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Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

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Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#61

Post by Teever »

TillE wrote: post #48
curiousllama wrote: post #23

Bluntly, I’m not sure why this a conversation. I’m all for productive disagreements (even on small things!), but there’s not a substantive point being argued here. Try being more blunt & concise. Instead of explaining, just say “please add unit tests and I’ll approve,” and then disengage. They’re the one who needs their PR approved - not your problem. The key here is escalation path. He’ll have to bring it up to his…

> and then disengage Seriously, you don't owe anyone your time to have a pointless debate. Boundaries are important, as is not wasting your own time. You explain the rules, you're done, conversation over.

'I didnt ask you to do it, I'm telling you to do it. Are you going to do what I am telling you to do? I will take any answer other than an explicit confirmation as a 'no'.'

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#62

Post by tacostakohashi »

> "What does it matter?", "It's already done.", "It would take too much time to break up.", "I'll do that next time", etc.

These mainly seem like lame excuses that are being used to shut the discussion down. You don't need to let that succeed, you can potentially engage politely but firmly.

"What does it matter?" => It matters because its easier to review, revert, reason about in the history, it's our convention that was discussed/communicated earlier...

"It's already done." => No, it's not, it is a PR pending review and feedback. This is my feedback. If you would like feedback from the group earlier in your development process, feel free to approach any one of us for input as you are making your changes, there is no need to wait until you feel that your change is "done".

"It would take too much time to break up." => How much time do you feel it would take to break this up? Are you familiar with the git operations to perform this task? Would you like me to help, or break it up for you? Realistically, it should probably only take a few minutes to perform this task for someone proficient with their tools.

"I'll do that next time" => Since you understand the rationale and benefit, why wait until next time, let's do it this time?

"Well it's so simple. It's not worth testing." => Great, since it is so simple, it should only take a few minutes to write the test.

"I'll add a test later" => Ok, when in particular were you thinking you would like to do this? Add a ticket for that, with a due date, so it doesn't get forgotten? Perhaps it's easier to just do it now, what do you think?

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#63

Post by fcatalan »

While you are the party in the right here and others have given sound advice, some part of me is rooting for the guy. It sounds like someone jaded, maybe well into burnout. He might not have been like that always, might be worth exploring why. I've been in similar situations throughout my life and always overcame them, but over time it gets harder to care enough to lift yourself up without any help.

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#65

Post by 2devnull »

Make it cost something. Like, force them to watch a training video or something. Schedule a long meeting at a time they don’t like to discuss the issue.

Lastly, consider that maybe they are saying something that should be heard. Maybe they are right and it just appears to be foot dragging.

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#66

Post by egberts1 »

This is where office politics come into play.

You build not only a strong list of counterpoints and points (without a single mention of the forcefully person's name) then elicit as many peer supports as you can with that list (preferably on paper that you can take back). Sometimes, I've had to remove the forcefully person's lone point in order not to tip my hand.

Then reveal in a meeting, again without mentioning the forcefully person's name.

I've gotten 100% this way, even the forcefully person's silent resignation and it's "aye" once the consensus is revealed.

Surprise is the name of the game.

If you cannot pull up a decent list and a consensus then you probably should just move on, unless it is a safety factor or a danger to one's life.

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#67

Post by charlie0 »

TillE wrote: post #48
curiousllama wrote: post #23

Bluntly, I’m not sure why this a conversation. I’m all for productive disagreements (even on small things!), but there’s not a substantive point being argued here. Try being more blunt & concise. Instead of explaining, just say “please add unit tests and I’ll approve,” and then disengage. They’re the one who needs their PR approved - not your problem. The key here is escalation path. He’ll have to bring it up to his…

> and then disengage Seriously, you don't owe anyone your time to have a pointless debate. Boundaries are important, as is not wasting your own time. You explain the rules, you're done, conversation over.

The only thing will accomplish is demoralizing your team and having then turn in the bare minimum workong code. You clearly don't care about what your team thinks, so why should they care about going above and beyond when writing their code?

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#68

Post by charlie0 »

nperez wrote: post #58

In the past I've been told to hire specifically for the personality trait of being willing to push back hard. Though stubborn people might be difficult sometimes, I really appreciate their presence when requirements are unclear or unrealistic. With that said, code quality, F/OSS license policies, and testing should be something the whole team talks about and comes to an agreement on. There's a big difference between…

I think it's good to have at least 1 person in the team like this. Sometimes a higher up makes a mistake and suggests a terrible idea. If the team is all yes men (or women), then that bad idea is implemented and in the end, causes a lot of pain down the line. The worst part seeing that look in your teammates faces. They KNOW it's a bad idea, yet no one says a word.

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#69

Post by mjrbrennan »

bdw5204 wrote: post #57
mjrbrennan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would honestly find #3 a tough pill to swallow as well, and where do you draw the line? If I copy a line of `arr.map()` and use my own variable names does that count? Direct copying from SO can be bad generally but also adding all the license hoop jumping overhead just seems annoying. The first two are fine though as long as there is room for interpretation, but if the person is pushing back every single time that’…

The "license hoop jumping overhead" is a legal requirement. If it ever comes out that your software contains code copied from some random web site, you're asking for a copyright infringement lawsuit. If you stick GPLed code in your code base, then your entire codebase is GPL and you're required to give away the source code on request. Even if something is MIT or BSD or similar license, you probably need to give the a…

Yes I do understand the legal requirement for these kind of things, I was more trying to be understanding of why there was push back from the person the OP is describing. I also think anyone would be hard pressed to find an engineer who has _never_ copied anything from SO without attribution.

Re: Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully?

#70

Post by elteto »

nperez wrote: post #58

In the past I've been told to hire specifically for the personality trait of being willing to push back hard. Though stubborn people might be difficult sometimes, I really appreciate their presence when requirements are unclear or unrealistic. With that said, code quality, F/OSS license policies, and testing should be something the whole team talks about and comes to an agreement on. There's a big difference between…

There’s a difference between stupid stubborn and technically competent stubborn. I’ve worked with people who are very smart and absolutely can’t suffer a fool (or some arbitrary rule). They can be annoying to work with because they push against the status quo and sometimes you just want to get the review done and move on. But they are fundamentally right and often times push back hard enough to where things actually change for the better. I don’t mind this too much and sometimes I wish I was more like that. Sure, they could have applied some social grease to make things roll more smoothly , but whatever, people are people.

Then there’s stupid stubborn where it’s just laziness or lack of capacity, or something else. This guy sounds more like that.

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