Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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I am dealing with this at the moment. We have a new contractor and he always wants to make big changes whenever he does something. Sometimes he may be right but I am getting tired explaining that maybe there is a reason why we are doing things a certain way and that the changes he is proposing often are just changes but don't really improve anything.

To quote the seven habits of effective people:

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

This is one of the most valuable lessons of contracting: only try to help people who want to be helped. Sometimes you can influence them to want help with something (e.g. an architectural change that will make things better), but if they don't believe there's anything wrong, it's just going to be a pointless battle.

It gets more awkward when you're brought in by one person, but quickly realize that the people you're working with don't want you to do what you were brought in to do. Or when people tangential to the project see it as a threat to the status quo and actively try to prevent you from doing what you're trying to do.

"but if they don't believe there's anything wrong, it's just going to be a pointless battle."

Also consider that the people there aren't dummies but know what they are doing. One of the biggest career improvements I have made is to assume people are competent until I get clear evidence of the opposite. This makes relationships much more pleasant.

That's very true. The middle ground of that is that smart people, making a series of reasonable decisions, can still lead to a terrible destination. I've done it myself, and I've had teams describe multi-year developments where I can't point out a specific place they went wrong. People get caught up in that though, and they're often blind to it until a fresh set of eyes get on it.

[I've spent a lot of time this morning trying to articulate further, and I'm too distracted by the work I'm trying to do. Sorry.]

You're probably correct in your analysis, but in general I'm very wary of people who use self-help readings or techniques to analyze what everyone around them should be doing differently. I often run into people who seem to use these kinds of things as excuses to blame others and not take reasonable action on their own.

I don't walk around quoting self help all the time. My point is that before you give advice first take some time to understand the situation.

Of course, for a contractor, there's good money in making the problem bigger...

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