Managers need to stop giving people feedback on their personality | Hacker News Reader

Managers need to stop giving people feedback on their personality

fortune.com

20 pointsadrianhoward25 comments

I had a teammate who shouted me down in a meeting, said my opinions were invalid and he didn’t need to explain anything to me. (I had asked why we were building an entire in memory implementation of a sql database engine just to run tests and prototypes)

Anyhow, he continued being incredibly abrasive and angry until our supervisor called a meeting and he claimed that he had aspergers - which may have been true but it effectively tied the hands of my manager. They explained to me that they could not let him go even though it would be best for the team, because he had made this statement and there could be legal troubles if they did.

So he continued on being toxic, until he blew up in a PR review (basically left an insane set of GitHub comments) and they decided this was too much and they moved him to another project/team where he would have very little interaction with people.

Anyway just wanted to leave this as an anecdote for a situation where the solution was very difficult to solve and eventually it was sort of solved but it definitely required managers giving feedback about someone’s personality.

Your allegations of the "wrongs" he did:

- shouted at you in a meeting claiming that your opinions are invalid and that he didn't need to explain matters to you.

- being abrasive.

- blew up a PR review ("insane set of Github comments")

While I empathize with you and understand that such behavior shouldn't be normalized, it remains murky which of these are performance related. (What happened to the in-mem sql DB thing, what was his rationale for commenting in the PR review?)

Pardon me, but this reads like a one-sided take of the events that transpired.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that arguments happens and it's important to understand the rationale behind the friction rather than determining the eventual loser as the one being in the wrong; for the loser could be the one wronged.

In a team it is generally good to be able to discuss approaches without becoming angry, shouting and leaving the meeting. Performance does not just encapsulate the code you produce, especially as a senior engineer.

After he left the team, the in-mem implementation was removed being widely recognized as a roadblock to building new features (needing to implement an in-memory version of sql WHERE clause or ORDER BY just to add new features to a web app that was backed by an actual SQL DB was error prone and there are many better solutions to testing your DB code)

The PR review was another explosion from people questioning his further development of this crazy complex in-men SQL implementation, and the questions were well founded but he was getting very irate at having to constantly defend this thing he was building that others on the team found to be a time suck.

This is definitely one sided, it was one of the most difficult situations for me to traverse as I’d never been in a situation where a coworker was what I would characterize as abusive to me and others on the team, so I still can’t really approach it fully objectively.

It's a very interesting recollection. Thanks for sharing it here.

I'm always interested in what motivates some people in our line of work. There are so many with such strong drives to work hard in ways that don't make any sense to me.

Apologies, but regardless of being one sided, there is no acceptable professional reason to shout at someone in a meeting.

I’m not sure why you are writing this take, but I’m not sure how this is constructive.

And.

- and you're not sure... "but" would imply a contrary statement following. Two statements predicated on the same exposition, "I'm not sure", are in agreement.

If someone is a pedantic little prick and uses open forums, like meetings, to undermine your efforts then you might find it hard to keep your demeanor.

I'd like to site the first paragraph of this comment as an example. While it is accurate and relevant, it is also unnecessary and reduces the value of the statements you have made, diminishing them in the eyes of others, but to no greater benefit.

There an example; the correct use of "but".

Uhm.. It certainly affects MY performance if I have colleagues who act like that towards me or others.

I absolutely believe in understanding and practice forgiveness towards colleagues who have aspergers, going through personal issues or whatever. But there is a limit to what one should tolerate, for ones own mental health.

id go see a doctor, let them give you some diagnosis too, and yell back next time he raises his voice

If I have a team member that is being a jerk then I will give them feedback on their personality, regardless of protected characteristics. The option is: Give feed back and they fix behavior, or they get fired. Toxic people have no place on my team.

EDIT: Unless they are doing so much more of the work then the others that they cant realistically be replaced, then I will allow them to be toxic but only so much they others people aren't quitting. OK there's is a little bit of hyperbole there but sometimes the best workers are not very socially palatable. I will still give them regular feedback on their poor attitude.

My wife's company had a toxic person that was really hard to replace. Took most everyone complaining and losing 2 other key personal before management finally decided to act. IMO there is nobody so valuable that you need to put up with toxicity.

Good story. What does it have to do with the linked article, which is about how women and people of color disproportionately receive personality-based feedback?

It has to do with the title of this thread though.

So perhaps this is an indication that the title should be updated to more accurately reflect the original one. (Not everyone reads the linked articles.)

> Women are … 11 times more likely to report being labeled as abrasive

> Specific and constructive feedback about someone’s work performance offers them more opportunities to grow.

If “abrasive“ is not constructive and the person is at risk of losing her job because she is abrasive, are you suggesting she not be told she is abrasive?

Then it's ultimately not about personality or productivity, but ultimately whether person is of value to the company, org, team, or those in power, financially, politically.

It's about both, if you are nice but a mediocre consistent worker you are likely not going to get fired because there are not enough 10x programmers to go around

I know what you mean. It's a thin line to walk. Sometimes you really have to keep them for business reasons. But I found that sometimes the shock of losing the skills and/or knowledge of that one key person is just what's needed for the rest of the team to pick them up.

This is a common theme in sports teams. One guy is toxic but contributes a lot, should we keep him?

Luckily most teams are not sports teams, and most people are replaceable.

The thing about toxicity is it's contagious. People will start to use it as signalling: "I say toxic things because I'm valuable". It's like that cartoon of The Internet Commentator's Fallacy.

Large scale statistical analysis of words used in performance reviews is, to put it in the article's words, very unactionable feedback. How could you go about resolving this? The impression you get from a person is a very difficult thing to change.

If you were to treat each race and group differently, being mindful of this data when writing reviews you will probably end up with a system that is more racist than the one you started with. It is noted, for instance, that Asians received a higher incidence of "genius" feedback; they also have a higher IQ on average. Would it be more or less racist not to tell a gifted person that they are gifted based on their race? Certainly there is a stereotype that may have biased you, but there is a truth beneath that stereotype. It forms a very complex feedback loop, where a reality creates a self-enforcing perception. The mind is pattern seeking, but once it sees a pattern it will start to find it in places it wasn't present, and use these incidences to justify the pattern as a whole.

If you just try not to mention these things in reviews, you haven't solved the problem. You just aren't telling the person about it to their face. I would rather hear someone's biased opinion of me, than have them hold it behind my back.

The most pressing issue to me is that there is no way to detect which of these things are genuine insights and which are biases. The only way would be a control group who don't know each other's race. You could partially achieve this through online interactions, but the less of a person you experience, the less you can learn what they are like. The only way to hold a truly unbiased opinion is to never have talked to someone or seen them. A review being potentially accurate is inextricably linked with it being potentially biased.

Fundamentally, you can't bring your perception of your coworkers in line with reality given that: 1 — you don't know what reality is; 2 — you can only discern reality by perceiving it, yet your flawed perception is the issue you're trying to solve; and 3 — your perception of your perception is also subject to biases.

If you have to give feedback - please please with cherry on top give it about what a person _does_ specifically on the team versus on _who they are._ (speaking from a position of both having given personality feedback which I regret and being given feedback on being "abrasive", "difficult", "opinionated" and you name it what else)

"No more ‘abrasive,’ ‘opinionated,’ or ‘nice’: Why managers need to stop giving women and people of color feedback on their personality"

what the actual fuck kind of racist bs is this?

Why not just write what you mean "Why managers only need to give white males feedback on their personality"..

That said, there's some difference between behaviour and personality.. Whatever personality and or race / gender / diagnosis you have may help explain (but not excuse) your behavior in certain situations, and when that behavior is unprofessional, it is to be pointed out to you along with an opportunity for you to apologize (assuming you're not grown enough to figure that out by yourself).

I've had situations in my work life where my less-than-idea brain configuration has caused me to have inappropriate reactions or responses, I've recognized them and apologized, sometimes right away, sometimes when it has dawned on me later, and as a result of that bit of self-insight, I do believe I'm not universally disliked by my coworkers.

There is no way a few DEI courses, videos or whatever are going to change people's habits. Habits require lots of repetition over time to impact a lasting change. To do that requires an general attitude of forgiveness while the person is practicing the new habits as slipping up is easy. But there is often no forgiveness. So even those who would like to do better can't and are instead forced to withdraw from social interaction with those they feel they might potentially offend if they slip up.

IMO things like DEI training are the symptoms/signs that things are changing for the better. I don't think they will lead to any change but do mean there is a general shift in culture going on. So while a good sign, expecting these things to have a real impact is not realistic.

I have kind of the opposite problem from most. I tend to not be very social at work and avoid joining groups, cliques, etc. or making small talk. And it seems to be an imperative for some people to try and "draw me out of my shell", which inevitably results in their feelings being hurt because they can't (and possibly because I'm fairly direct or short with them).

the answer is simple: "essential functions of the job"

If that means a certain amount of teamwork, mentorship, etc and the person is unable or unwilling to perform that, then they are not meeting the essential functions of the job.

Programmers for example need to commit their work to source control... with reasonable commit messages, docs/comments, tests, etc.

If it is that simple, you'd be able to quantify the attributes you mention, instead of giving rather vague statements such as 'reasonable' and 'certain amount'.

That combined with the fact most managers are stumbling their way through feedback-giving processes makes most feedback on personality absolutely worthless for the average person. You can easily confirm this by asking for proof as to how individual aspects of their feedback will improve work. The far majority would fail to substantiate it.

The important thing is to use EFotJ as a guidepost. If coworker X is complaining, ask yourself if it's an essential function of the job. Generally terminations aren't edge cases, it's people who are wildly unqualified, unable or unwilling to do the most basic aspects of their jobs. For documentation ("PIP"), pick a couple of really basic metrics. If the person is good enough to game them, you can execute a second PIP with tighter rules, incl 360 perf review.

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