Do the right thing, wait to get fired
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Do the right thing, wait to get fired
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Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#2To his credit though Chade-Meng Tan earned some infamy by intercepting celebrities walking through the door and getting his picture taken with them :-) Not exactly "Good for Google" but not something that generally got you fired either.
I'm all in favor of encouraging self empowerment but recognize that it means you will get fired more. It is the cost of doing what you believe. Not everyone is ok with that and I respect that.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#3To his credit though Chade-Meng Tan earned some infamy by intercepting celebrities walking through the door and getting his picture taken with them :-) Not exactly "Good for Google" but not something that generally got you fired either. I'm all in favor of encouraging self empowerment but recognize that it means you will get fired more. It is the cost of doing what you believe. Not everyone is ok with that and I resp…
It's also important to understand that doing the right thing often does not mean ignoring broken processes; it means recognizing that they are broken, and fixing them. Of course, that's not particularly easy either, but it's worth doing.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#4At my last company, I earned myself the unofficial job of Employee Advocate because of this philosophy. The company (which I won't mention by name, but can be easily determined) was set up to be a great place for developers to work, and for the most part succeeded in that goal.
But as time went on, there were some failings in a few areas, so I decided that I would be the one to push the founders to continue realizing their goal. I know I became a thorn in their sides on several issues, but I could also tell that other employees appreciated me speaking up, especially the non-technical staff, which often did not receive the same benefits as developers.
I always figured that if I got fired for speaking my mind on an issue, that would be okay, because it would be a clear indication that the company was too far gone and it was time to leave. Fortunately, for me and the company as a whole, that never happened.
Despite being a thorn, I remained on good terms with the founders. They seemed to understand where I was coming from, even if they did not agree.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#5Beware of "also want to find employees ready to take risks, make decisions, try new things, move fast and even break things."
Doing the above can be a sure say to get the bad kind of fired from a job, especially for large corporate environments. I have worked at places where they claimed that innovation was rewarded, when in practice they were so risk adverse any out of the box thinking was punished.
By all means push the boundaries but don't claim that your issues of climbing the ranks or being overlooked for interesting tasks is because you are a square peg in a round hole.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#6Beware of "also want to find employees ready to take risks, make decisions, try new things, move fast and even break things." Doing the above can be a sure say to get the bad kind of fired from a job, especially for large corporate environments. I have worked at places where they claimed that innovation was rewarded, when in practice they were so risk adverse any out of the box thinking was punished. By all means pus…
Meng's point is that getting fired is a good thing, if it happens because you did the right thing. It shows you that the company you work for does not share your values, and hence you shouldn't be working for them.
His point isn't that you won't get fired, it's a different way of looking at getting fired. A lot of people assume this is a universally bad occurrence. He's telling you that it's an important opportunity to find the place where you can act in accordance with your values and climb the ranks.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#7Or, you could just work for a company that won't fire you for doing the right thing. I've turned things upside down a number of times, but if the outcome was correct, I never felt even remotely that I would be fired.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#8Or, you could just work for a company that won't fire you for doing the right thing. I've turned things upside down a number of times, but if the outcome was correct, I never felt even remotely that I would be fired.
> I never felt even remotely that I would be fired.
Then either you understand politics perfectly, or you don't understand politics at all. I think the second is probably more likely.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#9Disagree and commit is a better strategy. Having done a short stint as an engineering manager, sometimes there's disagreement, not everyone agrees on what the right thing is, hopefully not everyone goes and does their own thing and waits to get fired. This is not a good strategy for collaboration and compromise. If you say the right thing is to know when to collaborate and when not to, you've created a tautology.
Re: Do the right thing, wait to get fired
#10> You’ve got to recognize that companies are schizophrenic. They build process, and rules, and structure and they ask you to follow them:
> [...]
> But greatness rarely happens by following rules, process and structure. That is why companies also want to find employees ready to take risks, make decisions, try new things, move fast and even break things.
The inconsistencies and contradictions you describe are not symptoms of schizophrenia. If you need a medical label, how about dissociative identity disorder?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Positive_and_neg...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder...
That said, I believe that these opposing goals are normal, expected, and desirable, so your mental illness model doesn't really work for me.