Having had to deal with a few people who were in your position, here are a few points to consider.
- Realize that you being cocky at the beginning likely didn't help you with the way your coworkers are treating you.
- NEVER pretend that you know or that you understood something unless you really do. Its okay to not understand something, everyone knows that if you do not admit it, you'll never learn and therefore are a lost cause. This is the major problem I have seen with people in your situation.
- Do not get caught in details, focus on understanding the big picture and get the basics right. Always put things in perspective.
- Volunteer to do grunt work, will make you gain experience and put things in perspective.
- When something isn't clear, do not assume it works in a way thats practical to what you are doing and go on, go ask instead. Otherwise you doing grunt work will lose everyone's time.
- When you don't understand something, explain what you understand or how you see thing and why, let your perception be corrected.
- Do not get yourself too tired by studying outside of work. Some study is fine but you need rest to learn and perform.
Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
141–150 of 191 posts
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#142I will answer them in the reverse order:
3. Absolutely Not. There are a lot of amazing Jedi like developers, who are not only the best at what they do, but elevate the level of the whole team, and help make everyone around them become incredibly productive.
2. I think this is pretty normal. You actually want to be in an environment like this early on in your career, so you can learn from these people and from the wealth of their experience. Experienced people are good at spotting design flaws, and common pitfalls in solutions to problems because of their experience.
1. This is actually a big red flag. You may want to see if everyone in the team is behaving like this with you. If so, either this workplace has extremely bad work culture, or they have a perception that you're really dumb. You cannot be dumb, or incapable, because hey! you did get hired at this place. But either of these two situations I mentioned is a big red flag. So what I would suggest is to try to look for smaller projects, or sub problems where you can work relatively independently, so you can have the satisfaction of having contributed to the company, and build that level of trust and reputation in the team, and also in parallel try to interact with others in the team with the intention of finding a 'mentor' who understands you and helps you guide through the politics of your workplace. If nothing works or improves in a say a month or two, it is a good idea to look for a different team within the same company, or switch to another company.
Good Luck!
PS - I work for msft
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#143My rule of thumb is that I always try to be the dumbest person in the room. If I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm not learning. I want to surround myself with people that know more than I do about things I know little about. My advice: 1) Shut up and listen 2) Ask them respectfully and professionally for advice when you need it 3) Shut up and listen some more If you're an engineer, I also recommend the followin…
> 1) Shut up and listen
I like that but many people get irritated and feel you're not proactive enough if you just occasionally ask questions.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#144You might be the smartest person in the room, as you've only stated that you have the least experience.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#145If you're the dumbest person in the room... STAY. It's good to surround yourself with smarter people.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, I think the environment sounds toxic.
This is a natural response. But isn't this a spiral down? and impact your confidence with signs of quitter? Say OP is in a startup currently , this downgrade will mean a jump to a big MNC to a services offering to a outsourcing company. The issue at hand has to be handled at some point right?
OP's not in a startup company; he said he was in a quite desirable software company.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#147Wow, sounds like you landed into one of my previous jobs :)
If things are really that way (and you aren't just feeling worse about yourself than is deserved) then leave.
Don't just up & quite unless you can afford that but take the time to find somewhere with an environment that fits what you want better and can allow you to grow.
Being thrown into a challenging project is one thing but with no support is quite another.
I had a similar experience and I was miserable. Add to that when anything I did went wrong people came down on me really hard but everyone else seemed to get a pass ...
Took my time and found something else and now I am super happy.
Most of us are too old to be treated like crap.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#148From what you're saying (and here we have only YOUR point of view and description) there's something poisonous in that company/position/sector/department and it's gonna end bad no matter what. I don't think any team can run a marathon successfully with that kind of attitude towards team-mates.
A couple of advises:
1) Since you had this experience, try not to be a dick on newcomers when your time comes. You said that you were a bit cocky. Now imagine how the other guy in the room must have felt.
2) Generally being kind and humble will get through lions or lambs equally unharmed. I've seen it happen. I'm talking about being humble even to the ones that are openly rude to you - that kind of thing - by giving them a second and third and forth chance.
3) IMHO it's better to stand your ground accept who you are and ask what you don't understand. Make them teach you one way or another. Since you're there try to take away whatever you can. Again try being humble and kind. Maybe there are others that feel exactly like you do but don't come forward because they lack the same strength of character that you do. It takes guts to say I don't know in a hostile environment. Stick to what you know, try to do your homework and when the time comes, state your arguments. The explanations might not as convincing as your first thought and as a result this might turn to be a more liberating change of attitude for the entire team.
4) Those guys that you call 'ninja' others call 'newbies'. There's no rock-star developer IMHO, except from prominent figures that have prove themselves over time (e.g. Wall, Torvalds, Thompson, etc.). But even with those guys, you first and foremost have to be yourself: If you feel that you need more detailed explanation ask for it. Politely but firmly, trying everything possible to avoid conflict, state your arguments and questions as best as you can.
5) As Socrates, Plato and Aristotle said, every man has to pursue one and only thing in his lifetime: Happiness. A series of wise choices could make you happy. If the current situation makes you unhappy, try to find out the real reason, make peace with yourself, accept who you are - by accepting who you are you should respect those with less or more knowledge than you at any domain - and if you can't change the environment around by changing yourself, leave. However keep in mind that 3 out of 5 times, the problem is within you.
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#149My rule of thumb is that I always try to be the dumbest person in the room. If I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm not learning. I want to surround myself with people that know more than I do about things I know little about. My advice: 1) Shut up and listen 2) Ask them respectfully and professionally for advice when you need it 3) Shut up and listen some more If you're an engineer, I also recommend the followin…
> You'll learn their code styles and neat tricks that you never considered.
I agree, it's a good thing to be the dumbest person in the room, BUT a good engineer or developer does not only shine in the work he/she produces, but also in making sure it's clear for his/hers coworkers.
Clear and documented code beats smart code and hacks, and often you can bundle it in a library making it optional to truly understand the workings of the library to use it. (Unless performance is that important or you are doing HFT-alike things)
Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
#150> 3. Do all star/ninja/rock-star software developers have rotten attitudes?
Once you are proficient at some language/framework/library it seems (at least to me) hard to be humble about something you built with it. Sometimes, and hopefully, we're excited about what we've built!
How do the real star-software developers that don't seem to have a rotten attitude after years of experience do it? (I'm really honestly asking! I hate when I get excited about something I built and scare off or offend others, or start rambling about all the new things I've learnt or done)