
There are no adults in the room - mooreds
https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/08/12/there-are-no-adults-in-the-room/
======
VikingCoder
The adults in the room are the ones who aren't looking for some omniscient
overlord to have all the answers.

If you've realized this, you are one of the adults in the room.

~~~
jandrese
That terrifying feeling when you realize the world is being run by people just
muddling their way through problems one at a time and big grand plans rarely
last very long.

~~~
epylar
Even more scary, the people who running things who -think- they know
everything and convince other people they do.

~~~
nonford150
Or - they have the final say-so for projects and if they don't agree people
either leave or they just learn not to present innovative (read different)
solutions. Once the leader leaves, the ones left are so conditioned not to
engineer (innovate) the status quo eventually sinks the ship (process,
company, etc.)

------
nimbius
eh, coming from a blue-collar job Im seriously inclined to disagree. shops
with questions are _good shops._ questions mean learning.

>there are no true adults in the room at any organization.

Im an engine mechanic by trade, and ive worked in shops with no adults. theres
no OSHA "days free" sign because management is well aware that people are
getting hurt and doesnt need to call attention to it. These are shops with a
high percentage of "fatal 4" accidents: flying objects, swinging objects,
rolling objects and lack of PPE. disability rosters are usually 3-4 people
deep. guards on machines are routinely off, or if present, dangling by a bolt.
your senior-most tech is a temp. Most of the people you work with can remember
at least one amputation in the past year.

The absolute worst Ive seen had a mechanical maintenance tech with 3 missing
fingers (crushed that year) and a manager with a bone growth stimulator on his
arm from a mangling accident at a metal lathe he wasnt qualified to operate.

~~~
hinkley
I think it's machismo. In a room full of people white knuckling everything,
nobody wants to be the 'baby' who calls for rational behavior.

I see the same thing in white collar jobs, but the damage is harder to see.
Physical and mental health rather than broken bones and lost limbs.

There's no reason everyone should have to be a hero all the fucking time. But
often the only way to fix it is if everyone refuses. Not saying unionize, but
if everyone slows down to a sustainable pace then what can they do about it?

~~~
birdyrooster
Futilely reorganize your business units repeatedly until it’s a Dead Sea and
there is no distinction between working hard and slacking off.

Edit: I see I cut too close to reality for some here and I want to apologize
if you felt this sarcasm was off base but really I feel that my comments are
indicative of reality and I am bringing something new to the conversation
here.

------
fullshark
I agree with the content of this article, but disagree with the central
metaphor. "Adults in the room" is used to indicate a responsible person who
stops malfeasance right? I think it's just a matter of once you start work you
realize it's not schoolwork, not only are the solutions never clear, the
problems are never clear either.

~~~
jerf
Rather than seeing it as an actual claim about adults, see it is a
representation of someone's mental model that there will always be people who
are like adults are to a child.

In fact, when you get a job, _you_ are now an adult in the room, so you better
act like it. It's one of the many ideas that when you bring it up to the
conscious level it's drop-dead obvious, but the idea that there will be other
responsible people can lurk in the lower parts of your mind for a long time,
and it can take a lot of time to clear the idea out. Thinking about it
consciously is unfortunately not a full solution to that problem, but it
certainly can be a huge help.

It's the same sort of thing as imposter syndrome; it's not that you're
literally an imposter, in fact many sufferers of imposter syndrome may well be
above average, it's a statement about internal perceptions.

~~~
celticmusic
When I first entered the workforce I remember someone pulling me to the side
and used this exact metaphore. Told me there were adults and children and I
needed to start treating certain people as adults rather than equals (more or
less, I'm paraphrasing, but this was the meaning).

I was blown away that anyone actually had that attitude toward others. I was
probably 21 I think?

I mean, I get it on one level with respect to politics, but screw that.

------
duxup
>If you go into a company expecting to be handed work on a platter and to have
someone know exactly what is going on, the way that, say, a college professor
knows how to teach physics 101, you are going to be disappointed. It’s much
more likely that the folks who are senior to you are trying to stay one step
ahead of the customer.

I had a "non traditional" education.

I was a great High School student, but once I was in college I struggled,
mostly due to non educational issues (poor reading comprehension, depression,
general issues I think would be termed ADHD) and I dropped out. I managed to
work my way into the tech industry with luck and just making stuff work. The
fact that I didn't and wasn't going to know what to do I chalked up to my own
reading comprehension and other issues. So I just accepted it and kept "moving
forward".

Meanwhile a lot of friend continued on through college being very successful
and accomplishing a lot and then... really struggling when the working world
wasn't fair, and perhaps most importantly didn't provide a prescribed path to
high fives, good grades and knowing they were doing it right and would get
good outcomes.

So I'm often working with CS grads and I see the same thing from some of them,
folks struggling when they're not told what to do, how, and confidant in their
own actions.

Education seems to provide a lot of specific environments that just don't
exist outside that and it tends to be a bump in the road for a lot of people.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Great comment, I absolutely agree. I learned to code largely through problem
sets, HIGHLY defined, clear issues with pre-cleaned (!!!) data. Once I'm out
coding in the wild, I am the one creating the dataset, it's highly messy in
its infancy, and most of my collaborators are in flux about what they want,
how they want it, and which subgroup and sample they want to examine. The name
of the game seems to be quick iteration and fast communication loops.

~~~
duxup
Just naming stuff, you'd think that would be obvious and easy and then things
change and: "Why the hell did I name it that?" is a common thing I think.

------
seren
Maybe the most surprising thing for me is that it is not only true at the
entry level, but this is always true the higher you meet people in the
hierarchy. Somehow I expected leaders to master their subjects, have grand
long term visions or perfectly know the market/domain.

From what I can see, most people are trying to do their best but being a staff
principal senior engineer does not necessarily you can answer everything (but
usually they know who to ask or what to do to get an anwser)

It is not that people are incompetent, but you can't be an expert at
everything.

~~~
neilalexander
Someone once told me an old USSR joke that went something like this:

"What should a student know?" "Everything"

"What should a lab technician know?" "Almost the same as the student"

"What about a graduate?" "In which book is that thing that the student should
know?"

"And the associate professor?" "Where is this book?"

"And the professor?" "Where is the associate professor?"

~~~
pojzon
Thats how I see career levels in my company..

The higher someone is the less overall they know. I know regulars that I would
put way higher than some of our experts. And its not only technical knowledge
but also problem solving, attitude and craftsmanship.

Thats what happens when promotions are given based on "years worked" or
"office politics" instead of work excellence.

Sad reality in a lot of companies in IT.

~~~
learc83
>work excellence

Promotions to new positions based on performance in the previous position
don't always work out great either.

~~~
chasd00
yep. you get promoted to your level of incompetence.

------
k__
Very true.

I can't count the number of people I worked with who sold me their dev team as
the universal weapon for software engineering. Just to see them cobble
together a solution on outdated tech that they didn't even understand half as
good as they said.

I think we should be more humble. Which is hard, because everyone wants to be
seen as valuable.

~~~
brodouevencode
You can be humble and valuable at the same time. When hubris creeps in that's
when things become problematic - not just for that person or team but for the
entire company. One thing that I was thankful to learn early on was to assume
that everyone else (in the organization) knows things you don't.

~~~
emsy
Yeah but unless you have someone who sees your value, the loudest, not the
most valuable, wins.

------
streetcat1
So this is the result of what I call "technical democracy". Or consensus
driven management. The adults are there, but their opinion is mixed with
everyone else.

This is the symptom of an industry that do not value experience and even
oppose it.

------
baron_harkonnen
But some rooms definitely have more clowns. Don't mistake the message of
"nobody knows everything" for "nobody has to know anything".

There are places and teams that do have competent, experienced people that
know how to solve tricky problems, and there are also teams where too many key
people basically don't know anything and attempt to silence the voices of
anyone who have experience and expertise from making them look dumb.

In some places "everyone is trying their best" to solve tough problems, in
other places "everyone is trying their best" to get promoted. These two orgs
are not the same.

------
kaolti
This is true in general. "Adults" are just an idea for kids to look up to.

~~~
triplee
This. I was going to say essentially the same thing.

Every adult who becomes a parent seems to realize very quickly that their
parents also had no clue WTF was going on.

So yeah, no different with what we do, since we're literally always building
new things that haven't been done before.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> So yeah, no different with what we do, since we're literally always building
> new things that haven't been done before.

"Where do people get the confidence to say that their work is so uniquely
novel that it's "something that has never been done before in the history of
the universe", that the field is obviously totally different from another
field they know nothing about, etc. ?" \--Dan Luu

I think it is less that these things "have never been done before" and more
"we haven't bothered to learn anything from people who've done things like
this before". Same with parenting.

~~~
PeterisP
It's the same as with parenting - you _can 't_ really learn these things from
people who've done this before, you have to learn them by doing it yourself. A
large portion of potential parents put in a _lot_ of effort to read up and
learn stuff before their first child, but that's really nothing compared to
what they can learn from actual experience; when rising your second/third/etc
child, everything you'll use will be from the actual experience with previous
children and just a minority of useful things will come from the initial vague
guidance of others.

~~~
mark-r
I had a friend who was super excited to have his second child, because he'd be
able to reuse the knowledge he had picked up with the first one. Then he
discovered that his kids were polar opposites - he had to start over from
square one.

------
xsmasher
This reminds me of the Steve Jobs janitor story:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-
difference...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-
between-a-vice-president-and-a-janitor-2011-5)

Except that line should kick in WAY before the VP level. Getting out of the
"schoolkid mentality" is key to success in your career.

* if you're blocked on a task, you need to specifically tell your boss and/or the person blocking you

* if a task is stalled on someone else's desk, you need to go chase it down, not just say "not my problem anymore"

* if a process is broken, you need to work on fixing the process, not just complaining or shrugging

Basically, you need to focus on SUCCESS and RESULTS, not just effort and
following the rules.

~~~
pragmatic
Sounds like a great way to burn out.

~~~
xsmasher
I'm not talking about running full tilt 24/7; I'm just saying don't be that
guy that gets assigned a ticket, makes a comment on the ticket for
clarification, and then spends the next four hours doing god-knows-what
instead of reaching out and unblocking yourself.

------
yakattak
I’ve found that while the majority of people are trying to stay one step
ahead, there are always those that feel they do know what’s going on
completely. However, because they think they’re in the know, it’s very often
that their opinions are scripture and it’s impossible to change their mind on
anything. If you’re a new developer, this problem is exacerbated by the “I am
a principal engineer, you’re an associate so I’m correct.”

------
hos234
Well the "Adults" in the room are the ones who don't run out "once the
maelstrom of chaos and uncertainty arrives". Most people we call adults do.

------
awillen
Figuring this out really blew my mind. All of these giant corporations from
Apple to Chevy to Starbucks are just a bunch of people trying to figure stuff
out. When I was younger, even in college, I really thought of companies as
these perfectly organized machines with flawless processes that allow for
continual success. Now I realize it's a bunch of normal humans doing their
jobs while they deal with the other shit in their lives too.

Putting that together really helped give me the push to start my own
business... if founders are just people with an idea who do work to make a
company, I can be a founder.

------
kylek
I very much agree with this, especially the point on hubris. What I'm really
looking for is advice on dealing on people in more senior positions that don't
get this.

Being mostly self-taught, I often feel like I don't have any ammunition
"against" the more academic folks, and it makes it difficult to maintain an
open/curious mindset. What do I need to prove to stop the constant attempts to
gaslight me? I strive to be a team player, but the amount of condescension is
maddening sometimes.

~~~
erikpukinskis
My advice:

1) Focus more on assisting your peers with their work. This doesn’t mean
telling them what to do, but look for people who are struggling to keep their
head above water on work that you know how to do well, and help them out of
that place.

2) Let people win. Not when it’s important to you, but know when you’re in the
“I’m right but this isn’t going to sink our project” place and let them have
those wins. It will help take their “make sure that one stays in line” radar
off you. Bonus points if you can make them feel like you learned something
from them.

3) Quit. I don’t mean right away, but if you’re not generally enjoying your
workplace, for ANY reason, or even for NO reason—quit. Some of this is
basically like dating. When you don’t like someone, you just keep looking.
There are more fish in the sea, as they say.

4) Remember that disagreements are fundamental to collaboration. There simply
isn’t time to reach consensus on everything, even in a zero asshole
environment. So teams are built on sparse networks of trust. There are likely
a very small number of bottom lines that hold the org together. Everything
else is a “nice to have”. Keep that in mind, and if you want to feel valued at
a high level, you’re going to need to figure out what those bottom lines are,
who is trusting who to watch them, and how you can help them long enough to
become part of that trust network.

5) I heard a quote recently that I’ve been thinking a lot... Paraphrasing:
“The master doesn’t convince anyone she knows the right way. She just works,
and her work is flawless.” Just something to think about when you’ve got an
assignment that doesn’t quite match what you think the ultimate strategic goal
should be. You can still execute at a high level and feel good about that.

~~~
kylek
Hey thanks for this response. I'll have to work on #2 - I suppose I need to
search for more opportunities to ask them for advice, maybe it will help build
a bridge. Difficult to get past the initial dismissiveness, though. I'm not
ready to quit but that is a good reminder too. I'm actually incredibly happy
with the role (besides not feeling like everyone is 100% on board, anyways).
#4 is a great reminder as well (and while we're butchering quotes - "tension
on a string can create majestic music" :) ). Really appreciate the stoic point
of view of that quote in #5, too.

------
braythwayt
1\. The general point this essay is making is correct.

2\. I do not think the expression "adults in the room" is meant to describe
omniscient individuals, I believe it refers to the quality of judgment and
motivation people have.

I believe adults and uncertainty are orthogonal.

3\. The general point this essay is making is correct.

------
alexashka
This is cute. This article is itself an example of no adult in the room - the
author skips over the real causes workplaces are full of mediocrity and goes
for the politically correct never-offend-anybody stance of 'nobody knows
eeeeverything, right?'

Workplaces are full of people who are not good at their job, only think about
their bottom line and will resist anyone threatening their safety by trying to
'help' as the author suggests.

I'm looking forward to a blog post on how to navigate office politics, because
that is the most important skillset of working at any large corporation, as
soon as you have a mediocre skillset that isn't obviously mediocre to the
manager caste.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Where you see mediocrity and people not being good at their jobs, the author
sees that "... no one knows everything and everyone is doing the best they
can.".

> goes for the politically correct never-offend-anybody stance of 'nobody
> knows eeeeverything, right?'

I feel like you may have unreasonable expectations - everyone starts out with
a mediocre skillset. Do you expect everyone to be experts? Or are you simply
frustrated with the corporate ladder?

~~~
jessaustin
The proper response to mediocre skillsets is to do the work to improve
skillsets. Whatever else is meant by "adults", one would hope they're helping
that process.

------
wozer
Somewhat dangerous advice. Might make you too accepting of a place that is
just badly run.

------
rossdavidh
So, the basic idea that no one in most adult organizations knows as much as a
teacher who has taught that exact same curriculum several times before, is
true and relevant.

What is not brought out much is, well if you cannot use the standard of
knowledge and competence that school and childhood taught you to expect, what
should you expect? The one-sentence answer is too vague to really serve as a
useful guideline.

My wife, when working one of her first jobs, had a boss who was such a crack
addict that she cleaned out the cash register of her own business every night,
forcing my wife to ask the first several customers of the day for exact
change. This, is not just not perfect, it's not ok, and you would want to quit
any job where the boss is like that. But, she didn't have enough experience
yet to know what was the actual, real-world level of expectation you should
have for how together the people in charge should be.

Perhaps I am expecting too much from one article, but it mostly seems to say
(properly): "don't expect the same standard of knowledge and competence that
your childhoold trained you to expect", without saying much about what to put
in its place.

------
abarringer
I've often thought.. If you feel like everything is under control you clearly
don't know what's going on. It seems the higher I go in a company the more
this is true.

When I was a junior being handed design or detailed work specs it seemed like
part of an over-arching grand plan. Now I realize.. we just hang on and try to
stay alive; albeit with-in something resembling a meta-narrative.

------
algaeontoast
I think an important aspect to this that maybe hasn't been mentioned is how
important it is to understand what your values are - more specifically, what
your boundaries both personally and professionally are.

Sometimes, regardless of age or experience, you have to decide when you should
step up as the "adult" in the room and either leave or call something out as
crossing a personal / professional ethical boundary.

Big tech co's and startups try to word HR legalese and cultural "principles"
to subvert and minimize the affect of personal boundaries and expression.

If you want to learn about a company's workplace health, ask what they define
"honesty" as, from the standpoint of a founder and that of a new college grad
/ employee working for them.

------
Malic
This isn't a new idea to me either. I would have put it in words "The attic of
the org-chart is empty" but same point.

But what bewilders me is that there ARE achievements in the world that you
have to wonder how they succeeded. The engineers and scientists of NASA put
men on the moon without email and mostly paper based information sharing
systems. You can't just muddle your way though such efforts - how did that
mission succeed? It is REALLY the case that a handful of "more aware than
most" individuals had a such a strong direction providing influence on their
peers (or subordinates - or superiors even) that made such an achievement
possible? It seems like stretch to me.

How did they do it, if most of them were just muddling their way through?

~~~
AstralStorm
They weren't. They had plans and formal improvement processes. They had
Messengers and strong, well defined hierarchy with an inch of a clue.

Now, they also failed spectacularly a few times.

Email or Slack do not change anything.

------
m463
I am reminded of a post entitled "older and wiser" to the listserve:

The archive of the comment is here:

[https://thelistservearchive.com/2013/09/13/older-and-
wiser/](https://thelistservearchive.com/2013/09/13/older-and-wiser/)

("the listserve" was an experimental mailing list where a member was chosen at
random to post to the rest of the list)

------
ssawyer06
It’s a funny title for this idea. When starting your career, I think it’s much
more productive to think “ok I’m an adult now” rather than “there are no
adults in the room”. Maybe we’re saying the same thing, but it’s a mental
shift.

------
jsilence
I share the same experience. Rarely is there one colleague or superior who
completely groks the problem space. But is this not what you get when you move
fast and break things?

------
ur-whale
This particular principle also applies to politics and government, especially
when it comes to economic policy.

But most people are completely oblivious to that fact.

------
ykevinator
Spot on

------
draw_down
Absolute freedom is terrifying: you could do anything, who knows what to do,
who knows if it will work?

It’s much more comforting to focus on things like clean code, anything you can
devise a set of rules for and read a big book about and then action the advice
in the book. See, best practices say we should do this.

