ASSASSINS! Dealing With Developers That Attack Your Character

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Hey folks, I'm just leaving the office on Monday night. Got to get home for the dev leader live stream, which by the way, if you haven't checked that out yet, by the time this video is up, you've missed this week's. But every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific on my main YouTube channel, Dev Leader, do a live stream there covering topics that come from code commute, which is cool because if you're watching this and you like these videos, you can come check out a live stream on the same type of stuff. Um, we are going to go to Reddit for a topic today. This is from the experience devs subreddit. I'm not going to read out the post because I'm driving a motor vehicle and that would be absolutely reckless. Um, but this is about um the poster was saying, you know, how do you deal with people that are basically like obsessed with arguing or trying like always creating an argument out of something?

And uh they give a couple of examples about how an individual's like basically in meetings trying to correct people um you know just like jumping in to like say no that's wrong or whatever and they described it interestingly I don't I feel like I don't hear this phrase that often but feels like a good term for it. They said character assassination. It seems like the goal of this person is to basically just put someone else down. And I thought that was a really interesting way to put it. So, wanted to talk about that. I think it'd be an interesting topic. I don't really know how far we'll get into this. I don't have uh I have a little bit of lived experience with this that I'll go through. We'll see what's up. Um, and a friendly reminder to folks, if you want questions answered, leave them below in the comments with software engineering, career topics, that kind of stuff.

Or if you want to be kept anonymous, you can send them into dev leader on any social media platform you can find me. Uh, happy to try and uh get your stuff answered in a video response. If you message me, then uh I can keep you anonymous and you can write as much context and detail as you want. Uh, sometimes if you've watched my other videos, you'll notice if I get a general question, I give a general answer because I'm trying to cover as much as I can. Um, but if you ask something really specific with a lot of context, then I can try to narrow in on them. Okay, we got about it says 37 minutes to get home, but we'll see if we get in the fast lane if we can cut that down. Um, this channel almost covers my fast lane bills. It's about 50%.

Uh someday, someday we can afford the fast lane. And uh yeah, so I think one thing I want to start off by saying is that in your career, you will absolutely notice all sorts of different personalities. Um you'll see themes come up too. So this kind of behavior where people and I'm not a psychologist. I don't know enough about sort of the background on this stuff to be able to talk about it like super intelligently like here's why. This is just observations from my lived experiences. But you'll see patterns come up. Uh you know one of the really common ones is the intelligent right? This is a a common thing. Um, unfortunately we have someone who's like very very smart but also like I don't know like they steamroll everything. You can't really have a say. Um, maybe sometimes they're kind of doing this character assassination stuff, but I think you can have also just like people that are Oh, there's a an ambulance or a fire truck or something.

I don't see it though. fire truck. Beep beep. That's cool. Um, yeah, I think you can get these people that are kind of like character assassins, but I think the what I wanted to touch on again from my experience is that I don't always know if the intention is to be a character assassin or if it's just like the behavior we observe. So, when we say a phrase like a character assassin, it seems like it's intentionally trying to cut someone down. Um, and I feel like yes, I I have experienced that or observed it. I've heard of people talking about this, especially I'm not going to like I have heard about uh sort of people talk about companies that it's pretty common to have this kind of thing. I don't want to just like bash companies without even knowing, but I've heard of some big tech companies where people talk about them this way.

um you know it painting things with uh you know broad strokes and huge generalizations. Who knows? But um I've heard of that. But I've also seen people that do this kind of thing that was described in this post where they're like they they almost just need to like jump in and like try to correct things or it's almost like they just need to have I don't know some say in something and I don't know how to explain it. It's like it's almost like they'll disagree with it just to make sure they're part of the conversation or something. And I think that this is not like a not really like an intentional like character assassination thing. Um I can't really drive. This intersection is blocked. Okay, green light. It's a weird intersection to explain, but basically there's only a short distance between me and the next light and we're already backed up, so we'll make it through.

But yeah, I I've I've seen pro in my experience probably more of the latter where it's just someone who has like again I don't know enough about the what's going on under the hood for these personality types, but um not trying to be malicious. It's just like they're finding ways to get into the conversation and have like it's almost like they need the last word or they need some input. Um it's it feels kind of bizarre when you see the pattern happening cuz you're like why is this person doing that? Um but I wanted to call out I've seen this difference between like what I would call like like looks like malicious behavior versus just like sort of an oddity. Um maybe they're rooted in the same thing. I don't know. Um, again, that's beyond beyond me. I'm just a just a computer nerd, right? That's it.

This guy's got to move. Get out of my way. I got places to be. Um, okay. So, let's talk about some examples. Um, I'll go through a little bit of what I've seen. So, my first probably ex I'm trying to think if it's even before I started working. I'm sure this probably came up in in university at some point. It It must have I have not put enough thought into this. I just thought about this now, but this must have come up in school. Um, I can't recall though. But I I feel like now that I'm thinking about this, there's probably some examples from university like classmates that might do this. Again, not not to be malicious, but to like do this thing where they're in the conversation. They need to say that you're wrong or that's not quite right. And when I give you my example from work, I think you'll kind of see like this funny uh thing that happens.

But so maybe in school sure but in my experience the first one that I can remember like vividly remember this scenario was um we had an intern and this intern was very smart. He was uh you know really man this car is like boxing me in. Get out of here. The same car that wasn't letting me in is not letting me out. Um, so this intern was like very technical, right? Very very intelligent person. Um, but he he did this thing where like as described, I don't think it was a character assassin, but he was constantly like, "No, no, no, like here's how it is." And you couldn't have a conversation with him without it happening. So very repeated pattern. Um, and my sort of observation of this or like the way that I would interpret this is like um he's it's it's almost like he's looking for validation.

So he would say things like, you know, that's that's not right. Here's how it is. And you'd be kind of like looking at him like, that's actually like that's just what I said. You just said it the same thing in a different way. uh or or you quite literally misunderstood what I said and you just repeated sort of the same thing. Um, and I can the part that I remember vividly was there was this conversation that we were having and um, he was part of the conversation and he was basically arguing and and when I say arguing I mean like not like fighting but like debating with someone else like and the volume of voices would get very escalated. It was kind of funny to watch. um but was doing this thing where he's like, "No, no, no, it's this." And the other person would escalate, "No, no, no, it's this." And um what he didn't realize was that he was doing this thing.

And the other person was sitting there being like, "Dude, I'm not disagreeing with you on this. Like everything you're saying and you keep saying no, like I am I'm saying the same thing as you." And we had a a co colleague of mine uh super super funny guy and I remember him just getting completely frustrated at this. And this guy would speak his mind all the time. Um had the best laugh, like super contagious laugh. And he just stood there and was like, "Look, man." He's like, "He's agreeing with you." you and had to shout it at this guy because he couldn't realize that he was just trying to argue or it seemed like he was just trying to argue. Again, I don't fully understand why. I think it was because it was almost like he if he didn't get the final word in, then he was invalidated somehow.

Or if he was silent in a conversation, then he was invalidated somehow. Um, I don't know if that's actually how that works, but that's how I observe that in conversations with him that he needed to do that to be validated and then would run into these funny situations where people are like, "Hey man, like I don't know why you're arguing with me. Like, I don't even know why this argument is happening because I am agreeing with the words you're saying." Um, it's just a very funny moment where someone had someone else, a third party had to shout it at him. Um, very awkward, very funny. Um, anyway, that's an example of someone who I don't think they had any malicious intent, not a character assassin. I think this was more like sort of a inter I don't know, like a personal issue that they were dealing with.

personality trait. I don't know. Um but anyway, kind of funny. So the um the thing that I wanted to highlight there though is like the people sometimes do this even when um I can't remember what I was saying before exactly, but they're doing this even when they're not disagreeing with someone. um they maybe they perceive it as they're disagreeing, but uh it's it's just very odd. Um now when we talk about a character assassin and this might look similar, right? But I think what it comes down to is the motivation is different. And I've seen I've seen this kind of thing happen where someone is trying to to put you on the spot um to basically I don't know like I don't maybe they're trying to make you look stupid or they're trying to invalidate you and maybe this is how those other people feel right that I was just explaining.

Maybe they feel invalidated in conversations for some reason and then they have to do this thing where um let me let me start a disagreement somehow and then get the final word so that I'm validated. Maybe that's what's happening. But with the character assassins, it kind of seems like where it feels like there's malicious intent. Like why else would you be doing what you're doing if not to put me down or to put soand so down? Um, this could come across, I think, sometimes like people are passing blame like, well, I'm not responsible for it, but like so and so over here, uh, you might hear this like throwing people under the bus. So, I think that type of personality trait can kind of creep in here, too. Maybe that's not the same as a character assassin the way this person explained it.

The example they had in the Reddit post is around like technical implementations trying to basically call someone out and saying like, "No, you don't understand how it works." And they're like, "Yeah, I do, buddy." Um, but when you do this thing where you're throwing people under the bus, so to speak, you're kind of in front of people saying like, "I don't know, like so and so's fault. Like, here you go. Like, let's all look at them and point to them and they're to blame. Um, I have had this experience a couple times in my career. I would I don't know if I could characterize the individuals though as being character assassins. I feel like I have had assassination attempts on my character and um I don't I don't deal with that very well. That's uh that's one of the things that I I struggle with personally.

I've told this story before um and it's one of I don't know it's one of my favorite memories I guess of of someone what felt like tried to throw me under the bus would do a an assassination attempt on my character and um the long story short is that basically someone made a you know they were trying to say like they're not responsible and to blame me for it for some some issue that happened in uh in code having to get changed. Like we had to revert some fix or something. And uh basically this person was like made a false claim and the false claim was such that it was going to put me on the spot to be to blame for it. And uh I was sitting there with my team at the time and in in this room with our our manager or VP or something.

I can't remember the the titles at the time, but um yeah, it was just like putting me on the spot and I had to you could ask I could call my team right now and they would tell you that like I had to take a really deep breath. This is in the video I talked about this. I was talking about breathing and how like taking a deep breath saved my career because um yeah like like I said I when people are I'm totally fine if people want to debate things I think it's good I think we need to be able to do that right um even today uh was having a meeting with uh two guys from my team and one of the guys joined late so we were kind of catching them up on what we were discussing so I repeated a claim that

I made like a statement my perspective on something and the guy let me finish and he said I I actually disagree with you on that and what I didn't do was be like no well screw you or whatever because he's not saying like well you must be dumb or like you don't know what you're talking about he was very much like here's my take on it and then we could have a constructive conversation about it and when we go through conversations like that I was like hey I I think we're talking about the original framing of this in a different way. So, absolutely, I can see your perspective on this. Let me adjust what I said to align with that framing a little bit better. We still don't have to agree on it. Maybe we still disagree on it fundamentally. That's okay. But at least now the framing can be adjusted.

So that to me is like a really constructive way to bring up things where like, you know, if you're going to disagree about something, fine. But when you're when the intention seems like, I'm not here to progress the conversation. I'm basically here to end the conversation by by throwing you under the bus or invalidating you and just leaving you out to dry. I think that's not cool. So in my scenario that I was explaining um was basically like take a deep breath because you know that person is is there to to basically attack my character. Um they were not interested in progressing the conversation. They were essentially there to say like nope like their fault not mine like mic drop. But you can't really do that if you don't have the right data. Uh, and it's just factually incorrect. So, bit of an awkward conversation that one.

Um, but I had to take my deep breath and then sort of present the counter evidence that's like, you know, what you're about to try and mic drop on is just not actually the real data. So, no. Um, but yeah, very very awkward moment for me in my career. Uh glad I took that deep breath because I probably would have said some I would have regretted just to be honest. I was it was a it was very close. Um, I have since then had another situation where I had uh someone in a leadership position relative to me um do something kind of similar where they were saying um essentially like you know what like why was like in front of a group of people like why was this not addressed kind of thing like almost like you should have known better or I'm not going to get into the details of it cuz it's not not going to help anything and does it's not really relevant.

But essentially putting me on the spot in front of a group of people and um the again the problem is like the intention of that is not to progress the conversation. um if they wanted that conversation to progress, they would have asked about it, like been genuinely curious about, hey, like what is up with that or like don't don't we have a thing that does X and what's the state of that or you know, again, be curious about it. But when it's presented like you should have known better or something like that, I think that that's not really territory for advancing anything in a positive way. Now, don't get me wrong, the the words that were used were not you should have known better, but the framing was like this is your responsibility. You know, why clearly you're not doing something about this. Why is that the case?

Um, and again, I don't I don't deal very lightly with that because that is, in my opinion, a character assassination attempt. Um, and I don't tolerate it. Like I I think that that's one of the that's one of the things like as an adult I've talked about this on live streams by the way. So again to plug the live streams, you'll get more you get kind of like more raw conversations like this, but that's something that I I just don't deal with. Um, so in in that specific example, instead of me You know, like I had to take a deep breath, Nick. But having to try to call out to the person without doing the same thing back to them, I think is important. The feeling I get when someone does that to me is like this is how it feels. I don't take the same action, right?

But how it feels is when someone does that, I want to respond like, "Oh, you you think that you're trying to assassinate my character?" like buckle up cuz like it's about to go down. But I don't do that. And I don't do that because number one, I know how that feels. And number two, I don't think it's productive. It might feel good in the moment, but I'm going to instantly regret it. Like I don't I don't like doing that because I don't want to just be mean because when I'm put into that position, all that I want to do is be very mean. So I have to like sort of coach myself out of it in the moment to say, look, like be the bigger person. Uh maybe they didn't mean that. Maybe you interpreted a different way. Maybe they're having a bad day and they didn't know a better way to bring it up.

I have to have, you know, these rapid fire conversations with myself to, you know, as I take my deep breath, just be like, don't, you know, if you have if you have a piece of uh, you know, evidence to bring forward that's helpful that can progress things or at least put you to a position to take it offline, great. But otherwise, like I don't know. um find a way to to acknowledge or say like we'll discuss it offline like I don't think that's accurate. Let's discuss it offline kind of thing just because um if someone was trying to be malicious and I don't I don't like I said these people weren't like necessarily repeat offenders of it just some situations that came up. Um, if this is something that someone's trying to do to be malicious, then you kind of take the power away from them and by saying like, "We'll just discuss it offline." In my opinion, that's a it's a power removal deescalation kind of tool.

If they're doing it in the first place, it's because they're trying to throw you under the bus. they're trying to um you know have eyes on you to say like look this person doesn't know what they're talking about. Okay. If we don't know then I'm happy to present all the information about that offline. Don't want to derail this current conversation. It's not really what this conversation's about. So let's not waste other people's time but I'll get you all the data you need. No worries. Um, when I've reflected on this though, like this type of thing, like the the character assassination thing, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because I I do have a very negative like internal response to it. It's one of the things that triggers me the most. Right? This happens on social media a lot. I'm okay if people want to disagree with my takes on things.

Like I encourage people to leave comments and stuff, especially on these videos. I don't expect that everyone who watches these videos is going to be like, I totally agree with that. Like I try to give different perspectives, but if you disagree with it, that's totally cool. Tell me why. But when people come here and they're like just being trying to be like, "Who's this idiot? Doesn't know what he's talking about." I'm like, "Look, man. we don't want to go down that road because I just don't want to like be mean back to you. It doesn't it's not going to help anyone. But I was trying to think about why I I have a response like this. And again, I'm not a psychologist. My wife knows all about this kind of stuff. I don't. She doesn't watch these videos. So if she did, she might say, "Nick, shut up.

I know what's going on." But I think that it probably stems from interactions with my father. And I think that when I was younger, I can recall situations where my father would try to put me on the spot like that. Um to I don't know, like he probably thought it was funny to try and single me out to do something. And again, I'm not being malicious. I think, you know, he'd be around his friends or something and it's like, oh, like here's a scenario like if we if we pick on him, and I'm not saying he was like a mean person or anything, but if we, you know, use this scenario, he thinks it's light-hearted. I think as a kid, I was probably like, I don't like that. Like, that really bothers me because you're, you know, you're making fun of me, right? you're using me for your humor and like I am not included in that humor.

He probably thought I was or intended for me to be, but I don't think that I was, right? Cuz it would bother me a lot. Um, again, I'm not saying my father is a bad person. I love my father. But I think that there was enough of these instances growing up where that probably like that feeling of being like singled out where someone's, you know, trying to to make fun of you or single you out is probably something that stuck with me where I'm like I don't deal with that. And I think as an adult, like I probably had a realization, I don't know how many years ago now, but I'm like I actually don't have to deal with like that. And when I've talked about this on my live streams, I can't remember the context of this.

Oh, I was saying if um you know, if I had a manager or someone someone in a leadership position above me, if I ever had someone shout at me, this was the context, and they were like yelling at me on in whatever setting, I would resign. Like that's it. You're allowed to yell, but like not at me. You don't do that. And it's similar because the realization was like I'm literally an adult and no one gets to choose to do that to me. Like I don't have to tolerate that at all. Um and I don't want to. And there's there's not like a maybe there is an amount of money. I don't know if I've thought about this enough. So to say there's not an amount of money where I'm like ah that makes the job worth it. Um, I don't know what the dollar amount is to be to tolerate being yelled at or to tolerate people trying to do character assassination attempts where that's just like a normal thing.

I don't deal with that. I don't like it. I think it's And uh yeah, like that's that's the end of it. And the part that I mentioned on my stream is like like I I Skype my parents every weekend. I've done this for years now and it's great. get to see my parents, my sister lives across Canada from where I was. Um, so get to see her, uh, my brother-in-law, and then my niece and nephew, which is great. But my father will periodically still try to pull the same It's way less frequent now, but he tries to do it. And guess what? I'm grown up. I don't have to tolerate that I have been in situations where and the power move for me is like my my mother um I know that like being able to Skype um you know have calls with them like she misses both my sister and I tremendously.

So the power move is like I just won't go on the call. Like if you're going to talk to me like that that's fine your choice but I'm not going to be on the call. You know what can't happen is that I can't not be on the call. So my mom my mom will kick his ass. Like I have to be there. Uh she misses us so much, right? So um I don't have to say anything mean back. But I can shut that type of thing down very fast by saying like I just, you know, oh that's okay. Like we don't have to talk today. Thanks. And end it. and he will very quickly like he's he's very salty about it because I think that he's trying to to make light of the situation. and it's supposed to be funny. So, he's going, "Well, obviously you don't have a sense of humor like, oh, whatever." But he's not respecting boundaries, right?

So, for me, that's a boundary and I will set that. And I am very firm on it now. So, if you want to be um you know, trying to belittle me or that kind of stuff, like no worries, that's on you. My boundary is this. If you can't deal with it, it's okay. Um so, yeah. Like I I get this kind of thing with content creation a lot. I had to uh the most recent one was actually a couple days ago. Um it's pretty rare that I have to like you know I'll have trolls and stuff saying dumb I just make like uh LinkedIn or Twitter posts about it cuz usually people will say things where again you're allowed to disagree. I'm not going to call you out for stuff like that. But when people are like, "Who watches this stupid person?" or something, I'm like, "Okay." Like, "Ah, you're probably making unintelligent comments now." Um, I'm happy to go create content out of you.

It's okay. I don't mind. Um, but when people are uh there's a line sometimes people cross. So, I had uh there's this content creator. I'm not going to even say his name. Um, that's just publicity for him. But I see like saw him on Twitter a lot and all that he did literally every single post. It kind of seems like a character assassin. He would always just disagree with people. And I'm like, dude, like it's really difficult to read the stuff you you post about because you're always just like, this person's so dumb. And you're like, man, like h how is it possible that everyone around you is just wrong all the time always? Seems kind of like suspicious, right?

Um the um there's actually another guy like this that I had to block, but this guy recently on Blue Sky, like I know him from Twitter, but on Blue Sky, he just responded back to a blog blog post I had about like the factory pattern, which is a common gang of four design pattern. And uh so I had like a blog article I just reshared and he responded and he said sounds a lot like this one and linked to his own parody blog post that's like chat GPT written says in the article about like madeup design patterns um that are like put out there to to like make people think that they're dumb or inadequate. And I was like dude what's with the what's like why did you just link a parody post? And he's like, "I don't understand your question." He's like, "What you wrote is literally exactly this." And I'm like, "You know what?

I think that's the the line for me. Like, now you're just being an man. Like, I knew you were a bit of a jerk, but like I don't know." And then I was like, "Hey, there's a block button. I'm just going to block him on everything." The other guy was a um it was a guy on on LinkedIn. Um I won't give the details about him but he was doing a similar thing where like he he would just he was making a name for himself just out of like on other people and he took a blog post of mine and shared it on LinkedIn and was like here's this is the difference with him instead of saying like here's all the things where these are incorrect He just listed like he said this blog post is like totally off the mark. It's all wrong. And then the reasons that it was wrong were just a bunch of extra data points that I didn't happen to write about.

So because I didn't write about some nuance details, it made it wrong. But I know what he's like from his other posts and I'm like, you can't have a conversation with this guy. is just an So, at that point, I was like, you know what? I've seen him do it enough. Now, he's done it to me. Block button. Unfortunately, we can't just block our colleagues. And um so, I think that it's really important that you learn about different personality types. Sorry, my mic's drifting. You learn about different personality types and that way you can understand how to navigate them because what you don't want to do is run away from these things all the time. You don't want to pretend they don't exist. You want to make sure that you have strategies for like different personality types. Whether it's a character assassin, whether it's an intelligent whether it's someone who's always asking questions and doesn't seem to be able to like they don't learn from asking questions all the time.

Like there's all sorts of different personality types. Um you will see the patterns in your career, especially if you're going to different teams and stuff. you'll see more and more of this, but we build software in Teams, so you have to understand how to navigate this kind of stuff. It's why it's not just code. The people part's huge. So, thanks for attending my rant. Um, yeah, hopefully that was kind of interesting. Maybe you have a fun story about a character assassin or something that you want to share in the comments. Do it because that'd be fun to to go read about. So, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. Take care.