15 ms·

Humiliation in Startups

53 points by cyborg 14y ago

nateberkopec 14y ago
The idolization of Steve Jobs has a lot of issues, and this might be a good example of one. We don't know whether Apple succeeded in spite of or because of Steve's management behaviors. It's also worth noting that the original Mac (the same time period most of those 'crazy Steve' stories originate from) was a huge commercial 'meh'.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  Not to mention NeXT, which also had its share of "crazy Steve" management, and which would have been an unmitigated failure if Apple hadn't bought them out. If you're interested in that story, Randall Stross' book Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Next-Big-Thing/dp/0689121350 http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Next-Big-Thing/dp/068912135...) is a good telling of it. (It was written before Jobs' return to Apple and subsequent huge success, so it's a fascinating artifact of the time before he became Saint Steve.)
- JVIDEL 14y ago
  Word, when I read that he said to Jon Ive "your ideas are shit" I couldn't believe that guy would keep working for him.
  - nateberkopec 14y ago
    Wow, really? Source?
    - JVIDEL 14y ago
      His bio, check it. Also I didn't know (before that) that he refused to pay his daughter's tuition and some friends of his wife had to do it instead. Awkward at the least...
      - Tomis02 14y ago
        Why awkward?
        JVIDEL 14y ago
        Guy is a billionaire and wont pay for his own daughter's college? hello?
        Tomis02 14y ago
        Whereas most people in this situation would be qualified as assholes (and rightly so), Steve Jobs gets a mild look of disapproval. For me, "awkward" does not begin to convey how screwed up that is. It seems that people have a real hard time accepting that the guy they worship for delivering some of their gadgets was in fact a major douchebag. This tendency to make Jobs into a person he was not it very disturbing. Of course, on HN you risk being banned for saying something bad about His Holiness because some of its highly ranked people are also members of the cult of Apple, but that alone should not be a reason to tip-toe around the obvious.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        JVIDEL 14y ago
        You are barking at the wrong tree dog...
dclaysmith 14y ago
I think adherence to "compliment publicly, criticize privately" is an absolute requirement of a good manager.
- ecaroth 14y ago
  I would also add "don't be a complete asshole" as an additional requirement. Obviously that was not good code, but good managers encourage people to make mistakes so they can learn from them (as long as it isn't mission critical stuff)
- CodeMage 14y ago
  While I totally agree with you, this example goes beyond that. Whether it's in public or in private, calling someone a "retard" and asking them how they could do something "so fucking stupid" is inexcusably abusive and a reason to quit on the spot, at the very least.
kanja 14y ago
Humiliation is poison in a work environment. There is no quicker way to make people resent their jobs, stop interaction, create hate and mistrust and send a signal that "you don't matter".
- smacktoward 14y ago
  The problem is that bad managers regard those things as features, not bugs.
- krober 14y ago
  I would think the code base suffers as well. I'd tend to avoid code reviews, or at least not actively seek them out, if public humiliation was par for the course.
- hoopism 14y ago
  Well said. Amazing that you would bring on a college grad and blow up on the first mistake. Great way to beat the initiative out of a young kid.
ja27 14y ago
That's not just startups where that happens. Senior developers, especially the "man in a box" geniuses that don't work well with anyone else are downright abusive of other developers (and God help the poor customer support or QA people that talk to them). On the other hand, guys I really respect just call those "rookie mistakes" and expect them to happen. Hopefully you catch them in code review before customers are impacted.
gpcz 14y ago
One of W. Edwards Deming's "Lesser Categories of Obstacles" contends that the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of mistakes and unintended consequences in a business, while workers are responsible for about 15% (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly_Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly... ). Deming's 8th Point of Management is to drive out fear so that everyone can work effectively for the company (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principl... ). Publicly humiliating the programmer seems to be simultaneously disregarding the symptoms of a systemic issue (namely, a lack of code reviews) and putting everyone on the team into a state of fear.
jonny_eh 14y ago
Wow, a surprising number of comments on that blog post agree with the manager. Ya, it's a stupid bug, but the way the manager dealt with it was totally out of line. Whether or not that "style" of management results in better output is moot, you just don't treat people like that. It's not like the developer shot the manager's dog or anything.
citricsquid 14y ago
Please can you increase the font size on your blog? Not only does small size font make no sense, it is also unreadable for me (chrome, Windows): http://i.imgur.com/TZUVi.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TZUVi.jpg Anywhere from 16px to 22px would be fine, we are here to read the text afterall. It's the focus!
- aqme28 14y ago
  Can you zoom in to make it more readable? (ctrl + mouse-wheel for me) e: VVV Good point.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    I could make it more readable by tweaking my settings. But that only helps me. Asking people to remember to make stuff accessible helps everyone who needs it.
DanBC 14y ago
In the UK employers have a legal duty of care to protect their employees from harm in the workplace, and this includes stress. This is written in law, and has been supported by court cases. One incident like that is wrong, but could perhaps be explained by someone having a really bad day. Recognition, apology, and no further incidents would help. But continued incidents? The company is leaving themselves open to lawsuits. ("Constructive dismissal" and employment tribunal in the UK.) I'm pretty sure that toxic work environment leading to poor health is something that has been through US courts. I mention this because sometimes the only way you get through to PHBs is to talk about costs and risks, and not "don't let employees be dicks to other employees".
- justin 14y ago
  Holy crap... nanny state? I'm not agreeing in any way with the manager in this situation; public humiliation of employees by managers is both morally cowardly (bullying someone from a position of power) and ineffective over the long run (in my opinion). But still, stress happens in most jobs. Often times it is caused by a combination of home and work factors. It's ridiculous to make "preventing stress" a legal duty of employers, because that's not wholly within an employers control. Example: Faulty machine used to serve customers blows up at work at now you have a lot of angry customers. Stress ensues.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    In this context "stress" means "bad stuff that could be controlled but isn't" - it's different from "adrenaline rush caused by tight (but achievable) deadlines" or "employer trying hard but things go wrong". Employers are expected to have procedures in place to deal with things like sexual harassment. This is similar, they're expected to have procedures in place to deal with bullying. I agree that I might have made it sound stronger than it is. In real life it's pretty reasonable.
  - drewmclellan 14y ago
    It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that the stress (and business impact) could be reduced by making sure any critical machine has a hot-backup should it fail. Making sure employees are happy and safe in their work is good business.
sparknlaunch12 14y ago
Humiliation is not isolated to startups. In fact every industry has these type of characters. Such behaviour is not the best method of motivating your team. Sadly it exists. What will you do differently next time? Would you call this behaviour out to your other manager or directly to the perpetrator? If you want to avoid it happening again you should speak up. Unless you don't mind the abuse?
babarock 14y ago
Similar humiliations used to happen to me at my first job. It was the first time I was programming professionally and made a few mistakes that would've cost the startup a lot. On my second week opn the job, I commented out, by mistake, the initialization of variable $user (arrrgh!!). The website crashed on all the signed-in users. My boss being the stressed nerv-ball that he was crictized me in the same way described in the article. I think there's a lesson to be taken here. Not for managers (clearly good management would criticize privately) but for the employee. Learn to take a yell. It's not good style but it's widely common, people above you scream at you when you screw up. Learn not to take it personal, and not to let such incidents affect your passion for your work. The yelling is bad form, but it's not direct criticism at you. In large entreprises, it's the result of a chain of screaming starting at the top. In startups it's the result of the nerve-wrecking stress, founders go through. 'Constructive criticism' is an advice we give would-be managers, but it's a luxury starting employees rarely get. You're lucky if you meet one such boss in your career. Learn to take criticism, the bad kind, leaving out the humiliation. I found the best way to cut a yelling short is by answering loudly: "You're right I screwed up, I'm sorry. At least now I learned it, it won't happen again". After getting yelled at like this a few times, you'll realize it's really not against you, and such an answer would calm down your boss quickly; make sure not to make that mistake again, because then you'd really deserve a humiliation ;). This is easier said (written?) than done, but it's a natural part of one's career. I take it as a mental strength test. Also, you won't be the junior on the team forever. One day you'll be responsible for an intern screwing up. Remember that moment and don't be too harsh.
- AznHisoka 14y ago
  Yup, I also find it's best to say stuff like "Yup, you're right. This was a dumb mistake. I should be fired for this"
  - zxcvb 14y ago
    Never EVER say "I should be fired for this". You probably mean it as a little joke. Getting yelled at for screwing up is not the right time to make a joke. Unless of course you are serious, in which case you're an idiot. Saying something that weird will just make it seem like you don't care or you're weird. The fact you say you 'find it best' suggests you get shouted at a lot or you are making this up. Either way, you shouldn't be dispensing this kind of nonsense advice to other people who may well follow it.
debacle 14y ago
That has nothing to do with startups - the PM is an asshole. > so afraid of being publicly railed-on that they wrote pretty much bug-free code all the time. That's a non sequitur. Programmers try to write bug-free code all the time anyway. No one tries to introduce bugs.
oskarth 14y ago
I hope no company YC makes this mistake, considering How to Win Friends and Influence People [0] is recommended reading in YC [1]. For example: Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. and Let the other person save face. That is, criticize in private, give praise in public (give the person a fine reputation to live up to). Calling someone a retard is a counter-productive thing to do. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen... 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584 (can't find where I read it, but this thread points to pg recommending it)
- qbproger 14y ago
  Is there a YC reading list somewhere? I've been looking to do more reading lately, and this looks like a good title to start with.
  - srijan4 14y ago
    http://ycombinator.com/lib.html http://ycombinator.com/lib.html
stevencorona 14y ago
I would have quit on the spot- you should never put up with that kind of second-class behavior.
parfe 14y ago
What a terrible environment. Fear from humiliation does not make better code. Code reviews, instruction, and collaboration help make better code.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Code reviews are just opportunities for institutionalized bike-shedding. And in cases like this ensures further humiliation. Instruction can work, but it requires a smart programmer who can do it right. Collaboration can work but it reduces the speed you can think at to how fast two people can communicate instead of how fast one person can think. And no, I don't have good solution (other than to ensure you only hire the best people).
majmun 14y ago
i wonder how you didn't notice this while developing app.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Rookie error. It happens. That's the point of code review.
  - drewmclellan 14y ago
    Absolutely. We have code reviews because we all make mistakes. Sometimes really dumb ones. It's crazy to be mad at a programmer for a bug in their code found during a code review. Discuss it, learn from it, and not only does the code get fixed, everyone involved becomes a better programmer by some small amount. The only time it's justifiable being mad is if something gets through code reviews and into production - and at that point it's not the programmer's fault, it's the fault of procedure which enabled buggy code to ship undetected. So you get mad at the system, review the failure and fix it.
Greg12x 14y ago
Ouch.
intractable_ 14y ago
(x-posted from the OP's comment page) The people on that page that are saying the abuse as well deserved are part of the problem. Sure, it's not good code, and causes problems in production. It's certainly not the right way to do this -- but constructive criticism, gentle corrections, and rewards/acknowledgements of successes when they occur are far more effective in the long run than this public tirade bullshit. AFAIC, the PM that humiliates an employee in public for any reason is (a) immature, (b) short-sighted, (c) unprofessional, (d) a poor choice for a PM, and likely (e) insecure and feels the need to strut his/her intellectual "superiority" in front of others lest their authority/superiority be called into question. I also would have quit on the spot -- life is far, far too short to deal with that kind of crap, and there are other work environments in our field where one can do what one enjoys and where it's okay to be a fucking human being instead of being viewed as merely a code generation resource that can be kicked around when it doesn't "behave." The proper response to that kind of public humiliation is "Okay, you're right, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But not as stupid as abusing your employees and creating an environment where the primary motivators are grounded in FUD. I'll collect my things from my desk because...how to communicate this part adequately...oh yeah: fuck you."
necro 14y ago
Would this have helped how you feel better? Or would you feel the same way? "This is retarded! There's no delay in the while loop. How many times does the client have to connect to the DB per second? Thousands! I can't believe this implementation is so fucking stupid!" In this case we try to refer to the code directly, taking our reference to the person.
JVIDEL 14y ago
"You retard! There's no delay in your while loop. How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands! I can't believe you'd do something so fucking stupid!" Wow, was it that hard to keep it down a little? see: "Dude there's no delay in your while loop. How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands! go fix that" See? is not sugar-coating it, simply not being a gigantic asshole about it.
- davidw 14y ago
  I think with anyone who cares about doing good work, simply asking the questions that will lead the person to realize what a fuckup it is should be enough.
Jach 14y ago
> "How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands!" Is this a source of concern for the DB? If it is, you might want to consider limiting connections on one side or the other at a deeper level. Self-inflicted DoS bugs during development aren't fun, but actual DoS attacks in production are even less fun. If there's a potential way to bring your DB to its knees and you get popular enough for trolls (let alone actual crackers) to take notice (and if you're writing video games that presumably have high score boards or something similar this isn't that unlikely) expect people to find it. It's good to get yelled at some number of times throughout your life to help you grow a thicker skin, but I've never been yelled at in the work environment. If it occurred I'd be strongly motivated to quit like others here. Stating matter-of-factly "That was stupid" is one thing, joking and exaggerating stupidity of yourself or others is another (and is dependent on implicit understanding of such and also requires a certain culture of the group), but when it gets to a manager actually screaming at you about a possibility of something bad happening then that's the line, at least for me. If I wanted to get screamed at, I'd join the military.
- Estragon 14y ago
  If I wanted to get screamed at, I'd conclude I was a masochist and seek therapy.
B0Z 14y ago
The behavior you experienced from the "manager" was, at best, grossly inappropriate. It may or may not help now, but I think it's important to be mindful of where other peoples' perspective is. The "shoe on the other foot" mentality sounds like it has been forgotten both both the manager and you. It's a two-way street.
stuff4ben 14y ago
Unfortunately I've done something similar to this to some outsourced contractors in India as we were doing a final code review of their deliverables. I regret it still and have tried to make amends. On the one hand we're paying them good money to do work we don't have time to do ourselves so at the time I felt it was ok and warranted. On the other hand they're human beings just like me with feelings and pride and i took them down a notch in front of their peers. Yes, I'm a better coder than them, yes we were paying them lots of money for work I felt should have been better. But the way I went about it was totally wrong. Sucks but at least I learned from it.
droithomme 14y ago
> It makes me sad to see recent portrayals of Silicon Valley hold up humiliation as a recipe for success. This is an interesting statement in the article and I think it is worth bringing up. It contrasts significantly to the other article I just read that said that "public shaming", which is just another word for public humiliation, is a desirable practice needed to stem the existential threat to engineering of "brogrammers". http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/opinion/trapani-brogrammer-culture/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/opinion/trapani-brogrammer-cul... > Sometimes the road to enlightenment is paved with public shaming.
moocow01 14y ago
I don't know about Steve Jobs but every company Ive been in where this has started to become the culture it has been a sign of a sinking ship... and every time that sign was accurate. If you think public humility is motivating it probably is in the short term. But its the most motivating for getting that resume spruced up again.
- jonny_eh 14y ago
  I dunno, I think we could all use a bit more pubic humility ;)
stcredzero 14y ago
Perhaps a good way for such a rookie mistake to be handled would be to turn this in to playful ribbing. (WAT? WTF?) I too have been the subject of manager outbursts like this. Only do it if you're deliberately trying to get rid of the person, and if you're doing that, be aware of the precedent you're setting. There's too many things to know about programming for any one person to be expert in everything, and never make a WTF mistake.
smacktoward 14y ago
I grew up on military bases around military people, and in that environment I learned one bit of wisdom that has helped me many times when managing people: If you're in charge, and your people screw up, it's not their fault. It's yours. Yes, they made a mistake. But why did they make it? Did you not train them sufficiently? Did you not give them the mentoring they need? Did you fail to get important tools or information to them? Did you put them in a position of greater responsibility than they're currently equipped to handle, or where their skills don't match the needs of the position? At first when you try to wrap your mind around this line of thinking, it can be difficult. Why should I be held responsible when Jack the Junior Coder is the one who actually screwed up? But eventually, if you stick with it, you learn something important: on a real team, who screwed up is irrelevant. If one person fails, the whole team fails. And your job as a leader is to help your people get to a place where they fail less and less every day, not to pin blame. This is the difference between a manager and a leader: a leader is someone who accepts responsibility not just for his own actions, but for his team's as well.
- nateberkopec 14y ago
  "If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers." - Sun Tzu I think startups have a lot to learn from the military community. Yes, for the most part modern militaries are extensive bureaucracies, but military thinkers and intellectuals are really at the forefront of management science. John Boyd basically wrote The Lean Startup 30 years before Eric Ries did.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    I have had a blog post rattling around in my head forever introducing Boyd's leadership principles to non-military folks. Should probably get around to actually writing it one of these days...
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      One of these days is, empirically, none of these days at least for me, so could you just post a link to some introduction?
essayist 14y ago
A much better approach (from a piano teacher, but it generalizes: Tags like "stupid," "bad at ____", "sloppy," and so on, are ways of saying "You're performing badly and I don't know why." Once you move it to "you're performing badly because you have the wrong fingerings," ... it's no longer a vague personal failing but a causal necessity. Anyone who never understood limits will flunk calculus. It's not you, it's the bug. http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html
chrisacky 14y ago
Speaking of awful code. 17 days ago, when the new Galaxy "demo" page launched from Samsung, they had that webpage, www.tgeltaayehxnx.com with the countdown.. you guys remember? Anyway, I was interested to see what was happening with that page out of interest so I checked out the source. What I found made me laugh so hard. Given the fact that I knew that second perfect cache invalidation is pretty hard...and given time zones... I knew that this wouldn't end well. What happened as a result? They created their own distributed denial of service that was set to fire off every connected user at the same time. They ended up taking down their new launching page for their phone. This was the code: if (timediff < 0) { //console.log("LIVE!"); location.reload(true); } else { // Do stuff. } Whoever wrote that code, was basically checking if the time difference between the countdown was zero and then refresh the page. Guess what? This ran continuously. For thousands of clients... I wonder what kind of jokes they had at Samsung over this one.

53 points by cyborg 14y ago

The idolization of Steve Jobs has a lot of issues, and this might be a good example of one. We don't know whether Apple succeeded in spite of or because of Steve's management behaviors. It's also worth noting that the original Mac (the same time period most of those 'crazy Steve' stories originate from) was a huge commercial 'meh'.

smacktoward 14y ago
Not to mention NeXT, which also had its share of "crazy Steve" management, and which would have been an unmitigated failure if Apple hadn't bought them out. If you're interested in that story, Randall Stross' book Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Next-Big-Thing/dp/0689121350 http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Next-Big-Thing/dp/068912135...) is a good telling of it. (It was written before Jobs' return to Apple and subsequent huge success, so it's a fascinating artifact of the time before he became Saint Steve.)
JVIDEL 14y ago
Word, when I read that he said to Jon Ive "your ideas are shit" I couldn't believe that guy would keep working for him.
- nateberkopec 14y ago
  Wow, really? Source?
  - JVIDEL 14y ago
    His bio, check it. Also I didn't know (before that) that he refused to pay his daughter's tuition and some friends of his wife had to do it instead. Awkward at the least...
    - Tomis02 14y ago
      Why awkward?
      - JVIDEL 14y ago
        Guy is a billionaire and wont pay for his own daughter's college? hello?
        Tomis02 14y ago
        Whereas most people in this situation would be qualified as assholes (and rightly so), Steve Jobs gets a mild look of disapproval. For me, "awkward" does not begin to convey how screwed up that is. It seems that people have a real hard time accepting that the guy they worship for delivering some of their gadgets was in fact a major douchebag. This tendency to make Jobs into a person he was not it very disturbing. Of course, on HN you risk being banned for saying something bad about His Holiness because some of its highly ranked people are also members of the cult of Apple, but that alone should not be a reason to tip-toe around the obvious.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        JVIDEL 14y ago
        You are barking at the wrong tree dog...

dclaysmith 14y ago

I think adherence to "compliment publicly, criticize privately" is an absolute requirement of a good manager.

ecaroth 14y ago
I would also add "don't be a complete asshole" as an additional requirement. Obviously that was not good code, but good managers encourage people to make mistakes so they can learn from them (as long as it isn't mission critical stuff)
CodeMage 14y ago
While I totally agree with you, this example goes beyond that. Whether it's in public or in private, calling someone a "retard" and asking them how they could do something "so fucking stupid" is inexcusably abusive and a reason to quit on the spot, at the very least.

kanja 14y ago

Humiliation is poison in a work environment. There is no quicker way to make people resent their jobs, stop interaction, create hate and mistrust and send a signal that "you don't matter".

smacktoward 14y ago
The problem is that bad managers regard those things as features, not bugs.
krober 14y ago
I would think the code base suffers as well. I'd tend to avoid code reviews, or at least not actively seek them out, if public humiliation was par for the course.
hoopism 14y ago
Well said. Amazing that you would bring on a college grad and blow up on the first mistake. Great way to beat the initiative out of a young kid.

ja27 14y ago

That's not just startups where that happens. Senior developers, especially the "man in a box" geniuses that don't work well with anyone else are downright abusive of other developers (and God help the poor customer support or QA people that talk to them). On the other hand, guys I really respect just call those "rookie mistakes" and expect them to happen. Hopefully you catch them in code review before customers are impacted.

gpcz 14y ago

One of W. Edwards Deming's "Lesser Categories of Obstacles" contends that the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of mistakes and unintended consequences in a business, while workers are responsible for about 15% (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly_Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly... ). Deming's 8th Point of Management is to drive out fear so that everyone can work effectively for the company (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principl... ). Publicly humiliating the programmer seems to be simultaneously disregarding the symptoms of a systemic issue (namely, a lack of code reviews) and putting everyone on the team into a state of fear.

jonny_eh 14y ago

Wow, a surprising number of comments on that blog post agree with the manager. Ya, it's a stupid bug, but the way the manager dealt with it was totally out of line. Whether or not that "style" of management results in better output is moot, you just don't treat people like that. It's not like the developer shot the manager's dog or anything.

citricsquid 14y ago

Please can you increase the font size on your blog? Not only does small size font make no sense, it is also unreadable for me (chrome, Windows): http://i.imgur.com/TZUVi.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TZUVi.jpg Anywhere from 16px to 22px would be fine, we are here to read the text afterall. It's the focus!

aqme28 14y ago
Can you zoom in to make it more readable? (ctrl + mouse-wheel for me) e: VVV Good point.
- DanBC 14y ago
  I could make it more readable by tweaking my settings. But that only helps me. Asking people to remember to make stuff accessible helps everyone who needs it.

DanBC 14y ago

In the UK employers have a legal duty of care to protect their employees from harm in the workplace, and this includes stress. This is written in law, and has been supported by court cases. One incident like that is wrong, but could perhaps be explained by someone having a really bad day. Recognition, apology, and no further incidents would help. But continued incidents? The company is leaving themselves open to lawsuits. ("Constructive dismissal" and employment tribunal in the UK.) I'm pretty sure that toxic work environment leading to poor health is something that has been through US courts. I mention this because sometimes the only way you get through to PHBs is to talk about costs and risks, and not "don't let employees be dicks to other employees".

justin 14y ago
Holy crap... nanny state? I'm not agreeing in any way with the manager in this situation; public humiliation of employees by managers is both morally cowardly (bullying someone from a position of power) and ineffective over the long run (in my opinion). But still, stress happens in most jobs. Often times it is caused by a combination of home and work factors. It's ridiculous to make "preventing stress" a legal duty of employers, because that's not wholly within an employers control. Example: Faulty machine used to serve customers blows up at work at now you have a lot of angry customers. Stress ensues.
- DanBC 14y ago
  In this context "stress" means "bad stuff that could be controlled but isn't" - it's different from "adrenaline rush caused by tight (but achievable) deadlines" or "employer trying hard but things go wrong". Employers are expected to have procedures in place to deal with things like sexual harassment. This is similar, they're expected to have procedures in place to deal with bullying. I agree that I might have made it sound stronger than it is. In real life it's pretty reasonable.
- drewmclellan 14y ago
  It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that the stress (and business impact) could be reduced by making sure any critical machine has a hot-backup should it fail. Making sure employees are happy and safe in their work is good business.

sparknlaunch12 14y ago

Humiliation is not isolated to startups. In fact every industry has these type of characters. Such behaviour is not the best method of motivating your team. Sadly it exists. What will you do differently next time? Would you call this behaviour out to your other manager or directly to the perpetrator? If you want to avoid it happening again you should speak up. Unless you don't mind the abuse?

babarock 14y ago

Similar humiliations used to happen to me at my first job. It was the first time I was programming professionally and made a few mistakes that would've cost the startup a lot. On my second week opn the job, I commented out, by mistake, the initialization of variable $user (arrrgh!!). The website crashed on all the signed-in users. My boss being the stressed nerv-ball that he was crictized me in the same way described in the article. I think there's a lesson to be taken here. Not for managers (clearly good management would criticize privately) but for the employee. Learn to take a yell. It's not good style but it's widely common, people above you scream at you when you screw up. Learn not to take it personal, and not to let such incidents affect your passion for your work. The yelling is bad form, but it's not direct criticism at you. In large entreprises, it's the result of a chain of screaming starting at the top. In startups it's the result of the nerve-wrecking stress, founders go through. 'Constructive criticism' is an advice we give would-be managers, but it's a luxury starting employees rarely get. You're lucky if you meet one such boss in your career. Learn to take criticism, the bad kind, leaving out the humiliation. I found the best way to cut a yelling short is by answering loudly: "You're right I screwed up, I'm sorry. At least now I learned it, it won't happen again". After getting yelled at like this a few times, you'll realize it's really not against you, and such an answer would calm down your boss quickly; make sure not to make that mistake again, because then you'd really deserve a humiliation ;). This is easier said (written?) than done, but it's a natural part of one's career. I take it as a mental strength test. Also, you won't be the junior on the team forever. One day you'll be responsible for an intern screwing up. Remember that moment and don't be too harsh.

AznHisoka 14y ago
Yup, I also find it's best to say stuff like "Yup, you're right. This was a dumb mistake. I should be fired for this"
- zxcvb 14y ago
  Never EVER say "I should be fired for this". You probably mean it as a little joke. Getting yelled at for screwing up is not the right time to make a joke. Unless of course you are serious, in which case you're an idiot. Saying something that weird will just make it seem like you don't care or you're weird. The fact you say you 'find it best' suggests you get shouted at a lot or you are making this up. Either way, you shouldn't be dispensing this kind of nonsense advice to other people who may well follow it.

debacle 14y ago

That has nothing to do with startups - the PM is an asshole. > so afraid of being publicly railed-on that they wrote pretty much bug-free code all the time. That's a non sequitur. Programmers try to write bug-free code all the time anyway. No one tries to introduce bugs.

oskarth 14y ago

I hope no company YC makes this mistake, considering How to Win Friends and Influence People [0] is recommended reading in YC [1]. For example: Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. and Let the other person save face. That is, criticize in private, give praise in public (give the person a fine reputation to live up to). Calling someone a retard is a counter-productive thing to do. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen... 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584 (can't find where I read it, but this thread points to pg recommending it)

qbproger 14y ago
Is there a YC reading list somewhere? I've been looking to do more reading lately, and this looks like a good title to start with.
- srijan4 14y ago
  http://ycombinator.com/lib.html http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

stevencorona 14y ago

I would have quit on the spot- you should never put up with that kind of second-class behavior.

parfe 14y ago

What a terrible environment. Fear from humiliation does not make better code. Code reviews, instruction, and collaboration help make better code.

tomjen3 14y ago
Code reviews are just opportunities for institutionalized bike-shedding. And in cases like this ensures further humiliation. Instruction can work, but it requires a smart programmer who can do it right. Collaboration can work but it reduces the speed you can think at to how fast two people can communicate instead of how fast one person can think. And no, I don't have good solution (other than to ensure you only hire the best people).

majmun 14y ago

i wonder how you didn't notice this while developing app.

chris_wot 14y ago
Rookie error. It happens. That's the point of code review.
- drewmclellan 14y ago
  Absolutely. We have code reviews because we all make mistakes. Sometimes really dumb ones. It's crazy to be mad at a programmer for a bug in their code found during a code review. Discuss it, learn from it, and not only does the code get fixed, everyone involved becomes a better programmer by some small amount. The only time it's justifiable being mad is if something gets through code reviews and into production - and at that point it's not the programmer's fault, it's the fault of procedure which enabled buggy code to ship undetected. So you get mad at the system, review the failure and fix it.

Greg12x 14y ago

Ouch.

intractable_ 14y ago

(x-posted from the OP's comment page) The people on that page that are saying the abuse as well deserved are part of the problem. Sure, it's not good code, and causes problems in production. It's certainly not the right way to do this -- but constructive criticism, gentle corrections, and rewards/acknowledgements of successes when they occur are far more effective in the long run than this public tirade bullshit. AFAIC, the PM that humiliates an employee in public for any reason is (a) immature, (b) short-sighted, (c) unprofessional, (d) a poor choice for a PM, and likely (e) insecure and feels the need to strut his/her intellectual "superiority" in front of others lest their authority/superiority be called into question. I also would have quit on the spot -- life is far, far too short to deal with that kind of crap, and there are other work environments in our field where one can do what one enjoys and where it's okay to be a fucking human being instead of being viewed as merely a code generation resource that can be kicked around when it doesn't "behave." The proper response to that kind of public humiliation is "Okay, you're right, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But not as stupid as abusing your employees and creating an environment where the primary motivators are grounded in FUD. I'll collect my things from my desk because...how to communicate this part adequately...oh yeah: fuck you."

necro 14y ago

Would this have helped how you feel better? Or would you feel the same way? "This is retarded! There's no delay in the while loop. How many times does the client have to connect to the DB per second? Thousands! I can't believe this implementation is so fucking stupid!" In this case we try to refer to the code directly, taking our reference to the person.

JVIDEL 14y ago

"You retard! There's no delay in your while loop. How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands! I can't believe you'd do something so fucking stupid!" Wow, was it that hard to keep it down a little? see: "Dude there's no delay in your while loop. How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands! go fix that" See? is not sugar-coating it, simply not being a gigantic asshole about it.

davidw 14y ago
I think with anyone who cares about doing good work, simply asking the questions that will lead the person to realize what a fuckup it is should be enough.

Jach 14y ago

> "How many times do you think the client can connect to the DB per second? Thousands!" Is this a source of concern for the DB? If it is, you might want to consider limiting connections on one side or the other at a deeper level. Self-inflicted DoS bugs during development aren't fun, but actual DoS attacks in production are even less fun. If there's a potential way to bring your DB to its knees and you get popular enough for trolls (let alone actual crackers) to take notice (and if you're writing video games that presumably have high score boards or something similar this isn't that unlikely) expect people to find it. It's good to get yelled at some number of times throughout your life to help you grow a thicker skin, but I've never been yelled at in the work environment. If it occurred I'd be strongly motivated to quit like others here. Stating matter-of-factly "That was stupid" is one thing, joking and exaggerating stupidity of yourself or others is another (and is dependent on implicit understanding of such and also requires a certain culture of the group), but when it gets to a manager actually screaming at you about a possibility of something bad happening then that's the line, at least for me. If I wanted to get screamed at, I'd join the military.

Estragon 14y ago
If I wanted to get screamed at, I'd conclude I was a masochist and seek therapy.

B0Z 14y ago

The behavior you experienced from the "manager" was, at best, grossly inappropriate. It may or may not help now, but I think it's important to be mindful of where other peoples' perspective is. The "shoe on the other foot" mentality sounds like it has been forgotten both both the manager and you. It's a two-way street.

stuff4ben 14y ago

Unfortunately I've done something similar to this to some outsourced contractors in India as we were doing a final code review of their deliverables. I regret it still and have tried to make amends. On the one hand we're paying them good money to do work we don't have time to do ourselves so at the time I felt it was ok and warranted. On the other hand they're human beings just like me with feelings and pride and i took them down a notch in front of their peers. Yes, I'm a better coder than them, yes we were paying them lots of money for work I felt should have been better. But the way I went about it was totally wrong. Sucks but at least I learned from it.

droithomme 14y ago

> It makes me sad to see recent portrayals of Silicon Valley hold up humiliation as a recipe for success. This is an interesting statement in the article and I think it is worth bringing up. It contrasts significantly to the other article I just read that said that "public shaming", which is just another word for public humiliation, is a desirable practice needed to stem the existential threat to engineering of "brogrammers". http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/opinion/trapani-brogrammer-culture/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/opinion/trapani-brogrammer-cul... > Sometimes the road to enlightenment is paved with public shaming.

moocow01 14y ago

I don't know about Steve Jobs but every company Ive been in where this has started to become the culture it has been a sign of a sinking ship... and every time that sign was accurate. If you think public humility is motivating it probably is in the short term. But its the most motivating for getting that resume spruced up again.

jonny_eh 14y ago
I dunno, I think we could all use a bit more pubic humility ;)

stcredzero 14y ago

Perhaps a good way for such a rookie mistake to be handled would be to turn this in to playful ribbing. (WAT? WTF?) I too have been the subject of manager outbursts like this. Only do it if you're deliberately trying to get rid of the person, and if you're doing that, be aware of the precedent you're setting. There's too many things to know about programming for any one person to be expert in everything, and never make a WTF mistake.

smacktoward 14y ago

I grew up on military bases around military people, and in that environment I learned one bit of wisdom that has helped me many times when managing people: If you're in charge, and your people screw up, it's not their fault. It's yours. Yes, they made a mistake. But why did they make it? Did you not train them sufficiently? Did you not give them the mentoring they need? Did you fail to get important tools or information to them? Did you put them in a position of greater responsibility than they're currently equipped to handle, or where their skills don't match the needs of the position? At first when you try to wrap your mind around this line of thinking, it can be difficult. Why should I be held responsible when Jack the Junior Coder is the one who actually screwed up? But eventually, if you stick with it, you learn something important: on a real team, who screwed up is irrelevant. If one person fails, the whole team fails. And your job as a leader is to help your people get to a place where they fail less and less every day, not to pin blame. This is the difference between a manager and a leader: a leader is someone who accepts responsibility not just for his own actions, but for his team's as well.

nateberkopec 14y ago
"If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers." - Sun Tzu I think startups have a lot to learn from the military community. Yes, for the most part modern militaries are extensive bureaucracies, but military thinkers and intellectuals are really at the forefront of management science. John Boyd basically wrote The Lean Startup 30 years before Eric Ries did.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  I have had a blog post rattling around in my head forever introducing Boyd's leadership principles to non-military folks. Should probably get around to actually writing it one of these days...
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    One of these days is, empirically, none of these days at least for me, so could you just post a link to some introduction?

essayist 14y ago

A much better approach (from a piano teacher, but it generalizes: Tags like "stupid," "bad at ____", "sloppy," and so on, are ways of saying "You're performing badly and I don't know why." Once you move it to "you're performing badly because you have the wrong fingerings," ... it's no longer a vague personal failing but a causal necessity. Anyone who never understood limits will flunk calculus. It's not you, it's the bug. http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html

chrisacky 14y ago

Speaking of awful code. 17 days ago, when the new Galaxy "demo" page launched from Samsung, they had that webpage, www.tgeltaayehxnx.com with the countdown.. you guys remember? Anyway, I was interested to see what was happening with that page out of interest so I checked out the source. What I found made me laugh so hard. Given the fact that I knew that second perfect cache invalidation is pretty hard...and given time zones... I knew that this wouldn't end well. What happened as a result? They created their own distributed denial of service that was set to fire off every connected user at the same time. They ended up taking down their new launching page for their phone. This was the code: if (timediff < 0) { //console.log("LIVE!"); location.reload(true); } else { // Do stuff. } Whoever wrote that code, was basically checking if the time difference between the countdown was zero and then refresh the page. Guess what? This ran continuously. For thousands of clients... I wonder what kind of jokes they had at Samsung over this one.