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> Your “I told you so” only highlights that you need to construct stronger arguments. Most of the time I'm not been listened to and should have been, I feel li

> Your “I told you so” only highlights that you need to construct stronger arguments. Most of the time I'm not been listened to and should have been, I feel like it is out of apathy or laziness, not out of whether the argument was sufficiently strong. My request "this will not work for X reasons" is almost always followed by "and Y is what we need to do", but Y implies … additional work. The culture of current corporate workplaces are especially insidious for the original person ever learning anything. The additional work implies a scope change, or tickets slipping into the next sprint, which is implicitly frowned upon. You're supposed to be a team player, so when something does — as predicted — break, you fix it (not the original person) as it now needs to get done, and the company doesn't really care who or how the job gets done so long as it is done. (Or, even, the breakage is in your area of expertise, and even more knowledge — and work — is required to fix it than to have avoided it in the first place, enough so that now you're the one who must take care of it.) But, what has the original person learned? Half the time, even if gently prodded, "Hey $coworker, I've taken care of Y here to fix the Z breakage." is just left unresponded to in chat. Did they read it? Who knows. In person is usually just a "Oh, okay." But do they understand that this is what they were warned about, and that it has cost me time, which causes me to be stressed and frustrated? Who knows. (And all the "emotional intelligence" stuff suggests that one must simply suppress that stress & frustration, as emotion has no place in the workplace.) But… I do agree that outright saying "I told you so", IME, rarely results in a positive impact. But, I'm not sure what does.

XorNot 6y ago
The real trick is that caring about anything in the modern corporate workplace is a mistake. Unless you hold equity and board position in the company, then you are completely replaceable at any time for any reason. The only thing you should be doing is ensuring that the chain of decision making is documented so blame flows upwards. And exercise some discretion in ensuring you get away from managers with a track history of poor decision making. Workers don't own the company, and they have almost no power (nor the time to engage in the politicking which would give it) within the decision making structure there. Look after yourself first, and plan to leave when people who do think they have an ownership start making bad decisions.
- dropit_sphere 6y ago
  This really is the answer. In the past I would have regarded this as horribly cynical, but not so now. You're not being paid enough to risk your career by crusading for truth, or to go down with the ship. None of this means you can't or shouldn't do good work, even somewhere badly managed. Do good work, polish your resume, and disappear without a trace.
- flukus 6y ago
  > The real trick is that caring about anything in the modern corporate workplace is a mistake If I could go back 20 years and give myself one piece of mental health advice, this would be it.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    This is an "I told you so" to myself. For all of my carreer I avoided big corporate companies because I just assumed I would hate it, even though at least in the past it maybe sounded more glamorous and I could probably make a lot more money. Recently, through no action of my own, my company was sold to a much larger company. Well I was right. And you have nailed the essential heart of it I think. You just have to not care about what you're doing, how well it could be done, or what tools you're using to do it. Which is just no way to live. But you still have to excel and look good somehow, even with no freedom of movement to excel IN. All you can do is do the pre-scribed wrong things, well.
    - aahortwwy 6y ago
      > You just have to not care about what you're doing You do have to care, you're just mistaken about what it is people in big corporate companies are actually doing. What they're doing is advancing their own careers and those of their network. > how well it could be done Reflected in the rate of advancement, which can be actively maximized through effort and attention. > what tools you're using to do it. The "work" is in fact one of several tools used to advance the career. This is why it is so frequently performed with little care or love. Often it only matters to the career to the extent that it can be declared "done." Most companies lack mechanisms to tie what happens later back to the original doer, so the marginal benefits of care and quality to the career are low. If you care about the actual "work" and craft it's best to find a place with little to no concept of advancement, in my opinion. EDIT: Some people really are just phoning it in for a paycheck, and who can really blame them? Others who may appear to be lazy or careless simply have a different set of priorities. If those priorities offend you but the person is nevertheless succeeding, probably a good idea to move away from that environment.
EsotericAlgo 6y ago
The version of this that continually bites me is when someone is designing what is essentially a distributed system but doesn't know that's what they are designing. System W -> System X -> System Y -> System Z are connected with the assumption no guarantees or coherency checks are needed. Might as well just email spreadsheets...
- 8note 6y ago
  Isn't the usual assumption that team w is responsible for system W to work, team x for system X, etc? And you can figure out who needs to fix a problem when it comes up?
  - EsotericAlgo 6y ago
    Yes, but a path of heartache if the interfaces between systems aren't robust. Say W sends a message to Y but doesn't record the message was sent Y or wait for any sort of ack (say a process that drops a flat file to an FTP server that gets deleted after 7 days). Now someone finds out Y is missing a bunch of things. Who's fixing it and who should be fixing it?

XorNot 6y ago

The real trick is that caring about anything in the modern corporate workplace is a mistake. Unless you hold equity and board position in the company, then you are completely replaceable at any time for any reason. The only thing you should be doing is ensuring that the chain of decision making is documented so blame flows upwards. And exercise some discretion in ensuring you get away from managers with a track history of poor decision making. Workers don't own the company, and they have almost no power (nor the time to engage in the politicking which would give it) within the decision making structure there. Look after yourself first, and plan to leave when people who do think they have an ownership start making bad decisions.

dropit_sphere 6y ago
This really is the answer. In the past I would have regarded this as horribly cynical, but not so now. You're not being paid enough to risk your career by crusading for truth, or to go down with the ship. None of this means you can't or shouldn't do good work, even somewhere badly managed. Do good work, polish your resume, and disappear without a trace.
flukus 6y ago
> The real trick is that caring about anything in the modern corporate workplace is a mistake If I could go back 20 years and give myself one piece of mental health advice, this would be it.
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  This is an "I told you so" to myself. For all of my carreer I avoided big corporate companies because I just assumed I would hate it, even though at least in the past it maybe sounded more glamorous and I could probably make a lot more money. Recently, through no action of my own, my company was sold to a much larger company. Well I was right. And you have nailed the essential heart of it I think. You just have to not care about what you're doing, how well it could be done, or what tools you're using to do it. Which is just no way to live. But you still have to excel and look good somehow, even with no freedom of movement to excel IN. All you can do is do the pre-scribed wrong things, well.
  - aahortwwy 6y ago
    > You just have to not care about what you're doing You do have to care, you're just mistaken about what it is people in big corporate companies are actually doing. What they're doing is advancing their own careers and those of their network. > how well it could be done Reflected in the rate of advancement, which can be actively maximized through effort and attention. > what tools you're using to do it. The "work" is in fact one of several tools used to advance the career. This is why it is so frequently performed with little care or love. Often it only matters to the career to the extent that it can be declared "done." Most companies lack mechanisms to tie what happens later back to the original doer, so the marginal benefits of care and quality to the career are low. If you care about the actual "work" and craft it's best to find a place with little to no concept of advancement, in my opinion. EDIT: Some people really are just phoning it in for a paycheck, and who can really blame them? Others who may appear to be lazy or careless simply have a different set of priorities. If those priorities offend you but the person is nevertheless succeeding, probably a good idea to move away from that environment.

EsotericAlgo 6y ago

The version of this that continually bites me is when someone is designing what is essentially a distributed system but doesn't know that's what they are designing. System W -> System X -> System Y -> System Z are connected with the assumption no guarantees or coherency checks are needed. Might as well just email spreadsheets...

8note 6y ago
Isn't the usual assumption that team w is responsible for system W to work, team x for system X, etc? And you can figure out who needs to fix a problem when it comes up?
- EsotericAlgo 6y ago
  Yes, but a path of heartache if the interfaces between systems aren't robust. Say W sends a message to Y but doesn't record the message was sent Y or wait for any sort of ack (say a process that drops a flat file to an FTP server that gets deleted after 7 days). Now someone finds out Y is missing a bunch of things. Who's fixing it and who should be fixing it?