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What you've got is in fact a people problem

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Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#81

Post by imagineerschool »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #68

>>> want honest feedback and that they are safe to offer it The key word is safe . It’s not safe. Or they don’t think it is safe. The problem is almost always going to be the person asking and saying “it’s safe”. Or their boss. Which just repeats the problem one level up. And you know the solution? Weirdly it’s democracy. The idea of enough of us know the secret we can replace the problem. Often we don’t have to do t…

Democracy in the workplace descends into a popularity contest, unless there are reliable systems in place to keep things reasonable.

Don't ask me how I know until I'v finished processing it in therapy in a couple years.

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#82

Post by brianmcc »

imagineerschool wrote: post #81
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #68

>>> want honest feedback and that they are safe to offer it The key word is safe . It’s not safe. Or they don’t think it is safe. The problem is almost always going to be the person asking and saying “it’s safe”. Or their boss. Which just repeats the problem one level up. And you know the solution? Weirdly it’s democracy. The idea of enough of us know the secret we can replace the problem. Often we don’t have to do t…

Democracy in the workplace descends into a popularity contest, unless there are reliable systems in place to keep things reasonable. Don't ask me how I know until I'v finished processing it in therapy in a couple years.

Watching a few episodes of recent TV show The Traitors should dispel any positive myths re the wisdom of small teams! :-D

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#83

Post by geraldhh »

hinkley wrote: post #72
refulgentis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believed that strongly, to the point that it was borderline immoral to not share. Then I sold the startup and worked at Google for 6 years. 1 out of 4 managers hit the bar that I figured would be a floor, you could have a constructive conversation with them and they'd help you if something was up.

I don't think anything has hurt me as much emotionally in my career as working at a really great place as my first job, setting my expectations for the next ten years of my career to be anything like that, and then get curb stomped over and over again by mediocrity that thought it was objectivity or responsibility. Trying to mold people who did not want to be molded resulted in a lot of Pyrrhic victories.

i too remember my first company very fondly and wonder if there is some cognitive bias at play

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#85

Post by chopin »

joeig wrote: post #62
ilaksh wrote: post #8

My suspicion is that a lot of this comes down to budget pressure causing management to constantly discourage efforts by technical teams to invest time in the quality of their systems rather than push out more features. Then the same problems start popping up and the manager loses faith in their team. The times they said "no" to infrastructure development and working down technical debt may not even enter their mind.…

I think it helps to speak the same „language“ as the manager. Add price tags to the infrastructure development or technical debt. This may add an important perspective to the discussion for both sides.

But exactly that is hard. Backups have a high price tag when missing but none when not needed.

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#86

Post by alephnerd »

arvinsim wrote: post #76
hinkley wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching some interview long ago when the guest hit it square on the head. My guess is that it was Joel Spolsky, but only because no other names come to mind as being plausible. Essentially the rant goes: So all of these people who were not particularly good at people skills in high school go into a career where they think people skills won't matter as much, and check out for 4 years while their fellow classmat…

Then it begs the question: how do you recover out of this mindset in an increasingly disconnected world?

Self improvement and open mindedness.

Being friendly, honest, and learning when to keep your mouth shut (biggest mistake when I had engineers chat with customers) is more than enough to keep everyone happy.

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#87

Post by indrora »

dang wrote: post #28

Jerry Weinberg's classic Secrets of Consulting has tons of hard-won wisdom about this kind of thing. " No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem ." - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... He posted once to HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1825352 - but start here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813443 ) Edit: There's also Gerald M. Weinberg has died - http…

I miss Gerry Weinberg. Used to get lunch with him regularly

He credits a man named Sherbie for the three rules. That man was my grandfather.

The best advice Gerry gave me was when I was in a tough spot in college. “Expectations are fickle things that we work ourselves up over. Reevaluate them regularly, they have expiration dates long before they begin to smell funny.”

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#88

Post by lifeisstillgood »

imagineerschool wrote: post #81
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #68

>>> want honest feedback and that they are safe to offer it The key word is safe . It’s not safe. Or they don’t think it is safe. The problem is almost always going to be the person asking and saying “it’s safe”. Or their boss. Which just repeats the problem one level up. And you know the solution? Weirdly it’s democracy. The idea of enough of us know the secret we can replace the problem. Often we don’t have to do t…

Democracy in the workplace descends into a popularity contest, unless there are reliable systems in place to keep things reasonable. Don't ask me how I know until I'v finished processing it in therapy in a couple years.

But the system to keep things in Place is profit and customers.

Re: What you've got is in fact a people problem

#89

Post by VierScar »

chopin wrote: post #85
joeig wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it helps to speak the same „language“ as the manager. Add price tags to the infrastructure development or technical debt. This may add an important perspective to the discussion for both sides.

But exactly that is hard. Backups have a high price tag when missing but none when not needed.

Similar issues happen for justifying security. But if you've got a price tag, then just do expected utility. What's the odds that you'll need a backup? 1%? 0.1%? Per year? And what's the value of that backup price tag during that time? $10m? 0.1% per year * 10m = 10k per year.
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