Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Story: “It would be career limiting..."

doomedprojects.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 342 posts

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#241

Post by WindyLakeReturn »

jimmaswell wrote: post #217
peteradio wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a horrible truth, hate to upvote but you may be right. But why is it engineers who must rise to the political occasion?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task STEM people will naturally succeed at this task immediately, while an average person, like a koala unable to understand a leaf is food unless it's put on a tree, can only answer the logic problem if it's phrased in terms of social rules. The STEM people's brains tended to develop in a way that intuitively understands logic in a more abstract way, better able to und…

Aren't the images in that wikipedia link misleading?

In the original case, you have the following statement: If even, then red. You also have 4 cards, 3, 8, red brown. So two numbers that relate to the if side and two colors that relate to the then side.

In the second picture, you have the statement: If drinking alcohol, then >=21. You also have 4 chards. 16, 25, soda, beer. So two numbers that correlate to the then side and 2 drinks that correlate to the if side.

But the way they arrange and color code the cards makes people associate the drinks with the colors and the ages with the numbers, which is mixing up the if and then.

Granted, this isn't a problem in the text explanation, but could lead to further confusion by someone trying to create associations between drink alcohol status and color when it is really drink alcohol status and even/odd.

Unrelated to my the rest of my comment, I found that despite having what I would consider a very logical brain, I did have a much simpler time solving the drinking problem than the original one. I reach a satisfactory conclusion in each, but the drinking one felt more natural and intuitive while the original problem included a pause and double checking my logic. I would like to be tested on social rules that aren't part of my current social context to see if that played a roll in this specific instance (the article says there is evidence that the effect persists even when the rules aren't part of the existing culture, but that is a general trend and may not apply to specific instances).

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#242

Post by roxgib »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #99
BWStearns wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concoct a plan to stage the product development and release such that it gets done and you don't cost a giant contract Yes, always showing up with a solution to problems that you've surfaced is a good idea and good for your career, ... BUT: isn't coming up with a solution to this problem literally the job of the management team that they presented to? If management hears "the thing you think will happen will absolu…

Suppose you were a junior engineer working with a senior engineer. They gave you a task, and you came to a similar conclusion: it was their job to do X, but they weren't doing it. Would you simply tell them they're not doing their job, or would you ask questions, talk in private, and try to dig in tactfully? When I was 22 or so, I did go around telling a certain senior engineer that they weren't doing their job. I st…

I think what a lot of comments are missing is that they tried to raise this with management, and eventually management responded by asking them to conduct a review and deliver the results, which they did. Maybe they could have played it better but it doesn’t sound like it was their idea to do it this way.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#243

Post by sillysaurusx »

maest wrote: post #197
sillysaurusx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to touch on that: one of the things you learn is that it’s better to be liked than right. We devs often fixate on whether we’re right and the other person is wrong. One specific incident comes to mind. I was working on Heroes of Newerth, a DotA clone. We achieved a bit of popularity in those days, and we reached around 50k concurrent users. So our servers tended to melt. One day, the servers went south, and…

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think technical issues were the reason HoN failed. For context, I have played a lot of DotA2 and HoN (5.2k hours in DotA2, probably 1k hours in HoN). This is anecdotal, but I was never really bothered by outages and neither were the other people that I played with. Instead, I think HoN made some very bad decisions regarding cosmetics and fostered an extremely toxic playerbase.…

Surprisingly, what killed the company was the lack of competitive scene. We sort of expected players to organize themselves. We also had a lot of the DotA pros at the time.

The moment icefrog and valve dropped their $1M tournament prize pool, the company in hindsight was doomed. But it took a couple years to sink.

Players follow pros, and if the pros are playing DotA, they’ll switch to DotA. Our only chance was to keep the pros. It would have been smart to make an exclusive contact with as many pros as possible. But of course, that’s with hindsight.

The rise of twitch happened to coincide with the rise of pro DotA, which I think was a factor in shifting popularity.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#244

Post by lmm »

monksy wrote: post #187
maxbond wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not…

Seeing this and the todolu work advice girl ... I think educating people on how threats are composed and used is something that everyone should understand. I'm now realized that I've been soft threatened quite a lot.

Being able to understand threats is not always beneficial.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#245

Post by lmm »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

If accurate, realistic project schedules are considered a "career limiting move" then obviously the company was never a good place to advance your career anyway. As evidenced in this anecdote, this mentality doesn't produce good results for those companies. Looking back at the places I've worked, I'm having a hard time thinking of any examples of people committing singular "career limiting moves". Most tech companies…

> If accurate, realistic project schedules are considered a "career limiting move" then obviously the company was never a good place to advance your career anyway. As evidenced in this anecdote, this mentality doesn't produce good results for those companies.

Not good results how? They got their $60M and moved on to the next sucker.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#246

Post by Aunche »

tootie wrote: post #194
pojzon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better approach is to leave. Talking to those kind of ppl is like playing chess with pigeon. Just dont, have dignity. We are some of the smartest ppl this earth is supporting.

Absolutely nobody involved in this was stupid. In fact, the ones who signed the doomed contract were very savvy, just very self-serving. Part of the reason I got screwed was because I had excellent relationships with almost all the other account managers and they also all knew that successful deliveries lead to more sales and were brilliant at what they did. It's hubris to think that tech brains are always the smarte…

Clearly someone was being stupid if there was no accountability in what contracts they sign

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#247

Post by tonnydourado »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #172
xg15 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people around me were trying to hint that things aren't quite as clear cut as it seems, but it took a swift kick in my backside to reboot my worldview. Was your rebooted worldview that you had been factually incorrect (i.e. the senior dev actually did do his work) or was it that you were factually correct, but hierarchy and office culture demanded that everyone pretend you weren't?

I wanted to touch on that: one of the things you learn is that it’s better to be liked than right. We devs often fixate on whether we’re right and the other person is wrong. One specific incident comes to mind. I was working on Heroes of Newerth, a DotA clone. We achieved a bit of popularity in those days, and we reached around 50k concurrent users. So our servers tended to melt. One day, the servers went south, and…

> it’s better to be liked than right.

Broadly, maybe. At work, I don't care about being liked by people that can't admit they are wrong.

That doesn't being a dick to anyone I think is wrong. The whole point of telling someone that they're wrong is to correct course and fix things, and bullheaded, righteous, approaches never accomplish that.

But it does mean you don't keep quite. You don't give up. You ask questions, you try to learn. Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one.

I understand being unwilling to bulge to people that come in thinking they know better about everything. But I do not accept not even listening to someone that disagrees, that's a red flag,and I am out asap.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#248

Post by lmm »

chaostheory wrote: post #171

> Two years later, the client canceled the two-years-late project before it ever launched. They ate a $60M loss. This has to be a project for the government

Disagree; could be any large organisation - government, NGO or private company, it's all pretty much the same once you get too big to manage.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#249

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

duped wrote: post #47

I mean this story is cathartic, but I don't get what the "rabble rousers" expected to happen. You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions. And a 12 month delay on a $60 million contract isn't a solution, it's another problem for the sales/client success people. And doing it in front of a group of management, no less - that's like firing a shot across the bow, declaring that the…

Totally agree, they went in presenting a problem and not a solution, to the wrong bunch of people.

Nobody wants to hear that, even if it's true, and even more so if it affects the company's bottom line.

There's two ways I see they might have worked around the issue. The fundamental problem with the project might not be workable, but firstly reaching out for a private chat with some of the participants would have shown the likely reaction in advance. Secondly, re-framing it as a solution space, might get more people to buy in.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#250

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

fleddr wrote: post #118
duped wrote: post #47

I mean this story is cathartic, but I don't get what the "rabble rousers" expected to happen. You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions. And a 12 month delay on a $60 million contract isn't a solution, it's another problem for the sales/client success people. And doing it in front of a group of management, no less - that's like firing a shot across the bow, declaring that the…

Your take is exactly what is wrong with the culture. An existential problem is not a problem because you didn't sell it correctly. You first need to "massage" the individuals to create some kind of coalition. A coalition willing to accept basic facts or responsibility. If a CEO were to be a fly on the wall in this room and overhear it all, they ought to fire every single manager in the room. Quite obviously they are…

> You first need to "massage" the individuals to create some kind of coalition. A coalition willing to accept basic facts or responsibility.

Hard agree with this approach! Why surprise and upset people enmasse when you can talk to individuals more privately and test the waters beforehand.

Post reply on HN