's unstated motivations are is really important IMO. I spent a job working tirelessly at something that I valued a lot, but others didn't seem to care too much about. After a bit of time, I realized that most people were looking at the work from how it hurt/benefited them based on a specific (but not widely publicized) bonus structure. People's actions started to make a lot more sense when I looked at them through this lens. I was still able to do the type of work that I valued, but fitting it into other people's frameworks of what is important made a huge difference.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#26No one is thinking about you as much as you are. At the end of the day, people are reacting to their own feelings, values, and ideas as much or more as they are to anything you said. Taking yourself out of the debate - no matter how personal it feels - is always a good first step.
I had to read this twice. But just to confirm what you mean: We should take our personal feelings out of a debate -- but surely we must still remain in the debate?
IMO debating is massively overrated. It really only works well in certain cases and the rest of the time it just makes everyone really frustrated.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#27How to deal with a-holes. Even better, how to make higher ups realise who the a-holes are and deal accordingly (which might not happen for a couple of reasons)
How do you make the high-ups realize who the a-holes are
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#28I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Wi…
You can flip that and say the advice your co-worker needed to hear: don't be duplicitous or treacherous in the workplace. You may think it gets you ahead but this is highly illusory and temporary. When you look back you'll just have anxiety and regrets behind you, if you have decency. And when it's all over, the things you thought were really important at the time won't be, so why be a jerk about them?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#29Marshall Rosenberg nonviolent communications