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Be Kind

briangilham.com

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Re: Be Kind

#361

Post by yunruse »

nodesocket wrote: post #322

I was just thinking about this today. Why is it that software engineers have a supreme mind set... "Oh you don't know that?" "Oh you don't know about that tool?" "Oh you use PHP?" We categorize our peers into two buckets. One with whom you respect, and unfortunately the other as newbies, rookies, not worthy of our time and energy. Listen, I am completely guilty of this behavior myself. Howerver, after reflecting I am…

If anything, acting arrogant helps maintain any habitual problems you have. If you teach someone something, you have to reword it - which teaches it back you you most of the time, and offers a good third-person view of your work habits.

Re: Be Kind

#362

Post by GordonS »

Wow, this really resonates with me.

The very first day of my first 'proper' job, I made a total mess of something that cost the company around $5000. But my manager was like 'don't worry, we'll sort it, just learn to ask if you don't know how to do something'.

Many years on and I lead a development team. Now I always try my best to 'be kind', to coach and mentor, and it almost always pays back.

That one guy's kindness had a lasting impact.

Re: Be Kind

#363

Post by nostrademons »

ninjakeyboard wrote: post #313

As software engineers: As beginners, we're over-confident in our ability, even if we actually suck and make lots of mistakes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect The opposite seems to become true - experienced engineers (who have learned from their mistakes) seem to be extra paranoid. I've seen also older engineers that seem to be confident still, talk a bit game, but they just never learned.…

Overconfidence is a huge benefit in playing the political game - getting people to take you seriously, managing up, interfacing with the outside world. Like it or not, humans are primed to respond to confidence; for most people, listing the dozen ways a system may fail signals that you shouldn't use the system, while for engineers, it signals that these are a dozen things to be fixed.

The trick - when getting to higher levels of technical management - is learning how to context-switch between being overconfident for the benefit of non-technical stakeholders and being paranoid with the technology so that the things that could go wrong don't actually go wrong.

Re: Be Kind

#364

Post by bbcbasic »

cortesoft wrote: post #348
wyago wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're probably not implying regression to the mean is causational, but that was my initial reading so I want to clarify for those who may not be familiar with the concept. Regression to the mean is simply that any given datapoint is most likely to be the mean, or close to it. This means that any exceptional data point,up or down, can be expected to be followed up by the mean. The example of this being misinte…

Yeah, I always make an example with coin flips to show how this is true.... lets say heads is success and tails is failure. Flip 100 coins. Take the ones that 'failed' (landed tails) and scold them. Flip them again. Half improved! Praise the ones that got heads the first time. Flip them again. Half got worse :( Clearly, scolding is more effective than praising.

That's a brilliant example. I wont forget that now.

Re: Be Kind

#365

Post by kinow »

Had similar experiences in my first job with one of the smartest engineers I ever worked with (Claudio Marcio da Silveira). He early-retired to work on his family business (something related to flowers). But I can still remember all the times he let me learn by doing small mistakes, covered my bigger mistakes, and also educated me.

Trying to become that same engineer in my own way, but I definitely own a lot to him. And to other professors from uni/school that were extremely kind as well.

Re: Be Kind

#366

Post by euske »

This reminds me of a similar story about being nice. It has nothing to do with software development but I want to share this anyway.

I was in Seattle and I took a public bus. The fee was $1. It was my second day in the US and I didn't have a dollar bill in my wallet (nor a transit card). I was assuming that I can pay with a larger bill just like Japan. Big mistake. The driver yelled at me but nonetheless she let me ride for one time. Then the guy sitting next to me suddenly offered a dollar bill and said "take this, so that you can pay for it by yourself." I probably looked at his face with amazement. "Thank you very much, sir." The guy got off the bus in a few stops later and I never had a chance to say this, but I know it's my turn now. I want to thank the nameless person who slightly changed me. Kindness is contagious.

Re: Be Kind

#367

Post by fcoury »

euske wrote: post #366

This reminds me of a similar story about being nice. It has nothing to do with software development but I want to share this anyway. I was in Seattle and I took a public bus. The fee was $1. It was my second day in the US and I didn't have a dollar bill in my wallet (nor a transit card). I was assuming that I can pay with a larger bill just like Japan. Big mistake. The driver yelled at me but nonetheless she let me r…

I had a similar one. I was working in Rio de Janeiro, here in Brazil and money was really really tight back then. I would fly from Rio back to my city where my girlfriend is every other week.

So sure enough I got into a taxi cab and asked him to drive me to the airport, but make a stop at an ATM. When I went to withdraw the money for the cab, I noticed my payment didn't go through, it was still pending. I was desperate, didn't know what to do.

I kid you not, the guy withdrawing money from the ATM next to me somehow managed to notice my despair and got a chunk of money bills out of his pocket and said: "how much do you need?". I think I just stared back at him for a minute or so. "What?", I replied.

He told me that one day I'd have the opportunity to do the same for another person. I always remember this and always help strangers any time I can. And I realized that we are the ones that gain the most when we help.

EDIT: somehow somehow

Re: Be Kind

#368

Post by randartie »

Seems like this story is being received pretty well here.

Though, in my opinion I think it's kind of insulting to be asked something like "What did you learn?". The question isn't really necessary. You know that you screwed up.

That kind of dynamic between an engineer and a team lead is off-putting to me.

I think the proper way for a team lead to handle it is to instead work with the engineer to help find ways to eliminate the human error by implementing tooling or processes. The conversation should go something like this:

Lead: "I wonder how we can make sure none of us break XYZ widget again"

Engineer: "We can build out ABC and run that, also generally just test better before pushing to prod".

Lead: "Cool, do you want to go ahead and take care of that?"

Re: Be Kind

#369

Post by jasonkostempski »

Maybe im just lucky but this is generally how any manger I've ever had normally would have handled the situation. Not every single time, of course, since they were all humans and got frustrated sometimes, especially after a few of these in a row, but for the most part, they weren't dicks.

Re: Be Kind

#370

Post by driverdan »

happyslobro wrote: post #38

Mentoring is hard. It makes me question everything that I know, and worry about what this guy's code will look like in a year if I criticise this, or praise that. I wish there was some way we could all just work together, for real, in real time. I miss construction. Back then, I could just tell someone "Hey! You! Don't fuck that up, I'm pouring concrete around it tomorrow!" And we would still be cool at lunch break.

If you have the culture you can make similar jokes with people who write code.
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