5 ms·

I had an interesting case a few years back... I was supposed to follow the spec exactly. However, in all the UI/UX diagrams myself and team were given, there wa

I had an interesting case a few years back... I was supposed to follow the spec exactly. However, in all the UI/UX diagrams myself and team were given, there was no “close window” or “back buttons”. This included things like pop up notifications. I went ahead and implemented it anyway. Then sent them to the design team to ask if I should remove (took under an hour of work). I was later reprimanded for not following the spec, BUT they kept my implementation and design. This is one experience that sticks out because I was reprimanded. However, I’d say every project I’ve been on has been at least 10% of the the final project designed & implemented by engineers on the spot. Beyond UI design decisions engineering can have a major impact on UX. Every single function can make-or-break the experience. That’s why we, as engineers, wield a lot of power.

Faaak 8y ago
I would've gone against them: either you reprimand me and we take out the feature, or we keep it and then you thank me.
- unkulunkulu 8y ago
  Exactly my thinking, totally irresponsible behavior on the part of design team
- PretzelFisch 8y ago
  At that point it's best to find a new employer. It sounds like there was some weird ego game being played.
rossenberg79 8y ago
On small things like this it’s easy to just gaslight people into thinking they told you it was ok. You can just explain it was such a small detail they probably don’t remember you brought it up and they said it was ok. If they say no, just double down and keep insisting and as long as there are no records of your conversations you will win.
- unkulunkulu 8y ago
  Lol the problem with gaslighting is not that it’s not easier in some contexts but that it is an actual act of aggression
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    For a more cynical take on why GP's advice is bad, it also breaks down trust in communication. If I catch you trying to gaslight me once I have to run all of your future statements through a more strict truthiness parser in my head, and I'll place less trust in statements you make that are actually true. People who perceive themselves as smarter than the average bear can sometimes believe that they possess the mental prowess to lie without being caught, and this is often true, but the one time it isn't true it can have devastating effects on interpersonal relationships and communication. I don't even judge people negatively for all lies, if you lie about a detail of your personal life while in a work setting there could be totally understandable privacy reasons for that where a non-answer would have a different effect than a hard "no." But if you lie about prior decision making processes, that breaks down trust in the exact domain that we need trust in. It poisons the well, and that isn't worth a little less friction in one specific decision making process.
    - rossenberg79 8y ago
      Trust goes both ways, if you are going to reprimand me in the future for implementing a needed feature but then go ahead and use it anyway and even take credit for it then I will gaslight you next time the same problem comes up.
      - blotter_paper 8y ago
        I don't know all the details of your specific situation, but from what I've read it does seem that your superior was in the wrong. As others have noted, this is a situation where it might be clever to look for a new employer. That being said I don't think passive aggressive lies and manipulation are a smart response. I also don't think that the actions of your superior break down communication in the same way that gaslighting does. Reprimanding somebody while still eventually using their idea can be recognized as an asshole move whether or not it affects "trust." Being an asshole isn't a great trait in a work environment, or life in general for that matter, but I know plenty of assholes who I still probabilistically trust not to lie to me. Finally, and I'm not saying this is the case in your specific negative experience, I can imagine scenarios where some light reprimand might be useful even if the idea implemented is ultimately accepted, like, "hey, that was a good idea, but it affects something above your paygrade and we really want you to go through this process[0] when making these sorts of decisions in the future." I don't think that applies to your back buttons, but I can imagine scenarios where accepting an idea while lightly reprimanding a failure to communicate during the decision making processes could make sense. Edit: I can see how the "and even take credit" part breaks down trust in a similar way. I still don't think further trust-destruction is a clever response. I would leave, call them out on the lie, or (if not in a position to risk unemployment by pissing off a superior) bite my tongue and try to rise through the ranks. Other edit: typo. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19832774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19832774
yowlingcat 8y ago
I've dealt with a designer before that said very literally and in no uncertain terms that there was no need for me to be involved in the high level feature design because he only needed to talk to the frontend engineer "actually implementing it" -- deeply ironic, given this feature was 95% core backend engineering, and so was in my wheelhouse. And so I ended up silently building the feature the way I suggested, and although he hemmed and hawed, he (and the rest of the team) later on conceded I was right. FWIW, I view this more a failure of product management than anything. This should never have become an argument or adversarial interaction between engineering and design, and it's occurrence was to me a sign that things had procedurally failed quite a bit earlier. I'm happy I was able to save the project and get it to a successful launch (and certainly took the commensurate amount of credit), but I do wish some designers and product folks had more of a sense of awareness for how frequently this happens.
- mwfunk 8y ago
  I think the most interesting things to create are often the work of groups of people who all have very different areas of expertise. Everybody's working together towards the same final product, but everyone has their own mental model of how that process works, and no one person can really see the full picture (like the story about the blind men and the elephant). I've worked in different sorts of crossfunctional teams over the years at different companies in different industries- sometimes the other people are designers, or scientists, or people from other engineering disciplines who aren't down in the weeds like I am on the software side of things. Or sometimes they're the customers/clients/whatever, and are making specifications in a technical vacuum. I think it's 100% pure human nature to always assume that one's own piece is the most complicated or meaningful part of a project, whereas other people's roles are more straightforward implementation details. I don't think it's from selfishness or conceit, rather it's plain old cognitive bias that we're all susceptible to. You know much more about all the stuff that needs to be done in your part of the system, and are painfully aware of the risks and challenges. You generally don't know nearly as much about the tasks other people are doing in other layers or fields, and from the outside looking in, it seems like everything is always more simple and straightforward than it actually is. Even people like managers or designers who generally aren't concerned with minute technical details are susceptible to this type of cognitive bias. They play much more creative roles, in which they're literally deciding what the final thing is going to be, but with little or no guidance for how it should be done. That's up to the worker elves who have to assemble the component parts into the desired gizmo. Since the worker elves' reason for employment is assembling parts into gizmos, the people playing more purely creative roles always face a moral hazard of assuming that problems assembling their visions are due to failings of the worker elves themselves, rather than inherent weaknesses in the vision.
aitchnyu 8y ago
Reminds me the funny/painful pic of 'Profile updated successfully' inside an obvious error dialog.

Faaak 8y ago

I would've gone against them: either you reprimand me and we take out the feature, or we keep it and then you thank me.

unkulunkulu 8y ago
Exactly my thinking, totally irresponsible behavior on the part of design team
PretzelFisch 8y ago
At that point it's best to find a new employer. It sounds like there was some weird ego game being played.

rossenberg79 8y ago

On small things like this it’s easy to just gaslight people into thinking they told you it was ok. You can just explain it was such a small detail they probably don’t remember you brought it up and they said it was ok. If they say no, just double down and keep insisting and as long as there are no records of your conversations you will win.

unkulunkulu 8y ago
Lol the problem with gaslighting is not that it’s not easier in some contexts but that it is an actual act of aggression
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  For a more cynical take on why GP's advice is bad, it also breaks down trust in communication. If I catch you trying to gaslight me once I have to run all of your future statements through a more strict truthiness parser in my head, and I'll place less trust in statements you make that are actually true. People who perceive themselves as smarter than the average bear can sometimes believe that they possess the mental prowess to lie without being caught, and this is often true, but the one time it isn't true it can have devastating effects on interpersonal relationships and communication. I don't even judge people negatively for all lies, if you lie about a detail of your personal life while in a work setting there could be totally understandable privacy reasons for that where a non-answer would have a different effect than a hard "no." But if you lie about prior decision making processes, that breaks down trust in the exact domain that we need trust in. It poisons the well, and that isn't worth a little less friction in one specific decision making process.
  - rossenberg79 8y ago
    Trust goes both ways, if you are going to reprimand me in the future for implementing a needed feature but then go ahead and use it anyway and even take credit for it then I will gaslight you next time the same problem comes up.
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      I don't know all the details of your specific situation, but from what I've read it does seem that your superior was in the wrong. As others have noted, this is a situation where it might be clever to look for a new employer. That being said I don't think passive aggressive lies and manipulation are a smart response. I also don't think that the actions of your superior break down communication in the same way that gaslighting does. Reprimanding somebody while still eventually using their idea can be recognized as an asshole move whether or not it affects "trust." Being an asshole isn't a great trait in a work environment, or life in general for that matter, but I know plenty of assholes who I still probabilistically trust not to lie to me. Finally, and I'm not saying this is the case in your specific negative experience, I can imagine scenarios where some light reprimand might be useful even if the idea implemented is ultimately accepted, like, "hey, that was a good idea, but it affects something above your paygrade and we really want you to go through this process[0] when making these sorts of decisions in the future." I don't think that applies to your back buttons, but I can imagine scenarios where accepting an idea while lightly reprimanding a failure to communicate during the decision making processes could make sense. Edit: I can see how the "and even take credit" part breaks down trust in a similar way. I still don't think further trust-destruction is a clever response. I would leave, call them out on the lie, or (if not in a position to risk unemployment by pissing off a superior) bite my tongue and try to rise through the ranks. Other edit: typo. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19832774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19832774

yowlingcat 8y ago

I've dealt with a designer before that said very literally and in no uncertain terms that there was no need for me to be involved in the high level feature design because he only needed to talk to the frontend engineer "actually implementing it" -- deeply ironic, given this feature was 95% core backend engineering, and so was in my wheelhouse. And so I ended up silently building the feature the way I suggested, and although he hemmed and hawed, he (and the rest of the team) later on conceded I was right. FWIW, I view this more a failure of product management than anything. This should never have become an argument or adversarial interaction between engineering and design, and it's occurrence was to me a sign that things had procedurally failed quite a bit earlier. I'm happy I was able to save the project and get it to a successful launch (and certainly took the commensurate amount of credit), but I do wish some designers and product folks had more of a sense of awareness for how frequently this happens.

mwfunk 8y ago
I think the most interesting things to create are often the work of groups of people who all have very different areas of expertise. Everybody's working together towards the same final product, but everyone has their own mental model of how that process works, and no one person can really see the full picture (like the story about the blind men and the elephant). I've worked in different sorts of crossfunctional teams over the years at different companies in different industries- sometimes the other people are designers, or scientists, or people from other engineering disciplines who aren't down in the weeds like I am on the software side of things. Or sometimes they're the customers/clients/whatever, and are making specifications in a technical vacuum. I think it's 100% pure human nature to always assume that one's own piece is the most complicated or meaningful part of a project, whereas other people's roles are more straightforward implementation details. I don't think it's from selfishness or conceit, rather it's plain old cognitive bias that we're all susceptible to. You know much more about all the stuff that needs to be done in your part of the system, and are painfully aware of the risks and challenges. You generally don't know nearly as much about the tasks other people are doing in other layers or fields, and from the outside looking in, it seems like everything is always more simple and straightforward than it actually is. Even people like managers or designers who generally aren't concerned with minute technical details are susceptible to this type of cognitive bias. They play much more creative roles, in which they're literally deciding what the final thing is going to be, but with little or no guidance for how it should be done. That's up to the worker elves who have to assemble the component parts into the desired gizmo. Since the worker elves' reason for employment is assembling parts into gizmos, the people playing more purely creative roles always face a moral hazard of assuming that problems assembling their visions are due to failings of the worker elves themselves, rather than inherent weaknesses in the vision.

aitchnyu 8y ago

Reminds me the funny/painful pic of 'Profile updated successfully' inside an obvious error dialog.