Refuse to write tests because they are "below you." I am finding out this is a cultural thing (national, not corporate).
How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
41–50 of 191 posts
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#42As a solo developer who does all these, I have a lot of self-loathing.
The worst are the "What the hell was I even doing here?!?!? / What does this even mean?" moments. Like at one point I thought this code was obvious and worked great. I remember feeling that way about it and feeling all accomplished here, but now I don't feel that way and this code seems impenetrable or at least a big hassle now...
There's no feeling quite like going 'what the hell was the person who wrote this thinking??' and then doing a git blame and making a humbling discovery.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#43Individuals often have little control over these things, and they are indicative of deeper cultural incentives. Without transgressing some, nothing will get done in many orgs. I see it a lot in big money VC backed startups, much less so in bootstrapped businesses. It’s important to be non-judgmental of people doing these things and simply leave or master Machiavellian moves to clear a path to promotion as other playe…
I agree. The system in place is to blame, and those people rose because they are just playing the game that is dealt to them.
I'm not so good at the Machievellian political aspect, so I personally opt to leave when I notice behaviors like this are rewarded in the current system. I also wonder if I was able to rise in an organization that functions like this, if I would b the type of person to actually root out that toxicity in the first place.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#44I thunk there's a second "flavor" of arrogance, where a person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room. These people will openly admit they can improve and seek training, partly because they believe they're capable of anything. They don't think they're at the top of the mountain, just that their mountain has no peak. The real problem is they believe "lazy" coworkers will eventually be b…
Just don't settle for being a 'jack', become an expert, and produce something you think is maintainable for yourself and your colleagues.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#45It is not hard on practice :)
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Game theory suggests this is true. Dog eat dog. But do you think this is because incentives are misaligned, or do you think that even successful bootstrapped businesses, if around long enough, will fall victim to this culture?
>> will fall victim to this culture The issue with this culture is that using optics to achieve an advantage generally works, but is not a good long-term--big-picture strategy. So reasonably, of course you need to learn all of these quirks, just to be able to get rid of the vermin in your org.
I agree if we decouple optics from genuine promotion in which an employee "manages upward" their true successes. I know that people are more nuanced than this and it's not black and white. So this will become quite tautological.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#47I thunk there's a second "flavor" of arrogance, where a person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room. These people will openly admit they can improve and seek training, partly because they believe they're capable of anything. They don't think they're at the top of the mountain, just that their mountain has no peak. The real problem is they believe "lazy" coworkers will eventually be b…
[deleted]
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#48Referencing Dunning-Kruger effect in any topic on software engineering is very arrogant and pretentious on itself. This says more about the author, than other people's stupidity. The article is just bad.
Also the "Negativity is infectious." feel-good bullshit.
"If someone complains, it focuses the attention on the negative side of things."
(...after a whole article complaining about behavior s/he does not like, ironically)
If you want to see big disasters look in organizations where warnings are ignored as "negativity" and people blame the messengers.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#49Holy crap, is
>gives cryptic names for variables, or at best not self-explanatory
sure a big one. It's part of a category of small decisions that dramatically increase cognitive load when accumulated. Along with it:
>Passing many arguments into functions with names that have no relevance to their role inside the function, so you constantly have to look up which argument maps to which function param
>Needlessly reorganizing data structures or renaming variables so that it becomes more difficult to reason about the flow of data
Naming things isn't just the hardest problem in programming, it's also the quickest way to piss off your peers if you're lazy about it.
Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You
#50There's not a single thing in there that I don't recognize in myself at one time or another. I sometimes feel like I don't see anti-patterns as I go through my career, I fall over them and sprawl on the floor.
The important thing is that you can recognize your own problematic behavior, and actively work on fixing it. Nobody's perfect, but I imagine there's a reason the author put #1 as #1 ;)
Yup, looking at common problematic behavior without reflecting inward, is an issue in and if itself. People often behave this way for a reason. You're liable to for the same reason.