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Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#41

Post by ensiferum »

This is of course only your side of the story but it sounds like he's way better at office politics and elbow tactics than you are. When you were at same level in the org I would have just cut him off from the critical information flow and communicate directly to the superiors. Now that he's your superior you cutting him off can backfire where you're the one causing the trouble and not being a "team player". Anyway, you can bet that he'll continue to take the credit of the work that his team will be doing, fast forward 10 years and he's probably a C level exec while you're still a SWE. Just the way the world works.

My advice is to a) leave asap, b) simply ignore him as much as possible while you're stuck there.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#42

Post by zldkz5 »

beat wrote: post #23

Bluntly? You're letting anger and resentment cloud your judgment. Your colleague is clearly not incompetent. He just has different goals from you. He probably wanted to shift from a technical role to a managerial role, and he succeeded. That's not incompetent! And that's probably because he recognized his talents are better with people than with technology. So be happy for his success, rather than resentful of his pe…

> It seems to me like people skills are a weak spot for you.

That's not true as I always hangout with the people in different teams, and, we get along pretty well. I just don't do kiss-ass to my boss and I don't take advantage out of situations.

> Find ways to work together

We worked together for two years on daily basis. And I overcome a lot of bad behaviours but I can't stand to report to him

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#43

Post by unethical_ban »

beat wrote: post #40
JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you work together or respect someone that takes credit for you work? This guy is a snake, it's not about being introverted.

Are you sure we're getting a complete story here? The OP is what writers call an "unreliable narrator". We're seeing this through his very emotional lens. It's quite possible the other person did a lot of the "people" work that enabled the code to be written and distributed. In that case, it's a "we", not an "I", and focusing entirely on "I wrote the code", ignoring how it fit into the organization, is dismissing som…

If the OP is an unreliable narrator, then you shouldn't assume the guy isn't a snake, either.

I have seen the case you're wary of: a technical, but poorly communicating, employee that resents the success of a well-meaning, less technical but better communicating coworker.

I have seen good people like that, and I have seen snakes that pull the "we/I" as in the OP's story.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#44

Post by jhowell »

rc_hadoken wrote: post #24
jhowell wrote: post #2

Don't take it personally. Be happy for their accomplishments. Be happy for your accomplishments. Think about how important the "tough" times you are having now will be in 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 years. Control what you can control.

He can control someone taking credit for his work...

Do you offer suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#46

Post by sailfast »

JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #35
beat wrote: post #23

Bluntly? You're letting anger and resentment cloud your judgment. Your colleague is clearly not incompetent. He just has different goals from you. He probably wanted to shift from a technical role to a managerial role, and he succeeded. That's not incompetent! And that's probably because he recognized his talents are better with people than with technology. So be happy for his success, rather than resentful of his pe…

How can you work together or respect someone that takes credit for you work? This guy is a snake, it's not about being introverted.

To be fair, the OP said whenever the work was cooperative the person said "We", not "I", which I think is an improvement on snake.

I'm not saying it's great, but it also sounds like the OP needs to be more proactive about speaking roles in meetings when it comes to value of their practices, why things were done, etc. Now, would I work for a person if I hated them? Nope. Would probably be out of there.

In terms of "How can you!?", this stuff happens all the time all over the place and people work together. I think you can work through it with colleagues - it's not easy, but it's important if you think the mission / company are worthwhile. Otherwise, you're just going to dig deeper "into the box" on the credit thing and it won't be a good reflection on your work.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#49

Post by La_Beffa »

clavalle wrote: post #33
zldkz5 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree with you, the point is that being technical person doing a technical job I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. As I like to act first and share later, but there are people who talk but don't know how to act properly. I can build this skills as you said, true, but in my position now it would be impossible to get a promotion as the available spot has been ta…

>I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. Nope. Silence is always less noticeable than noise. Evil prevails when good men do nothing. Also, nonsense fluff prevails when good work isn't spoken of. You have a professional duty to make sure nonsense is crowded out by important information. No one is going to do that for you. Follow the rule of three...tell people what you a…

Cannot agree more, this is a life lesson that should be taught in school. Especially in medium/large companies where you got rewards like promotions, bonuses and so on, then your colleagues are competitors. Pretty much like politics, the one over promising and under delivering wins over the quiet one that delivers.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with incompetent people

#50

Post by oblio »

zldkz5 wrote: post #37
Aeolun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can make the leadership recognize the greatness, there’s no difference between ridiculously shitty code that works, and beautiful, well-organized code that works. Since you’re already in the position where you seem to lead the technical efforts of the team, where would you like to go from there?

> there’s no difference between ridiculously shitty code that works, and beautiful, well-organized code that works. Unfortunately that's not true. If "shitty code that works" requires three days to be understood in order to make a small change that became a delivery issue and three days in a problem that can be solved in one hour are $$ that somebody is paying. In addition "shitty code that works" most of the time ha…

I had a cat. The cat would do stupid stuff while I was away and when I'd get home I'd get angry and smack the cat with a newspaper. Then someone told me: the cat is like a small kid: if you punish it after more than 5 minutes, it doesn't associate the punishment with the "crime".

People outside your team won't understand your reasoning. They'll see code working one day and a random failure a long time after that, which might or might not be related to the previously working code. They're just like my cat.

If you want to act for "shitty code", act before it's in production. Afterwards it's very hard to dislodge. And even harder to pinpoint the blame, as the author will definitely protect his back, ethically or not.

I'd take the experience as a lesson in human interactions :)

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