Comment by leetrout | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leetrout | Hacker News Reader

This is a great article and while my startup didn't make it past 5 members the advice in here is solid.

On shirts (and swag):

My startup had a mascot at the end and I wish we would have had it upfront and had stickers.

It may seem trite but it's even documented in books like Managing the Unmanageable (or might have been Peopleware) that Apple made shirts for projects. When I worked at NatGeo we made internal swag for our project.

For me personally, living in a world of intangible software, stickers and shirts give me something physical I can hold in my hand. Something I can wear or point to and relate to what I'm doing.

On not knowing what you're doing:

I think the best people I've worked with are very intelligent and curious and do great work for things they don't understand because they ask a ton of questions to learn it which helps lead to epiphanies. It doesn't always shake out that way but with a group of motivated individuals it is so rewarding.

On everything being temporary:

Leaving design / trends aside and looking at our code-- our engineering-- this is absolutely true. For any devops engineers out here reading this: repeatability helps a TON. It's so much easier to migrate from bash scripts to RPM/Deb and from RPM/Deb to Docker. Or from [Puppet|Chef|Ansible|Salt] to [New Flavor Of The Week]. Once it's codified in some way it's so easy to move it forward. Automation == repeatability == freedom.

On people are everything:

Please, please, please don't hire smart jerks. Great, you're smart, you can program in 10 languages and worked at a FANG. If the team doesn't want to sit next to you and work with you on a project I am hoping to shape my life, my future and my family's outcomes 8+ hours a day (even remote) it's going to spoil the whole bunch.

I could go on and on for each section. I loved this article. Y'all will certainly find parts you disagree with but on the whole it is great and very applicable.

Smart jerks are the worst. I work with a few of them and they can really be insufferable.

They interrupt every conversation (IRL or through Rocketchat) because they know absolutely everything about the subject you happend to be talking about. I have started to use the AKSHUALLY meme image in retaliation from time to time.

But what gets me the most is their self-importance. The bragging about the import people they have met, or the presentations they are asked to do. It gets really old really quick.

It sounds like they just have very bad social skills and are insecure about it.

Exactly. Social skills can be learned, but often that requires a lot more effort and pain than learning a new programming language or framework. Listening with full attention is the most underrated "best practice" in tech.

They can be learned to some me extent, but they are harder for some people to learn than others, especially those far off to one side of the spectrum. Actually, it is really easy to tell naturals apart from those who have to consciously study social skills, the latter being much more stilted and systematic than the former. I admit I find it really off putting when interacting with someone with heavily trained social skills (and I’m definitely not a natural). I prefer people to be themselves rather than pretending to be something else.

> I prefer people to be themselves rather than pretending to be something else.

Very few people are "themselves" in practice. There's a difference between how one feels and what one conveys. Communication is about conveyance.

If it is easy to see through communication that goes against feeling, the result can be unsettling to some listeners; eg what are they hiding? What do they really think?

At a communication skills training class the instructor asked us, "Are you listening, or just waiting to talk?"

I'm adequate at this sometimes, but there are situations where I'm... pretty bad at it. They tend to be where:

(a) somebody is explaining something at either edge of my understanding -- either well-inside (and listening feels like a waste of time because I know this stuff) or well-outside (and listening feels like a waste of time because I don't know enough to get a solid purchase into the stream of communication).

(b) the primary purpose of the conversation is setting expectations or attempting to provide motivation, but it goes on for more than twice the minimum necessary communication

(c) I'm distracted by some unresolved issue I care about more.

(c) is clearly my issue. (a) & (b) are arguably failures of the other party as much as anything I'm doing, but I feel like I could probably get better at responses here.

If anybody has any hints, I might even try to listen. :)

The thing about (not) learning social skills is that there isn't instant feedback whether it's working or not. Can't write Selenium routines for people.

Yep worked and been bullied by smart jerks. They really eat the culture, and management are not interested in dealing with them.

That’s been my experience when I’ve tried to get help from management. It’s super frustrating because I know managers don’t want to be babysitters but the smart jerk type only really answer to authority.

Just looked up that meme. Thank you dearly.

At Recurse Center, it's the #1 social rule. Some folks have a hard time adjusting, but the environment is materially improved when everyone respects the rule.

  1. No well-actually’s
  2. No feigned surprise
  3. No backseat driving
  4. No subtle -isms

https://www.recurse.com/social-rules

While I disagree with the concept of pushing one's beliefs on onto other team members, I think it's good that you guys are upfront about your philosophy. This way people can use this information to decide if they want to be involved with your organization or not. I recently joined a seemingly normal team only to discover a culture packed with unwritten rules and arbitrary taboo, a situation I would have completely avoided if only I had known the reality of the situation.

At a previous job my first week included 4 people telling me they were sorry I had to work with the person I was working with and several more explaining the political undercurrent / power holds.

And that’s really hard to shrug off.

I think the issue with social rules like the above, is that they seem kind of childish and would make me feel like I am in elementary school.

In the real world, some people are annoying and you should learn how to cope with it instead of having artificial rules to defend against it.

None of the issues in this list are really that offensive or disruptive of the regular work day. If I worked at a place that had these rules, I would quit.

A lot of "smart kids" were basically taught to be that way by incredibly toxic school experiences. It's part of why I walked away from a National Merit Scholarship.

A lot of what they are doing is likely driven by intense loneliness combined with learned self-defense behaviors. Being ugly back is unlikely to really fix anything. It just feeds the toxic cycle of one-upmanship.

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