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The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

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Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#31

Post by Smudge »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #21

A manager I know had a term for obnoxious over-achievers: "brilliant assholes". But there are other kinds of high achievers who should not leave because, after all, talent is talent. You don't say, "Bob wrote 70% of our product, and he's head and shoulders above the rest of the team, so he's got to go!" You should say, "How are we best utilizing our in-house talent? Does Bob engender resentment from the lesser progra…

> How are we best utilizing our in-house talent?

This question definitely captures more of the nuance that I felt was naggingly lacking in the original post. It's easy to justify firing someone in very black and white terms, but it's a lot harder to take such an employee and turn them into a valuable member of the team again, even though that might be the best outcome. Not saying it can always be done -- I've seen managers try for too long and fail, but I've also seen managers start making cuts at the first sign of trouble.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#33

Post by dozzie »

danjoc wrote: post #17

Here's his point (I think): "The founder and I made the most classic of mistakes: putting up with someone because we were afraid to lose their ability. I’ve since come to learn over and over again, it’s almost never worth it." Perhaps just me, but I don't like this style of writing. It takes pages of reading to arrive at a fairly simple point. Authors, please make your point first. Elaborate all you like with long wi…

I think this is not the most important point. The most important is this:

> [...] you are actually holding back everyone else at the expense of this person.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#34

Post by poof131 »

speeder wrote: post #2

Question: What a person that IS the exceptionally skilled person but that drags down the team, should do to not drag down the team?

Learn that everyone has value. No one is as exceptional as they think.

The guy coding a little slower but who customer success always talks to about problems. Great, he’s enabling communication between teams.

The girl who cleans up behind the “flash” programmer whose prototypes are awesome but doesn’t quite finish.[1] Great, she’s creating production code to be maintained by a team.

The list goes on. People provide value in ways that are not always apparent. I think Peopleware talks a bit about this although I may be mistaken, about the one team member who didn’t seem to fill a role but made everyone happy.[2] If the team wins everyone wins (hopefully in a good org).

The most exceptional teams have people filling roles. Every role is important and provides value. It’s why teams with a ton of exceptional people often implode, because they are all exceptional at only one thing and no one is filling the other roles. So all the members may appear exceptional, but the team is weak. It's a value systems problem.

[1] http://firstround.com/review/how-to-spot-and-magnify-the-pow...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-...

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#35

Post by vayeate »

fwn wrote: post #3

TL;DR version: "[...]I made the most classic of mistakes: putting up with someone because we were afraid to lose their ability. [...] it’s almost never worth it." edit: shortened it.

Yeah I was frustrated that I skipped over half this article to get to the point.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#37

Post by shric »

pdxandi wrote: post #27
n72 wrote: post #16

If that's the biggest mistake he's ever made, he leads a charmed life.

Perhaps they meant professionally.

Worst professional mistake? Amateurs! I once did rm -rf cvs when I thought I was in my home directory wiping my local checkout. I was actually in the root dir of the repo. We had no backups.

The 90s were such fun; long live distributed source control.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#38

Post by natepollack »

I'm the kind of developer the article mentions (at least some of my previous colleagues like to think so). But here is the deal. It is hard to work with me if you don't want to put enough energy into your own work. Because at my previous job there were people who told me that it is impossible (for them) to work with me, and all I could see that they didn't add ANY value to the project, but made me do stupid things like using Google Docs to track my tasks, instead of Basecamp which I already used with others for quite some time. And you know what? If you are this kind of person then it is super hard for me to not get pissed every time you open your mouth. I'm not the kind of guy to smile at you if you try to make my work harder than it already is.

And there were people who said that working with me was the best part of their job, but they were hard working and smart. And I really liked to work with them too. Every story has two sides.

I don't mean that Jason (OP) is not right! He probably is. But you can't generalize this as easily as the article says. Sometimes not the mean developer is at fault but the stupid management (even if there is more of them).

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#39

Post by Riod »

edent wrote: post #22

Wow! Once again I'm grateful to live in a country with sane labour laws - and glad to have the backing of a trade union. So because the managers couldn't do a decent job of managing their employee, he loses his job and all associated benefits?

Agreed. I think it can be traced to cultural factors. From working in the US, I find that needing to fit in is a huge part of their work culture. People notice when you don't share the same interests. The compulsion to flatter your boss is very strong. Very different to my part of Western Europe where work is work and not about finding people with the same interests to hang out with. I suspect the 'smart' employee in this situation was probably frustrated and wanted a higher performance environment. Entrepreneurship would probably be a better path for him.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#40

Post by Riod »

Cartwright2 wrote: post #25
edent wrote: post #22

Wow! Once again I'm grateful to live in a country with sane labour laws - and glad to have the backing of a trade union. So because the managers couldn't do a decent job of managing their employee, he loses his job and all associated benefits?

Found the guy who's difficult to work with... Seriously though, every company has had to deal with one of these people sooner or later. The cost to team morale always outweighs the talent of the difficult developer. Let them go, let them learn, and hope they fix their act at the next company. It always hurts to throw away talent.

It's also possible that the company is decidedly mediocre but has a strong culture of having people who all think the same way on the team. Smart person sees this and is frustrated but doesn't have managerial authority to make improvements.

Different cultures have different expectations of the relationship between employer, colleagues and the employee. Guessing op is from a place where being right is more important than everyone being on the same page but being wrong.

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