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Don’t point out something wrong immediately

blog.the-pans.com

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Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#51

Post by hinkley »

the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

> we never got the time to fix it

The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France.

"We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness.

Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity. If your self image depends on blaming fate or having a scapegoat elsewhere in the organization then you really should take a hard look at yourself, your team, and your motivations.

Sometimes, the only way for things to get better is if you can get consensus from the developers that tasks that look like X really should take 3N units of time even though historically we've been quoting 2N units. On some teams you can't get that consensus, and you're going to have to be okay with that or move on. But the power of No is there you just have to use it. If you don't at least try, then shame on you.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#54

Post by Litost »

the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

This is really good advice, to which I'd add:

1) Don't lose track of the outcome, "being critical can easily put others in a defensive stance and make it hard to get that information", this also applies to the phase after you've gathered all the necessary information and need to fix it, if you've been too fast and loose with the blame cannon, good luck getting anyone's help afterwards fixing it or earning any respect for future work.

2) From the OP "This is when we should take a pause before pointing out something is wrong", this might sound weird bringing this up, but Mindfulness techniques as often also employed in CBT, which encourage you to observe the immediate thoughts, e.g. in this case fish out the blame cannon and let rip, but instead acknowledge them and don't act on them are great for developing this "pause".

3) From a Systems Thinking pov, complex adaptive systems often evolve in many small steps, rather than are designed so I'd extend your "But more often than not there is a good reason" to more often and not there may be many good reasons all bubbling away in the melting pot of despair. As an example my last company tried to implement the Spotify Squad model and it was a disaster, but it wasn't just one decision by one person that sunk it, it was a whole combination of decisions taken over time and feeding off each other, many taken by people who didn't even work there any more.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#55

Post by bfung »

donatj wrote: post #40

This has been the hardest thing for me as I become more and more … old. I want to be like "this is wrong" "do it this way" etc. For a while there before I realized I was burning bridges, I was… for lack of better phrasing actively an asshole. There's value in letting the juniors flounder a bit. I had a conversation with my manager about this just a couple weeks ago. One of our junior developers was having trouble get…

s/old/experienced/

It took a realization myself that my 20 year accumulated knowledge, insights, skills, mental models is not something most college grads can grasp (there are very, very few exceptions). And telling them verbally doesn’t help either.

Ex: due to that experience, I can pick up any language & ecosystem and be productive in 3 days max (from js to c++ to haskell). I can’t expect that from a bootcamper or new grad.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#56

Post by quicksnap »

kashkhan wrote: post #53

And that's why Challenger blew up. Don't work with people who cant handle being wrong and fixing it.

It's not about people not handling being wrong, but about introspecting on how we deliver feedback. If people cannot take feedback or accept flaws in their work, that certainly is a problem. But this article is just asking us to think about the human relationships in our work, and to hold back on knee-jerk feedback.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#57

Post by babyshake »

nomel wrote: post #10
pimlottc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with a code review, though, you might want to wait until you’ve digested the rest of the review instead of firing off a comment. Maybe it makes sense in context. Or maybe there are bigger fish to fry and it’s not worth quibbling over small things.

> Or maybe there are bigger fish to fry and it’s not worth quibbling over small things. I've taken this approach with one of our engineers, and now we have a huge pile of "small things" that has created some pretty serious technical debt. My perception is that they don't try to understand what I'm pointing out, and come up with rational for how they have it. I think I have a lot to learn.

It is tough to balance between sweating the details and not bikeshedding (sweating the details at the expense of the big important architectural decisions)

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#58

Post by sgjohnson »

unnouinceput wrote: post #52

Pointing wrongs is for noobs. An expert hoards them like CIA/NSA hoards zero days and you deliver them on the day of performance review.

But this benefits absolutely nobody. Not even the manager doing that. I know that in my workplace a manager would get chewed out for that, as this practice is explicitly banned by policy. Any issues should be raised the moment they are discovered.

Even without the said policy, it doesn’t benefit the business, because if it’s a problem employee, you’re pointlessly keeping them on a payroll, and it doesn’t benefit the employee, because if you hit them with everything at once, little of it will resonate with them.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#59

Post by cottager2 »

hinkley wrote: post #51
the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

> we never got the time to fix it The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France. "We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness. Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity…

The goal of writing software is rarely to produce a piece of well-engineered software. More commonly, the goal is to produce a product in a given time frame using the team of engineers available, which may be of variable quality. If you’re trying to make the software perfect, you’re likely doing something very wrong.
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