> My professional experience has taught me that proactive empathy can be more harmful to a work environment than a simple combination of humility and compassion.
This is beautifully put.
> There's nothing more obnoxious than a coworker without a clue, or to-which you're indifferent trying to 'understand you'. Especially if they're tremendously off-base.
I had a colleague try to do this with me, and it led to a couple of the shittiest weeks ever of my career (so far). My self esteem and perception of my own morals were absolutely shattered until I got a better handle on what was really going on.
> If you cannot empathize you're unqualified to be a software engineer and should pack up your stuff.
I do mostly empathize with this person. I don't believe they are inherently lazy or malicious, and recognize that they're likely going through something in their personal life.
I used to just observe from afar making the mental note that this person was sort of clocked out, but I care much more now that they're in a leadership position that is directly correlated to my career's success.
Empathy in the inverse direction must also hold, people should feel bad about their own lack of output, creating a thankless burden of the rest of their team.
> Broadly, maybe. At work, I don't care about being liked by people that can't admit they are wrong.
Why do you presume all outcomes of your eggregious interactions is placing blame on others?
It seems you are totally oblivious to some of the most basic principles of working in a professional environment: if you antagonize and attack your team members, you are not trusted to help out and have their backs. This means you are not an asset but a liability. Working close to you is making them vulnerable to being stabbed in the back by you at the slightest issue. And that's why you are not liked, even if/when you are right.
All the people can be right, but that doesn't justify you insisting on pissing on everyone else's cereals.
This is outrageously inappropriate. Coworkers who are so willing to be cruel are exactly what makes me uncomfortable in social situations at work. Bullying is always inappropriate. Social interaction at work should be optional and consent should be obtained before revealing personal information. People have different preferences and those preferences should be respected. I can’t believe I even have to say that.
> It's cake and a break from work. Even if you hate every single person you work with with a burning passion, it's still cake and a break from work.
It’s not about hating your coworkers. It’s about social anxiety, professional conduct, and personal liberty. Don’t lie to me about the purpose of a meeting and don’t use my professional time for your personal entertainment. I have a life outside of work. I don’t appreciate wasting working time because I still have to do the work. Don’t interpret my discomfort in forced social situations as a personal insult.
> I can only understand this opinion if its some kind of forced event after or before work, or worse you're the employer and just want people making you money only.
It doesn’t matter what you understand. Your behavior is inappropriate. I doubt it was your intention to hurt anyone so take the feedback, adjust your behavior, and move on.
> But getting paid to take an extra break and then scolding your coworkers seems a step too far
I am paid a salary. The work has to get done. Social interaction isn’t free. I still have to find time to do the work.
> Talking about management in this specific way tells me that they see their management coworkers as enemies, and not as equals.
How am I being a jerk here, pointing out the obvious truths. I don't treat other people as enemies. I'm just speaking my mind about systemic problems.
I don't book company wide meetings that are (semi-)mandatory and waste thousands of person-hour of work time for the company, just because I enjoy it and am in position that can do it. I try to be mindful about the communication I initiate and treat other's people time with respect. I write TL;DR in my emails and optimize for groups performance, not just my own self-interest.
The thing you should deduce from what I wrote is that instead of being self-optimizing stupid/naive/cynical person, I actually (possibly irrationally) care about my craft and efficiency of the group I belong to, and can do my own critical thinking, instead of accepting status quo uncritically.
>Good luck if you ever have a boss or a colleague who prefers rapport and empathetic communication over the more direct, rational style you prefer. You are going to continually wonder why that boss expects you to read their mind.
That hit home for me. I once got called down to HR to find my boss there. I discovered at that moment that she was frustrated with how long it was taking me to do my job. Part of my job is pulling data for mailings out of our database. We have ~1 million constituents, and regularly send mailings with tens of thousands of recipients. She had performed that role before me, and she felt that it could be done much more quickly that I was performing it.
Turns out, I could perform the task as quickly as she expected, but I had totally misunderstood a conversation we had months earlier. Word had gotten to my boss that a person had called in because of a factual error on a piece of mail we had sent them. She came by my desk and asked me about the error, as I had specifically said the file was 99.5% error free. I mentioned that the incorrect information had been put in the database by someone else, and the error rate was about what I had expected. She told me that she wanted 99.9% error free mailings from then on.
Later on, I sent her data for another mailing. She came by my desk and asked if the data was 100% correct. I said I was confident it was 99.9% correct. She said we couldn't have any errors this time, and we needed to make sure that the data was 100% correct. I told her that it was fundamentally impossible to be 100% sure the data was correct. She said that she understood, but she wanted it 99.99% correct, as we couldn't mail constituents information that was wrong. I said it would probably take 10x longer to run the data, but I could do that if she wanted it. She did, so I proceeded to make sure the data was 99.99% correct.
She was absolutely flabbergasted when I brought these conversations up. To her, she thought 100% confidence meant "pretty damn sure" and 99% confidence was somewhere around "It's probably right, maybe." From my perspective, 99.5% correct meant we'd have 5 or fewer bad rows for every 1000 rows in the data.
It was so weird for both of us, because we both thought we had been incredibly clear with the other person. I thought I had been very clear with my point -- I had spoken with her about how long it would take to ensure the data was 99.99% correct several times, because I was concerned about the delay. She had thought she was being emphatic, ad I was just being a pain in the ass. The thing is, that I'm generally not particularly hung up on the difference between literal meaning and figurative meaning, and she generally pretty clear when expressing what she wanted in technical conversations without hyperbole. So she hadn't even considered that I was interpreting her comments literally, and I hadn't considered that she was being hyperbolic.
It was definitely a huge learning experience for both of us. We had both been really stressed for months because we failed to communicate effectively with one another, despite both of us recognizing the same problem and trying to bring it to the other person's attention.
> Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.
I think this is dangerous ground to thread. I don't like to work with assholes any more than the next guy and I'd certainly prefer working with people I personally like but that kind of thinking opens doors to all kinds of abuse; from favoritism (I like him, therefore he gets a pass when somebody else might not), through promotions (what does giving a promotion to somebody likeable over somebody more competent do to morale?) to plain fuckarounditis (playing career games rather than what's good for the business, wasting company resources on petty political games).
I mean, I get it - it's human nature. But something feels off when we're justifying our simian prejudices in an environment where we're supposed to prioritize somebody else's satisfaction (whoever is paying us) but instead we do what we feel is best for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system of judgment (I don't care if this guy sucks, I like him because he's my friend).
> It seems to me like people skills are a weak spot for you.
That's not true as I always hangout with the people in different teams, and, we get along pretty well. I just don't do kiss-ass to my boss and I don't take advantage out of situations.
> Find ways to work together
We worked together for two years on daily basis. And I overcome a lot of bad behaviours but I can't stand to report to him
>"If your leader is toxic enough that everyone would rather quit than work with them, how are they supposed to function as a leader?"
No one said toxic. They said jerk.
I quite like working with a bunch of opinionated assholes that are willing to argue to the bottom of something, and have no personal investment in me liking them.
The great thing about jerks is that they don't take it personally. When you see the jerk the next day, you're still at square one. You will always be at square one.
Not friends, not enemies, just coworkers doing your job -- willing to step on each others toes to get things done the right way.
I've worked at places where everyone is nice. It's hell. "Nice" people are bad: morally, ethically, and for the bottom line.
> but instead of denouncing them to the manager, chose the path of being a good guy and do my best to help them.
There’s your problem.
My advice would be to be very open about this with your manager and let shit hit the fan next time your coworker push something that will break in production and/or create problems.
The sad reality of many environments is that grunt work that keeps the light on is very often not even acknowledged, and it’s usually more cherished the person who fixes the issues instead of the person who prevents them or never causes them in the first place.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again, sadly.
Another extrema ratio: if you’re not satisfied with your manager’s response, go talk to your manager’s manager.
> And that has a corrosive effect on culture. Those negative thoughts don't go away, and when team members repress doubts, resentment builds. Passive-aggressive behavior starts to predominate, politics brew, and problems linger on without being solved. So although people may hold their tongue intending to be nice, the result is that a more subtle kind of meanness takes root
This is so absolutely true that its painful, because I have seen this first hand.
The thing you must do is try to figure this out before you join a company, because this tiptoeing around people's feelings seems to work really well at shit and spectacularly average companies. So if you go into a place where this is the accepted way of doing things and try to be the straight shooter, you'll find yourself on everybody's shit list because that's just the way things are done, and in short order (depending on the level of sociopathy that prevails at your particular firm) very strange things will start to happen to your career.
It seems to be that at companies that are doing really amazing things, with really smart and accomplished people, this is not the case.
I also think that this might be a function of culture in the city you work, So while a more unfiltered approach might not raise eyebrows in New York, doing that in Texas could cause problems
> Not that you should go out of your way to be hurtful, but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club.
I agree that this could be useful advice and that you should _not_ hesitate to give it if you think it will be useful. However, I think it's rather extreme and short-sighted to say that such advice should be given entirely "without regard for emotion."
Here's the thing. Your co-workers are human. Humans have lizard brains, and sometimes get defensive. In order to maximize productivity and harmony in the workplace, you want to avoid that.
> But a better reaction is to not care. I’ve never had much trouble working with people who didn’t like me, because I’ve never been particularly bothered by it. If your work is so full of those people that you really don’t like turning up every day, then finding a different job is a better reaction than getting too wound up about it.
I would think in this case some self-reflection would be useful. Not caring may cause someone to gloss over the why they are not liked by so many.
Obviously not everyone will like everyone. That's just how the world works. But, if there are a large amount of people at a workplace who actively do not like someone, that person should think about why that is.
That's quite harsh. Empathy and social bonding is normal and healthy.
Yes, there are a lot of hypercompetitive working environments that train workers to see each other as contenders and encourage cynicism. It also depends on country you are it.
But please don't assume it's the norm across all organizations (companies, no-profits, academia...).
>I’m not a jerk, I just care too much and want other people to care the same amount.
I don't know the real situation, but based on this rationale it sounds like you were being a jerk. You're not even really denying it, just trying to excuse your behavior because it was in service of some higher goal.
That said, acting like a jerk is a behavior, not a permanent attribute. The feedback from your boss should have been about the behaviors you engaged in that negatively impacted the team.
This is beautifully put.
> There's nothing more obnoxious than a coworker without a clue, or to-which you're indifferent trying to 'understand you'. Especially if they're tremendously off-base.
I had a colleague try to do this with me, and it led to a couple of the shittiest weeks ever of my career (so far). My self esteem and perception of my own morals were absolutely shattered until I got a better handle on what was really going on.
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