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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?

#71

Post by hbrn »

Plenty of bad advise here.

It sounds like you already made up your mind about this person and came here to enforce your confirmation bias.

Since I've been on both sides of this story, I'm going to be the devil's advocate.

> I try as much as possible to explain _why_ practices are what they are, the effects on our project, the team, etc. Any suggestions for these conversations in the future?

How about showing the hard evidence that those practices are beneficial and a net positive? Let me guess, you don't have that. If you had, there wouldn't be a debate. My bet is you don't even have metrics to look at in the future that will prove your practices are beneficial.

> 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

Is this a one-off you're looking to attack them on, or a consistent behavior? Based on the description I suspect it's a one off. If it's consistent, it is pretty bad. Since it looks like you're already got off the wrong foot, you'll need other team members to advocate for smaller PR.

> The benefits of unit tests are so fundamental

Ah, the cargo-culting. The benefits of testing are fundamental. But testing is hard. Unit testing is a way for lousy engineers to pretend to do testing.

https://kentcdodds.com/blog/write-tests

> On Friday, I discovered a chunk of code copied from Stackoverflow ... The person said things like "how would anyone find out"

Was it a 2-line or 100-line snippet? Context matters.

The person you're describing might indeed be a toxic asshole you want them to be. But it is also quite possible that you are the asshole here, mischaracterizing them to confirm your bias.

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

#72

Post by everybodyknows »

Common denominator of all three issues is bad PRs. You don't say much about company code review process, the central question being, "Who has commit authority?" Clearly the problem child should not.

If it's only you trying to block a merge, perhaps deputize others to co-review. Hearing your same objections from multiple others could make them harder to ignore.

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

#73

Post by mud_dauber »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9

IMO this person needs to come to Jesus or be fired. > I'm the tech lead but not manager You need to have a conversation with the manager. Document the violations of standards and company policy. The manager should review this with the problem employee, in writing, and the employee should sign an acknowledgement that the warning was received and understood. If the employee does not improve he or she should be terminat…

This is the correct answer. CtJ or hit the bricks.

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

#74

Post by tails4e »

I've a similar issue with foreful pushback, but different circumstances. In this case it's someone who sticks blindly and rigidly to rules (often dictated by him) that are not bad persay, but can and do impact productivity. For example, designers should not write tests, that's for verification. If they do write tests they must use the (complex) verification env, not not a simpler unit test env. Compext checkin hoops to jump through, Many other items like this that make devopment beureaucratic and slows things down. It's really frustrating as I'm in architecture (previously implementation) and he's in implementation so he pushes back as 'it's his area'. He then complains we don't have enough resources, and schedules must push out. The sad fact is we did similar projects before with a team half the size, but just more efficiently, but he wont listen to that at all.

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

#75

Post by fsociety »

hbrn wrote: post #71

Plenty of bad advise here. It sounds like you already made up your mind about this person and came here to enforce your confirmation bias. Since I've been on both sides of this story, I'm going to be the devil's advocate. > I try as much as possible to explain _why_ practices are what they are, the effects on our project, the team, etc. Any suggestions for these conversations in the future? How about showing the hard…

Pretty much this. Context matters so much. Even at a higher-level, imagine this at a FAANG vs. startup finding product market fit. The situations are completely different.

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

#76

Post by fooster »

Teever wrote: post #61
TillE wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'.'

Do you find this type of answer to actually help you accomplish your and your organizations goals? I don’t think many people would react well to that type of military style order frankly.

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

#77

Post by DontchaKnowit »

mjrbrennan wrote: post #69
bdw5204 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I absolutely have never put stack overflow code into a prodiction code base and I dont think Ive heard anyone talking about or seen anyone do that. I dont think that is typical all.

I use stack overflow to understand a concept or a technique frequently, but always type my own code from scratch.

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

#78

Post by peelle »

mjrbrennan wrote: post #69
bdw5204 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of us coded before SO, but I think you're being too general. Using SO to see examples of syntax is completely different than copying a chunk/function/page of original code someone wrote to solve a problem.

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

#80

Post by hnfong »

curiousDog wrote: post #39

After seeing great folks laid off from FANG, i would also question if you should care so much about these things. IMO, us SWEs tend to care so much about writing idiomatic code for corporate overlords when in reality the effects of mildly sloppy code won’t be realized for a decade, it’s okay to leave it to the next poor soul that has to deal with it 10yrs down the lane and just enjoy your weekend :-)

Unless you switch jobs every <2 years, the next poor soul is most likely yourself. 10 years down the lane? You'd be shooting yourself in the foot by writing bad code if 6 months later you have to troubleshoot a bug related to the spaghetti you created yourself.
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