Comment by repomies691 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by repomies691 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure if I understand some of these:

"It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"

What was the treated poorly part? Someone priorized some other work over his assignment, or something? I personally think overtime should be avoided, but often people do it voluntarily.

"A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."

Seriously? Everyone has a bad day now and then. This is of course not nice behaviour, but I wouldn't consider it worth remembering or mentioning as "being treated poorly".

"The general manager who is non-technical, asked me to investigate options to uplift our ageing bespoke ecommerce solution. Upon delivering my findings, I was told that “your findings are biased.”"

What would be the proper way to communicate this? If the manager thinks that the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it in some other way?

The "investigate options" one was one of the few situations that I could see a possible slight. I've seen managers who play this dumb game where they put people on a research problem, and the job isn't for the engineer to do unbiased research & prototyping, but it's instead to reinforce whatever argument they were originally pushing for (but your "job" is to actually bring facts in). I've heard the "you're biased" line enough from those kinds of people to just shrug it off and move on, but I've also seen engineers who become paralyzed trying to figure out "what the boss really wants". For my biased point of view, these managers fit into a category called "the worst" anyways, so getting worked up about it is probably not worth it.

As an aside on the not understanding front, what was the deal with the team lead scenario? In my experience team leads aren't managerial positions so I don't quite understand why the guy was so concerned with other employees salaries. There was also a lot of missing details there, the author could have been making significantly more, and so the raises were treated differently? That was definitely a peculiar one.

>> The "investigate options" one was one of the few situations that I could see a possible slight. I've seen managers who play this dumb game where they put people on a research problem, and the job isn't for the engineer to do unbiased research & prototyping, but it's instead to reinforce whatever argument they were originally pushing for

My manager asked me to interview a guy for our embedded software team. The guy was working for our internal customer and was already well liked by the team, but he wasn't creating software. I asked if my input would matter or he already had his mind made up, and he said that yes, this was a real interview. So I asked the guy a few questions and then decided to just give him "FizzBuzz" in the language of his choice. He spent the rest of our time and more trying to solve it but no full success. Then I was in the awkward position of taking him to lunch since everyone else had gone already. So I go back to the boss and say "the guy can't code, don't hire him". Boss hires him anyway. Kid figures out FizzBuzz later that afternoon - he's got determination, and people were ultimately happy with him being on the team. Lessons: 1)Boss's mind was already made up. 2)FizzBuzz is not necessarily a good test. 3) No matter what people think of you, if you fuck up that test your nickname around the office will be "Fizz" from then on.

To me, it seemed clear that he had nominal responsibility for salaries, but was being routed around and undermined. Whether a "team lead" should have responsibility for salaries seems beside the point--if you've told someone they have responsibility they should have it until you relieve them of it.

Yeah, generally at any company large enough to have a dedicated HR function, dev leads usually don't get informed or consulted in salary decisions. I was confused by that one too; his expectations were out of line on that one IMO.

The reason for this is that it's not at all uncommon for dev team members to make more than team leads if they have a specific skill set that the market values more.

Hi,

Author here. Unfortunately that one was from a small startup where I was responsible for evaluating my team members' performance and salary.

Yeah; unfortunately at startups where roles / expectations aren't clearly defined, this type of stuff happens. Honestly I doubt it was out of malice; it's simply easier at a small company for the CEO to make all the comp decisions themselves than have to consult half the company about information that's supposed to be confidential. He may have thought he was doing the right thing to do -- startup CEOs are usually just winging it.

> "It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"

The developer is being treated poorly and gave a response to indicate why s/he was being treated poorly. I don't see the problem other than the person coordinating developer recruitment should respect people's time more.

> "A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a drink” without looking at me and wondered off."

If I knew the person well enough, that one is actually a "I need to talk away from here" or a warning to not talk here. I've had friends go with that, but it really is not clear from the context what is going on or has gone on.

Most are ok but the one on code review for new candidates and slack that one is off.

Getting offended because people have stuff to do dosent mean you're being treated poorly.

"If the manager thinks that the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it in some other way?"

Describe the points of the analysis that seem biased, without even using the word "biased".

"Looks like you only considered..."

"I don't see any mention of..."

"But you didn't mention [superior feature] of [other product]."

"Biased" is an accusation against the presenter, as opposed to asking questions or making comments about the analysis directly. Making a personal attack does not help in making a good decision.

Especially the last one I find interesting, I have the perspective that if someone did dismiss me and didn't say anything or gave me a clearly bullshit reason I'd find that much more offensive than telling the truth to my face.

Maybe the person wasn't biased, but obviously the manager thought so.

The "you're biased" line is a dismissive remark in a sense though. Everyone's biased, to certain extents, and keeping bias out of research is really tough sometimes. But:

1. A lot of times, this statement is used as a weak crutch by someone who had a different idea, but can't properly explain their side of the position and work towards why there was a difference in conclusion. Usually it's because the person that said "you're biased" is actually carrying a ton of bias into their viewpoints.

2. Even if someone was biased, do you think telling them that they're biased is going to bring resolution? Of course not. See point #1.

The correct response to being accused of bias is to step back, review your finding, your possible biases, and either adjust your findings or have an argument for why you don't feel they are biased.

Not to pout and say you're being treated poorly.

I don't know what the guy did in the moment, but you're right about how you should react in that moment.

That said, bitching about bad managers is a time honored tradition as old as management itself, so I don't really see the big deal with blogging about it.

I would prefer if someone said "I think you're biased" instead of being lied to with some bullshit excuses to dismiss my point/research/whatever.

Hi,

Author here, I can see why you have these questions. I tried to keep the moments short so left out some details.

For the first one, it was the passive aggressive tone and the fact that it was posted in a public channel. This person in one other occasion, stormed out of a meeting room whilst another colleague was trying to explain something.

For the second one, later on through mutual colleagues I realised that he essentially thought very little of me because at the time I was a junior developer so I made lots of mistakes in my code base. In my defence though, I was on my own and I had to learn Rails myself.

For the third one, I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my findings were biased. It was more so that he had his agenda and just wanted me to confirm his approach from the technical perspective.

Hope that clears things up a little bit. :)

To be honest I think you should give people a little slack and relax. You are taking things too personally. Everyone has a bad day now and then. Based on your descriptions to me it looks like "not treating people poorly" would require almost superhuman capabilities from managers and coworkers. They probably have also lot of other stuff to worry about as well.

"under the same circumstances, I know I _wouldn't_ treat others the same way I was treated back then"

I wouldn't dare to make that claim. Every situation is different and also everyone's mood varies from day to day. It is very difficult to be that nice guy all the time.

It should not be difficult to be a nice person all the time.

We are building software, and/or managing a product/team. It's a communal effort that requires empathy, kindness, and love. If you are one of the few who can't love your fellow coworker/subordinate/boss then you are toxic.

Unfortunately, bullies existed on the playground and they exist in the software industry too.

> It should not be difficult to be a nice person all the time.

There's a huge difference between most of the time and all of the time.

I'm a strong advocate of empathy in the workplace, but part of that is recognising that sometimes people are just in a bad mood.

Someone who snaps at you because they're really stressed that day is in no way a bully.

If you snap at someone because you are having a bad day you should apologise to that person or at least clarify that it's not personal.

Having a bad day is not an excuse to be rude to someone, especially if they are not aware of that.

What do you do when you're in a bad mood and you blow up on someone?

You apologize the next day / whenever you calm down. And then that out-of-character event doesn't end up being someone's lasting impression of you.

As always, the last 5% is the hardest part.

> It should not be difficult to be a nice person all the time.

I agree, it shouldn't be difficult, but some people seem to go out of their way to make it difficult.

To put it differently: if you interviewed those people from the blog post, would they say that they do the things described in this article? Likely not!

It may be difficult to always be nice. But what should never be difficult is being humane, and if it is there are deeper concerns to deal with.

I think I do, hence I put this sentence in the article: "There are a few of these moments that I still find hard to swallow, but most of them I simply chuckle whenever I think about them. ;)"

For most of these moments, it was more a reflection of my personality if anything - under the same circumstances, I know I _wouldn't_ treat others the same way I was treated back then. I much prefer to use softer tones and more positive ways to start those conversations.

This is mostly normal stuff from people who are stressed and work with each other all day. Being short is simply needing to get things done. I have seen things that are huge problems though.

Years ago at this little company I saw the CTO punch the CEO and basically knocked him out. The CTO walked out and we never saw him again. Keep in mind, these were grown men (I was still in college).

I've seen full on yelling and screaming with personal insult after personal insult. This was a normal occurrence on how IT and the business communicated. I never really got used to it, so luckily I worked from home 99% of the time.

I was in a meeting once with a bunch of contractors from different companies, all were yelling at each other about whose fault something was. The gov. PM could not get control and I finally stood up and said it was my fault personally so can we move on now.

And these only scratch the surface. One guy I worked with would always storm out of meetings saying he was going to get you fired if you disagreed with him on anything. That was almost comical though :)

It seems like you're attempting to form an opinion about circumstances based on knowledge you acquired past the time they happened.

At any rate, I don't see how either #1 or #2 constitute poor professional treatment. I can see how it can be a bad experience - I've been on both ends of such behaviour, frankly - but I don't think it's unprofessional. #1 actually points out a serious problem, too!

#3 and #4 from the blog post, however.. I would be livid.

Well to be honest, anytime people are asked to work on something new at 5pm it typically represents a monumental failure on management's part. If reviewing those code tests was important, you should have made time for them to do that during the day.

It sounds like they were constantly getting hit with new "top priorities" that needed to be handled "right away" on top of their new duties.

These stories kinda make it sound like you keep getting reprimanded for shelling into servers and installing random packages. If you aren't somehow resonsible, keep your chin up, not everywheres filled with those kinds of people.

> I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my findings were biased.

In what way were your finding supposedly biased? Why is it necessary for the manager to be technical in order to detect that bias?

Even presuming that you would need to be technical (a big assumption, non-technical people aren't necessarily idiots because they're non-technical), how do you know a senior technical person didn't already talk to them and warn that bias of a certain type could result in $YOUR_FINDINGS?

I thought the first one was the other way around: that he was being treated poorly, with people having him put out fires all day and not giving him time to do his real work. I see nothing bad in his response.

Im curious, if someone thinks very little of you and you try to start a conversation and that someone does not want to talk you ever - then what would be the correct behaviour for you? Because the "i need only coffee" seems to me quite neutral.

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