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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

#131

Post by lynnetye »

mercer wrote: post #71
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 immens…

I agree with you 100%. Our relationships with our employers and with our work is very much like our romantic relationships. It sounds like Rick and management were both inexperienced and focusing too much on the short-term. Similar to breakups, sometimes we draw them out over many months (or years...) because we've invested so much into something already, it's hard to just pull the plug. And certainly the idea of the "frog in the boiling water" applies to both types of relationships. When things get bad slowly over time, we don't notice.

I also feel like I've been a little like Rick before (though in a non-developer role). I learned a lot from that experience and, like you, have matured as a result.

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

#132

Post by Sevrene »

user5994461 wrote: post #116
Sevrene wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow, maybe I'm not understanding you correctly. Are you actually saying personality is only a result of environment? Take for instance introverts vs extraverts. Introverts might be forced to be more social in an open office, but they would still work better in a private space and management has the ability prioritise their worker's personality and provide both open and private spaces for them.

The way you behave at work is in great part a result of the environment. Let's say that every time you have a meeting, the manager and the client blame you for the project being late. Soon, enough, you probably gonna avoid them as much as you can or kill yourself in overtime, maybe both. It shouldn't take long before you get the reputation for being a dickhead and maybe someone will write a blog post about it. None o…

I believe I understand what you mean now, although it's possible we might be conflating the environment having a large impact on ones behaviour (which I agree you are correct on), and; someone's innate personality developed due to genetics and their collected experiences in different environments and as such behaving better, worse, or different in those environments. Essentially we are arguing Nurture vs Nature, or Environment vs Genetics, right? I believe they both have a large impact and can cancel each other out.

For instance in your first example, a very charismatic person might not get a reputation for being a dickhead because everyone loves him due to his loveable personality, yet he's in the same environment and situation as the person who is known as a dickhead.

> I can give you a much simpler example. Put 10 people in an arena and give them a sword, gladiator style. The last standing gets to stay alive.

> Congratulations, you just discovered that any human can be turned into a murderer in 10 minutes! They adapted to their environment.

Have you ever been in a disaster or life threatening situation? There's a fight or flight response and that response can be different depending what sort of personality you have, right? I imagine not everyone would fight in your hyperbolic example if we simulated it thousands of times. I guarantee there are many people out there that would drop to the ground crying in a ball rather than fight to the death.

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

#133

Post by sage76 »

le-mark wrote: post #7

There were a lot of failures in the Rick story "on all sides" as POTUS would say. This author seems to identify with Rick and frames this type of developer as gifted, but taken advantage of. At the end of the day, we all have to manage our own careers. And in this field that especially includes "managing your manager". Whatever process you find yourself in, you have to be able to push back and say: "I'm working on X,…

> Whatever process you find yourself in, you have to be able to push back and say: "I'm working on X, if you want me to work on Y, what do you want first? What's the priority?"

I asked an ex-manager that once when I had 2 important issues to deal with. His response : "They're both important dude, get going on them."

I don't know how to respond to that. Assholes will be assholes I suppose.

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

#134

Post by chiph »

pascalxus wrote: post #109

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 explanat…

At a minimum, shops should have some short documents that explain where the code is in source control, what is needed to build it, where it got deployed, and some general idea about how to do a full system test. Call it the "Hit by a bus" doc if you want. Or more nicely -- the new hire orientation doc. And it's management's job to ensure it gets kept up to date. Because it's a business continuity issue.

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

#135

Post by cannonedhamster »

I was a Rick once, though not by choice. The company underpaid, management received bonuses based on cutting staff, and the company wasn't a tech company. They refused to give raises or title only promotions. I tried to set up knowledge transfers, tried to spread workloads, instituted training, but it was never enough and all the work ended back with me. I eventually left and now make significantly more for less work. I've never let myself become a Rick again.

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

#136

Post by Mithaldu »

cupscale wrote: post #105
Mithaldu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know you did mean firing, but even that wasn't necessary. In germany we actually force companies to at least try and work things out. In order to fire someone you need 3 documented instances of misbehavior followed up improvement attampts, or an actual breach of law.

This gives everyone time to sit down, gain distance, sleep over it and calm down and try again.

Plus, if the feeling of not getting along remains after that, after some calming down it's often easier to work out a mutually acceptable separation. In a similar situation over here, Rick would've gotten a fairer treatment even on separation, other than "fuck you, bye".

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

#137

Post by Mithaldu »

bllguo wrote: post #107
Mithaldu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know he didn't mean killing. I elaborated in a comment above.

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

#138

Post by cannonedhamster »

cupscale wrote: post #77
coldtea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 inappropri…

Actually no, just because you kill someone doesn't mean you're going to jail. If someone is attacking you and you lash out in self-defense, you're very likely to not go to jail as everyone is expected to be able to defend themselves. It sounds very much like this was a defense mechanism to overwork. The fact that they didn't give him time off before approaching him was kind of crappy in the first place. It should never have come to what it came to.

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

#139

Post by Angostura »

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…

Actually, I'm pretty sure what happened next was a dozen influential customers enquiring where those multiple weird little edge-case features that they relied on had gone in in the new, seemingly "dumbed down" release - the features that they had explicitly requested two years ago, which Sales had promised to get the sale, and which Rick had implemented in a bit of a hurry, noting that it would need to be refactored later.
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