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I've spent most of my career in a client facing role of one sort or another. One difference, at least from what I've seen, is that the incivility mentioned in

by mason55 11y ago

I've spent most of my career in a client facing role of one sort or another. One difference, at least from what I've seen, is that the incivility mentioned in the article is generally directed at the clients (behind closed doors of course). Especially once you grow past a size where losing a single client won't kill the company, you get the blame the client for everything that goes wrong (really just venting about the normal things that go wrong in any technology delivery). I do think that, in that environment, one of the senior people has the responsibility to keep the client hate from becoming totally toxic and pervasive. Of course there are bad clients but even good clients can be demanding and you don't want to have a whole team of client facing people who hate all of their clients.

Edmond 11y ago
Funny, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago on this very issue: http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of-it-consulting.html http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of...
- proveanegative 11y ago
  I agree with the general sentiment of your blog post but one claim caught my attention as not justified when it should be: >Just as people’s salary is not an acceptable topic of conversation amongst colleagues I think negative opinions about clients should be similarly off limit for casual conversations. The badmouthing of the client can get out of hand and become detrimental to your relationship with them. I have seen this happen. That employees shouldn't discuss their salaries is a piece of accepted wisdom but does experience support it? Personally, I can't say it does, but then again, it is such a rare freak occurrence you can hardly discern any trends. I suppose that under the conditions of a strong general taboo on it people talking about how much they make may already signal trouble; does it, however, create trouble where the taboo is weaker (e.g., in Europe)? I am not urging to abandon the taboo on discussing your salary simply because I can't find a good reason for it but I would like to understand how it came about and whether the conditions that created it still apply.

by mason55 11y ago

Edmond 11y ago

Funny, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago on this very issue: http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of-it-consulting.html http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of...

proveanegative 11y ago
I agree with the general sentiment of your blog post but one claim caught my attention as not justified when it should be: >Just as people’s salary is not an acceptable topic of conversation amongst colleagues I think negative opinions about clients should be similarly off limit for casual conversations. The badmouthing of the client can get out of hand and become detrimental to your relationship with them. I have seen this happen. That employees shouldn't discuss their salaries is a piece of accepted wisdom but does experience support it? Personally, I can't say it does, but then again, it is such a rare freak occurrence you can hardly discern any trends. I suppose that under the conditions of a strong general taboo on it people talking about how much they make may already signal trouble; does it, however, create trouble where the taboo is weaker (e.g., in Europe)? I am not urging to abandon the taboo on discussing your salary simply because I can't find a good reason for it but I would like to understand how it came about and whether the conditions that created it still apply.