Anxiety in product development • Hacker News Board

Re: Anxiety in product development

#121

Post by gav » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

maximum_stress wrote: post #112

It's funny this came up because I was about to create this throwaway account and post an Ask HN for advice anyway. Me and my team are in the process of delivering a new infrastructure provisioning system that will bring 9 figures worth of equipment online this year. For the most part we're on time modulo the usual bobbles that come from a year-long project this size. My upper management regularly says We're in a new…

How I think about a situation like this is that your new manager has given you new information that you need to decide what it means.

Either:

1) You've never been in a safe space with room to fail, you've just been operating under this misunderstanding.

Now you know this, you can correct course and change the goal: instead of trying to deliver the best system possible, your team should focus on delivering the minimum required to meet the goal of having it in 60 days. You can cut scope and reduce quality to meet that goal. They are prioritizing the minimum, not the best long-term option for the company.

You also now know a new fact about the organization: you don't want to be there because it's the type of organization that will change the rules on you and fire you for not meeting (what sounds like) unreasonable goals. You now have a new goal: find a new job. Your manager has helped you re-prioritize, this is priority #1 and your project is relegated to #2. Even if you don't get fired in 60 days, you risk being fired in 65 or 90 days, you don't want to be there one day longer than necessary.

2) You are in a safe space, but your new manager is rogue. Even if this is the case, trying to discover that this is the case, and trying to remedy the situation if it is, has a huge personal risk to you with little benefit.

Your best bet is to look after yourself, not the organization, and start looking for a new job. If you go to upper management and they don't fire him, you're going to have somebody that has power over you that is going to be working against you.

--

It might hard advice to hear, and hard to follow, but you should be less stressed about the situation. You now have a clear understanding of what you need to do.

Sorry for the long-winded reply. My contact details are in my profile, I'm happy to be a confidential sounding board if that helps.

Re: Anxiety in product development

#122

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #65

wnmurphy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To get an idea what kind of problems they're dealing with, I started by working two weeks in the restaurant. LOVE this.

And as a result, the system is a total success so far. Without any kind of specifications or design meetings beyond a 5 minute chat here and there.

Can I ask whose idea was it that you work in the restaurant? I love that and such people (who do like you do) I'd like to work with

It was your idea? What did they say, they were surprised?

Re: Anxiety in product development

#123

Post by pathseeker » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

cmehdy wrote: post #101

koheripbal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that emotional compartmentalization is a critical skill. A couple years ago, I faced a very tough time in my life. My business was collapsing, my family's finances were in jeopardy, and there was a serious health issue going on. The emotional stress was incapacitating. I couldn't sleep, let alone focus enough to fix my problems. It was the downward spiral nightmare scenario. If I didn't have dependents (wife +…

It's pretty useful for most day-to-day things, but (1) who you are can absolutely be changed by external circumstances - see TBIs and other long-lasting traumas, and (2) there are medical illnesses where you can be mostly robbed of your ideas - which by this mantra leaves you powerless to change your world. I'm not saying that to take away anything from the well-being brought by this interesting personal prayer, beca…

>who you are can absolutely be changed by external circumstances

Yes, but that's focusing on the very unlikely external circumstances and defeating the point. 99.99% of the daily stuff that seems important actually is not and it's healthier to live a model assuming it's not important rather than worrying that everything could be that devastating brain tumor or IED taking out your bus.

Re: Anxiety in product development

#124

Post by rurp » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #99

asdfman123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're probably training them to be autonomous just like I'm training my dogs to use the dog door. They're still uncomfortable doing so because they're used to me letting them out, but every so often I let them do their own thing and they eventually find their way out. Soon it will become habit and they won't depend on me so much anymore.

Serious question I've had about dog doors: How does a dog door prevent rodents and other riffraff from coming in?

I would guess that the smells and activity from the dog would keep a lot of the critters out. Most wild animals avoid dogs and don't want to risk getting trapped in an unknown space with one. Not that it will always work, but I bet the critter traffic is vastly less than if the house was left empty with a dog door.

Somewhat related, many of my neighbors have had issues with rats. I have seen them on the edges of my yard but never seen or heard one inside. I haven't done anything to prevent them except for having two indoor cats. These are fully domesticated chubby cats that probably couldn't catch a wild rat to save their life, but I suspect their presence deters rodents for the most part.

Re: Anxiety in product development

#125

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

gramontblanc wrote: post #95

asdfman123 wrote: post #87

Yes, but what leads to anxiety? Toxic team dynamics. Google did a study and found the number one predictor of strong teams was a feeling of "psychological safety." > Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor A…

I wonder if the same effect holds true if a team is made up of mostly confident/brash people, or if safety-to-project-yourself can be trained and elevated independent of any other aspect of social environment. Maybe improv classes or subsidizing employees to exhibit art or publicly perform music?

> Maybe improv classes or ...

Some ppl have a whole life behind them with insecurities and bullying and traumas, and

... Itll be hard for improv classes for a week to have much effect compared to that

But still it's an interesting idea, I suppose if the more shy ppl in the company got to do impro, that'd be good for the company (and them too)

Re: Anxiety in product development

#126

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

rurp wrote: post #124

war1025 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question I've had about dog doors: How does a dog door prevent rodents and other riffraff from coming in?

I would guess that the smells and activity from the dog would keep a lot of the critters out. Most wild animals avoid dogs and don't want to risk getting trapped in an unknown space with one. Not that it will always work, but I bet the critter traffic is vastly less than if the house was left empty with a dog door. Somewhat related, many of my neighbors have had issues with rats. I have seen them on the edges of my y…

> never seen or heard [any rat] inside ... two indoor cats ... chubby

> ... couldn't catch a wild rat

I'm seeing a possibly different reality

Re: Anxiety in product development

#127

Post by cmehdy » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #123

cmehdy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty useful for most day-to-day things, but (1) who you are can absolutely be changed by external circumstances - see TBIs and other long-lasting traumas, and (2) there are medical illnesses where you can be mostly robbed of your ideas - which by this mantra leaves you powerless to change your world. I'm not saying that to take away anything from the well-being brought by this interesting personal prayer, beca…

>who you are can absolutely be changed by external circumstances Yes, but that's focusing on the very unlikely external circumstances and defeating the point. 99.99% of the daily stuff that seems important actually is not and it's healthier to live a model assuming it's not important rather than worrying that everything could be that devastating brain tumor or IED taking out your bus.

In the US alone, for TBI alone, there were almost 3 million TBI-related emergency department visits in 2014[0]. One in 4,000 babies born in the US have hypothyroidism[1]. At the lower bound, there is 0.25% of the US population subject to schizophrenia[2]. If we go and look at things like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), 2.7% of US adults have had it in the past year, 32% of which had serious impairments associated with it[3].

I would invite you to seriously challenge the formulation of your idea: it's not that 99.9% of stuff "seems important and it's not", it's that not 99.9% of people have the ability to deal with it through just the one therapeutic aspect of self-talk. Moreover, there is a propensity to share these words because they are inspirational, yet there is very little put forward for the people who do need more than that - and who, in turn, tend to suffer from ailments which in many cases could be alleviated if as a society they were more acknowledged.

If you re-read my message, I hope you do see that I am appreciating the original words, and simply highlighting additional options to people out there who need more than that. That's all.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html

[1] https://www.rightdiagnosis.com/h/hypothyroidism/stats.htm

[2] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/schizophrenia.sht...

[3] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/generalized-anxie...

Re: Anxiety in product development

#128

Post by gramontblanc » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #125

gramontblanc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the same effect holds true if a team is made up of mostly confident/brash people, or if safety-to-project-yourself can be trained and elevated independent of any other aspect of social environment. Maybe improv classes or subsidizing employees to exhibit art or publicly perform music?

> Maybe improv classes or ... Some ppl have a whole life behind them with insecurities and bullying and traumas, and ... Itll be hard for improv classes for a week to have much effect compared to that But still it's an interesting idea, I suppose if the more shy ppl in the company got to do impro, that'd be good for the company (and them too)

If it has an effect it could be worth pursuing just to measure the size of the effect. If perfection isn't needed, "good enough" might be better.

Re: Anxiety in product development

#129

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #79

wpietri wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get this entirely. And for me, this is driven by broken feedback loops in software. Some years back, I started a company with an excellent product manager, one very focused on actual user impact. One of the first things we did is build a tiny, cheap usability lab; every Tuesday we'd have 4 users in to try things out. We rigged it so engineers could watch the sessions remotely, and for the sessions we didn't watch,…

Definitely, I've been through all sorts of roles at all sorts of companies. This was freelancing though; I had full freedom to do things my way, which is how I ended up working for two weeks to learn about their problems. And I still prefer delivering food to working on the software. Thankfully, they're super happy with it and there's not much left to do.

I hope that after a while you think about building some product for an audience you like. Your natural empathy and willingness to engage users make me think you'd be stellar at doing your own thing.

Re: Anxiety in product development

#130

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #82

wpietri wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get this entirely. And for me, this is driven by broken feedback loops in software. Some years back, I started a company with an excellent product manager, one very focused on actual user impact. One of the first things we did is build a tiny, cheap usability lab; every Tuesday we'd have 4 users in to try things out. We rigged it so engineers could watch the sessions remotely, and for the sessions we didn't watch,…

Tight feedback loops that include everyone from the customer through to developers have been the key to success on every successful product I’ve been a part of. It’s been difficult for me to reconcile these feedback loops and whole-team involvement with the current online push for asynchronous workflows. In my experience, the developers who want to isolate themselves at home or in their office, pull tickets out of a…

100% agreed. This is my big fear about the shift to remote work: it can deeply exacerbate organizational pathology.

For what it's worth, I've worked with a couple teams that were remote and great at this, so it's not impossible. One was a small startup. The developers had worked together in person for years and were really well bonded. Once they added in some remote pairing, it was fantastic. The other was a Mozilla team where they put a lot of emphasis on close collaboration. Between the two, I have a fair bit of hope.