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How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

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Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#41

Post by tppiotrowski »

jreese wrote: post #40

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…

I agree with this and would add Slack to the equation. It's just faster to ping a senior engineer on Slack than to spend 5 minutes looking into an issue.

I've also seen new hires burn an entire week because they were afraid to ask a question.

But I think the balance has definitely shifted towards asking too much help...

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#42

Post by fwip »

morelisp wrote: post #12
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…

The fun should come from solving fundamentally difficult problems, not from someone fucking up a CRUD response because they didn't properly test their filter parsing.

Lots of companies have no "fundamentally difficult problems" when it comes to their software. Lots of software developers don't have any of these problems to solve.

(I'm also against this "YOLO because it's fun" attitude, though.)

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#44

Post by throwaway20371 »

My teammates create e-mail filters to send useless daily e-mail reports to the trash. I try to find out who controls the e-mail process, or the e-mail address, or something, so I can fix it... but I spend lots of time and it ends in vain. I couldn't find who "owns" the process, I couldn't find who controls the mailing list, and I couldn't get anyone to give me permission to change it even if I knew how.

Clearly the problem isn't just having the skill or permission to change something, it's also the friction involved in figuring out how the hell to do it. How do you lower friction? Documenting things, making it easy to find things, making it easy to get access to things. If you can come up with an internal system that combines all of that, you have a one-stop shop for fixing high-friction problems.

I think Wikis are highly underrated. They seem to encapsulate all those things. Anyone can edit (or revert edits), anyone can access it, anyone can find it (eventually). Somehow we need to tie all the rest of an organization into a Wiki.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#45

Post by jreese »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #41
jreese wrote: post #40

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…

I agree with this and would add Slack to the equation. It's just faster to ping a senior engineer on Slack than to spend 5 minutes looking into an issue. I've also seen new hires burn an entire week because they were afraid to ask a question. But I think the balance has definitely shifted towards asking too much help...

When I started at BigCo, the recommended policy was to spend two hours trying to solve it yourself, including searching the wiki, debugging code, etc. If you hadn't made any progress in that time period, then ask someone from your own team or make a post in a related internal support group. Only after exhausting that route, and getting no help, should you escalate to the team/oncall that owns the tool/service you are having problems with. It seems that culture has been lost.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#46

Post by NAHWheatCracker »

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…

I do push for changes, such as bringing ideas to the team lead and bringing these things up with my manager (hence being brought up in reviews).

There is a self-reinforcing aspect to learned helplessness in teams, as you've pointed out.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#47

Post by justin_oaks »

teeray wrote: post #10

Has anyone actually overcome any of these bad situations? Or has there been a situation where “So and so quit because X, we need to change X.” You can’t change an org from the outside, but it’s also difficult to change it from the inside.

The most positive change I've seen happen in an organization is through skunkworks projects, i.e. work you don't tell your boss about.

Too much technical debt, but the boss doesn't want to refactor? Refactor any code you were touching anyway.

Build process too complicated and brittle? Write build scripts, add error checking, and make other necessary changes to fix the problem.

My past bosses never asked "Where did you find the time to do that?" even if they even noticed that anything happened at all.

At one company I worked, we had no build server. The boss didn't see the need for it so he never approved it, but he also didn't reject it once we set it up.

Any organizational change that requires other to change their behavior or their opinions? It is very difficult to change. The only success I've had is by mentioning an idea multiple times and eventually my boss started thinking it was his idea.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#48

Post by wcarss »

aflag wrote: post #38
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?

This seems like a really good idea.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#49

Post by NAHWheatCracker »

Thrymr wrote: post #31
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.

He's the scrum master for other projects and he deals with things like hiring.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#50

Post by justin_oaks »

teeray wrote: post #10

Has anyone actually overcome any of these bad situations? Or has there been a situation where “So and so quit because X, we need to change X.” You can’t change an org from the outside, but it’s also difficult to change it from the inside.

Funny enough, at my last job the bosses never listened to anything their employees suggested. Whenever an outsider (journalist, user, family member, or outside consultant) suggested the same thing as the employees suggested, only then did the bosses consider it.

I don't know how common this is in other places, but that organization could only change through external, not internal, influences.

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