Anyone's team always arguing or just mine?
Posted by tnerb253@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 44 comments
Working in 'big tech', feel like I've become a 'yes man', my team members constantly having heated back and forths over tasks or misunderstandings in project scope with my lead/manager, meanwhile i'm just sitting here collecting my check
Oldmanbabydog@reddit
I used to partake in conflict. Arguing for long term best practice over putting POCs into production and requiring clarity. Now I’ll just bring up my concerns, document it, and move on. I’ve been like this since September and my team is now inundated with support requests due to shoddily built systems and poor documentation. I really couldn’t care less since I was retaliated against for “slowing down progress” and not “balancing short term business needs against long term stability”. So now I just collect checks and “I told you so’s”
bookshelf11@reddit
This sounds like a hard environment to work in. Disagreements by themselves are healthy but when it's constant and has bad vibes it means something is wrong with the culture imo.
Cool_As_Your_Dad@reddit
I have worked people that want to flex in meetings about tech. Was wasting huge amount of time. Everyone trying to 1 up and be better.
After a while I just watched them clown around
Recent_Science4709@reddit
I used to do the fighting but I stopped, it’s just not worth it. People seem to actually think you’re smarter if you argue constantly.
Attila_22@reddit
What looks smarter to me is just delivering consistently every time ahead of schedule with no fuss or drama.
Unlucky_Kale340@reddit
Not everyone thinks like you unfortunately
Exciting_Door_5125@reddit
I've don't work in big tech and have a chill team. 5+ years, no turnover, and no heated arguments/drama. We do have disagreements, etc., but it's always constructive and professional. We're all also 10+ years experience and have families. I think everyone understands it's just a paycheck.
I suspect there's generally a more pressure in big tech and that can trickle down into team dynamics. Also age, company culture, etc., all play a factor.
bwmat@reddit
Lol, what does 'having families' have to do with anything?
diablo1128@reddit
Nope.
Working on safety critical medical devices, think dialysis machines, at private non-tech companies in non-tech cities everybody just does whatever they are told in terms of tasks. It's top down management style and it's pretty clear you opinion on priority really doesn't matter, even though they say it does.
You learn deadlines are meaningless as well as they are just arbitrary goal posts. People miss "deadlines" all the time and nothing happens, things are done when they are done. The project was late for a major release to the FDA by over a year once and we still got a team celebration for releasing. There was not one attempt to understand on why were were late.
In terms of design decisions SWEs just go with the flow and if the solutions sounds like it works with no issues then it's fine. Nobody argues about anything and people keep their heads down and work for the most part. In turn code reviews are pretty much hand waved through. You look for obvious logic errors, linters passed, testing, passed, etc... and then send it on it's way.
Affectionate_Day8483@reddit
I feel like I worked at a very different medical device company. We had constant battles between dev and quality groups. Pm and po battles for deadlines scrutinized. Delivery metrics for sprints and quarters reviewed with vp leadership. Several OKRs needed to be filled by the team.
On the people part, it depends. My last team had a young tech lead that micromanaged everything which caused the team to have a 60 percent turnover rate in year.
On the management level, there was stack ranking, two of the manger's ICs will always be labeled low performers every year to offset the two that had exceeds. If you got a low performance rating you cannot be promoted for two years. Performance is based on likeability, visibility, and politics with management, not execution.
Honestly, I think the company morphed into some bastardized version of Amazon. What you described above wouldn't fly at this company.
diablo1128@reddit
Yup, totally different companies based on what you are saying. The company I worked at was proud to have a very flat hierarchy and minimal process. There were no team metrics, KPIs, OKRs, or anything like that as the project manager pretty much ran the show and expected people to do what they saw for the most part. People were expected to act like adults and do their job to company expectations, people who wouldn't conform were swiftly fired.
The process had "quality" built in to it. Quality meaning FDA standards and things IEC standards like 60601 and 62304. You follow the process and you will be successful and the "quality" the company wants is built in to that.
There was no micromanagement since everybody was expect to do their job. If it works and is safe, ship it. Having "clean code" was left up to individual SWEs. Sure there was a coding standards, but it was bare bones and didn't really enforce more than style stuff. There was still a lot of turnover, but it was because people left for new jobs. There was not a lot of middle career SWEs at the company, it was new grads and SWEs at the end of the career looking to coast in to the finish line called retirement.
Yup, no stack ranking or anything like that where I worked. People were compared to each other for reason like salary bumps, but that's about it. There were really no promotions because it was a flat hierarchy.
You were either a "Technical Contributor" or "Lead Technical Contributor". Anything more nuanced that that is left up to your boss to figure out. You were Senior when you got senior work, but there was no official bump because of that.
Though if you do well in the eyes of management your yearly raises are more than just the cost of living increase. I routinely got 7% raises each year, but they also start new hires lower than industry average, so there was always room to rewards what they deem good employees.
I am assuming you worked at an actual tech company where I worked at was clearly a non-tech company.
tnerb253@reddit (OP)
I'm starting to feel like deadlines are just a way to shift blame or have something to bring up in your yearly review.
diablo1128@reddit
I can see that at some companies.
Where I worked that wasn't the case as nobody got bad performance reviews. The ones that got bad reviews were the SWEs that never had anything to shore for all the "work" they were doing. If you can get things done, nobody really cares how long it took as you got things done, so yay.
Affectionate_Day8483@reddit
I worked on a team where management would say, "you guys are not friends and some of you do not like each other, but you all still get the job done and that's all we care about". This team had frequent shouting matches, people would make changes on each other's branches without informing the other person because they didn't like how dev wrote the code. Sometimes they would hang up the call. Others would say what dumbass wrote this.
I left after a year
code_blooded_murder@reddit
When I hire, I treat technical ability as table stakes. What I’m actually evaluating is whether someone has the soft skills and maturity to operate effectively in a workplace. All else equal, I’ll choose Person A: technically competent, pleasant to work with and a strong communicator over Person B: a FAANG-level technologist who’s rigid and difficult to work with.
There’s a saying that a team can have at most one Dennis Rodman. From what I’ve seen, many teams end up with several. My teams have room for zero.
codescapes@reddit
I broadly agree but some of those more 'forceful' characters are very useful to have if your team is genuinely being treated poorly and needs to fight its case vociferously. If you can pivot their energy outwards (and it's genuinely required) rather than inwards.
There are 'peacetime leaders' and 'wartime leaders'. A lot of the FAANG types are used to an environment of conflict where people are constantly trying to eat your lunch, steal your projects and generally behave like snakes. Sharp shoulders are the only way to not get treated like dirt.
I don't like it, I don't want it but I do get it and it serves its purpose sometimes. I am a bit of a 'hedgehog' personality-wise (porcupine echidna, honey badger... pick your defensive animal). By which I mean I'll be polite, friendly, supportive, charitable etc right up until I sense someone is trying to fuck with me or the team and then I wont put up with it at all and they get put in the 'never trust again' bucket. At that point they basically do not exist to me unless it's in writing.
code_blooded_murder@reddit
This is a good response, and I'm probably showing my hand a bit here- I do extremely poorly in sharp elbows kinds of places. I'm with you though about stepping up when someone comes for me or my team.
VeryAmaze@reddit
We used to have a very opinionated person in my team and then we'd have ahem heated discussions. They internally transferred and since then it's been peaceful, we just chilling 😌. Only pms get heated up occasionally.
frustrated_dev@reddit
But there must be someone setting the tone still? Is it just that there were two opinionated people and one left?
Electrical-Fig8712@reddit
sounds like a classic case of office politics
DirtzMaGertz@reddit
Sounds like a classic case of that one dev everyone knows and hates working with.
DingBat99999@reddit
A few thoughts:
Hioneqpls@reddit
We had a bunch of professional disagreement that almost burnt me out because it was usually about a topic nobody knew much about, but people really had to have an opinion on everything so everyone just made up stuff and argued it.
DingBat99999@reddit
So, that would not be healthy conflict.
Bloviating for the sake of hearing your own voice is no ones definition of healthy.
Hioneqpls@reddit
Makes em feel really productive though
Possible-Belt-3889@reddit
try suggesting a team retro to improve communication
586WingsFan@reddit
I don’t care anywhere near enough to argue with anyone. As long as I keep contributing to my 401k at my current rate I’m retiring a millionaire. Idgaf about what design pattern you want to use. If it breaks, you get to fix it
icpooreman@reddit
I find teams that are constantly fighting are usually behind on something they promised and people are trying to shift blame rather than solve the problem.
My company drops me into a lot of situations like this. I fix the code base. Magically everybody acts like they're best friends again when they were about to murder one another 15 minutes prior.
Alternative-Wafer123@reddit
If arguing without getting you promoted, please stop, it has no value added except being hated
just10bps@reddit
we should call "big tech", "bitch tech" now. because that's what it has become.
i don't work in bitch tech, but my company also functions this way. no one wants to work honestly towards a solution, everyone is just trying to pawn off work to someone else.
flying_roomba@reddit
We don’t need the gendered connotations with that. (I understand your sentiment though.)
115v@reddit
Yeah usually part of the discussion and push back. If you don’t voice your opinions you don’t get anywhere really. Are you gonna support something that is stupid just cause you didn’t push back?
Ok-Armadillo-5634@reddit
Absolutely
Ok-Armadillo-5634@reddit
I will never argue or give my opinion not because I don't care, but because I fucking hate meetings.
BoBoBearDev@reddit
I have worked in one, the in fighting was so bad, 2 jr devs rage quit, they didn't even bother for a transfer when the company has so many different teams and different cultures.
There were two reasons I observed. The tech lead was an asshole keep rejecting the result without a clear answer. And he made so much demands, the team is on edge. And then there this is senior dev basically dictating what everyone should have done while he never accepted any change requests. And the project manager didn't step in, so, the environment is too volatile to stay.
Life-Principle-3771@reddit
I'm usually part of the fighting lol. I think it's usually a good thing. Obviously too much can be a negative, but frequently having opinionated, spirited discussion is a plus.
Valuable_Ad9554@reddit
It's so highly variable I think. If the general competency of the people involved in the discussion, or heated discussion, is sufficiently high then good things can come out of it.
I think when people get tired of it, it's often because the participants didn't meet that criteria, which can lead to it just consuming people's time and social battery while having no real upside. And that's the kind of situation where the net loss sort of compounds on itself as it will stick with people long after, festering and leading to feelings of "man I hate my team" etc.
Famous-Test-4795@reddit
Isn’t that kind of an unnecessarily uncharitable or demeaning assumption? It is possible to waste a lot of time discussing things that are a distraction from your team’s goals. I have been criticized for such a thing before.
Valuable_Ad9554@reddit
Just a very generalized observation, which it's hard to go beyond unless we have specific scenarios to analyze, OP specified "misunderstandings in project scope" which suggests to me a lack of competence somewhere if it's a recurring thing (as is implied by the Q)
Goducks91@reddit
Yep, if the "heated" discussion is between people who the team respects and trusts than it's productive. If one of the people in the heated discussin the team doesn't trust it's not going to be productive.
toweringalpha@reddit
Corporate snakes are ubiquitous since DEI was shoved down our throats for the past 15 years. These are the ones who fight unnecessarily, always complaining, and get no work done. For the past 1.5 years, all these folks have been being let go in layoff round after round. Life has been relatively peaceful, but the workload has increased; at least my mental peace is in a better place.
Objective_Truth_4449@reddit
No one on my teams gives a shit about hardly anything. Sometimes I wish they would argue more, instead everyone just rubber stamps everything and no one cares about hardly anything.
kevin074@reddit
Having an opinion and articulating it is good for the team and very essential.
Arguing is usually unnecessary imo, usually it’s just a matter of doing POC on both sides rather than spending time talking
Bricktop72@reddit
Not heated but everyone tries to bring their A game.