Live data from Hacker News

In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

wqtz.bearblog.dev

191–200 of 229 posts

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#191
post #3

Similarly, once you’re looking for a new job, assuming you’re looking for roles with the same job title you had before, do everything you can to paint your previous job in a positive light even if it was miserable. If you don’t, interviewers are left wondering how to interpret your dissatisfaction at your previous job.

Having interviewed people who had previously worked at places I've worked, or where coworkers have worked, I can see this backfiring.

I've put candidates at ease by mentioning well known struggles at their current employer. Generates a laugh.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#192
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The stress comes from people who are bad at what they do and are trying to make it someone else's problem. There's some irony in the way you try to pin the blame on a third-party, and while trying to denigrate it too. I think it warrants some soul searching. I mean, would you feel stressed if you had to endure a team member who threw blanket accusations at your competence and in the process blamed you for causing g…

you have no idea how luxury this belief is. having been the guy fixing the third party's bugs at almost every position, i side with the parent.

This industry has basically no standards for what a software engineer should know and chronically underinvests in training people, then people will jump on hackernews and bitch about people not knowing what they're doing like they haven't been saying university is worthless for the past 7 years.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#193
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to goblin mode in dating you should 100% be yourself but only if you already have money and don't particularly need a given job. This works best when you already have a job. You want the shitty PHB megacorps to reject you so you don't win to lose by getting a job you are going to hate.

I'm not sure I actually want to know, but what the hell is "goblin mode"?

It's a Tuesday. You crawl out of bed. You don't brush your teeth, you don't take a shower, you don't do your hair, you don't even really get dressed. You grab a piece of cake or a pretzel or something from the fridge, climb under a blanket in whatever room your TV is in, and binge Star Wars content for the next 5 hours. Your boyfriend watches a portion of this from the kitchen table, sipping his coffee. Goblin mode.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#194

In software, often the people are the source of stress. Building the software is easy to many in this industry, and the vast majority of the value produced came from someone who thought creating it was easy. Being surrounded by rock stars all doing something they find easy is sublime, and I encourage everyone to seek out those environments. They exist and are fleeting. The stress comes from people who are bad at what…

Am I the only one that finds nothing positive about the term “rock star” in when applied to people you work with? I want to work with smart and accommodating individuals who are team players. None of these qualities are what we expect of rock stars. When I hear “rock star” - I fear a cult of one.

You are 100% correct, nobody wants to work with a "rock star" on a team. When I hear "rock star" I think diva. The best teams are made up of a group of competent people who get on with each other and do great work together - not a team where one or more people are god's gift and the others are subordinates. That kind of scenario doesn't last too long.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#195
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be honest about why your previous employer wasn’t the right fit without burning bridges. I really dislike all of this “reading between the lines” aren’t Americans supposed to be direct?

> I really dislike all of this “reading between the lines” aren’t Americans supposed to be direct? Only when talking to people beneath them. When talking to your superiors, you should be deferential and circumspect. American society is more hierarchical than a feudal aristocracy. It's just based on money, skin color, and gender instead of family name.

Well, it's family name, too. You're just forgiven somewhat if you're outside the community and don't know which family is supposed to be given deference. Unless you're talking to a family of cops or the family that owns everything in the area, in which case you immediately agree with whatever political opinion they share (loudly).

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#196
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very reasonable counterpoint. It's unfortunate you're addressing a bland dismissal that shouldn't carry weight on it's own. Everything is always more nuanced. Doesn't mean grantparent poster didn't have a good reductive shorthand. The dismissal didn't even bother trying to reframe. But it's always an uphill climb because there is an internally-consistent manager-brain line of thinking for the workspace they've create…

The issue with your last statement is that it _is_ part of your job and an increasingly important one at that. It is _also_ your job to make them less bad - this is good because your incentives are aligned. If they both can't be of use and can't be made better, then you need management to step in.

>It is _also_ your job to make them less bad - this is good because your incentives are aligned.

This depends on the number of shits given. I can make anyone better who gives a shit, but there are a whole lot of people who don't and are irredeemable. If this seems to be the case, it's best to cut bait and find someone else quickly. In the 90s, it was "hire fast, fire fast," and somehow this was discarded. It was a tough but highly effective model for making really good teams.

To add to this, it seems people are either unwilling or unable to figure things out for themselves. There are some proprietary things that are really tough to figure out, but it seems a lot of devs these days spend about 5 minutes, then ask for help. "Back in the day," devs would spend a day or two banging their heads agains the before asking for help, and they were better for it.

This no shits given isn't limited to developers, but BAs, PMs, Biz and QA people. It seems a lot worse today than 10 years ago. I ended up spending a good chunk of my day doing people's jobs for them. The people that were hired to take stuff off my plate end up putting stuff on my plate.

Maybe I'm just old and salty. Get off my lawn!

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#197
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with your last statement is that it _is_ part of your job and an increasingly important one at that. It is _also_ your job to make them less bad - this is good because your incentives are aligned. If they both can't be of use and can't be made better, then you need management to step in.

>It is _also_ your job to make them less bad - this is good because your incentives are aligned. This depends on the number of shits given. I can make anyone better who gives a shit, but there are a whole lot of people who don't and are irredeemable. If this seems to be the case, it's best to cut bait and find someone else quickly. In the 90s, it was "hire fast, fire fast," and somehow this was discarded. It was a to…

Personally I'm with you on "many people no longer able to figure stuff out". However, we may differ on the time frames we're willing to "take" from them.

Back in the day, you figured stuff out on your own, because you had no other resources. I remember breaking my computer's ability to boot into a working DOS prompt (too long ago to remember what exactly went wrong and how I fixed it). I had a few hours until I would have to tell my dad that I "broke the computer" I had just gotten. That was motivation to try a lot of things and figure it out. My dad never knew in the end coz I fixed it. I also had no internet or other people around to ask for help even if I had wanted to.

But today, if I see someone struggling for a day or two on something that in the end I'll be able to solve for them in less than 5 minutes once they do ask, then I do think that's too long given they have the whole wide internet, AI tooling as well as coworkers to help them out available to them. The worst for me is when they struggle with the same type of stuff over and over or when they are unable to pick up the strategies I used when solving it for/with them. I try to solve things with them as much as I can but with some people it's just too frustrating. Like you want to just throw lots of things at the wall quickly and see if they stick but they're too slow / don't even seem to understand the concept or don't have enough ideas of what to try and throw at the wall.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It sounds like this test is working as expected based on the comments here. "Honest" might mean telling your coworker that their code sucks and you could do it better if they would just get out of your way. Tactful and positive would be saying they're off to a good start but here's some feedback. If someone can't describe their current or previous job in somewhat positive terms, I don't expect they'll be abl…

Imagine if any other field operated this way, holy shit, how does tech only get away with this toxic shit? Good try their Joe, you only nicked the artery a little bit! Umm nope thats not how we cut the lumber Bill, don't worry though the rafters are invisible under the roof!

Tons of other fields operate this way.

Notably, in aviation, when things go wrong it is generally looked at in a non-blame way so that training cam be updated to prevent similar problems in the future.

It might not be what makes you happy, but ATC isn't in the business of making you happy. They're in the business of saving lives, which this method accomplishes better than what you're expecting.

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this characterization implies a dichotomy that bothers me. Work is certainly not my top priority, but I spend a ton of my time on my job, and I would like to feel fulfilled and happy doing it. Have capable colleagues that you can trust to pull their weight is a big part of that. In general, I’ve found that the clock-in, clock-out types seem to take their mediocrity as almost a badge of honor, with this feelin…

The person I replied to claims their work based social interactions are totally utilitarian and transactional - very Patrick Bateman. Should work be fun? Of course, in fact every part of life should be good and fun for everyone all the time, yes? But realistically, I wouldn't have any fun working with this guy. If other peoples "mediocrity" is spoiling the "fun" for you, then you should consider building your own fun…

The quotations feel unnecessarily petty. Do you enjoy working with people who are incompetent? Is there anywhere you’d draw the line with regards to competence, at which point you’d rather not have to deal with them?

Re: In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships

#200
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere between toxic negativity and toxic positivity lies a middle ground and I think some of the comments here are presenting a bit of a false dichotomy. When interviewing people, it’s usually possible to identify both extremes. I’d prefer to hire someone who is not toxic. That goes for both extremes.

So going back to the originally assertion about not saying anything negative about the company when asked for reasons why you didn't like it? Why is saying something negative in that situation toxic? Crazy making man!

Saying something negative isn't inherently toxic. But saying something negative in a job interview is walking a line. Everyone everywhere has experienced negative factors in a prior job, so it's not exactly a revelation if someone has some war stories.

But what a person chooses to focus on does say something about how that person thinks.

If I ask someone what they dislike about their previous job, and they say something like "there were times when management would change directions at the last minute and cause the whole team to scramble", that's relatable and not necessarily a red flag.

If someone starts venting about low quality coworkers and shitty management, that's probably a red flag.

If someone volunteers negativity unprompted, that's probably a red flag.

My point here is that discerning between toxicity and honesty is usually possible, and what a person chooses to be negative about is a signal that helps tell the difference.

What I don't want on my team is a culture of negativity. A negative/pessimistic default is a wet blanket that shuts things down before they have a chance to get started. It creates tension where it need not exist. And it requires significant effort to counteract once it exists on the team. And to reiterate, I'm not looking for toxic positivity either. That's a separate problem.

Post reply on HN