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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?

#91

Post by mindentropy »

melony wrote: post #56

My advice for you is different. Kick the ball up the chain. Ask the higher ups to send a reminder on company policy or to implement mechanical tools. Do NOT put yourself in the firing line, especially in places with an "academic-inspired" workspace. You don't want to be the bad guy, you don't want to be known as that " difficult " tech lead. You are not high enough up on the food chain to safely pull rank on your tea…

>In many companies, policies are guidelines for management to cover their ass. E.g. "Giving gifts to political leaders in third world countries is prohibited and illegal". This is complete nonsense, every MNC above a certain size have no choice but to grease the wheels when operating in developing countries.

Exactly! It is also not limited to developing countries but in developed countries as well. Just that the criminals are in suits and they use a more sophisticated lobbying instead of the cruder bribing.

I really don't understand how people are so passionate about corporates. It is "work" and they really have to pay me well to get me to do this bullshit.

Working on personal side projects gives me a creative outlet as an engineer to work on things I love without all this bullshit.

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

#92

Post by potta_coffee »

I've worked with a couple of these guys at my current company. I spent six months trying to get along with a guy and get some kind of compromise going. After lots of abuse and long, painful workdays I finally asked to be switched to another team. If your management doesn't value the integrity of the workplace and doesn't hold the person in question accountable, there's no use fighting it.

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

#93

Post by mdcds »

Since said person doesn't want to listen you and you don't have the direct authority over that person, I think it's reasonable to ask the team manager to deal with it.

Say something like the following. Just remember to include specific pieces of evidence that support your claim.

"Person X doesn't seem to care about company policies regarding the code quality. On following occasions: he/she did something sloppy that was against the policy A and refused to even acknowledge it during the review. Can you explain him/her why following these policies is important"

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

#95

Post by barking_biscuit »

Veuxdo wrote: post #8

You describe your workplace as academically-inspired, yet experimentation and large PRs are discouraged. In you shoes, I'd double-check to make sure the "small-PRs-only" policy is in alignment with the company values before making that a real point of contention.

The small PRs thing literally came out of things like "The Principles of Product Development Flow", which talks extensively about Queuing Theory, as well as the findings from Accelerate which came out of academic research. So... I can very much see how it would be aligned?
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