Ask HN: How to help a shy developer to participate to a team? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to help a shy developer to participate to a team?

19 pointsdarlyy34 comments

Hello HN,

I recruited a junior developer for my company who I knew to be very shy and reserved. He has been working with us for almost a year in an open-minded and low-hierarchical company.

He is a good player, but his shyness prevents him from sharing its ideas and contributing to the company's progress like any other employee.

Do you have effective management techniques that I could use to help him?

I'll probably suggest him to make small informal technical talks within the team or even in public to show him that he has things to share. But i'm sure some people tested very good method.

Thanks for your responses \o/

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I'm a senior dev, and generally reserved. I will make a suggestion once if I think it's worth pursuing, but never again. Louder devs get their way over me often. I don't mind. It's exhausting defending your reasoning to people who want to shout theirs instead of reason things out calmly and quietly together.

If you're happy with his "good player"ness, then leave him the hell alone. People trying to crack me out of my shell "because reasons" get an opposing and forceful response from me. I hate feeling manipulated against my will, and if you want me to be some sort of performative marionette and not a coder, then we're not right for each other, and I will be leaving soon.

Weigh where you value this developer. Not everyone gives a hang about "contributing to the company's progress" in the macro, and are content with micro problems.

I say this as a Sr. who has been somehow railroaded into a Lead/Management role that I loathe, and it has ruined a great situation for me, and it will soon ruin it for my employer. And my manager doesn't understand my objections, as many times as I have told him.

$0.02. Have you bothered to ask this dev if his quietness is indicative of anything other than his shyness and reservedness that you already knew and are somehow not respecting? Maybe Email it and await his response. It might blow your hair back. The howler you'd get from me, if I respected you enough to be honest, would certainly adjust your posture. :)

How does a company make sure a person like you is happy? Genuine question. I always worried when working as a team leader that hearing nothing bad might be bad (and I miss a reason that someone has left). I guess you are not shy in a 1-1 to say you are unhappy about something?

Money, obviously

I just want to add that being "low-hierarchical" sounds great, but often it just creates implicit informal hierarchies based on seniority, expertise, past relationships, etc. For some people, this can be harder to navigate than traditional hierarchies that are more clear and explicit.

Whether this is part of the problem here is impossible to say without knowing more about the situation, but it's something to keep in mind. He may see his teammates as less approachable than you do.

Has he shown any initiative to become more outgoing? And what would be his incentives for doing so?

It is possible that he sees his situation as perfectly fine and not in need of any correction. In that case any change in his behavior would be caused by pressure from others, and I am not sure this is a good outcome.

I would recommend being explicit about this expectation with him. Some shy people are badly calibrated and have the erroneous impression that they are speaking too much already leading to their low contribution rate. Make him aware of this issue and get his response to why it is happening and working together to address whatever the issue is.

You may also want to directly call on him in meetings to solicit his opinion thereby forcing him to speak ("Hey Bob, we haven't heard your thoughts yet, what do you think about option XYZ?"). If you do this often enough, he may see that his fears about speaking up are unfounded.

Thanks for the advice. BTW, i've been working with ASD people in the past and they will never communicate until you ask them something.

> You may also want to directly call on him in meetings to solicit his opinion thereby forcing him to speak

Um, so a meeting will go from "very uncomfortable" to "anxiety inducing Russian roulette standup".

You could build a culture where written communications are held in equal status with verbal communications. That might not only help this person, but might activate everyone to start sharing ideas.

I think I can emphasise with him on this one. I get a tremendous amount of anxiety whenever I show anyone my work or anything that I've worked on. The key here, and I think you've got it, is starting small.

But, I mean really small. Do you do much pairing at your company? Just sitting down with him and 1:1 and getting him to show you his stuff and then slowly expanding that group with people that he feels comfortable with. That's what I did anyway - I even did my first conference talk this year.

Do not throw him in the deep end and make him the focus of something that he's not comfortable with. When in a group as well take more pauses so he has a chance to speak and invite his opinion occasionally.

Hope you can work it out, if you can you'll do him a massive favor.

I used to by a shy junior developer. What helped me was that the environment was very friendly and whenever I spoke, I was heard. Not just heard, but if my suggestions were good they enacted upon. If not, I was explained why.

I also had many casual discussions with my manager so that helped me open up with him. Later I had discussions with other (equally welcoming) senior devs. Now the whole team feels like friends to me and I generally don't shy in speaking up.

I'd suggest not trying to change him. Instead, enable him.

Let him share his ideas a way he feels more comfortable (maybe an RFC/document write up he can share via email/slack, etc).

i second this approach, it's a good practice to meet people where they are at and as it is an "open minded" environment, this should be the expectation, not a conformity to the norm.

First, try to understand why he is shy and how exactly is his shyness preventing him from contributing to progress. Is he shy by design, even outside work? Or does he feel like he does not have the psychological safety to speak up? You can get a sense for this by spending some time with him 1:1 outside work and getting to know him as a person.

Second, examine your own relationship with him. Does he trust you as a manager? Is he open to your feedback? If not, you should work on building that relationship - you know how you can/should do that.

Finally, once you have that relationship and understand the root cause, give him constructive and candid feedback. If he's shy by design, you could have a constructive conversation about it - does he perceive it as a weakness? Does he realize that it might be holding him back? Make him think and align on a plan to help him overcome it. If he's not seeing psychological safety in the team, dig into how the team works and make a plan for yourself to fix that.

Then make this part of your regular 1:1s and track progress. Important that he sees that you are vested in his success and are genuinely helping him.

Needless to say, this assumes that you want him on the team and help him become a better version of himself.

This 1000x.

Psychological safety is by far the most important requirement for group participation. You could be doing everything right for people in the middle of the bell curve and still have this person struggling because of something very specific to their childhood or personal experience.

Could you share about the way leaders plan, execute, and communicate effectively?

Do you have an email address or a contact method?

Yes Chandra dot Kalle at Gmail

We have a voluntary reading group that meets once a week. There is a constantly growing team reading list from which volunteers pick and present 5 minute summaries at the weekly meeting. Usually just a round table conversation, but sometimes a blackboard gets used. Works quite well in building up comfort level and confidence of the more reserved types.

First, try to make taking on challenges and self-improvement part of group culture.

You can introduce your team to various books/videos/articles around people overcoming all sorts of challenges on a day to day basis.

Such an environment motivates everyone to take on challenges: fitness, intellectual, social, and so on.

It is important not to single out anyone on a particular dimension. Acknowledge that we are all lacking in one area or the other - so make it a general team thing, something super normal within your group to work on enhancing both strengths/weaknesses.

As a practical step - share your own shortcomings, and how you have/are overcoming them. This sort of personal struggle, and your efforts to overcome will motivate others to share their own struggles and overcome them.

I had a similar situation with a junior dev in our team some time ago. He would only ever contribute a sentence or 2 into any meeting when asked upon, otherwise would be silent.

We discussed it and tried a few things, but ultimately what worked for him was to write down some bullet points about what he wanted to say before a meeting. This gave him time to do the thinking up front and relaxed him greatly.

Turns out he was really quite clever and chatty. It can just be very intimidating to think and talk on the spot amongst a group of experienced peers.

If you have enough of a bond, I'd have a chat with him. I'd explain that as a smart person and valued member of the team his verbal output would really help. I'd say his perspective would be great to hear more as you know he has the skills to have good judgement. Obviously this would need tailored to the person at hand but, I have had good results with this method.

Ultimately they may never be the most chatty member of the team but some output is far better than none and encourages the contribution to grow.

“The Loudest Duck” is full of advice for (at least some variations) on this situation.

What does he say about why he’s reserved at work?

Encourage junior developers to speak first to avoid embarassing themselves in front of senior developers.

Maybe collaborating and theory crafting on a task could take the pressure off his ego and image. Focusing on him could be a mistake, getting him wrapped up in a group task could be enough to dissolve the shyness.

I would suggest a combination of pair-programming, coding dojos and code reviews with NO force to participate.

1. pair programming

Pair programming, if done correctly, encourages you to communicate with your partner. If he is shy, he won't be to excited about it, so I would start giving him the possibility to attend a pair-programming session of two other developers working at a pretty trivial task.

2. coding dojos

Participating a coding dojo and solving a problem in groups of 2 or 3 devs can support you not being shy about presenting your solution. A fizz-buzz unit testing dojo maybe would be too trivial, but I think adventofcode[1] may provide some interesting problems that have nothing to do with your daily tasks.

3. Code reviews

Weekly 45 minute code reviews build up a regular practise and knowlege transfer. My recommendation would be that you start by having a conversation about a piece of code, that everybody likes to get into a positive mood. Presenting something that you are proud of can be a problem but discussing a problem about an existing solition is often a common ground.

[1]: https://adventofcode.com/

If the guy is just - for want of a better word - genetically shy and a sole-contributor type who likes to take tasks and bunker down and churn out code, implementing any of these suggestions will probably make them snap quit.

I think the better question to ask here is, can you get the input you're looking for out of the guy through a method that best suits their style. These suggestions are very 'force the round peg into the square hole' - like; the guy's shy? ok, we'll fix that by ramming him into situations where shyness isn't permissible until he gets over himself.

It may be better to figure out how they can best deliver their contributions; some people prefer to digest input and write emails than engage in a 'face to face' because they see that as inherently adversarial and tend to back down.

At the end of the day, not everyone is going to be able to stand up and advocate loudly for themselves in a group scenario; that does not make them a bad contributor. You need to evaluate their ability and ensure that your processes do not mean that an insistence on 'face to face, talk it out, say what you mean' style of communication in the business results in their contributions getting steamrollered.

Amen. When I read the OP's post, I thought it could have been my manager. I am reserved, not outgoing, but I'm a team player. I prefer to take tasks, especially larger ones and bunker down exactly as you said.

I'm pretty useless in sprint refinements with asking questions in a group setting, but if I'm given a set of requirements or mockups, I'll knock it out of the park every time. Been doing it this way for almost decades now. I didn't snap quit when a previous employer started trying to get me more sociable but I was gone within a few months.

OP would be well-served to take your suggestions if they want the developer to stay.

I really learned something from this post. Obviously till today I did not understand REALLY shy people, nor ever had a collegue THIS shy.

If anyhow I ever get into such a situation, I feel better prepared.

Thank you.

We aim to please

As an EM I'd advise you to consider if this person simply isn't outgoing or talkative.

Some people are shy or reserved, some people are happy to follow and go with the flow.

Trying to force a shy person to be outgoing can backfire and you'll lose a valuable teammate.

You could perhaps hire an improv coach for a team workshop. Level one improv is all about building team rapport and helping individuals feel more comfortable contributing in a supportive group.

> You could perhaps hire an improv coach for a team workshop.

Can't personally think of anything more likely to make an entire team quit in unison.

Agreed. A company I used to work for did a half-day improv workshop. It really did teach us a few things that have made a lasting improvement on my communications at work. But it also was the day that solidified my decision to leave that company... not right away, but I knew from that day on that I was a short-timer.

It isn't that the workshop was bad, or uncomfortable. They did a good job making it work for everyone. It was more of a realization of how blind the leadership was to truly understanding their people and finding ways to work together that made us all thrive.

It's called 'work' and not 'fun'. Gotta set the expectation that part of the job is not just being a code-monkey but being able to communicate effectively. Time to work on a plan together to improve communication.

Yes there is the "do what your paid for and quit whining" approach to leadership. But often being a good boss is worth more than a 20% rise. The stress of dealing with shitty bosses is just not worth it. Anything with the "your my subordinate get on with it" attitude just makes for a stinky job. Any boss that uses the word "code-monkey" is not for me.

Clearly the OP sees the net problem and wants to fix it. But you want to do it in a win-win way.

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