How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams • Hacker News Board

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#31

Post by Thrymr » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

> My manager doesn't know anything about the code, my project, or the release project.

What... does he know?

Fine, he doesn't get into the code itself. But the project and its dependencies? Yikes.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#32

Post by atmosx » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

The tech lead wants to be “a hero”. It’s a common theme, the problems are well known when you have ppl hero-balling.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#33

Post by halfmatthalfcat » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #11

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but not having the net provides some level of "fun". Most of the projects/companies/teams I've worked on didn't have tests, adequate backups or had scenarios where errant keystrokes blow up production but it's nothing that has been world-stopping and these jobs rarely involved anything were downtime equated to real harm (outside of the economics of the companies themselves, but usually nobody nece…

> it's nothing that has been world-stopping Well then you're talking about a completely different scenario than I am.

I would hope that world-stopping software (banks, critical infrastructure, healthcare, etc) have tests and all the things to prevent catastrophic error. For the rest of us, breaking things here and there in the name of moving faster is (anecdotally) more fun.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#34

Post by _rtld_global_ro » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #5

Read Dan Luu's article about normalization of deviance, or Dan Na's talk "pushing through friction". https://blog.danielna.com/talks/pushing-through-friction/

One of the best talk I haven't seen for quite a long time, thanks for sharing.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#35

Post by ddek » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #11

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but not having the net provides some level of "fun". Most of the projects/companies/teams I've worked on didn't have tests, adequate backups or had scenarios where errant keystrokes blow up production but it's nothing that has been world-stopping and these jobs rarely involved anything were downtime equated to real harm (outside of the economics of the companies themselves, but usually nobody nece…

> it's nothing that has been world-stopping Well then you're talking about a completely different scenario than I am.

I could definitely YOLO out a change when I worked on code used by 100 people. When it was used by 10000, an error every now and then is forgivable. Now, if I make an error in a deployment I could stop 10,000,000 from using my systems. Similar outages have made newspapers. Even then, compared to FAANG scale I'm still playing with toys. The fastly outage was top story on the BBC while it was happening.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#36

Post by kevinmgranger » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #29

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

What is the difference between your team lead's bad reasons not to push internally for a better system: > The other team doesn't know how to do the release. > He wants to be a "team player" so he can't deny the release. > Project managers will never allocate time to improve the release process. and your good reasons not to push internally for a better system? > My manager doesn't know anything about the code, my proj…

The last bullet of each scenario is fundamentally different, and the ammunition bit is the most important part.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#37

Post by scottlilly » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

I left my last contracting project around six weeks ago because of encountering this attitude - yet again.

I wrote my first custom business program 40 years ago. Since then, I've only been on two teams that didn't exhibit this attitude.

At this point, I really don't want to continue programming for a living, precisely because so many people adamantly refuse to fix problems with painfully obvious (and quick and cheap) solutions.

I've given up on trying to get people to change their behavior. If I do continue programming, my approach will be to try to find one of those rare teams that actually changes and improves.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#38

Post by aflag » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

Can't your tech lead suggest that he'll do the release under the condition that someone from that other team pairs with him so that they learn how to do it?

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#39

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #19

Just today, my team had a developer meeting. The tech lead started out by complaining about how he has to do an untested unplanned release today because another team made some urgent changes. He's the only person who knows how to release it. The other team didn't communicate until today that a release is necessary. We've done two other releases in the past month and both required a day of troubleshooting to fix issue…

This is why I .. struggle to function in society. There are tribal forces at play that are beyond me. Or require me to play games I don't want to play.

Social tissue is a strange medium and most of the time it's a friction generating engine. People complain, time passes on, nothing happens, repeat.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#40

Post by jreese » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

As a member of a core infra/"foundation" team, the biggest drain on my soul is the number of other engineers that are helpless, or never learned how to find solutions on their own. They never search wikis, look for similar posts on internal groups, or even read the error message from the tool that tells them exactly how to fix the problem they're asking about. When the culture has become "google everything", but you can't google for internal tools/tech problems, suddenly folks have no idea how to read error messages, debug a stack trace, or solve any problem without hand-holding from a senior engineer. I've been at BigCo for nine years now, and it has only gotten worse as the size of the company has grown exponentially.