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Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

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Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#101

Post by 111_1_111 »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #29
foobarchu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the point was that she shouldn't have shared that information with peers at all, it's that she needs to be more careful about exactly who she's telling it to. OP may easily be in a position later of promoting her to another position. Even if she is confident in her choices by that point, OP will still have that information tucked in their mind, and will (maybe unconciously) utilize it in their decisions…

A good group project with people who are mature enough to handle someone's expression of vulnerability without judgement might be what keeps them in the class. If you reject someone over an expression of doubt, it was never about the doubt.

> A good group project with people who are mature enough to handle someone's expression of vulnerability without judgement might be what keeps them in the class.

Yeah, and a bad group project with somebody who is dumb enough to express their vulnerability to me might be what drags my grade from an A to a B.

> If you reject someone over an expression of doubt, it was never about the doubt.

I hope you realize that this is meaningless nonsense.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#102

Post by scarface74 »

greenrd wrote: post #89
scarface74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent 9 years at one company- seven years longer than I should have - and by the time I left in 2008, I was way behind where I should have been. I spent from 2009-2016 admitting weaknesses left and right so I could learn from other people. I think that might have kept me from getting ahead at the 3 companies I worked at during that time, but it was worth it for the skills I picked up. Even at my current position as…

As a tech lead, it's actually easier for you to admit weaknesses, since your subordinates will be happy if you arrange things such that their job satisfaction is high, regardless of how much or little technical work you do. For a front-line engineer it's more dangerous, particularly if there is a perception (even if unfair) of a discrepancy between how they presented themselves at interview, and how they are presenti…

The only times I've been closed to getting fired weren't because of technical skills. I don't believe I've ever come up against a technical challenge that I couldn't solve by putting enough man hours into it.

But, the one thing that I've gotten a couple of "improvement plans" about were surrounding my lack of emotional intelligence and attitude. Those nine years between 2008-2016 were just as much about improving my emotional intelligence as learning technical skills. I look back in horror about some of things I did during the first 12 years of my career. I can very much see where the article is coming from.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#103

Post by greenrd »

jeffdavis wrote: post #39

"To the extent that he’s been successful, it’s because he’s been strategic about what he reveals, and to the extent that he is heading for disaster, it is because he is often unstrategic about what he reveals." I like the rest of the article, but this seems almost like the definition of confirmation bias.

What counterexamples would you offer? Bearing in mind that it may have been intended only to apply to consequences that he was responsible for, not things that he had nothing to do with, but I can't think of any examples of the latter right now.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#104

Post by watwut »

greenrd wrote: post #82
rainbowmverse wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good group project with people who are mature enough to handle someone's expression of vulnerability without judgement might be what keeps them in the class. If you reject someone over an expression of doubt, it was never about the doubt.

The reality of group projects is that all too often, one person ends up doing most of the real work. Group projects don't need to be more infantilising, they need to be more "shape up or ship out!"

It is not infantilizing to accept expression of doubt or some kind of negative feeling. People have opinions and feelings and sometimes express them. Getting scared of that and yelling "shape up or ship out" is as immature as stopping the work altogether because of it.

Also, in my experience, the people who express such feelings are the ones who tend to be willing to do a lot of work and also the boring work needed to finish the thing.

The one person doing all the work in group project imo, is because group projects are quite dumb exercises. It has little to do how real cooperation in just a little competently managed work works and keeps more hardworking people hostage to lazy ones. Regardless of whether it is lazy or hardworking who is more open about his state of mind. It has nothing to do with infantilization - many adults in same situation will slack, because that is how incentives are lined up.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#105

Post by rajacombinator »

aetherson wrote: post #13

I'm 40, and some of my coworkers are like 25. I'm about two management levels above the basic engineers, but we're a small company and everyone knows everyone. So I'm having lunch with some of the engineers, and one of them shares out of the blue that she regrets getting a computer science degree at her (good) college, and thinks she should've gone into business instead. And my immediate thought is, "For god's sake,…

I’d wager if such an unimportant comment would have a serious effect on her prospects working for you, her prospects weren’t that good to begin with.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#106

Post by cosmie »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #92
losteric wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're describing discretion and reiterating the author. They never suggested lying, merely being mindful of the circumstances when disclosing truth.

Added an excerpt from the post. It seems to be the opposite of what I'm saying.

I read that section as what one is commonly exposed to, not what he's advocating doing.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#107

Post by greenrd »

dkarl wrote: post #48

Traditionally, for a man among men, expressing confidence has always been safe. If a man expresses confidence in a situation where confidence is foolhardy, other men will interpret it as a performance of masculinity. I'm sure Rick understands this project is going to be a nightmare. I'm glad he's gung-ho about it. If you express fear, on the other hand, your fear will be scrutinized to determine whether it is well-fo…

> What kind of filter do I want my employees or coworkers to have at work? Should we systematically favor bravado over vulnerability? My gut feeling is that we should not.

I think structural/procedural solutions can be very helpful to encourage honest discussion. For example, rather than asking "when do you think you can have this done by?" you can ask "let's try to estimate this story in a timeboxed way, as a group, using planning poker". I know it may sound silly to those who have not done it before, but it works really well. It's difficult to explain the real reason why this helps so much without revealing more than I'd rather reveal in public.

Also, and relatedly, to the extent that you wish people to be more open and take ownership of problems such that they can honestly discuss their work-related problems rather than trying to keep you happy and play office politics, you can try to exhibit servant leadership. But you can't really be a servant leader when it comes to some issues, like hiring and firing - and by consequence, performance review. There you have to be firm but fair.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#108

Post by lnanek2 »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #56

I really do think about this a lot, but I disagree with what the author proposes which is basically lying or deceiving others: > Authenticity is rare, but people performing authenticity is common, and being good at that performance can build a fortune. Not just authenticity, of course. Being able to pretend that you are furious is a trick that all great sales people use. And being able to create the illusion of a sin…

Lying definitely works really well at work, however. I recently had to work with another team that committed to do a portion of the work on a feature, they blew it off for 5 weeks, then at the big meeting about it lied and claimed they never agreed to do any of it. Every person on the team lies and swears that never agreed, even though there are Hipchat logs of them working on it for a couple days with us before they punted it without telling us and went radio silent. Since they chose lying, however, it's impossible to ding them on peer feedback since they'll just claim miscommunication on the part of the reporter. So they insulate themselves from any bad feedback by lying their asses off...

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#109

Post by blub »

dkarl wrote: post #48

Traditionally, for a man among men, expressing confidence has always been safe. If a man expresses confidence in a situation where confidence is foolhardy, other men will interpret it as a performance of masculinity. I'm sure Rick understands this project is going to be a nightmare. I'm glad he's gung-ho about it. If you express fear, on the other hand, your fear will be scrutinized to determine whether it is well-fo…

Hearing "I'm so scared" from inexperienced programmers about Flash projects doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

We should accept it for what it is instead of imagining fanciful scenarios about the communication patterns of the two(?) sexes.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#110

Post by solidsnack9000 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #77
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyway, it's pretty disheartening to see an incident that is heavily colored by gender expectations related and acknowledged as such but then interpreted as a story about a one-dimensional spectrum from expressiveness to guardedness. Maybe you have said it already in the above but to ask directly: do you think the author or their colleague would have treated Lisa’s remarks differently if she were a man?

FWIW: Male characters in movies who show you their scars are seen correctly as bragging about what badasses they are. I am a woman inclined to do that and I have had to learn to stop it. It is consistently interpreted as "Oh, you poor, pathetic thing, so victimized by life! Clearly, you need to be rescued! (by which I mean treated like a doormat and taken advantage of)" Outright bragging goes worse places. So the GP…

That is different from what is described in the original article, though, where “Lisa” really does speak in a way that communicates fear and a sense of trepidation.
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