How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams • Hacker News Board

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#61

Post by ptmcc » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

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 know your frustration and pain, but as someone frequently on the other side of the equation trying to seek out answers, it is often difficult-to-impossible.

Just this past week I was working through some infra setup challenges, I had to piece together half a dozen different documents, several README files, and a few archived slack threads. These sources often are outdated or even contradicted each other. Even after all that and some earnest trial and error I still had to ask for help.

It's fine to want to point to the docs, but when you do that you better have good docs you're pointing to. As an infra team, often your "API" is your docs and templates. Searching slack threads and piecing together bad docs isn't a scalable solution for every dev to repeat individually. But neither is pinging an individual with every question. Teams need to invest in good documentation.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#62

Post by zelon88 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

From the article;

> Hold managers accountable: one of the key responsibilities of leaders is to create positive change for their teams. Once you notice a situation where you think everyone is in learned helplessness mode, make sure to notify your manager and follow-up until the problem is addressed.

"Hey boss, I noticed that Bob and Joe are really helpless at their jobs and that you just kinda watch it happen."

Yeah what could possibly go wrong with that?

I'm not saying the thinking is wrong, but a little idealistic. Not everyone works at BigCo where it is impossible to get fired and you only ever get transferred. Nevermind most of the people in this position are going to have extremely short tenture.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#63

Post by tick_tock_tick » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #51

atmosx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He actually called himself out for this during the conversation. I'm not sure how to convince someone to stop doing that.

Demean the work, don't say anything about him but minimize the value of what he is doing. Commiserate how bad it is that he has to waste a day doing something with so little value. Be on their "side" but make it clear you "understand" what they are doing isn't valuable.

All of these comments should be said in group setting to try and get the crowd to pickup similar views. Just make sure no one thinks of what they are doing in a positive light.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#64

Post by mixmastamyk » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #46

thaumasiotes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All you have to do is say no once in a while.

No, don't bring the company to a halt with a tantrum. Just insist on getting one thing fixed a month and nine months from now everyone will be a lot happier.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#65

Post by ineptech » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

zelon88 wrote: post #62

From the article; > Hold managers accountable: one of the key responsibilities of leaders is to create positive change for their teams. Once you notice a situation where you think everyone is in learned helplessness mode, make sure to notify your manager and follow-up until the problem is addressed. "Hey boss, I noticed that Bob and Joe are really helpless at their jobs and that you just kinda watch it happen." Yeah…

I don't know if that was intended to be snarky, but yes, that's exactly what you should do, and people do in fact do that, and it often does work (although probably not as quickly as you'd like).

How else am I supposed to know Bob and Joe are doing bad work? Should I count their LOC/day? Pore over their code and rely on my own (10 years out of date) opinion of it?

In my humble opinion, there is one (1) good way to measure developer productivity, and that is to ask their teammates, and if you won't tell me your teammate is awful, you can't really complain that I don't act on it. Of course it's possible that you tell me and I don't do anything, but at least then it's my fault and not yours.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#66

Post by Iefthandrule » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #64

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All you have to do is say no once in a while. No, don't bring the company to a halt with a tantrum. Just insist on getting one thing fixed a month and nine months from now everyone will be a lot happier.

Can't teach everyone to have a backbone. Heck, nerds are infamous for being easy to manipulate.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#67

Post by nilshauk » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

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.

I’m actively working to change this as a CTO in a small digital agency. Can’t say that I’ve completely solved it but I’ve started challenging my peers when they use the words hope, belief and especially magic to describe what they’re up against. We’re professionals not hobbyists. Our codebases should get easier not harder to work with over time.

We have a sister organization which is larger and with their own CTO. I’ve tried to boil the ocean and inspire change across both companies, it was hard, for now I'm just focusing on trying to inoculate the new hires against accepting any sub-optimal bureaucracy. Though I see that need to find some way to train them to be so open and confident that they can start to challenge processes when they need to.

I have a lot of hope in the new hires though. Culture is hard to change but definitely doable. It’s all about who you hire, fire, praise and incentivize.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#68

Post by bedobi » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:35 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…

Oh man this is a punch below the belt, perfectly describes some of my previous gigs. I'm so grateful my current team is NOT like this.

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#69

Post by yodsanklai » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

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've been at BigCo for nine years now, and it has only gotten worse as the size of the company has grown exponentially.

You should try to change team or company then. Don't believe all SWEs suck. There are pretty good coders out there :)

Re: How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams

#70

Post by Aeolun » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 11:39 PM UTC

firebaze wrote: post #25

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…

Most of the time managers are trying to be helpful, and most of the time they do in fact understand quite a lot of the background of a project. I'd suggest to try to see the situation from their perspective, which you maybe already did, but sometimes this helps understanding a perceived lack of action.

It’s not good if they’re paralyzed by this though. If the manager automatically says no to anything that may contain some element of risk, I will stop telling them.