211–220 of 229 posts
Yet, about 30% of the source of TFA is a stylesheet. I guess they mean no external stylesheet?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the other is about keeping a polite distance to prevent repeated interactions. or, the other is about providing them the vision and the clear set of steps. Then checking their progress along those steps. (including revising the steps when the original plan diverges from the evolving reality). Training and mentoring the people so they can become rock stars.
This comment and a sibling both brought up the issue of less experienced people and mentorship, which is important to clarify. Some incompetence is a known quantity, and when it is known it will not produce stress. The junior dev on the team might not know how to do something. The team leadership should already have priced that in, and have a plan to help them if need be. If the junior dev's incompetence is creating…
One team member had a TBI. My manager gave him a custom track so he could succeed. That sounds kind, but it meant the rest of us had to constantly check in, fix problems, and slow down for him.
Another person had lots of field experience but couldn’t handle problems without getting emotional. He built walls around every challenge and pulled people into his frustrations. He had the title of senior consultant, but he couldn’t do the work without a junior staffer helping him every step.
Then there was a junior person who had already underperformed in another team. Instead of addressing it, leadership moved her to my team, where she had even less experience. If I gave her 10 basic tasks, she would typically only complete 7. Not challenging tasks, just needed follow-through. My boss told me to keep setting clear expectations and checking in more. But she just kept pulling time and attention away from the actual work.
She was also split 50/50 between her old team and my team. I kept telling my boss and the other SVP that this made no sense. If someone is underperforming, the worst thing you can do is give them two sets of responsibilities. There’s no way to hold them accountable. Any time she didn’t deliver, we’d say, “Well, maybe it’s because of her other team.”
And here’s what really got me. My boss admitted he wanted these people off the team while enabling them. I ultimately pushed the field guy to deliver actual work until he quit. I kept pushing for the junior staffer to be placed on one team that could pin down her underperformance until the other team took her back. Leadership talked about fixing things, but they wouldn’t act. And it put me in a role that I wasn’t supposed to fill, applying pressure on my teammates rather than support.
This is an organizational deficiency with promoting engineers to manager roles as a matter of course. My boss was a fine engineer, but he was a horrible manager and no one held him accountable for his bullshit. I saw people go around him to complain to his superiors, but it wasn’t well received or productive.
Shame on the organization.
Humans are inherently social beings (there's also a positive correlation of intelligence in animal species with the level of socializing (eg: birds, dolphins, dogs, etc.)).
It's also good to see the term "Social Health" starting to being used these days.
I reckon (tried on myself) that to be able to still prioritize one's personal and work growth, that one could remove self-indulgences like watching TV, browsing public reels (any social media outside of your family and friends), listening to music alone, etc. and instead spend some of that extra time with others. To an extent, these relationships help with personal and work growth as well, for example getting better at a sport or traveling and learning about other industries respectively.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Their belief just screams "DEI"
Complaining about "DEI" is a cope mechanism of incompetent individuals, who prefer to fabricate conspiracies to justify why someone else was chosen over them. It's a rehash of the old argument of complaining about low-pay immigrants for stealing jobs that would otherwise be rightfully theirs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In companies with highly compartmentalized roles, too much work to do, and annoying co-workers, it's easy to say, "that's not my problem, go away." (With a bit more diplomacy, I'd hope.) I have always prioritized trying to be the stereotypical helpful person who might not know the answer to your question, but usually knows who to ask. The more your name comes up in the context of "who knows how X works?", the better…
A lot of times that stereotypical helpful person is so helpful that junior people never learn to get rid of their dependence on that person. I know that because I've been that stereotypical helpful person. I realized something was amiss when a junior person who had been on the team for two years still came to me every other day to ask me questions. They spent minimal amount of effort thinking on their own, and then s…
In my case, this happened a few times. My solution to that is: whenever I get the impression that I'm becoming a critical path for someone else's day-to-day work, I start to wean them off the direct advice and start pointing them to where else they can find the answer instead. If they ask how to do X, I'll say, "Sorry, I'm a little busy with something else but here is the documentation for it. You might start by looking at Y or Z first. I'll check in later if I get a chance, let me know if you have any questions at that point."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 someth…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 someth…
1) Stick to the prompt
2) Don't rant negatively without a clear point that might be appreciated for the given position
Is that fair? Anything else? Thanks for expounding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their belief just screams "DEI"
> Their belief just screams "DEI" Complaining about "DEI" is a cope mechanism of incompetent individuals, who prefer to fabricate conspiracies to justify why someone else was chosen over them. It's a rehash of the old argument of complaining about low-pay immigrants for stealing jobs that would otherwise be rightfully theirs.