How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#151

Post by vharuck » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #33

vharuck wrote: post #18

I 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…

Nobody’s mountain has a peak unless you either stop learning or die.

True, but I just need to stop thinking I can climb every mountain faster than people focusing on a couple. To put it another way, I need to rely more on others' progress. Even better, help them progress.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#152

Post by logfromblammo » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

chooseaname wrote: post #149

logfromblammo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#9 might be a symptom of a structural problem. If developers routinely encounter problems arising from technical debt, and are continually asked to fix those problems, but are somehow never afforded the opportunity to retire the technical debt, that creates an aversion to the maintenance work. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if it is broke, just use duct tape." A lot of places have infinite budget for fixing things…

> #9 might be a symptom of a structural problem. If developers routinely encounter problems arising from technical debt, and are continually asked to fix those problems, but are somehow never afforded the opportunity to retire the technical debt, that creates an aversion to the maintenance work. I've seen a couple fresh grads come in with that attitude and get away with it. I think it is more personality type than an…

There is a sweet spot.

The boss can't hire new grads to work on it, because they can smell the manure from a mile away. So as long as you're willing to slap on yet another coat of superficial patches, they'll keep paying you to do it.

That's an equally-bad symptom of the same problem, approaching from the opposite side. The structural problem still doesn't get fixed, because the developers aren't repulsed by it at a visceral level quite enough to kill it with fire or nuke it from orbit. It's just scary enough to scare off the competition.

The technical debt is kept in place, so that people can live off of the technical interest payments. It's not an honorable living, but it is a living.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#153

Post by gerbilly » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #143

gerbilly wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have definitely experienced this. Imagine a competent developer writes a mostly correct system with few bugs, and that requires few fixes over time. Management will likely perceive the first incompetent developer as better than the more competent one. Why? Because the incompetent developer is seen to be fixing problems all the time, which is a positive thing.[1] (You could say his work is more 'salient' to manageme…

In big companies maybe, in small company I would say I took over job of guys that were firefighting awesomely. If they would continue doing that, company would go under. When I joined, big customer was already starting to pull out because there were constant issues, though fixed by brilliance of those guys. With me on board and those guys gone there is a lot less issues and guess what... My boss has time to drive aro…

> I don't say that your story is not true, but those guys in your management are lamentable, they don't understand how much more could be done if they would not have those problems in first place...

In large companies with more layers between developers and the customer, this kind of dynamic can go on for a while.

I've seen it many times.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#154

Post by munchbunny » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

Dzugaru wrote: post #65

> Developers can’t easily go back to where they were right > before an interruption. They need to get into the mindset > for development and then slowly trace back to where they > left off. And every fellow developer knows that. I used to think like that too, but after 10 years programming in many environments, now I'm inclined to disagree. If I cannot refocus immediately after interruption - I know I'm doing somethi…

I've found that the issue of re-acclimating to context has more to do with the quality of my notes than with the complexity/simplicity of the question.

In the course of figuring out something complicated, it's sort of like a tree traversal. If I take good notes on the leaf nodes I need to fill out, then it's easy to just resume right at the leaf node. If I don't take good notes, I have to retrace the rest of the tree.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#155

Post by scandox » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #148

scandox wrote: post #71

Here's a profile of a developer: - Easy going and pleasant. - Really interested in programming and tech in general - Talks intelligently about the problem at hand. Asks all the right questions. Agrees a plan of action in collaboration with colleagues. - Creates systems that definitely appear to work - Code looks pretty sane. Structure is right. Style seems good. - Always very responsive to problems. Jumps straight on…

> - Code looks pretty sane. Structure is right. Style seems good. You're attributing that bullet point to the wrong developer. Here's a profile of a reviewer : - Isn't paying sufficient attention to the code being submitted. Don't get me wrong-- I've ripped away drywall to reveal nastiness before. But what you've described is systemic, and for that the reviewer must share some responsibility.

Look I'm happy to take my part of the blame but some of what was wrong was so damn subtle.

Ultimately one does trust people to make design decisions at some level of code that one does not second guess...

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#156

Post by watwut » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #40

vharuck wrote: post #18

I 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…

Arrogance has very little to do with thinking you know a lot, or disagreeing with others, and everything to do with failing to follow social protocol. If you let other people speak, pause long enough that they feel like you are giving their words a fair evaluation, and then don't use words that they must interpret as telling them they are wrong you will not be seen as arrogant. This is true even if you rarely or neve…

I kind of miss the point where you think about what people said, react to that actual argument and wonder for brief time whether they actually might have a point.

It is failure of this one way more then just lack of pause - especially in long term relationships.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#157

Post by Insanity » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #120

lolc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that just sounds like you don't have tasks that require deep thought. And that you've developed habits to cope with interruptions, such as note-taking. To turn a complex thing into a list of simple things can be done by experience as well as by deep thought. But don't think you could get that experience in 5-minute chunks of thinking. To get the experience you need deep thought. Maybe set your sights higher if…

To me that just sounds like you don't have tasks that require deep thought. If everything you do requires deep thought, this is possibly a sign of bad code design.

Not _everything_ but a large part of what I do does involve rather deep thought.

But indeed, what helps me is to pick one of the things that is easy to 'refocus'.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#158

Post by xkcd-sucks » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

whttheuuu wrote: post #126

finaliteration wrote: post #63

I’ll add another one: Nitpicking constantly. I’ve worked with people who will fight and argue over every. Single. Detail. It drives me insane and usually makes me quit faster than anything else when I encounter those people.

This. There are 2 types of developers: those who enjoy philosophizing about programming minutiae and then there are those who enjoy shipping products.

There's a subtype who ignores your review request for weeks but delivers a verbal drive-by nitpicking, as he's leaving work early, which focuses on trivial matters of opinion and ignores obvious bugs in functionality.

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#159

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

lolc wrote: post #98

balabaster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "usually leads to components nobody can understand let alone maintain" As you advance up the mountain, you will learn to see complexity simply. When you make this realization, your components will simplify dramatically. You must learn to see simply before you can design simply. It just takes time. There's nothing wrong with this, humility doesn't mean giving up your belief that you're capable of anything. We were a…

As individuals, there's damn little we can achieve.

[deleted]

Re: How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You

#160

Post by chooseaname » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #152

chooseaname wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #9 might be a symptom of a structural problem. If developers routinely encounter problems arising from technical debt, and are continually asked to fix those problems, but are somehow never afforded the opportunity to retire the technical debt, that creates an aversion to the maintenance work. I've seen a couple fresh grads come in with that attitude and get away with it. I think it is more personality type than an…

There is a sweet spot. The boss can't hire new grads to work on it, because they can smell the manure from a mile away. So as long as you're willing to slap on yet another coat of superficial patches, they'll keep paying you to do it. That's an equally-bad symptom of the same problem, approaching from the opposite side. The structural problem still doesn't get fixed, because the developers aren't repulsed by it at a…

You're still stuck on "the code is bad and that's why they don't want to touch it." I'm saying, their attitude is bad and feel maintenance is beneath them.

Every, and I mean every, development shop has some amount of tech debt. But even if the code is generally good quality, you have a subset of devs who think maintenance is below them. That's a bad attitude and people don't want to work with that.