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I also think this shows a few red flags of the author. Definitely not a team player, runs from boring stuff (instead of challenging it or trying to fix it), and

I also think this shows a few red flags of the author. Definitely not a team player, runs from boring stuff (instead of challenging it or trying to fix it), and then hides in a corner a few days instead of actually talking to the manager (who thought the person was busy a few days with the onboarding, so naturally didn't show them a desk yet).

deleted 6y ago
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stingraycharles 6y ago
It’s just a cultural fit issue. Different people have different personalities / preferences, and what may be one person’s “red flag” may be the other person’s preference.
- twblalock 6y ago
  Not all preferences are reasonable. I've seen multiple posts by the author of this piece and I wouldn't want to work with that person. I've worked with people who have similar personalities, and it's just not worth it. You can find competent people who are easier to get along with.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    What does worth it mean to you? I worked relatively near the author of this post in the past, and she’s totally brilliant. Saved our company’s ass over and over again. I personally learned a ton from her and still look up to her immensely even though she left behind a mean (anonymous) complaint about me and probably thinks not very highly of me :p
    - pedro2 6y ago
      How old are you? I’m in my thirties and if someone left a mean anonymous note about me I would be pissy about that for a few years before I’d find it mildly amusing. Congrats! (in case there is doubt: not being sarcastic)
      - dkersten 6y ago
        Yeah, mean anonymous notes are childish. Be an adult and have a conversation with the person you have a problem with.
        huffmsa 6y ago
        Or put your name on it. John Hancock didn't sign "Concerned Former British Citizen"
        Lammy 6y ago
        I understand what you're getting at here and my hypocrisy did cross my mind when I was typing my comment, but please recognize the power imbalance between somebody like me who is very junior in their career and a visibly-brilliant 20X Engineer with an established audience. It's terrifying to think of the reputational and career ramifications of being a War Story topic for somebody in that very influential camp. My late-night comment wording wasn't the best, and what I was trying (and perhaps failing) to get at was that Rachel belongs to a class of engineer so outstandingly capable that dealing with any faults they may have is still totally worth it. Definitely so on an overall-corporate-success level, but even so on the very personal level. I learned so much by just being in her orbit for a brief point in time that I'd still jump at the chance to be in that position again despite how scared I know I would be of fucking anything else up. The career growth via skill osmosis is worth it to me.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Nah, I didn't mean it like that. I'm a big boy and can handle criticism. It was just hurtful to read a rant about myself from someone I considered kind of an idol before that. It wasn't incorrect or undeserved at all but I just wished I'd been asked my side. I'd rather not identify myself to explain more, especially since Rachel comments here. (Hi Rachel, keep being awesome and ignore the haters!)
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > What does worth it mean to you? Not the parent, not having a strong opinion on the author, but have felt similar about some people in the past. "Difficult to work with" is an issue, and I too prefer to avoid people that sort into that category. They'd have to be actually brilliant to make up for it, just being really, really good doesn't cut it. Why? Because they add friction to things, and they poison the team's ability to get work done. Difficult people are not fun to work with, so everyone avoids them. And then they avoid using things the difficult person built because using it would mean you'd have to work with them if you run into issues, or want to improve it etc. It's just much easier to find people that are easy to work with, and working with them is much more enjoyable. Even if they were not as good, my personal experience is that replacing one difficult person with two others is well worth it. A happy team is way more productive and makes up for it easily, so accepting someone that's difficult to work with is generally "not worth it" to me.
    - rachelbythebay 6y ago
      Uh... what?
tinus_hn 6y ago
Walks in the door and starts whining about the touchbar MacBook.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't really get the part about the Touch Bar MacBook. How is that relevant or how is it a red flag on the company's part? Did she request a MacBook Air or something?
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    It's relevant as a stressor. It's a device not used by the author previously, and does weird janky things, distracting them from otherwise being able to work. I've gotta say I was in a similar situation with regards to new unknown hardware last year. They hand me a new-ish Macbook Pro, wireless keyboard and mouse, and point me at a desk. It's not new hardware, and it never operated together so I spend way too long trying to figure out why the fuck there's no "Pair device" button, or anything like that on the Mac OS hardware. After struggling and trying various online tutorials which involve holding the mouse near the screen while you turn it on - I finally ask for help and someone points out that I can just plug the USB/Thunderbolt cable in. What USB/Thunderbolt cable? Oh the one that someone else stole to charge their iphone, I guess. Meanwhile I'm being bombarded with a ton of forms and shit I have to sign up with and people from all over messaging me to welcome me to the company and "Can you do x,y,z real quick..." As it was, I was a nervous wreck for the rest of the day second guessing everything that didn't quite work like I expected (weird OSX-isms), and worried about looking like some new overpaid idiot that doesn't even know how to operate a computer.
- isoskeles 6y ago
  Doesn't say she uttered anything out loud about what a garbage laptop it is. But why not? At that point, I'd rather just bring my own hardware. I'd rather have just about anything else, a less powerful Macbook Air, a Thinkpad, a Dell XPS, almost anything. I'll take a wired keyboard ducttaped on top of the Macbook. Touchbar MacBooks are just one more sign of a bureaucratic company that cannot functionally empower any single person who gives enough of a shit to recognize that a lot of people hate the Touchbar. Nope, just someone signs off, "Yeah whatever get them the expensive one, it must be better."
mjburgess 6y ago
That's my read. At a guess, I'd say she's autistic (, I am to some degree, myself). Her comments about company culture and politics -- in other posts -- suggest a kind of obliviousness and her sense of "things being right or else" suggest an intolerance to frustration which is peculiarly autistic. There's a comment by a lyft employee also saying as much. Being aware of it in myself, I have a place to start for resolving these issues without seeming so arrogant/entitled/hostile. I suspect the author does not have the language/insight for that yet. ( I frequently have to stop myself making a 'last stand' on every issue which fails my impossibly strict criteria for Right ). In this case, the HR dept has created a process for HR people: mostly extroverted who think "fun" is about chasing things around and answering pointless questions. I like to think I'd recognise it for what it is though -- something other people enjoy. I dont think this author is able to see that. I think she believes her own stress is a perfect guide to the world being wrong, rather than her own limitations.
- hjek 6y ago
  > I think she believes her own stress is a perfect guide to the world being wrong, rather than her own limitations. I like how she's listening to herself and insisting on some basic human decency. You should always at a minimum insist on your right to walk out of uncomfortable situations. Personally, I'd be doing the exact same thing for similar reasons, and I'd feel bad if others tried to come up with a diagnose for me for trying to minimise emotional stress and eventual burnout.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    She didnt say "I didnt enjoy the HR day and found it stressful". She didnt say she's trying to "minimise emotional stress", she said it was a "redflag". Doing a pointless quiz and being given a macbook pro is a "redflag". This is a person who does not take any responsibility for the stress they feel and attribute it all to some nefarious feature of the environment they are in. What she needs to do here is learn what features of that environment caused her stress, and be self-aware enough to seek out other employement which is structured differently. What will happen if you don't understand yourself well, is that you'll keep thinking its "problems with other people" that you need to "fix". And you can't fix the entire world. You have to learn a compromise for the sake of your own mental health.
meddlin 6y ago
Is the author not a team player or tired of the BS? Would you be willing to have a conversation with a team member like this? If I witnessed your type of response (seemingly defensive) within the first hours/days of starting, I would begin to wonder what kind of change I could impress even if I did take the "approved channels". Ideally, we would pick up on all of this during interviews and go our own ways. It doesn't always work that way though. There is /something/ we have to offer each other. You put up your defenses, I put up mine. And in a short time you're looking for a new hire, and I'm looking for a new place.
janwillemb 6y ago
I agree. Maybe they handed out desks in the onboarding process. At least talk to someone about it instead of punishing yourself by sitting and whining to yourself.
legulere 6y ago
When you join a company you cannot change things that aren’t part of your tasks right away.
- duckface 6y ago
  You can, however, and should, ask for what you need, such as a desk. Not taking responsibility, but stewing, playing the fake victim, then writing a self righteous blog post to complain, when you could have just asked and got a desk. I'm not surprised your experience is not a great one, when you don't communicate then blame others for not knowing what you're missing, and have that entitled and privileged, "Bring me a desk," attitude.
deleted 6y ago
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giantDinosaur 6y ago
It certainly shows a willingness to not be particularly compliant, which is one of the greatest business (or group) sins.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  Agreeableness is an asset in a well-functioning institutions. Disagreeableness is an asset in pathological ones. Disagreeable people, however, often cannot really tell the difference.
brailsafe 6y ago
Upon not being offered the support that a good on-boarding process should include, she worked with other members of the team to solve the problem she was facing and get started on something useful, rather than trudge through the rather pointless series of tasks that were assigned a higher priority than a basic work surface. Sounds like a team player to me.
- ozim 6y ago
  Uhm not what I took from the text: "Some friends who had already been at the company reached out and provided their own take on how to get started, and I went from that." This looks like people from random other teams in the company. Not the team she was hired for. Totally doing her own thing because she had some connections.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    I suppose that particular sentence could be interpreted a number of ways; I see it more as leveraging connections necessarily rather than surreptitiously. Either way, having friends at the company would also help cultivate a sense of optimism that carried her through this time rather than being as significant at the time as many are proposing.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

stingraycharles 6y ago

It’s just a cultural fit issue. Different people have different personalities / preferences, and what may be one person’s “red flag” may be the other person’s preference.

twblalock 6y ago
Not all preferences are reasonable. I've seen multiple posts by the author of this piece and I wouldn't want to work with that person. I've worked with people who have similar personalities, and it's just not worth it. You can find competent people who are easier to get along with.
- Lammy 6y ago
  What does worth it mean to you? I worked relatively near the author of this post in the past, and she’s totally brilliant. Saved our company’s ass over and over again. I personally learned a ton from her and still look up to her immensely even though she left behind a mean (anonymous) complaint about me and probably thinks not very highly of me :p
  - pedro2 6y ago
    How old are you? I’m in my thirties and if someone left a mean anonymous note about me I would be pissy about that for a few years before I’d find it mildly amusing. Congrats! (in case there is doubt: not being sarcastic)
    - dkersten 6y ago
      Yeah, mean anonymous notes are childish. Be an adult and have a conversation with the person you have a problem with.
      - huffmsa 6y ago
        Or put your name on it. John Hancock didn't sign "Concerned Former British Citizen"
      - Lammy 6y ago
        I understand what you're getting at here and my hypocrisy did cross my mind when I was typing my comment, but please recognize the power imbalance between somebody like me who is very junior in their career and a visibly-brilliant 20X Engineer with an established audience. It's terrifying to think of the reputational and career ramifications of being a War Story topic for somebody in that very influential camp. My late-night comment wording wasn't the best, and what I was trying (and perhaps failing) to get at was that Rachel belongs to a class of engineer so outstandingly capable that dealing with any faults they may have is still totally worth it. Definitely so on an overall-corporate-success level, but even so on the very personal level. I learned so much by just being in her orbit for a brief point in time that I'd still jump at the chance to be in that position again despite how scared I know I would be of fucking anything else up. The career growth via skill osmosis is worth it to me.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Nah, I didn't mean it like that. I'm a big boy and can handle criticism. It was just hurtful to read a rant about myself from someone I considered kind of an idol before that. It wasn't incorrect or undeserved at all but I just wished I'd been asked my side. I'd rather not identify myself to explain more, especially since Rachel comments here. (Hi Rachel, keep being awesome and ignore the haters!)
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > What does worth it mean to you? Not the parent, not having a strong opinion on the author, but have felt similar about some people in the past. "Difficult to work with" is an issue, and I too prefer to avoid people that sort into that category. They'd have to be actually brilliant to make up for it, just being really, really good doesn't cut it. Why? Because they add friction to things, and they poison the team's ability to get work done. Difficult people are not fun to work with, so everyone avoids them. And then they avoid using things the difficult person built because using it would mean you'd have to work with them if you run into issues, or want to improve it etc. It's just much easier to find people that are easy to work with, and working with them is much more enjoyable. Even if they were not as good, my personal experience is that replacing one difficult person with two others is well worth it. A happy team is way more productive and makes up for it easily, so accepting someone that's difficult to work with is generally "not worth it" to me.
  - rachelbythebay 6y ago
    Uh... what?

tinus_hn 6y ago

Walks in the door and starts whining about the touchbar MacBook.

Hamuko 6y ago
Yeah, I don't really get the part about the Touch Bar MacBook. How is that relevant or how is it a red flag on the company's part? Did she request a MacBook Air or something?
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  It's relevant as a stressor. It's a device not used by the author previously, and does weird janky things, distracting them from otherwise being able to work. I've gotta say I was in a similar situation with regards to new unknown hardware last year. They hand me a new-ish Macbook Pro, wireless keyboard and mouse, and point me at a desk. It's not new hardware, and it never operated together so I spend way too long trying to figure out why the fuck there's no "Pair device" button, or anything like that on the Mac OS hardware. After struggling and trying various online tutorials which involve holding the mouse near the screen while you turn it on - I finally ask for help and someone points out that I can just plug the USB/Thunderbolt cable in. What USB/Thunderbolt cable? Oh the one that someone else stole to charge their iphone, I guess. Meanwhile I'm being bombarded with a ton of forms and shit I have to sign up with and people from all over messaging me to welcome me to the company and "Can you do x,y,z real quick..." As it was, I was a nervous wreck for the rest of the day second guessing everything that didn't quite work like I expected (weird OSX-isms), and worried about looking like some new overpaid idiot that doesn't even know how to operate a computer.
isoskeles 6y ago
Doesn't say she uttered anything out loud about what a garbage laptop it is. But why not? At that point, I'd rather just bring my own hardware. I'd rather have just about anything else, a less powerful Macbook Air, a Thinkpad, a Dell XPS, almost anything. I'll take a wired keyboard ducttaped on top of the Macbook. Touchbar MacBooks are just one more sign of a bureaucratic company that cannot functionally empower any single person who gives enough of a shit to recognize that a lot of people hate the Touchbar. Nope, just someone signs off, "Yeah whatever get them the expensive one, it must be better."

mjburgess 6y ago

That's my read. At a guess, I'd say she's autistic (, I am to some degree, myself). Her comments about company culture and politics -- in other posts -- suggest a kind of obliviousness and her sense of "things being right or else" suggest an intolerance to frustration which is peculiarly autistic. There's a comment by a lyft employee also saying as much. Being aware of it in myself, I have a place to start for resolving these issues without seeming so arrogant/entitled/hostile. I suspect the author does not have the language/insight for that yet. ( I frequently have to stop myself making a 'last stand' on every issue which fails my impossibly strict criteria for Right ). In this case, the HR dept has created a process for HR people: mostly extroverted who think "fun" is about chasing things around and answering pointless questions. I like to think I'd recognise it for what it is though -- something other people enjoy. I dont think this author is able to see that. I think she believes her own stress is a perfect guide to the world being wrong, rather than her own limitations.

hjek 6y ago
> I think she believes her own stress is a perfect guide to the world being wrong, rather than her own limitations. I like how she's listening to herself and insisting on some basic human decency. You should always at a minimum insist on your right to walk out of uncomfortable situations. Personally, I'd be doing the exact same thing for similar reasons, and I'd feel bad if others tried to come up with a diagnose for me for trying to minimise emotional stress and eventual burnout.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  She didnt say "I didnt enjoy the HR day and found it stressful". She didnt say she's trying to "minimise emotional stress", she said it was a "redflag". Doing a pointless quiz and being given a macbook pro is a "redflag". This is a person who does not take any responsibility for the stress they feel and attribute it all to some nefarious feature of the environment they are in. What she needs to do here is learn what features of that environment caused her stress, and be self-aware enough to seek out other employement which is structured differently. What will happen if you don't understand yourself well, is that you'll keep thinking its "problems with other people" that you need to "fix". And you can't fix the entire world. You have to learn a compromise for the sake of your own mental health.

meddlin 6y ago

Is the author not a team player or tired of the BS? Would you be willing to have a conversation with a team member like this? If I witnessed your type of response (seemingly defensive) within the first hours/days of starting, I would begin to wonder what kind of change I could impress even if I did take the "approved channels". Ideally, we would pick up on all of this during interviews and go our own ways. It doesn't always work that way though. There is /something/ we have to offer each other. You put up your defenses, I put up mine. And in a short time you're looking for a new hire, and I'm looking for a new place.

janwillemb 6y ago

I agree. Maybe they handed out desks in the onboarding process. At least talk to someone about it instead of punishing yourself by sitting and whining to yourself.

legulere 6y ago

When you join a company you cannot change things that aren’t part of your tasks right away.

duckface 6y ago
You can, however, and should, ask for what you need, such as a desk. Not taking responsibility, but stewing, playing the fake victim, then writing a self righteous blog post to complain, when you could have just asked and got a desk. I'm not surprised your experience is not a great one, when you don't communicate then blame others for not knowing what you're missing, and have that entitled and privileged, "Bring me a desk," attitude.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

giantDinosaur 6y ago

It certainly shows a willingness to not be particularly compliant, which is one of the greatest business (or group) sins.

mjburgess 6y ago
Agreeableness is an asset in a well-functioning institutions. Disagreeableness is an asset in pathological ones. Disagreeable people, however, often cannot really tell the difference.

brailsafe 6y ago

Upon not being offered the support that a good on-boarding process should include, she worked with other members of the team to solve the problem she was facing and get started on something useful, rather than trudge through the rather pointless series of tasks that were assigned a higher priority than a basic work surface. Sounds like a team player to me.

ozim 6y ago
Uhm not what I took from the text: "Some friends who had already been at the company reached out and provided their own take on how to get started, and I went from that." This looks like people from random other teams in the company. Not the team she was hired for. Totally doing her own thing because she had some connections.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  I suppose that particular sentence could be interpreted a number of ways; I see it more as leveraging connections necessarily rather than surreptitiously. Either way, having friends at the company would also help cultivate a sense of optimism that carried her through this time rather than being as significant at the time as many are proposing.