likely Rick never could off load his work because of management. he may have been up against a wall of resistance where no one else did anymore than they had too. this is how you get Ricks. You have a general apathy among many of the developers which sets in because they don't see anyone held accountable so why should they exert the effort?
You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
31–40 of 175 posts
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#32Yeah, wow. I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. But much like Frankenstein's monster, it's incredibly easy to see who had a hand in transforming Rick into what he became. It's hard to read the original article and not see several large "where the hell was management" red flags: > Any time there was a particularly challenging problem, Rick would handle it. That's a management failure , and a particularly egregious one tha…
> I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. "No doubt" a real person is a dick, because of a single-sourced account from those who fired him, which even at that, leaves the question of their own failures wide open?
Ehhh sorry, saying things like "I'm Albert Einstein and you're all just fucking monkeys scratching in the dirt" doesn't strike me as the speech of someone who's particularly nice.
Most people (at least in my experience, you know, the one who's making the subjective judgement about him being a dick) can be angry without saying something pretentiously mean like that.
It's ok for the conclusion here to be, "Rick's an asshole who should've been fired but management fucked up pretty badly." Situations don't have to be binary with only one party at fault.
EDIT: Let's also not forget the accounts of Rick supposedly berating people in meetings. If multiple people think you're being mean to them, you're probably being mean.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#33Yeah, wow. I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. But much like Frankenstein's monster, it's incredibly easy to see who had a hand in transforming Rick into what he became. It's hard to read the original article and not see several large "where the hell was management" red flags: > Any time there was a particularly challenging problem, Rick would handle it. That's a management failure , and a particularly egregious one tha…
> I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. "No doubt" a real person is a dick, because of a single-sourced account from those who fired him, which even at that, leaves the question of their own failures wide open?
Also, even assuming Rick is a dick, I think that might have been more sympathetically (and probably more accurately) rendered as "Rick became a dick".
As the article points out, working endless overtime to the detriment of the rest of your life - not to mention isolating yourself from those around you - will play havoc with your mental health, sense of perspective, and general wellbeing.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#34There were a lot of failures in the Rick story "on all sides" as POTUS would say. This author seems to identify with Rick and frames this type of developer as gifted, but taken advantage of. At the end of the day, we all have to manage our own careers. And in this field that especially includes "managing your manager". Whatever process you find yourself in, you have to be able to push back and say: "I'm working on X,…
"managing your manager" is great in theory, but a lack of managing up doesn't absolve management of their primary responsibility to do that job themselves. Their direct reports already have primary responsibilities to do the work, expecting them to also do yours is a little bit much.
Managers who want their reports to develop the skills to "manage up" have a responsibility to help them develop those skills and should not simply expect them.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#35Yeah, wow. I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. But much like Frankenstein's monster, it's incredibly easy to see who had a hand in transforming Rick into what he became. It's hard to read the original article and not see several large "where the hell was management" red flags: > Any time there was a particularly challenging problem, Rick would handle it. That's a management failure , and a particularly egregious one tha…
Is he, really? Seems like the most dedicated employee mentioned in the article. Could his devotion be tempered by management and molded into a better hammer for the company? Sure seems like it. Seems like Rick was well respected to be placed so much responsibility - the real dicks here are the ones who led to his decline without intervention.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, Rick's a dick, no doubt. "No doubt" a real person is a dick, because of a single-sourced account from those who fired him, which even at that, leaves the question of their own failures wide open?
Ehhh sorry, saying things like "I'm Albert Einstein and you're all just fucking monkeys scratching in the dirt" doesn't strike me as the speech of someone who's particularly nice. Most people (at least in my experience, you know, the one who's making the subjective judgement about him being a dick) can be angry without saying something pretentiously mean like that. It's ok for the conclusion here to be, "Rick's an as…
I don't know: in my experience pretty much everyone has a breaking point somewhere and once they reach it things can get pretty random. I've seen people I thought had it all together just completely lose the plot and disintegrate too many times to believe it's all bubbling away there, just below the surface, in all of us.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#37I see so many sides to this
-I’ve been a Rick, stayed at a company for nine years, knew where the bodies were buried because I buried most of them myself and became more disenchanted year after year which caused my attitude to get worse and worse. They wouldn’t fire me but they also wouldn’t promote me and give me raises - causing a horrible cycle.
I woke up one day 8 years later in 2008 and making only 10,000 more than I had made in 1999 as the raises were abysmal and the bonuses got cut realizing that I wasn’t competitive.
9 years, four companies, and a lot of humbly studying and learning from people a lot younger than I am, I’m finally in a position that I want to be in as the software developer lead for the company.
I saw myself becoming the bottleneck and working crazy hours for the first 5 or 6 months. I had to put a stop to it. I sat down with my manager, hired three more people. I now insist that everyone be responsible for making sure their work gets all the way to production, everyone does there own devops work, documentation is part of the “definition of done”. I let them solve their own problems even if I know I could solve it faster.
I’m training the team not to be dependent on me.
When it comes to meetings, each developer is responsible for chasing detailed requirements when there are gaps.
My responsibility is to hire, train, and to mentor. I will do the most critical pieces of the architecture that is a base for everything else. I also enforce a 40-45 hour work week. If you want to learn on your own that’s fine but no one should put in crazy hours. We don’t want to set that expectation.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#38There were a lot of failures in the Rick story "on all sides" as POTUS would say. This author seems to identify with Rick and frames this type of developer as gifted, but taken advantage of. At the end of the day, we all have to manage our own careers. And in this field that especially includes "managing your manager". Whatever process you find yourself in, you have to be able to push back and say: "I'm working on X,…
> There were a lot of failures in the Rick story "on all sides" as POTUS would say. Nope, there weren't. That's what management is for. Everything that happened, since they didn't attempt any change, is their fault and their only.
Naw, at the very least Rick was guilty of hubris and naïveté. I came in after a Rick left once, that guys ignorance and poor decisions hobbled that company for years. Icarus is not held in high regard, by anyone.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#39A very similar scenario is described in the fictional work, "The Phoenix Project", is it not? There is a smart character who handles every escalation, but nothing is documented, he was the bottleneck, and his stress level was high. Management had to figure out they needed to handle the escalations, prioritize, reduce the bottleneck, document the solutions, and teach others to fish. This article seems to be addressing…
Yup, very similar scenario in The Phoenix Project. And thank you for the reminder of that. It occurred to me reading the original article and this reply to it that I may be somewhat putting myself in a Rick situation right now. I don't have any good book recommendations, but I'd be delighted if anyone else did :)
I can sympathise. I've basically been brought in to take over from someone who was the technical bottleneck for the company I now work for so that he can get on with being CTO. For a while I was necessarily working alone, but now I've hired a team and am in the process of eliminating myself as the bottleneck: by the time I go on holiday at the end of this week I want to be off the critical path and never find myself on it again.
Re: You fired your top talent. I hope you’re happy
#40Personally, I'm patiently waiting for the third installment: "Our incredible story"