I need someone to make me a list of things I am not allowed to say and who I’m not allowed to say them to at work. This is getting ridiculous. Every time I turn around someone is making this face at me 😬 and saying “Don’t say that to that team” or “Don’t say that to this person”. I can’t do my work right if I have to keep censoring myself on everything people find organizationally sensitive.

What kinds of things did you say to elicit such reactions?

Sexist? Racist? Condescending? Narcissistic? Haughty? If none of these, don't worry. Keep saying and keep calm

@asgs he seems himself as hero, not the douche it seems

You are there to sell them your work, and there are there to provide you some service. Nothing more.
I would be pissed too if the guy at the groceries counter would make a point of delay me by yapping about something that is not my payment method. So would any passers be angry at me if I was an talkative toll collector.

So, keep things professional and talk about what they pay you to talk. If they get angry about strictly work subjects, that's on them.

@asgs No! Nothing like that. Details about clients and ways of wording things that are just a matter of personal style, knowing different things about stuff, etc.

@aviophile Dude.

@JsonBoa Thanks. I’m being professional. I’m just more detailed in my comments and communication than some would like. I believe in giving people enough information to make informed decisions. I don’t get why some people over-summarize and keep things deliberately vague. It just results in more meetings and huge misunderstandings.

Could it be business-senitive information you're saying? Or organisational info, that should remain in mgmt layers?

@netikras I mean, if there’s things that shouldn’t be said due to confidentiality reasons/because they’re business-sensitive, you should really say that up front before giving someone that information. In my humble opinion.

I work on a large monolith with several applications built into it. There around 60 projects with code places into them randomly, no modular boundaries, even for infrastructure, legacy code that they wanted to rebuild for next gen but actually just wrote layers ontop of so now the object graphs have properties for the same operations but different depending on which website created it, no aggregate roots, no tests, sadly no clean self documenting code or documentation either.

When I raise any of these topics people get pissed off that I'm being negative. I don't know how to raise them positively so I gave up.

@AmyShackles you overhear a pm talking numbers with a client. E.G. How much will the client pay for a feature. How do you know if you can share this with your team? Other teams? PMs? Your spouse?

You overheard. You weren't told directly. Who's to ask how sensitive this is?

Or perhaps noticed some .doc in a deprecated svn repo..

What I'm saying is there are unidirectional info channels, where you don't get a chance to ask if it's sensitive info. Or in some times such a thought doesn't even cross one's mind upon being provided such info

@netikras One example is saying the name of the contact at the client to other developers. That’s the kind of stuff that is apparently so wrong to do that I had to go through all the online discussions about the client and erase their name from the record. There’s no harm or risk in saying the person’s name. I asked to know for sure. No confidentiality agreements or risk that knowing a person’s name will jeopardize the process or the project. I’m only told that it’s someone’s “etiquette” preference in the upper layers of management. Again, no specific risk or detriment. “It’s just the way things are done.”

That’s why I need a list. I can’t read minds.

Don’t talk. Code. Then you’ll be fine.

Unless you comment or document stuff. That’s risky.

Also…keep variable names short. Risk of leaking info if you are a verbose waffler.

@platypus I recently got a job role change to manager. Was specifically told not to code. Leave that to the developers. But don’t offer them solutions from years of experience. Let them figure it out on their own. Yeah.

@netikras Gonna point out that I’ve never worked tech in an office. There’s not really “overhearing” when everything’s written down or in a meeting. 😅

I was in France working. We were staying at a house we rented. In the backyard I found an animal. To the other coworkers who were Irish and American I said: Hey look, I found a frog! The response: You racist son of a bitch...

@Demolishun
Poor baguette boy.
Had you rescued him? <3

@Demolishun
Je suis une baguette moi même, donc.

@scor

The french I learned badly:

Je ne parle pah Frances

Parle vou Ingles?

@scor hello baguette!