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Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#121

Post by glitchc »

clavalle wrote: post #33
zldkz5 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree with you, the point is that being technical person doing a technical job I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. As I like to act first and share later, but there are people who talk but don't know how to act properly. I can build this skills as you said, true, but in my position now it would be impossible to get a promotion as the available spot has been ta…

>I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. Nope. Silence is always less noticeable than noise. Evil prevails when good men do nothing. Also, nonsense fluff prevails when good work isn't spoken of. You have a professional duty to make sure nonsense is crowded out by important information. No one is going to do that for you. Follow the rule of three...tell people what you a…

I find this prevailing mentality incredibly troubling and the one truly broken thing about North American culture. Taken to its logical end, it is the underpinning root cause of all that ails the U.S.

In short: “I did it all myself” is always a lie. It could only ever be true if babes were left in woods since the time of birth to fend for themselves, and even then, debatable.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#122

Post by jpm_sd »

beat wrote: post #23

Bluntly? You're letting anger and resentment cloud your judgment. Your colleague is clearly not incompetent. He just has different goals from you. He probably wanted to shift from a technical role to a managerial role, and he succeeded. That's not incompetent! And that's probably because he recognized his talents are better with people than with technology. So be happy for his success, rather than resentful of his pe…

> Nothing big ever got built by a bunch of grumpy, resentful introverts.

Well, the Linux kernel did, but I think for the most part you are correct.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#123

Post by thatcat »

glitchc wrote: post #121
clavalle wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. Nope. Silence is always less noticeable than noise. Evil prevails when good men do nothing. Also, nonsense fluff prevails when good work isn't spoken of. You have a professional duty to make sure nonsense is crowded out by important information. No one is going to do that for you. Follow the rule of three...tell people what you a…

I find this prevailing mentality incredibly troubling and the one truly broken thing about North American culture. Taken to its logical end, it is the underpinning root cause of all that ails the U.S. In short: “I did it all myself” is always a lie. It could only ever be true if babes were left in woods since the time of birth to fend for themselves, and even then, debatable.

Really? It seems pretty easy to fall into a group dynamic where one person gets the technical debt dumped on them while the other handles the non technical aspects. This is because it is easier to not communicate and just do everything yourself than to explain to someone who is less technically motivated, for whatever reason. When you slow down and try to explain stuff over and over, until at a certain point as the gap increases it feels like the other person is either incompetent or taking advantage of the situation to reduce their own workload.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#124

Post by at_smith »

pcpcpc wrote: post #66
zldkz5 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree with you, the point is that being technical person doing a technical job I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. As I like to act first and share later, but there are people who talk but don't know how to act properly. I can build this skills as you said, true, but in my position now it would be impossible to get a promotion as the available spot has been ta…

I've been reading a book on nonviolent communication[1]. It's been helping me rethink how I approach work conversations and communicate what I want. Putting it into practice has been tough, but early results have been good. I'm less likely to get angry, and while I still am not necessarily getting what I want all the time, I feel like I'm getting more clarity and direct communication around why not. [1] https://en.wi…

What book?

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#125

Post by Techonomicon »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #98
eriktate wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing big ever got built by a bunch of self-centered loud mouths either. And these are typically the types that find themselves in these roles. I think you're making a big leap saying "let them deal with the frustrations of relationships". Nowhere in OP's post does he mention disliking people. In fact he seems proud of the fact that people come to him when they have questions. You need more than pure technical acum…

The OP never made the case that the person was incompetent though. I'm not seeing any red flags other than the OPs resentment. I understand where he's coming from. It's a struggle that many technical-minded folks go through in a business environment. When "I just wanna build cool stuff" clashes with "How do we manage resources efficiently to meet the deadline?"

That isn't the case here, I think you're conflating the two. Building cool / cool stuff doesn't clash with meeting deadlines, knowing how to do both / when / how to compromise is vastly more useful than being either one of those two extremes.

The more people in management that care about building well engineered products and that treat humans like humans and not resources the better off we are as a community.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#126

Post by pcpcpc »

at_smith wrote: post #124
pcpcpc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading a book on nonviolent communication[1]. It's been helping me rethink how I approach work conversations and communicate what I want. Putting it into practice has been tough, but early results have been good. I'm less likely to get angry, and while I still am not necessarily getting what I want all the time, I feel like I'm getting more clarity and direct communication around why not. [1] https://en.wi…

What book?

https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#127

Post by beat »

existencebox wrote: post #112
beat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I've seen snakes too. But I've seen people imagining that those they disagree with are snakes about 100x as much (or more). And if people don't get past this idea that everyone they're at odds with is a malicious, incompetent cheater, they can wind up being a simmering pot of bitter paranoia as they get older, unable to see the good in others. People who let bitterness rule their lives are far, far more common th…

I'm not quite sure if you meant it as an example of ineffective advice or not, but the "be wary of snakes" advice is quite close to what I give my mentees, although tailored to my predictably Munger bent of "be wary that other people's incentives often don't align with yours." (As a note, I think we're using the word "snakes" for purpose of context consistency, it's not a word I'd usually use when discussion the actu…

It's not so much I think "All people are good", as "All people are incompetent", and "All people are the hero of their own story". And people are very, very poor judges of risk, generally - how many people are more afraid of terrorists than car crashes?

This dovetails into your last paragraph, by way of saying that the fact that paranoid behavior is counterproductive is in no way inhibiting paranoid behavior. People believe it works. What people believe is far, far more important to them than what actually is. We engage in counterproductive, even self-destructive behavior all the time. And not just the "incompetent" people, but everyone I know. We are all stupid. (fwiw, I do not consider "smart" and "stupid" to be opposites, but rather different qualities that happily coexist. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you aren't also stupid.)

This is also aggravated by the human distrust of those who are different. How many employees think their managers are ignorant fools at best, and actively malicious at worst? A majority, probably. How many of those people really have a good understanding of their manager's job, and the pressures and conflicts the manager deals with? Not many, I'd wager. This is the root of racism, nationalism, and other forms of tribalism, if you think about it. Those feelings are irrational, but they're common as dirt.

This view of humans as stupid rather than malicious was reinforced for me recently, when I read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling (which you should definitely read!). Rosling, a doctor/professor/world health expert, tested thousands of people with basic multiple-choice three-options questions regarding well-documented facts on the subjects of poverty, global health, and the link. What he found was that every audience, no matter how smart, well-educated, caring, or involved in the field, actually performed worse than random chance. Start on his questions, without reading his book first, and you'll find yourself doing worse than if you'd just pulled letters out of a hat. Don't feel bad, the same is true of UN leaders, CEOs, med students, etc. Rosling went on to identify ten different thought patterns that lead us to misunderstand the world, even the most basic facts about it.

Read it, and then look around the corporate workplace, seeing it through Rosling's eyes. You'll see very few snakes and a tremendous number of idiots.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#130

Post by indogooner »

beat wrote: post #23

Bluntly? You're letting anger and resentment cloud your judgment. Your colleague is clearly not incompetent. He just has different goals from you. He probably wanted to shift from a technical role to a managerial role, and he succeeded. That's not incompetent! And that's probably because he recognized his talents are better with people than with technology. So be happy for his success, rather than resentful of his pe…

I am not sure he is a people person. He probably has good rapport with higher-ups but if people routinely bypassed him to take advice from OP that means he is clearly not valued by others in team. Once OP leaves his tech incompetence would be shown up and would lead to more devs leaving the job. These are the kind of 'people person' who hamper productivity and eventually lead to team dissolution. Although I agree he is clever enough to jump ship before that.
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