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Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

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Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#131

Post by cowpig »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #56

I really do think about this a lot, but I disagree with what the author proposes which is basically lying or deceiving others: > Authenticity is rare, but people performing authenticity is common, and being good at that performance can build a fortune. Not just authenticity, of course. Being able to pretend that you are furious is a trick that all great sales people use. And being able to create the illusion of a sin…

That part of the article bugged me as well. I think there's a significant difference between being "authentic" and oversharing.

If being "authentic" is revealing the full nature of all your feelings to someone, I think that never really happens: language doesn't have the required bandwidth. Instead, I'd define being "authentic" is the opposite of intentionally misleading people.

Being authentic is a strategy that has served me well in my life: I routinely develop relationships based on mutual trust which serve me well. Plus I don't feel like a bad person.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#132

Post by adrianratnapala »

A good article, which should probably be read alongside the one about "vulnerability" by Leah Fessler [1] that it is responding to. Mining the links, I sniff an insidious confusion about what it means show "vulnerabilty". On its face, it sounds like "exposing your weaknesses". But in pro-vulnerability literature (e.g. [2]), it seems more like "displaying honesty and courage". Those are strengths, not weakensses.

An example is when someone is confident enough to say "Hey, I don't know about [X], can you explain it?". That confidence is good; but for it to work, it must be common knowledge that, since no-one understands everything the question displays keenness to learn (i.e. strength) and not ignorance (i.e. weakness).

[Pro tip: one of the most valuable, and easiest, life skills I learned as a young man was to say "I don't know" in a confident tone of voice.]

It is bad if vulnerability-talk teaches young people to display their weakness, since of course that will lead people to lose confidence in them. What else could it do? But it is good if they learn to turn problems into opportunities to strengthen themselves, and to do it openly so that their colleauges can help.

[1]: https://work.qz.com/1155475/im-a-millennial-and-i-cant-get-m...

[2]: https://www.fastcompany.com/3001319/why-doing-awesome-work-m...

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#133

Post by aetherson »

jupiter90000 wrote: post #73
aetherson wrote: post #13

I'm 40, and some of my coworkers are like 25. I'm about two management levels above the basic engineers, but we're a small company and everyone knows everyone. So I'm having lunch with some of the engineers, and one of them shares out of the blue that she regrets getting a computer science degree at her (good) college, and thinks she should've gone into business instead. And my immediate thought is, "For god's sake,…

If they don't like computer science why do you think they'd want to advance a career related to computer science? Maybe speaking it out loud is helping them move towards fulfillment of what they'd really like. People are allowed to regret their career choices in front of people if they want to. It may have consequences, but that's their business.

If she wants to get out of engineering, that's something she can do at any point, on her own recognizance. She doesn't need my help to do it.

But, on the other hand, if she does decide she wants to continue as an engineer in our company, she's now added a kind of negative datapoint to my evaluation of her suitability, and for something that's not entirely within her control -- it's partly within mine. It's just a bad idea for her to do this.

It's not the only data point I have, and I tend to think that she'll actually do fine in engineering if she decides to continue down this path. But my job isn't to make her dreams come true, it's to find the people to make the best investments of the company's money in personnel.

Let's give a not-entirely-hypothetical. Let's say that Alice is the name of the engineer who expressed regrets about going into engineering (not her real name, to be clear), and Betty is the name of another, very similar engineer, who has expressed no regrets.

A tech lead spot is opening up in Alice and Betty's field. It's likely to be the only such spot in the near term. Alice and Betty are both seemingly good candidates for the job. But I have to be worried that whichever one I don't pick for the role will feel that they have no career path at our company, and quit.

Now, I could pick Alice. But I know that at least at one point in the past, Alice was regretting becoming an engineer. It sure would suck if I pick Alice, Betty quits, and then six months later Alice pursues her dream to go into business. Whereas if I pick Betty, and then Alice quits, well, maybe Alice was going to get out of engineering anyway.

I feel that I have to give some weight to this information I have about Alice. It's not that I dislike her or feel that she's weak for expressing doubts. It's that she's given me a reason to doubt that she'll be here long term, and if I'm going to invest a limited resource in her versus her peers, I want to do so with the most assurance possible that she'll be here long enough to make that investment worthwhile.

Ask yourself if it would be fair to Betty for me to pretend I didn't know this about Alice.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#134

Post by DoreenMichele »

aetherson wrote: post #133
jupiter90000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't like computer science why do you think they'd want to advance a career related to computer science? Maybe speaking it out loud is helping them move towards fulfillment of what they'd really like. People are allowed to regret their career choices in front of people if they want to. It may have consequences, but that's their business.

If she wants to get out of engineering, that's something she can do at any point, on her own recognizance. She doesn't need my help to do it. But, on the other hand, if she does decide she wants to continue as an engineer in our company, she's now added a kind of negative datapoint to my evaluation of her suitability, and for something that's not entirely within her control -- it's partly within mine. It's just a bad…

Thank you for this explanation.

I was an excellent student. I also spent a lot of years as a homemaker. Such thought processes often aren't obvious to me and they often aren't explained well, making it easy for people to feel like "the boss is playing favorites" or whatever, which I really don't like to do personally but I am often not equipped to argue it if other people do it.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#135

Post by jupiter90000 »

aetherson wrote: post #133
jupiter90000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't like computer science why do you think they'd want to advance a career related to computer science? Maybe speaking it out loud is helping them move towards fulfillment of what they'd really like. People are allowed to regret their career choices in front of people if they want to. It may have consequences, but that's their business.

If she wants to get out of engineering, that's something she can do at any point, on her own recognizance. She doesn't need my help to do it. But, on the other hand, if she does decide she wants to continue as an engineer in our company, she's now added a kind of negative datapoint to my evaluation of her suitability, and for something that's not entirely within her control -- it's partly within mine. It's just a bad…

It made sense how you thought of what she said. If she doesn't like computer science, maybe you passing her for a promotion would help motivate her career change. So doing what you are saying may actually be helping her dreams come true in a roundabout way.

Edit: Why should she put on an act for the sake of money/career/boss if she doesn't want to? Maybe the argument is she didn't know better (which may be true).

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#136

Post by jupiter90000 »

greenrd wrote: post #100
jupiter90000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't like computer science why do you think they'd want to advance a career related to computer science? Maybe speaking it out loud is helping them move towards fulfillment of what they'd really like. People are allowed to regret their career choices in front of people if they want to. It may have consequences, but that's their business.

The point is, these consequences can include everything up to and including termination, and a resultant difficulty in finding a subsequent job that pays as well. The young woman probably didn't think of that when she blurted that out. Or maybe she has a trust fund to fall back on, but the people around her may not, and she wasn't setting a good example.

I get it. If she doesn't like computer science though, maybe the termination will be part of her process to finding something she enjoys. Edit: my point is she doesn't have to pretend if she chooses not to. Who cares if that's what she chooses to do. I guess maybe the concern is she was oblivious to the impact of what she said.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#137

Post by aetherson »

scarface74 wrote: post #61
crispyambulance wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is you can never _really_ know, in advance, who is going to be empathetic about expressions of doubt and who is going to silently and permanently pass judgement upon it. Saying that stuff to peers has little risk especially if the peers know each other. But aetherson has a supervisor role here and he is at least being honest to us that such a remark will condition his future opinion of the blabber-mouth. Th…

Your boss is not your friend, but your boss can be your mentor. I've had to form a level of trust with my boss because I really needed his advice as a first time tech lead. I knew the technology I was implementing pretty well but now knowing how to approach higher ups and people in other departments is just as important.

Let's be clear, though: I'm not her boss. She's two levels below me and not in my direct chain of command, currently. I'd actually be less down on it if I were her boss, and she was speaking just to me, seeking advice or something. There's a sort of "Let's have an open discussion about career stuff" venue in which you kind of agree to suspend judgment.

Just randomly dropping that factoid in a group discussion where it's difficult or impossible for me to probe deeper and understand what's behind it is not a great idea. That makes it easier for someone to take a bad impression from it.

But, also, yeah, I agree, your boss is never fully your friend. I like a lot of the people who work for me, and in other circumstances I think I could be friends with most of them, but part of my job is to evaluate them, including negatively. There is an art to expressing vulnerability in a way that creates intimacy without making a person question your abilities. You can't just assume that everything that you say will have only positive consequences.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#139

Post by dorkwood »

I'm not a manager, but the people I've worked with best over the years are the ones who have shared a bit of themselves at work.

People who act 'professional' all the time aren't trustworthy to me. It's impossible to have a frank discussion since they're always hiding behind the veneer of professionalism. They overrate their own ability to fool an audience, and it erodes everyone's ability to trust them.

I'm not saying everyone needs to blurt out their feelings 100% of the time. I'm saying honesty isn't only reserved for touchy-feely millenials. If you cultivate a culture of honesty rather than dog-eat-dog deception, you'll get better feedback from your employees, you'll be able to give feedback easier, and teams will be more comfortable speaking up instead of sweeping the garbage under the table.

The problem with the woman in the interview wasn't that she was being honest, it's that she was framing her honesty in an unproductive way.

Re: Discretion still matters – don’t hurt your career by sharing too much

#140

Post by solidsnack9000 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #111
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is different from what is described in the original article, though, where “Lisa” really does speak in a way that communicates fear and a sense of trepidation.

Is it? If it is, why am I so frequently interpreted as playing the victim card when I am displaying my badass scars? Or even simply telling it like it is about my actual life experiences?

Is it?

If we accept for the moment, that Lisa was just describing her sense of uneasiness -- her sense of trepidation -- that's different from "displaying my badass scars" or "telling it like it is about my actual life experiences".

That does seem like a reasonable reading of the original article.

I did start out by asking what dkarl thought about whether or not the original author would have thought differently, if a young man had said those things; or if his argument was that having trouble with saying those things was a problem. I'm not sure where you're going but it seems like you're saying, that I should accept your thoughts about your experiences as a conclusive answer to my question to dkarl. That seems strange.

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