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Yes, please don't be that guy. I was a lead at the last startup I was at, and we hired a guy who loved to point out everything we were doing "wrong". Literally
by _9omd 5y ago
Yes, please don't be that guy. I was a lead at the last startup I was at, and we hired a guy who loved to point out everything we were doing "wrong". Literally weeks into the job and he's already writing up huge docs about everything we need to improve, with having almost no context for why we made certain decisions. The majority of things he assumed to know better on we also knew better about, but there simply wasn't enough time and man power to do things in the "right" way. He also pointed out some things that we were unaware of, but he had already tarnished his reputation by being so abrasive about the critique while putting so little time into understanding.
Now the twist in this story, is that through this interaction, I reflected on a past job and realized that I had been that guy once! That sure was a moment of personal cringe. It's cemented into my brain how important it is to ask questions to fully understand the context decisions are made in before chiming in to say how wrong they are.
- ad-astra 5y agoThere needs to be between 3 months to 1yr of onboarding before going in & trying to change everything. I always remind myself of this when starting new roles. One time my old team hired a hotshot in the gaming industry that came in trying to change everything in the first 2 weeks. It rubbed everyone the wrong way. He had a habit of interrupting one of the women on our team way more often than any of the men on the team. We ended up letting him go. If he would have just shut up and listened, he’d probably end up being a fine addition to the team (assuming he wasn’t actually sexist). What always sticks with me is that in retrospect, most of the changes he was advocating for were good ideas…
- mhitza 5y agoI've been that engineer at a particular time in my career. And saw others be that person as well, since. In my view, commonality between I and others I've known with that behavior was that we came from a long multi-year project. After experiencing daily maintenance of big projects for a couple of years, you tend to have a strong opinion of things you don't want to see again when moving for greener pastures. It just seems to disappear with time. Maybe because at some point people accept that telling others what to avoid is pointless, people tend to learn only from their own mistakes.
- gjadi 5y agoI think an important distinction to keep in mind is: - Do not criticize without understanding the root issue - BUT, ask questions about the issues you encounter AND, document/explain the quirks/history as you go IMHO the important thing is to learn that: 1. you don't know the whole context, ask around before criticizing 2. keep your eye open for quirks, don't let a general "laissez faire" attitude take over you update:format