Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 108: An Insecure Teammate and Disclosing Past Ratings

Episode Date: May 13, 2018

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: What do I do about an insecure teammate whose insecurity causes them to lash out at others? I’d like to change teams within my company, but I’ve had some negative performance reviews in the past. How early should I disclose this to my prospective manager? Jamison talks about the Khan Academy Engineering Principles, which are great and which you should read.

It takes more than Big Omicron skills to be a great engineer. This is episode 108 of the Soft Skills Engineering podcast. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice show for software developers about non-technical subjects. So, remind me, Big Omicron is the main villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, right? No, that's Theta. Oh, Big Theta, okay.

You're right. You can take Omicron jokes basically anywhere. One could say that they are unboundable. And we did. Okay, I want to thank our wonderful patrons. These are the people that are supporting this show and helping make it possible. Thank you to Paulinho de Rocha, David Jackson,

Chris Fitkin, Ken Howard, Sean Clayton, and Dustin Coates. They are all sponsoring at the level where we thank them every episode, and we really appreciate their support their support and others support helps us produce the show helps us pay for hosting helps us do some design stuff and uh ultimately helps enrich us which helps make the world a better place i'm just convinced that the more money we have the better the world is we have dedicated one chamber of each of our hearts to each of these people and there's still a few chambers remaining um i think you should see a doctor if that's the case unless you have a space heart all right let's get to our first question do you

want to read it sure this comes from an anonymous listener who says hey jameson and dave i'm a huge fan of the show awesome we're a huge fan of you too i've listened to every episode of the show and recommended it to friends and coworkers. I don't know what to do about an insecure teammate who makes me want to take the show's primary advice and get a new job. This person is an experienced engineer who is 30 plus years older than me.

This person hedges on every estimate, critically scrutinized teammates, makes constant excuses, minimizes others' work, complains about everything, is enabled by well-meaning but unassertive colleagues, constantly requires help, doesn't listen,

assumes they are right until proven wrong, and passively aggressively confronts individuals in a group setting thanks i like you're welcome yeah yeah you're welcome okay i when i first read this question i assumed okay there may be in their 20s or 30s this person is maybe in their 50s or 60s but i have had several revelations since then it's possible that the question asker is a prodigy and maybe they're five and this person is 35 and there's just some conflict going between those it's also possible they had a typo and they meant that they are 30 plus years older than this person and this person is a baby maybe they're a toddler maybe they're two years

old it would totally fit yeah my daughter checks off most of these she actually refuses to do estimation so um but all the other things is enabled by well-meaning but unassertive grandparents check and also sometimes well-meaning but unassertive parents check there's another explanation her grandparents are great that was a joke we know they listen they also listen to this show sometimes so another thing that could explain this is maybe this is the parent of the person writing it okay yeah so not only are they 30 years older but it's it's their child and they're trying to co-opt this podcast and take it in a different direction into the way unexplored parenting advice

category yeah no one has ever done a podcast on that yeah um i think we'll make a killing the market's wide open we will pivot to become daddy bloggers basically that we already are let's be honest okay that's true i think if you look at a list of attributes and you can think you know a toddler has most of those that's a bad list of attributes unless they're like gives great hugs uh laughs often i don't know enjoys playing with worms like those are all pretty good but this this sounds bad sounds like a bad person to work with yeah it does not sound fun at all i think we should employ a little bit of armchair psychology and try to diagnose what's going on here i think we have all we need there's there are dozens of words here

completely sums up the person i think the question hit on it when it said an insecure teammate and a lot of these seem like pretty negative reactions to that insecurity if they're hedging on their estimates maybe they're they're worried about hitting their deadlines they're not sure they're going to be able to and their response is to just wildly inflate them critically scrutinizes teammates estimates minimizes other others work complains about stuff that could be like trying to deflect negative attention from themselves because they're worried about looking bad so if they deflect it onto other people then uh they might feel like they're out of the out of the spotlight a little bit they're not as worried about being being shown to have

issues with their work assumes they're right until proven wrong passive aggressively confronts people i don't know it feels like the insecurity is at the root of this i feel like the question asker has already identified this a little bit i don't know what you do about it well if there's insecurity maybe they need security maybe a little like crypto maybe oh yeah okay two-factor authentication um i mean you started saying crypto and you forgot to finish it which is cryptocurrency because that's what that's what comes after crypto now cryptography bogus cryptocurrency that's the thing that comes after so yeah the blockchain Shane will help this person as it helps so many people be more secure until

they get hacked by international criminals. Yeah. I mean, this sounds bad. What do they do about it? As, as I'm assuming they're a teammate, their peers,

they're not in a reporting relationship. So, so how do you make this better for yourself? If you can't wave the ultimate stick of like, you better do what I say or y'all get fired, which is like, that's like the implicit thing behind any attempt by a manager to improve someone's performance and behavior that's the ultimate like you hope you don't have to do it but that's the ultimate

connotation of like right if they don't want to improve to improve things then it's like well you have to because i said because if you don't or else i'll reach for my big red button yep and then in three to six months the trap door will open yeah just you wait anyways what do you do as a peer uh okay i i have worked with a couple of difficult people before and in one case i maybe two cases well maybe three sorry in three cases everyone you work with difficult day no no i've worked with four difficult people and in three cases i handled it badly and in one case i handled it well would you like to know the difference between the three cases and the one case i would like to know so much the difference in the one case i actually became the person's

friend and i know that sounds like a trite silly you know platitude but i did and i i became their friend i had their kids over to visit my kids we uh hung out we did stuff together and you know what he got a lot more easy to work with after that point and i didn't become friends with him so that we could have a better working relationship i became friends with him i think by accident and then we had a better working relationship so i mean something is motivating this person to be this way and maybe it's 30 years of experience that's jaded them or maybe but but you don't know what it is is the problem and i think if you understood that person and maybe if you were that person you would understand a lot better and one way to get closer to that is to

become friends with them or at least try to get to know them yeah that's a good point 30 years uh older than you it's i don't know how old either of these people are but it's very possible that the co-worker you're talking about has been programming professionally longer than you've been alive and that's that's a lot of experience that's a lot of stuff that they have gone through and learned about and then has all become uh obsolete knowledge and and bad things that happen to them that they might have built up scar tissue from or i don't know yeah that's a good point so um your suggestion kind of get to know them uh understand what's motivating them a little bit more did in the case where you became the person's friend did their behavior change or did

your understanding of them just allow you to to deal with it better i think both actually changed his behavior with me definitely changed with me i don't think others necessarily but maybe you know actually you know what I take that back I can think of one other instance where I saw a distinct improvement yeah I think we both changed yeah okay well that's encouraging

so I would find an opportunity to get to know this person where work pressures are gone so like go out to lunch there's no pressure to solve a problem there's no pressure to deliver something there's just you know get to know each other talk chat find out what's important to them ask lots of questions

but don't ask like an armchair psychologist why why are you insecure is that really what causes all these behaviors that i don't like tell me about your childhood yeah okay i was gonna just say talk to your manager because it's their job to deal with it they uh you are responsible for getting your work done and depending on your role in the team some that might involve more um working with other people and other people's productivity but your manager's the person who's ultimately responsible for the effectiveness of the team and especially the the stuff around calling out other people in a group setting um the the effect this person has on their teammates sounds pretty negative yeah and they may or may not be aware of it they may

or may not have advice for you on how to deal with this person there are definitely certain people that you need to figure out how to like interact with them in a way that works around their their difficult things and some of that you can get from someone who knows some of it you can get from experience and that might change things i i think unfortunately it's impossible to count on changing people like you can try and get to know this person and try and become their friend but i don't think you can say like and they will change because yeah it's up to them yeah um so you you can and i think being their friend would make it easier for them to open up and easier for them to change but it wouldn't guarantee it but ultimately i feel like your

manager should be aware of the effect that this is having on the team if they're not already aware then then it's fine to tell them and if they are already aware they could have some helpful advice on how to deal with it given this huge list um and how bad it sounds i would be very surprised if management is not already aware so yeah i would probably approach this situation with management from the angle of hey how can i help how can i help this situation and you will implicitly be making them aware of the fact that this person is impacting you by you reaching out to help to management and telling them like i'm aware of the impact and i want to do something to be part of the solution. Yeah. A lot of this depends a lot on the kind of person that you are and what

you're comfortable with and the kind of team you have. Um, I think there are certain people in certain teams where if someone confronted another person in a group setting, like a peer would just step in and say, Hey, that's not okay. Don't do that. And there are also certain places or teams or people that would never, ever, ever do that and be a huge deal. So that, I mean, you, you could act more assertively but there are also things that affect you directly so uh one of the things on this list is complains about everything and i think you could have a conversation with this person and just say when you complain about this thing it makes me feel less motivated and you like you don't appreciate the work that i've done on it and it affects me and you make it about like

this is how it affects me can can we improve this and that's still a hard conversation to have but it's different than you like correcting their behavior yeah um and stepping in and saying like hey you don't talk to this other person that way uh it feels a little bit more like you trying to solve your own problem versus you trying to solve their problem i love that plus you're trying to solve the problem of them plus you're stating facts you're not giving a command you're just expressing how something is and wondering if maybe they weren't aware of that you know yeah there's actually i've been reading a bunch of stuff about engineering principles and team culture and stuff and one of my favorite documents is the khan academy engineering principles document

and it has a blurb on seeing possibilities not just problems i'm gonna read it because it's real good anything that's broken is an opportunity to make khan academy better be the type of teammate you want to work with openly and productively acknowledge weaknesses talk about possibilities don't focus on negativity we create our culture with every interaction and we can fix whatever imperfections we face start with how we talk about them i really love that uh i mean i don't know i've worked at a bunch of places everywhere has broken horrible crappy things and they vary in the amount and the intensity but if you're looking for things to complain about you can find them everywhere and there's a difference between saying like boy this sucks and saying

this causes problems what can we do to fix it and that difference in approach makes a huge difference in in morale for me and for teams that i've been on too so i think if you can if you can address that behavior as a thing that affects you and would make your life easier that's great especially if you have some kind of culture or principles or there's some something that the team has agreed upon that you can point to um that that also makes it easier to have these conversations if you've agreed like we want to talk about how to make things better not just complain about the state of things if that's a conversation you've had as a team then you can you can approach that person and talk about it a little more directly i like that and if not maybe it's time for your

team to adopt a little bit of uh team what's the word some team principles yeah i think you could do a lot worse than just steal these ones and change all the references to con academy to whatever your company is yeah but there there's lots of great resources and they're probably different for each team um have we helped maybe we'll find out in a few weeks hopefully if you take our advice we'd love to hear about it yep best of luck with this situation question all right would you like to read our next one i really want to read our next question this is from a listener named george i'm considering changing teams within my company but i've had two needs improvement ratings in the past since then i've risen to meets expectations

for the next two i have to disclose this to my prospective manager should i proactively address this in my communication with them or should i let my improvements speak for themselves so you okay so so this is an internal transfer and he's george is required to disclose this but the question is what exactly do you think here maybe i think it's around when when should george disclose it okay like right at the beginning or wait until the transfer is already in progress or or maybe a few years from now after george has moved on um and just for some context generally needs improvement is like a two out of five meets expectations is a three out of five and from my experience most people are usually in the three out of five range that's

like the accepted normal range and and needs improvement is like you're not going to get fired but uh you gotta you gotta shape up that's reasonable yeah i think it's pretty typical where if you get a rating that's in that area more than a certain number of times in a row then you will be terminated yeah that's what i've heard anyway um okay so if you if your company does stack ranking you actually might be a hot commodity because they need people on their team to give low ratings to so that they don't have to give the low ratings to the people they actually want on their team i'm sorry i just i just threw up in my mouth a little bit i'm sorry stack ranking it's great trademark

i've heard of success stories of people turning around after bad ratings i haven't heard of specific instances like this of of like how to approach communicating to a potential new manager i feel like just out of like what i think is right it seems like the right thing to do would be to tell them proactively if it's going to be a bad surprise to them i would rather address it up front and have them know about it versus get kind of far along into the process and then have them discover like oh there's this thing you didn't tell me that's bad yeah that just seems there's one trickier there's one possibility here which is you need to figure out if it's true is if this manager learns about two needs improvement ratings in the past um will that automatically disqualify

you in the manager's mind or not and if the answer is no but there's still a chance that it could disqualify you then it makes sense to delay this as much as possible while you build a good positive rapport with the manager you know what i mean um after you've had a few meetings after you've had a chance to show that you're a positive you know team player whatever the attributes they're looking for try to get those infused into the manager's mind about you and then bring the news to them yeah i guess that makes sense so you're you're giving a little context for it instead of leading with like i'd like to join your team by the way i got two needs improvement ratings but it's all good yeah yeah the uh this is an adverb the adverb they used was proactively i think we both agree on

that that yes you should disclose it proactively i like your advice of providing more context first so maybe you don't have to do it in the first communication with them but i think it would definitely be better that they find out from you than that they find out while like i don't know maybe it pops up in some system after the transfer has been initiated or something like that. I feel like if I were in that position, I would feel, and,

and it was this case where you were required to disclose it. Well, yeah, I'd feel, I'd feel misled, I think. Yeah. You can also,

I don't know what the timeline of all this was. If you, if you had good performance and then had me needs improvement and then move back up again, i think you can use it to show how you deal with adversity i don't know what's going on with your life either but there were there was probably some reason why you had those ratings and you could talk about how you dealt with it and how you um moved to improve things and i think that's that's a pretty strong story yeah i feel like the most often outcome when people get negative

ratings is they end up quitting or they get fired so like sticking around and persevering and improving things i think that yeah that's a positive outcome yeah that's theoretically the goal and you did it so that's a great story plus it gives a little bit of precedent and your manager will know look if i give this person feedback if i give george feedback george is likely to improve he's got a track record of improving on feedback in the past you know what you tell him you say i'm collecting ratings i've had needs improvement i've had needs expectations i need the lowest one and the higher ones and there are more higher ones left than lower ones so i think it's more likely that i'm gonna get those so help me complete my collection awesome i love it that's

a great story okay well have we helped george no because i think there's still one more option at george's disposal that we haven't discussed okay how good are your database hacking skills oh uh yeah felony okay well you've had the you've had the needs improvement rating what about the went to jail rating technically that means needs improvement look on the plus side you may dodge this awkward conversation with your boss if you can get into that database and craft some nice sql to replace your bad ratings with good ones and the downside is you could never work again but you know gotta consider a lot of people's goals are to never work again though

i would say that's probably the lowest on my list of things i would recommend but it's still on the list yeah i guess there are a lot of things above it i'll keep putting more things above it if it looks like it's it's if you've tried all the things and it's looking more and more enticing you'll just keep stacking it up pushing it down have you tried doing everything you already tried but in reverse order yeah i i think i think you're right with your desire to proactively address it that feels like the right thing to me and if you can if you can tell a good story about it explain why it

happened explain how you learned from it and and you can do that after you've established your value already i think it'll work out well i feel like if i were in this situation if someone wanted to come onto my team or if i was trying to get someone to transfer onto my team and and i felt like someone addressed this well that would actually make me i think it would make me like them more and want them more on my team versus someone who just like there's just a lot of mystery and like yep they always got needs and meets expectations uh there's never any negative feedback and and we have no idea how i i i don't know i don't know how to explain it i think you probably already explained it it just shows how you respond to feedback yep i agree okay i think

with me repeating stuff you already said but worse that means the question is answered i think you didn't repeat anything and it was good oh thank you dave you liar yes have we answered the question i i think so all right good luck george i hope it works out for you what can people do if they want to submit their own questions go over to softskills.audio and click on ask a question we have a simple form there where you can fill out your name or not you can be anonymous or not and put in as much or as little information as you care to put in thank you for everyone who's written in with questions please keep them coming they come in waves and we're in a lull right now we need your questions they power us just like the sun powers

captain planet so bring them on all right i think we're done yep thanks everyone