4 ms·

This is crazy. He is the CEO of an 800 person company and the people talking to him sound like they are completely unprepared for the conversation. Of course th

by duado 8y ago

This is crazy. He is the CEO of an 800 person company and the people talking to him sound like they are completely unprepared for the conversation. Of course the third argument needs to be fucking documented! Their response should have been "yes, this is a clear bad, we'll fix the documentation by tomorrow's meeting." Not just sit silently on the call while the CEO has to go do it themselves.

copperx 8y ago
The people there sound like I did on my thesis progress reports after I had been out drinking with friends. As much as I was ready to hate on Wolfram given his reputation, he's completely justified about his complaints, and he's being professional about it. I see nothing "toxic" about this conversation, as others have mentioned. He is completely focused on the work; there are no personal attacks. The main interlocutor sounds like he is taking things personally.
- duado 8y ago
  Frankly a good CEO would not tolerate this bullshit or promote people like this. My guess is people there are promoted on technical merit alone which means that there must be a lot of smart fucking people there but with obviously poor task execution skills.
anjc 8y ago
It's obvious that these people are not stupid and understand that interfaces need to be documented. They are instead confused. I've had micromanagers like SW before, and have been confused many times at the state of something precisely because the micromanager took it upon themselves to "do it themselves" on the fly, just like SW did here. Admitting that it's clearly bad and saying you'll fix it by tomorrow would be a neverending pursuit, because the micromanager's meddling is constant and touches everything. No doubt somebody else will now be confused that this third parameter is suddenly documented when it was a task delegated to them, and somebody else is confused because they were told to deprecate the parameter.
- duado 8y ago
  The difference between a micromanager and a detail-oriented manager is the micromanager tells you how to do it, the detail-oriented manager tells you what to do. I only see detail orientation here. Even the string to describe the API was written by Wolfram even after he asked for suggestions. I’d expect them to jump in and commit to fixing it themselves.

by duado 8y ago

copperx 8y ago

The people there sound like I did on my thesis progress reports after I had been out drinking with friends. As much as I was ready to hate on Wolfram given his reputation, he's completely justified about his complaints, and he's being professional about it. I see nothing "toxic" about this conversation, as others have mentioned. He is completely focused on the work; there are no personal attacks. The main interlocutor sounds like he is taking things personally.

duado 8y ago
Frankly a good CEO would not tolerate this bullshit or promote people like this. My guess is people there are promoted on technical merit alone which means that there must be a lot of smart fucking people there but with obviously poor task execution skills.

anjc 8y ago

It's obvious that these people are not stupid and understand that interfaces need to be documented. They are instead confused. I've had micromanagers like SW before, and have been confused many times at the state of something precisely because the micromanager took it upon themselves to "do it themselves" on the fly, just like SW did here. Admitting that it's clearly bad and saying you'll fix it by tomorrow would be a neverending pursuit, because the micromanager's meddling is constant and touches everything. No doubt somebody else will now be confused that this third parameter is suddenly documented when it was a task delegated to them, and somebody else is confused because they were told to deprecate the parameter.

duado 8y ago
The difference between a micromanager and a detail-oriented manager is the micromanager tells you how to do it, the detail-oriented manager tells you what to do. I only see detail orientation here. Even the string to describe the API was written by Wolfram even after he asked for suggestions. I’d expect them to jump in and commit to fixing it themselves.