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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
141–150 of 572 posts
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#142There's a couple of issues that stand out to me: Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or insen…
This one way street also extends to the way Coraline's accomplishments at GitHub are presented in the article.
There's all of this talk about all of the code she pushed and all of the popular features she wrote, but there's no context as to whether or not those things were the metrics by which her performance was being measured, e.g. what her management was expecting her to do. So when the negative review is mentioned, we're supposed to be shocked by it. Certainly she is shocked by it. That doesn't mean she should have been.
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#143If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company doesn't want you there. I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being happy -- maybe you only hear about the bad cases, but a PIP often seems to me like a cover your ass plan on the part of the company. They want to get rid of a person, but they're afraid of getting sued, so a PIP is a way to document why a pers…
"I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being happy "
At least where i've worked, they work out about 50% of the time. That tracks with the PIP's i've been involved in.
I can also give you anecdotes if you like, but i'm not sure you care.
"This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why. " I'd agree plenty of PIPs are written and delivered at various companies as a cover your ass.
But where I am, and what I do, they are used as a hopeful wakeup call with some formal tracking and feedback mechanism. Really. As you say, there is no point if there is no hope of improvement.
(I know how cynical HN is, of course, so i don't expect this to be believed)
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#144I am really torn on this one. I want to discuss the article because I think it brings up interesting topics, and for the most part HN folks are good at discussing polarizing things like this without devolving into Reddit-style nonsense. On the other hand, I want to flag it, because the article itself is absolute garbage. EDIT: I see now it is flagged. To be clear, I didn't, because I still think it's worth discussing…
Programmers aren't really well known for their inherent skill in writing. It seems like the content, rather than the delivery, is the more important thing here.
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#145The experience she relates reminds me a hell of a lot of the way my previous job ended, which amounted to a handful of offended people uninterested in (directly) talking, and (my direct) management largely uninterested in reconciliation / facilitating. All of the problems she relates are with people who are not directly communicating with her, usually after she's directly communicating with them. Whereas, according to the story she relates, everyone who actually engages with her likes the experience.
Over all, it paints a picture of GH where the management (and many / some employee) are not fans of directly dealing with problems, which, IMHO, speaks to people who don't do it often enough. Most of the time, when I (or others who've related stories) "turn" to directly deal with a people problem, it turns out not to be much of a problem at all. It's only when you try to deal indirectly, or not all, that things go south and eventually explode.
Interestingly, all of the people at my last company that I had this issue with were in the Bay Area, and I didn't have this issue with folks in other remote offices.
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why. Because sometimes it's a genuine desire for someone who is a good cultural fit to improve. > If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company doesn't want you there. I've put folks on PIPs before (we don't call them that and we're much more straightforward about it t…
Well put -- I suppose these sorts of things are largely kept between manager and employee, so people don't end up hearing about them unless the employee decides to disclose.
You're right. It's also something employers can't dress up often for legal reasons. E.g. you can't be vague/fluffy/nice about the reason for putting someone onto a PIP. So if your company culture is kind/gentle, then it can seem like a HUGE abrasive shock to have one appear.
There are of course some people who are a) actively assholes and b) genuinely oblivious to the rules applying to them. But you gotta believe they're in the tiny minority in the world.
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#147The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…
Reading the full article, it strikes me how you can be "inclusive" if you are constantly highlighting the differences. The fact, for example, she dismisses PRs or code reviews because made by white males. Or the blog post on her first deliverable, rewritten by a white male. I don't see what could be the benefit to point that out in every sentence: that all of that is made in malice because of gender and race? If I ha…
> she dismisses PRs or code reviews because made by white males.
I didn't see this and can't find it. Can you point me at where this happens?
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#148If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company doesn't want you there. I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being happy -- maybe you only hear about the bad cases, but a PIP often seems to me like a cover your ass plan on the part of the company. They want to get rid of a person, but they're afraid of getting sued, so a PIP is a way to document why a pers…
> This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why. Because the PIP exists to to support the argument that the firing was not for a prohibited reason in the event that the employee charges that it was. “At-will” doesn't mean there aren't prohibited reasons for firing, and if you don't have any evidence for what the firing reason was, it doesn'…
This is super-cynical.
If you want to get rid of them, you don't have to have success criteria at all.
You could just document the behavior that makes them want to fire them ("you smell funny") and followups in an email, and call it a day after a week or so.
Having success criteria when you just want to get rid of someone means if they do succeed, but you still wanted to just get rid of them, you are worse off as an employer :)
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#149The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…
I thought her positive reaction on being placed into such an obviously intentionally isolated team was odd. A team of people just so, without the undesirables, their own org structure with dedicated PMs, QCs, and backlog. The way things fell apart when that cocoon was breached -- both from within and without -- was entirely predictable. How was this supposed to work in the first place? What did they hope to accomplis…
This happened to me at my last job - there were a bunch of us in a celebrated cocoon, and then everything fell apart when it was breached. It wasn't about undesirable people, it was about undesirable management influences; whiplash from constantly changing projects and reorgs, moving goal posts, etc etc. It definitely came with it's fair share of problems.
We were trying to isolate ourselves from the craziness in the rest of the company, and we got a lot of cool shit done while it lasted.
Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why. Because the PIP exists to to support the argument that the firing was not for a prohibited reason in the event that the employee charges that it was. “At-will” doesn't mean there aren't prohibited reasons for firing, and if you don't have any evidence for what the firing reason was, it doesn'…
This is super-cynical. If you want to get rid of them, you don't have to have success criteria at all. You could just document the behavior that makes them want to fire them ("you smell funny") and followups in an email, and call it a day after a week or so. Having success criteria when you just want to get rid of someone means if they do succeed, but you still wanted to just get rid of them, you are worse off as an…
> You could just document the behavior that makes them want to fire them ("you smell funny") and followups in an email, and call it a day after a week or so.
Documenting something that has no objective criteria does very little to defeat even slight evidence of another motive for firing where the proferred reason is purely pretextual.
> Having success criteria when you just want to get rid of someone means if they do succeed, but you still wanted to just get rid of them, you are worse off as an employer
That's true; that cost is weighed against losing wrongful-termination lawsuits.
Also, very often formal PIPs follow undocumented informal ones that have the same purpose in reality that a formal one does on paper (but which avoid any adverse record for an employee you end up keeping), and the success criteria in the formal PIP are things the manager knows (to a fair certainty) the employee will not meet based on the informal one.