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> all those networking opportunities which help you find your next job have been debilitated. Well, not all of them. Do your job well while being someone fun t

> all those networking opportunities which help you find your next job have been debilitated. Well, not all of them. Do your job well while being someone fun to work with. People will remember that, especially the ones in your age group. The people I worked with when I was younger are now in positions where they can let me know about jobs and recommend me for them, and I am in that position too for them. This situation is not great, but keep moving forward as best as you can.

acituan 6y ago
> Do your job well while being someone fun to work with “It is not enough that you do your job well, you also need to spend energy to put out an entertaining persona.” is such an Americanism that creates a game theoretic layer of duplicitous characters on top.
- sosborn 6y ago
  There is a difference between being fun to work with and being entertaining. Maybe I should have worded it, “be a joy to work with.” Some people are a pleasure to work with, even if they are quiet and shy.
  - acituan 6y ago
    Still sounds like some servile function to evoke positive emotions in others is required. Why doing our jobs is not enough? If everyone is doing their jobs, wouldn’t that be “fun” enough? If not, shouldn’t that be a problem with the job description? This is important because whenever the boundaries are poorly defined, there is room for narcissistic abuse, even if self-inflicted. “Be a joy to work with” could have so many failure modes; the guy who brings up inconvenient truths could be penalized, the useless people pleasers can get ahead. The idea could work to Marie Kondo one’s clothes, but I feel like standards should be different for humans.
    - sosborn 6y ago
      I think you are reading way too much into this. There are ways to bring up inconvenient truths without being an asshole, and there are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering. People who don't see this are actually the ones that people don't enjoy working with.
      - acituan 6y ago
        Well you’ve suggested this ideal of “being fun to work with” and you’re challenged to clarify your position, no need to get defensive. “There are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering” I’m sure of that but work by nature includes competitive or opponent processes too (eg code reviews, design reviews, performance reviews), how does the nice guy handle those? To me it sounds like your ideal of being nice could end up causing not getting what one wants or not having one’s job properly (eg not pushing back sufficiently in a code review). Niceness is a tricky metric to go by in a work environment, adults disagree, and work is not always fun.
        sosborn 6y ago
        Honestly, people who view reviews as competition are exactly the people I don't enjoy working with. Those people are always the ones who view any criticism as a slight rather than an opportunity to improve, and it will always show in their work. On the flip side, if the critic can't express their criticisms without being an asshole, well then of course people aren't going to like working with them.
        acituan 6y ago
        I agree that reviews being seen as a competition is a problem, but it is nonetheless the same problem if you don't see it that way while people around you do. Promotions, compensation etc they are not exactly zero-sum games but they do approximate zero-sum dynamics, so they are a competition whether we like it or not. I think the asshole persona is a useful device to think through this problem, but I think you are overemphasizing it and ignoring other personas. You can express criticisms with perfect tact and you still will encounter people that has a problem with being challenged (it is rather common with newly promoted technical leads or managers), or like I said a healthy code review will require saying "no" at times, with no fault of the reviewer, will still generate adversarial dynamics. And let's be realistic, performance reviews are highly biased towards positive feedback because criticisms look harsher on that format than they are so people hold back therefore I don't see "asshole" dynamics as frequent as you are focusing, if anything "niceness" dynamics is incentivizing dishonesty in peer feedback.

acituan 6y ago

> Do your job well while being someone fun to work with “It is not enough that you do your job well, you also need to spend energy to put out an entertaining persona.” is such an Americanism that creates a game theoretic layer of duplicitous characters on top.

sosborn 6y ago
There is a difference between being fun to work with and being entertaining. Maybe I should have worded it, “be a joy to work with.” Some people are a pleasure to work with, even if they are quiet and shy.
- acituan 6y ago
  Still sounds like some servile function to evoke positive emotions in others is required. Why doing our jobs is not enough? If everyone is doing their jobs, wouldn’t that be “fun” enough? If not, shouldn’t that be a problem with the job description? This is important because whenever the boundaries are poorly defined, there is room for narcissistic abuse, even if self-inflicted. “Be a joy to work with” could have so many failure modes; the guy who brings up inconvenient truths could be penalized, the useless people pleasers can get ahead. The idea could work to Marie Kondo one’s clothes, but I feel like standards should be different for humans.
  - sosborn 6y ago
    I think you are reading way too much into this. There are ways to bring up inconvenient truths without being an asshole, and there are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering. People who don't see this are actually the ones that people don't enjoy working with.
    - acituan 6y ago
      Well you’ve suggested this ideal of “being fun to work with” and you’re challenged to clarify your position, no need to get defensive. “There are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering” I’m sure of that but work by nature includes competitive or opponent processes too (eg code reviews, design reviews, performance reviews), how does the nice guy handle those? To me it sounds like your ideal of being nice could end up causing not getting what one wants or not having one’s job properly (eg not pushing back sufficiently in a code review). Niceness is a tricky metric to go by in a work environment, adults disagree, and work is not always fun.
      - sosborn 6y ago
        Honestly, people who view reviews as competition are exactly the people I don't enjoy working with. Those people are always the ones who view any criticism as a slight rather than an opportunity to improve, and it will always show in their work. On the flip side, if the critic can't express their criticisms without being an asshole, well then of course people aren't going to like working with them.
        acituan 6y ago
        I agree that reviews being seen as a competition is a problem, but it is nonetheless the same problem if you don't see it that way while people around you do. Promotions, compensation etc they are not exactly zero-sum games but they do approximate zero-sum dynamics, so they are a competition whether we like it or not. I think the asshole persona is a useful device to think through this problem, but I think you are overemphasizing it and ignoring other personas. You can express criticisms with perfect tact and you still will encounter people that has a problem with being challenged (it is rather common with newly promoted technical leads or managers), or like I said a healthy code review will require saying "no" at times, with no fault of the reviewer, will still generate adversarial dynamics. And let's be realistic, performance reviews are highly biased towards positive feedback because criticisms look harsher on that format than they are so people hold back therefore I don't see "asshole" dynamics as frequent as you are focusing, if anything "niceness" dynamics is incentivizing dishonesty in peer feedback.