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Comment by viach | Hacker News Reader

> Be an engineer that PMs don’t hate

Easy-peasy. Always agree with their estimates, never complain, never ask for a raise, work additional hours.

Unfortunately true. Then when it all goes south, they are like "oh well, we tried". People really don't understand how hard it is to do something right, you know, the kind of things customers love and will stay in line to buy it. And when an engineer (an actual one) points out some flaw they immediately call him a jerk.

I never understood what people mean by "a jerk/asshole": sometimes they mean an actual jerk but a lot of times it seems to mean "people that don't agree with me".

I've found the way engineers say it is ultimately what gets them labelled as a jerk. It often lacks that hand-holding that business types expect.

People expect respect not hand holding. That kind of comment equating people with children is what gets you rightfully labelled as a jerk.

I worked with many people I disagreed with. We would debate endlessly over how to solve an issue. I've worked with a few people who were assholes. They would lose their cool if anyone disagreed with them, and start threatening, calling names, etc...

I've been in a couple situations in my career where physical altercations even occurred.

Go on...

Haha...let me just say that small companies fighting to stay afloat cause an enormous amount of stress. Every decision is scrutinized and debated. Egos flare and you end up with physical altercations.

Probably the most serious altercation is from the late 90s...the co-owner walked into a meeting, after yelling at the other co-owner for awhile, people stood up and the one co-owner knocked out the other. The one who threw the punch left and we never saw again.

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