this seems like an insane statement to me, you can just hire for ability to function in a team?
IMHO if you assume the people around you are incompetent or malicious then that’s exactly what you’ll find.
Further, if the people around you are actually incompetent or malicious then awareness of that fact won’t change the outcome anyway.
What are you implying, that you are some kind of God? So if you see them as bad, often bad appears, and if you see them as good, then often good appears? That's some magical stuff there.
Further, if the people around you are actually incompetent or malicious then awareness of that fact won’t change the outcome anyway.
True. But we're here talking about managing serious operations, in which case being keenly aware of the above fact helps make decisions and they don't all have to be "evil" decisions and can often be quite beautiful solutions. You can reallocate people to optimize them without firing them, feeding one more person.
Pretty much, yeah. Another way of saying this is “perception is reality.”
Everyone has their own perception of reality. As a result some people like you and others don’t. You can choose to perceive those around you as favorably as possible. You control your perception of reality.
It’s similar to this HN guideline:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I think this is the defining characteristic of HN that makes it a valuable place to be. It’s a deliberate choice I wish was more widespread.
> True. But we're here talking about managing serious operations, in which case being keenly aware of the above fact helps make decisions and they don't all have to be "evil" decisions and can often be quite beautiful solutions. You can reallocate people to optimize them without firing them, feeding one more person.
Totally. And you should assume the best about those you manage so you can move them into a position where they can succeed rather than dismissing them for their flaws.
Do you think the amicable discourse on HN is indicative of feelings? Do you think the Hi and Hellos you get at work displays the true fabric of things?
I'll just start with small examples in case you want to keep the convo going:
1) Leetcode is a thing
How? Dude, there's dislike of a certain type of developer and obsession toward the idea of another type of developer.
2) Agile is a thing
How? Dude, there is dislike for the autonomy and value a developer brings.
3) How do you turn a "normal" engineer into 10x engineer
How is this question constructed? What is "normal" and who defined the ideal "10x"? How do you turn your "normal" wife into a dime? What? What kind of question is this? The business dislikes the price of a developer, how do we get more value for what we paid. These are the things you have to read into.
...
N) Plenty more examples, the tech industry operates on shade because our PR game is so fake (seriously, remember the ping pong tables?)
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Which brings me back to "people don't really like each other" and good operations need to manage that.
There may have to be a different way to think about this. How can you have things that hate each other but still run an amazing operation? The best operation I can think of is a zoo. You have your tigers over here, and your penguins over there. The operation as a whole is amazing.
A company of just tigers will destroy everything and a company of just penguins need too much caretaking.
Most armed forces are not a “team”, they are an operation. If you constantly try to fit an operation into a team framework, that’s when you’ll try to turn penguins into tigers (how do you turn someone into a 100x engineer?). Or worse, you tell a tiger to chill out and relax with the penguins (you’re asking for trouble). If you need a 100x engineer, make sure the engineer is a thousand miles away and gets paid like it and far away from the normal engineers lest they start believing the tiger cage is suitable for penguins or vice versa. It’s a big operation, no teams.
If you MUST build a team, then just be yourself. You probably are building something small dogs like, so hire a few street dogs and you won’t even need to worry about zoo-scale decisions and operations. You won’t need to go through the mistake of jamming 4 different species into the same enclosure to finally learn how things live separately but together.