Comment by kiawe_fire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kiawe_fire | Hacker News Reader

I've not heard of Camille Fournier until now, but glad I found her, and this article is quite timely for me.

I'm dealing with several issues right now in trying to "take ownership" of things that aren't mine.

With our EDI system, I only get called in when the "real" owners are too busy, but when I do, I find their entire architecture is a foot gun that makes development way harder and more error prone than it should be.

With our (customer facing) admin system, the entire thing has a UX that I think easily triples the work/time/number of clicks to do anything, and just begs for many routine things that bog users down to be automated.

The problem I do own, the mobile apps, is greatly hampered by the back-end that drives all of the other problems that I don't own, so all problems including mine could benefit greatly from working on that problem as well.

But when I talk to other engineers, they (a) don't see the problems being as impactful as I do, (b) don't believe that I can solve the problems in the first place, and (c) ultimately don't want to put any time or effort into learning about the problems or my proposed solutions, even though putting in a little effort now could save us from regularly having to stay late and fix fire drills like we do now.

I've even gone to the length of building prototypes to demonstrate both (a) and (b), and in some cases they relent somewhat on (a), but continue to talk as though solutions aren't possible... even as they're looking at a live, running prototype.

I'm at a point where I either need to let it all go and just "do my job" (even though I feel the quality of work I can do on my own stuff is being limited by OPP), OR mobilize the internal end users by showing them my prototypes and getting them on my side (to pressure the engineers) which somehow feels a bit sleazy, OR quit and find another job.

This is the key phrase

> ...of things that aren't mine

Ive been in that situation some years ago and I learnt 2 thing,

1. I mishandled that situation due to arrogance (it finally sunk in that being right isn't enough!)

2. more importantly, against real entrenched positions, I can't fight a fight for which I have no formal authority, and against people who will actively sabotage me even at the cost of themselves (and they really did damage themselves to block me).

It sounds like you're doing a far better job than me in presenting your case, so well done there, but if people are just going to be dicks and you can't get their buy-in, AFAICS and IME you're going to lose. If you can make a case and the other engineers won't take it seriously, raise it up to their manager (and carefully, not in a way that I did which was to annoy my co-workers) whose job it actually is. If boss won't listen, you're stuffed. Swallow it or resign.

I'd suggest trying to find why your co-engineers don't see it as you do - you've given (a), (b) and (c), but it would be interesting to for you to get their side - if they're "regularly having to stay late and fix fire drills", well, the very first thing an engineer does it make life easy for themselves, so why is that not happening here?

Having driven a beneficial change gives you a ton of valuable experience that you can use then in another company, with better processes, and at a more impactful position.

I'd go for it if I were in your shoes and had the energy.

This is a tough situation to be in. I've been there myself and it's not fun. If I were in this same situation again, I would ask myself a few questions:

* Who is my customer in this situation? It could be your boss, your boss's boss, an important stakeholder, end users, etc. Make sure you have clarity on your customer so you can focus on their problems first. If you have find you have multiple "important" customers, then prioritize the most important first. This is likely the person who has the most influence on your immediate success.

* Are any of the problems you identified "your" customer's problem? If so great, time to get to work. If not, consider reprioritizing. You should reach out to your customer and get their feedback on priority. Be careful not to lose sight of the big picture.

* How do I know the other engineers aren't right? If you work with smart people who know how to get things done, then you should take their feedback seriously. Maybe they're right and you're wrong. Always validate your assumptions.

* What would happen if I just solved the problem myself? If you can then do, seriously. Submit a PR with your solution or build a proof of concept. Default to taking action. Don't wait for someone else's approval to get shit done.

* How can I measure and bring transparency to these problems? You'd be surprised how powerful emails with data are. If you can measure the problem (e.g., MTTR, rate of failure, response time) and more importantly the impact on customers, then you may be able to indirectly "motivate" others to solve their own problems. Send regular updates to managers, Directors, VPs, Execs, anyone important who will listen.

* At what point should I just let this go? Time box your efforts and once that time period has been reached, just let it go. This very well could be a situation where the "problem" is not the top priority. You may have to let this one burn so you can focus on other things.

These are good points but

> Don't wait for someone else's approval to get shit done

This may be a great idea, but mishandled it can truly piss people off. See my other reply to this. Turn the diplomacy up to 11 if you plan to try it.

Not gonna lie, I have pissed some people off with this approach myself even when it was handled properly. Diplomacy and collaboration should be used first. Maybe even let someone else take the win. Use the get shit done approach as a last resort.

Both you and jonathanfoster have raised some great points here.

In a way, the working prototypes I've built (many of which could be production ready with little extra work) have been my "just get shit done" approach, both to prove my solutions to myself, AND to help make the argument to the rest of the team.

What's tough is that I'm not getting any hard no's on anything... after I build and show working prototypes of my ideas (many of which could be deployed to production with little extra work) I usually get a pat on the back followed by a "we'll discuss getting this out there when we have more time to learn it", and then it goes nowhere.

Next step would be deploying the stuff to production, but I have a good hunch I'd be the only one using the stuff, which wouldn't actually fix the problem from the customers' perspective if only half the system works as they'd expect (especially if new features continue to be written by the other engineers using old systems).

Ego might be part of this, though, so I think being extra diplomatic and trying to frame these ideas as "other people's ideas" might get me further.

Barring that, I might go straight to the customers (starting with our internal users and maybe broadening from there) to make sure my ideas are actually worthwhile to them.

If I can get a hard no from either my co-workers or the customers, I'd be more willing to either back off or find another place where I fit better. But as of right now, I see our customers asking for things we can't deliver, and I have a drive to fix it, but I don't think there's a way forward without my co-workers' and superiors' buy in.

Thanks for all the ideas!

I've been in similar, though not quite the same, situations, and I've come to suspect that it's a full-on case of “let other people think they came up with the solution themselves.” For which I've got pretty much no skill at all.

There's a certain type of engineer that makes a business out of staying late to fight fires that they set themselves. I'm not sure if there's much chance of changing that culture.

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