A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice” • Hacker News Board

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#91

Post by yamtaddle » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

I think that one SlateStarCodex post about modern office work tending to make any normal person exhibit strong ADHD symptoms was on to something.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#92

Post by evntdrvn » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

stuckinhell wrote: post #89

CuriouslyC wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a staff engineer at an org that heavily prioritizes domain knowledge and promotes for it and agreeableness heavily, I think that view is only true in the most black and white of cases. We have lots of developers working at 25% productivity because the flaming dumpster fire of tech debt we inherited is slowly turning into a flaming landfill fire as we pile shit on top of shit rather than fix things. I'm not sure wh…

I sympathize as well, but I also know many many developers are extremely poor at judging what/how the code affects a given Firm's KPI's. I've been in literally hundreds of conversations with engineers who want to refactor a given technical system and don't realize the code debt is really due to the fact human businesses run on endless edge cases and weird exceptions. They only account for the majority use cases, but…

I’m really curious where you work, the team you mention in your last paragraph sounds like my dream job :D

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#93

Post by yamtaddle » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

prometheus76 wrote: post #78

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

A frequent refrain from parents of kids diagnosed with ADHD: "My kid doesn't have problems with attention! He can play a video game for 10 hours straight! I have to tell him to go to the bathroom!" It's actually misnamed and many professionals are trying to shift the name to "Executive Function Disorder". The dysregulation swings both ways: can't focus on uninteresting things, but hyperfocus on interesting things. Yo…

> "Johnny gets all of his work done quickly and it's stellar work, but then he is a frequent distraction to those around him."

Yep, a variant on bright/"gifted" + ADHD presentation. ADHD as fuck, but smart enough that they get by kinda OK-ish regardless, and maybe even excel... until, perhaps, one day, that's not enough anymore and everything falls apart. The intelligence masks the ADHD enough that it might go undiagnosed and untreated for a long time.

Fortunately, spotting these kinds of "twice exceptional" situations is a big focus in modern gifted education, so that's getting a bit better.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#94

Post by UncleOxidant » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

gavinmckenzie wrote: post #75

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

I was diagnosed ADD (or what would now be called inattentive ADHD) in my 30s. But the testing results were not clear, in part because I'd developed a lifetime of coping mechanisms and skills that allow me to behave in non-ADHD ways through force of will. If I look back at my primary school report cards, they are a mixture of both gifted and below-average performance with teacher comments like "Does amazing work when…

I'll be 60 in a few months and looking back I've tended to think that anxiety has been the main thing that held me back in my career, but I can also relate to the post above where they say they do great in the early days of a job/project, but as time goes on find it more and more difficult to stay engaged. I guess I would think this is caused by anxiety in my case, but now I'm wondering if maybe there isn't more going on. I also got mixed results in school: gifted in subjects I liked, average/below averages performance in subjects I didn't care much about. So maybe there's always been a bit of an issue, but I also tend to think that it's much worse since the advent of smart phones - I think there may be a lot of us who were either not ADHD or just on the edge of being ADHD that have been pushed over the edge by being constantly connected.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#95

Post by stuckinhell » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

evntdrvn wrote: post #92

stuckinhell wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize as well, but I also know many many developers are extremely poor at judging what/how the code affects a given Firm's KPI's. I've been in literally hundreds of conversations with engineers who want to refactor a given technical system and don't realize the code debt is really due to the fact human businesses run on endless edge cases and weird exceptions. They only account for the majority use cases, but…

I’m really curious where you work, the team you mention in your last paragraph sounds like my dream job :D

Sorry can't say, but I doubt it's your dream job.

That team is expected to work any amount of hours, sleep in the office, and do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#96

Post by UncleOxidant » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

yamtaddle wrote: post #91

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

I think that one SlateStarCodex post about modern office work tending to make any normal person exhibit strong ADHD symptoms was on to something.

Not disagreeing, but I guess I'd go further: having immediate access to all the information available on the internet has made many normal people ADHD. Smart phones took it a step further: all that access was now in your pocket. Add in social media and how many people aren't essentially ADHD now?

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#97

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

> maybe just 5% apply to me.

The clinical descriptions of these sorts of things are evolving; first it was ADD, then it was ADHD, now it's often talked about as three things, ADHD-H (hyperactive), ADHD-I (impulsive), and ADHD-C (combined).

Furthermore, sometimes folks have developed coping mechanisms, you may have a handle on behaviors in some context, but if circumstances change, you may not feel that way anymore.

Then again, you also just plain may not have it, it's true.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#98

Post by CuriouslyC » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

stuckinhell wrote: post #89

CuriouslyC wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a staff engineer at an org that heavily prioritizes domain knowledge and promotes for it and agreeableness heavily, I think that view is only true in the most black and white of cases. We have lots of developers working at 25% productivity because the flaming dumpster fire of tech debt we inherited is slowly turning into a flaming landfill fire as we pile shit on top of shit rather than fix things. I'm not sure wh…

I sympathize as well, but I also know many many developers are extremely poor at judging what/how the code affects a given Firm's KPI's. I've been in literally hundreds of conversations with engineers who want to refactor a given technical system and don't realize the code debt is really due to the fact human businesses run on endless edge cases and weird exceptions. They only account for the majority use cases, but…

I work at such a firm with constantly changing legislative and organizational requirements, and while there is definitely a lot of moving target syndrome around business processing logic that this applies to, there are other things like a byzantine service architecture leading to people having to make web service calls rather than join across tables, a house of cards docker/kong setup that people are afraid to update because it's so difficult to debug, unit tests that take 10 minutes to run even in limited cases because of the poorly written migrations and other unrelated bad architecture/engineering choices. Those things could all be fixed with a very reasonable amount of effort for the productivity boost they'd give, but the technical leadership in the teams that owns those things is not super competent, so they're afraid to make any significant changes because they're not confident in their ability to solve problems that might arise as a result.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#99

Post by edabobojr » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

TexanFeller wrote: post #45

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Whether this is the case quickly becomes apparent by working closely in tandem with the person, e.g. pair programming. It will be obvious within the first few minutes whether the person simply cannot hold a train of thought for as long as the problem requires. As you write, there are concrete ways of addressing this. On the other hand, it is also obvious when the la…

Pairing is actually one of my most helpful strategies for keeping myself on task with boring tasks. People probably notice my ADHD much less when pairing with me. One reason remote work has destroyed my productivity is that pairing just can't happen in the same way.

I've always been afraid of pairing. I don't know how well others would appreciate my periods of daydreaming followed by periods of hyper-fixated focus.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#100

Post by JeremyNT » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

tr3ntg wrote: post #63

alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

I hear this all the time, and these workplace-focused descriptions of "phases of underperformance" really apply to me, but I don't think it's ADHD. I can focus on all sorts of things when I try, and when I look up symptoms of ADHD, maybe just 5% apply to me. For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no rea…

> For me, I've joined new teams and crushed it for a few weeks where it was at least expected performance, but then I quickly fall off a cliff for seemingly no reason. Anxiety compounds this, and I can identify why I've sometimes been slow to crawl out, but the initial fall is always difficult to diagnose.

I think often this is due to the fact that doing a good job isn't noticed or rewarded.

Sometimes the intrinsic motivation of learning a new skill, tool, or environment, is reward enough. If you're new on a project or job, you might think that being a high performer will garner respect, praise, and promotions.

However... if you consistently perform well and management can't (or won't) recognize this in some tangible way, that's a surefire way to kill motivation.