How to Work Effectively with Someone You Don't Like

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2023/11/26/5-ways-to-work-effectively-with-someone-you-really-dont-like/

by BerislavLopac • 3 years ago

289 327 3 years ago

forbes.com

atemerev• 3 years ago

Good points; I am, however, also interested in how to work effectively with someone who doesn’t like me.

lacrimacida• 3 years ago

Send them a link to this page

xyzelement• 3 years ago

Probably can troubleshoot a bit. How do you know they don't like you? What's your guess as to why?

Supermancho• 3 years ago

I almost always clash with someone who rather spend the team's time trying to do it right (for whatever that means to them) as opposed to sooner. This is often expressed as "making a second change is more time than taking a week to think about it carefully the first time".

What's more, the results:

* turns out it's a delaying tactic to avoid doing work

* feature creep

* added complexity, which is brittle (feature has to be reworked, nobody is happy)

* constant nitpicking + the assumption that you will adopt their higher standards

Is this better? For some projects maybe. At least we have alerts that go off every day and nobody pays attention to them and multi-tiered shared libraries that result in esoteric problems (mostly from package upgrades) that affects projects X, but not Y and Z.

Not to say these engineers don't add value, but they are daily problems that everyone has to work around. This includes product stakeholders.

peteradio• 3 years ago

How do you work with someone who has no responsibility? Like "build fixed boss" with link to failed build.

unsupp0rted5• 3 years ago

Can you ask for proof?

Tests passing, screenshots/gif of build fix in action, etc

sevagh3• 3 years ago

If it's anything like companies I've worked at, you stick them in an unimportant fiefdom and give them raises, promos, and refreshers for decades.

bvirb• 3 years ago

If you can afford to and you have a team dynamic where "everyone makes mistakes" you can give them more responsibility -- like other people being stuck until they actually fix the build. But that can backfire if they're very junior or the culture is very negative around making mistakes.

Otherwise asking them questions can help. Come from the place that you must be missing something and ask them why you can't get XYZ to work as expected. Make them figure out what the problem is. Really get in the mindset that you're missing something though, or it can come off as patronizing.

FirmwareBurner• 3 years ago

Isn't that what PIP is for? Either improve or leave.

Since it sounds like he's doing it on purpose (malicious compliance), if it's happening several times already and you've already explained to him what the correct process is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving people second and third chances, have a talk with them and see what the problem is, maybe they have issues with their health or their personal life, but people who engage in malicious compliance because they can't be bothered to follow a simple process need to be shown the door pronto as that attitude negatively affect the whole team.

donatj3• 3 years ago

Going on a decade ago, I worked with a DBA who would get angry and scream about things and often at me because I was one of the few willing to butt head’s with him. He would want to change something in the database schema and I would calmly explain how that wouldn’t work for the business logic it was representing. He’d go on to berate you and the data design.

He was very difficult to work with, but also inarguably one of the smartest people I have ever met. I learned so much from him that I still use today. We were even relatively friendly outside of work topics, talked about our mutual interest in minimalist music pretty often.

When he was let go for obvious reasons, I was the strangest combination of upset and relieved I have ever experienced.

a_c2• 3 years ago

Curious to know how is he doing now

donatj3• 3 years ago

LinkedIn has had him as retired for a bit, but he was a DBA for Wells Fargo for years after he left us.

greenthrow2• 3 years ago

The brilliant jerk thing is, in my experience, largely a myth. If someone is highly intelligent, they will realize acting like a jerk is not helpful and causes them problems, and they will correct that behavior. People who persist in acting like a rude child beyond college, in my experience, get credited as brilliant because people are intimidated by their attitude. But if you look at their actual accomplishments and delivered value, it will be unimpressive.

arethuza2• 3 years ago

"The brilliant jerk thing is, in my experience, largely a myth."

Not in my experience - I've met a few spectacular examples in my career - but I am in my 50s.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

I'm not sure about that. It can at least be slow.

I was... maybe not brilliant, but pretty good. I also was at least a borderline jerk - arrogant and not very nice. It took me at least a decade out of college to get better.

My wife and kids think I'm on the autism spectrum, though I have never been diagnosed. Whether or not it's true, "people" is a language that it took me a long time to learn.

chrisweekly• 3 years ago

There are different kinds of intelligence, and they often don't correlate to each other. A brilliant coder can absolutely be an emotional infant. It will handicap their career, for sure, but doesn't entirely preclude their ability to solve certain kinds of problems.

yolo3000• 3 years ago

It's funny because that's how I think of most people going into management and above. They are smart, yet they will walk over you if you get in their way.

tyingq• 3 years ago

If someone is highly intelligent, they will realize acting like a jerk is not helpful and causes them problems

That doesn't appear to happen for other unhelpful behavior. Plenty of brilliant people with severe issues with all sorts of other criminal or self-destructive habits.

conjecTech• 3 years ago

Unfortunately not everyone we dislike is bad. I think this is a case of the fundamental attribution error: Most mean people aren't inherently mean, but are in circumstances that have made them so.

Yes, there are newgrad "rockstars" that can't play nice, and end up not being very productive. But there are also veteran engineers who have stayed at companies through 3 years of 100% attrition and are not super interested in listening to the opinion of the 4th junior backfill on some minor improvement to a system they architected and have been given 0 time to pay down technical debt on. Or maybe they are going through a messy divorce and the stress of it bleeds into their professional life.

I've gotten a lot of good out of finding such individuals, assuming they're reasonable people, and doing what I can to make their lives a little better.

roland35• 3 years ago

Many times it's not like they are a complete jerk - I sometimes they are just not really caring how they come across. The thing is - if no one is ever disagreeing with them they can be quite pleasant to work with!

charlie03• 3 years ago

The one brilliant "jerk" I work with works mainly by himself. He's been isolated from everyone else. I say "jerk" because he doesn't seem like one to me, he's just disagreeble. I've noted in most working environments, especially remote ones, being tactful is of the upmost importance, which is odd in an engineering environment where having correct and efficient solutions would be the most important. Me being somewhat disagreeable, I actually like the guy because he doesn't beat around the bush. But alas, one person's honesty is another person's "rude" behavior.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

If someone is highly intelligent, they will realize acting like a jerk is not helpful and causes them problems

Being intelligent does not mean someone is good at self-awareness.

leetcrew• 3 years ago

sometimes you just don't have the full context on the situation. I used to work with a systems dev manager who was notorious for getting mad, yelling, and questioning every little detail whenever an external team went to him for launch signoff. at first, I thought the guy was just an asshole. what I gradually figured out was that the application teams had been outright lying about designs, fabricating test results, and only involving him at the last second to launch a pile of trash on the critical infrastructure he was responsible for. this had been going on for years and resulted in several major outages.

sure, he could probably have been a bit more diplomatic instead of blowing his stack every time, but there's only so much a person can take.

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

In my experience in academia, it isn’t a myth at all. So much brilliant scholarship in my own field has been produced by people who are infamously ornery and prickly, and who don’t fit in with the departments they are at purely due to social reasons, not scholarly ones. It’s actually a problem that the modern tenure and grant system requires people to be very socially functioning and schmoozing.

joshjje• 3 years ago

You can be highly intelligent but also lack the social awareness / emotional intelligence, take Aspergers Syndrome for example.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

You discount the idea that

1) there are Savant syndrome people out there who cannot catch and correct their problems

2) they seem disproportionately attracted to tech

So you're right that it's rare, but Tech does tend to be a very odd outlier for that kind of person.

EspressoGPT2• 3 years ago

I worked with a DBA

How is it always the DBAs.

zabzonk• 3 years ago

their worries about not being much good at their job? the one time i tried to get one to look at our database design, the response was "it looks complicated". when compared with the back end for the trading system they were supposed to be supporting (but didn't), it was really simple.

mathattack• 3 years ago

They’re the ones who have to catch all the nonsense dropped from above. They’re like offensive lineman - never get credit for success, only blame when something goes wrong.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

At a previous job, I worked with such a person as well (not a DBA, though). Everyone tried to avoid working with him to the greatest degree possible -- except me.

His emotions didn't bother me at all, and pretty quickly he came to like me exactly because I wasn't afraid of him and was always honest with him about my professional opinions.

Eventually, though, I became his de facto "contact point", and everyone else who needed to interact with him would come to me and have me do it instead. That ended up being a huge downside.

mdgrech23• 3 years ago

sounds like you're also hard to work with.

donatj3• 3 years ago

I don't feel like I am. That said, I'm sure that's what a lot of people who are hard to work with would say.

I'm opinionated and willing to stand up for what I believe is correct, but I'm soft spoken. I think the difference between the DBA and myself is that I am very open to other people's opinions and ideas. A fair number of my coworkers followed me here from a previous job.

For a while, I was being a little harsh and short with people on code reviews. I could sense how people were reacting though and actively sought to be better. I worked with a friend who is a software mentorship advocate on how to better communicate effectively.

As much as I hate the term, I think a little emotional intelligence and self reflection goes a long way.

wccrawford• 3 years ago

That reminds me of a client we had at a previous job. He would constantly stress out the system far beyond what others did. At one point I heard "100x" thrown around.

It let me fix major bottlenecks in our system long before it affected other customers, and we could just shut him off for a while (it was in his contract after a while) until I fixed the problem.

I was a little sad when they finally banned him for good, but the rest of the company was rather relieved.

will5421• 3 years ago

Too smart for the job?

__MatrixMan__• 3 years ago

If I were a DBA, I'd yell a lot too. When the straw breaks the camel's back, the camel lands on the DBA.

bob1029• 3 years ago

The combination of difficult + genius is a pretty standard deal. At a certain level of brilliance, it becomes challenging to communicate ideas, or more importantly, their implied value proposition to the business. Much of the time there is also some ego conflict on the team that evolves into a vicious cycle that requires superhuman reflection to unwind.

For me, the best hackaround for friction is a demo. If I want to prove a controversial idea to the team, I build it first in my own time and then show it. Talking about and planning to do big scary things is 99% of the drama source in my life. Sometimes the demo goes off rails too, but it has a much better chance.

After doing this for a while, I still believe the most potent off-hand mastery that a genius technologist could obtain is the sales pitch. Treating your team members just like your customers and hacking their brains into wanting what you propose is the ultimate skill - if you can pull it off. If you can't convince your team regarding your idea, it may not matter how brilliant it is. Dragging 10-20 horses to water is mostly infeasible for one person to accomplish without reaching for cartoon villain tactics (which would ultimately kill the whole business).

I've done the sales pitch a few times. My go-to trick is to present 3-4 options, one of which is the option I want the team to really go with. The other options are framed in such a way that everyone feels super smart picking the one I wanted all along. Carefully-crafted options can move mountains.

hnrodey• 3 years ago

someone with experience right here

Exoristos4• 3 years ago

I thought I was the only one that built demos on my own time from sheer desperation.

throwitaway2222• 3 years ago

Sounds like a spectrum person.

dkjaudyeqooe2• 3 years ago

I've had a DBA refuse to do something for me, with me being a contractor and he being full timer. I remember I basically said "I've a dev, you're an admin your purpose in life is to implement what I build, given I have no access, so just fucking do it".

I'd previously had someone talk smack to me on the phone when I needed something, so I hung up and went over to their desk and chewed them out loudly.

This was the same place where one day after work I was at the pub with my workmates and I was profanely bad mouthing the head of IT as an incompetent boob (with just cause) and everyone was kicking me under the table trying to get me to shut up because his offsider was at the table listening. Two days later I look up to see him being marched past my desk and off the premises by security. He'd been fired.

So maybe I was the bad person in that office, but these people just refused to do their job for no explicable reason. I remember everyone told me they've never heard anyone swear at work as much as I did, but they named a server after me after I left so they seemed to appreciate me.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

Hope you took some personal reflection out of that instead of just concluding with "well I got my namesake at the job so that's nice". I don't got time to yell at people, I took an IC track for a reason.

If I'm blocked, that's a lead's or manager's problem to solve or escalate. As a bonus, it leaves a paper trail that I don't need to lay out most of to begin with (just get it rolling).

andy99• 3 years ago

There's a framework of skill vs agreeableness, where you get {brilliant,incompetent}{nice,jerk}. If someone is objectively an incompetent jerk, there's not much to work with, otherwise there's usually a way. You don't have to like colleagues, just work professionally with them.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

Nice and incompetent is often harder to deal with though. If someone is a jerk and incompetent, the solution is easy. You just fire that person, documenting the reasons is usually pretty easy, and nobody remaining feels bad about it.

Nice and incompetent (assuming the person really is incompetent) is usually a lot harder. The business decision should be the same: fire them. But for most non-sociopaths, nobody wants to fire nice people, and their incompetence usually lingers much longer.

On the flip side you see much of the same dynamic. Everyone loves brilliant nice people, so you keep them around. When it comes to brilliant jerks, I've found that most of the time , if they really are brilliant, they can be coached to understand their jerkiness is an impediment to their business/career goals, and will at least acknowledge it and try to keep it under wraps. But if they don't, at this stage of my life I just don't think it's worth it. They can go be super successful somewhere else, but my life is too short to be around someone a considerable portion of the day who is just toxic.

I also think it's important to clarify what being "a jerk" means - there's a difference between being brash and short and being a toxic jerk. I mean, I think most people would classify Steve Jobs as a jerk by the dictionary definition, but he obviously wasn't a jerk that was toxic to the organization. On the contrary, he was a giant motivating force, and many people have said they did the best work of their lives working for him and are grateful for the opportunity.

ryandrake3• 3 years ago

I also think it's important to clarify what being "a jerk" means - there's a difference between being brash and short and being a toxic jerk. I mean, I think most people would classify Steve Jobs as a jerk by the dictionary definition, but he obviously wasn't a jerk that was toxic to the organization.

The problem with "kind of jerks" at the helm is that people further down the totem pole look up to their leaders as examples of how to behave, and it is a lot easier to adopt "jerkness" into your behavior than it is to adopt the more subtle, effective parts of Jobs's personality and behavior that enabled Apple to succeed. So as they say, the fish rots from the head. The leader's SVPs take on a mildly "jerk" persona because that's the example set, their VPs look at their SVPs and become mostly jerks, their Directors become raging assholes, and before you know it, the whole management chain is toxic.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

Nice and incompetent (assuming the person really is incompetent)

YMMV and it can really depend on the pedigree of work. But personally I've never ran into a truly incompetent nice person. Very few incompotent jerks who were fortunately let go quickly, but the closest I can recall is a really nice lead who clearly wasn't lead material. But they were an absolutely brilliant IC and clearly had knowledge to spread to others. You can tell why they made him a lead; he was more or less a "guru" of sorts who constantly got people unstuck from some sticky situations. Being a helpful IC isn't the same as being a lead, though.

But otherwise, I don't know. At least, I've never run into those "can't do fizzbuzz" levels of programmers who somehow got hired.

watwut4• 3 years ago

Incompetent jerks do very well in corporate. They usually have very clear idea about who the boss is - boss gets to be treated very nicely. Peers are subtly badmouted and criticized when they can't defend themselves. And the most jerkness goes to peers they don't need and such.

Toxic jerks are not just autistic-like unaware of social situations. They are fully aware when they can and can not afford it.

zeroonetwothree• 3 years ago

I just move on and work with someone else. Not worth the stress.

gardenhedge2• 3 years ago

This is better advice. If you can move on then do that.

jodrellblank• 3 years ago

"Run away from your problems, avoid dealing with them or learning better interpersonal skills" is better advice?

underseacables3• 3 years ago

This is good advice but when given I often hear pushback; there are no other jobs, why should I leave, or we need a union etc. If a job is making you feel bad, you should leave, because no matter what you're not likely to change that job. People bristle at this notion..

sokoloff• 3 years ago

Changing your company is usually easier than changing your company. ;)

xenadu02• 3 years ago

I pitch that advice as follows:

You have two choices here.

You can be fight for what you think is right but go into that battle understanding you have a high chance of losing. It is a noble endeavor and society needs people willing to pay the personal price to make forward progress. Only you can decide if this is the hill you want to die on.

The second choice is to put yourself and/or your family first and move on. It's just a job. This second choice will almost always result in more happiness and possibly even wealth for you.

Which is more important to you? Fighting for some form of "justice" here or being happy?

poszlem• 3 years ago

My first boss told me once: "You can either change your job or change your job" and that's how I always looked at it. Try to effect change, but don't force it.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

To be fair, it isn't a drop of a hat to switch jobs. Just look at the current tech market. It ain't always an option even here.

And while I get job hopping because of money (bigger pay bumps, company loyalty is dead), I still wouldn't want to hop Too often. That will also make it harder to jump later on when a really good opportunity comes up.

It also brings up an old adage: "when everything around you smells, look under your shoe". Of every job has "someone" that annoys you in different ways, you may need more than a change of environment to address that.

alphanumeric0• 3 years ago

This enables unscrupulous companies to force people to quit by consistently being assholes to them.

bityard2• 3 years ago

So, win/win, then? /s

mnw21cam• 3 years ago

Document the abuse, collect enough evidence, quit, then sue them for constructive dismissal.

kaon123• 3 years ago

Nothing works if that person is your superior and holds absolute power over you.

Examples situations close friends of mine have experienced:

1. You are a PhD student and he (and it usually is a he) is your professor.

2. You are in a profession with limited opportunity (say, HR) and he is your boss.

3. You are an immigrant, and losing your job means leaving the country.

4. All of the above.

I feel articles like these are written by people that have never been in above situations. If you are in a dependency situation, you are fucked. Pro lifetip: Avoid dependency situations whenever you can. And sometimes you can't and just have to hope for the best.

(edit: add styling)

vannucci• 3 years ago

Your 3rd bullet really hits hard, I had many colleagues at an old job who would do insane things for our company because they were on a visa and had purchased a home and they explained to me that they can't afford to not do every single thing asked. It was so heartbreaking.

charlie03• 3 years ago

I've worked at a place with mostly HB1 engineers and I've seen this lead to bad software because almost no one can say no to dumb requests. In these environments, no one challenges the higher ups and just do what they are told, no questions asked.

robertlagrant3• 3 years ago

4 sounds particularly bad. A male PhD professor who's also your (usually?) male HR boss and you're in on H1B.

ebiester4• 3 years ago

You can just as well be on an F1 and all the professor has to do is deny funding for a semester, and you've wasted years of effort.

raincole• 3 years ago

I'm not entirely sure when the gender entered the equation.

throwaway167• 3 years ago

Laugh not. I've been there. Not a H1B but a work visa in another country. PhD yes, worse, lapsed but threw it around, better, business setting.

My 'way out' was to stay on and keep building good terms with his boss's equivalent in another part of the company, one of the owners. Worked out ok. Had she not been there, I'd have left.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

People holding power over others should always consider that hammers are easy to get

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Streleski

ycombobreaker• 3 years ago

People in general should not be seriously forced to consider that a coworker will murder them, regardless of the power imbalance in the workplace. This is totally out of line.

daoboy2• 3 years ago

Absolutely all of that.

About a year of my enlistment in the Marine Corps was under a platoon sergeant who was one of the worst people I have ever met. Petty, cruel, and genuinely sadistic. He had authority over virtually every aspect of our lives, to include things like random barracks inspections in the middle of the night (that was definitely not the worst of it). It was a nightmare.

It was a defining period and I got out vowing to never put myself in a position where someone had that much control over my life again.

malnourish• 3 years ago

Did you decline to re-enlist?

thendrill• 3 years ago

Absolutely agree.

Especially with supervising professors.... The dumbest people... And Hr... Shit people..

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

I agree with the GP comment that if someone is in a supervisory role to you and you don't like them, do everything you can to find a way out.

The thing I find so amusing about your comment is that, in a thread about dealing with toxic people, you have written off "supervising professors" as "the dumbest people", and all of HR as "Shit people", and you fail to see the irony.

jSully24• 3 years ago

5. Your superior has deep previous relationships with other higher level people in your company.

tivert• 3 years ago

2. You are in a profession with limited opportunity (say, HR) and he is your boss.

Why is your example HR? Literally every company has an HR function and they're often quite large organizations. There's tons of opportunity to move away from a bad boss in HR.

A better example would be some company-specific niche role [1], where the only similar roles would be at a competitor located on the other side of the country.

[1] I could give examples, except those would give away more personal info that I want to

kgwxd• 3 years ago

Avoid dependency situations whenever you can.

The most important lesson programming has ever taught me.

TheOtherHobbes• 3 years ago

Especially not if they're a narcissist or some other label on the Cluster B spectrum.

Some people are inherently toxic. You should not assume good will, because they're motivated by antagonism and hierarchy, not a genuine need to solve problems together.

Worse, they're incapable of empathy. And they gravitate to positions of power. So the higher you go, the more likely you are to meet them.

Obviously it's wildly and unhelpfully wrong to suggest everyone you have friction with is like this.

But it's also unrealistic to ignore the existence of a personality type that can be incredibly destructive, professionally and personally.

WesolyKubeczek• 3 years ago

You are fucked if they don’t like you. If it’s just you not liking them without it being fiercely mutual, the article may still apply.

I’ve been in the situation #3. The rule is that you put your best game face on and try to either fly under the radar or not give them reasons to dislike you. Create a network of acquaintances on your own level and get as much intelligence as you can.

Brave Soldier Švejk is practically required reading for getting the right kind of attitude.

underseacables3• 3 years ago

I would add bad colleagues. I worked with two people who were very toxic, but loved by the Queen Cersi-like manager. Those two hated me and took great joy undermining my work. The evil manager enabled the atrocious colleague behavior.

that_guy_iain• 3 years ago

Nothing works if that person is your superior and holds absolute power over you.

The only reason they become issues is if they don't like you. Otherwise, these are still valid. The post isn't about working with someone who dislikes you. It's about working with someone you dislike.

dandare2• 3 years ago

and it usually is a he

My toxic boss (she) was a diversity hire (women in tech) with limited experience (fast tracked for management) but unlimited support from the top (diversity quotas). I ended up bullied out of the company with damaged mental health (anxiety attacks).

svnt2• 3 years ago

he (and it usually is a he) is your professor

This has not been true for some years now: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61

selimthegrim2• 3 years ago

1. Can be managed if you have direct contacts with the deans. I really don’t recommend this unless you know exactly what to do. You can’t teach academic managing up. Also if you’re on an H1-B or F1 (not domestic) I agree you’re cooked.

elzbardico• 3 years ago

This is easy. The other way around, even more when you're new in the team and the person that doesn't like you is well established is the biggest challenge.

braindead_in• 3 years ago

Interestingly, all these things are required for loving kindness meditation practice as well.

lijok2• 3 years ago

As far as I understand, the fastest way to correct a work relationship going sour, without having to go through an emotional rollercoaster, is to find a connection, no matter how small. Maybe you both enjoy/dislike something, maybe you're both experts at a particular thing, etc.

unsupp0rted5• 3 years ago

I’ve never found the connection angle useful, as the recipient of the attempt. It feels... if not patronizing, then at least irrelevant.

Oh Star Trek played a vital role in both our formative years? That’s nice, but let’s get back to solving the matter at hand.

DonHopkins4• 3 years ago

Even a shared love of Star Trek can result in irreconcilable differences and huge battles. I'd never want to work with somebody who likes Holodeck episodes or doesn't love Gowron.

That said, there are some times that even Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans can actually get along.

I'm bistellar: I love both Star Trek AND Star Wars!

jon-wood• 3 years ago

This has just brought back vivid memories of the person I used to work with where the one thing we had in common was actually a love of Star Trek. I still have no idea how he loves it so much given he apparently learned absolutely nothing from it, seemingly every belief and behaviour he held was something that would have Picard facepalming.

jddj3• 3 years ago

I agree that it feels trite and fake.

The way to get things done with difficult people is:

1. Work out (for yourself) what you really want*

2. Work out (for yourself) what they really want*

3. Accept that they want that

4. Work maturely and fairly within that context.

No cookie cutter management fluff is going to get you anywhere useful with intelligent people.

* Usually people want their situation to either be more rewarding (read: recognition or control) or less taxing.

Edit: Acknowledging this here, because it does apply to this comment:

5. Draw the rest of the owl

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

Sounds like a lot of HN people just don't like desire friends period. Like work is just a begrudging duty to attend to for half their waking lives but do it in tech because it pays extremely well for less investment (compared to other professions like doctors and Lawyers).

Again, It's half your life in your most active years so Idk how I'd tolerate a lonely workplace in top of an increasingly lonely world. Does everyone just suffice using online dating and posting here for other socialization?

ahoka• 3 years ago

Resort to stockholm syndrome? No, abuse is never OK.

lijok2• 3 years ago

There’s a big difference between abuse and not being liked by someone

sevagh3• 3 years ago

If they bring the heat, you bring it right back. If you let people bully you once it won't ever stop.

brnt• 3 years ago

A bully needs standing up against, full stop, but was OP arguing any bullying was involved? I indeed share the experience that it helps to find commonality if you have to work with someone you don't jibe with. The not jibing doesn't have to be nasty.

snowwrestler3• 3 years ago

You don’t need to match a heated affect to stand up to bullying. You just need to know where your lines are, and stand your ground. It can be done calmly, and might even be more effective that way.

bityard2• 3 years ago

Well, the thing is, if you try to fight a jerk with their own weapons, others around you will see you behaving as a jerk as well. And then you've lost more than just another argument.

I prefer the Columbo method. No matter emotional the other person gets, remain calm, polite, and respectful in ALL of your responses. Remember that an angry person's only goal is to get you angry as well in an effort to blind you to the facts. Then when you trip up, they point at you and say, "Ha! See? You were wrong!" A professional manipulator can be very, VERY good at this. The most important thing to remember is: just don't get angry no matter what. You can't control THEM, but you CAN control YOU.

If they are the type who can _eventually_ be reasoned with, then relentlessly question their facts, poke holes in their logic, and eventually they will likely shut up or go away. Or, possibly, you might learn something you didn't know and they weren't good at articulating it well, and you can both move forward with a better understanding. It sucks that some people can't put forth a rational argument without making it a flame war first, but that is sometimes the way it goes.

But if they just want to argue, then a simple, "sorry, but I really have to focus on X right now," followed by the silent treatment always works as a last resort.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

I refuse to let others turn me into the sort of person that I wouldn't want to be around.

snowwrestler3• 3 years ago

This works if it happens naturally. If it’s forced, it can come across as insincere or manipulative and make things worse.

datadrivenangel3• 3 years ago

You have to force it sincerely. Dale Carnegie wrote a book on this.

dclowd9901• 3 years ago

We had a writing exercise in one of my college creative writing classes. You were supposed to write down 5 things you hate about someone you dislike. Then you’re supposed write down 5 things you admire about them.

Really taught me a lot about my perspectives and what real humility looks like.

kstrauser• 3 years ago

I had a smart, thoughtful coworker that I just couldn’t mesh with. Something about our personalities were oil and water. One day it came up that we were both fans of the same video game genre, and from then on we had something pleasant to chat about. That tiny bit of personal connection had more of a smoothing effect than I would have expected.

whatyesaid• 3 years ago

GPT?

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

Even worse, what’s the advice for when your cofounder is the ceo, has a higher stake than you, and is borderline incompetent? But you’re funded and the idea has promise. Quite the catch 22. Do you stay and do all the work while this person is along for the ride? Assume you can’t push them out

williamcotton2• 3 years ago

Did they do the fundraising? Do your primary investors like and appreciate this person? If neither are true, talk with your investors and perhaps they can offer advice.

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

They have an absolutely premium resume. Investors like it

carlosjobim2• 3 years ago

Who would found a company together with somebody without knowing that person very deeply? You can't be in business if you're incompetent in the most basic skill for businesses: understanding people. How didn't you know before that he or she was incompetent? That makes you completely incompetent as well. Learn people skills before trying to start a business again, or you will be burnt.

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

Good situations come up, X millions raised. Takes a few months of working with someone to understand them. It’s probably still better than working a regular job

svnt2• 3 years ago

If everything else works, or you can make it work, eventually as you scale their incompetence will show, and they will be helped into one of the roles for founders like these: CSO, CIO, CPO, etc.

It is also possible that you just don’t understand their competency or value. It isn’t a given that high skill in rational discourse is necessary for everyone.

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

Right but it’s a weird feeling, doing all this work and have this person own large stake in it

philote• 3 years ago

Maybe try to remember the reasons you originally wanted to start a company with them? I'm curious what those reasons are if this person is incompetent and trying to start a company. Did they bring the idea AND the money?

I'm in a related situation. I've been working for a company for years, and the owner is incompetent in most areas except sales. His original company is over a decade old but now almost dead. Somehow he's still getting investor money and for the past 5 years has been trying to start a new business, but keeps pivoting before anything is actually released to the public. I'm the main dev and it's getting frustrating, but I know without me he definitely won't get anywhere. And the pay vs time invested is pretty good at the moment.

tmpz22• 3 years ago

Help the person grow in a way that minimizes what you perceive as incompetence. How is this not the obvious answer versus drastic action?

Are they bad at contributing technically? Are they lazy? Are they bullish on bad decisions? Do they not listen to input? Are they reckless? Are they overly optimistic? Are they morally dubious? I've yet to meet a founder-type that didn't exhibit at least one (often two) of those traits.

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

It’s more that they just don’t have good business sense. They can’t make decisions on their own, and so I’m essentially doing their job and mine.

willcipriano• 3 years ago

Stay but don't wipe their ass for them. Allow the natural consequences of failure to fall on their head, then when they are frustrated and scared offer to resolve the problem for additional equity and or a fixed fee.

Basically set boundaries, those types set very clear boundaries around the money so that's a great place to look when considering what your time boundary is.

naasking3• 3 years ago

Even worse, what’s the advice for when your cofounder is the ceo, has a higher stake than you, and is borderline incompetent?

I know someone in a similar situation. My advice at the time: get a big white board and a keep running score on who was right on any particular decision. I don't think they took me up on that suggestion.

scaryclam• 3 years ago

From my experience, if your CEO is not competent, the business is doomed to fail without an immense amount of luck.

I've worked in a startup that had funding, and a good idea, but the CEO couldn't run a business. He also wouldn't let any of the reigns go to people who COULD run the business, so it was miserable. We'd change directions at least once a week, we'd have him promising customers things that we obviously couldn't deliver, and he'd sign contracts we couldn't honour. He was also abusive to the staff, with the exception of one, who was also incompetent but brown-nosed relentlessly.

If the idea has promise, leave, wait out any non-compete and start again without them. Heck, they may even close down and you'd be free to do as you wish. Or move on if there's no way to do that without being sued into the ground. Life is too short to be miserable at work.

greatpostman7• 3 years ago

Yeah, I really really wish I could have a run at it myself. It just feels like this huge amount of baggage, and all the value I’m creating is accruing to someone else. I’m at the point to where there’s no real reason to communicate with him other than to keep up appearances, there’s no decent information/ideas/perspectives/developments coming from that side of town.

It still feels foolish to walk away, I could probably will this business into some level of revenue. Question is if it’s worth it to me, a liquidity event would be so far away.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

This isn't helpful if you're already in that situation, but I would never be a cofounder in a venture where all the cofounders didn't have the same stake.

EspressoGPT2• 3 years ago

TIL: Visiting Forbes without an ad blocker will trigger epilepsia.

anticensor• 3 years ago

Major or minor seizure?

chiefalchemist• 3 years ago

My only "agreement" going into a position is:

I'll do my best to make you look good, if you do the same for me and everyone else.[1]

Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it doesn't. It's not that I don't like the person per se. It's that that person typically likes themselves too much, and the rest of stand in that shadow (read: blind spot).

People talk about being nice and being kind, etc. at work. Sure, that helps. But first and foremost...Do. Your. Job. And don't neglect the team either.

[1] This work "agreement" is a more optimistic riff on another heuristic I have: When you expect more of me than you do of yourself, we have a problem.

froggertoaster• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/kbpFk

flint2• 3 years ago

Years ago, I had an issue with a coworker. My mentor told me to pray for them. I cursed him but did it anyway. About six months later, a different coworker came to me and asked, "How do you get along with X? They really seem to respect you." I told him that I prayed for X. He called me an axxhole.

sumtechguy• 3 years ago

sounds like you found someone new to pray for

varjag2• 3 years ago

This has to be the most American thing I read on HN this year.

dang• 3 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic or religious flamewar, and certainly not both at the same time.

selimthegrim2• 3 years ago

Do you live in the South?

flint2• 3 years ago

I live in Nashville now. That job was on Wall Street. I am not religious.

shipscode• 3 years ago

Instead of partaking in these mental gymnastics it’s prudent to go out on your own or get a new job.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

Can on;y do that so many times in quick succession before it becomes harder to jump the next time.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

Those are good tips. I would also add "don't engage with them on anything that isn't work-related".

I have a coworker who is difficult to work with because he insists on political conversations. "Don't engage" is working well there. Every time he tries to talk politics, I immediately shift the conversation to a work topic. I keep hoping that he'll catch the hint, but even if he never does, doing that still avoids unnecessary workplace strife.

snowwrestler3• 3 years ago

Avoiding political conversations at work is probably a good idea even with people you do get along with.

Getting along great doesn’t always mean two people will agree on every topic. And obviously people do not need to agree on every topic to have a fantastic time working together.

Also, depending on the context, other people might overhear part of the conversation and disagree, get offended, etc.

Faark• 3 years ago

But do you want to work with people you cannot disagree with? Like, at some point we will probably disagree on work related topics as well, and I'd expect it to go somewhat similarly.

DrBazza2• 3 years ago

Sex and politics have traditionally been the two topics that are best avoided in social settings. It seems that tradition is gradually disappearing.

muro• 3 years ago

And religion

lesuorac2• 3 years ago

Do you mean work settings? I think traditionally Sex has been a staple of social settings; it's why a non-trival amount of people play novice sports (to meet future spouses).

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

I thought the taboo topics were religion and politics.

norir• 3 years ago

The problem is that our culture provides us with few models of how to effectively agree to disagree. Indeed we often elevate the most stubbornly obstinate in their views with unfortunate trickle down effects on all of our discourse. It's a shame that in cases like this we can't easily say things like: I hear you but I have a different take and I don't think this conversation will be constructive so let's stay focused on X. Or even, I agree with you, but this isn't the time or place for this conversation so let's stay focused on X.

ttymck• 3 years ago

The other problem is that no one seems comfortable saying "I don't want to discuss this with you".

wholinator2• 3 years ago

What do you think would be effective models? I ask because your final two statements sound like effective topic changers. Is the difficulty that it takes so many words to say? Or that people generally feel awkward about those kinds of statements

nitwit0052• 3 years ago

Society does provide ways, but people don't always care. They won't take a hint, because they want an argument. They'll keep trying to get what they want.

My grandmother was one of those people. She wanted to "win debates", in her words. I'm not sure the winning ever happened, but she tried for decades.

valyagolev• 3 years ago

Not engage on sensitive topics: yes, even with people you like

Not engage on any topic outside the strictly necessary for work: a passive-aggressive way to keep the animosity forever

asylteltine• 3 years ago

Should you though? Generally people tend to get fired when no one wants to work with them. Life is too short

QuadrupleA• 3 years ago

These all seem so passive... various forms of "accept it and behave like the problem doesn't exist." What about kind/effective ways to give feedback or communicate about behavior that isn't working?

dandare2• 3 years ago

Because it almost never works.

Joker_vD• 3 years ago

You seem to suppose that there is always some magic combination of words that would make the other side to suddenly change their behaviour. Unfortunately, there may be not: say, other other side actively doesn't want to change their behaviour (they're personally fine with it, and your proposed changes would inconvenience them ever so slightly), and then can afford to not change — now what?

ryandrake3• 3 years ago

I always loved the scene[1] in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 7, where Data gives Wharf negative feedback about his job performance. It's obviously fictional, but it's a pretty good example of assertively, professionally and politely giving constructive feedback that can be accepted without losing face by the recipient. A lot of best practices shown in this one scene.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdiQhMPt1Zo

chriscjcj• 3 years ago

Gotta love that Picard Maneuver at the very end.

According to the video below, it's Data's one and only!

https://youtu.be/3ar-eJwgTsM?t=910

tuckerpo• 3 years ago

That assumes that any random selection of the human population is receptive to critical feedback.

stuckinhell2• 3 years ago

If you they don't like you, you should assume they will try to get you fired. Document get ready to prove anything and everything to HR.

77% issues in business are really just people who dislike you personally.

ecshafer• 3 years ago

You must work with psychopaths. If your reaction to not liking someone is to try and get them fired, there's something deeply wrong with you. I've worked with plenty of people that I don't want to be friends with, but you go to work, make some small talk, and do your job.

stuckinhell2• 3 years ago

yea I probably do, Fortune 500 companies attract very ambitious people.

bsenftner3• 3 years ago

Back when I worked in the incredibly dysfunctional video game industry, it was common for various key technical people to become soured over the course of the 18 months of 7 day weeks... After they'd threatened to quit multiple times, extorted the studio for as much raise as the studio could afford... they'd call me in to be the guy that talks his attitude down for the duration of the remainder of the production. I have the skills to evaporate anguish, overt aggression, and talk pragmatic sense into people pushed over the edge. You may have heard of the incredibly stressful day to day working at EA Sports; several of those games in the 90's were in serious risk of never completing because the team were going to kill one another - then they called me in.

mattbrewsbytes• 3 years ago

Enlighten us, gamedev whisperer. Seriously though - that had to be some stressful situations and a lot of people could benefit from hearing how you were able to de-escalate things.

bsenftner3• 3 years ago

Just be a person, real person that listens to them, agrees when they make sense, but also point out contractual obligations, ramifications of leaving, never threats, just calm discussion. I was at E.A. when 3D0 flopped, and learned a lot about handling stress.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

they'd call me in to be the guy that talks his attitude down for the duration of the remainder of the production.

sounds like the solution is to not work 7 day weeks, or pay them more in some way (more vacation after shipping, more money). But I get it, that's unheard of for 90's game industry.

jksmith• 3 years ago

Those five qualities are all great if they can be codified into a delivery system. Don't hate the player, hate the game. If you don't like the game, only one thing to argue about, which is changing the rules of the game. But then the fifth quality kicks in, which is "Letting Go." Trust/improve the process for the sake of using less energy.

ape4• 3 years ago

What if you're the one that's unliked ;)

H8crilA• 3 years ago

When you reach the effective pay/level ceiling you can also decide to play along and wreck a little havoc by for example letting the asshole say too much in meetings or on corporate parties. It's a fine balancing game, where your goal is to create entertainment without negatively impacting your own emotional state. Most people are actually at some sort of a ceiling, for example due to inability or unwillingness to reach higher ("do politics") or to move to a more profitable location/company, even if they don't realize it.

madamelic2• 3 years ago

I disagree mostly.

If they are that obviously disagreeable, others likely also have problems with them and they are just a difficult person to work with. Leadership that allows such a person to run unabated (ie: no corrective action nor termination) is ineffective and weak in my opinion, either purposefully or accidentally.

If you find someone that is strongly disagreeable indefinitely and others in the company voice the same sentiment for long periods, you should leave as soon as possible because somewhere in the chain, there are problems no one is addressing and it will only get worse especially if it is a young company. People like this are a cancer and it will never result in anything good.

If you find someone that is strongly disagreeable and others don't say the same (or even worse, the opposite!), there is a good chance _you_ are the problem and should check-in with yourself why.

People don't rampage through life unchecked for no reason. There is a reason and both you can near immediately fix. Kow-towing to others and just dealing with it isn't solving the problem, it could even be making the situation worse.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

I think the issue is that it's rarely "obviously disagreeable". I read a lot of comments here and I'd say a good half of them feel slighted over very minor stuff. Stuff that affeccts a friendship but it really shouldn't impact your ability to work. bringing up Star Trek too much or your kids may be annoying to some, but isn't disciplinary worthy in my eyes

green_biri• 3 years ago

One year ago during an online meeting, a coworker from another team compromised with our client on a set date for a solution. The deadline is reached a week later, and no updates are available on the progress.

I engage my colleague with an initial friendly tone via Teams, full of my characteristic smiley emojis. My messages are seen, however ignored.

Several hours later, I notice that my colleague is joining a non-priority, non-mandatory meeting. I send a new message, stating that I am aware of his presence on the meeting. I beg for any feedback, as by now my inbox has 2 frustrated emails from our client. My words are conveying desperation, as I only intend to obtain any significant status update.

My colleague replies that his agenda is none of my business, then proceeds to report my "invasive" approach to my manager.

Our client got understandably upset, as we missed the deadline. We later lost the contract that month.

I still do not go along with this coworker, as earlier this month we have had another disagreement, which, I am afraid, has only worsened the relationship, maybe up to an unsalvageable state.

This article does not seem to have suitable advice for my scenario, as I have no interest in working with unresponsive and irresponsible individuals. I do wish the article could provide more insights on how to deal with lack of ownership as well.

flappyeagle• 3 years ago

There are 3 situations

1. No one is being an asshole, it's a real misunderstanding or difference of opinion. The article basically helps you in this circumstance. It's rare.

2. The other party is an asshole. They should be fired. If no one gets along with them this is probably true.

3. You are an asshole. You should be fired. If you find yourself always working with people you think are assholes this is probably true.

Figure out if it's 1,2, or 3 first

naasking3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure being an asshole is enough to get fired if you're doing the job and not breaking any rules. I suppose it depends on what "being an asshole" means in this context. If it means rude or curt or whatever, then no. If it means actually breaking the rules, then sure.

johncessna• 3 years ago

I think it's more likely that number 1 is the norm and 2 and 3 are the rare exceptions. We aren't omniscient beings. Your perception that person A stole credit for your idea may forget that person A was involved or doesn't account for the work they did that you weren't aware of.

3 people sit around at a table during happy hour discussing ideas for an offsite.

Person A suggests that they have it in Atlanta and provides good justification.

Later, Person B follows up with their contact in finance to see if they can extend the budget, and gets it approved.

Person C, who's job it was to plan the offsite, coordinates with the travel coordinators, gets invitations sent out, and other various

Who's idea was this? Who deserves the credit?

I think all 3 have claims and it'd be easy for each one of them to accuse the other 2 of idea theft or taking credit for things they didn't do. A contrived example, yes, but I think misunderstandings due to a lack of seeing all the information/data happens more often than people realize.

datadrivenangel3• 3 years ago

The problem is when people are actively making your life harder just for their own ego.

The best way to deal with it is to vote with your feet.

danielovichdk• 3 years ago

I am that guy. Really.

I don't try hard to be someone others don't like. But I try with every inch to ask why at things I don't understand, and quite frankly I demand answers.

I very rarely believe in anybody professionally, because people has a tendency to nurse their subjective opinions and thought more than commit to long reasonings of why and find evidens for their claims.

I don't make friends at work. In my almost 25 years in software engineering and management of teams I go to work for getting things done and backed by as sound proof as possible. I keep track of this, write everything down and hate verbal communication because it blurs agreements and is subject to lie from other parts.

I am actually a cool guy at night. I have a rich family life and a big social network. I am mentally fit and in good shape. But don't fuck around when you work with me because I go hard on being absolute surgical on point.

Call it what you want. I call it being professional.

reportgunner• 3 years ago

The fact that the article recommends being respectful, having integrity and trying to learn and improve from the interactions says a lot about the people who are not like you.

pvg• 3 years ago

I think you also have to recognize not everyone shares your dedication to the study of the blade.

madamelic2• 3 years ago

The problem isn't necessarily the people like you, in my opinion, who have the experience to back their words up.

The real problems are the expert beginners who think they know everything because they read 3 books or something.

If someone came in with vastly more experience than me, I am not going toe-to-toe with them unless I know for a fact they are wrong because I trust they know what they are doing. As long as they aren't yelling at me or demeaning, I am on the train of helping them do what they want.

There's a difference between authority and being an asshole in my opinion.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

Sounds like you're inflexible and slow down process. Which can be a good thing, but it really depends on the studio.

I've tried to do this in the games industry and I just end up being called "slow". Because games have historically been "break fast, ship buggy". There's not a lot of value in a well-architectures codebase here. It's getting better due to some high profile buggy disasters, but change is slow.

very rarely believe in anybody professionally, because people has a tendency to nurse their subjective opinions and thought more than commit to long reasonings of why and find evidens for their claims.

Most peope don't want to hear long reasonings unless they are the ones directly solving the problem. There's no point making an articulate proposal if the readers skim and pass on feedback I already addressed.

I imagine it's the same for many ambitious juniors. They get dismissed and they change their language as they adapt to the industry. Things aren't as eglitarian as the marketing shows, and those who see the sausage being made adapt.

I don't know. It sounds like you either had some very quality work history to come to these conclusions, you had the funds/connections to found/co-found work where you shape the culture, or you have an extremely strong sense of duty. I'm proud of my experiences, but I can't say I relate, and I'm already broken. No point correcting corporate, better to suck off their funds and prepare to be my own boss.

at_a_remove2• 3 years ago

I privately dread being that person that is unliked. So much so that at times I fear it is becoming self-perpetuating. I mostly shut up, for fear of being misunderstood.

Maybe I should use this as a handout.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

A fact of life is that nobody is going to be liked by everybody. That's just not how people work. Trying to ensure everyone likes you is a bit like trying to ensure that the weather is great every day.

at_a_remove2• 3 years ago

It's more a fear of being disliked by everybody than not being liked by everybody.

gemstones2• 3 years ago

As in software, the best tool for avoiding errors is to not have the software in the first place.

If you must work with someone, or consider yourself to have an ethical obligation to follow this, this is good advice.

If you don't...

Just slowwwly remove your touchpoints with them. Freeze them out. Go through other channels. If you do this right, the person will feel like you have just gradually drifted apart, but won't be able to pinpoint a clear cause.

You don't have to try and get them fired, or anything (and that may backfire on you, so I don't recommend doing it.) But if enough people do this, then they will gradually be the most replaceable person on the team, and they may be let go regardless.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

Just slowwwly remove your touchpoints with them. Freeze them out. Go through other channels. If you do this right, the person will feel like you have just gradually drifted apart, but won't be able to pinpoint a clear cause.

Doesn't work if they're leading the project. This is also a very childish way of dealing with problems. Part of your job is to be an adult and learn how to work with people you don't like. Not how to avoid them. It's a critical skill to success in this industry.

gemstones2• 3 years ago

Oh it's not good advice for everyone! If they're a lead on a team you must interface with, they fall into my "you must work with them" bucket, and then the article is pretty good advice.

Eh, I disagree that it's childish advice! It works out pretty well for everyone except the person being frozen out - no matter if you're a child or an adult.

tikhonj• 3 years ago

Sometimes the most effective way to work with a person is to work around them.

Always resorting to that isn't mature or professional, but neither is not recognizing when that's the best option.

BeetleB2• 3 years ago

An article from Forbes giving tips that are implicitly stating you should stay in an abusive relationship? I'm not surprised.

While these aren't bad tips per se, the article is sorely incomplete. Where are the tips on how to escalate? Having conversations with management (and/or peers) on why bad behavior is being enabled? Where's the tip on leaving?

My last job had a brilliant asshole. Within a year it was clear the management knew and did not want to do anything about it. Every person in the team was tolerating the poor behavior. So as soon as I wrapped up the project I was working on, I switched teams.

He continued to be a headache in that team. Finally, about 2 years later I found out that one person who had suffered significantly was thinking of quitting. I let him know that if he wanted to escalate to HR (specifically for harassment - it was getting that far out of hand), that I had kept notes of his behavior (with dates, etc) during my time there. He decided he would escalate and informed his manager. The manager said "Give me a bit of time and let me deal with this." Soon after, the asshole went on vacation and soon after that it was announced that he had decided not to return. Whether he was fired or convinced to quit - I don't know.

The real question is: Why do things have to reach the point of harassment before action is taken? If you're in that sort of org, don't stay there. It will be a magnet for such folks.

I do feel sorry for the guy. We had lots of points of connection (as per this article). I did empathize with him on many things. He actually campaigned to get me that job! He could have been a great employee if he changed his world view and behaviors a bit. But social proof was against him and there was no one he looked up to who could mentor him on his behavior.

blablabla123• 3 years ago

If you're in that sort of org, don't stay there. It will be a magnet for such folks.

That's true. I've been at a job where people routinely talked badly about people in other teams but also a colleague I closely worked with was constantly accusing me of breaking agreements, going behind management's back. At first I didn't take all of this very seriously and thought trying to say as little as possible will be the best strategy. Eventually though my manager asked me directly and I mentioned these things. He said he'll take action and eventually also HR got in the loop. Some things happened but the general issues persisted. FWIW I heard colleagues even saying really insulting things about HR.

Exoristos4• 3 years ago

He could have been a great employee if he changed his world view and behaviors a bit. But social proof was against him

What does this actually mean? Can you give any examples?

BeetleB2• 3 years ago

Lengthy comment below. The application of social proof to my ex-coworker is at the end.

Social Proof is a concept in the book Influence by Cialdini. I strongly recommend the book - fairly entertaining.

The idea is that your brain relies on people you consider to be your peers/in-group for many things: customs, social norms, and even truth. Your brain usually looks to them for guidance on the above, and often ignores others.

This is why the Bystander Effect is particularly pernicious. When something horrible is going on, and you see your friends observing it and doing it, your brain is primed to say things "My friends accept this, so there's probably nothing wrong with this" or "My friends are not interfering. I probably shouldn't either" When someone does interject and help, it's often by someone who does not consider the other bystanders as part of his peer group. This is expanded on here: https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2017/May/social-proof-and-the-b...

I often deal with this at work. I've had fellow coworkers make a claim, and I show a (simple) mathematical proof disproving their claim. The outcome is usually one of the following:

1. They accept they were wrong, but it doesn't stick in their mind. A week later they're parroting the same wrong thing.

2. They look at their peers in the room, and ask "Have any of you heard of this?" If no one has, they outright reject my proof without finding any flaws. This was shocking to me, but it's happened so often at the workplace I find it normal now.

I once got a bad rating at work because a particular circuit simulation wasn't behaving the way they expected it, and they insisted I was either running it wrong or had messed up the circuit file. I hadn't. I asked why they expected it to behave differently. The answer was always "We've been doing this for over a decade and the capacitance is never sensitive to the following inputs." This was tribal knowledge and I was the lone person questioning it.

The circuits expert was on vacation. The work stalled for 2 weeks where I pretended to find the flaw, and had to answer daily that I hadn't found it. Upon the expert's return, I go to him and he sends out an email to all of them saying "Your beliefs are wrong. The capacitance can change with those inputs. There's nothing wrong with the simulation."

But the damage was done. I was still viewed negatively. And I'm sure if I ask them now, they'll go back to "the capacitance never changes with those inputs" - it's what everyone else believes around them.

I've seen this in the SW world as well. Actually, much more often. Avoid a quicksort injection attack by randomizing the list (O(N) operation) first, and a room full of programmers laughed at me saying "That's silly! We're trying to sort a list and you're jumbling it up first. That's just going to make sorting harder!" (And no, they did not have an alternate solution to the attack).

I thought I was immune to such behavior. Surely, if someone comes to me with objective advice/evidence, I'll listen to him! But after I read that book, and as I got older, I encountered a number of situations where I was in the wrong, and realized that at some point in the past I had been advised on the correct path, but did not take it. Why did I not take it? The answer was always social proof: The person was not in my peer group, and so my brain always had an excuse. That person doesn't understand my perspective. Or That person lives a very different life. I don't want to live his life.

Random example from HN: Go search for Sarno and his treatment for back pain. Read up on Sarno's views on what caused back pain (and some other pains). For someone like me, his theory and solution is very much nonsensical pseudoscience. Had most people come to me with it, I would have dismissed it. But here I was on HN, with a significant number of folks stating how their back pain was gone for good - at times after years of suffering - by following Sarno's advice.

This is my crowd[1], so suddenly I did consider reading up on it and applying it.[2]

Getting back to my ex-coworker. He came from a culture of extreme competence. Very good at math, physics, and programming. Knew the low level details really well. This was considered a bare minimum to graduate from his elite university (not in the US). He felt all universities should have those minimum requirements, and since they didn't, someone had to protect teams at the company from them. He couldn't control hiring, but could control quality within the team.

By having that world view, he had automatically made all his teammates be part of the out-group. They were not his peers, and so he would ignore any advice they could give. Hence, no one was in a situation to gently steer him to better behavior.

[1] A tell tale sign of social proof in action is when someone says "I know it sounds crazy, but you should listen to this guy. He's one of us.

[2] Sorry for the non-spoiler. His advice didn't help me with my pain. But I totally accept it did for others, and do suggest it to others.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

The real question is: Why do things have to reach the point of harassment before action is taken?

Blurry lines are hard, but harassment has very clear lines. I imagine that's the reason. At the same time, people don't want to be narks and report every little infraction. Being annoying doesn't necessarily mean you deserve to lose your job, but that's where the blurry lines come up, yet again.

If you're in that sort of org, don't stay there. It will be a magnet for such folks.

It's not always easy to change teams nor jobs, sadly. And people need the money. Lot of things you wouldn't put up with if you had "fuck you" money. But very few do, fewer so in this economy.

amelius2• 3 years ago

How to work with someone who:

1. you have to work with remotely, and

2. never reads your entire e-mails, only the first sentence or (if you're lucky) the first paragraph.

Any ideas?

munchbunny• 3 years ago

Why do you "have to" work with them?

I think the nature of your dependency on them and their dependency on you figures heavily into your viable options to address the overall communication problem. In my experience this kind of issue is often unique to the specific pair of people.

amelius2• 3 years ago

Honestly, if I could, I would replace them by chatgpt. It does a better job at reading my instructions.

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

Condense email, always a good idea to reflect, e.g I can quickly write too long texts where you can cut half. Condensing down to one sentence is maybe hard though.

Alternatively, write multiple one sentence emails... :D

Seriously? Ask him to read better an/or do more calls, if they work better?

If nothing helps, fire/report/escalate whatever option you have, as simple as that, or run for yourself ;)

edgarvaldes• 3 years ago

Shorter emails? I'm serious. I try to write a draft, then edit it until the core message is left. Then, "check this docs/let's have a virtual meet" for more context.

bjornlouser• 3 years ago

Add a hook in the first sentence of your email that allows them to shine, even if it’s a false lie.

“I’m having trouble figuring out this piece of the critical path”

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

Put the essence into the very first sentence of the email: bottom line up front (BLUF) [1] [2]

[1] https://www.animalz.co/blog/bottom-line-up-front/

[2] https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...

ryandrake3• 3 years ago

BLUF[1]. Put the key point you want to convey (or question you want answered) in the very first line of the E-mail, in boldface or color or whatever as the TLDR. Then go into detail further down, that you know your colleague may or may not read.

Don't mix topics for these people. Send multiple E-mails. Chances are, they use their Inbox as a TODO list, and if they have an E-mail with multiple topics it could get lost.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

kdazzle• 3 years ago

never reads your entire emails

That’s basically every executive, or most managers, so only lead with the most important bullets and put details way at the bottom

corobo2• 3 years ago

Pick up the phone.

I know, I know, as a millenial I hate to do it too. But it does get things done much smoother and much quicker when someone isn't that great of a text-based communicator in my experience.

3minus1• 3 years ago

talk with them? Explain with examples how their behavior impacts your ability to do your job and ask them what they recommend for working better together.

bombcar• 3 years ago

Write what you need in the first sentence.

Maybe include extra detail below, but reduce it to one sentence. You need something, ask for it.

Honestly, it's the biggest part of business communication. That first sentence.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

I have a formula for emails that I follow because most people don't really read past the first sentence.

The very first sentence of any work email I send is the action I want them to perform -- the sentence that most people would put at the end. I also write the subject line so it functions as a todo bullet point for them.

The next paragraph is a summary of why I need them to do whatever it is that I am asking them to do.

The rest of the email is the details.

The last paragraph of the email restates the first.

willseth• 3 years ago

This is bland advice and only applies in trivial situations where the colleague has bad habits, quirks, etc., which is really most people. Everyone can be annoying if you look for that perspective, but most people are…fine. If someone is actually manipulative or abusive, this advice is tantamount to “chill out, and let them walk all over you.” Actual shitty people don’t usually think they are being shitty and/or they have very powerful rationalization engines and/or short memories. For these actual shitty people, showing respect or “finding a connection” won’t stop their shitty behavior, so what’s the point? Maybe if taking the high road makes you feel better, but really if you find yourself stuck working with one of these people, you should GTFO. That is the critical missing piece from this article.

throwitaway2222• 3 years ago

I was that "chill out, and let them walk all over you" person for someone that started helping our company as a contractor. He had a very dominant personality, of which no one at our 4 person shop had. A year later the CEO announced he was our VP of engineering. He made comments about women, made inappropriate jokes a lot. The remaining 3 years that I was at the company, his personality fused into everything and every new hire. Everyone picked up his attitude, jokes and lack of seriousness. Could easily be a textbook definition of how toxic behavior spreads. Even me, eventually I found myself cracking jokes about customers to please this person.

I finally left, comically after this person left - the company now dangling and struggling. I joined a new company, and I found it refreshing to see people take things seriously again. Huge difference.

So yes, you should GTFO if this happens to you.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

This is bland advice and only applies in trivial situations where the colleague has bad habits, quirks, etc.

given the responses here, it sounds like it should help a few people's problems.

5cott0• 3 years ago

"You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." - Raylan Givens

"If you're gonna keep talkin I'm gonna put you in the trunk" - also Raylan Givens

outworlder3• 3 years ago

When it comes to jobs, you could be standing in Asshole Central, though.

JoeyJoJoJr• 3 years ago

I don’t really like that first quote because, at least from what I have observed, really shitty people tend to operate in circles, as do really great people. It is perhaps not until you make a massive life change, such as moving city, that you realise that assholes were dominating all of your previous social circles.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

I mean, that is a valid solution. If you're a highly liberal person and you're in conservative central, you will be seen as the asshole. Or maybe it's something more tame like being a sports buff outside of work among a sea of techies who talk about nothing but programming. It's all relative.

Either way, the quote to me reflects a need to either change yourself or your environment.

josefrichter• 3 years ago

I once had a colleague who hated me to the point she refused to talk to me. The weird thing was I had no idea why. Even when I offered her to have an open conversation, to clarify what happened, and how can I possibly fix it, she just didn't respond. Was kinda difficult to work with her :-)

romanows• 3 years ago

Could your manager have helped figure this out? Even if they can't change anything, it can be helpful to loop your manager in so they aren't surprised if a simmering conflict erupts down the road.

davidw• 3 years ago

I will hand this out to future co-workers by way of introducing myself...

zubairq• 3 years ago

Great tips. Thanks!

llbeansandrice• 3 years ago

This feels like the boomer advice my parents would give me when I just want to rant about my job or a coworker. It's also so incredibly generic and bland that it really only applies if someone is being kind of annoying rather than weapons grade incompetent or manipulative.

Seems right up Forbes' alley tho.

johnnyanmac25• 3 years ago

when I just want to rant about my job or a coworker.

Are you a man? It's a pretty common action for a man to want to "solve a problem" when hearing a conversation based around problems. Even with modern conversation we don't really have much language to codify when we "just want to rant". It should be felt by body language and my autistic mind never catches that. It just feels even lazier to sit there and listen to someone dump with no recourse, I feel helpless.

So I get it. I don't have an answer and I ironically did it right here, but just some consideration from the other side of the fence.

it really only applies if someone is being kind of annoying rather than weapons grade incompetent or manipulative.

sounds like half the problems being vented out here.

watwut4• 3 years ago

It was literally his/her parents, not OP who would try to give advice.

Also, as someone who works in male dominated profession, men rant all the time, complain all the time and do not want to hear solutions when that goes on.

Just assume they just want to rant. I tend to give advice too, but I try to hold up unless I am really sure, cause most of the time people just want to rant.

tcgv• 3 years ago

Great tips. They may seem obvious, but often aren't. When I was an individual contributor, I encountered my fair share of occasional work disagreements, and fortunately, was able to learn and grow from those experiences without much hassle. I consider myself more relaxed than the average person, so you really need to make an effort to get me stressed. Working in environments with a balanced work culture also help.

After becoming a manager I realized that not only do I need to continue handling occasional personal disagreements with colleagues, but I'm also now responsible for coaching my reportees on how to effectively navigate their own conflicts and occasionally stepping in to mediate. It's been an interesting challenge managing people and helping them become more happy, productive and achieve our business goals as a team.

Shameless plug: In a related matter, I recently wrote simple guidelines and examples on how to communicate better when receiving requests from colleagues, which I noticed is one of the many ways people start developing a negative opinion of their counterpart, fostering conflicts:

- https://thomasvilhena.com/2023/10/guideliness-for-requests-f...

ctrlp• 3 years ago

"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."

todotask• 3 years ago

My coworker, a Singaporean gentleman, was an older man who often communicated in a way that was awkward and confusing, making work with him a challenge. He had a habit of spamming Buddhist topics in WhatsApp and boasting about his achievements, especially his daughter, in a manner that felt unprofessional. What made it worse was that he would intentionally give hard massages on my shoulder behind me when I had repeatedly mentioned that I had an injury on my right joint arm.

In the end, the situation became so untenable that I felt compelled to resign from the Japanese MNC. As for my colleague, I hear he's planning to retire with his wife in China, where he can hopefully enjoy an affordable living standard.

I would say that he has an interesting work attitude.

In other workplaces, I was surprised that the company hired a male colleague who had the habit of touching or molesting other male colleagues.

neilv• 3 years ago

and 87% have worked with a toxic boss, according to a poll

How many bosses have those polled had? (What's the likelihood that any given boss is toxic?)

watwut4• 3 years ago

Toxic people are more likely to seek positions in power. They are also more likely to keep and gain them, because they have less issues to harm competitors (for example by intentional gossip) and are more likely to say pleasing lies.

onetimeuse92304• 3 years ago

Am I the only one that sees the most important point is missing?

0. Focus on facts in any conversation with or about the person. Keep anything that is not obviously related to work products out of it.

Yes, especially when you both don't like each other but there is willingness on both sides to achieve same or at least similar goal and have productive relationship, keeping emotions and opinions out of it and focusing on just the facts is, in my opinion, the best way to deal with the situation.

Also, don't comment, spread rumors of any kind about the person you don't like. I tell other people "I may not like the person but I don't find it a problem as long as we both want to achieve the same positive goal for the organisation."

poulsbohemian• 3 years ago

I appreciate these articles but there's always something they overlook: what if the other party doesn't want to play ball? You see it in politics, relationships, business - if the other side is in "I win, you lose" mode, none of these coping strategies really work. That's the article I want to see written.

JohnFen13• 3 years ago

if the other side is in "I win, you lose" mode, none of these coping strategies really work.

If I'm dealing with a person like that, and the thing they want to "win" isn't something important for work, then I just let them "win". It's no skin off my nose. Let them have their meaningless victory.

If it is something important for work, then I just make the best factual case I can to whoever matters and roll with the results.

iteratethis2• 3 years ago

My tip would be: just don't care.

I once was hired as a type of consultant for an internal matter. The company had a lot of in-house developed software from various internal departments situated in different countries.

A whole bunch of representatives traveled to a single location focusing on one such important application. We had 10 local versions of it. Plan is to get rid of all of them and align on what should go into a single new one that was to be built.

The sessions were a total disaster. A tragedy of the commons situation where each representative did not cooperate or align, instead they all tried to "win" each and every little detail. Frustration grew, there was shouting, petty revenge behavior, toddler-like silence (I refuse to further speak), people simply leaving, and even people crying from stress.

In the debrief with the session leader, she was still traumatized. She watched me dutifully make notes and then asked: how do you do this?

During the sessions, which lasted 2 days, I was at perfect peace amidst a bunch of screaming pseudo-adults. Completely unbothered. I'm not talking about controlling my frustration, I had none at all.

Because I don't care. It's a super power. Which obviously needs to be applied responsibly.

ravishi• 3 years ago

If I may ask: do you have kids?

I used to have a lot of trouble when trying to not care about stuff. I didn't care about most stuff, but it used to be impossible to not care about stuff I was naturally interested in.

Now after almost three years raising a toddler I can see clearly when people are behaving like babies. And I'm used to handle a stressed baby who is not cooperating for God knows why. It happens quite frequently and I just play along. I got used to being there, offering support without any expectations (because he usually doesn't want any at that point), trying things out just to give him a chance to take the bait, etc. Now it just feels like life is finally making sense to me. I catch myself applying this to my relationship with my wife, to my work, etc. I feel like I would probably not make these realizations nor develop this mindset if it wasn't for my kid.

imetatroll2• 3 years ago

Man does this resonate. More people should endure kids not just for this but for the joyful moments as well.

iteratethis2• 3 years ago

I don't have kids, but I can totally understand how that would increase one's tolerance for chaos.

I think I "don't care" because I'm very analytical. Already at a very young age did I realize that this world doesn't make much sense in that it's not very logical, consistent or fair. It's more like a game to play.

So you develop a kind of "humans going to human" attitude where you detach from drama. Or at least pick your battles.

PikachuEXE• 3 years ago

Agree.

Point is to control emotion (negative side at least) and get stuff done. Perform like a "professional killer" who kills problems (I remember there is a manga with this topic).

There are always too many people losing their control of themselves (or don't have enough from the beginning). If possible, help them. If not, help yourself and don't bother.

We are entities with limits. Spending time on things we cannot/will not do is a waste (I value my will almost as important as my capability, we are humans not slaves/machines).

neilmarion• 3 years ago

This is something like "don't be passionate" according to the book "Ego is the Enemy."

This is like disassociating your sense of identity or ego from your opinions/thoughts according to Eckhart Tolle.

This is something like being "aware" or "being an observer" of yourself according to Zens.

This is something like "stillness" according to stoics.

Congratulations! You've unlocked your "deeper self" :D

maCDzP• 3 years ago

On a long enough timeline everyone’s fucks drop to zero.

rcarmo• 3 years ago

Very timely article, highly debatable approach. Not really worth following.

How to Work Effectively with Someone You Don't Like

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