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How to build toxic software teams

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71–80 of 102 posts

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#71
Take everything your senior but not executive direct reports write up at your request, make a copy of the docs, then share the copies with your executive peers as if they are your own words and ideas. When your direct reports ask for an update on the project, or want to know why no one has commented or engaged on the write-ups they created, ignore them.

Ask your direct report to do all of the prep work for a critical project that they are most qualified to run and oversee, ask them to share the pre-reads with a decision making group, invite them to the kick-off meeting, tell them five minutes before the meeting starts not to say a word during the meeting, or else.

Show up 20 minutes late to a 30 minute meeting, then spend the next 20 minute talking at the group, allow for no interruptions, keep everyone over time.

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#73

Do a daily stand-up Make sure to monitor your team every day and force their performance first thing in the morning. Focus on the daily grind to ensure meaningful change can never occur. Hire randomly Never put in the work to identify potential candidates based on their contribution to the industry or relevant projects. Always rely on blind applications to a job ad then make the applicants perform grueling and humili…

> Do a daily stand-up I absolutely disagree with this one. Both the best and worst teams I worked on as a developer both had daily stand ups and the frequency, length, and process was nearly identical. If daily stand ups are a problem for your team, it's usually a symptom of a bigger problem, not a cause. I'm a manager now and I have multiple teams who report up to me. Personally, I hate daily stand ups so when I too…

Daily stand-ups are a problem when people don't understand the purpose of the meeting.

Social bonds are built through repeated casual social interactions. Standups are a mechanism for building social bonds within the team by creating an environment where they take place.

If you think that standups are about status updates or resolving blockers than you're being led astray.

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#74

On a positive note, we just had a sprint retrospective today and the entire team gushed with praises for each other and we all agreed that team morale is great, and that we are accomplishing great things despite all the challenges we had been facing recently. I attribute this to a few things I’ve observed. First, we do have some extremely dedicated engineers who lead by example rather than granted authority. This gar…

[flagged]

@dang

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#75
post #2

Remember that if one of your team members has a good idea about how to improve the codebase or the process that you should acknowledge that it's a good idea and tell them how much you like it. Then you should always remember to tell them that it's "not the right time" so you can then move on to demand status updates on features.

If said teammate decides to follow through on his idea without your explicit permission, transfer him to another team ASAP (without his approval). No teammate can show initiative, self-direction, or autonomy. Furthermore, every piece of work must be represented in JIRA and every team member must report on it —- daily. This happened to me recently. Yes, I’m a little salty about it. Although it’s probably for the bette…

> We didn’t need a JIRA board or a roadmap or someone to help us plan or prioritize. We simply got our work done. Imagine that.

How did you prioritise?

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#77
post #58

Retain rockstar programmers at all costs, even if they push everyone else to quit over being mistreated. Give them fancy job titles. Have upper management crack sexist jokes, and HR laugh with them, so that women at the company who are sexually harassed know reporting it will do at best nothing, and at worst risk their own career. Only hire young men in their twenties, and praise the idea of working long hours. Child…

>so that women Men aren't impervious to sexism either. >Only hire young men in their twenties, and praise the idea of working long hours Young women are working ridiculous hours as well. >Child care is for their wives to do. What child care, most of the highly educated aren't having kids to begin with. (Exaggerating, but it's not the big deal given what most career couples in their 30s make.) >Pay new grads more than…

> Men aren't impervious to sexism either.

Given that GP didn’t say they were, why is your first instinct to assume that anything OP didn’t mention, in what were fairly obvious examples, was specifically excluded?

> Young women are working ridiculous hours as well.

So are the elderly, why are you excluding them?

And so on.

Come on. There’s absolutely no need for the ridiculous pedantry, and it adds less than nothing to the comment chain. Be better.

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#78
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so that women Men aren't impervious to sexism either. >Only hire young men in their twenties, and praise the idea of working long hours Young women are working ridiculous hours as well. >Child care is for their wives to do. What child care, most of the highly educated aren't having kids to begin with. (Exaggerating, but it's not the big deal given what most career couples in their 30s make.) >Pay new grads more than…

> Men aren't impervious to sexism either. Given that GP didn’t say they were, why is your first instinct to assume that anything OP didn’t mention, in what were fairly obvious examples, was specifically excluded? > Young women are working ridiculous hours as well. So are the elderly, why are you excluding them? And so on. Come on. There’s absolutely no need for the ridiculous pedantry, and it adds less than nothing t…

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Re: How to build toxic software teams

#79
post #6

It's easy. Hire one bad narcissist. Keep praising and promoting them.

Not so fast, it’s easy to start but you really need to invest in a long term plan to hire their poorly behaving friends from past jobs too. They’ll never let you forget that they are all high performers, how bad everyone else that works there is, and how lucky you are to have them save you from yourself.

Don't worry, every narcissist's first step when gaining power is to build a powerbase of controllable, weak, assholes who put loyalty to them above all else.

Re: How to build toxic software teams

#80

Do a daily stand-up Make sure to monitor your team every day and force their performance first thing in the morning. Focus on the daily grind to ensure meaningful change can never occur. Hire randomly Never put in the work to identify potential candidates based on their contribution to the industry or relevant projects. Always rely on blind applications to a job ad then make the applicants perform grueling and humili…

Pay quietly Don't pay your staff consistently for the same work. Refuse to advertise your budgets, and loosen your "ranges" to get people in the door when they push you about it, but then use those same targets to hand-wave away people already inside -- who come to you after comparing notes or observing the impact of broader market conditions like inflation. Also, stop them from comparing notes or doing fifth-grade l…

Don't forget having HR regularly discourage sharing salary for some bullshit reason in flagrant disregard of labor laws.
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