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How to grow professional relationships

tej.as

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Re: How to grow professional relationships

#101

Post by anthonyc »

trogdor wrote: post #96
tejaskumar_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iain, nice to hear from you after all these years! I still say the weirdest shit ever, but now more in line with my value of honoring people above all else. I indeed, by the grace of God, have made massive strides in my behavior thanks to friends like Gabe Greenberg from G2i.co (where I worked some time ago) and others. I also talk about our shared company where we worked together and the toxic environment in this po…

Your response to Iain suggests that his account of your interaction with a new female colleague (“You know you're a slut, right?") is generally accurate. Do you really think of that as “saying the weirdest shit ever”? Most people I know would call it overt sexual harassment. I’m struggling to understand how you could have thought that was acceptable conduct. What am I missing?

I hate to pile on, but I listened to the podcast OP linked above. It doesn't make the situation sound any better. It is worse, actually. OP is tone deaf going on this podcast talking about the toxic, racist, misogynistic culture with seemingly no awareness of his contribution to it.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#103

Post by that_guy_iain »

anthonyc wrote: post #101
trogdor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response to Iain suggests that his account of your interaction with a new female colleague (“You know you're a slut, right?") is generally accurate. Do you really think of that as “saying the weirdest shit ever”? Most people I know would call it overt sexual harassment. I’m struggling to understand how you could have thought that was acceptable conduct. What am I missing?

I hate to pile on, but I listened to the podcast OP linked above. It doesn't make the situation sound any better. It is worse, actually. OP is tone deaf going on this podcast talking about the toxic, racist, misogynistic culture with seemingly no awareness of his contribution to it.

I think his experience of racism and "shitboy" may have desensitised him to the whole thing. He was there for years before I joined and honestly, it was meant to be better then and had a bunch of work on the culture but it was still pretty shitty.

I remember once I semi-joked "You guys talk about a culture problem in IT, it sounds like you have a Tejas problem" and he generally looked like he felt bad about it.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#104

Post by mung_daal »

tejaskumar_ wrote: post #64
that_guy_iain wrote: post #59

I find this quite funny, I've worked with this author at a company and the stories of his behaviour to other coworkers there make my WTF collection. So to find him talking about growing professional relationships either means he's made massive strides in his behaviour or it's a lot of nonsense. This is the one I always tell people when I explain how WTF IT can be, I wasn't there for it, but it was retold with the aut…

Iain, nice to hear from you after all these years! I still say the weirdest shit ever, but now more in line with my value of honoring people above all else. I indeed, by the grace of God, have made massive strides in my behavior thanks to friends like Gabe Greenberg from G2i.co (where I worked some time ago) and others. I also talk about our shared company where we worked together and the toxic environment in this po…

everyone knows your game too bad it is a competition and your pitch is weak

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#105

Post by tejaskumar_ »

ghaff wrote: post #82
tejaskumar_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha, what a lovely story! Really shows what happens when we engage as _people_, not _opportunities_.

This is a lot of the misunderstanding around "networking" you see in discussions. A lot of tech people see it as an unwelcome task/burden. Whereas, it should be generally viewed as a pleasurable opportunity to just get to know people who may (or may not) be useful at some point in the future.

My theory is that that term has this reputation because it is somewhat dehumanized: you _talk_ to people, you _network_ with opportunities.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#106

Post by beryilma »

ghaff wrote: post #90
beryilma wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because all their relationships are transactional and they aren’t offering anything of value Why is a transactional relationship considered bad? And why would one consider a transactional relationship as something not offering value? I don't like small talk, but if I like the person I would try to help them anyway with their transactional request, with the expectation that I might have a similar transactional reque…

If you "like" a person, it's probably not really a transactional relationship. "Hi, I'm one of the 100K alumni who went to the same school as you did, can we do coffee?" is.

>> "Hi, I'm one of the 100K alumni who went to the same school as you did, can we do coffee?" is

I have absolutely gotten similar requests from students through my Alumni organization and have accepted them in the past. I don't see a problem here.

Here is a direct quote from a request that I have accepted in the past(redacted a little): "Hi , I am a MS in CS student at graduating in spring '25 and I saw your profile on 's alumni page. I'm pursuing a career in software engineering and I'm wondering if we can connect and chat sometime about your career and the culture at ."

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#107

Post by tejaskumar_ »

Agentus wrote: post #75
lovich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

yeah i switched from business to software engineering, and it felt like an sysphean task to develop and keep relationships up in this new hemisphere. thought it was just me but didnt really have that issue with business people. in software it feels like the relationship halflife is accelerated. wonder how to get around that issue with people you literally have to strong arm the social stuff for them. i know doing com…

I don't know, this sounds a bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Why not go find extroverts instead?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#108

Post by impute »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #21
mkmk wrote: post #9

On the practical side of things, one important behavior that I see people frequently forget is the importance of following up. This is probably the biggest differentiator between relationships that languish in the early stages, versus those that progress along the author’s continuum. It’s always a bit strange when you only hear from people once every few years, just as they need an intro or career advice or whatever-…

Very good point. What's the old saying "A friend in need, is a friend, indeed." ? I like to have personal relationships, as opposed to corporate ones. Funny story: During the 1990s, my direct boss was a fairly low-key Japanese man. I really liked him. He was a marketing type, so we didn't really have a technical basis for our relationship. He was a decent chap, and I happily followed his orders. In return, he gave me…

How did you "run into each other, from time to time"?

This seems to be the key part. There's research that shows that relationships are built via multiple, random encounters. Do you think he still would have dropped by your office if you hadn't had these run ins?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#109

Post by tejaskumar_ »

bityard wrote: post #99
blitzar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bit strange when you only hear from people once every few years, just as they need an intro or career advice or whatever This might out me as a psycopath, however, cut to the f'ing chase. If it is a transactional conversation don't insult my intelligence by pretending that it isn't. Obvioulsy this can create a problem as I tend towards "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". If something is within my m…

I get it, as engineers we value efficiency and truth above almost everything else. But most people are not like us. They want to be appreciated, acknowledged, and seen above almost everything else. If you call up an old acquaintance and start the conversation by asking if they know of any job openings, you will be seen as someone who only values what they can DO for you, instead of who are they ARE to you. Nobody lik…

Exactly. Humans are so much more irrational and illogical than the machines we know. And this is a feature, not a bug.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#110

Post by jabroni_salad »

beryilma wrote: post #87
lovich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

> because all their relationships are transactional and they aren’t offering anything of value Why is a transactional relationship considered bad? And why would one consider a transactional relationship as something not offering value? I don't like small talk, but if I like the person I would try to help them anyway with their transactional request, with the expectation that I might have a similar transactional reque…

It's only bad if one of the parties doesn't understand that it is transactional. When you succeed you might find that some people you thought you were just trading with feel betrayed in some way.
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