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You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

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Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#71

Post by mercer »

scarface74 wrote: post #37

I see so many sides to this -I’ve been a Rick, stayed at a company for nine years, knew where the bodies were buried because I buried most of them myself and became more disenchanted year after year which caused my attitude to get worse and worse. They wouldn’t fire me but they also wouldn’t promote me and give me raises - causing a horrible cycle. I woke up one day 8 years later in 2008 and making only 10,000 more t…

When I read the original article I was immediately curious how Rick would've written about this, and whether he was really as bad as he sounded, because I also have been, at least, a semi-Rick. Or at least I can imagine someone writing about me in a way similar to this.

There's a lot I could say about my experience, but it boils down to a combination of bad practices/behavior on both sides (that I learned from immensely), broader circumstances, as well as a bad fit between me and my direct superior(s) or the nature of the company. I think the latter is often underestimated.

I believe that the 'true' story of bad employee/employer is often a lot more like a romantic relationship than we care to admit. And while my impression is that Rick was more at fault in this situation, I'd say that just like a romantic relationship, the best lessons to draw from these events are not the blame-game ones.

(of course, maybe that says more about my romantic entanglements than about work hierarchies...)

EDIT: tangentially related, but I just realized that one of the few ways in which I feel I can say I've 'matured' on my path to 'adulthood', is having experienced multiple sides of, in essence, the same situations. It makes empathy and productive solutions so much easier, even if not always in the moment.

This kerfuffle is a good reminder for me to keep an eye out for these types of lessons and to avoid reflexively looking for someone or something to blame.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#72

Post by coldtea »

cupscale wrote: post #41
bartread wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know: in my experience pretty much everyone has a breaking point somewhere and once they reach it things can get pretty random. I've seen people I thought had it all together just completely lose the plot and disintegrate too many times to believe it's all bubbling away there, just below the surface, in all of us.

Your reasons for being an asshole don’t change the end result though. It just changes the context around it. Similarly I can understand how an aggressive dog came to be (poor training, etc.). That won’t change my opinion that the dog should be put down when it mauls a kid, you know?

>Your reasons for being an asshole don’t change the end result though. It just changes the context around it.

No, it very much does.

We are not cavemen to assign labels to people based only on external outcomes. Ever courts take emotional state and other circumstances into account.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#74

Post by cupscale »

forgottenpass wrote: post #64
cupscale wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh sorry, saying things like "I'm Albert Einstein and you're all just fucking monkeys scratching in the dirt" doesn't strike me as the speech of someone who's particularly nice. Most people (at least in my experience, you know, the one who's making the subjective judgement about him being a dick) can be angry without saying something pretentiously mean like that. It's ok for the conclusion here to be, "Rick's an as…

Most people (at least in my experience, you know, the one who's making the subjective judgement about him being a dick) can be angry without saying something pretentiously mean like that. Doesn't matter. Someone backed into a corner is just act like someone backed into a corner. The die was already cast. Everything that happens after is blame-shifting.

Uh, what? It absolutely does matter. There are appropriate reactions when you’re “backed into a corner”, and there are inappropriate reactions.

I absolutely get to say what the arbitrary line is in this case because I’m the one making the subjective judgment that Rick was most likely being an asshole.

If Rick had snapped and shot up the place would you think he should face no consequences?

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#76

Post by dx034 »

cupscale wrote: post #57
falcolas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. Who, when being worked 12x7, and when given the pressure of being a blocker of everybody else, isn't going to respond poorly? I've seen some of the nicest and even tempered people get short with others when the pressure cooker is really turned up. Rick sounds like he was a good guy to begin with - someone who regularly helped his coworkers, someone his coworkers trusted - until he w…

None of that changes the fact that Rick became an awful co-worker and needed to be removed, whether temporarily or more permanently. Sorry, berating your co-workers repeatedly is a terminable offense in many places. To go back to my analogy: Frankenstein’s monster still killed a bunch of people at the end of the day, even if it was Frankenstein’s fault that the monster existed at all. We can blame Frankenstein while…

Giving someone more tasks than anyone could handle and then firing that person because they don't achieve it is only management's failure. He didn't need to be "removed", he only needed to be managed properly.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#77

Post by cupscale »

coldtea wrote: post #72
cupscale wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reasons for being an asshole don’t change the end result though. It just changes the context around it. Similarly I can understand how an aggressive dog came to be (poor training, etc.). That won’t change my opinion that the dog should be put down when it mauls a kid, you know?

> Your reasons for being an asshole don’t change the end result though. It just changes the context around it. No, it very much does. We are not cavemen to assign labels to people based only on external outcomes. Ever courts take emotional state and other circumstances into account.

Sorry, it really really doesn’t.

The court might take your emotional state into account when you murder someone, but if they’ve got you dead-to-rights you’re still going to prison.

Does Rick deserve to get blacklisted? No. Would I have been incredibly upset if they named the individual? Yes.

Did Rick deserve to get fired even though they basically set him up to get fired? Yep, he still does.

Did Rick react inappropriately to a horrible situation? Yep, he did.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#78

Post by user5994461 »

noxToken wrote: post #51
Sevrene wrote: post #14

While I can agree there are 'real' rockstar developers that act like the original article mentions, I don't think whether Rick was or wasn't one of them is what matters here. What matters most here is how management dealt with him and their lack of responsibility for Rick's work for the last two years(!) and the end as their result. Other industries seem to get this better than ours. I've worked in quite a few places…

> Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. I'm willing to bet that it likely causation in a majority of cases. I've been there. Business comes back with a list of wishes for the quarter. We're asked about the features as a whole, and I'm already on the fence about whether it can actually get done. We start getting gran…

Quick question, what does your contract say about work hours? There is usually a well defined limit and the unpaid overtime you do should be regarded as illegal.

Don't put all the blames on management when developers do long hours. It's the developers who decide to stay late all the time when they should not.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#79

Post by cupscale »

dx034 wrote: post #76
cupscale wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that changes the fact that Rick became an awful co-worker and needed to be removed, whether temporarily or more permanently. Sorry, berating your co-workers repeatedly is a terminable offense in many places. To go back to my analogy: Frankenstein’s monster still killed a bunch of people at the end of the day, even if it was Frankenstein’s fault that the monster existed at all. We can blame Frankenstein while…

Giving someone more tasks than anyone could handle and then firing that person because they don't achieve it is only management's failure. He didn't need to be "removed", he only needed to be managed properly.

Did you read the original article? That wasn’t the crux of why they fired him.

Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy

#80

Post by Sevrene »

donatj wrote: post #44
Sevrene wrote: post #14

While I can agree there are 'real' rockstar developers that act like the original article mentions, I don't think whether Rick was or wasn't one of them is what matters here. What matters most here is how management dealt with him and their lack of responsibility for Rick's work for the last two years(!) and the end as their result. Other industries seem to get this better than ours. I've worked in quite a few places…

I worked for a company for five years as first a junior and later senior developer. My reviews were always glowing. I got promoted to lead shortly after our current lead left. I worked 10 hour days harder than I had ever worked in my life and developed a stress disorder I needed to take medication for. When my review came around I was told I was not getting enough done . There was zero possibility of me getting more…

Some spend their entire lives working at a company to figure out how little they actually value them in the end. I know I've worked for people for far too long knowing this and always regret not leaving sooner. Glad you saw the light and had an opportunity to get out, some don't always get that sadly.

I've turned down contracts because the stress of working with certain businesses just isn't worth the money they are offering and they are a constant revolving door of people. Hiring a contractor, burning them out with insane expectations and micromanagement and firing them when they miss those deadlines or slip up. It seems like it might work in the short term but long term it has to be costing these companies. They always have the worst codebases too, funny that.

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