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

Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

terriblesoftware.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–68 of 68 posts

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#61

Post by steveBK123 »

heymijo wrote: post #57
mistersquid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One pattern I've seen in lower functioning teams with lots of conflict is some members being very well spoken, typically more classically trained like a philosophy background, probably a past debate club type kid. "Strong opinions, loosely held" type behavior where bad ideas were passionately argued by the more eloquent & aggressive team member until everyone else was exhausted and just let it run. > The kind of gu…

Yes, someone who truly wants greatness should be able to hear a poorly thought our argument, cognitively question the counter party to help them articulate exactly what they are thinking, or even articulate it better themself. Then you can weigh and measure competing arguments. A high-functioning team is going to have at least one person who does this. For a perpetually high functioning team this is going to be secon…

It's hard to do but my current boss is pretty good at that. It can require an amount of forced agreeableness and sometimes sidebars to get each party to fully spell out their line of thinking so the strongest voice doesn't simply win.

Often you want to do this simply to map out the min/max risk matrix to either side of a debate, so you can make informed decisions.

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#62

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sunray2 wrote: post #40
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the biggest “secret,” was keeping people on board, for a long time. It was almost impossible to hire folks that could “hit the ground running,” as the tech was very proprietary, so investment in training was a big deal. When they finally wrapped up our team, the person with the least tenure, had been there a decade. Keeping people for a long time, is a big topic, on its own. Also, everyone believed in The Missi…

Do you think that craftmanship and longevity, in terms of keeping these people on board, go hand-in-hand? As an example, Hamamatsu Photonics has been in the optics field a long time, and is going hard on developing for quantum physics applications. It's refreshing, since pretty much every company in quantum computing is very young, so hasn't had the time to build that craftsman vibe yet. Of course, there are people w…

> Do you think that craftmanship and longevity, in terms of keeping these people on board, go hand-in-hand?

In this case, yes. But that also depends on who you want to retain.

If you want to retain folks that treat their work seriously, and in a craftsmanlike manner, it's important to provide a structure that incubates and rewards that.

We've really reached a point, in tech, where we're in a "death spiral." Companies treat their employees like crap. They may pay them well, but they treat them terribly. This means no loyalty, so the employee feels no issue with leaving as soon as the grass looks greener elsewhere, and the management feels justified in looking at their employees as "disloyal," or even "dangerous." It's a classic negative feedback loop. Money is the only meaningful currency, so people flit around, jacking up their salary, and looking at each company as "just another job."

The people that need to start the change, are CEOs (and shareholders). It's difficult, because "blinking first," seems "wussy," and also, it's pretty much certain that employees would continue to act the way that they do now, for some time, until a new culture gets established. That time, may be enough time to kill the company, as their more rapacious competition eats their lunch.

I was lucky to join an old corporation that had a long-established tradition of retaining top talent. Not sure if you would be able to start a new one, with a similar ethos, these days.

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#64

Post by EasyMark »

tetha wrote: post #59
mistersquid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One pattern I've seen in lower functioning teams with lots of conflict is some members being very well spoken, typically more classically trained like a philosophy background, probably a past debate club type kid. "Strong opinions, loosely held" type behavior where bad ideas were passionately argued by the more eloquent & aggressive team member until everyone else was exhausted and just let it run. > The kind of gu…

> The problem is not that incontrovertible proof cannot be provided real time. Yielding evidence from complex, esoteric systems is always difficult and time-consuming. This is why we've started to write down larger decisions, the reasons and spots of uncertainty for these decisions in a central, public place. I'm jokingly referring to this as our growing constitution of tech. I think this is right, because some of th…

this is a good idea, as it allows those who aren't the "great orators of their time" some space to breath and think. Not everyone is a fast on their feet debater. Lots of quieter people have great ideas, but don't speak up because they don't have the best debate skills, but are great with making a bullet list of facts and data to back up their side, but are nervous in confrontations during a meeting.

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#65

Post by steveBK123 »

EasyMark wrote: post #64
tetha wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not that incontrovertible proof cannot be provided real time. Yielding evidence from complex, esoteric systems is always difficult and time-consuming. This is why we've started to write down larger decisions, the reasons and spots of uncertainty for these decisions in a central, public place. I'm jokingly referring to this as our growing constitution of tech. I think this is right, because some of th…

this is a good idea, as it allows those who aren't the "great orators of their time" some space to breath and think. Not everyone is a fast on their feet debater. Lots of quieter people have great ideas, but don't speak up because they don't have the best debate skills, but are great with making a bullet list of facts and data to back up their side, but are nervous in confrontations during a meeting.

Yeah there's not a huge overlap of great talkers and great thinkers, thats for sure

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#66

Post by coffeefirst »

relaxing wrote: post #44
coffeefirst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Therapy Speak for "pitching ideas and asking questions is encouraged, you will not be reamed or looked down on if some of those are bad." This is a good idea. Unfortunately, using therapist jargon in other contexts sounds very strange, shibolethy and throws people off.

It’s not so jargony, is it? You’ve heard the word psychology before, and everybody knows what safety is. You can’t handle the two concepts applied together? If so, what would you say in its place? It’s hard to write an article about a concept if you have to say "pitching ideas and asking questions is encouraged, you will not be reamed or looked down on if some of those are bad" every paragraph. The irony of tech peop…

Sure, but I know what it means. Anecdotally, I've found for a lot of these borrowed phrases, unless the people I'm talking to are already familiar with family, I still have to explain what I'm talking about and how to apply it if I want to be understood.

And indeed, much irony.

Re: Why Your 'Harmonious' Team Is Failing

#67

Post by blueboo »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #49
blueboo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …in mature teams with high trust, people don’t have heated arguments… This dynamic flourishes when the stakes and/or uncertainty are low enough. High stakes and high uncertainty means everyone’s pushing their intuition and their reasoning as far as they can. They’re at their limit of what can be communicated efficiently. This results in an uneven distribution of communication bandwidth across the edges in the team…

>I think it’s reasonable to wonder that, if the temperature never rises about room temperature, the team might not be fully challenging itself. I suspect this only seems reasonable if you've never experienced a healthy work environment. I probably would have agreed with you when I was in my twenties, working at a startup with another bunch of twenty-year-old guys and a CEO who was in over his head. It wasn't unusual…

My experience agrees with you — which is why I tried to hedge in my statement — but meanwhile tech culture treasures its stories (perhaps just-so stories) of demanding leaders getting better performance from outrageous targets.
Post reply on HN