Does the advice in the article apply to interacting with people who are not well-intentioned?
In my experience the truly impossible collaborations always involved people who wanted to play politics, take credit for stuff they didn't do, undermine me etc.
On the other hand I was almost always able to remove friction if the person I was working with was well-intentioned and non-political.
Once upon a time I received quite a lot of well-meaning advice on dealing with organizational difficulties, "deal with the process, not the people," and so on. I was told that I focused too much on individuals. The person who kept pushing this advice on me -- they would be referred to as a "thought leader" these days -- was absolutely blind-sided and shoved out by a bad actor.
As far as I am concerned, pretending that bad actors simply do not exist has allowed some of the greatest problems I've seen plague organizations, drive out good people, and so on. I have noticed that saying you have a bad actor reflects poorly on the people doing the hiring (this insulated one of the bad actors until all of the relevant hiring parties left), but so much of it seems like willful disregard. I find myself sometimes amazed at how easily greased people are by snake oil salesmen selling largely themselves and a kind of "don't even worry about it" optimism.
> As far as I am concerned, pretending that bad actors simply do not exist has allowed some of the greatest problems I've seen plague organizations
Absolutely. In my experience there are vicious cycles at play. Political people (that's my name for bad actors) seem on average better at identifying whether somebody is political or not. They are also better at reinforcing each other. Political people will tend to hire and promote political people since that's the game they understand. Non-political people might tend to promote more of their own kind, but they will probably be worse at spotting the political kind, hence they will make more mistakes wrt promoting competence.
Come to think of it this whole thing seems quite amenable to some sort of evolutionary game theory. Maybe in conjunction with social network theory. I'm curious if anybody studied this already.
Multiple people in my last organization fit this bill. Worse, these bad actors are somehow able to leverage their incompetency to be branded as 'thought leaders' themselves. Its comically impressive...
A good and true quote, but to equate things like the Nazis or genocides with a couple of assholes on the Solution Design team who strongly prefer Technology [X] is overkill.
They're not evil, they're just a wet blanket, and you're not a good person, at least not per se, for opposing them -- maybe they're right?
The thing is, you have to take it all without a sign of unhappiness or grumble. Roll with it and deal with it... until you don't. Then you go hard against. You can never be halfway.
Same questions. You cant ignore them , they do suck up 100x better than what you do. They never get blamed, you do not have organisational power over them, you can play politics but it is tiring, you cant be friends with them because they stab you in the back. They are also functionless, and low in the actual task skill set.
This happens more often in family business, although there are lots of blue blood in many large enterprise as well.
Sometimes I just want to get the job done, I dont want a full blown internal war with another team.
There are also technically skilled political people. And these can do awful lot of damage in culture that can't deal with bad polics. Functionally incapable people are easier to deal with (you just don't hide their problems and isolate others so that it is hard to blame on them). It serves no one to pretend that sociopathy and knowledge or usefulness are mutually exclusive.
It may be even more prevalent in large corporations. Wherever there are many layers of management there's a lot of room for people who like climbing the greasy pole.
My key takeaway from the article was to create a Career Stakeholder Map. This must be something taught in business school. I've never heard of it.
Someone who is not well-intentioned would rank very low on the "Interest" scale. Where they rank on the "Power" scale is independent of their intentions.
This is has been bugging me for some time as well. How does one differentiate between a well intended Vs not in a typical work environment? Intentions are interpreted through various signals and when there are various strands of office politics in play it makes it really difficult to open up and follow the playbook suggested. The typical fear of are we giving away too much information by opening up and is it going to make it worse sometimes comes to play. Wish human interactions were simple
I think the best that we can do is to observe people over time and slowly build trust or distrust.
Work interactions I guess could be treated as a repeated game with imperfect information. We have to try to refine our priors iteratively.
The way I did it was to be well-intentioned, honest and open with everybody in the beginning and close up as needed. I would determine if somebody was ill-intentioned based on how they reacted to my feedback and based on their general behavior. Do they tend to talk people behind their back? Do they consistently silo information? Do they offer constructive advice? Do they focus on the actual work rather than on attention-seeking? etc.
But indeed the task is not easy and things will never be perfectly clear.
This is a throwaway account, but I'd like some advice on this very subject.
I recently ended a working relationship with a company that had a problem with 'not liking' me.
I moved to another country to offer onsite services to this company, as I created the core (design and tech) of a product that unexpectedly performed very well and became the focus of their business. Unfortunately this meant throwing out years of work by their core team, the owners work included.
As I had only been working remotely and very part time till this point, I saw an understandable resentment toward me and addressed it head on with each of the team when I arrived onsite. I perhaps failed in this because I was met with nods, smiles, and a professional behaviour me most of the time but not friendship.
I was actively excluded from team lunches for example. And I heard less than favourable rumours about me in the local community, a community I never worked in.
This is ok, to a point if a little hurtful. As it didn't impact my work, I thought just letting it go was a better approach.
Many people had a secure job based on my work...thats probably my resentment talking but worth saying.
Anyway it came to a head when I asked for the money we agreed for my contribution. (I had held off charging till the company was on more solid ground) At this point I was quickly told that the owner created the thing I made for them. Not me.
Then closed ranks and told me I was a bad friend, refusing to pay obviously.
I think being left out in the cold all this time was a good sign that the company as a whole was planing something like this. Not explicitly but something.
Did I do the right thing in leaving? Am I the 'bad friend'?
I did think we where both, this is 100% my mistake.
Not being bitter about it, rather I should have been more strict and not offered business favours for free. Things like not charging for late payments, relocation and so on. 100% my error.
I mean, I'm glad you're taking this opportunity to do some soul searching, but the bottom line is that someone owes you money that they're not paying you.
If you were robbed in the street, would you be laying in bed worrying about whether you had a robbable face? Would you be trying to think how you could have been friendlier to your muggers?
The number one in a business relationship is to be clear about money issues. Friendship may come in addition. A lot of people think that asking for money will hurt the relationship but the opposite is true.
Yes I think this answers my question quite distinctly, asking for the agreed amount should not have resulted on what happened. Even if there is a misunderstanding on any side, it should have resulted in negotiations, not an immediate accusation and denial of work done.
If you had a proper contract, talking to a lawyer should fix your payment issue.
As others have pointed it out they were not your friends in the first place.
I’m lucky as I have managed to gain a true friend through work, but it takes a lot of time spent together, I’m not sure if it is even possible remotely.
If you are remote ppl can also use you as a scapegoat for issues they have that you are not even remotely responsible for.
It's clear something like this has happened. Writing it down and getting valuable feedback here is helping me with my self doubt. I'm always questioning all kinds of things about myself surrounding this. I didn't create the end product in a vacuum, many people contributed to it and it feels weird to state my importance over others.
Looks like it will be court at this point. I'm more worried about my career and reputation now.
By the way, in the United States copyright is owned by the author of the work unless there is a written contract assigning it to someone else. The only real exception to this is an employee can assign copyright to their employer by mere verbal agreement. Since you were a contractor they don't have the copyright unless you actually have a written contract assigning it to them.
We do have something in writing and my lawyer is taking it seriously. What bothers me, if a bigger name than I is claiming my work as his own, what impact that will have on my career?
Sounds like the old phrase "you can't understand something if your salary depends on not understanding it" applies. If the boss of the company spreads misinformation that impugned you, his reports will believe it.
Yeah, after seeing the velocity in which I was told I created little of value for the company, I think the resentment and ego issues runs much deeper that I saw.
I have started to think along these lines now, but have to be careful not to bias myself. It might turn out that this is true, and I am keeping an open mind about it all.
Best thing is to try to understand and move on. It is possible that there's something you did or said or your attitude but it is also possible someone might be sabotaging you. By moving on and seeing whether these patterns repeat you can asses whether you have any blame at all. I've worked in a toxic environment and know how they affect the confidence. Second, no pay no play, it's a good sign to move on.
On friendship: if you show a more humble side of yours people won't be afraid to be your friends. Sometimes people are intimidated by people who are better than them.
Also eagerness friends turns people off, sometimes it's better to just smile and wait for friendships to happen naturally. Not sure if that was your case but it's a good thing to rummage on.
I totally agree, I've never been in this kind of situation before. I've managed teams before, worked as a grafter and everything in-between, my complains have always been technical in nature. Never personal, in fact quite the opposite.
My best guess is it was rooted in the resentment that an outsider created something (in a fraction of the time) that meant the disposal of years of their work.
And this is no comment of the quality of their work at all, it was excellent. It just didn't strike a cord with audiences. This has happened to me many many times.
Something along the lines of an unearned position.
So yes, I think although there is no reoccurring pattern of this. I could have been much more sensitive to this issue.
>> "(I had held off charging till the company was on more solid ground)"
>> "Am I the 'bad friend'?"
Those comments are a red flag to me that you are confusing business with personal relationships, it will always cost you money. I'm curious to know what your upbringing was like. I am speaking from experience here. I'm not saying that you fit into this model (I don't know you), but, it has been my experience that people from codependent families tend to fall into this trap.You are a gifted programmer, but, you struggle to understand how to appropriately bond with people.
You are woking in the same physical space, you see them, you know about their lives and families so you assume because of that you are 'friends'. You may be friendly but you are not there together because you are friends. Your bond is that you all earn a living there, that's it. Later, you may become friends, but that takes time.
A better way to conduct yourself is to put on a 'work persona'.
You are not the same person in every situation right? You do not walk around town in your underwear like you might at home. You do not drink soup from a bowl in a restaurant like you might at home. You don't talk to your mother like you do a stranger right? You are many different people already. You may not consciously choose to change your speech when you talk to your mother or a baby or a dog or a cop or a stranger but you do it. So recognize that ability and use it.
Your work persona will have a different vocabulary, wardrobe, everything.
Your work persona should be professional but warm. Professional means good manners and doing what you are supposed to do even if you do not feel like it. It does not mean cold and without personality.
If you are acting like a professional you have every right to expect others to act like professionals and you should interact with them like they are a professional.
It is at this point (pro to pro) that the lack of payment should have come to a head. When you are not being paid, stop working. Do it in a friendly way, don't shout or storm out. Give a company a small grace period (maybe a week) but even that is pushing it. Then simply say to whoever you report to: I'm unable to work here without pay, I'm sorry. If you can pay me I will continue work. If they say "we will pay next week please keep working" You say: 'I will keep working next week when I am paid'.
Seriously, even if you GET THE FEELING like you aren't going to get paid (like you said) that is the point to start saying something.
Someone here mentioned a lawyer. Let me tell you something from experience, don't rely on that in place of speaking up. Even if you have an airtight contract written by the best lawyer in the country and everyone in the company signed and agreed to it, A CONTRACT IS NOT MONEY. In fact, enforcing that contract is going to cost you money. It costs $250 to sue someone in America and 99.9% of all lawsuits are settled before they go to trial. That means the only thing that matters is who has the most money to fight over the contract. If it is you (a person) versus your work (a company) you probably do not have the money to fight over a contract. Start speaking up early and leave if you aren't paid.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say what I actually think happened. I think you rewrote their code without explicitly being asked to do so. Programming is fun, you saw that you could make a big impact so you just did it yourself and it worked! However, from their perspective you did something they didn't actually ask you to do, so, they feel it doesn't have value. You also didn't press for payment which further fuels their feeling (not fact) that you did not contribute value.
Also, the product existed before you and there are a lot of people who make that product work regardless of who wrote it: sales, support, management. Remember that, they sure do.
If you are so talented that you can rewrite an entire production grade codebase: go work for someone who pays you or work for yourself.
Honestly, and I mean this in the most sincere empathetic way I know how to say it: you sound a bit inexperienced and a little immature. This experience will help you grow. Remember how it feels to be disrespected and not paid and use that horrible fucking feeling to protect yourself in the future. I'm not saying be jaded and cynical, I'm saying just act as a professional (especially when it is difficult to do so) and you will be amazed at how things like this stop happening.
One final point and I will hit 'reply' and count the downvotes: How long did it take you to be able to do what you do? A thousand hours? Five thousand? Ten? More?
Whatever it is: THAT is what you are selling; your experience.
It is confusing because programmers are used to just spending time at a computer without any expectation of being paid. We read and code and try things and chat online about it, all in a self-education mode learning on our own because it is fun. Then we go to work and, again, I sit at a desk, I open my favorite editor and write in my favorite language and I'm having fun again! I'm just in a different building. So when I don't get paid it actually feels kind of OK because I am used to doing this for free. Oy.
The difference is now that you are working for someone they are getting the benefit of all that sweat equity. Name another industry where someone has a thousand hours of experience and they are expected to work for free. It doesn't exist.
Ask for payment, you earned it. If you do not get paid on time then walk. If you see a coworker not getting his rightfully earned pay, that company is broken and if you don't move on you will eventually be next to not get paid.
You are a talented developer, businesses need talented developers so they hire them. After that, your experience there is largely up to you.
Be a professional and walk if you are not paid in timely manner. Always speak up for yourself, look out for yourself, and if you see others being treated poorly (and it's permitted) find another job.
There are some great points here, but a few leaps.
Nope, not from a codependent family.
I did create the product (A game), I designed the game and designed a novel tech to run it. I was given an open brief and created this game based on my domain knowledge. It was meant to be part of a larger project but it got such a good response that it became the entire project.
I'm ok with people not being my friend and being professional. I'm unsettled by being singularly excluded and rumours spread about me.
My professionalism has been impeccable, beyond reproach even.
I did get payed, just not the full amount.
And I've got about 15 years behind me.
The things you've said that ring true are:
What you said about seeing another developer on the team getting paid far less than what they are worth. Yes I saw this, one of the middle managers let slip they thought he was a coward and would not leave because of poor pay. I foolishly ignored this sign, rather I tried to get them to increase his pay.
"CONTRACT IS NOT MONEY", oh yes! I know this very strongly. It is a concern, but my reputation is of more value here.
Because many people were involved in the game it feels odd to stand my ground, but I see no other alternative.
And yes, I did walk the second there was a refusal to pay.
I hope you don't get down voted too much here. Some good stuff!
I hope I helped some and I appreciate the feedback, and apologize, for the leaps I made. If your professionalism is beyond reproach and they are calling people 'cowards' and not paying the full amount, a few things are true.
1. You are in a toxic environment.
2. You are not paid to change or fix that environment.
3. You are not the problem.
There are so many great companies out there who treat people well; you would thrive at one. This is a great example of why the culture fit is so important in a job. If you do interview around make sure to ask things like "What does it feel like to work here?" or "What is the day to day like?" If you get far enough in an interview ask to speak to some peers and get their take on the stuff that is not specifically tech related.
Look around and find a good job where people who are friendly. You spent way too much time learning your craft to deal with bullshit.
Honestly it sounds like you just work with a bunch of dicks.
No worries, you and others are helping me see this.
It's such a good point to find the right environment. I think that's the best approach going forward with other companies. I've worked with many people over the years and was perfectly fine not being close friends or anything like that, this is the first time I've had people actively trying to exclude me from inter staff things as well as with others in the local community.
Or just move on. There are some situations or people where “smart” approach doesn’t solve anything. The article has good points. If we understand others, we can handle things easier, but also can be lost in the dark. It takes time and energy, some cases doesn’t worth the quest.
The “just find another job” trope is tiresome and overused. This seems to be commonly thrown around in a hand-wavy way, and it ignores a large part of reality.
The idea that one can just move to another job is a luxury in many places. Many areas have only one or two employers, so there’s simply no place to go.
There’s also the fact that no matter where you go, you will likely always find someone you don’t get along with. Learning to deal with those people is a life skill.
Not just luxury, but it is making us collectively incapable of dealing with bad actors. Over time, we (as an industry or culture or whatever) are loosing behaviors and skills needed to expose or minimize harm.
Meanwhile, culture is increasingly dictated by bad actors - making it even harder to oppose them. For example, some of what is said to be "professionalism" are basically rules that make it harder to deal with bad actors or companies.
I meant move on as thinking, not switching a job. I’m working in an enviroment where are limited options to switch. Dealing with it, as you don’t do it. As others also wrote about bad actors. You cannot go on a path where you won’t find any. From my point and experience, sometimes you shouldn’t care. If you don’t like 5% of your coworkers or just one, thats totally fine. But if I want to go further, you may not dislike them. They are just not the same. I don’t think the only way is some scientific/psycholgical explanation to get over with them.
Edit: I switched because of this, taking the risk, it’s worth it. At the current place I got another bad actor, but we could manage these differences.
I agree. People that dislike someone, wait for things to confirm their personal bias and ignore positive things the disliked person does. First impressions are so important and prevent unreasonable headaches with someone.
I think some of the advice is pretty good. Especially the bits about using questions rather than assertions to resolve conflict, and asking people for help (asking somebody who doesn’t like you for help can be very disarming). But I think the root of the problem comes from caring about things you probably shouldn’t care about all that much. If somebody at work doesn’t like you for some stupid/immature/political reason, the natural reaction is to not like them back. But a better reaction is to not care. I’ve never had much trouble working with people who didn’t like me, because I’ve never been particularly bothered by it. If your work is so full of those people that you really don’t like turning up every day, then finding a different job is a better reaction than getting too wound up about it. It’s the company’s problem more than it is yours, and there not much reason to care about that either, if that’s the kind of working environment they’ve chosen to create.
>If your work is so full of those people that you really don’t like turning up every day, then finding a different job is a better reaction than getting too wound up about it.
Honestly, I'm approaching this point myself. The problem isn't chemistry or letting go or whatever. The problem is when the other side is extremely inflexible and has a position of power over you. They get to comfortably sit in an ivory tower and tell you what's wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it. Its extremely soul-crushing and trying to fight it with their higher-ups is generally a waste of time for a myriad of reason (cargo cults, echo chambers or simply pride aka "surely this senior knows better than his subordinate!"). And 9 out of 10 times, these discussions are absolutely trivial in nature and only break the flow of the person waving at the ivory tower along with incurring the cost of switching contexts. Rarely, if ever, do I get a discussion which results into an actual new insight or actual transfer of knowledge. And at the end of the day, the company wonders why they can't keep any employees or why their workforce is burned out, yet somehow they still manage to survive despite making these poor choices.
Of course, this is just personal experience and is by no means a generalization.
If you can leave a situation like that, you absolutely should (unless there’s some other major benefit that would make you want to stay).
> yet somehow they still manage to survive despite making these poor choices.
Sometimes when you leave a company like that, you’ll get the pleasure of watching them go down in flames. But usually not. The thing to keep in mind is that all companies have an incredibly broad set of responsibilities to maintain. To be a successful company, they really only have to be actually good at a few of those things (even less to just survive). Most companies are actually quite bad at most of the things they do. So I wouldn’t get upset when you see a company with terrible practices continue to tick along. The only thing it really means is that those practices haven’t completely obstructed them from delivering whatever value they do deliver to their customers (yet).
In any case. The more important thing to worry about is your own happiness.
> To be a successful company, they really only have to be actually good at a few of those things (even less to just survive). Most companies are actually quite bad at most of the things they do
Yeah, laws and the nature of the job in particular protect the company I work at really well. Specifically, no international players see reason to compete which helps their position (any American startup with an ounce of competence would steamroll our feature set within a year), as well as the customers themselves putting massive emphasis on security over quality. A case of sunken cost fallacy from the customers and first-mover advantage.
> If you can leave a situation like that, you absolutely should (unless there’s some other major benefit that would make you want to stay).
You're right. Case of risk-adversity kicking in and laziness, along with lack of opportunities presented, but those are personal obstacles and to a large degree, poor excuses.
> But a better reaction is to not care. I’ve never had much trouble working with people who didn’t like me, because I’ve never been particularly bothered by it. If your work is so full of those people that you really don’t like turning up every day, then finding a different job is a better reaction than getting too wound up about it.
I would think in this case some self-reflection would be useful. Not caring may cause someone to gloss over the why they are not liked by so many.
Obviously not everyone will like everyone. That's just how the world works. But, if there are a large amount of people at a workplace who actively do not like someone, that person should think about why that is.
Anytime somebody doesn’t like you, there’ll be some reason for it, even if it’s a bad reason or completely without merit. There’s usually something to learn in taking an interest why that is. But you can only have so much influence over what people think about you, so not being bothered by their opinions is all I’m advocating for. If somebody disliking you causes you to notice a character flaw in yourself, or an instance where you’ve legitimately wronged somebody, that is something you should care about irrespective of their opinions.
> Over a series of conversations, Kacie and I worked through the situation. She revisited the stakeholder map she had created in her first few weeks in the role, which clearly showed that Marta’s collaboration and partnership were essential for getting the business results Kacie wanted.
Is this something people do when they start a new job?
I have done this once, when I started in a middle-management role. During the first weeks, I was introduced / introduced myself to a couple of dozen people in various capacities with whom I would need to collaborate.
I kept a text document in which I listed who's who and what's what, and what their relation was to the organization I worked for. Nothing too fancy, just names, organisations, contact info and a few keywords.
It's a useful exercise to do at the start of a new position for several reasons. For instance, you want to ensure you didn't skip or include the wrong people when sending out an e-mail. Or you have to attend, or organize, a meeting, so you want to know who's going to sit around the table and how they tie into the goal of the meeting is.
When the lay of the land shifts fundamentally, it's useful to revisit the exercise.
If you're in a purely operational role and your territory doesn't extend beyond your team or your office floor, there's not much point in doing such a formal exercise.
Very useful in a big company setting, even if you're an IC on a team without much contact beyond your team. It's relationship building and helps to know who is who.
If your role depends a lot on coordinating people and building rapport with your superiors, it intuitively makes sense to do so. Similar to how a dev will get familiar with how the team communicates, does pull requests, estimates etc. - just in a different work environment.
It can be extremely useful when starting a project, and is part of accepted project management techniques (APM body of knowledge and similar). It genuinely helps to consider important people's level of interest, level of influence, and preferred communication styles. I can easily imagine it becoming so ingrained as to be used in all new situations.
I've also heard of it being used in situations with difficult colleagues or excessive office politics. Of course, by the time you are writing a stakeholder management plan just to deal with your own manager and peers, you probably need a new job, but it can be useful to keep you going for a while.
My former boss used to say that to me regularly, where I'd ask myself "Yeah, why don't I know this?" It was incredibly toxic and it's one of the reasons why I was afraid to reach out and ask for help.
He's still on the same team, but fortunately I'm working under someone else (the other teammates got the sense that he was a dick).
I had a mantra I used to use, I would say with emphasis “And I would know this how?” But, communication depended on word of mouth trickle down, which was horrible, and I refused to accept responsibility for things I was not made aware of.
There are some nice pieces in there occasionally, but if you ask me, nothing really replaces managing people on your own and A/B test all those things you hear and read about in practice.
Your personality is unique to you and you'll find external advice fitting your personal style in a believable AND effective way less often than you might think. Even from the same sources, you'll find better and worse pieces for yourself, like for example I adopted the super easy question from Joel Spolsky's "Guerilla Guide to Hiring Engineers" because it's a super good predictor for me, while I found his brainteaser utterly useless after testing both a few times.
Lots of pieces on HBR are rather abstract and handle topics in a meta way, which I did not find very usable. As for me, I'd give my former self this URL for starters and then tell them to dive right in and find out for yourself:
When you want to “learn from experience”, how much better do you do if you first have a theoretical framework that points out where to direct your attention?
Theory and practice, when done together, is much more powerful than either alone.
Good practice books like "High Output Management", "Influence", "Hard Things about Hard Things" gives you a view of what other people at other (high-functioning) organizations do and exposes you to the norms in industry. They also give you mental models to think about things, and helps you to become aware of the problems you never knew existed. And it helps your normalize your expectations: you may think your company sucks, but reading widely and critically helps you realize even the very best companies deal with the same problems and don't really have significantly better solutions.
Reading a good book is like having a conversation with and picking the brain of a really competent mentor, dead or alive, and of a calibre that not exist in your organization. Internal mentorship is sometimes oversold. Most organizations have managers that have merely adapted to their local ecosystem and don't really have any insight on management as a craft. Managers who learned purely through experience tend to be shaped by the company's culture and may do very well in their niche but lack imagination to go beyond because they have no theory to hang their thoughts on.
Also, books are like travel -- you don't know what you don't know until you've seen for yourself what exists. You sometimes need to peek outside your organization to see what other cultures exist.
Is your second recommendation "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" or "Influence: Science and Practice" (both have Robert B. Cialdini as authors)?
I'd buy some of their "10 Must Reads on X" books and see what you think about the quality of articles that way before commiting to a more expensive subscription.
In my experience the truly impossible collaborations always involved people who wanted to play politics, take credit for stuff they didn't do, undermine me etc.
On the other hand I was almost always able to remove friction if the person I was working with was well-intentioned and non-political.