Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
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Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
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Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#2The problem is that if you are actually do know best, everybody else has to make that mistake and learn, and while doing so, is halting progress that could be made in the right direction.
In my world as a software developer, I've found that if my group of colleagues and the boss has very different culture and skills than you do, it's very hard or impossible to influence change. Because the entire group would have to be on the same level of technical experience OR have enough respect for titles or experience to follow someone else, in order for progress to happen.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#3The problem is that if you are actually do know best, everybody else has to make that mistake and learn, and while doing so, is halting progress that could be made in the right direction. In my world as a software developer, I've found that if my group of colleagues and the boss has very different culture and skills than you do, it's very hard or impossible to influence change. Because the entire group would have to…
I agree with you, it is important to let the person fail and learn. But sometimes, this can be costly and fixing it may be hard.
My approach is to ask the person question and understand what is the objective trying to be achieved, and hope with the answers given, the person realize it is doing a mistake.
I also hope that the person respect my experience and is able to learn from my mistakes and do not need to do the same mistakes in order to learn.
But I do not always succeeds in these endeavors. Once a colleague was developing some page objects for Selenium tests and creating classes with only one attribute, which was the full URL of the page. Of course tests would not word when executed in several environments and to have this files were useless. But to fix exactly this, I saw it required more knowledge on OO design than a simple talk could give.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#4The problem is that if you are actually do know best, everybody else has to make that mistake and learn, and while doing so, is halting progress that could be made in the right direction. In my world as a software developer, I've found that if my group of colleagues and the boss has very different culture and skills than you do, it's very hard or impossible to influence change. Because the entire group would have to…
The article describes a situation where your co-worker is potentially doing something unproductive, and how you can get them to change.
The situation where your own boss is making a mistake, and you yourself have to carry out their instructions is much trickier, as you might find yourself being blamed for the inevitable poor outcome.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#5The problem is that if you are actually do know best, everybody else has to make that mistake and learn, and while doing so, is halting progress that could be made in the right direction. In my world as a software developer, I've found that if my group of colleagues and the boss has very different culture and skills than you do, it's very hard or impossible to influence change. Because the entire group would have to…
I agree with you, it is important to let the person fail and learn. But sometimes, this can be costly and fixing it may be hard. My approach is to ask the person question and understand what is the objective trying to be achieved, and hope with the answers given, the person realize it is doing a mistake. I also hope that the person respect my experience and is able to learn from my mistakes and do not need to do the…
>> But to fix exactly this, I saw it required more knowledge on OO design than a simple talk could give.
What do you do in this situation?
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#6Good advice in the article, the relationship is more important than to fight over details but I would recommend using standards.
Regarding the change, ask her why she want to change it? How would it give a business advantage for the business? It is a bigger change, write it down so you can evaluate in retrospect -> this is how we improve. If it does not give any business value why should we do it?
As they say in the article do not go directly against the proposed change because the person will not remember your arguments only the feeling they had when you said it.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, it is important to let the person fail and learn. But sometimes, this can be costly and fixing it may be hard. My approach is to ask the person question and understand what is the objective trying to be achieved, and hope with the answers given, the person realize it is doing a mistake. I also hope that the person respect my experience and is able to learn from my mistakes and do not need to do the…
>> But to fix exactly this, I saw it required more knowledge on OO design than a simple talk could give. What do you do in this situation?
I think that 1st we have to understand that to solve this, every solution is slow.
1st I send some links on OO designs and SOLID principles.
2nd I made a few comments on the code review that tacked more real problem like maintenance, change of URL since we were still in development phase and other pages and dialogs that do not have a URL and how this mixed with the rest that have.
3rd was to have design discussion pior development - which we did not have.
For last, some hours during week with the whole team to talk on design and coding, in order to have evryone on a similar level of knowledge.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#8I went through this phase with a difficult coworker over code, would take code reviews personally, developed long running branches in an ivory tower with no input or discussion.
Learned to let go and he has his parts of the code base and I have mine. Not ideal, but worked as we were a 2 man dev team at the time. Then he left and we grew the team. Now we got a few minefields left in the code base that anytime we need to add a feature or work in the area we have issues due to technical debt.
What could one have done instead? Anyways the situation is a lot better, the new team all mesh well and discuss issues without taking it personally. Take away (probably obvious) is that good communication amongst team members is vital.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#9The flaw here is that you assume that "Kara" will learn from her mistakes. Not always the case. Especially in "creative" personality types. Find a creative, rational person if you can.
Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You
#10The flaw here is that you assume that "Kara" will learn from her mistakes. Not always the case. Especially in "creative" personality types. Find a creative, rational person if you can.
Hehe, or, they will will get replaced as soon as they learn enough to find a better paying position.
It’s really a triple choice: 1. Shirtfront the stupidity
2. Build the relationship
3. Avoid the whole thing and work with people who are on the same wavelength