Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#61

Post by tonyarkles »

vinceguidry wrote: post #45
natepollack wrote: post #38

I'm the kind of developer the article mentions (at least some of my previous colleagues like to think so). But here is the deal. It is hard to work with me if you don't want to put enough energy into your own work. Because at my previous job there were people who told me that it is impossible (for them) to work with me, and all I could see that they didn't add ANY value to the project, but made me do stupid things li…

The thing you need to realize is that the company is bigger than you are. If you can't work out a way to get along with others in your company, then you are the problem and not the people you perceive to be doing things wrong. You should go find a place that better fits your way of doing things. I bounced out of a big company for that and other reasons. I just could not deal with the culture. I work at a smaller comp…

I find this very interesting: "...they are paying you and not the other way around."

I've spent a fair bit of time consulting now, and one of the key things to remember is that in a functional relationship, the employer is extracting more value than they're paying the employee! If it's the other way around (as an average), the company is going to be bankrupt.

My go-to catch phrase is: If you don't like how things are run, you can "change your organization" or you can "change your organization". I.E. you can either put effort into fixing things, or you can put effort into finding a new job.

You can plan your strategy based on the value that your team is providing. If your team costs $X and you're making $4X, you've got pretty solid leverage to state that you guys know what you're doing and want to make things better (or you'll leave). Alternatively, if you're at $0.9X ROI, you can probably make a good argument that you can turn things around from losing money to making money.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#62

Post by bgribble »

erichocean wrote: post #58
speeder wrote: post #2

Question: What a person that IS the exceptionally skilled person but that drags down the team, should do to not drag down the team?

Switch teams. Seriously, that's what you should do. People in this category (as everyone realizes) are "assholes", or more accurately, on the spectrum. A team full of average neurotypicals is not a good situation for someone on the spectrum, nor is it a good situation for the neurotypicals. It's best to leave and find another early stage startup where the primary problem isn't "teamwork"; you'll be a lot happier at y…

Not every hard-to-work-with person is "on the spectrum". Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#63

Post by dpark »

erichocean wrote: post #57

Instead of calling them "assholes", I wish people like the OP would just be honest and say they don't want to work with people on the spectrum. There's no shame in that, it's perfectly fine to prefer neurotypicals at your workplace; the vast majority of people do.

Some people are just assholes. Most assholes are pretty normal, aside from being assholes. They are generally not socially unaware, or particularly awkward, or show difficulty with communication, or anything else that might indicate obvious autistic behavior.

And similarly, most people I might characterize as slightly autistic are not assholes. I've worked with some really awkward folks, and people who were really bad at picking up social cues, and people who were unable to express themselves well. I don't think any of them were assholes, even if they weren't always easy to work with.

I think it is really insulting to people with autism spectrum disorders that you would assume anyone characterized as an asshole is autistic. I also think this attitude contributes to some of the asshole behavior on our industry. We write some unacceptable stuff off as "geek behavior" when it's just people being assholes, which is an activity exclusive to neither geeks nor autistics.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#64

Post by pitay »

ebiester wrote: post #8
speeder wrote: post #2

Question: What a person that IS the exceptionally skilled person but that drags down the team, should do to not drag down the team?

It depends on the person and the team. There is more than one way to be difficult to work with. For example, some can have anger problems. In these cases, mindfulness coaching can be useful. Why are they angry? Are they angry at perceived incompetence? Are they angry when they don't get their own way? Are they angry because of the argument with their parents the night before? Another is contempt. If someone treats th…

I have to highlight the contempt part of ebiester's post. Working with people who have contempt for the people around them is seriously deleterious to your productivity and mental health.

If you are working for a boss who has contempt for his underlings, I would suggest leaving, if you want to be productive in the future. Working under that sort of manager is absolutely hazardous.

A way you can spot someone who has contempt is to notice if they put down people, even if in a backhanded kind of way, or assuming the worst about someone. I have found that showing contempt for people in a 'lower socioeconomic status' is a strong sign of them showing contempt for everyone else they can put down to elevate themselves.

If they are your manager then they are likely to go up the organisational hierarchy soon, because they are really good at self promotion if they are already your manager.

This has come from my experience in the workforce.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#65

Post by jaybosamiya »

shric wrote: post #37
pdxandi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they meant professionally.

Worst professional mistake? Amateurs! I once did rm -rf cvs when I thought I was in my home directory wiping my local checkout. I was actually in the root dir of the repo. We had no backups. The 90s were such fun; long live distributed source control.

Well, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#66

Post by laughinghan »

natepollack wrote: post #49
vinceguidry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you need to realize is that the company is bigger than you are. If you can't work out a way to get along with others in your company, then you are the problem and not the people you perceive to be doing things wrong. You should go find a place that better fits your way of doing things. I bounced out of a big company for that and other reasons. I just could not deal with the culture. I work at a smaller comp…

Problem is: it was my company, my idea. I just trusted the wrong co-founder, who started hiring his lazy friends. When I confronted him about this he said that I should just work on the tech beause he knows how to run a successful company. Eventually he fired me, because they couldn't work with me. Now they spend they time on buying Twitter/Reddit followers/likes, which I'd have never agreed on, because the company i…

Your story sound unfortunate, and I hope you bounce(d?) back from it.

But your story also sounds very different from what the article is about. The parable in the article is not a story with two sides. The basketball team's performance was objectively measurable thanks to the championship games, and the team performed objectively worse with the skilled but hard-to-work-with player, and performed objectively better without him.

In your story, you say the other team members "didn't add ANY value to the project" and "try to make [your] work harder than it already is". In the parable, the semi-pro player, in spite of being the best player in the league, was adding NEGATIVE value to the team.

If you were hardworking and smart and completed your tasks while your teammates were lazy and didn't accomplish anything and just complained about not being able to work with you, then they (and the person who fired you instead of them) are the problem, not you.

Re: The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

#67

Post by vinceguidry »

laughinghan wrote: post #66
natepollack wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is: it was my company, my idea. I just trusted the wrong co-founder, who started hiring his lazy friends. When I confronted him about this he said that I should just work on the tech beause he knows how to run a successful company. Eventually he fired me, because they couldn't work with me. Now they spend they time on buying Twitter/Reddit followers/likes, which I'd have never agreed on, because the company i…

Your story sound unfortunate, and I hope you bounce(d?) back from it. But your story also sounds very different from what the article is about. The parable in the article is not a story with two sides. The basketball team's performance was objectively measurable thanks to the championship games, and the team performed objectively worse with the skilled but hard-to-work-with player, and performed objectively better wi…

I see no reason why both stories can't be shared and learned from. They're somewhat different, but it's all the same lessons we need to learn.
Post reply on HN