
Developers, Being Treated Poorly? You Are Not Alone - fredwu
http://fredwu.me/post/142289849178/developers-being-treated-poorly-you-are-not
======
chasing
Most of these I read and am, like: "I wonder how the other person would've
described the situation?"

For example:

> One of our servers needed to be rebuilt, so trying to be a team player and
> help, I started installing some basic packages. The senior dev on the team
> turned to me, straight faced and enunciated in a deep and cold voice: “don’t
> touch anything on it, this is my server!“

Is this because you're a junior-junior developer with an established history
of fucking things up? Who has something else they should be working on? Then
stay away from the guy's server.

Anyway, let me join the chorus of wondering what, exactly, is so terrible
about most of these little stories. Especially when they're so vague as to be
nearly useless...

I've been a developer for twenty years. I can tell you some _actual_ stories
of developers being treated poorly. They're generally a little deeper than,
"Someone said something uncouth in my general direction."

~~~
fredwu
Hi,

Author here. Indeed I was the junior dev at the time.

I now regret not making a lot of the points clearer. In this case, I know I
would definitely NOT treat my junior devs this way. In my view, using either
aggressive tones, or public shaming, is not the right way to resolve things. I
wish that senior dev at the time would've talked to me in a way that did not
make me feel like I was worthless and intentionally fuck things up - at the
end of day, most people try to do good things for their organisation, right?
:)

~~~
chasing
So lets pretend you're the older developer in this case. You've been tasked
with setting up this server and you have a way you like servers to be set up.
You and your team will be working on it, you want it set up just so.

One morning before you arrive at work, junior dev Fred -- a nice kid, but
definitely junior -- gets ahold of the server and starts monkeying around.
It's not his job. It's not his server. And now you're either going to have to
wipe the server and start fresh or get a debrief about what he has and has not
done. And Fred's junior, as noted, so he doesn't always know the best way to
do things (although, like many junior developers, he sure thinks he does!). So
now you, senior dev, have this wild card that you just don't want to deal with
because you're busy and doesn't Fred have other tasks on his plate? Why is he
jumping all over your damned server?

So you snap at Fred. "Get away from that -- it's mine, not yours. Please do
your job and leave me to mine."

Doesn't seem out of line to me.

~~~
fredwu
Hi,

Author here. This is going to attract a few more downvotes for me, but I have
to respectfully disagree. Partially because the scenario wasn't quite what had
happened, but more importantly, even in situation exactly like what you have
just described, I would not have just lashed out on my junior colleague - to
me no matter how junior they are, they are still my colleagues and they still
add value. There is no reason why I need to be aggressive to them when they
made mistakes.

~~~
humbleMouse
If someone started installing packages on my server willy nilly I would be
very angry. Servers are a personal thing. Furthermore, it is downright
unprofessional to be tinkering with other people's servers if they did not ask
you for help!

~~~
jimbokun
"Servers are a personal thing."

If you are paying for the servers out of your own personal funds, sure.

But if it belongs to the company employing you, no, it's not a personal thing,
it's a corporate thing.

~~~
humbleMouse
I suppose "personal" might not have been the best word to describe this. What
I meant to convey is that Servers are a fragile highly configured entity. It
doesn't matter if the server in question is in a corporate environment or if
it's your "personal" server - you don't want junior people editing
configurations.

------
repomies691
I'm not sure if I understand some of these:

"It was near the end of the working day, around 5pm, as the person
coordinating the developer recruitment in our area I ping’ed our Slack channel
to encourage our developers to start reviewing some code tests from job
candidates. One person replied: “My end of day activity is doing the stuff I
should have been doing all day instead of the other things that came up.”"

What was the treated poorly part? Someone priorized some other work over his
assignment, or something? I personally think overtime should be avoided, but
often people do it voluntarily.

"A senior software architect who I used to respect walked close by in a
meetup. We worked for the same company a while back so I smiled, said hi and
was about to start a conversation, he quickly cut me off with “I need to get a
drink” without looking at me and wondered off."

Seriously? Everyone has a bad day now and then. This is of course not nice
behaviour, but I wouldn't consider it worth remembering or mentioning as
"being treated poorly".

"The general manager who is non-technical, asked me to investigate options to
uplift our ageing bespoke ecommerce solution. Upon delivering my findings, I
was told that “your findings are biased.”"

What would be the proper way to communicate this? If the manager thinks that
the findings are biased, would it be better not to say that, or communicate it
in some other way?

~~~
fredwu
Hi,

Author here, I can see why you have these questions. I tried to keep the
moments short so left out some details.

For the first one, it was the passive aggressive tone and the fact that it was
posted in a public channel. This person in one other occasion, stormed out of
a meeting room whilst another colleague was trying to explain something.

For the second one, later on through mutual colleagues I realised that he
essentially thought very little of me because at the time I was a junior
developer so I made lots of mistakes in my code base. In my defence though, I
was on my own and I had to learn Rails myself.

For the third one, I put the "non-technical" part in to indicate that my
manager does not have the technical capability to determine whether my
findings were biased. It was more so that he had his agenda and just wanted me
to confirm his approach from the technical perspective.

Hope that clears things up a little bit. :)

~~~
repomies691
To be honest I think you should give people a little slack and relax. You are
taking things too personally. Everyone has a bad day now and then. Based on
your descriptions to me it looks like "not treating people poorly" would
require almost superhuman capabilities from managers and coworkers. They
probably have also lot of other stuff to worry about as well.

~~~
repomies691
"under the same circumstances, I know I _wouldn't_ treat others the same way I
was treated back then"

I wouldn't dare to make that claim. Every situation is different and also
everyone's mood varies from day to day. It is very difficult to be that nice
guy all the time.

~~~
bakeryOnMain
It should not be difficult to be a nice person all the time.

We are building software, and/or managing a product/team. It's a communal
effort that requires empathy, kindness, and love. If you are one of the few
who can't love your fellow coworker/subordinate/boss then you are toxic.

Unfortunately, bullies existed on the playground and they exist in the
software industry too.

~~~
aninhumer
> It should not be difficult to be a nice person all the time.

There's a huge difference between most of the time and _all_ of the time.

I'm a strong advocate of empathy in the workplace, but part of that is
recognising that sometimes people are just in a bad mood.

Someone who snaps at you because they're really stressed that day is in no way
a bully.

~~~
lbn
If you snap at someone because you are having a bad day you should apologise
to that person or at least clarify that it's not personal.

Having a bad day is not an excuse to be rude to someone, especially if they
are not aware of that.

------
mikekchar
At the risk of a tremendous backlash, I have to say that with the vast
majority of these I was left looking for the punchline. There were clearly
some very upsetting situations, but in nearly every case I could potentially
see both sides of the equation. It was hard for me to consider these examples
of poor treatment. Rather sometimes just examples of poor judgement (also from
the developer's side -- for example not leaving the premises after being
dismissed).

This stuff is hard. In my experience you have to cut people some slack and be
understanding of difficult situations. If you are able to succeed at that, you
should find opportunities to help. This will, in turn, make you more valuable
to your employers and also make you much happier.

Of course, it's hard to give good advice from the other end of a comment box.
I wish you the best of luck in your current endeavours!

~~~
koolba
> There were clearly some very upsetting situations, but in nearly every case
> I could potentially see both sides of the equation.

Nearly, sure but not all.

From the article (emphasis mine):

"A new big shot executive joined the company as our new CTO. He had no agile
background and our company was transforming and pushing for a lot of agile
principles at the time. Two weeks into his new appointment, the new CTO
published an internal document titled “Controlled Chaos”. After reading the
document everyone immediately realised that he was describing waterfall. The
document was shared as a Google Doc and was open for comments, so people
started asking hard questions. _Weeks later, many of us who were vocal about
his document were let go_."

Asking for feedback and shooting the messenger(s) is pretty up there on the "
_How to make sure you never get honest feedback again and screw things over
the long term_ " scale.

~~~
mikekchar
Yeah, it's hard to say. I can share one particular horror story from my past
(because it is fun ;-) ). I worked on an internal tools team and did not get
on terribly well with my manager. I was very critical of him when he made
mistakes (which he did fairly often -- some of them really serious ones). When
my yearly review came up, I submitted a list of all of my accomplishments for
the year. He said, "Ordinarily if someone gave me a list like this, I would
give them a very good review. However, I just don't like you." And he gave me
the worst possible rating.

I actually hung around at that job for several months (I was young and
stupid). We had a reverse review system for our managers and our team of 9
developers gave our manager the worst rating in the entire company (a company
of 100K employees!!!). My manager was incensed and locked us up in a meeting
room for an hour to lecture us on how disappointed he was in his review.

At one point he said, "The thing I am most disappointed in is that I had no
idea things were this bad. Why didn't anyone tell me?"

I replied, "I've been trying to help you ever since I got here. That's why I
keep yelling at you. Nobody else will open their mouth because they see how
you treat me."

We looked at each other and I like to think that we both learned something
very valuable. I quit my job soon after that and I heard that he improved as a
manager (at least a little bit). After a lot of soul searching I realized that
"helping" someone when they can't understand what you are saying is quite a
bit like stomping on their face ;-)

~~~
tristor
> After a lot of soul searching I realized that "helping" someone when they
> can't understand what you are saying is quite a bit like stomping on their
> face ;-)

Thanks for this. Put in this context and thinking back it makes some things in
my past career clearer to me. I have often been the person "helping" and
getting penalized for it as well. It's often difficult to bridge the divide
between the factually correct and the politically? socially? correct.

------
de_Selby
I'm really struggling to see what the big deal is with a lot of these stories.

It seems like either

a) We're only getting half the story.

b) There are clues that poor communication was the issue.

c) There is no story to begin with, just some perceived slight in the authors
head.

~~~
jacobush
Nicely put. I upvoted this story so I could see what you guys think in the
comments. I read it and, and yeah, any combination of a) b) c).

One clue that poor communication might have been an issue, is that you and I
are left here standing feeling like we are missing out on something in the
story. That is not good storytelling, AKA it is poor communication.

Wu, more details! Maybe the "need to get a drink guy" was really ill and could
barely stand up? For instance.

~~~
LukeB_UK
There are many reasons why the "need to get a drink guy" could have done what
what he did, for example poor social skills (not his fault) or being socially
drained (as somewhat of an introvert, I experience this)

~~~
gwbas1c
Or the "need to get a drink" really meant that he didn't like working with
Fred.

~~~
Shengbo
Or he needed to get a drink.

------
flatline
These left me with an uneasy feeling of someone who is oblivious to their
blind spots and has unwittingly placed themselves in difficult situations with
little self-awareness. I suspect the fault for many of these incidents - if we
are looking to place blame - lies largely with the author. Not getting a pay
raise when everyone else on the team gets one? This may raise a red flag about
management but it certainly raises a red flag about the employee in question.
Going back to a meeting after being fired? Cringeworthy - it's something you
may do early in your career before you know better, but this is clearly a
senior dev who still lacks some fundamental understanding of workplace
conventions and interpersonal communication.

I wonder if the author was raised in a very different culture, either because
he or his family was of foreign origin, or he was simply brought up with an
atypical set of cultural cues and values. These can be very difficult to
uproot, and may explain the sense of bumbling through professional situations
that the article conveys.

~~~
brational
> I wonder if the author was raised in a very different culture, either
> because he or his family was of foreign origin, or he was simply brought up
> with an atypical set of cultural cues and values. These can be very
> difficult to uproot, and may explain the sense of bumbling through
> professional situations that the article conveys.

This is what I thought as well. The author's perceptions of reality seem a bit
"off" and even naive in some cases.

~~~
julietcharlie
Honestly, the constant hints at social naivety and how the author felt
victimized by any negative comment like he lacks the proper empathy to realize
that hey, sometimes people are just having a bad day, immediately gave me the
vibe that he is somewhere on the spectrum.

------
philbarr
Don't seem that bad. Try:

\- I was once asked to go to meet a customer with our sales manager and wasn't
told why beyond, "we just need a techie there." The sales manager did his
pitch and when it came to questions someone said, "you haven't shown us the
proposed architecture," and the sales manager points to me and says, "that's
why Phil's here." I had to invent one on the spot using a whiteboard and with
a bunch of very knowledgeable people firing questions at me.

\- One developer I knew was tasked with using a font that cost a lot of money.
He was explicitly told by the directors to use the font anyway without paying
for it, which he did. Later when the company was sold this came up in
disclosure, and the directors blamed the developer saying they had no
knowledge.

\- Another developer, during their personal review, was told that they weren't
getting a pay rise but that, "it's not because you're black." She was in
tears.

~~~
xigency
While these are almost certainly bad, they are not all specifically related to
being a developer. Mainly just poor treatment of an employee.

The article had instances where a developer:

\- lost essential computer access privileges

\- was forced to re-invent technology

\- was denied chances to advance his/her careers through academia

\- felt group shaming

\- was expected to spend most of the day picking up pieces

\- was fired without review

The last one is more general but these at least have a technological slant to
them, and they do seem to be related to some kind of passive, cultural bias.
And each of the stories might have some weak points but the point is that
_some developers feel they are being treated poorly_ , which is a big deal.
This crowd is very analytical but a dismissive response is not really the
appropriate way to address these claims. (Not saying you're being dismissive,
just the general attitude of comments.)

Your comment also hints on another pattern which is, every time there are
small problems, there are going to be bigger problems underneath.

------
wobbleblob
Being treated poorly? Ha. Demand for our expertise has, as far as I can tell,
always outstripped supply. Compared to most sectors, we are treated like
royalty.

Funny war stories though, of course I have some.

One of the owners of the company I'm working for used to put his agreements
with customers and other 3rd party contacts for the week or the month in his
agenda for the last day of said week or month.

Every week, every single week, on Friday afternoon at 4:55pm he'd call: "Ah,
good thing you're still at the office. Hey, I promised <contact> that we'd
have <complicated thing> done by the end of this week. Can you take care of
it? You're awesome, thanks! Have a great week end"

(The company has grown quite a bit, and got more organized, so this no longer
happens)

~~~
AndyNemmity
The all too common, end of week, end of Friday I need x y and z done
immediately, and have a great weekend.

So infuriating.

~~~
wobbleblob
More funny than infuriating. Unless there's an actual production issue, at
weekend o' clock everyone goes home.

------
Lazare
Eh. About 1/3 of those seem bad, a 1/3 seem totally fine, and another 1/3 I'm
just confused by.

Example: HR is a function, not just a department. The fact that you don't have
a full time HR person doesn't mean that the job they would have done is going
to remain unfilled; it just means someone else has to wear the HR hat,
probably the CEO. If you're taking a week off and expecting to use sick days
rather than vacation time, a doctor's note does seem appropriate, and I have
no idea why it's relevant that its a startup with only 10 people. Being asked
to go to lunch while sick seems much dodgier, but the story presents the lack
of a dedicated HR person as the punchline, when that seems irrelevant. You
can't abuse sick leave just because the company is small.

Similarly, having your head of network operations not understand the issue
with your Cassandra cluster and just check the port responds to packets is...I
dunno, I guess it's bad? Kind of? Assuming that his job description includes
setting up Cassandra clusters, which it probably wouldn't be in many
companies, so...

On the other hand, there were enough stories there to make me feel pretty smug
about my current job. But overall, the stories feel more like zen koans than
actual stories. You read it, you stop, and you puzzle over it. It's bad that
the head of HR doesn't normally personally do exit interviews...why? Or is the
problem that the head of HR taking an interest in you? Are we meant to be
upset she isn't doing more interviews, or that she isn't doing fewer? Or is
the issue unrelated to the number of interviews? Are we meant to guess? Or the
ones about pay rises for team members; are we meant to assume that this would
normally be the author's job? Or is the complaint that it wasn't the author's
job, but should have been?

~~~
hyperpape
He said a day, not a week. And anyone who asks people with fevers to come to
work is making a big mistake.* You're not allowed to send kids with fevers to
daycare for good reason.

* Barring true "all hands on deck, no matter what" scenarios.

~~~
Lazare
> I then went home, and was sick for the rest of the week. I was then asked
> for a doctor’s certificate “for HR purpose”.

Sounds like the doctor's certificate was for taking the rest of the week off.

In any case, I agree completely about asking him to come in anyhow; it's just
weird that it didn't seem to be the focus of the story.

~~~
hyperpape
You're right. I don't know how I misread that. If he was out for a whole week,
instead of a day or two, I definitely see where the doctor's note could be
expected.

------
morgante
If these are the worst experiences someone has had as a developer, they've had
a great career. Most of these aren't even bad and many are in fact totally
what you'd expect.

> As the team lead, I was told by one of my team members that they had gotten
> a pay rise.

Depending on the company structure, "team lead" might not make you their
manager. Of course you won't know their pay if you're not their manager.

> "Ordinarily I only do exit interviews with female employees…"

It makes sense that the HR head would generally not personally engage in exit
interviews, but would do so when it's directly related to an initiative
they're personally pursuing (diversity).

------
contingencies
The thing that gets me in medium sized organizations is mixed messages from
different sides of management. I feel like poor communication tends to be the
rule here rather than the exception. This includes cases where I have been
hired as a firefighter.

The thing that gets me in large companies is backstabbing psychopaths that
ritually abuse the common assumption that everyone is working together, in
order to elbow their way ... somewhere.

If you work with a group of smart people who are able to selflessly say "Hey I
don't know about this" or "Maybe I made a mistake there, how can as a team
change the process for these decisions so that we prevent making this kind of
mistake in future?" ... treasure it.

------
FLGMwt
I'd like to take a moment to comment on the general theme of responses in this
thread. Rhetoric such as "chin up" and "it could be so much worse" and "relax"
are very commonly seen in response to those suffering from severe depression
and anxiety. Often, that approach to empathy amounts to observers summing up
the situation, projecting that they themselves wouldn't have been hurt in that
situation, and then patting the author on the head and telling them to sit
back down.

While many of us may not objectively take away "he was treated poorly" from
the author's brief stories, it is a fact that the author felt emotionally
affected by these experiences enough to share them. I think he aim to create a
forum for people in the industry who themselves feel slighted by something
that happened to them. Something something, intersectionality.

Hey Fred, thanks for sharing.

~~~
osweiller
We -- humanity in general -- judge and react to our own lot and situation by
what we _think_ everyone else endures: What we think is "normal", and then we
take offense by what we think is abnormal (which we assume must be poor
treatment or disrespect).

Hearing the common sentiment might be useful. Sympathizing with the author
simply because they claim aggrievement to what seems like _completely_ banal
situations is unlikely to be useful to anyone, most certainly the author.

------
3minus1
Kind of sounds like the OP comes into a job and is really over-eager, trying
to be helpful touching other people's servers, emailing 50 new coworkers about
an ipad, arguing with a manager in front of everyone, talking in a meeting
about a feature he doesn't fully understand. This kind of behavior can piss
people off. It's good to be enthusiastic but focus on your own shit first.
Answer questions/give help when it's solicited.

------
mooreds
That is crazy. I have been in the industry for over 15 years and only can
think of two episodes that would even compare to anything on the list. And
they were both far milder than what OP encountered.

Most places I have worked there has been a recognition that software is hard
and that developers need to be respected. (Not worshipped but respected.).

I am a white male, so maybe that plays a role? I don't know.

Not sure where the OP works (SV?) but wow. Hope he finds his way to a less
toxic environment. I certainly would have considered leaving the industry
after such experiences.

~~~
engi_nerd
Funny, his post seems like a barely toxic environment to me. But then, here
are things that have happened to me in the defense industry across several
different jobs...

* Being asked to bill to one project while working on another; both projects were for the US government. Mischarging on contracts is illegal, immoral, and unethical, and I refused to do it. Later that day my boss pulled me into the office and gave me the old "Well we don't want to fire you but we might have to if your attitude doesn't improve" speech. I asked if this speech was related to my refusal to mischarge labor. The answer: "Yes, absolutely."

* During the Fall 2013 US government shutdown, I was on travel. The contractor I was working for told me to keep working. Everyone else at the home facility was furloughed. I kept working and kept getting paid. The company gave all employees a $2500 Christmas bonus for "staying loyal" to the company. Except those of us on travel, because we had not had to lose any salary. Okay, fine. But later on the company did return the leave that people took during the furlough. So, effectively, everyone else got a paid vacation from work PLUS a $2500 bonus and I got neither.

* Regularly cursed at by aircraft crew chiefs when I ask for access to perform inspections. I have been told, "Fuck you, we don't need your shit to fly, get the fuck out of here." Funny, the flight clearances say my system has to work!

* Yelled at by a very senior manager because I did not make a significant engineering change based on a poorly worded post-it note. I had asked the note's author for email clarification and formal documentation of the change. The author refused. I notified my managers -- including the manager who yelled at me -- of the situation. They promised to take action but did nothing. Uncertain of how to proceed, I kept raising the issue at status meetings but was ignored. The failure to take action on this almost cost us a launch opportunity.

And I have many more stories of similar things. But I think I have it good
compared to huge numbers of people.

I don't think the OP, or many of the posters on this board, realize just how
good you have it.

~~~
mooreds
> I don't think the OP, or many of the posters on this board, realize just how
> good you have it.

Agreed. Being an in-demand software engineer is a gift, and I am grateful
every day that I stumbled into this career.

On the flip side, maybe you don't realize how bad you have it :) .

~~~
engi_nerd
No, I'm pretty aware of how bad my working conditions are relative to, say,
some of my friends who work at Apple or Facebook.

Things regularly happen in my world that would top _anything_ the OP has
posted about. I hate to engage in one-upmanship, but this post just seemed
very silly to me.

~~~
mooreds
> I'm pretty aware of how bad my working conditions are relative to, say, some
> of my friends who work at Apple or Facebook.

May I ask why you stay in your current working conditions then?

Are you doing work you consider to be really important? Challenging?
Lucrative?

Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Are you able to make
suggestions to improve the conditions for yourself and others? Are you locked
in because of external concerns (location, family needs, etc)?

No job is perfect (they call it "work" for a reason) but I am curious why
you'd stay at a job that is so tough.

~~~
engi_nerd
I should note that only one of the stories I told is from my current job
(being cursed at by crew chiefs). The others are from my last job, which I
left in 2014.

I'm beginning to ask myself the same questions.

Partly I am locked in due to family concerns. My wife and I have moved 3 times
in 4 years of marriage and we're both tired of moving (Each of us also moved a
couple of times in the two years immediately before becoming a couple, so we
are very tired of moving). We've just had a baby so stability is paramount.
Therefore I don't want to leave this general area. But, this is a very large
testing/research base, so there is other employment available.

The work I am doing is important, to me, but not particularly challenging. It
is very lucrative. And my suggestions are taken seriously. I pretty much
determine what I do on a day to day basis.

So it's not as bad as it could be. I do have agency here. But I'm also a
little bored.

~~~
mooreds
Thanks for the illumination. I get desiring stability.

Good luck to ya!

------
greenspot
> Being Treated Poorly?

Everyone, every employee, contractor, founder, just anyone could exactly say
this sentence at some point. All of us experienced unfair, grueling situations
in the past and it's tempting to tell this everyone.

But not everybody would tell that they have been treated poorly or write a
blog post about it. They know that there're every day people around you who
make mistakes. Mistakes which make their life harder and sometimes these
mistakes are not mistakes anymore when looking from both sides, maybe they are
just misunderstandings and maybe too many in a short time.

It's the easiest to blame others when facing difficulties but some of us don't
do this, they learn, develop empathy and just move on because they know:
blaming, complaining and negativity won't solve anything. It makes you just
feel even worse.

I don't want to judge about your situation in any way but I just like to
express that the most difficult thing career-wise is _dealing with people_ and
it's the easiest to blame people when things don't go the way you expected.
This is what I did for too many years—blaming others—until I realized that I
am the sole person who can be made responsible for my situation.

------
vacri
I've worked a variety of jobs over my life, and I have to say that I find it
funny the degree to which software developers whine over how difficult they
have it. Software development is one of the cushiest jobs around. Indoor work;
no heavy lifting; little to no customer contact; little to no shift work
(unless you're in ops); generally intellectually stimulating; easygoing dress
code; generally get to be constructive and creative; very well paid; self-
trained is an entirely viable way to get that paycheck (not a lot of self-
trained lawyers out there...); generally easy office life; generally get the
better computing equipment; conferences are frequent perks of the job; you're
not on your feet for your whole shift unless you choose to be; occasional
option to work from home; skills are in demand... the list goes on and on.

Every time I see one of these articles, I wonder if the author ever spent much
time working a menial job.

~~~
toast_coder
I agree with a lot of your points here. But lets not give the viewing public
the idea that being a programmer is an 'easy' job.

First programmers suffer from the same lack of loyalty that permeates most
companies these days. They can and will be let go pretty much the moment it is
financially convenient to to so. As a software developer, it burns that much
more when you were a large factor in the reason the organization was
successful.

Second, since people can be self trained, and they are, this is a hyper
competitive field to work in. Everyone says they can do everything, and
resumes are no help in distinguishing candidates. While at same time many
people directing the work of software developers have no idea what they are
asking for in terms of complexity, while being given business driven time
frames.

This is a hyper competitive field that inflicts serious mental stress on the
people performing at high levels. I have many a day where I long for the
simplicity of a'menial job' where only really thing you need to be successful
is a positive attitude.

~~~
vacri
But your first point is largely the problem I have with these screeds - these
are problems with being an _employee_ , not a _developer_. It's not like
developers get _less_ loyalty than other employees.

I agree that development is not _easy_ , as it requires considerable skill to
be good (and hence the big paypacket), but the skill required for the job is
somewhat orthogonal to working environment.

I dunno. I've worked in retail, phone tech support / general support, as a
medical tech, and had a ton of friends in hospitality, and I'd rather deal
with the rare error like zer00eyz had than deal with the general public every
day. I'm working 12-hour days at the moment due to crunch time, coming home
exhausted, and I still would not trade this job for any of the other jobs I've
had, judged purely on work environment.

------
progressive_dad
Working on a high profile tech team and project. We had the most brilliant and
insufferable devops engineer I've ever met. I don't mean just your standard
grump overworked sys admin. This guy was a treasure.

1) Previously all engineers had 20% time and would work on personal projects.
We had a ton of extra servers lying around and it was fairly simple to
provision some space to work on an idea. His first week he went to the CTO and
had 20% time axed and demanded that all provisioning go directly through him
and all physical servers be nuked from orbit.

2) They got him a personal secretary. He routinely had her go 5 blocks to get
him gummy bears, buy him a waffle iron and make him waffles in the office, and
routinely made sexist comments.

3) Op sec. We would have media come by the office once in a while so this guy
instituted a policy of "security through shame" If you didn't have 2factor
auth on your email he would send you snide comments. If you didn't use full
disk encryption you had to go to a mandatory course on personal security. If
you left your laptop unlocked at your desk to go the bathroom it was prank
emails and screwing with your settings. On the 3rd time he would confiscate
your laptop and lock it in a personal safe he had under his desk for the day.

4) This guy would use our internal channels and slack to shame anyone non-
technical. One time the personal assistant to a VP in another department
accidentally posted a listing asking if anyone had a bed for sale to the
channel for asking about restaurants in the area. 24hours of shame where he
got the entire tech team to participate emailing everyone in the company if
they had any food shaped furniture for sale. Apparently she broke down crying
and had to go home for the day.

5) Despite the fact that we had no QA team this guy refused to deploy hotfixes
even for critical launches. You got one day a week to launch code. You got one
chance. If there was anything wrong it was, "roll back and try next week."
Unless of course the issue was you needed a CDN cache clear or there was
something wrong with the build. Then you could email him (directly after the
deployment) and have him refuse to respond or believe you for about an hour
before he would actually do anything.

I could go on. this guy was a king turd.

~~~
tristor
The guy sounds like a jerk, but at least #3 seems to have come from a good
place even if it might have been handled better. Security is absolutely
essential and the weakest link is the human in most cases. That's why its
important to build good security habits. Implementing policies and using
software to enforce them only goes so far. His intention there was no doubt to
try to instill some sense of personal security in the people involved that
they might hold with them in the long term by calling them out and sending
them to training.

The rest of that sounds like reasons to fire the guy though. Although, having
been in ops my whole career, I've never had a secretary, so it seems to me
like this guy likely had a hookup with somebody in senior leadership so was
probably untouchable/unfireable. I've dealt with the type before where it was
somebody important's cousin or son who "knows computers", and suddenly they're
running the IT department. On the plus side, at least it sounded like the guy
wasn't incompetent.

~~~
progressive_dad
#3 is the most problematic in my mind. Personal security is absolutely
essential and it is the personal responsibility of everyone.

This one most clearly shows his utter lack of empathy, nuance, understanding
what a leadership role means, disrespect for basic humanity. This is the one
that finally made me quit. He confiscated a guy's PERSONAl laptop that he had
express permission to use.

I mean, this stuff is currently in the courts being decided, but (to use a not
so subtle metaphor) he's gonna fall squarely on the side of, "Its my office
bathroom I'll take upskirt shots if I want!" ?

~~~
tristor
Wow, yeah that's definitely crossing the line. Personal equipment is just
that. The company should have no say over how you use it or what it contains,
only whether or not its allowed on the network. If there was a security issue
with the laptop, it should simply have been blocked from network access (or
never given access to begin with). Taking someones's personal laptop and
holding it hostage falls on the wrong side of the line for 'theft', I would
say.

------
askyourmother
The takeaway is that work is a lot to do with working with other people, not
just waiting for github to come back online, or waiting for the 5gb download
to compile stuff on OSX.

People are far complicated than code, so we should take the time and make the
effort to build and maintain relationships with our colleagues (professional
relationships - shame it often needs spelling out!).

Treat others as you would be treated is a good start.

We can't always choose our colleagues, but we can choose to make the best of
each and every situation.

It is complicated enough where the team decided to build the project upon the
sinking sands of npm dependencies - at least make sure you are fighting
together, not each other!

------
lujim
This is more of a collection of hurt feelings. I didn't read them all but most
of them seemed to result in a bruised ego.

------
krzrak
Interesting read, but some of the entries are... weird. For example, what's
wrong with requiring doctor's note for whole-week absence? Some of them seem
to be submitted by someone who may be considered a little bit to much
entitled.

~~~
LesZedCB
Maybe they had to take the whole week off because they were required to come
in instead of rest on that first day. Maybe it would've only been two days
otherwise.

------
dccoolgai
The thing that bugs me the most aren't incidents like these (which honestly
don't seem all that bad) but general "patterns". One I've seen pop up again
and again is "ask me about something > I give you my professional advice >
ignore it > come to me after you screwed things up by ignoring my advice > now
I have to fix it". Have seen this at every one of my jobs as a
developer/manager.

------
catmanjan
Alright, I've re-read all of them and I still can't find one that stands on
its own as a legitimate complaint.

~~~
hathym
"My manager, who was the general manager, wanted to fire two of my developers.
His tactic for firing the senior developer was to make the senior developer
role redundant and offering the dev a junior developer role instead."

I didn't read it all, but I think this one can be described as poor treatment
against the author's coworker

~~~
repomies691
Difficult to comment on with these light details, but is firing also poor
treatment? Sometimes companies need to fire, for whatever reasons. I think it
is good if some other role is offered instead.

"His tactic for firing the senior developer was to make the senior developer
role redundant"

How do you make a role redundant? Usually it is about what the business needs,
the people inside the company don't make roles needed or redundant, but the
business and how it develops defines the needs for varying roles. For example,
if customers suddenly stop buying and decide to go ellewhere, everyone inside
the company can be considered redundant.

~~~
hathym
putting an employee in a closet in a hope to destroy its moral and force him
to quit on his own? poor treatment is a light description IMHO.

~~~
jschwartzi
I wish I worked in a closet. Then at least I wouldn't have people looking at
my screens all day.

------
LukeB_UK
A number of these are simply poor communication and some of them are actually
the fault of the author.

~~~
jacobush
Possibly. You never know with any story at all, but these stories are not even
compelling and engaging when taken at face value.

------
meapix
The author must be keeping record somewhere of those things. You can't just
remember that stuff over the years. If that's the case, maybe the problem is
with you.

I had couple of those things but can't really tell the details. You're not
happy, just let go and move on, don't even need to send notice, just don't
show up the next day.

------
gwbas1c
Fred, if you're reading this:

When I read this article, it's not very flattering towards you. The attitudes
expressed by your colleges imply a high amount of frustration.

------
zeemonkee3
These sound extremely mild compared to some other jobs. Try being a high
school teacher, waiter or call center worker for a day.

------
Mimu
One of the story in the comments is awesome (from jakob). Dude got unleashed
to a client without the necessary knowledge, client got angry and asked for a
replacement, a senior came and actually teach the junior. I expected the story
to end poorly and it actually was a great happy ending. Would read again.

------
kazinator
> _One of our servers needed to be rebuilt, so trying to be a team player and
> help, I started installing some basic packages. The senior dev on the team
> turned to me, straight faced and enunciated in a deep and cold voice: “don’t
> touch anything on it, this is my server!“_

This could be deadpan humor. The developer didn't realize he was being
intimidating to a junior. You _can_ say that to a long-time colleague,
especially if you have a history of busting each others' chops that way.

Someone who might have once been a very confident, blasé junior doesn't
understand what it's like to be an intimidated junior.

Not an excuse, of course, but geeks are not always good at reading situations
like this, even if they are sociable, with a functioning sense of humor and
all.

He might have been thinking, "I'm treating this fellow like one of the old
timers!"

Why I suspect it was just chop busting is that the server isn't really his
(even in the sense of being personally assigned: because then why would anyone
else notice that it went down and want to fix it?). If you really want a
server for your own use, you fire off a virtual machine, or find some box to
up under your desk. If that goes down, nobody knows about it; no junior is
going to be spontaneously fixing it for you. Also, in general, nobody in their
right mind gives a crap about some silly server at work. It's just "I'm
putting on theatre, pretending I'm irrationally possessive about this stupid
server".

------
projectileboy
I've definitely had some of these moments. But I always try to remember that I
am the common factor in all of my bad relationships.

------
vinceguidry
I made this post about a week ago:

> Only if your industry is capital rather than labor intensive, in which case
> you'll have elaborate procedures in place for safeguarding and maintaining
> your infrastructure.

> For everyone else, a certain amount of breakage is expected. When things
> break, there are generally manual processes that can be put into place to
> keep business moving.

I've been mulling over that for a week now, and these stories have brought to
surface the idea that software and technological infrastructure is actually
capital and not labor and should be treated as such. Developers are like
highly specialized factory machines. Unfortunately, because they are human and
not actually machines, they're capable of being repurposed with little more
than a whim. Imagine taking a machine designed to sort apples and repurposing
it to de-core apples instead. It's going to take more trouble than it's worth;
just buy a de-coring machine.

I guess I've just been playing too much Factorio.

------
yousaidwhat
Interesting comments here on Fred's experiences. I agree with some commenters
that more context is needed, but I think the key point(s) missed. This is
about civility,tact,compassion, humility and communication. Civility is not
something you innately have,but is learned (or not in some cases) and quite
frankly many people do not know what that is. Tact clearly was not used in
some instances. Compassion was lacking in the perceived arrogance and
defensiveness shown. Humility can go hand in hand with compassion in realizing
you are not the "shit".

Communication, or the lack thereof, can contribute to the situations that
occurred and that too is a learned behavior and not innate.

I can empathize with the situations and it is always good to be aware as a way
to foster your growth and understanding.

------
drumttocs8
I'm trying very hard to share your outrage... I am trying... but it really
seems most of these are you being annoyed that you annoyed someone.

------
lukeholder
To be honest, most of these seem like half the story.

~~~
repomies691
Yep, very light on details...

------
mbostleman
Software developers are at the top end of pay in our current economy. They
often have (or easily can have) the flexibility of working remotely. There is
a high demand for them and an acute shortage of supply. For the foreseeable
future the chance of being unemployed is effectively zero. On top of all this,
two thirds of them do not need to invest the capital or the lost opportunity
cost in a college education. The remaining third probably doesn't either.

In this situation, if employers aren't the ones being treated poorly then
something is wrong. And any developer that is complaining needs to have a
better understanding of the power that they have and how to use it.

------
igl
We had a talented CS-student intern once.

They seated her in the marketing office away from the developers.

FML for developers?

~~~
cm3
Isn't this more discrimination than anything else?

------
kazinator
> _Excited to have had my overseas conference talk proposal accepted, I asked
> the new head of our department who had joined our company for only a month
> or two for travel approval. Fully expected a pad on the back, I was
> surprised to have been told that I cannot go, with the reason being “it is
> just not a good time”._

What?

"Travel approval" means that you're expensing the travel to the company, and
the expense requires approval. For that to make sense, you have to attend the
conference as a representative of the company, furthering your company
business in some way.

Maybe this developer should have asked for a vacation. Failing that, unpaid
leave of absence.

------
rdez6173
These anecdotes seem a little light on detail, so it's hard to really see how
Fred was treated poorly.

Through the course of my career there have been personality conflicts. I think
this is natural and common. In the world of startups it can be even more
dramatic.

The bottom line is that you should be confident in your skills, but not be an
asshole (and you should expect the same from your colleagues). And, unless you
have an equity stake, you can always move on.

It sound like Fred did this - he dealt with some standard workplace BS, then
moved on when it was untenable. Good on him.

I just wish the examples were a bit more detailed and illustrative of the
post's title.

------
ianwalter
Good post Fred. I thought the examples were good and I didn't have trouble
understanding the point of the article. It made me think about similar ways
that I've been mistreated and ways that I've mistreated others, especially
junior devs. Software development is truly an exercise in patience and as an
industry we need to put more value on some of the softer skills. I can speak
from experience that positive environments lead to better outcomes.

------
stormbuilder
1) Find me a profession where people don't have grievances

2) Considering that so many companies slavishly build their whole culture on
servicing engineers, color me skeptical.

~~~
acdha
> 2) Considering that so many companies slavishly build their whole culture on
> servicing engineers, color me skeptical.

Look deeper at the respect, and its most common proxies – money and hours:
some places do seriously try to tackle developer productivity but there are
quite a few where e.g. the average mid-level manager makes more than the most
senior developer or the free food / foosball table is expected to make up for
routine 60+ hour weeks or inability to fix long-term structural problems.

This is particularly of interest for younger developers: look at what happens
to the older people at your company – do their careers mysteriously stall
after their mid-30s, do they start getting flack for leaving on time to pick
up their kids or actually using vacation/sick leave, etc. Most places say they
value a good working environment but some of them are banking on you not
taking them up on it.

------
tdkl
Responds here are pretty "interesting" compared to carefully crafted ones in
another trending HN thread [1]. They're both daily CS/IT problems, except one
is somehow about gender and the other should "man up, because masculine talk".

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11427467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11427467)

------
swalsh
Whatever you feel about the article, Let me recommend this book to ALL
engineers. The title is kind of bad, but the book has made me a much better
team lead.

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/0671027034)

------
thr45345
My corporation had 10 people in Ireland and 4 people in India, Teams worked on
different products. Entire indian team quit within 10 days for better offer.
Their project had strict deadline in 8 months and it was already 4 months
behind the schedule.

My boss reassigned me to their project, in exchange for work-from-home and
some other perks. I put the project back on schedule and released it on time.
I did that alone, help was promised but never assigned.

At performance review that year my work was "acceptable". My (indian) project
was delivered on schedule (haha), but I missed a few key meetings on my Irish
project.

Latter I had problem with my manager. While I was slaving on Indian project,
Irish team was learning new technology. I was expected to know this
technology, since I was technicaly part of Irish team while they were learning
it.

I quit shortly after that. Now I do remote consulting

------
shams93
Crap happens on any job but having been in the industry 25 years i can say
that poor tteatment of people is often the norm. Everybody in the startup
arena is bing pushed to the wall in terms of hours so you see more negative
behavior because youre often dealing with sleep deprived people who are making
poir choices based on lack of sleep etc.... The competition in the industry is
so vicioys a job can often feel like being a contestant on Game of Thrones.
But the bottom line is the way many startups are run leads to poor decision
making poor treatment of people and ultimately failure for the business. These
arent sucessful activities this kind of abuse you document is really the
result if poor structuring. A startup is like a boat if its poorly structured
it will fall apart in the most vicious way wjen you start hitting stormy seas.

------
codingdave
These sound pretty minor compared to some of the things I've seen. But I'm not
sure that a group of devs trying to one-up each on with horror stories is very
productive. What matters is how you deal with it when you feel something is
wrong.

First of all, trying to see both sides of the story is often helpful, as is
forgiving people for their tone and listening to what they are actually
saying.

But ultimately, after you have tried to resolve any differences or conflicts,
compromised where appropriate, pushed for change where possible, no job will
be perfect. And if the problems resulted in your being let go, then just walk
away and move on. Or if you are at a job with problems, you are left with a
very simple choice...

1) Accept the problems, and do your job.

2) Do not accept the problems, and leave your job.

------
paulojreis
Yeah, having been dealt a very nice hand career-wise (i.e. being a software
developer today) is really making us divas. And I say "divas" refraining
myself; there other "names", more derogatory but also more explicit, to apply
here.

------
vmateixeira
[http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/82/8273ea559a925938b1fefd3ee7444...](http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/82/8273ea559a925938b1fefd3ee74441ecae4372428dd206f88355dba99d587acd.jpg)

------
mpweiher
How about:

Boss: You didn't do X.

Dev.: I did, here is all the stuff I did.

Boss: This is OK, but it's your fault I didn't know about it.

Dev.: I sent you daily status e-mails. Here they are.

Boss: I see you did, but it's your fault because I don't read my e-mails.

Dev.: ?

Or:

I assign task X to a member of my team before my vacation. Boss pulls that
developer from task X without informing or consulting me (I would have been
available on E-Mail). When I return, boss dings me for task X not having
gotten done.

??

------
beerbajay
> access was revoked so I had to log into the hosting dashboard to reset the
> root password

You should have asked your coworkers why your access was revoked. Of course,
they probably should have communicated the reason in advance.

------
dsmithatx
Somehow I don't think the author ever expected this to be number one on HN.
Having read the article I'm not going to critique this. I do think it shows
many people up vote articles based on the title alone. I love HN and find a
lot of news here I can't get anywhere else. However, I do feel it's time to
revise the voting system and question why great articles at certain times of
the day fall through the cracks while other not so great articles can rise to
the top.

------
abpavel
Network infrastructure mean IP, not "everything I use". Network operations are
responsible for the network infrastructure. Cassandra is not network
infrastructure, it's just another application, one of tens of thousands that
network support. Network infrastructure is IP, and TCP is the highest layer
just for the testing purposes, to ensure there is no ACL or load sharing hash
issue that would put the packet on a sub performance link.

------
sirsuki
> …raise the awareness that kinder communication styles might be better
> received.

Hear hear! I've always wondered why commonly the same attitudes and
communication styles that developers employ to each other would be considered
shocking if they were employed to a significant other to say the least.

Communication comes up a lot in relationships but rarely in the work place. It
is only recently that psychological safety became a known term thanks to
Google.

------
puppetmaster3
This is normal treatment of developers world wide as developers are viewed by
MBA as blue collar workers.

What is the best way for me to avoid this?

~~~
Shengbo
Become one of them.

------
kelukelugames
People do and say stupid things all of the time. Each of us belongs to that
group too.

With that said, I'm always surprised when HR or management say stupid things
even though it happens all of the time. I still try to sympathize because exit
interviews are awkward. I noticed managers take exits personally and receive
bruised egos.

------
kazinator
> _Reluctantly obliged, I came into the office, went out for lunch with
> colleagues but I was so sick I could not eat anything and can barely sit
> straight. I then went home, and was sick for the rest of the week…_

That's just completely stupid; that manager was basically asking to have
himself and others infected.

------
jordache
none of these stories had proper context...

difficult to feel empathy for the anonymous authors behind these anecdotal
snippets

~~~
jsnider3
> anonymous authors

There's only one author and his name is Fred Wu. Agreed that there's not
enough context.

------
joe_momma
I think in general there is a lot of people with very different backgrounds
that work in an industry where standards are self defined.

Team leaders need to invest into their listening skills and stop thinking they
are all Steve Jobs, and that they have to be an asshole just to get anything
done.

~~~
ConfuciusSay02
But Erlich told me I need to be an asshole to get ahead?

------
nxzero
Reminds me of Rashōmon, a short story:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashōmon_(short_story)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashōmon_\(short_story\))

Which is to say, this strikes me as a very first world problem, one sided,
etc.

------
shade23
On a similar note .A more crowdsourced data website :
[http://clientsfromhell.net/](http://clientsfromhell.net/) PS:These are
majorly designers ranting

------
ryanmarsh
This guy wouldn't last a day in a construction site. Assertive speech isn't
necessarily hurtful speech.

------
happytrails
This seems fairly tame... How about folks yelling at you to finish your
project and verbally berating you.

------
cm3
How much of this is due to non-existent organization (not necessarily unions)?

------
deeteecee
lots of bad attitude, bad senior devs but without context of a longer chain of
events, can't consider its called "being treated poorly" rather than "a lot of
assholes work around me"

------
gjvc
a lot of this may be summed up in "real power is never given, it is always
taken"

------
virtuexru
I want my 5 minutes back please.

------
eggman
everyone can get their share of being treated poorly; there is enough to go
around.

------
alistproducer2
Jesus, I can't think of a better example of "1st world problems." Boo hoo.

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments that just put someone
else down.

I'm sure there's a thoughtful comment lurking in there if you want to take the
time to make it; if you don't, that's fine, but then please don't post at all.

