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

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

#21

Post by plank_time »

One of my mentors at the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley never said “no” to one of my ideas. He said “okay, we’ll try it out and see what happens.” He was inherently supportive of new ideas and as a junior engineer it felt very refreshing to not have to argue my way into a feature that I felt strongly about. I’ve carried that same mentality throughout my career.

My worst colleagues were the exact opposite. They didn’t listen to anything that they were advised and then when the project failed they tried to pin the blame on me. Luckily the rest of the team vouched for me so nothing happened but it left a bad taste in my mouth. There really isn’t much to learn from scumbags since it’s obvious you shouldn’t be a scumbag.

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

#22

Post by ramphastidae »

tracer4201 wrote: post #11

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. D…

Needed to read this, thanks.

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

#23

Post by 1234throwaway »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #3

Best: Office politics is more about perception of doing work and less about actually doing work. Worst: Apparently knowing how to use excel efficiently isn't better because manual calculations prevent errors.

the damage from 1 excel error can be so risky that its better for the company to pay a person to do the entire thing manually and derisk. infuriating from the perspective of technics, but not from that of incerto

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

#27

Post by solraph »

Best: Catch up, or go home. There's always more to learn, and if you don't apply yourself, you will get steam-rollered and you won't even know why.

Worst: The more confident someone is, the more likely they are to be full crap. But - just because you don't like someone, or they're full of crap doesn't mean their wrong and/or you can't learn from them anyway.

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

#28

Post by quanto »

Best: It was a lesson I got as a fresh grad. I was losing sleep over stress from work. "This is just a job," an older colleague told me. In reality, he really did his job -- he was always on time, his code was impeccable, and he used cool logic to solve any problem. And yet, he was never too emotionally attached to work. He always welcomed criticism of his work. He had the demeanor of a cool-headed hitman finishing his job. At the same time, he was a warm human being to his colleagues, including me.

Worst: A conversation with this boss-colleague of mine would go like this:

Me: There was an urgent bug yesterday, and I fixed it.

Him: That bug was within my major commit last month. Did you fix the bug because you think I am incompetent and can't fix the bug myself?

Me: Oh, no, it was an urgent bug ticket submitted to our team, so I went ahead and fixed it.

Him: So you are saying I am useless to the team.

Me: No-no, I don't think you are useless. Quite to the contrary. You were busy doing another ticket yesterday. You know what, maybe you are right, and I should have waited and reconsidered before I fixed the bug.

Him: Oh yeah? You are being passive-aggressive now. Your behavior is very toxic and is disruptive to our team dynamics.

Me: I am sorry you see it that way. Could you tell me what I could have done differe...

Him: I am downgrading your performance review, and you would be getting a lower discretionary bonus this year.

This ended up costing me a five-figure bonus deduction.

Since then, after rising through ranks, I too became a team manager. Thanks to this lesson, I know how not to treat my team members.

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

#29

Post by lostcolony »

To change anything you have to be responsible, empowered, and knowledgeable about it. If you only have one or two of them, seek out the others. If you can't attain all three, stop worrying about it; you can't change it.

Transparency leads to trust, but also can be abused. Be transparent in incremental steps, so that you still build trust with those that are trustworthy, and so you aren't hurt too badly by those that aren't.

Failures of people are as often due to the environment they're in as they are the people. That can be useful to not judge colleagues too harshly, and also to remind yourself you are good and capable when you find yourself in a job/role where you're unable to function.

The way to build successful products is to care about them. Stakeholders that seek to explain problems they're trying to solve and why the matter will get results; stakeholders that try to dictate solutions to dev will not. Seek out places that recognize the devs job is the 'how', and the rest of the business' job is the "what".

People who say "we're one team" and "it's not us vs them" are to be avoided. If the groups they're talking about were truly one team, such statements would not need to be made; making them is trying to band-aid over issues and misalignments rather than address them.

Be kind. Even useless assholes can become allies if they see you going out of your way to be kind to them.

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

#30

Post by Madmallard »

quanto wrote: post #28

Best: It was a lesson I got as a fresh grad. I was losing sleep over stress from work. "This is just a job," an older colleague told me. In reality, he really did his job -- he was always on time, his code was impeccable, and he used cool logic to solve any problem. And yet, he was never too emotionally attached to work. He always welcomed criticism of his work. He had the demeanor of a cool-headed hitman finishing h…

How do you not immediately report this guy to HR? His behavior is absolutely verbal abuse.
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