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

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

#251

Post by jorgesborges »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #167
sillysaurusx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think they could have done more. But the conclusion of the story is to heroically drive off a cliff, and say “it’s all I could do.” That’s where I disagree. If it were me, I would have privately (emphasis on private) worked my way up the chain of command, trying to alert more and more people that there was a serious problem brewing. The meeting in the story was obviously going to be a fai…

Your solution to a dumpster fire is to play a very risky game of hero, navigating an environment where at any point you could step on someone's toes, in hopes of salvaging a project for which there is absolutely no guarantee you'll get credit, let alone a sizeable reward, while the market is rife with opportunities. For a bunch of capitalists, not some noble goal. Forgive me, but playing hero (really just martyr) sou…

Not necessarily — the person you’re responding to said you can always ride it out if you don’t want to take on more responsibilities. That’s fair to me: look for solutions if it suits you, but otherwise stay silent and don’t introduce negativity (which is bad for you politically in addition to being bad for the project).

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

#252

Post by sideproject »

This is anecdotal, but I've also seen several projects in my ~20-year career that ended up no where. And reading through these stories (and there are countless stories of these doomed projects) one cannot help but wonder the amount of waste that we create. The original motivation of the whole Lean Startup was to reduce waste - not that Lean Startup model fits all the projects (and it shouldn't). Of course, it's impossible to know how a project will end up, but there must be a way for us as humanity to improve?

I'm also looking at the number of projects that I have built that got nowhere, so I'm also part of the problem. And with these projects, I tend to shrug off and say "well, that was a good experience".

But a "good experience" at $60M price-tag doesn't sound right.

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

#253

Post by samhuk »

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…

As most comments seem to say, I think that what you say describes a very bad culture. Although said with many more words, your proposed culture is of secrecy and opacity, where decisions and actions are performed in private in a conniving fashion to avoid "backlash".

Any company that doesn't appreciate honesty/transparency/openness is certainly not one I would ever be a part of.

Most importantly, and it's worth mentioning again because other comments pointed this out, the culture you seem to be a proponent of was critically instrumental in major disasters like the Challenger disaster. When we can't talk about those "inconvenient truths", they get buried until they are forgotten and we are forced to learn about them again, sometimes in the most cruelest of ways.

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

#254

Post by rayiner »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #192
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you need more time ask for it and explain why it’s necessary and why the delay couldn’t have been anticipated. It’s better to be late than be late and also delivery a shoddy product.

Sounds a lot like the discussion I had with my 12 year-old about his Science term paper :-)

Being transparent and communicating roadblocks early is just a good way to get through life. Nobody likes to hear something will take longer than expected, but what people really hate is non-communication that leads to unexpected delay, or even worse, poor work that's delivered late.

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

#255

Post by whimsicalism »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #208
acheron wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's how the Challenger blew up. Sometimes one side is right, and the other side is wrong, and it doesn't matter if they didn't "communicate and strategize" or "read the room". Obviously this guy is probably writing about a Javascript photo-sharing app or something and it doesn't actually matter, but it's the same principle. The managers who went ahead here would have gone ahead with launching the shuttle for t…

I assume you're referring to Feynmann's remarks in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report . The issue there was that management advertised a safety factor of 1 in 10^5 failures while the engineers thought it was more like 10^2, so numbers were fudged across the board to look reasonable. It really was a communication issue in that there was not accurate information on the riskiest parts of the laun…

> OP's investigation was the perfect opportunity to launch his own team but he blew it.

Deliver nicer and more palatable results and you could have had your own team!

Jeez, reading the comments here makes a lot of the dysfunction I've observed in industry make sense.

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

#256

Post by fleddr »

balaji1 wrote: post #183
fleddr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Any anecdotes of a company that was successfully split up as you suggest?

No, but it feels good to say it.

I just think middle management is a recipe for disaster. Their perceived high status means they aren't easily criticized or managed for rational output in a way normal workers are managed.

For some, middle management is a mere bus stop on the way to the top. So they play it hard. Elbow tactics. Other knows they end in middle management and forever try to sustain artificial kingdoms by any means necessary.

It is too distant from common workers and it's not the top either. It's the one place in the organization where the most vile and unproductive behavior goes unchecked.

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

#257

Post by monksy »

maxbond wrote: post #195
monksy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had a similar disagreement with a manager once about a project, and I said something like, "I'm stressed and working around the clock, I don't need you threatening me," and they were genuinely taken aback and even hurt that I would interpret it that way (as they felt they were offering advice). When I asked them to reverse the situation, they immediately understood. When the pressure is on, it's an easy mistake to…

Yep that's the one. I can never remember the person. But this is the video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gr8AgR42sDo

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

#258

Post by peteradio »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #228
sillysaurusx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was hired on as a full-stack developer to help a 2 person team (dev and designer) get a year-long project over the finish line. This was a November and the project was slated to go live on January 1. My first week was getting my PC configured, orientations, onboarding meetings with various external departments and perusing the project to get familiar. Week 2 I was supposed to get assignments from the lead developer…

I'm baffled when people (the lead) behave this way. I'm not asking this sarcastically and you probably wouldn't know, but were they on some heavy sedatives or psych drugs?

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

#259

Post by jrochkind1 »

jacobr1 wrote: post #218
peteradio wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how the deputized team drove off the cliff. At the very least they surfaced the set of problems which would need to be addressed to meet the contract.

The 12 month extension was going to get the managers who proposed it fired. So they couldn't actually propose it - thus the cliff. Instead they needed an alternative. Of course a better discussion would have been a frank reevaluation with the client, with several options and points of trade-off to consider. But really the best way - presuming everyone is working toward the same ends (NOT a given) - is to identify som…

> presuming everyone is working toward the same ends (NOT a given)

I have realized that in many cases neither the decision-makers at the client nor the decision-makers at the consultant/vendor are working towards the ends of a succesful product. Their ends are their careers, and benefit to their careers may be pretty orthogonal to actual product success.

Once when I was working at a place, I had a discussion:

"I think if we use this vendor solution, it's likely to not work very well for our users. I think we have a better chance of meeting our users needs doing it in-house."

"You could very well be right, but if we do it in-house and fail, it'll be our fault, everyone will blame us. Everyone is used to using the vendor for this, it's a decision nobody will blame us for, even if it fails. We're going with the vendor."

In some cases, everyone can in fact have their goals aligned... their goals simply aren't product success.

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

#260

Post by firefoxkekw »

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…

> People talk shit about office politics, but sometimes you need to read the room...

In my limited experience, most people have a kinda low self awareness, especially in the lower end of the food chain, the higher I go in the chain, the less naive people I meet. Why was he even worrying about a badly planned project? If your job is to code, just do that unless you are getting pay to be worried about the planning, which would be even a higher salary and at most have a very low key conversation about the problems with the superior of your manager, so when he gets fire for performing badly you can have more odds of getting his job.

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