Working with DIFFICULT Software Engineers - What To Do?!

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all right it is Thursday morning uh just leaving CrossFit I don't have a drive to work today um so just the commute back from the gym here oh someone's coming it's really difficult to see out of that spot um yeah couple things I guess to talk about I'm going to just catching my breath as always when I'm leaving this gym um one thing is just like in super quick because I've already done a couple of videos in a row about ranting but man like got some hilarious uh YouTube comments on my on my main channel one person in particular uh going a little bit off the off the walls trying to apparently provide constructive criticism they're upset with me that I'm not apparently I'm delusional for not accepting their constructive criticism that started off with you people um which is a pretty good laugh uh

and a lot of people are always like well hey like don't let uh you know ignore the ignore the haters ignore the trolls and it's like yeah for the most part right like it's uh you can't let that stuff get to you of course but when I see stuff like this I'm like this person is actually like uh not doing so well um in terms of their communication style and stuff like something's something's off uh because you can't like use caps and type at someone you people need to learn and then get into your your constructive criticism and then and then expect people to take you seriously right so I talked about this the other day when I was saying like uh you know when you're debating people on social media and stuff like when you if you're working in software engineering you need to

be prepared to be able to persuade people right um and sometimes that makes people uncomfortable because you're not like it's not about trying to like trick them into things like it's not like a negative thing it's like if you have an idea or your uh your team is working on something important and you other teams bought in to help make something successful that requires a level of persuasion is all that I'm trying to say so um it shows up in in different ways but uh essentially if you you're like very incapable of um like doing this regularly in conversation so for example if you're truly trying to give someone constructive criticism you are what you're doing is is persuading them that your perspective on uh the situation right like that you have something that you think would be beneficial that would improve the situation going

forward right so um if it's constructive criticism you are persuading someone that you have a beneficial idea to help them because if you are giving constructive criticism the success of that delivery is that someone understands uh ideally they agree with you ideally they go to implement it because they see the value in it then a failure to deliver constructive criticism is uh like the utmost failure of it is when someone cannot even recognize the value in what you're saying right because you can give really you can give feedback very poorly and sometimes there's still a message that can be extracted so the efficiency of that communication is not zero it's it's very low but it's not zero um but in a situation like this it's like like is it zero um no it's not zero still um this person was saying that I called a

topic beginner but I guess what I was trying to say is the examples I'm providing for the topic are like a beginner version of that so okay word anchoring like sure there's something to be improved upon but like to to go sift through what this person's saying to get that is not effective now I that was just one thing I wanted to mention cuz it was pretty relevant and based on some of the stuff we've been talking about and when I say we've been talking about I mean me talking at you um because that's how these videos go but um there was something else I wanted to chat through and I don't have a fully thought out like like action plan or recommendation plan uh but there's like a bit of a com theme uh from a couple people that have reached out uh whether

it's because of code commute or uh my my primary like Dev leader brand but uh scenarios basically where people are either working with or managing individuals that are kind of like what's a good way to put it I don't I want to say stuck but I mean like stuck can mean different things and I was trying to think of a good way to generalize this but it's kind of like people that are they might have tenure so they've been around for a while but they're they're actually causing situations to be um impeded and not on purpose by any means it's not like their goal is to like uh slow people down or anything like that oh my God you see that person pass me they just cut I can't even I don't know what to say about what I just watched they're weaving in and

out of traffic this is some some business no signal lights aren't on at least it's light outside um so basically these individuals that are they might even be like senior Sofer Engineers because they've been around for a while and you know they've acquired the title from being around for a while but the um they're starting to be like a barrier to team progression and the example that I was talking through the other day which by the way I have a followup um the uh the person that had asked me to talk about their situation where they were managing someone it's kind of stuck in their level uh they they were thankful they wrote me like a big email that has a lot more detail so I will spend more time another day talking through that but uh the the common thing is like either someone

even this example they're stuck in their level they by okay what's what's another good way to put this again I'm trying to think about this for the first time in terms of how to communicate it but someone being stuck in their level is uh also an example of like them not being able to deliver the effectiveness or the efficiency that you would expect at their level or the next level right so it's a it there is some commonality here and I think it's kind of interesting to explore nine people have reported that there's traffic 10 ft in front of me excellent that's what I want so this is it's an interesting situation I think uh depending on your role in the situation it looks different right so the first thing is like when you have an individual like this on a team I just want

to talk about it from a few different angles right if you're the manager um first of all having awareness of it's important so you might not even it's a maybe a good thing but a bad sign if you're not aware of this kind of behavior and you have to hear about it from your employees so if there's other people on the team that are like kind of hinting at it and you haven't seen any sign of it it might be a good opportunity to figure out how to be more connected with the team um so just something to think about but if you're a manager like this becomes your responsibility to figure out like how do we how do we deal with this um and if you're an employee on the team having to deal with this um this is something that I wanted to

talk talk about from some different angles and that's the I guess for today I don't even know I got 16 minutes left apparently in my drive to be able to stop rambling and give you some advice but um if you were the individual on the team that has to work with someone who is causing like some friction uh and again it doesn't have to be because they're mean or anything like that it might just be because they're the person with a lot of experience but they're like they're not willing to like to budge on anything so hey like we've done it this way for the past 15 years and like there's no reason to even look at anything else like that's pretty close-minded right um they might have they might be right they might be right that the current way is the best way but

uh not being able to like be open and explore things or communicate and like do the analysis like you know saying something that is has was I'm stuttering um saying something that's been around for 15 years is just the best thing still because and not giving a reason or not being open to doing the analysis is like not not a good spot um like that is the opposite of innovating so uh I guess a couple things to think of one is if you're an individual working on a team with someone like this uh it would be be good if it's like an actual like repeated pattern not just like a onetime thing whatever but if it's a repeated repeated pattern and it's impeding you it would be good to bring awareness to your manager so I'm trying to think if I had someone on my

team um that was having some challenges and trying to get their work done because it feels like they can't do their work effectively because the more senior one of the more senior Engineers on the team is not able to explore different things they not able to explain like they're just saying hey we've always done it this way and not offering more context being open um like I would appreciate knowing that because my expectation for engineers and especially as to become more senior like staff or principal level is like Innovation is important so that type of behavior again they might they might even have data that that says that it's one way or the other but then they're not communicating it so I need to be able to make sure that if I have some evidence around this around this that I can uh dig into

it further right so it's not about like ratting on someone uh at least from my perspective that's how I treat my team if they need to tell me about something like please do um I'm going to digest that information and figure out how I can go help someone not how I'm going to go punish them so think about this for however you work with your manager cuz I'm not your manager necessarily unless I am your manager and then now you know um the the other thing that's like I'm trying to think about an interesting way to approach this because yeah visibility to your manager is helpful because they're going to be the one ultimately who can align expectations with this person right if you're not managing them uh you you should not be trying to like put them into a position that's like hey these

are the expectations you're not meeting them like that's not necessarily a conversation for you to have um but I think something and this maybe this isn't helpful maybe it's not necessarily actionable but I think it would be beneficial to ask why so if someone and the example is like hey like no we're not going to go look at this other technology because we been using this one and we've been doing that for 10 years and it just works so I would dig in and ask why and what I mean by that is like this per like we want to uh assume best intentions right so this person is trying to save you time is is what's happening right I think for most the most part is they're saying with my experience I am trying to let you know that it is not worth your time

to go look into this so let me save you the time don't look into this just as an example so they they're trying to be helpful but the reality is it's not really translating into that and I think that's where things get kind of sticky because I think for most people they're not malicious so if they're just trying to help and that's not how it's coming across like if you can find ways to work with them and like I don't know like uh you can be the one pushing for better collaboration then that could help a lot so instead of just being like frustrated with them and saying like saying nothing first of all like that's not great um so just say okay I guess we got to do whatever Joe says like you're going to start resenting Joe uh you're acknowledging that it's building

some friction uh maybe you're observing this with other people oh my goodness and and Joe is holding other people back from being able to deliver effectively because you know someone's like hey we got to optimize this 30% I think we should explore this and Joe's like no we've just always done it this way and you're like okay but but I got a I'm responsible for making this 30% faster he's just like no like that's not how it goes like that puts you in a pretty crappy spot so if you're someone that's observing this with other like it's happening to other people too um it's probably a good indicator that like you could have a conversation with Joe about your situation and and dig into this a little bit further so again it's not about making Joe feel bad right it's not like Hey Joe you

suck you're holding everyone back but that doesn't actually help anything might be how you feel but it's not really helpful so if you were to have a conversation with I stress that really wrong wrong cabable um if you were to have a conversation with Joe about this oh it's too early I would say like what's a good way to to approach it right um I would not do it over like messages or email I would recommend if you're in person in person or get on a video call if that's all you can do and just say you wanted to talk about making some progress on whatever you're working on and and there's a couple things to acknowledge one is like that you you're trying to make progress and that like people I've heard people say like oh the compliment sandwich is dead but like compliment

sandwich is only dead if you can if you have radical cander with someone if you don't have a good uh working relationship with Joe and you go right into like I'm just going to give Joe the critical feedback because you know people need to hear it and stop being babies like I'm telling you that as an engineering manager guess who gets to deal with the outcome of these conversations it's meem so if you don't like compliment sandwiches because you think people can take the feedback and they need to like I get it but do you actually think you have solid trust and respect with this person because if you don't you're making problems for me now and I don't want more problems so please until you have the trust and respect compliment sandwich the hell out of everything or find other ways to make sure

people feel appreciated you don't have to use a compliment sandwich but Hey Joe just wanted to chat through this I'm trying to make progress on this uh you know it's uh been assigned to me and it's pretty high priority um you know I appreciate that you're you're trying to save me time like I appreciate all of your insights and stuff which is exactly why I wanted to talk to you more about this like helping that other person see that they're valued is very beneficial because if they immediately get defensive this is why I was saying the compliment sandwich thing like is actually a helpful tool you can do many different things but making sure they feel valued and invited and not immediately defensive is the recipe here so hey like you know I appreciate your insights that's why I wanted to talk to you I

know you're knowledgeable about this uh I know you said that uh we've been using this tech for a long time and uh makes sense um and then do like I guess do you liter like this is a question for you now like do you literally have evidence that that is the thing holding back um like be ready to position data to say like hey um when I'm doing my performance analysis it actually looks like we're hitting some bottlenecks specifically around this and from what I've been able to see it like you know from my research and poking around online and other examples it looks like um this is sort of like a side effect of like how this technology works right uh they have loging that's done this certain way or I don't know like make pick your example so then you could say so

I was doing some research into these other things that seem to have different Behavior but um I know your suggestion was X so like acknowledging them again right like you're not just ignoring them you hear them but there's still a challenge and that's like you need to come up with the solution so basically you're you want to position things like I need a solution and not doing anything is not a solution that's the The Meta Point here so trying to get them on board with working with you on your solution is the objective so you appreciate that they have insights that's why you want to dig in further um you acknowledge what they're saying you have some data points to explain yourself again but like in action is not acceptable so if they're saying hey we've we have to stick with this technology like I

don't know then what what is your suggestion Joe if we have to stick with this technology because if I have to make it 30% faster in this situation what is the proposal right um because the reality might be that Joe has insights into using different technology here it's going to be a huge pain in the butt to go rip it out put something new in so maybe Joe's point is like it's not that you're wrong to say another technology couldn't do this but maybe his point is like it's going to be so much work to do that right now that we shouldn't even be looking at that as an option for the thing that you're trying to do so in your conversation with Joe I would recommend trying to understand further about what Joe is saying right because what your potentially hearing it face value

is like don't use this Tech we already have a tech like that's pretty it's pretty lousy um but you could dig in a little bit further and say cool like you know why like again but it's not uh it's not challenging Joe and making him get defensive it's like I want to understand I want to understand more about your positioning on this uh and and asking to explain because Joe might tell you like hey look I actually agree that technology X is better than what we have but um but it's going to be too much of a heavy lift or or the one that you're looking at at least has these other risks that we've talked about before and they still apply uh maybe there's another one I don't know so the point is like actually taking the time to try and understand Joe I

think would be helpful so that's one part it's pretty rambly um but at the end of the day right like this is a situational thing that you can do to to try and make progress I'm not saying that's necessarily going to to fix this friction it might help fix the friction in the scenario but if this is a repeat constant thing I think ultimately uh you find ways to work with it like I'm suggesting here or you find ways to have it uh more visible to a manager so that the manager can do some coaching around this uh and try to align expectations for our friend Joe in this example to um the expectations and their role so of course I have other thoughts on this if you're in the manager position but to uh to summarize that huge kind of I don't know extreme

of Consciousness is like finding ways to be when people are causing friction I think there's a handful of things that you can do something's on fire oh actually I can't even breathe right now is it in here am I on fire no I think there's a truck in front of me um so to summarize that I think that when people are causing some friction like trying to like actually understand them because usually when people are causing friction uh what what it feels like is that they're just not giving you an option but you also don't get an opportunity to understand them all that you know is they they only see one path or something like that right but like why what is is it about that path that's so important like that needs to be focused on blah blah blah um getting that opportunity to

dig in further I think is critical there's too many people trying to make a left turn and then a right turn anyway I'm almost home I know maybe that wasn't super helpful but something to think about uh at a bare minimum it's a bit of a thought exercise for if you have challenging people to work with like trying to spend time with them to extract information understand them without uh getting them to be defensive more um I'm not saying that that's easy I'm not saying that it's fair that you need to be doing that every time uh I think that a manager should be stepping into help with some coaching there but that might be something that you can uh try doing so something to think about I got to take the garbage out I got to do that and that's that so thanks folks

um oh I didn't even explain what happened yesterday but um I was supposed to go to the office but I had a flat tire in the uh the X1 courtesy shuttle so I lost all my commute time I was waiting for four hours but deal with that another time take care