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For discussion purposes, in order: - A team I enjoy working with. - Career growth, solid pay and benefits. - A culture that doesn't tolerate toxic people

For discussion purposes, in order: - A team I enjoy working with. - Career growth, solid pay and benefits. - A culture that doesn't tolerate toxic people or excessive politics. - A quiet environment where I can concentrate and/or remote work days. - An interesting project. I used to care more about working with resume building technology. As I've gotten older, I care a lot more about interpersonal issues and my work environment.

friendzis 10y ago
Would you care to elaborate on what you consider to be toxic people? I have met people that are hell to work and/or interact with, though the word toxic does not come to mind when trying to describe them, therefore I'm curious.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Not the person you're asking, but: To me, "toxic" means that they poison others. Someone can be hard to work with, but if I don't have to work with them very much, I don't have to care. But if the whole group gets tangled up in their drama, then they're poisoning the whole group.
- xapata 10y ago
  Toxic meaning they make everyone around them bad as well. Like, my brother isn't a drunk, but when that old friend from high school comes around...
- jrs235 10y ago
  >what you consider to be toxic people? Narcissists, scoffers, and people with insolent pride
- joeax 10y ago
  A toxic person is someone who becomes an impediment to you getting your work done, either directly by sabotaging your efforts or indirectly by mobilizing others on your team against you.
- pascalxus 10y ago
  The problem isn't toxic people. No one wakes up saying, gee, it's a great day to be toxic today. The problem is toxic environments that incentivize people to become toxic. This usually happens due to overly stressed environments, that don't have Work/life balance, with deadlines that are way too aggressive, thus culminating in a pressure cooker environment, that's sure to blow up sooner or later. Once, you relax those constraints, everything else can work out and people don't have to become toxic.
  - mikehollinger 10y ago
    The Dead Sea Effect [1] nicely describes this sort of "toxic environment" in a pretty well-written piece from 2008. In the author's case, he traces it back to the inability to bring people into and out of an organization. [1] http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
  - friendzis 10y ago
    Strangely, the worst people I had to deal with were self-centered little-capable know-it-all egoists. Whatever question arises they have their opinion and know better. Thrown at a problem they try to raise their hands and float out of there or half-ass minimum viable prototype and leave it for others to fix. They go out of their way to make things suit their personal agenda. Need half of their hour to make a release? Sorry, cannot delay my daily jog. They promised something will be done (probably to client)? Will try to maneuver three levels of management to coerce someone to do it, because they lack competence to do it themselves and are not willing to learn. Such were the people I found barely bearable to work next to.
    - jrs235 10y ago
      These are more than likely narcissists. And they are extremely toxic and dangerous. It is best to avoid them, keep them away, or leave if you can't make them leave.
  - jrs235 10y ago
    I don't completely agree with your assertion. A toxic narcissist person will create a toxic environment and if the person is not dealt with immediately then the consequence is an environment that incentivizes toxic behavior which results in other people being or appearing to also be toxic. The narcissist wants/needs the appearance of other people being toxic so they can hide among them and keep people from pointing at them.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
I'd put your third item above your second, and your fifth above your fourth. Despite my nitpicking, that's a really solid list.
xapata 10y ago
I've narrowed my list down: 1. A team I like working with. 2. Enough pay to support my lifestyle. As I've gotten older, I've discovered that what I do doesn't matter, only who I do it with. Oh, and my health.
ryandrake 10y ago
I've found over the years that technologies don't build resumes, results do. If you can say that you designed, implemented and tested software for $COMPANY's $PRODUCT resulting in $NUMBER successful product launches worth $N million in revenue, it doesn't matter so much what the technology used was. My resume used to be a laundry list of platforms and languages, but it was not as effective as when I re-wrote it to focus on business results. Now that I'm more focused on management, I don't even mention the technologies I've used, except for what I'm current on (current job).
silversmith 10y ago
I guess I didn't go in the details enough - the professor asked me to steer the research more towards what could be applied in hiring process. You can show solid pay and interesting projects in an interview, but interpersonal relations and culture take time to clarify. For example, when I started working in my current company, I couldn't stand another guy there. But over the next year I both came to recognise what he was doing as highly important for the company, and found a perfectly ordinary human being underneath the image left by the first impression. Today we are often working together on projects, and both benefitting from each others skill set. But I absolutely loathed the guy on the first day.

friendzis 10y ago

Would you care to elaborate on what you consider to be toxic people? I have met people that are hell to work and/or interact with, though the word toxic does not come to mind when trying to describe them, therefore I'm curious.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Not the person you're asking, but: To me, "toxic" means that they poison others. Someone can be hard to work with, but if I don't have to work with them very much, I don't have to care. But if the whole group gets tangled up in their drama, then they're poisoning the whole group.
xapata 10y ago
Toxic meaning they make everyone around them bad as well. Like, my brother isn't a drunk, but when that old friend from high school comes around...
jrs235 10y ago
>what you consider to be toxic people? Narcissists, scoffers, and people with insolent pride
joeax 10y ago
A toxic person is someone who becomes an impediment to you getting your work done, either directly by sabotaging your efforts or indirectly by mobilizing others on your team against you.
pascalxus 10y ago
The problem isn't toxic people. No one wakes up saying, gee, it's a great day to be toxic today. The problem is toxic environments that incentivize people to become toxic. This usually happens due to overly stressed environments, that don't have Work/life balance, with deadlines that are way too aggressive, thus culminating in a pressure cooker environment, that's sure to blow up sooner or later. Once, you relax those constraints, everything else can work out and people don't have to become toxic.
- mikehollinger 10y ago
  The Dead Sea Effect [1] nicely describes this sort of "toxic environment" in a pretty well-written piece from 2008. In the author's case, he traces it back to the inability to bring people into and out of an organization. [1] http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
- friendzis 10y ago
  Strangely, the worst people I had to deal with were self-centered little-capable know-it-all egoists. Whatever question arises they have their opinion and know better. Thrown at a problem they try to raise their hands and float out of there or half-ass minimum viable prototype and leave it for others to fix. They go out of their way to make things suit their personal agenda. Need half of their hour to make a release? Sorry, cannot delay my daily jog. They promised something will be done (probably to client)? Will try to maneuver three levels of management to coerce someone to do it, because they lack competence to do it themselves and are not willing to learn. Such were the people I found barely bearable to work next to.
  - jrs235 10y ago
    These are more than likely narcissists. And they are extremely toxic and dangerous. It is best to avoid them, keep them away, or leave if you can't make them leave.
- jrs235 10y ago
  I don't completely agree with your assertion. A toxic narcissist person will create a toxic environment and if the person is not dealt with immediately then the consequence is an environment that incentivizes toxic behavior which results in other people being or appearing to also be toxic. The narcissist wants/needs the appearance of other people being toxic so they can hide among them and keep people from pointing at them.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

I'd put your third item above your second, and your fifth above your fourth. Despite my nitpicking, that's a really solid list.

xapata 10y ago

I've narrowed my list down: 1. A team I like working with. 2. Enough pay to support my lifestyle. As I've gotten older, I've discovered that what I do doesn't matter, only who I do it with. Oh, and my health.

ryandrake 10y ago

I've found over the years that technologies don't build resumes, results do. If you can say that you designed, implemented and tested software for $COMPANY's $PRODUCT resulting in $NUMBER successful product launches worth $N million in revenue, it doesn't matter so much what the technology used was. My resume used to be a laundry list of platforms and languages, but it was not as effective as when I re-wrote it to focus on business results. Now that I'm more focused on management, I don't even mention the technologies I've used, except for what I'm current on (current job).

silversmith 10y ago

I guess I didn't go in the details enough - the professor asked me to steer the research more towards what could be applied in hiring process. You can show solid pay and interesting projects in an interview, but interpersonal relations and culture take time to clarify. For example, when I started working in my current company, I couldn't stand another guy there. But over the next year I both came to recognise what he was doing as highly important for the company, and found a perfectly ordinary human being underneath the image left by the first impression. Today we are often working together on projects, and both benefitting from each others skill set. But I absolutely loathed the guy on the first day.