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How To Behave At a Software Company?
dawilcox writes "I'm a recent grad and am going to begin work at a software company. I want to make a good impression on my boss and coworkers. I know that performance is usually tracked, but there are also innate personality traits of good software developers that bosses just want to have around. What are those personality traits? What should I be trying to do in order to make a good impression on the people at my work?" (Appropriate side question: What behavior traits would you like your co-workers to exhibit?)
Uh, last software company I worked for and ate by myself... they thought I was anti-social and booted me. I'm like you though, I hate office drama so I avoid it like the plague, unfortunately... in an ironic turn, by not socializing to stay away from drama, you unfortunately can create it and draw attention to yourself.
Won't this just leave me with a broken spirit gaming the system while working for a know-nothing boss who makes ridiculous requests and sets impossible deadlines in a dead-end job?
The concept of keeping your work separate from your life is BS.
Hear hear! Your coworkers are a part of your life. They are your family at work. Just like your family at home, you weren't allowed to pick them, but you're stuck with them, so you need to learn how to like them.
I've lived and worked in Japan for most of my working life, and I just have to say that most places here get that right. Westerners wonder why Japanese workers are so loyal to the company, and there are a lot of reasons, but one of the strongest emotional/psychological ones is that many places really try to foster a real kinship. You very well might think that Kinoshita-san from 2 desks over is a jackass, but when push comes to shove, he's your jackass. Also, thanks to the boozy parties the company throws (that everyone pays for equally), you've chatted with him over beers and know that he is a super-involved dad who takes his kids out on the skiff to go fishing every weekend. You can't see him as just a jackass anymore; now he's a neat dad who happens to be a jackass at work.
At first, I resisted this culture with all my BS American individualist might, but before long I came to get it. They aren't forcing you to go to the party because they want to see what kind of stupid thing you'll say when you're drunk; they want to hang out together, and if you don't go it'll be a bummer for everyone. It's not a trick. People actually want to get to know each other. They probably won't be BFFs or anything; and the relationship will probably disappear if you transfer to another department or office, but for the time that you work together, you're doing it with people you know, and that makes all the difference in the world. When Sayama-san is going through a tough time with her husband, you cover for her--not because she's having a hard time with her husband, but because she's Sayama-san. And Sayama-san is having a hard time with her husband.
Finally, though, so much of this is predicated on the assumption that you're not going to be fired at the drop of a hat with a simple "oops, we can't afford so many people; bye." But that's another post entirely (and again, not really a socialistic post--one about not handing so much goddamned money to the people at the top so you don't have to panic every time the market changes, because you have money in the bank and tons of wiggle room in the budget).
A little self-respect, and enough spine to refuse to be exploited into giving up your personal life to further your bosses ends. Every time you work long hours, you create expectations that your co-workers should work long hours too, and they will despise you for it.
My first (and last) experience in a cubicle farm was a pretty shocking one. We had three guys doing the work of 10. It was extremely stressful. My co-workers would routinely work 60-70+ hours a week, if not in the office then at home with the laptop dialed in. I mean this job was practically their entire lives, and for what? $35k/year? Fuck that. When 5 o'clock rolled around I rolled out. The boss called me up one Friday evening wanting me to come back in and restart a data conversion process that had failed (due to programmers not having the file structure figured out completely) and I said no. I'd rather stand in the sun and dig ditches all day, regardless of pay, cause at least ditch diggers know when they get to go home and forget about work. They called some other unlucky fool in to do the job and nobody ever said a word to me about it, but I could feel some people didnt like it at all. Fuck them. My life is too valuable to be spent slaving away for someone else's benefit.