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I would do the exact same thing if I were her co-worker. She clearly states that this is a project she came up with that no one else on the team wants. If no o

I would do the exact same thing if I were her co-worker. She clearly states that this is a project she came up with that no one else on the team wants. If no one wants it, or is engaging with it, why would you expecting your colleagues to get excited to work on this? There is nothing more annoying in corporate that co-workers who start trying to give you projects and tasks you didn’t want, didn’t ask for and micro-managing you horizontally. Some of my worst job experiences came from people like this. They come up with a dumb project, then “clear it with management” then come and try to make me do it for them. Your co-workers are not your friends, especially not if you try to start assigning them work. Because who gets the credit? You do, not them. Suddenly they have another layer of management. I would both avoid and add friction to anyone doing what she is trying to do in this situation. I’m not paid to help my co-workers get promoted into management or do their pet projects for them.

kodah 5y ago
If you were on my team you actually do. I'm a senior+ engineer and other engineers work on the projects I lead. They get to pick their day to day work, but most projects are driven or approved of by me. We also have a manager which has a totally different set of responsibilities.
mediocregopher 5y ago
Nowhere in the post does it mention the author asking anybody to do any work. Their coworker showed up asking questions about something they're working on.
- Veuxdo 5y ago
  It sounds like the coworkers don't care about this project, though: > You've mentioned it multiple times in different venues with very little uptake from the rest of the team. It's pretty clear they are more concerned with other things.
  - mediocregopher 5y ago
    That's ok, and happens frequently. "I don't have time to fully comprehend everything that's happening over there, but COWORKER is handling it and I don't see any obvious problems with their approach. :+1: and moving on". Maybe some teams don't work this way, and require more direct participation and signing-off from members, which is fine too.
watwut 5y ago
No, the article is not demanding that co-workers are excited about the project at all. Nor is the author giving tasks to anyone. It literally starts with coworker complaining about lack of documentation, being given documentation, complaining about lack of wiki, being given like, complaining about missing info on wiki and then being shown it is there. Author is asking people to ask for docs before complaining about lack of docs and to read existing wiki before complaining about missing info on wiki.
progmetaldev 5y ago
I guess you're really notdoingthework. Someone needs to be assigning you work, and she never presented it as if she just came up with a project and threw it at another co-worker. If it wasn't her project, where did the documentation come from, and group discussion? This attitude sounds at least as toxic as the person who is unable to help themselves before reaching out for help to others.
drewcoo 5y ago
There is the management career track and the individual contributor career track. Advancing along either of them should depend on growing scope of influence. That means ICs need to drive projects across larger and larger groups of people. Of course the people who show they can do that get promoted. Try it!
- kodah 5y ago
  That's not really how it's done in practice though, fwiw. Large tech firms mostly try to quantify "impact" and that can mean a lot of things. You could have very large name recognition by doing a lot of outreach, like talks. Being a bit reductive, that's like promoting someone for their sense of celebrity. Then there's folks who save quantifiable dollars or improve some process by some nominal percentage of $success_metric for their impact. Wrangling a large project usually is pretty arbitrary and not on a single engineer - in fact, most of them are committee based.

kodah 5y ago

If you were on my team you actually do. I'm a senior+ engineer and other engineers work on the projects I lead. They get to pick their day to day work, but most projects are driven or approved of by me. We also have a manager which has a totally different set of responsibilities.

mediocregopher 5y ago

Nowhere in the post does it mention the author asking anybody to do any work. Their coworker showed up asking questions about something they're working on.

Veuxdo 5y ago
It sounds like the coworkers don't care about this project, though: > You've mentioned it multiple times in different venues with very little uptake from the rest of the team. It's pretty clear they are more concerned with other things.
- mediocregopher 5y ago
  That's ok, and happens frequently. "I don't have time to fully comprehend everything that's happening over there, but COWORKER is handling it and I don't see any obvious problems with their approach. :+1: and moving on". Maybe some teams don't work this way, and require more direct participation and signing-off from members, which is fine too.

watwut 5y ago

No, the article is not demanding that co-workers are excited about the project at all. Nor is the author giving tasks to anyone. It literally starts with coworker complaining about lack of documentation, being given documentation, complaining about lack of wiki, being given like, complaining about missing info on wiki and then being shown it is there. Author is asking people to ask for docs before complaining about lack of docs and to read existing wiki before complaining about missing info on wiki.

progmetaldev 5y ago

I guess you're really notdoingthework. Someone needs to be assigning you work, and she never presented it as if she just came up with a project and threw it at another co-worker. If it wasn't her project, where did the documentation come from, and group discussion? This attitude sounds at least as toxic as the person who is unable to help themselves before reaching out for help to others.

drewcoo 5y ago

There is the management career track and the individual contributor career track. Advancing along either of them should depend on growing scope of influence. That means ICs need to drive projects across larger and larger groups of people. Of course the people who show they can do that get promoted. Try it!

kodah 5y ago
That's not really how it's done in practice though, fwiw. Large tech firms mostly try to quantify "impact" and that can mean a lot of things. You could have very large name recognition by doing a lot of outreach, like talks. Being a bit reductive, that's like promoting someone for their sense of celebrity. Then there's folks who save quantifiable dollars or improve some process by some nominal percentage of $success_metric for their impact. Wrangling a large project usually is pretty arbitrary and not on a single engineer - in fact, most of them are committee based.