Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.
Of course you can always find an anecdotal counterexample, but the one time I decided I wanted to get someone out of a management position that was interfering with my job, it wound up backfiring hugely (the situation was *worse* after I succeeded) and on a personal level it's something I regret to this day.
On the other hand, every time I've come into a job situation and behaved with honesty and integrity, it's worked out well for me. And I get to sleep at night.
So take your pick.
The sad reality is that it's both- but for different types of garbage.
With capitalism, the liar rises regardless of whether or not times are tough.
With bureaucracy, the brownnoser rises regardless of whether or not times are tough.
Thus if you're an honest individual who doesn't give a shit what people think of you, you'll always end up unemployed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Hunh. That must explain why I'm living on the streets instead of in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Oh, wait! No! I am living in the nice house. And I didn't stab anybody in the back to get it. Nor, for that matter, is my business acumen the reason I'm in the nice house - in fact, it's basically just good fortune.
I'm not saying that there's no value in hard work, or in any of the other things we do on the job. But I'm sufficiently ancient at this point to have seen a lot of comings and goings, and the fact is that prosperity and [insert name of business tactic here] are largely orthogonal. If you don't have any talent, sure, maybe being an asshole is your only hope. Or maybe you should just go do what you really want to do and stop screwing around in a job you aren't suited for.
I hear this repeated over and over.
I'm sorry, but "networking" is not the ticket to success in a technical career. In a technical career, knowing your shit is simply far more important.
If you count "networking" as your most important skill, you probably work in management, sales, or some other NONtechnical position.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Having been on a few sinking ships, I haven't found that to be the case. What I've seen, oddly, is the opposite. People get nicer once the realize there's no future in it for anyone. At that point, it becomes about who remembers you and how, and whether they can get you into wherever they land next.
At a certain point, it just becomes collecting your paycheck until its your turn. No point in being a dick about it.
Can you recommend a resource for learning personal skills and politics? Books or something? How does one do this, exactly? Just show up for meetings and be nice to people?
This kind of reminds me when a dorky buddy of mine suddenly became an expert in "The Game". He went from tolerable dork to "call the cops" creepy in a matter of weeks amongst female company. I can imagine a similar technically proficient but socially mal-adjusted IT guy making a similar transformation when they try to apply their engineering problem solving skills to office politics.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
But think I started valuing *myself*.
Look, there's quite a difference between being assertive and being an ass. Being passive and being nice is also not the same.
Communication skills are very important in the modern company. I don't care who you are---the days of the lone wolf are long gone, if they ever truly happened in the first place.
Be willing to stand up for yourself. Treat others with respect, and take pride in your work. Make sure others know who you are and your value.
It's not backstabbing. It's healthy human interaction. And it'll lead to you having more respect higher up and among your peers.
The nice vs. mean question is a false dichotomy, and being strong doesn't have to imply you're an ass.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
One of the things ascribed to the "nice guy" that is presumed to hurt them is that they take responsibility for failures.
A lot of organizations with political problems have a sort of "blame-oriented" culture. When something goes wrong, someone has to be blamed, and that person must be made to suffer. This is, of course, bad, because it focuses on punishing someone rather than solving the problem.
Sometimes in such an organization, you can actually gain power by accepting blame. When a problem is brought up and the group is obviously going on the hunt for a scapegoat, sometimes you can stand up and say "I'll take responsibility for that," define the problem as you see it, and spell out what you intend to do about it. This can be so shocking to the other people that they don't know what to do about it, and thus there's no punishment. This is particularly true if you do this in a context where it's clear that you're not actually to blame for the problem, you're just accepting responsibility for it anyway.
This can have several positive effects:
1) You are seen as someone who isn't afraid to stand up and be responsible, a leader.
2) You are seen as a force for positive action, a bringer of solutions.
3) You get to be in charge of whatever it is, even if you might not normally have been in charge of it. If you want to do so, you can expand your realm of authority in this manner.
Sometimes when you do this, one or more people who are particularly blame focused will notice you said you're "responsible", not "to blame", and start questioning you to determine if you actually caused the problem or someone else did (maybe someone who works for you) so they can try to find someone to blame and harm. When this happens, I say something like "The important thing here is not that we affix blame and punish someone, the important part is that we solve the problem for the organization so we can move on and stop suffering the consequences. If you want someone to blame, blame me. I care more about getting the job done than about my image." If they try to pursue it, it makes them look like a fool in front of everyone else. If they try to go after a member of my staff, I say something to the effect of "I am responsible for my team, so if this problem is their fault, it's my fault. If I feel that any member of my team is failing to perform adequately, I will take care of mentoring them, helping them, or firing them as necessary. It's not your responsibility, and none of your business. I don't tell you how to do your job, please stop interfering with mine." I've never had anyone stupid enough to be willing to push it beyond that.
You can probably get away with all of this, IF:
1) You are willing to be bold about it. Timidity will just get you stepped on.
2) You're high enough placed in the organization that upper management knows you.
3) You've already built some respect with some successes, so upper management knows that when you say you will do something, you mean it.
4) Most importantly, you MUST have a solution to propose IMMEDIATELY when you say you are going to take responsibility. That solution doesn't have to be comprehensive, you can propose to have particular people study the problem to determine what the next step is, but have SOMETHING to propose right away.
P.S.
I ran into this at work. I was given a completely unrealistic goal to create a schematic in ONE week, for a project that I knew nothing about. I worked 80 hours in that single week, missed the deadline (no surprise), was threatened by my boss "If you can't do the job, I'll find somebody else who can" to which I replied, "Okay." He suddenly backed down because he didn't have anybody else, and I completed the schematic.
Long story short, I got the job done in 1.5 weeks, but the management still wanted to blame someone, so my boss took a "me first" attitude like the Doug in the article. He told everyone I was a lousy engineer and bad-mouthed him (false, HE badmouthed me), and that it was my fault the schematic did not get done in one week's time. (The fault lies with whichever idiot created the schedule, not the engineer). Anyway I got laid off on January 5. The asshole boss got to keep his job, and I, the guy thrown into a project with only one week's notice, got axed.
Yeah. Being a nice guy at work, like dating, often means you finish last. You gotta be an ass if you want to score.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I worked for a small company, which lived and died by the monthly sales numbers. I worked there for over 7 years and had survived over 5 major layoffs. (one of those included my direct report, leaving me the only IT person to support about 90 users, 20-30 being traveling sales guys who worked from their home offices, never coming to the office).
:)
The top boss was nutjob, constantly yelling at his people, belittling them and generally being an idiot. He was given a copy of the Jack Welch (the former CEO of GE) and in that book he talks about ranking his employees, and getting rid of the bottom 10% every year (the deadwood).
So of course around this time, sales went in the toilet, and there had to be layoffs. After 10+% of the employees were let go (which sucked for me the IT guy, because I knew it was coming and who they would be before it happened, but that's another story). The survivors were called to a Town Hall meeting to discuss the layoffs. Everything was going well with the Boss's speech. You know, crap like cut off the arm to save the patient. With less people we're all going to row harder to get to the finish line. Then the jaw dropper:
"I'm going to rank all of you, and post that list in the lunch room. You had better find someone above you on that list, get on their shoulders and push them down (using a motion like he's drowning someone in a pool)." We all were dumbfounded.
The first thing that went through my mind was: who's tires can I slash so they don't make it to work on time
I finally smartened up and got out of there.
Something similar happened to me. Only that it was the other way around, a key worker quit because he couldn't work toegether with another person on the team (which, btw, nobody else really liked either). Said person had better suck-up ties with management, though, and soon the person that we all liked, loved and trusted quit (or rather, "was asked to leave because he upsets the team"). We followed. Including the CTO, CISO and a few other very important people (it was a company dealing with IT-security products and services, just to indicate why a simultanous quitting of CTO and CISO is not a good combination for it).
Fortunately for the company it in turn sucked up quite successfully to an important client and they still buy their product. Because, well, there ain't much of a product left now...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Engineer" predates locomotives. The first "engineers" were military engineers, who made siege engines. The second "engineers" were civil engineers (to distinguish them from the military ones); they built buildings. Other sorts of "engineers" came later.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That's a leftover from when train engineers really were engineers. Coal fueled engines needed to be carefully regulated or they could explode.
As for the "Network Engineers" at least in Canada it's actually against the law to call yourself that. The engineering association in Canada put their collective feet down a few years ago about the whole MCSE thing. Microsoft of course pretends it didn't happen but just tells people to call themselves an MCSE and not spell out what it means.