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Wallet posted:Being polite and avoiding conflict aren't conjoined ideas. The way criticism is communicated makes a huge difference in the environment and in how that criticism is received. Paolomania was talking about a design document, which I took to mean an early-stage proposal document. That is the right time to tear things up if need be. I don’t see how a team can make decisions or debate anything without someone suggesting something for critique in the first place. Whoever’s responsible for making the first suggestions/proposals is going to take the brunt of the critique, but if that makes them upset then they’re not a good fit for that role. Personally if I’ve written a proposal I want people to pick as many holes as possible in it; the criticism shows me that people are engaged, invested and thinking about it. (Of course I’m not saying people should bikeshed or be outright rude and hostile to other people’s ideas in this process.) We’re never going to agree because there is no right answer to how a team should work. But people who are more conflict-driven (or at least more comfortable with conflict) are going to hyperbolically speak up how much fun it is to criticise things, and they’ll look forward to reading those docs with high energy. If you tell someone like that to rein it in, they’ll have less enthusiasm, less investment in the solution, will feel less secure in the team, and are less likely to speak up when others wouldn’t or to speak their mind openly - but they will also piss people off less, have a more professional vibe, and will probably stick to only raising major issues. If that’s the right tradeoff for your team, cool. Other teams might make a different decision there, and they’re not always going to be wrong and dysfunctional for it - they just wouldn’t be a good fit for everyone. No team is.
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Apr 4, 2021 09:55
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I like my team and we are all very chill, give constructive criticism when needed, and approach problems as an opportunity to learn something new. I’ve never been judged for asking a question if I didn’t know or hadn’t worked with something before. Outside of design/requirements meetings with the business folk we hardly do formal meetings outside of a once-a-week “here’s what I’m working on and how it’s going” Teams channel. It goes smooth and we meet all of our deadlines. I would probably hate all of your jobs, and it makes me want to be Junior forever.
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Apr 4, 2021 12:20
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Paolomania was talking about a design document, which I took to mean an early-stage proposal document. That is the right time to tear things up if need be. I don’t see how a team can make decisions or debate anything without someone suggesting something for critique in the first place. Whoever’s responsible for making the first suggestions/proposals is going to take the brunt of the critique, but if that makes them upset then they’re not a good fit for that role. Personally if I’ve written a proposal I want people to pick as many holes as possible in it; the criticism shows me that people are engaged, invested and thinking about it. (Of course I’m not saying people should bikeshed or be outright rude and hostile to other people’s ideas in this process.) I don't think our team is formal enough to truly have early-stage proposal documents. An actual early proposal here isn't really a proposal at all; We usually have a conversation about what something needs to do and what we think the pitfalls/open questions are, and then someone goes off to write up an analysis of what our options are for addressing them etc. They come back with a better researched set of options we can make decisions about instead of going so far down the road that we end up with a dissertation to pick apart.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:25
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Paolomania was talking about a design document, which I took to mean an early-stage proposal document. That is the right time to tear things up if need be. I don’t see how a team can make decisions or debate anything without someone suggesting something for critique in the first place. Whoever’s responsible for making the first suggestions/proposals is going to take the brunt of the critique, but if that makes them upset then they’re not a good fit for that role. Personally if I’ve written a proposal I want people to pick as many holes as possible in it; the criticism shows me that people are engaged, invested and thinking about it. (Of course I’m not saying people should bikeshed or be outright rude and hostile to other people’s ideas in this process.) So in the end "team fit" is more PLU and not a constantly evolving effort to incorporate more diverse points of view, styles of work, and/or experiences? Please name and shame where you work so I never consider interviewing there. Blinkz0rz fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 15:02
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One of the main reasons I’m trying to leave my job of 5 years is because no one can seem to make decisions and I’m getting bored as hell. poo poo will be talked to death in meetings but a lot of stuff is ultimately up to management and no one wants to say yes or no. My current manager was promoted from a technical position a while ago and honestly the longer this stuff goes on, the more I realize he is not a good manager. He really doesn’t really fight against bad decisions by upper management, and from what I’ve seen in meetings he is not good at communicating issues or ideas to upper management. That and the CIO seems to be constantly taking projects from other managers and trying to head them up himself. There are like 3 major initiatives that I haven’t heard poo poo about in months that should be occupying my time.
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Apr 4, 2021 15:19
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Blinkz0rz posted:So I'm the end "team fit" is more PLU and not a constantly evolving effort to incorporate more diverse points of view, styles of work, and/or experiences? Well, how do you make everyone happy? Genuinely curious. If you get a new team member who loves synchronous meetings but the current team members all prefer asynchronous document commenting, what would you, if you were the lead, do? Or a team member who strongly dislikes disagreeing with people in public, whereas the rest of the team likes having loud debates? Who gets to decide what the team’s processes actually are? I’m advocating for diverse team styles rather than condemning some team styles as toxic. I’m not sure how you get to me saying diverse styles is wrong from that. Not every team needs to have a complete range of every communication style under the sun, though, and if they do, they will probably have more misunderstandings, conflicts and endless process meetings than if they didn’t. I think most people would prefer to be placed in a team that fits them rather than being plopped into a team they’re complete opposites with because the team needs more ‘diversity’.
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Apr 4, 2021 16:15
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Blinkz0rz posted:So in the end "team fit" is more PLU and not a constantly evolving effort to incorporate more diverse points of view, styles of work, and/or experiences? I say this as a person who is not conflict averse and who will absolutely take over a conversation. You need to actively work to include all voices and foster an environment where you get the best contributions from all team members.
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Apr 4, 2021 17:38
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:'...and then we lit it all on fire, started over, and rebuilt knowing more about our product, data pipes, and stakeholders'. And this is when you wake up to the 3AM page that the prototype service you made two years ago is crashing under the workload again?
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Apr 4, 2021 18:20
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Here's an important thing for everyone to remember: the idea that the best ideas will survive intense criticism and the worst ones will fall away is horseshit. That's the ultimate idea behind that kind of process, and it just doesn't do what you think it does. It invariably ends up (and I'm saying this categorically) that the strongest personalities will drive decision-making, and their ideas will survive criticism not because they're better ideas, but because they're the ones with the personalities to power through it. And if you don't believe me, this is probably because you have a culture where strong personalities drive things instead of good ideas. I've been in academia, where this kind of poo poo is rampant. It is not a method for getting the best ideas, it's a method for empowering the loudest people. And I'm not saying these people are rude or bullies: I'm just saying they're the loudest. They can be polite as can be, and they can still monopolize and drive decision-making.
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Apr 4, 2021 18:25
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Here's an important thing for everyone to remember: the idea that the best ideas will survive intense criticism and the worst ones will fall away is horseshit. That's the ultimate idea behind that kind of process, and it just doesn't do what you think it does. It invariably ends up (and I'm saying this categorically) that the strongest personalities will drive decision-making, and their ideas will survive criticism not because they're better ideas, but because they're the ones with the personalities to power through it. And if you don't believe me, this is probably because you have a culture where strong personalities drive things instead of good ideas. I've been in academia, where this kind of poo poo is rampant. It is not a method for getting the best ideas, it's a method for empowering the loudest people. And I'm not saying these people are rude or bullies: I'm just saying they're the loudest. They can be polite as can be, and they can still monopolize and drive decision-making. This is an extremely good post
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Apr 4, 2021 20:32
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Here's an important thing for everyone to remember: the idea that the best ideas will survive intense criticism and the worst ones will fall away is horseshit. That's the ultimate idea behind that kind of process, and it just doesn't do what you think it does. It invariably ends up (and I'm saying this categorically) that the strongest personalities will drive decision-making, and their ideas will survive criticism not because they're better ideas, but because they're the ones with the personalities to power through it. And if you don't believe me, this is probably because you have a culture where strong personalities drive things instead of good ideas. I've been in academia, where this kind of poo poo is rampant. It is not a method for getting the best ideas, it's a method for empowering the loudest people. And I'm not saying these people are rude or bullies: I'm just saying they're the loudest. They can be polite as can be, and they can still monopolize and drive decision-making. I really don't agree. Opinions stated loudly are not the same as concrete points with rationale and evidence and it feels like some people here are conflating (or perhaps straw manning) criticism with being loud and overbearing and perhaps abusing a postion of power. Critique is not inherently any of these things even if lovely people masquerade these things as critique. Feedback like "this design breaks backwards compatibility and will not work with our phased rollout process" is something that needs to be said and it needs to be said early in design before a whole bunch of people put in a whole bunch of effort into something that is going to fall flat on its face when you try to launch.
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Apr 4, 2021 20:54
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Paolomania posted:I really don't agree. Opinions stated loudly are not the same as concrete points with rationale and evidence and it feels like some people here are conflating (or perhaps straw manning) criticism with being loud and overbearing and perhaps abusing a postion of power. Critique is not inherently any of these things even if lovely people masquerade these things as critique. Feedback like "this design breaks backwards compatibility and will not work with our phased rollout process" is something that needs to be said and it needs to be said early in design before a whole bunch of people put in a whole bunch of effort into something that is going to fall flat on its face when you try to launch. You've never dealt with someone insisting that their awful idea is great in the face of facts and evidence? And everyone else being slowly worn down until they stop fighting?
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Apr 4, 2021 20:58
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Paolomania posted:I really don't agree. Opinions stated loudly are not the same as concrete points with rationale and evidence and it feels like some people here are conflating (or perhaps straw manning) criticism with being loud and overbearing and perhaps abusing a postion of power. Critique is not inherently any of these things even if lovely people masquerade these things as critique. Feedback like "this design breaks backwards compatibility and will not work with our phased rollout process" is something that needs to be said and it needs to be said early in design before a whole bunch of people put in a whole bunch of effort into something that is going to fall flat on its face when you try to launch. A very good team might work like this, but most teams are not very good teams and the loudest or most senior person gets to drive all the decisions.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:00
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:You've never dealt with someone insisting that their awful idea is great in the face of facts and evidence? And everyone else being slowly worn down until they stop fighting? We do oncall rotations supporting what we make so we feel it when our stuff doesn't work well. When everyone in the room is thinking about how they are going to have to support said awful idea for years they are very incentivized to not let it slide.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:03
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ultrafilter posted:A very good team might work like this, but most teams are not very good teams and the loudest or most senior person gets to drive all the decisions. I can see that. I think this is just one of the ways that a stable, long-term team with a good manager to provide insulation from external pressure is a big difference from academia or a start-up, or a team with little insulation from external parties making demands.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:16
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ultrafilter posted:A very good team might work like this, but most teams are not very good teams and the loudest or most senior person gets to drive all the decisions. I don't even know that a very good team could work like this because not everyone is going to come with the same experience, knowledge, investment, and ambition. Selecting for those who already have the most skin in the game and built the process means that it gives the most senior and the most likely to stick around more of a voice. That's entirely antithetical to developing junior talent and building a culture that way inevitably leads to an off-ramp for more junior folks who just can't break into that conversation. Paolomania posted:We do oncall rotations supporting what we make so we feel it when our stuff doesn't work well. When everyone in the room is thinking about how they are going to have to support said awful idea for years they are very incentivized to not let it slide. This is an example of what I'm talking about. While this sounds good in theory, it biases the conversation towards those who are more battle-scarred from their experiences supporting the mistakes the team has already made, i.e. the most senior and longest tenured. Edit: Dev owning their services is absolutely a great way to run a team in general, but using it as an example of why your team built a culture of critique isn't doing you any favors.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:25
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Paolomania posted:I really don't agree. Opinions stated loudly are not the same as concrete points with rationale and evidence and it feels like some people here are conflating (or perhaps straw manning) criticism with being loud and overbearing and perhaps abusing a postion of power. Critique is not inherently any of these things even if lovely people masquerade these things as critique. Feedback like "this design breaks backwards compatibility and will not work with our phased rollout process" is something that needs to be said and it needs to be said early in design before a whole bunch of people put in a whole bunch of effort into something that is going to fall flat on its face when you try to launch. The thing is, software development isn't adversarial. We're building something as a team.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:52
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:You've never dealt with someone insisting that their awful idea is great in the face of facts and evidence? And everyone else being slowly worn down until they stop fighting? If not, read more CSPAM or talk to Shaggar.
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Apr 4, 2021 22:07
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:You're conflating a whole lot of things here. Nobody's saying to let a bad design go, it's that the best way to determine a good design is to not subject it to withering critique (even rational critique! there's always tradeoffs and pros and cons and hidden costs), and if it survives, it's good. Because that favors the person who can defend their (good or bad) design come what may, or the person who is hyper-critical of everything except their own ideas. Trust me, I can defend bad ideas to the point where everyone else has run out of steam. It's not a positive! It's a negative. What we want is to come to the best design given a bunch of desiderata, and I'm saying the "propose a design and subject it to critique" is just a bad way to do that. What is a good way to do it then?
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Apr 4, 2021 23:11
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Volmarias posted:And this is when you wake up to the 3AM page that the prototype service you made two years ago is crashing under the workload again? Actually yes, but the solution is to fix it. An anecdote in our case is that we had a service that was delivering a couple hundred MBs of data every time you loaded a view. On the company Intranet, this was fine and the load time was but 10 seconds. But on the VPN when WFH started, load times would shoot to 3 - 5 minutes. The problem was that we never designed this system to handle a lot of data - we didn't even think about it but wild success was the breeding ground for more and more use, which inflated the data payload, which lead us to where we are now. The solution? Keep the front end. Keep the database (most of it anyway). Burn everything in between - rearchitect and rewrite. It took 6 weeks of work, but the end result is a product that now scales with huge dataloads and we are better engineers and architects for it. I think teams are really scared of this and I think sometimes that fear is justified, but I see way more teams just wallow in that fear endlessly, trying to plan for every possible situation and end up in the coding cargo cult of TDD in the name of mitigating risk at all costs (dont at me). They end up releasing nothing, or at it's very best, a shell of what was promised. The culture of the team is so much more productive and people are allowed to both create and learn in ways that a book could never teach. Again, sample size of about half a dozen teams for me, but being able to freely create without a lot of fear of backlash if the software isn't Perfect Forever (or even good for more than 2x ROI or so) has produced better engineers and better teams in a pretty short window of time. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 23:38
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In my experience a lot of critique comes in the form of "have you thought about X case? If so please add it to the doc" or "what are your thoughts on <some alternative implementation>". The idea being to ensure the entire possible solution space has been explored, and to make sure all that stuff is documented so that someone looking up the original design two years from now (without being able to talk to the original author) can understand why things were done in a particular way. Straight-up second guessing the author of the design and telling them they're wrong would be pretty highly frowned upon, which seems like a big distinction between a helpful and a toxic design critique environment.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:04
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Volmarias posted:And this is when you wake up to the 3AM page that the prototype service you made two years ago is crashing under the workload again? that's your mistake for agreeing to go on call tbh
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Apr 5, 2021 06:50
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If your team can do a code review, they can do a document review. The same rules of etiquette apply. I don’t see anyone protesting that code reviews are bad and useless because the submitter will just defend their bad code until everyone gives up and you merge it. Or that code reviews will cause arguments so we shouldn’t do them. If a document review is considered too adversarial and dangerous to be allowed in your team, I wonder how you ever make any decisions or get any code through. This stuff is not for ‘very good’ teams only, it’s a pretty bare minimum of team functioning.
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Apr 5, 2021 08:45
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Ironically, I've invoked "trust me on this" as a response to review comments before  It was about someone wanting to mock a static class that held single pure method so that "testing is easier in the future".
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Apr 5, 2021 09:26
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:If your team can do a code review, they can do a document review. The same rules of etiquette apply. You're so close but I think you're missing the forest for the trees. No one is saying that doc review, or code review for that matter, is unimportant. The point is that both can be done in ways that are sensitive to the author and aren't an exercise in hazing like the OP mentioned originally. But, and this is the crucial part, it's easy to ignore that when a specific demographic of the team is the one that defines etiquette. If your team's MO is to aggressively nit-pick every review and code golf everything, that's a culture that's actively hostile to new folks joining the team. Waving that away with "not a team fit" selects against a diversity of thought that's crucial to building great teams and great products. Team culture isn't defined through its processes. It is cultivated by each person who has ever been part of the team having a shared vision and the goal of an engineering manager or team lead is to defines the parameters of that vision (what are we building and why) and be a steward to help guide its growth.
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Apr 5, 2021 13:00
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I am one of those loud strong personality types and I do have to be really careful that people aren't just going with my ideas sometimes because it's easier. If you have that personality type and you're not aware of it it can be really easy to think people are going with your ideas because they're good and not just because arguing with you is a pain in the rear end.
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Apr 5, 2021 13:49
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Blinkz0rz posted:You're so close but I think you're missing the forest for the trees.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:27
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Paolomania posted:Holy poo poo you are fixating on a single word in a single sentence that was clarified as offhand and hyperbolic and ignoring all of the ensuing conversation. None of the further discussion has included anything resembling hazing, hostility, abuse or personal attacks. Good points have been made that include rationale and examples and you have not engaged with any of it, rather you continue to assert a strawman of some kind of political regressive bullying new people. 'Critique' is no harsher a word that 'feedback' and yet you are acting like it is an inherently antagonistic thing to be "thirsty for critique" as opposed to "thirsty to give feedback". Sounds like you have a hard time getting feedback
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Apr 5, 2021 15:29
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Back-and-forth is part of the process, which includes insisting contributors actually engage with what people are saying! 
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Apr 5, 2021 15:33
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Blinkz0rz posted:No one is saying that doc review, or code review for that matter, is unimportant. I’m referring to this: Ghost of Reagan Past posted:What we want is to come to the best design given a bunch of desiderata, and I'm saying the "propose a design and subject it to critique" is just a bad way to do that. This doesn’t say “bad reviews are bad” (no poo poo!), it says document reviews are bad. BTW: Blinkz0rz posted:Team culture isn't defined through its processes. It is cultivated by each person who has ever been part of the team having a shared vision and the goal of an engineering manager or team lead is to defines the parameters of that vision (what are we building and why) and be a steward to help guide its growth. If a shared vision can carry your team, you have no dissenters, and your processes are unimportant because they ‘just work’ since apparently everyone’s so enthused by this fabulous vision, your team is almost certainly already homogenous and you aren’t aware of it. The vision isn’t doing much of anything, the homogeneity is. If you get one of these people that you perceive to be a ‘hostile nitpicker’ joining your team, what would you do? Somehow I’m guessing the answer is not “tell him you greatly appreciate the diversity of his communication style and his unique talent for catching defects, it’s so lovely to have individual differences on the team.” I think you would move to protect your homogenous culture and tell this guy to nice up or move on. This is no different from telling someone they need to have a thicker skin/be more outspoken/whatever to work in your team, except that that doesn’t fit your particular culture so you find it unacceptable.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:42
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Paolomania posted:Holy poo poo you are fixating on a single word in a single sentence that was clarified as offhand and hyperbolic and ignoring all of the ensuing conversation. None of the further discussion has included anything resembling hazing, hostility, abuse or personal attacks. Good points have been made that include rationale and examples and you have not engaged with any of it, rather you continue to assert a strawman of some kind of political regressive bullying new people. 'Critique' is no harsher a word that 'feedback' and yet you are acting like it is an inherently antagonistic thing to be "thirsty for critique" as opposed to "thirsty to give feedback". You know the adage about how there's a gem of truth in all jokes? The same applies to hyperbole. Take the feedback and recognize why a team whose culture includes aggressively dissecting design docs could possibly be unwelcoming for folks who are more junior or come from a different background.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:43
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As with everything else, going too far in either direction is bad. A team that picks apart design docs for the sake of picking them apart is dysfunctional, but so is a team that just lets anything pass in the name of people getting along. You need some level of critique, but not too much. And whether that level of critique is good or bad depends in important ways on how its done.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:47
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Blinkz0rz posted:aggressively dissecting design docs
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Apr 5, 2021 15:47
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:If a shared vision can carry your team, you have no dissenters, and your processes are unimportant because they ‘just work’ since apparently everyone’s so enthused by this fabulous vision, your team is almost certainly already homogenous and you aren’t aware of it. The vision isn’t doing much of anything, the homogeneity is. If you get one of these people that you perceive to be a ‘hostile nitpicker’ joining your team, what would you do? Somehow I’m guessing the answer is not “tell him you greatly appreciate the diversity of his communication style and his unique talent for catching defects, it’s so lovely to have individual differences on the team.” I think you would move to protect your homogenous culture and tell this guy to nice up or move on. This is no different from telling someone they need to have a thicker skin/be more outspoken/whatever to work in your team, except that that doesn’t fit your particular culture so you find it unacceptable. Miss me with that. Folks can have different ways of approaching a shared vision without the vision implying homogeneity. Diversity of thought is crucial and it's absolutely important to include and accept the loud, opinionated person as part of the process. It's also crucial to ensure that they don't drown out everyone else. Now let's talk about how the "hostile nitpicker" is usually just a white dude who has never had his ideas challenged or been forced to be accountable for his bad behavior or attitude because that's exactly the kind of person you're talking about and man are they rife in this industry.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:48
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Paolomania posted:Again you are projecting hostility. Take your own feedback. I'm only going by your words. Clarify them or accept that people are going to judge you by them.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:49
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Blinkz0rz posted:You know the adage about how there's a gem of truth in all jokes? The same applies to hyperbole. Take the feedback and recognize why a team whose culture includes aggressively dissecting design docs could possibly be unwelcoming for folks who are more junior or come from a different background. Are you this aggro when dealing with your team? You're the only one being aggressive in this conversation. Chill out
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Apr 5, 2021 15:50
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Blinkz0rz posted:Now let's talk about how the "hostile nitpicker" is usually just a white dude who has never had his ideas challenged or been forced to be accountable for his bad behavior or attitude because that's exactly the kind of person you're talking about and man are they rife in this industry. You're being a "hostile nitpicker" right now 
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Apr 5, 2021 15:52
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Blinkz0rz posted:I'm only going by your words. Clarify them or accept that people are going to judge you by them. I already did: Paolomania posted:I admit it was an offhand and hyperbolic statement. I should have just said "if your team is good at giving asynchronous feedback on documents you can skip the read-the-design-doc meeting". and you refuse to engage.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:53
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Paolomania posted:I already did: Definitely missed your comment and with this clarification I agree, good async design convo can absolutely replace in-person.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:54
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Thanks. I think we fundamentally agree that lots of (good) feedback is a good thing even if I initially expressed that poorly.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:58
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