

Ask HN: What questions do you _wish_ you could ask your co-workers? - gvr

Things you just keep to yourself, maybe because you don't want to come across as whiney, confrontational, demoralizing or for some other reason.
======
gvr
Here are some: Am I the only that...

1\. is tired of the semi-mandatory Friday afternoon karaoke sessions? If I
hear One More Time one more time it’s not going to end well. If you saw
Falling Down you know what I mean…

2\. thinks there’s no way this product is going to ship on time even if Linus
Thorvalds himself descended from the heavens on a white horse to join the dev
team?

3\. would like the CEO to share more information? I feel like I’m running
around blindfolded.

4\. is stressed out by the CEO sharing too much information. Sometimes the
truth hurts.

5\. That thinks we should work harder and more focused? Sometimes this office
feels like a f-n day care center! What are we, a bunch of 6-year olds? I wanna
change the world.

6\. That feels our product decisions are too data-driven? I thought I joined a
group of human beings when I took this job, not a bunch of nodes in a
datacenter.

7\. That feels our product decisions are too gut-driven? It’s like we’re in
Las Vegas on the wrong side of the table… “This is not a good town for
psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”

(I collected a few more at <http://blog.otelic.com/?p=198>, but no need to
visit that page - I'm just wondering what people out there are curious about)

~~~
russell
2\. I remember being at a release meeting for a quarterly software update for
a mainframe manufacturer. As they went around the room everyone declared their
projects were ready. Until they got to me. I said our test suite was way
behind schedule. (It was our first release.) Then they went around the room
again and it seemed that everyone else was behind also. We actually did make
the original schedule, but no one else did. (I make no claim that it always
worked out that way. :-)

~~~
gvr
The truth tends to have interesting domino effects :)

------
bartonfink
* Why don't we invest more energy into preventing fires and less into fighting them?

* How many times must I recommend approach A only to be told to try approach B, and then when approach B doesn't work be told to implement A?

* When is our CTO going to step out of the "first developer" role and into something approximating technical leadership?

~~~
Mz
_Why don't we invest more energy into preventing fires and less into fighting
them?_

I would upvote this 500 times if I could.

I was a homemaker and homeschooling mom for many years, so I had enormous
power to say "Okay, I'm done with this stupidity. How do we fix it once and
for all?" and then making it happen. Thus I have a rather low threshold of
tolerance for the slow bureaucratic process at work. I am currently on a pilot
team that handles complaint files and I have tried to actively advocate for
more fire prevention, less fire fighting. I think we are getting some good
things done but I still feel there is too little emphasis on fire-prevention
activities.

Sorry for, oops, deleting my earlier version of this post a hair before your
reply showed up.

~~~
bartonfink
No worries. My reply was basically to say that I know what to say to make my
case, but I don't know how to make the CTO listen. This is his first CTO
position, and up until August he was the only developer, so a lot of bad
practices we have (e.g. no process whatsoever) are holdovers from the way he
worked for a year and change. The obvious problem is that working alone dodges
an awful lot of problems that arise when you have to work together. Now, we're
running into these problems but the CTO isn't dealing with them - he just
disengages whenever they get brought up and says something like "You're right,
that's important, but first let's work on ...". Quite frustrating.

And again, no worries on the delete.

~~~
Mz
FWIW: If you have a solution rather than a complaint, that tends to go over
better and has more hope of being acted upon. Also, I have found that
opportunistically grabbing people in the break room (by themselves, with no
one around) and talking for a minute is sometimes way more effective than the
formal process I am supposed to go through (proviso: I am not in IT).

Take care.

------
hkmurakami
* Sales guys - Does every request have to be called "urgent"? Have you ever had a non-urgent request?

* Why do things seem to pop up at the last minute, giving us nowhere near enough lead time?

------
steve8918
1) How much do you make 2) How many stock options did you get 3) What was your
bonus last year 4) Why the #& _@_ #$ is <fill-in-the-blank> paid more than
us???

~~~
logn
glassdoor.com helps for this but not for startups

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wayathrow
Are all you guys as fucking bored and burned out as I am since the
acquisition? Counting the long days until we're vested?

------
tunaslut
why the hell did you create soooo many layers of abstraction and obfuscation
for such a simple CRUD requirement? seriously. WHY?

