why am I wrong ? should I care less like everybody else?
PS: where I currently work is wasting public money and I feel obligated to do something as a Libertarian!
why am I wrong ? should I care less like everybody else?
PS: where I currently work is wasting public money and I feel obligated to do something as a Libertarian!
Edit Source: I make this mistake all the god damn time, and never realize it until the person breaks and finally snaps at me. The whole time I thought we were just having a reasoned argument. I think that I am constructively invalidating the other persons arguments, meanwhile they are feeling belittled and defensive.
Edit edit: This is even worse if, like me, you think arguments are pretty much the greatest most entertaining game it is possible to play.
Instead of saying "bubble sort is too slow for us to use" (oppositional, "you are wrong for thinking otherwise"), try "wouldn't bubble sort be too slow for us to use?" (collaborative, "maybe you have something to add").
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I thought I'd open up for example. In university I adamently refuted the moon landing conspiracy of a group partner. I didn't realize this would offend, but it did. She did a lot of extremely vindictive things after that, and even tried to (with some success, I might add) incite anger towards me from other group members.
Some people become extremely defensive and then aggressive, perhaps it is especially so if you are the nerdy-humble-well-intentioned-Alice-low-gravitas type...
Knowing when to correct someone and when to keep quiet is something I have become a lot better at with age. It took a lot of learning the hard way though.
I would hope others are understanding that not everyone who is perceived as a jerk, actually intends it.
In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be pure rational actors.
But we aren't, not even close. (And I would argue that that's a good thing, but that discussion is waaaaay out of scope).
As soon as you accept that humans, including yourself, primarily make _emotional_ decisions and not rational ones, it becomes easier to steer decisions in a healthy manner.
I used to think more along these lines. I heard someone recently talk about Spock and Captain Kirk and their approaches to different situations, and he said that most people think Spock must always be right due to his logical side. He then said that many times Kirk’s more human emotional approach actually worked out better in the end. Obviously you need a balance. Things should be logically thought out but sometimes you need to act out of empathy and sympathy towards others even when it might not make that much sense.
Also being rational =/= being cold and unemotional.
The best way I've found to do this is to them you don't understand something and have them explain the solution to you.
Plus it's humility practice -- you might even turn out to be wrong!
But, you know, sometimes it turns out that I was actually the one not seeing some things clearly and by not coming out of the gate as a jerk about things we can both walk away having come to a collaborative solution and everyone feels good.
I can see why you'd think that, I made the same mistake earlier, but see there's this problem here...
vs
No, that's obviously wrong, why would you even think that? Let me show you the right way...
It's ok to be cynical and defeatist, but those two qualities don't make for useful answers to questions
Speaking the truth straight out can feel good, but it is rarely a good rhetorical strategy. Instead, back up, and start with this: what do the people across the table want? What do they believe is good, and what do they believe is important?
Now, how do you recast your arguments to appeal to those goals? How do you frame your position in such a way that they will want to agree with you?
This is the foundation of convincing people: empathize, understand them, learn their communication patterns. Once you see how they communicate and think, you work down those routes but send the message you believe is important.
The answer boils down to this: if you have a good idea but people are rejecting it, find a new way to talk about it.
When you proclaim a good idea, you aren't offering an execution plan to go with it, so people (rightfully) ignore it.
People in management also tend to buy impossible lies especially considering deadlines.
See, this is why the public sector is usually so ineffective and why it's so frustrating. The people across the table tend to jump from posting to posting, and make safe moves that are far from being the correct ones to fulfill the organization's larger goals, while cultivating political capital. Ultimately, they are motivated by the prospect of future postings and promotions, which are determined not by their performance in achieving the organization's goals but by how much political capital they have succeeded in accumulating.
There is no way to sell reform to these people, because reform involves upsetting the status quo, and upsetting the status quo costs large amounts of political capital.
Successfully leading change from the bottom in the public sector is for that rare cadre of people who are not just visionaries and cheerleaders for change, but are patient enough to spend years and decades building upon small changes that build up while not losing their patience and escaping to the private sector.
Source: been there, done that, screw that, couldn't pay me enough to go back and do that again
This is what I want to tell them:
Our core customer facing application is shit. The contractors who wrote it cut tons of corners and the marketing people who designed did a horrible job, the UI emphasizes features customers don't care about, and makes it extremely difficult for customers to actually reach and use the revenue generating sections of the app. Not only is the marketing leadership is disfunctional, and worse, you (the Sr VP) have created a disfunctional development organization, that makes me wonder if you understand how to develop commercial applications.
This is what I will say:
The weaknesses in our core application are costing the company millions of dollars a month. We are struggling with making quick, effective decisions and shipping new versions to address the major problems because we have "too many cooks in the kitchen" in our team meetings and planning. I will give specific examples and relate them to specific examples from my long history shipping quality commercial apps on time. I will finish by saying the team is demotivated and underperforming, which makes you, the Sr VP, look bad, and plead that we need to solve this, for them and the company both.
But if I'm wrong, and this Sr VP is one of the thin skinned exceptions (doubtful since they are taking the meeting from a Sr. Dev in the first place), then I can get a better job somewhere where it's less dysfunctional.
I'll bite.
Does it work? Is your approach effective?
In your engagement with the senior folk, do you just complain? Or do you suggest changes that you know are affordable and achievable? Are you arguing so you feel better about trying or are you genuinely attempting to affect change?
Also, has it occurred to you that the higher ups might not be the fools and cowards they appear? Is it possible that they are operating with constraints that they just haven't chosen, or are prevented from, sharing with you?
Obviously I don't know your organisation and it is, of course, possible that its staffed with incompetents. And that by sheer good fortune just you and a small group of your immediate colleagues are the only rational actors. Or it may be something else.
not all the times, but I had some success here and there! but not as much as I hoped for.
"has it occurred to you that the higher ups might not be the fools and cowards they appear?"
I am not that arragont to think I am the smartest person in a big organization or I am right all the times and others are always wrong! but those constrains are coming from somewhere and I believe most of it comes from people are lazy and don't like to argue with others because they want to be liked! There are lots of people that wants to please everybody and never push back on stupid ideas! the culture is top down and I have 7 level of management above me! I only can blame the top one or two :D
But, for what it’s worth, you’re almost definitely wrong in your analysis. Senior people at large organisations do routinely make poor decisions but it’s usually for either external factors, empire building or blame shifting. It’s hardly ever for genuine stupidity or laziness.
The way to do that is all in phrasing, tone of voice, and general respectful treatment. If, like me, this is not something that comes naturally to you, it might be worth searching google for a few little tricks that will help you to resolve disagreements. The Socratic method - using questions instead of statements - can be effective. It has also helped in my experience to describe similar situations in which the course of action you support has proven itself.
When speaking with managers who make a bad suggestion, it is helpful to explain that the course of action they are proposing was considered, and why it was rejected. That will reassure them that you are on top of the situation, and (in the case of a good manager) show that you are able to do your work without your assistance.
Of course if your manager's ego is tied to his/her suggestions, which is common, you're probably SOL. The most effective way I have seen a team deal with that is to implement the bad suggestions as quickly and flexibly as possible in order to minimise the damage to the schedule, the project, and so on.
I feel that a lot of places have a culture of agreeability. They are focused on fixing disagreement rather than fixing the underlying problem. A truth-telling person isn't suited to those environments.
I also feel that a "no brilliant jerks" policy is an anti-neuro-diversity policy. It weeds out high-functioning autistic and psychopathic people. I think any homogenous environment created from such a policy would be a dangerous thing.
this is gold, this is exactly what my organisation is doing!
Thanks it helps a lot.
It's so depressing.
Are you interested in the best outcomes, or addicted to behaving in the way you find easiest? If you are actually interested in outcomes, if you actually care you will learn that meeting people on their terms will produce better outcomes than communicating however you find easiest.
Technology is easy, people are hard.
this is so true, one of the reasons I chose technology was I thought I can just spend my time in a cube isolated and not have to deal with people, but more and more my job is becoming dealing with people rather than technology!
It seems the gut reaction in tech is that conflict is bad, but conflict is inevitable. It is better to respectfully resolve conflicts than try to avoid them at all costs IMO
At some point you have to learn to appreciate other viewpoints and approaches to problem solving. You might want to argue things on strictly technical merits when someone 3 or 4 levels above you has completely different criteria to judge a solution. Maybe he sees less risk or less cost, maybe he just doesn't want to change the status quo. Maybe he simply sees a challenge to his authority.
There's a wide spectrum between being a politician and pleasing everyone and being a politician and working through a discussion and couching your position in a way the other person appreciates and accepts. But it's on you to figure out how to make that work, not them.
Always always give people a way to save face, this applies doubly in meetings. If people feel like the choices are being right or being responsible for an error they will fight to be right. If you give them a third option (past inexperience, blame someone that left, poor testing, changed requirements) that doesn't hurt their reputation, they no longer have to fight to be right.
Try to teach people the principal behind why something is wrong/broken/bad. This applies to things like code health that there are more subjective. Instead of saying "That method should not be 300 lines." Teach that you want small understandable functions that do only one thing. This gives them a metric to use in the future and makes your comment seem more well thought out.
Be helpful when you can be. If you are always causing problem people will remember that. People also will remember when you go out of your way to help them. A little bit of oil could help the other interactions run smoothly.
I hope these little bits help some.
Nearly most decisions that seem wrong were taken due to time constraints. Something had to get out the door. Software can be patched later.
So instead of saying “Bob’s team isn’t producing a good product” look into why. Maybe “Bobs team was in crunch time due to 3 people leaving the group and decided to use their own queuing service instead of working with IT to use the company one and that’s causing some problems that I think we can address by spending time on X”
do non-libertarians feel that there's nothing wrong with companies wasting taxpayer money?