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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?

#81

Post by kitsune_ »

codecutter wrote: post #35
Madmallard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Please don't play it emotionally and report it to HR. Folks from HR are there to take care of the manager and employer. Such a step could be suicidal.

Maybe this is different here in Europe, but HR's role is to protect the company. HR in my experience does not do whatever a manager wants. Let's say you have a toxic direct, unless you have a 50 page document outlining every single transgression or bad behavior and the steps you took to mediate said behaviour, including corrective feedback, and statements by the toxic employee's peers supporting your observations, HR will often times do exactly nothing and happily ignore you, and even then, they could still propose "mediation" or "conflict resolution" procedures because they are afraid of an unfair dismissal law suit or whatever.

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

#83

Post by jumaro »

lostcolony wrote: post #29

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…

Thanks a lot for your comment. There's a lot in there. In fact, I added most of it to my personal collection of quotes.

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

#84

Post by beforeolives »

byteface wrote: post #80
beforeolives wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can. My point is that I can do it without having been explicitly taught touch typing. It's just a skill I developed over time and I thought that it happened for everyone else too.

So you feel for the 'home keys' instincitvely without looking? every time you type? and never had a single lesson?

I've never had lessons, I have no concept of home keys (just had to look up what they are), I type everything without ever looking at my keyboard at a reasonable speed.

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

#85

Post by autophagian »

byteface wrote: post #80
beforeolives wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can. My point is that I can do it without having been explicitly taught touch typing. It's just a skill I developed over time and I thought that it happened for everyone else too.

So you feel for the 'home keys' instincitvely without looking? every time you type? and never had a single lesson?

Yes.

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

#86

Post by bogle »

Best: in my first role, shadowing an experienced contractor, after I quietly suggested the company was a little disorganized, "Don't worry, they're all like that."

Also memorable was in one of my first contract roles from another, excellent, contractor, "Spend half the day on their stuff, and half the day on your own work. You don't want to raise their expectations."

To clarify that last bit of advice: a contractor should be capable of getting all of the day's work done in half the day (they are good at the job and they don't have to deal with the permanent employees' extra duties). The other half of the day may well be speculative work that the contractor wants to try out that will benefit the company but the management would never be able to say yes to if you asked for permission. Or it may just be real programming.

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

#87

Post by byteface »

byteface wrote: post #80
beforeolives wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can. My point is that I can do it without having been explicitly taught touch typing. It's just a skill I developed over time and I thought that it happened for everyone else too.

So you feel for the 'home keys' instincitvely without looking? every time you type? and never had a single lesson?

that was my point. the two little lumps on 'f' and 'j' are so you know where to put your pointer fingers in the dark. touch typers feel for them so they can type without looking. It's cool that you can just do that, without knowing, over time.

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

#88

Post by applepple »

From worst colleague: Succeeding in our modern economy has nothing to do with ability, intelligence or work ethic. It's about luck and intimidation.

From best colleague: 10x, 100x, 1000x... developers are real. I also learned that making bold, controversial claims will yield respect dividends in the future when they turn out to be true. For one of my past startups, I was working closely with the CTO who was at least a 10x or 100x and some of the stuff he was saying seemed to defy a lot of the industry practices at the time. I didn't take what he was saying very seriously at first, but over the years, I ended up discovering that essentially everything he said was true and lead to huge productivity increases. It had a big impact on me to understand that software development is a craft which can be mastered on a whole different plane beyond what the vast majority of developers can imagine. I consider a lot of his teachings to be 'trade secrets' and I try to pass them on to other developers I care about (especially open source collaborators).

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

#89

Post by bufferoverflow »

applepple wrote: post #88

From worst colleague: Succeeding in our modern economy has nothing to do with ability, intelligence or work ethic. It's about luck and intimidation. From best colleague: 10x, 100x, 1000x... developers are real. I also learned that making bold, controversial claims will yield respect dividends in the future when they turn out to be true. For one of my past startups, I was working closely with the CTO who was at least…

Could you teach us some of his best lessons please?

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

#90

Post by DayDollar »

wiether wrote: post #63
plank_time wrote: post #21

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 opposit…

> 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. I try to always have this kind of mindse…

You can at least entertain the idea, bad ideas spin themselves apart at the planning stage.

"I have a mobile smal bbq kit at home. I could bring that in for a try tomorrow. But were do we bbq. Fire detectors go off inside the building, so should be outside. Will bring it, but i wont grill out there in the rain, im for a rotating job on that. Volunteers?" There - death by self-execution. And you didnt even murder it by pulling hierarchy, which is always a good way to create a contribution dead company, were everyone just waits for the clock to go forward.

There is more to managing then making decisions (like in the movies). And in reality it should be more of a supportive role. And yes, sometimes you must entertain doomed ideas (like flying bicycles - those wright brothers, i kid you not).

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