You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

tonyarkles wrote: post #4

provost wrote: post #2

A very similar scenario is described in the fictional work, "The Phoenix Project", is it not? There is a smart character who handles every escalation, but nothing is documented, he was the bottleneck, and his stress level was high. Management had to figure out they needed to handle the escalations, prioritize, reduce the bottleneck, document the solutions, and teach others to fish. This article seems to be addressing…

Yup, very similar scenario in The Phoenix Project. And thank you for the reminder of that. It occurred to me reading the original article and this reply to it that I may be somewhat putting myself in a Rick situation right now. I don't have any good book recommendations, but I'd be delighted if anyone else did :)

It's simple to avoid:

1) don't work more than 45 hours a week, ever.

2) if you are forced to work any saturday or sunday, you take one day off in the following week.

3) don't work when you are outside of work. no remote access, no email, no slack, no app on your phone, don't accept calls from work.

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

#102

Post by thisisit » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

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…

Well, then I guess I am in a unique position, a reverse Rick of sorts ;)

I have tried and tried hard to stop people being dependent on me, writing detailed specs and documentations, generously sharing them with the team - not once but multiple times. The end result being people ask me either to do the stuff because "I am the expert" or resend the document link for them to study.

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

#103

Post by Mithaldu » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

cupscale wrote: post #97

volkk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The way it all happened was essentially "yeah so we beat the guy with a baseball bat and he had the nerve to swing back at us while we did so"

Eh, no it’s not like that at all. Again this is more like a dog that’s been abused over the years and then mauls a kid. No ones surprised that the dog is aggressive, and the owners are obviously guilty of abusing an animal - a horrible thing for the owners to have done. That doesn’t change that the dog’s aggressive now, though, and should be put down.

The sheer depth of badness this comparison reaches is extremely impressive.

Developers are human. They don't need to be put down.

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

#104

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

cupscale wrote: post #10

pault wrote: post #3

From a comment on the original post: "Unfortunately Rick rejected months of overtures by leadership. He refused to take time off or allow any work to be delegated. He also repeatedly rejected attempts to introduce free open source frameworks to replace hard-to-maintain bespoke tools. Including the security framework as you mentioned." Also: "Another poster blamed management. I agree that the situation that came about…

This still reeks of CYA. > "He refused to take time off or allow any work to be delegated. He also repeatedly rejected attempts to introduce free open source frameworks to replace hard-to-maintain bespoke tools." Why did he have the authority in either of those last two decisions? > "I agree that the situation that came about was also his manager’s fault. " And his manager's manager, and basically anyone who was awar…

One thing not clear, it might be an outsourcing company doing a product for an external client.

If so, we're talking 3 years overdue while billing an entire team. That's typically considered a success for the outsourcing firm. Remember that they bill by time*men, not by project delivered, coulnd't care less about the software and the people.

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

#105

Post by cupscale » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #103

cupscale wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no it’s not like that at all. Again this is more like a dog that’s been abused over the years and then mauls a kid. No ones surprised that the dog is aggressive, and the owners are obviously guilty of abusing an animal - a horrible thing for the owners to have done. That doesn’t change that the dog’s aggressive now, though, and should be put down.

The sheer depth of badness this comparison reaches is extremely impressive. Developers are human. They don't need to be put down.

No, but sometimes they need to be fired because the work situation is unrecoverable. Regardless of who’s fault it is.

“Put down” here is an analogy for being fired. I don’t actually think Rick should be put down. I’d hoped that was obvious.

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

#106

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #99

mercer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine the writer not intentionally hiding these things, but I do agree that they should be added to the original article.

I am not too sure because if I want to make noise about how my developer screwed up, highlighting the incompetence of the direct manager played a big part as well. Yea sure maybe the minute detail of management overtures being refused can be missed because they wanted to portray themselves as a good guy. From the looks of it the whole thing was written from "an expose on star developer culture" point of view. In whic…

Depends where the poster stands in the organization.

Highlighting failure of an employee is always a bad idea. Highlighting failure of many employees and the entire chain of command is a suicide move.

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

#107

Post by bllguo » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #103

cupscale wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no it’s not like that at all. Again this is more like a dog that’s been abused over the years and then mauls a kid. No ones surprised that the dog is aggressive, and the owners are obviously guilty of abusing an animal - a horrible thing for the owners to have done. That doesn’t change that the dog’s aggressive now, though, and should be put down.

The sheer depth of badness this comparison reaches is extremely impressive. Developers are human. They don't need to be put down.

I don't see how anyone who understands what an analogy is would come to the conclusion that the GP is proposing that developers are killed. What's shocking is how ridiculous your comment is.

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

#108

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:44 PM UTC

thestephen wrote: post #61

We re-released the product to this group. It consisted of 10% of Rick’s original code which was pretty stable. It also had a few thousand lines of new code to replace about 150,000 lines of incomprehensible mess. The team had replaced five years of work in about six months. Over the next few months we expanded from pilot to full customer release. Up next: Manager on Medium bragging that he or she would be able to typ…

A team of 3 people for 6 months is a total of 3000 hours*men. They can do a lot.

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

#109

Post by pascalxus » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:45 PM UTC

Documentation, while important is also a bit overrated in it's capabilities. Don't get me wrong - It would be lovely if you could simply read a bit of documentation to understand what's going on in the code. Reality is different. The details of understanding code, is in the code itself and how it connects to all the other bits of code.

The original author of the code has an understanding that far exceeds the explanatory powers of any documentation or anyone else that can come along and try to understand what's going on. By all means, attempt to document as much as you can, but don't expect it to be a silver bullet for understanding code.

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

#110

Post by forgottenpass » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

korzun wrote: post #22

I briefed the original story, and one thing that stood out to me is that the author threw a 'bomb' named collaboration into the mix AFTER firing so-called Rick. What author fails to understand, is that the problem could have been addressed by collaboration as well. I caught a 'scrum-master' CTO wanna-be that wrote an article about (omitting my name) how he is happy I was gone because I was hard to manage. This guy sh…

I vouched this comment.

I'm sure it was dinged for not using mild-mannered business vocabulary to describe the former workplace. But I've seen some form of this play out in real life enough times to tell your assessment probably isn't too far off, and you were right to get out of there.

Finding someone that's actually dedicated and not just willing to say "dedication" in an interview needs a position that won't burn them out, or the knowledge of when to quit. Having neither is a disaster waiting to happen.