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I also used to think this way, until I tried being fully transparent with my team. There really are people whose mindset is 100% "what should I do?" and never "

I also used to think this way, until I tried being fully transparent with my team. There really are people whose mindset is 100% "what should I do?" and never "what are we doing?" I think the mistake is assuming it correlates with seniority or skill or something; it seems to be independent of both. On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire.

Spivak 4y ago
> On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire. This doesn't apply to tanks or healers, only dps. Playing tank as an infra person I would do my team a disservice if I didn't make myself available on a dime to unblock my team. Big picture is fine for the planning meetings but on small teams I'm usually the only one, I have a bunch of cooldowns to keep track of, and don't always have the context because I have a separate workstream that has to telegraph out ahead of the dev work. I am always asking what I should do that has the most impact for my devs.
- vageli 4y ago
  Healers don't go around asking who needs healing, they see low health and prioritize. That is not asking "what should I do?", that is being proactive about the needs of the team.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    This framing is extremely stupid and misses the point entirely.
    - vageli 4y ago
      That's pretty uncharitable of you. I am an infra person myself and while I appreciate the parent's point about making themselves available to pick up other things on a dime, I was trying to point out that you can also proactively identify needs and address them as an infra person, often in ways that can be applied to other teams and that this is very much not asking for what they should be doing.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        Independently of the framing being stupid, that anyone thinks this is about an infra person being available to unblock a dev team or not is a perfect example of the confusion that can happen when "what should I do?" people get "what are we doing?" context.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Two points to that: * Looking for people who caught aggro and getting out ahead of it is the bulk of my work. It's how I prioritize my workstream. The problem, and where the metaphor breaks down, is that I'm not omnipotent or have Grid2. If my devs don't tell me their pain points or I don't pull it out of them by asking what deliverables they would like to see out of me I would miss out lots of higher priority items than what I can see. * The whole reason I'm on a team is because I have a specialized skillset and am but one stakeholder among many who want things from me. I will never run out of stuff to bring to planning but ultimately it's a group discussion about what I should do next. For larger companies s/me/the infra team.
gpm 4y ago
I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make between "what should I do" and "what are we doing". Are you talking about people making decisions that prioritize themselves over the company? People not being willing to go along with existing decisions? Big picture vs small picture? Something else?
- creakingstairs 4y ago
  Sounds like people who passively waits for orders before doing anything ("what should I do?") instead of actively seeking out and doing things that aligns with the team's current goal ("what are we doing [now]?").
Ken_At_EM 4y ago
My experience has been that there are employees who don’t really want to understand the big picture and just focus on their work. I have never seen transparency hurt the productivity of these employees. They know they can look and see the big picture any time, they just don’t bother to look:
- morelisp 4y ago
  "Transparency" means different things to different people. I suspect we agree, because my solution to the problem is to make it clear to everyone that they can ask me anything and I'll tell them everything I legally can. But for some people "transparency" also means a more active communication of this information, and this definitely confuses some (other) people because they will consistently interpret "we want to do X" or "we are going to do X" as "I should, right now, do (sub-part of) X".

Spivak 4y ago

> On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire. This doesn't apply to tanks or healers, only dps. Playing tank as an infra person I would do my team a disservice if I didn't make myself available on a dime to unblock my team. Big picture is fine for the planning meetings but on small teams I'm usually the only one, I have a bunch of cooldowns to keep track of, and don't always have the context because I have a separate workstream that has to telegraph out ahead of the dev work. I am always asking what I should do that has the most impact for my devs.

vageli 4y ago
Healers don't go around asking who needs healing, they see low health and prioritize. That is not asking "what should I do?", that is being proactive about the needs of the team.
- morelisp 4y ago
  This framing is extremely stupid and misses the point entirely.
  - vageli 4y ago
    That's pretty uncharitable of you. I am an infra person myself and while I appreciate the parent's point about making themselves available to pick up other things on a dime, I was trying to point out that you can also proactively identify needs and address them as an infra person, often in ways that can be applied to other teams and that this is very much not asking for what they should be doing.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      Independently of the framing being stupid, that anyone thinks this is about an infra person being available to unblock a dev team or not is a perfect example of the confusion that can happen when "what should I do?" people get "what are we doing?" context.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Two points to that: * Looking for people who caught aggro and getting out ahead of it is the bulk of my work. It's how I prioritize my workstream. The problem, and where the metaphor breaks down, is that I'm not omnipotent or have Grid2. If my devs don't tell me their pain points or I don't pull it out of them by asking what deliverables they would like to see out of me I would miss out lots of higher priority items than what I can see. * The whole reason I'm on a team is because I have a specialized skillset and am but one stakeholder among many who want things from me. I will never run out of stuff to bring to planning but ultimately it's a group discussion about what I should do next. For larger companies s/me/the infra team.

gpm 4y ago

I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make between "what should I do" and "what are we doing". Are you talking about people making decisions that prioritize themselves over the company? People not being willing to go along with existing decisions? Big picture vs small picture? Something else?

creakingstairs 4y ago
Sounds like people who passively waits for orders before doing anything ("what should I do?") instead of actively seeking out and doing things that aligns with the team's current goal ("what are we doing [now]?").

Ken_At_EM 4y ago

My experience has been that there are employees who don’t really want to understand the big picture and just focus on their work. I have never seen transparency hurt the productivity of these employees. They know they can look and see the big picture any time, they just don’t bother to look:

morelisp 4y ago
"Transparency" means different things to different people. I suspect we agree, because my solution to the problem is to make it clear to everyone that they can ask me anything and I'll tell them everything I legally can. But for some people "transparency" also means a more active communication of this information, and this definitely confuses some (other) people because they will consistently interpret "we want to do X" or "we are going to do X" as "I should, right now, do (sub-part of) X".