
How to adopt an “openness” mindset at work - philk10
https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/10/06/player-mindset/
======
igornadj
While I agree fundamentally, I think the blog post is focusing too narrowly
which gives me a bad taste in the mouth, and I read it as an attempt to pass
blame to employees.

For example, one suggestion is to point out the problem and discuss it openly.

>schedule a meeting with the project stakeholders and product owners ... talk
about the pattern of incomplete requirements and make recommendations ...

This is great, and from my experience happens all the time. People speak up to
managers all the time, every day. Rarely have I seen someone with a problem
not bring it up to their manager.

It's the lack of action from managers following the feedback that's often the
cause for developers adopting the "victim-oriented mindset". The direct result
of manager inaction is for the developer to think _the issues we have are real
and are not being addressed, so my manager is indirectly telling me not to
bring issues up next time_ which causes the "victim-oriented mindset".

Mindsets are situational, a developer's mindset reflects the environment they
find themselves in. Poor leadership is the number one cause for burnout
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17849489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17849489)).
Poor leadership causes poor mindsets.

~~~
jayd16
The main advice is to focus on solutions instead of throwing up your hands.
That doesn't mean every attempt will be met with success. Sometimes there
won't be much you can do but most of the time there is.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Usually, the best solution to a dysfunctional workplace is to find a job
somewhere else. If managers do not act on feedback from the people they
manage, that is what they are implicitly telling them to do.

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Waterluvian
I adopted a very similar perspective after years of having a lot of manager
churn. I used to get so frustrated that my job was unnecessarily difficult
because of them. Now it's become, "this is an opportunity to learn new ways to
communicate with a manager who thinks it's 1985." So instead of being
frustrated at the statement that my TypeScript and the other team's C needs to
use the same headers, I focused on how to communicate, in an economy of words,
why this API deviation may be a process problem, not a technical one. And in
the years since that, I've slowly gotten better (and regressed at times)
focusing on what I can control.

~~~
john_moscow
>instead of being frustrated at the statement that my TypeScript and the other
team's C needs to use the same headers, I focused on how to communicate, in an
economy of words, why this API deviation may be a process problem, not a
technical one.

The statement actually makes a lot of sense if you don't take it literally. If
you programmatically generate both C and TS part from the same common
definition (protobuf?) as a part of the build process, API deviation will
become an easy-to-see compile-time error instead of a runtime surprise.

~~~
Waterluvian
Totally. That's why I got into talking about a common API schema that could be
used to generate the required symbols. That got met with discussion of not
using TypeScript instead.

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klingonopera
There's only so much you can do yourself, take into your own hands, look at
from the other perspective, mingle around a problem until at long last you'll
end up where you started again: Forces out of your control.

And it's (or should be) OK to blame them, you've done your homework.

But then someone comes along and says "You've been going at this the wrong
way! Think positive! Think like a 'player'!". And as you roll your eyes,
people label you passive-aggressive.

People like that are probably a minority, but they most certainly exist, too.

~~~
lostcolony
So there's a difference between blame, and discussing failure.

"The project was not delivered on time because requirements gathering took so
long. Here's how we think we can help Product define them more efficiently in
the future" is different than "It's Product's fault".

Both are laying blame on Product. One is suggesting a solution and sharing
ownership of it; the other is only seeking to point fingers.

I would argue at no place should blame be okay. Because that creates a toxic
culture; people begin to be less open and transparent about failure, are less
likely to take responsibility, more likely to pre-emptively finger point to
try to shift blame, etc, and it becomes political. The fact that you feel you
are blameless is irrelevant if they can spin it so that it sounds like you are
to blame (and trust me, speaking as a dev, the other departments are going to
have way more time and experience in playing politics).

~~~
klingonopera
I agree with you on most counts, but you're viewing it from my position of not
yet having (attempted) to see it from different angles and tackling issues
(i.e. yet to do homework).

One should definitely do what you suggest and attempt to be constructive and
productive (i.e. do the homework).

But if management shoots everything down and they expect you to build a house
out of match-sticks and that thing falls apart at the slightest gust of wind,
are you to blame or management for not giving you better building materials?
(i.e. homework done, nothing left to do)

I'm advocating for a realistic view of things: Sometimes, oneself is to blame,
sometimes it's something else, and sometimes it's forces out of our control,
but there is always something at fault, if something goes wrong, hence there
is always something to blame in failure.

But seeing oneself to be blamed at all times leads to burn-out.

EDIT: I'm aware you could also take a bunch of match-sticks, grind them to a
pulp, and create some type of wood-like cement from it, and then build a house
from that, and that might work. So let's say, they just give you five boxes
with 20 matches each and it has to be at least 25 square-meters. Some might
now argue, that you could go and start trading this until you end up with a
house, there's the story of a guy who started trading a pen for something else
on eBay, and ended up with a house. So management now insists this has to be
done by the day-after-tomorrow. Etc. The question is: When and where do you
stop telling yourself you haven't thought of the right solution and instead
insist that management is absurd?

~~~
lostcolony
I would argue that that's a different issue. That's not about blame; that's
about management refusing to alter their expectations to meet reality, despite
you being open, transparent, and respectful about the state of it on the
ground. If they are unable to do so, and respond accordingly, it's a good sign
you should quit.

That's different than blame though. Yes, when things go wrong they go wrong
due to a reason, but I'm simply highlighting the difference between
highlighting what went wrong with a "here are some suggestions on how to solve
it", and highlighting it just to place blame.

If the culture is focused on placing blame, to where you feel the need to do
it, too, just defensively, GTFO ASAP. There is no way to win. I've seen once
technical people who gained a majority of their experience in that kind of
organization, and they were a liability everywhere they went.

------
trabant00
You can not take it on yourself to fix a company especially from a position
with no authority. You will end up having negative feelings about yourself and
your failures to steer the ship in the right direction. People _will_ hate you
for what they see as constant interfering with their decisions. This a recipe
for ever increasing stress and eventual burnout.

Please remember this: it is not your company. Not your responsibility. You
didn't build it this way. Even if you could fix it - and I assure you that you
can't - you would be doing the world a disservice. You would keep sociopaths
who only care about short term numbers on spreadsheets in business when they
rightfully deserve to fail.

If you find yourself with "negative feelings like unfairness, lack of control,
or frustration" especially in the IT sector please remember the job market is
booming right now and give a chance to another leadership to make the world a
better place.

------
elliekelly
This seems a lot like the concept of "Locus of Control":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control)

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wwarner
This is excellent advice.

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dang
Since lots of comments had an adverse reaction to this use of the word
"player", we replaced it above with "openness", which is the word the article
uses to describe a "player".

Hopefully that will help the thread focus on the article now.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Perhaps a better option would be: "How to avoid a 'Victim' Mindset at Work?"

"Openness" totally confused me—I thought the article would be about being open
to other people's viewpoints, or something like that.

~~~
dang
That's a good suggestion, but I think the word "victim" is still likely to
trigger people into reacting to that word rather than the underlying content.

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teekert
You're either at the table or you're on the menu.

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viburnum
Good lord, here is a CEO micromanaging people's feelings. This is incredibly
insulting and creepy. It would be more honest if he told people to just shut
up and do their jobs.

~~~
klingonopera
When I first read the article, I thought "Wow, this is perfect for a boss to
handout to their employees and shift the blame!".

Realizing now, that this was indeed written by a CEO, does add a bit of
flavor, but maybe he doesn't have any employees, and it's just a motivational
piece he uses for himself. To be honest, I really don't want to know.

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koboll
If you're going to invent an arbitrary term for workplace assertiveness, maybe
don't make it homonymous with a term for an aggressively flirtatious man.

~~~
drak0n1c
It's not an invention or arbitrary term. The more traditional usage of the
word player for much of the 20th century was to mean someone with agency and
control over their own life and surroundings. The usage evolved (narrowed)
with the popularity of rap in the 90s.

~~~
harlanji
In my mind they’re the same. A player makes plays and rises in the social and
economic hierarchies to the point that multiple women are courting him, thus
giving rises to the guy “playing games” complaints, “being a player.” Pick-up
artistry mocks what players do around women to get women (poor motivator) and
get seen as “players,” kinda like crackers get called hackers. I think rappers
still meant it in the histiric sense but mass sales means more simps who don’t
even know a player to misuse it more with an emphasis on women and pickup
artists. In our world, leadership at top companies are the players (and ads
are the drug, kinda joking).

~~~
dunstad
Leadership at top companies is disproportionately sociopathic compared to the
population at large, as well. How admirable.

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twiceaday
The word 'player' doesn't fit well and has bad connotations [1].

[1]
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Player](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Player)

~~~
chucksmash
Reading the article makes it very clear that they are not using the word in
that sense.

