

Stalemate: Are you building a culture of silence? - marlenac
http://morgamic.com/2012/04/26/stalemate-are-you-building-a-culture-of-silence/

======
aantix
I've run into these issues again and again throughout my career and personal
relationships. My twenties were especially difficult. I may now only be
realizing how much my very early years of my parents bickering, stone walling,
and passive aggressive behaviors we're the very habits I ended up reproducing.

I think I've made strides. I've started recording the rules I've adopted for
my emotional life; I'm calling it my emotional framework. :) Feel free to
fork, etc.

<https://github.com/aantix/emotional_framework>

~~~
morgamic
Thanks for sharing, I'll check it out. I think the "Resolving Internal Issues"
part is valuable and a place where I struggle myself quite a bit. Keeping a
living document like this is a great idea.

------
imroot
I just left an environment that was eerily similar (on a point to point level
of the article) a few weeks ago, after management started panicing that their
new product (which is a pivot of the code base) was slipping (almost day-for-
week in some aspects). It was getting so bad that only one of the developers
would actually show up in the office (and everyone else working from home)
just so that they didn't have to deal with the awkward silences. Nobody wants
to speak up or admit responsibility, so mistakes are swept under the rug.

When you remove the ability for individuals to speak openly and freely (either
because of pedestals, political reasons, or silos), you lose the dynamic that
allows for true innovation to foster with your development team. Calling an
all-company meeting to say that "We're not going to promote anyone to any new
position, we're going to hire everyone externally" doesn't feed the
team/company spirit, it makes you feel like you're in a dead-end job...and
when you feel that you have no motivation/skin in the game, your quality of
work, life, and support start to diminish.

Ultimately, I started seeing that I was becoming miserable in spending any
time working, and I started to notice the quality of my own work starting to
diminish as I started to take on less and less risky moves; something that is
completely unacceptable to me. While I've left without a formal offer in hand,
(and I'm confident that I'll find something that works for me) I've found that
I've been in a BETTER mood, knowing that I don't need to deal with the stress,
the mis-management, and the 'zombification' of my former coworkers. I'm
happier -- and that's what matters the most to me -- and I've now noticed
first hand what the warning signs are so I can avoid places like this in the
future.

~~~
morgamic
Sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you're happier and I hope you find something
soon.

Getting ahead of it, obsessing about culture and addressing things before they
get bad are so important for leaders to do but sometimes it gets lost in the
shuffle... :(

------
kiba
They sound true, but are they really true?

It's one thing to dispense advice, it's another to have it grounded in cold
hard facts.

~~~
morgamic
I think there's certainly some conjecture mixed in with experience, but if you
want something a little more focused I wrote this a while back:
[http://blog.mozilla.org/webdev/2011/08/08/pragmatic-
growth-f...](http://blog.mozilla.org/webdev/2011/08/08/pragmatic-growth-
from-2-to-40-in-4-years/)

The "Build a culture people want to be a part of" section is probably most
relevant.

But really, most of the concepts are so simple that you could find them in a
children's video about bullying:
<http://www.brainpopjr.com/health/relationships/bullying/>

~~~
AUmrysh
That mozilla one is especially great and covers some things I've worried about
with work culture. Especially great are the give people credit and laugh
rules.

