44
Root
3y

!dev

After almost a year of watching and experimenting (and not wanting to believe), I’ve learned something about the people i work with:

They don’t consider ideas based on the idea’s own merit, nor does a good idea improve their views of the person proposing it. They instead give the idea merit based entirely on who proposed it. It’s backwards.

• If they like or revere someone, their ideas cannot be bad, and they are never questioned even if they don’t make sense.
• If they sort of like someone, but that person challenges someone they like more, the ideas are dismissed and picked apart, and sometimes even reworded by the group and then accepted, with credit then given to the group. The person is still seen as wrong.
• If they dislike someone, none of their ideas are good, or they’re ignored, or ridiculed for reasons such as stating what is (only now) an abundantly obvious good idea.

(There is some overlap from the execs, where they occasionally consider an idea for its merit and then restate it, which means the idea is now coming from an exec, and is therefore readily accepted. Occasionally the original person gets some credit for this.)

It also applies to pictures of food in the cooking channel. If people like you more, they like your food more, while a professional-looking plate from a social leper gets ignored.

It’s like office politics, but applies to virtually every aspect of company life instead of just promotions, requests, and project assignments. It’s like replacing common courtesy and reason with a social FICO score: your contributions are only acceptable if you agree with your coworkers, laugh at their jokes, etc. And if you appear to like the same music, have recently posted more pictures of tacos or brownies than usual, etc.? Well, you had better do that before suggesting something you actually care about.

It’s social credit.
And it’s stupid.

Comments
  • 16
    It's super dumb.

    It's also human nature and most folks seem sure that they don't do it, but everyone else does.
  • 9
    Isn't that how people generally work?
  • 7
    So you discovered trust ?
    Cool 😎

    I just add that trust at first sight is more powerful then love at first sight.

    No matter what you do later someone might remember only what you did when you meet for the first time.

    That’s the foundation of why scholar and certifications systems exists.
  • 17
    Truth. Pretty much a universal constant.

    Last client I was at, there was a serious clique vibe. The director of IT was "former" IBM India. If you weren't also IBM India, you never had a good idea. It wasn't just non-Indians either, there was a guy who was actually quite smart and coincidentally Indian who was constantly shot down.

    I had a particular loathing for one of their architects. A lumbering slob who was the shape of a jujube. I realized at a certain point he was stealing my ideas and painting them as his own. Upon realizing this I identified how they were filtering to him and flipped the script; I would give good ideas, but paint the route to a direction that was guaranteed to fail. Needless to say, the jujube fell out of favour quickly after that.

    If you can beat them, sabotage them.
  • 1
    That's life, literally.
  • 1
    @SortOfTested evil 😈
  • 1
    People suck.
  • 6
    @iiii
    I just gave them the rope, they chose to make a noose and jump off a horse ;)
  • 8
    @N00bPancakes @iiii You’re supposed to make me hate people less, not more.

    Also, the behavior is more exaggerated here than anywhere else I’ve been, excluding some super-leftist groups where they would all get together and flame you until you left. Here, I suspect that’s HR’s job.

    Anyway, an example:

    In a code review: “Hey, you can use symbols here instead of strings, and you can do away with these array allocations. Also, you could break out these behaviors into their own methods.”

    Disliked: “premature optimization is the root of all evil. This is a waste of time.” — or: “These suggestions are bad and will make it so much harder to read. Are you this strict with your own code? Maybe you’re not right about any of this.” — or: “not everything has to be right for it to work, you know. I’ll make a new PR and have <coworker> approve it instead.”

    Liked: “omg, I didn’t even notice those. I’ll go fix my code.” and later: “The code is so much cleaner and faster and easier to read now!”

    πŸ™„
  • 3
    @vane It’s less about trust and more about favoritism.
  • 3
    @Root I’d rather call it herd or tribe.
    A tribe called quest πŸ•Ί
  • 0
    @Root people are what they are. It's your choice to hate them or not.
  • 1
    @vane
    Hey now, don't be bringing ATCQ down πŸ˜‹
  • 1
    @vane

    Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuttin ta Fuck Wit
  • 0
    Have you watched black mirror? Episode based on social credit system like you described
  • 2
    @Root When I read your this I felt like there may be more to the situation than described. Like a misunderstanding of business metrics for evaluation vs technical merits. I know I have a blind spot for the merit of ideas in some areas.

    After actually seeing who posted this, my views of the argument shifted a bit. I then had a biased opinion of the poster. You, the poster, have a higher level of status in my perception as a critical thinker. Whether is this translate to objective thinking when it comes to business metrics is unknown.

    So after realizing my own bias, seeing how it changed based upon learning the identity of presenter, and the uncertainty I can see how an organization can be like that.
  • 3
    I never understood why I must be nice at all time to anyone.

    We "had the talk" at my current employer and I made very clear that there is a very clear line between being "toxic" and "honest" (I still don't think that people are aware or know what toxic behaviour truely is... Cause those who scream loudest for non toxic behaviour are usually the ones bullying *cough* *cough*)

    Funny enough - after a week of discussions going back and forth, the whole idea got kinda trashed. Mostly because noone wanted a transparent process - eg. if someone felt offended, it must be made public even if anonymized and communicated why and how the incident took place.

    (This goes far beyond what @Root said, but I think that most of this gobbled up lying is truely toxic. I've had my fair share of lying backstabbers, working somewhere where lying is good behaviour is a No Go for me)
  • 0
    So you confirmed, that your coworkers are actually human.

    Most humans let emotions taint their data processing a lot.
    The upside of that is, that it makes it more likely to stand together against common enemies wich makes the survival of the group more likely...
  • 1
    @SortOfTested Sorry but I left my wallet in El Segundo.
  • 1
    @Oktokolo I think I called them collectivist idiots.
  • 1
    @saucyatom people are rooted in 20,000 generations of living as hunter gathers
  • 3
    You can literally kill such people with “separate the art from the artist”. The idea like this can literally make their head pop
  • 2
    @uyouthe Their heads would pop and then so would my job 🀦🏻‍♀️
  • 0
    @Root why intelligent people like you and SortOfTested are always fighting conceptual or existential problems when they’re not busy fighting stupid problems? Why are it always the extremes?
  • 0
    @uyouthe God is an pansexual fisting daddy?
  • 6
    OK. Maybe bad joke.

    More honestly - people feel intimidated for very funny reasons.

    I could go on with thousand examples - but in a nutshell: When you're not running in "cog" mode (Whatever work I have to do, I will ask no questions but just do it) you're the one who will possibly throw a spanner in the works.

    No matter if it's for good or bad reasons, you will very likely disturb the current process...

    So. When you're not accepting status quo you're always putting a big fucking target on your arse, cause someone will be afraid.
  • 6
    @IntrusionCM Most people seem to run on emotions alone, and only begin to think once they feel right about their emotional reaction to a situation. By then they’ve already made up their minds about how they’re going to react, and the rest is just finding ways of justifying it.

    Emotion, then logic.
    Backwards from how it should be.
  • 0
    @Root Yeah. Except in many cases in my career logic was completely missing.

    Like... Not existing?
  • 0
    @Root For more info on that study Jung and take a look at MBTI.
  • 0
    @saucyatom I would think most software engineers would be INTx’s though, not S’s or F’s.
  • 0
    @Root I agree that INTx is a good fit, but I suppose it depends on their motivation for the job. For some people it's just a job (that also is in demand). For me, it is because it aligns very well with my interests and my strengths (e.g. analytical thinking).

    (INTP here)
  • 5
    @Root One example just popped up in my head...

    We had a discussion about reviewing at my first employer.

    Especially one person didn't like "getting reviewed".

    And then he brought suddenly the concept up of intellectual property... I must have made a very weird facial expression at that time, because he suddenly seemed to feel victorious. Because he felt like a winner, he held an rage monologue.

    At the end of his monologue I just pointed out that in the work contract and by common law, his work belongs to the company and he's paid for it.

    (I really don't know why - but had this discussion more than once... With several different people)

    He couldn't admit he was wrong... End of story was that I had a very unpleasant discussion with my chef, since the special snowflake went in full rage mode to him...

    In the end everything was fine, chef wasn't mad at me or stuff like that.

    But the special snowflake got roasted (by everyone... )

    Like a chestnut over fire.

    Experiences like that are pretty common to me. I sometimes give my self the fault, because I never stopped people (at work) digging their own grave unless there was a compelling reason to do so...
  • 3
    @rutee07 Nobody really talks about personal things. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of friendly chatter at all, at least outside the food and music channels.

    Everything is work-related.
    I’ve been doing your second point on and off for that specific reason; it’s helped somewhat. Similar with mimicking lingo and writing styles, etc. etc. but adding something to a real discussion? Absolutely a no-go. There’s the management circle, and they’re beyond reproach — or even comment.

    Really, I think I’ll just be a silent cog as someone else mentioned, just do my job quietly, make very few waves, and get paid nicely while I can. It doesn’t really matter to me that they will make terrible decisions because someone the group likes suggested them. Unless I get blamed for the fallout, ofc.

    I miss my previous job more every day.
  • 0
    @Root if you look closely it's not really backwards. Or emotions are the base operating system, while conscience and logic are just smaller systems above. They don't have as much permissions and will never have without hijacking the whole system.
  • 1
    I was gonna say that it seems like that episode of black mirror where people are giving grades based on superficial shit and then have social score that gives them advantage in life.

    Then I realized that's actual life!
  • 0
    @Rutee07 Hi
  • 0
    @rutee07 I’m a piece of shit friend, but I replied at long last πŸ˜”
  • 0
    @rutee07 Ouch. Deserved.
  • 1
    That is why I respect people waaay more, who just say anything that is on their mind. Completely unfiltered, honest and sincere. Thou they tend to bed on the rather disliked side for most people.
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