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Do Nice Engineers Finish Last In Tough Times?
jammag writes "As the wave of pink slips is starting to resemble Robespierre and his guillotine, the maneuvering among tech professionals to hang on to their job is getting ugly. IT Management describes the inter-office competition between the manager of a server farm and the supervisor of networks and security. One was nice, giving his team members credit, taking responsibility when something went wrong. The other was a backstabber who spent plenty of time sucking up to the management. As the inevitable cuts came, who do you think hung on to their job?"
Hot tip: not every tech professional is an "engineer," the least of which being IT professionals and "network engineers." What a diluted title.
If the management above is unable to see which of the two in the example is worth keeping, perhaps it's not the best place to work anyway, as it looks like politics makes up more of the workload than engineering. I'm reasonably sure that engineers are engineers because they DO NOT want to be politicians.
Of course, there is always the fix the coolant leakage rate solution, mix that with the faked IP and filesharing solution and things get entertaining while you are passing out your resume.
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People like me, and I suspect most geeks on slashdot, want to be judged on our merits, but the fact is in most cases we won't be. So yes, nice engineers do finish last.
Why not make lemonade from lemons and accept a layoff? If you're financially stable with few or no obligations such as family, mortgage, etc. and you've had a reasonable work history why not just collect unemployment until you can find a decent-paying gig?
You won't make as much money, true, but if you satisfy the above conditions you'll probably make enough to afford food and a roof. You'll be able to sleep in every day, go to the gym, work on personal projects, go out on dates, and much more! It's not like you're being lazy or anything -- "the economy" is a very acceptable excuse for not having a job, at least until the economy goes back into full swing.
As an Engineer I believe my ethics are just as important as any other skill I may have. You should too. If a company I worked for didn't see that in me I would probably be working somewhere else anyway. You do have the ability to look for other employment while at your current job. If you have been at your job for any length of time, they will know you, both personally and professionally. If there is anything to worry about, they already knew it BEFORE anyone stabbed your back. A wise man told me once, "If a company wants you, they will do anything in their power to keep you. If they don't like you, they will do anything to get rid of you. This includes "bending the rules"".
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Is this even a supposedly true story? I'm not sure what we're supposed to conclude from n=1 cases of what appears to be a parable.
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I think that the whole premise of the question is false. The question being asked is whether nice guys who share credit and accept responsibility will get axed in favor of mean guys who steal credit and ID scapegoats.
I actually RTFA (I know, a /. blasphemy) and I don't think that is a valid question. According to the article, the reason "Doug" got the job and "Staurt" the nice guy got fired is that Doug went to their boss and made a case for why it would be better for the boss and the company to retain him instead of Stuart. Now his reasoning was flawed, but Stuart never made such a case. He just assumed that he got fired because he was the nice guy.
Being a nice guy (sharing credit, accepting responsibility) and valuable employee (recognizing your manager's needs and supporting them, being politically aware and astute) are not mutually exclusive.
What Stuart should have done is said "that I am well respected by my team, I keep a mature and professional attitude when mistakes are made (not like Doug who yells at his team). In this uncertain time after layoffs are announced, the remaining people will be nervous and perhaps looking to leave on their own terms. Kelly, I'll make sure that the remaining team stays on target, and achieves all goals, so you look good. Doug said that I cannot make the tough decisions, but look, I've come to you with cogent and well reasoned reasons to layoff the required people in my team, as you requested. I can make the tough decisions, but in a way that keeps the remaining team morale up and productive."
Now Stuart may have actually said that, but TFA doesn't say so. Instead we're left to assume that he just figured as a nice guy he lost his job.
Nice or mean doesn't have much to do with it, being politically aware and understanding office dynamics is everything.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
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Forbes was an idiot then, in a world of 6.5 billion people, there are at leas 6500 one-in-a-million geniuses out there, and ever since the banks fucked up and gave us a deflationary economy, demand for the products of people with ability has gone down 90%.
So no, ability has not only caught up with the demand, but has in fact passed it by at the speed of light.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have over the years read several articles about who the most successful CEO's are, those that are humble. When things go well, they give credit to the "team". When things go bad they take the blame. I think in the long run nice guys finish first. You can not trust someone who is a backstabber.
Do you know why the management of engineers seems stupid even if those managers might be fairly capable? It's because the level above them is the real problem.
Lower management might contain a few ex-engineers that actually do have a clue. The levels above that generally consist of business types that wouldn't know a hammer from a saw if their lives depended on it. However, those guys make the targets, the rules and the policy. And lower management has to carry them out, without question. They are spat on from above and spat on from below, they really can't win.
Don't blame lower management, blame the real culprits: MBA types.
The summary makes it out to be a choice between the evil, cold-blooded manager (Doug) and the warm, fatherly teamleader (Steve). As much as we all like to see the black-white picture, I'm frankly sick with it -- do we need to have Slashdot become the Cosmo Girl for Nerds?
With a clear suppressor and an underdog, this can also be painted another way.
Kelly is the manager of the above two here. She was in a very tight spot and felt very alone, with noone to rely on. When asked for employee ratings, Steve unresponsively turned his back to her, just following orders. However, when Doug came along, he offered a listening ear and offered suggestions of his own. He showed that he could think along, offer support as well as make tough decisions -- just the person she needed.
*yawn* See how boring this black-and-white stuff gets?
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Whether "nice" finishes last depends on your understanding of "nice". The more common usage is a people-pleaser who means well but cannot help operating out of a position of weakness because he thinks that happiness and fulfillment and completion come from other people (i.e. their approval and acceptance). To take on this nature is to be a leaf in the wind, always at the mercy of other people who themselves do not (yet) see their beliefs and full actions (with no exceptions) as choices. This is actually a form of slavery and it works because ignorance of the higher way prevents people from seeing that it is bondage. This idea taken to its full expression is unfortunately what most people think love is, when in reality its most healthy expression (which is still enslaving) is nothing more than a mutually agreed trade like those found in any market ("you're nice to me so I am nice to you").
The less common usage is well beyond mere courtesy and is more like an act of love. This is a person who has kindness and compassion for its own sake because cultivating these is pure joy. When you have this, there is no concern for outcomes or results because you realize that all of us are equal and must come to our own understanding at our own pace and in the fullness of our own time. There is no need to control and there is no need for this type of loving-kindness to be reciprocated. Reciprocated or not, the mere expression of it is pure joy and it is complete in and of itself. Everything is filled to the brim with nothing missing and there is no need to get upset (and thus cause suffering over) the non-ideal. It is the truly pure motive, in that even the exquisite joy of it is not done for the sake of experiencing joy. This is the type of person who finds possibilities and opportunities where there are none; the one for whom all actions and all speech are expressions of an ultimately simple and self-evident Truth. With this understanding, you feel that you yourself are not doing or saying anything. It is more like you find or observe yourself saying or doing this-and-that and it happens to be the best thing you could have said or done at the time, certainly far better than the result of any kind of deductive process. An engineer or anyone else who has this need not worry about things like tough times because he or she is free of the slavery that makes someone a victim of circumstance.
The only thing that is regrettable, or something like regrettable, is that most people live their entire lives without ever knowing the difference. It is not so complicated that most people cannot understand it. It is so incredibly utterly simple that most people overlook it out of a belief that they themselves should be doing something or seeking something or becoming something.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...telling his boss that mistakes that his employees made were his mistakes was not very smart.
Atleast that is how I read his actions.
Stuart should have been 100% honest. Lying to his bosses about who screwed up didn't help anyone in the end.
Well, it helped Doug.
Not saying throw the employee under the bus. Be cool, be honest, and tell it like it is.
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I would say the ruthless rather than the liar tends to rise in capitalism. Which doesn't mean that a decent, competent company can't do well, but they can be threatened by the ruthless company. Usually the demise of a good company at the hands of a ruthless company comes about through government collusion. For example, Ruthless Inc. spends the time and money to bribe lawmakers to legislate that Ruthless Inc's software is the new standard for official government widgets. Now DecentCorp's DiscoWidget app has no buyers. Ruthless Inc. buys the dregs of DecentCorp and sends the former employees to the salt mines.
Capitalism gets a bad rap, but sometimes that bad rap is more the direct result of centralized government's intervention rather than lack thereof. Sometimes not--witness Madoff's hedge fund.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Actually, in most jobs, they're both important. There's two lessons that the "smart kids" generally have to learn later in their lives (some have to figure it out in college, some get by a little longer). One is that unlike in grade school, smarts along won't put you in the upper echelon. You have to work hard, and you have to network. It's a big world, and no matter how smart you are, there's a guy out there who's at least as is talented as you and harder working. And there's a guy out there who's at least as smart as you and better at networking.
The point is that(especially in rough economic times) there's often more than enough smarts available to fill the demand. Being technically competent is certainly important, but unless you're in some very rare position where no one else is equally competent (or convincingly close), you've got some equally competent competition out there. Taking the time to develop some social and political business skills is not a wasteful investment in yourself.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I would say the ruthless rather than the liar tends to rise in capitalism. Which doesn't mean that a decent, competent company can't do well, but they can be threatened by the ruthless company. Usually the demise of a good company at the hands of a ruthless company comes about through government collusion. For example, Ruthless Inc. spends the time and money to bribe other firms and standards bodies to require Ruthless Inc's software as the new standard for given widgets. Now DecentCorp's DiscoWidget app has no buyers unless DecentCorp licences from Ruthless In.. Ruthless Inc. buys the dregs of DecentCorp and sends the former employees to the salt mines.
Capitalism gets a bad rap, but sometimes that bad rap is more the direct result of centralized government's intervention rather than lack thereof.
Of course, government intervention is only incidental, and is not required for this sort of maneuvering at all. (thus some fixes I made to your original scenario)
For every government intervention which leads to problems like this, There are equal or greater evils to be had from lack of government intervention.
Smart regulation is the proper answer.
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Same deal with employment. If your company/IT department think like a singles bar looking for one night stands and will screw over each other and customers for a quick buck then being nice means nothing and you need to out-asshole the others to get ahead.
If, instead, your company/IT department are there to build long-term relationships, satisfying service and repeat business, then being nice is very important.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You might want to look into some of the game theory behind all this. Basically, nice guys (cooperators) hang together and get a lot more done because they can trust each other. This behavior is vulnerable to exploitation by manipulative assholes (defectors). Nice guys can defend themselves against this by being picky about who they cooperate with, and seeking out others with a reputation as nice guys.
In essence, nice guys win if they ostracize assholes and learn to hold a grudge. If you're an asshole, you better be really good at it, because you're going to run out of suckers really quick. It's nice to know that ethical behavior is actually a sound strategy.
So in the example, the nice guy gets fired and that back stabber gets promoted.
Well, 5 years down the road, the backstabber is also fired, while the "nice guy" found a job through one of his former coworkers who thought he was amazing and good to work with (the guy was good but also made him look better!) The backstabber, can't find work, and has no references.
Being nice or moral isn't generally filled with short term benefits (which is why it's contrasted with greedy!), but in the long term can yield very good results.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Networking is the deliberate act of socializing with a large number of people in the off chance that one day one of them will offer you a sweet deal/job just because you talked about sports with him at a bar one night.
God, no. Networking involves a huge spectrum of social contacts, both work-related and not. Knowing that that guy you once worked on a project with knows everything there is to know about subject X will allow you to place a quick call to get something sorted, instead of having to go through "official channels", making you look incredibly efficient(and getting credit for what's inside his head, even if you're completely honest about how and where you got the info). Sticking around for a 5 minute casual chat with some colleagues and saying hi in the hallways does wonders if you later have to work with them on something again. Remember what people tell you about their lives, and enquire at a later point in time how they're doing on whatever subject they happened to bring up.
That shit is important to a lot of people. Enquiring about things that people really care about makes them feel good about themselves. Nothing wrong with that. I don't give a hoot about my or anyone else's birthday either, but then my opinions aren't always the most important, and on some subjects you have to compromise.
Besides, it's a lot harder to really dislike people you regularly have face to face contact with, and that goes both ways. Much easier to blame department Y for all the wrongs in the world if you've never met Joe, Jack and Jane that works their asses off down there.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
that doesn't seem very wise.
i mean, why would you hire someone who puts their own self-interests ahead of the good of the company? if the guy had sabotaged a competitor in order to land a large order or contract for the company, then maybe you could justify hiring them on the basis that their ruthless actions actually served the organization. but this guy sabotaged a co-worker to make him miss an important meeting with a customer. he has basically just hurt the company to make himself look good. how would such an employee benefit the company other than to undermine the company's meritocracy and drive away other honest & hard-working employees.
being a douchebag or a sociopath is hardly a virtue. usually such scumbags sleaze their way to the top of an organization by way of deception & manipulation. but only a really incompetent manager would deliberately seek out employees with such qualities. generally, people who actually have talent & ability don't need to stab their co-workers in the back or be manipulative to secure their own position or rise through the ranks in a healthy organization.
but only a really incompetent manager would deliberately seek out employees with such qualities. generally, people who actually have talent & ability don't need to stab their co-workers in the back or be manipulative to secure their own position or rise through the ranks in a healthy organization.
Well of course, no sane manager would hire someone who backstabs coworkers. The entire point of backstabbing your coworkers is that you don't get caught. Is it virtuous? Of course not. Is it effective? Well, according to this article, perhaps it is.
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After you quit, this is something you can let the board know what happened.
As a matter of principle, people like that should never manage other people.
In the real world, Machiavelli's are the one's who get remembered in history.