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0 pointscookiecaper9y ago0 comments

As unfortunate as it is, most people, especially us engineering-types, are not good at seeing what drives peoples' decision making. That means we do things like this that only make us look worse under the belief that they will help (including the belief that if it doesn't help now, perhaps it will later; this is slightly more likely, but still extremely unlikely).

The important people often see those things, assume it's an incoherent screed from a disgruntled piece of crap, and delete it without reading (I know from personal experience; such completely accurate and valid diatribes have gotten me fired on the 3rd day of my 2-week notice and, on a separate occasion, a running joke among the big shots for months after my departure, where one would specifically talk about how the email came in while he was on the toilet, at which point he cackled and promptly deleted it without reading).

To anyone non-technical, that letter is all mumbo jumbo. It seriously might as well be in a foreign language. They are not going to check a few of the cross-references and see that you're obviously right. Even though you might hope they'll do this just one or two times, they won't.

They are not going to ask the people called out in your letter to account for your accusations.

They are going to write you off as an unhinged, angry, and worthless nothing-tier employee/student/whatever, make fun of you for a long time, and then forget all about it.

Humans base their decisions on personal trust/credibility. The way to win against an evil IT director is to obtain far more trust/credibility in the eyes of his bosses than he has, and then to use that credibility to your advantage.

That's a lengthy and difficult process, especially when you start out as a subordinate and the boss has a lot more access and ability to frame your efforts to his advantage.

I personally have never had the patience to undertake such political subterfuge seriously and I find such undertakings both incredibly frustrating and soul-crushingly phony and hypocritical, but I am now convinced it is the only reliable way to get real career success and mobility. Thus I accept that any career success I enjoy will be lucky/accidental.

Employment and career IS a popularity contest. Good software is somewhere between the 10th and 20th most important career concern for a developer. The number one concern for anyone trying to make it in white-collar America is to be as well-liked and popular as possible. Most of the time, love of colleagues and love of bosses are symbiotic and they feed off of each other (as long as you're sycophantic efforts aren't TOO obvious), but to the extent that a situation arises wherein someone's love has to be preferred, prefer to get the love of the bosses.

This is the sure path to career success. Disregard truth, objectivity, and practicality. No one cares about you or what you think, they don't care about what you judge to be practical or wise. They didn't really hire you for your experience or insight even though they want to pretend they did. They hired you because they thought you would make them feel and look good.

Not only bosses, but people in general, care only that your presence and actions are generating pleasant feelings for them. Do this reliably, disregard everything that is not this, put only as much energy into the tasks required by your actual job description as you must to be passable in the unlikely event of a performance audit, and pour the rest of your energy into social development. If you're going to make it as a company man, that's the only reliable path.

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5 comments · 1 top-level

setq9y ago· 4 in thread

I agree with what you've said but IMHO is a dishonest way of living. I'd rather be poor than a suck up.

jwcacces9y ago

I don't disagree with you about the dishonesty of living a suck up life, but try actually being poor for a little while. Your tune will change to "Where would you like me to suck?" and "How hard?" very quickly.

I have the advantage to be able to leave a job and find another relatively easily, and I would definitely agree that I'd rather leave then suck up, but for those who don't have that kind of mobility, sucking up and playing politics can literally make the difference in making car / house payments, sending your kids to college, etc.

setq9y ago

I've been poor. £12 a week ($20) to feed three, evicted from rental, no job (because of an asshat)

cookiecaperOP9y ago

Yeah, this is also an element that's important not to discount, and can help describe why it's hard for engineers and other high-IQ roles to accept that social compliance is the #1 factor in all ongoing voluntary associations.

We're really spoiled in tech because the field is so abundant. We offend someone or get offended, and we're off to greener pastures within weeks if not sooner. I've come to believe that hopping around like this, which I've done for most of my career up to this point, is not healthy, but the availability means that technical people don't have to learn to conform as well as everyone else to survive. And while that means we may be able to keep a job, it's hard to move up.

These things that we struggle with are just normal life to a lot of people. They had to swallow these compromises early in life when it was apparent that good feelings were all they would be able to offer.

This contributes to the cycle because those people pay their dues to the establishment, go through the process, and get used to the circlejerk. They then expect everyone else to do the same.

When someone wants to come in and challenge some of their thoughts, opinions, or practices, even minor things, in what the challenger feels is a sporting way or a way to drive an interesting and inoffensive discussion, the "good feelings violation" siren fires off in the non-technical person's head.

This brings in a large flood of negative feelings and resentment, including but not limited to jealousy that you can express your thoughts openly while they've always had to kowtow, a sense that you're entitled for thinking you should be able to do this and "dictate from your expertise" (as was expressed about me once) instead of "climbing the ranks" the hard way and then quietly and subtly implementing your opinion after you've won the social clout like everyone else has to do, and a sense that you may represent a threat to the perceived competency of the challenged person (and those least competent will be the most aggressive protectors of this perception) in the minds of the people whose trust they live off, which is really everyone -- colleagues, subordinates, and superiors -- which means it's very difficult to overtly question or discuss anything done by anyone, even in what you believe is a polite or considerate way.

Exceptions are basically not made to this. The potential of substantial data loss, massive security holes, etc., are irrelevant. If someone grossly incompetent like this is on your team, the smart move is NOT to challenge or disprove, because again, no one evaluates proof on any basis except "which proponent do I trust more?". The smart move is to frame the situation such that his failures are opportunities for you to deduct from his social clout and add into your own, without ever firing an alarm in anyone's mind that you're trying to do this.

It's all an image game. As an individual contributor, you can avoid a lot of this game as long as you're non-threatening, churn out semi-reliable work, and are at least not annoying if not socially pleasant. Once you try to move up the ladder, even just one rung, image and likability goes from 65% of the equation to 99%.

cookiecaperOP9y ago

Yeah, I definitely agree with that to a large extent. That's why I stated that any career success I personally enjoy will be based on luck and/or accident instead of political skill. I've tried to bring myself to find some way to reconcile these paths and still feel that I'm not throwing away my integrity, but I've been having a hard time doing that. Trying to find that reconciliation has actually been a large part of my personal struggle over the last year or so.

I think the thing is that there are degrees here. A lot of the things that we are socialized to consider "bad taste" are not actually immoral and unfair (for example, aggressive SEO), and you have to meet on that playing field if you ever intend to be competitive. But you have to identify the limits of what's just getting into the nitty gritty of business and what's crossing the line into being a cheater/liar/phony.

There also seems to be some people for whom social camouflage comes naturally. These people don't feel like frauds or phonies when they cater their preferences and likes to match those of the group around them. It's hard to compete with these people because they have no compunction about being yes-men and they have no malfeasance behind it, since they don't really even realize they're doing -- they only realize that they're making the people around them happy. They truly just have nothing original or important to contribute and don't realize that they're mimicking everyone around them, which, as we've discussed above, is a great skill to have on the path to career success.

I think that developing an active, interesting conversational style and taking care to frame arguments in the most emotionally influential way possible without altering, distorting, or seriously misrepresenting them is perfectly in bounds. Most people do this intuitively to some extent or another, and I believe that intuition can be improved with practice and training, and that that's a great thing for anyone to develop.

The problem is that that's about where I stop. Even if there is nothing immoral about dragging yourself to a baseball game with the bosses, it still feels painful and phony to do that kind of thing. Your unscrupulous and/or unaware competitors, however, will waste no time immediately making themselves as likable as possible by adopting all of the boss's favorite things and habits, refusing to criticize him or anyone whom he holds in high esteem no matter how grossly dangerous their actions are, etc.

It's a tough game. Sometimes I try to believe that there's some cove of people that aren't this way out there, but it always gets shot down as soon as I start believing it again.

I'm starting to think that the only bonds that allow real honest participation are permanent and non-revocable bonds like parent-child and sibling relationships. People still get offended in these and rarely they may even fully withdraw, but most of the time everyone accepts each other and has to get over the perceived slights. I'm not sure there are many voluntary relationships (certainly not relationships where the continued relation is predicated upon a regular payment) where people do that.

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5 comments · 1 top-level

setq9y ago· 4 in thread

I agree with what you've said but IMHO is a dishonest way of living. I'd rather be poor than a suck up.

jwcacces9y ago

setq9y ago

I've been poor. £12 a week ($20) to feed three, evicted from rental, no job (because of an asshat)

cookiecaperOP9y ago

This contributes to the cycle because those people pay their dues to the establishment, go through the process, and get used to the circlejerk. They then expect everyone else to do the same.

cookiecaperOP9y ago

It's a tough game. Sometimes I try to believe that there's some cove of people that aren't this way out there, but it always gets shot down as soon as I start believing it again.

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