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Best: It was a lesson I got as a fresh grad. I was losing sleep over stress from work. "This is just a job," an older colleague told me. In reality, he real

by quanto 5y ago

Best: It was a lesson I got as a fresh grad. I was losing sleep over stress from work. "This is just a job," an older colleague told me. In reality, he really did his job -- he was always on time, his code was impeccable, and he used cool logic to solve any problem. And yet, he was never too emotionally attached to work. He always welcomed criticism of his work. He had the demeanor of a cool-headed hitman finishing his job. At the same time, he was a warm human being to his colleagues, including me. Worst: A conversation with this boss-colleague of mine would go like this: Me: There was an urgent bug yesterday, and I fixed it. Him: That bug was within my major commit last month. Did you fix the bug because you think I am incompetent and can't fix the bug myself? Me: Oh, no, it was an urgent bug ticket submitted to our team, so I went ahead and fixed it. Him: So you are saying I am useless to the team. Me: No-no, I don't think you are useless. Quite to the contrary. You were busy doing another ticket yesterday. You know what, maybe you are right, and I should have waited and reconsidered before I fixed the bug. Him: Oh yeah? You are being passive-aggressive now. Your behavior is very toxic and is disruptive to our team dynamics. Me: I am sorry you see it that way. Could you tell me what I could have done differe... Him: I am downgrading your performance review, and you would be getting a lower discretionary bonus this year. This ended up costing me a five-figure bonus deduction. Since then, after rising through ranks, I too became a team manager. Thanks to this lesson, I know how not to treat my team members.

variable11 5y ago
Classic corporate psychopath. Doesn't do the work, gets you to do his work, attacks you for doing it, and probably took credit for the fix behind your back. Once we can screen these people out of positions of power through MRIs or whatever, the world will improve in a big way.
Madmallard 5y ago
How do you not immediately report this guy to HR? His behavior is absolutely verbal abuse.
- codecutter 5y ago
  Please don't play it emotionally and report it to HR. Folks from HR are there to take care of the manager and employer. Such a step could be suicidal.
  - loopz 5y ago
    Just as you have to earn the respect from everyone, each single individual in that org must earn your respect. Choose your confidants carefully. HR is for door in, and out.
  - kjakm 5y ago
    I find this attitude to be the same as kids not telling on the bully because it’ll make things worse. The guy lost a four figure bonus for no sane reason. Keeping quiet isn’t going to make anything better. You either speak with HR or firstly maybe your boss’s boss. Maybe things are a bit different if you work in one of the places where you can be fired at will but generally you have employment rights that will protect you.
    - nowherebeen 5y ago
      Never talk to the bosses boss without going to your boss first. By doing so, you are ignoring the chain of command and likely will you fired. How would you feel if someone you managed went behind your back to talk to your boss?
      - kjakm 5y ago
        Agreed, I thought that was implied in my comment but reading back it isn’t. I disagree that going above your boss first would lead to getting fired though (again with the exception of at will employment).
      - Hajuijj 5y ago
        That kind of behavior is for me a red flag which would definitely lead to me scheduling a meeting with the boss of my boss. If you really wanted to stay with that company because everything else is great, your only chance is to solve this with the boss of the boss. 5 figure bonus lost due to this is abuse.
mjthompson 5y ago
Clearly he's got some issues given the reaction. However, was he informed of the bug? Was there an expectation he would fix his own mistakes? I don't work in IT/Software Engineering - I work in law. But when I find fault in other's work, it's a courtesy to let them know and give them an opportunity to address it. It's part of being a team player. I am not trying to be critical of you. It's just reading this reminded me of similar experiences where I was in a similar position to you. They were important experiences. People can feel bad when other people fix their mistakes when they aren't given the opportunity to be heard about it. It's so tempting to just say 'I will just do it myself' but you might find other people react poorly to this. Of course, maybe things are different in the IT world where it may be challenging to identify who committed a buggy change to the code repository, or perhaps just a radically different culture of work. But at the end of the day we are all human. It does appear you have developed an awareness of this, given what you noted in your reply to him (and props to you for that!). From there on, his behaviour was misguided and not appropriate.
- quanto 5y ago
  No offense taken. Your questions are valid. 1. Would he be informed of the/a bug(s)? Absolutely. We monitor bug tickets submitted to our team throughout the day. It's a main part of our job. 2. Was there a strict code ownership per individual contributor? No. This team's culture was such that once one contributor's code was committed to the main repository, it is part of the team's responsibility, not just the original contributor. In fact, any kind of don't-touch-my-code attitude was heavily frowned upon, worthy of a warning. I understand other teams may have different cultures. I was too young to know the office dynamics back then, but in hindsight from more life experiences since then, I now see that he was just a very insecure person. His former colleagues were advancing ahead of him, making 4x his salary, and the last thing he wanted was a young team member outperforming him. This observation itself is a life lesson for me.
  - ozim 5y ago
    Thanks for following up. Because I wanted to ask why he would be so mean to you. That insecurity part answers that.
grecht 5y ago
I feel like most people wouldn’t need this kind of bad lesson to know what not to do. And those who would are a lost cause anyway, as they probably know that what they’re doing is wrong.
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Looks like he set you up to fail no matter what you would have said back then.
- blablabla123 5y ago
  True, at best he was talking purely cynical and out of frustration. Still handled really very well by not adding any more vitriol but rather talking about the facts. Eventually the OP even got promoted.
avinassh 5y ago
> He always welcomed criticism of his work. What are some ways to do this effectively?
- goodlinks 5y ago
  Just listen and try to steel man what they are saying as best you can before you start to consider how it might be wrong. Try to get onto the path of thought that led them there, but let the questions that arise naturally for you hold off as long as you can. To be clear this is like a policy, you will fail at it but it reminds you of the prinicals that you believe in. I learn a lot doing this in more ways than i could explain in a book, never mind a comment.
  - goodlinks 5y ago
    doesnt matter how wrong or personally based the attack/criticism is. The more extreme the situation the more important it is to keep to the plan. the lessons learned will cover all of existance as you will learn more about how people model the world, problems and solutions beyond the specifics of the problem at hand. *if doing this drains you make a change of environment (e.g. job), however i find that the discussions you have like this change other peoples thinking more effectively, so its also how you sew the seeds of cultural change.
- someelephant 5y ago
  Similar to people with ptsd, your amygdala may be overactive. You can try different methods of reducing your general level of stress.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  Personally, I try to detach it from myself and think in term of process, even if they are just internal processes (as in processes I created for myself). Why was this bug not prevented? Did I follow the processes? If yes, why did they fail, and how can I change them not to fail next time? If not, why did I not follow them? How can I ensure that this will not happen again? Also, can I share my experience? Can I learn from someone else experience? I think it's very good to say "I did this and that, which I thought would be enough, but it wasn't, how do you guys do it?". Not saying it's perfect, and I always feel bad whenever there's a bug in code I wrote, but I'd rather hear about it, if only just to try to reduce the amount of time this happens in the future.
300bps 5y ago
Does this company use any form of stack ranking to determine bonuses? It sounds like one possibility is your boss may have been trying to prevent you from getting to his level which would mean he would have to compete with you. Stack ranking incentivizes people at higher levels to only allow incompetent people to get to their level because they’ll look better in comparison.

by quanto 5y ago

variable11 5y ago

Classic corporate psychopath. Doesn't do the work, gets you to do his work, attacks you for doing it, and probably took credit for the fix behind your back. Once we can screen these people out of positions of power through MRIs or whatever, the world will improve in a big way.

Madmallard 5y ago

How do you not immediately report this guy to HR? His behavior is absolutely verbal abuse.

codecutter 5y ago
Please don't play it emotionally and report it to HR. Folks from HR are there to take care of the manager and employer. Such a step could be suicidal.
- loopz 5y ago
  Just as you have to earn the respect from everyone, each single individual in that org must earn your respect. Choose your confidants carefully. HR is for door in, and out.
- kjakm 5y ago
  I find this attitude to be the same as kids not telling on the bully because it’ll make things worse. The guy lost a four figure bonus for no sane reason. Keeping quiet isn’t going to make anything better. You either speak with HR or firstly maybe your boss’s boss. Maybe things are a bit different if you work in one of the places where you can be fired at will but generally you have employment rights that will protect you.
  - nowherebeen 5y ago
    Never talk to the bosses boss without going to your boss first. By doing so, you are ignoring the chain of command and likely will you fired. How would you feel if someone you managed went behind your back to talk to your boss?
    - kjakm 5y ago
      Agreed, I thought that was implied in my comment but reading back it isn’t. I disagree that going above your boss first would lead to getting fired though (again with the exception of at will employment).
    - Hajuijj 5y ago
      That kind of behavior is for me a red flag which would definitely lead to me scheduling a meeting with the boss of my boss. If you really wanted to stay with that company because everything else is great, your only chance is to solve this with the boss of the boss. 5 figure bonus lost due to this is abuse.

mjthompson 5y ago

Clearly he's got some issues given the reaction. However, was he informed of the bug? Was there an expectation he would fix his own mistakes? I don't work in IT/Software Engineering - I work in law. But when I find fault in other's work, it's a courtesy to let them know and give them an opportunity to address it. It's part of being a team player. I am not trying to be critical of you. It's just reading this reminded me of similar experiences where I was in a similar position to you. They were important experiences. People can feel bad when other people fix their mistakes when they aren't given the opportunity to be heard about it. It's so tempting to just say 'I will just do it myself' but you might find other people react poorly to this. Of course, maybe things are different in the IT world where it may be challenging to identify who committed a buggy change to the code repository, or perhaps just a radically different culture of work. But at the end of the day we are all human. It does appear you have developed an awareness of this, given what you noted in your reply to him (and props to you for that!). From there on, his behaviour was misguided and not appropriate.

quanto 5y ago
No offense taken. Your questions are valid. 1. Would he be informed of the/a bug(s)? Absolutely. We monitor bug tickets submitted to our team throughout the day. It's a main part of our job. 2. Was there a strict code ownership per individual contributor? No. This team's culture was such that once one contributor's code was committed to the main repository, it is part of the team's responsibility, not just the original contributor. In fact, any kind of don't-touch-my-code attitude was heavily frowned upon, worthy of a warning. I understand other teams may have different cultures. I was too young to know the office dynamics back then, but in hindsight from more life experiences since then, I now see that he was just a very insecure person. His former colleagues were advancing ahead of him, making 4x his salary, and the last thing he wanted was a young team member outperforming him. This observation itself is a life lesson for me.
- ozim 5y ago
  Thanks for following up. Because I wanted to ask why he would be so mean to you. That insecurity part answers that.

grecht 5y ago

I feel like most people wouldn’t need this kind of bad lesson to know what not to do. And those who would are a lost cause anyway, as they probably know that what they’re doing is wrong.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

Looks like he set you up to fail no matter what you would have said back then.

blablabla123 5y ago
True, at best he was talking purely cynical and out of frustration. Still handled really very well by not adding any more vitriol but rather talking about the facts. Eventually the OP even got promoted.

avinassh 5y ago

> He always welcomed criticism of his work. What are some ways to do this effectively?

goodlinks 5y ago
Just listen and try to steel man what they are saying as best you can before you start to consider how it might be wrong. Try to get onto the path of thought that led them there, but let the questions that arise naturally for you hold off as long as you can. To be clear this is like a policy, you will fail at it but it reminds you of the prinicals that you believe in. I learn a lot doing this in more ways than i could explain in a book, never mind a comment.
- goodlinks 5y ago
  doesnt matter how wrong or personally based the attack/criticism is. The more extreme the situation the more important it is to keep to the plan. the lessons learned will cover all of existance as you will learn more about how people model the world, problems and solutions beyond the specifics of the problem at hand. *if doing this drains you make a change of environment (e.g. job), however i find that the discussions you have like this change other peoples thinking more effectively, so its also how you sew the seeds of cultural change.
someelephant 5y ago
Similar to people with ptsd, your amygdala may be overactive. You can try different methods of reducing your general level of stress.
Leherenn 5y ago
Personally, I try to detach it from myself and think in term of process, even if they are just internal processes (as in processes I created for myself). Why was this bug not prevented? Did I follow the processes? If yes, why did they fail, and how can I change them not to fail next time? If not, why did I not follow them? How can I ensure that this will not happen again? Also, can I share my experience? Can I learn from someone else experience? I think it's very good to say "I did this and that, which I thought would be enough, but it wasn't, how do you guys do it?". Not saying it's perfect, and I always feel bad whenever there's a bug in code I wrote, but I'd rather hear about it, if only just to try to reduce the amount of time this happens in the future.

300bps 5y ago

Does this company use any form of stack ranking to determine bonuses? It sounds like one possibility is your boss may have been trying to prevent you from getting to his level which would mean he would have to compete with you. Stack ranking incentivizes people at higher levels to only allow incompetent people to get to their level because they’ll look better in comparison.