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Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

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Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#101

Post by ilyt »

tyroh wrote: post #42
revskill wrote: post #3

Why that is the matter ? The problem is in bad project management, technical leading and outcome management instead. Solve those issues first, and there will be no overrated people.

This is precisely what's happened in our company. The project management head was not a servant leader and actively avoided doing real work while telling others what to do and promising to do things that never happened. Sadly, this person is still with our company at the time of this writing, but thankfully not anymore in a role where they can derail work. What really struck a nerve in me was that I had to catch all…

The worst case of that took 2 other managers with him.

He was kicked but project was so mismanaged that the next 2 PMs outright fucking left, with last one throwing comment like "well, they told me that they will be throwing me on deep water but they didn't tell me it will be with concrete boots on!".

To be entirely fair fuckup wasn't totally his (the person involved in selling it to customer sold Perl based piece of software that we only had to "lightly customize", that turned out to be a lie and we had no Perl devs on staff, so it turned into some monster...) but still.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#103

Post by serverholic »

paulcole wrote: post #100
serverholic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexualizing products. Creating cute jokes during the super bowl. Implying that if you buy this product, you'll improve your social status. Am I expected to believe that these things are about communicating value? I'm sorry but that's a steaming pile of BS. Using power tactics with your customers during sales calls. Creating a sense of urgency. Bending the truth to make your product appear more favorable in general an…

Reminds me of how I find computer programming to be an amoral profession because missiles have guidance systems and Al Qaeda has a website.

This is a false equivalency. Most software engineers aren't working on weapons, but most sales and marketing people engage in deception and other amoral practices.

Not to mention that software engineers literally build the products. Sales and marketing's job is to shove it down people's throats.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#105

Post by satisfice »

Most of the items here are good things that are taken too far. You can almost automate writing an article like this: take any set good things (writing code, releasing products, innovating, being kind to others, helping old ladies cross the street, etc.), take them to an unhelpful extreme, and say “don’t be like that.”

Don’t obsessively add code, or release useless products for the sake of releasing, or reinvent things that are perfectly good and not worth improving, or be creepy like Dr. Jekyll, or stalk old ladies.

I like people who keep track of status and make documentation, thank you! They are useful people!

All you need to not overrate someone is to be a critical thinker who pays attention over time to how things are done.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#106

Post by jacksonkmarley »

Personally I don't have much experience with people behaving like this, motivated by straight-up laziness or covering up incompetence so blatantly. These seem like they would be very obvious problem behaviours, and not as damaging as other more common but perhaps less overtly dishonest habits of overrated people.

I have encountered many people who behave in harmful ways according to personal or organisational incentives that they or others could argue were legitimate. Technical people promoted above their managerial competence level for example, can end up being rated highly by upper management as they are seen to be experts, but can then go on to make terrible strategic decisions.

Also non-technical project management professionals, using techniques that could be interpreted as legitimate, can be rated highly despite contributing next to nothing. Asking tech contributors for deadline estimates, recording the answers, and then chasing the overruns can seem like constructive action.

Then you realise that there are no high level plans coming back that integrate the timelines in a constructive way, it's just a way to apply psychological pressure by getting investment in a target that can be held over people's heads.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#107

Post by vegetablepotpie »

LazyCroHacker wrote: post #41
genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

Yo. Ask me anything. Edit : I'm actually serious. I don't do most of the things in the article, or at least definitely not with the intent and detail - but I've been moved over time from being a pretty good and certainly respected hands on techie, to a middle to upper manager with massive imposter syndrome, and certainly feel I contribute less for more credit. Client loves me. My boss loves me. My team loves me. But…

I’m an aspiring overrated person, I started as a developer, then was promoted into a product owner role because of attrition. I have ended up spending most of my day in meetings and being interrupted over IM, and there is not much time for coding. Realistically, I should either do less meetings, or commit to less coding. The latter is better because I’m not as good at coding as my peers.

My barriers are that I’m not great at the people skills, and to compensate I’ve focused on the technicals of this pseudo leadership role such as making graphics for power point slides, and agile administration, like using the tools and scheduling those rituals.

How can I make the leap to doing no coding and just doing the meetings and delegation?

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#108

Post by seattle_spring »

paulcole wrote: post #28
q-big wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: there is of course an incentive not to admit this. Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office politics. On the other hand, the people that the article discuss are good at office politics/marketing themselves and often don't have such a deep knowledge about programming. Thus, I would indeed assume that the typical HN reader/writer le…

The average HN reader is highly overrated for other reasons. > have detest for office politics The problem is that many people on HN believe any interaction with someone with an MBA, marketing background, manager, etc. is “office politics.”

That seems like kind of a strawman, doesn’t it? I’m not convinced anyone really thinks what you are claiming.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#109

Post by insightcheck »

serverholic wrote: post #103
paulcole wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how I find computer programming to be an amoral profession because missiles have guidance systems and Al Qaeda has a website.

This is a false equivalency. Most software engineers aren't working on weapons, but most sales and marketing people engage in deception and other amoral practices. Not to mention that software engineers literally build the products. Sales and marketing's job is to shove it down people's throats.

To the contrary, I think paulcole made a great point. It doesn’t need to be weapons. A programmer who makes a social media feed more addictive isn’t necessarily moral. But a salesperson/marketer can promote something generally seen as good, or at least far more good than the example programmer.

Ad campaigns can remind people to vote, encourage people to quit smoking, or convince people to avoid drunken driving. A marketer is behind for the design and distribution of these public advocacy campaigns.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#110

Post by vinay_ys »

majormajor wrote: post #98
q-big wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: there is of course an incentive not to admit this. Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office politics. On the other hand, the people that the article discuss are good at office politics/marketing themselves and often don't have such a deep knowledge about programming. Thus, I would indeed assume that the typical HN reader/writer le…

> Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office politics. I think it's more accurate to say that they have a detest for dealing with people in ways that require persuasion, or more generally situations without an "objective" right answer. You want to do A, someone else wants to do B, you can't do both, you both think you're right, boom, "poli…

A lot of the time, the person who takes this stance tend to forget that execution matters more than the idea being objectively correct. Good "politics" is about persuading the actual people who have to own and execute that idea. There are bad situations where you find yourself opposite people who add little value that is obvious and yet demand they be persuaded or else they will stand the way of your idea. When the emotional burden of fighting such battles crosses a certain threshold you feel burn-out and give up. This threshold is high for people who can do office politics well and it is low for most self-described techies. This does not mean that latter kind of people don't create the same emotional stress for others through their own political schemings (yes, even without knowing consciously, we are all political animals in our own ways – we wield what powers we have to attain our agenda, in however good or bad ways we do it).
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