Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 110: Team Spirit and Half-hearted Recruiting

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: How do I help foster team spirit in a newly created team? I work for small startup (fewer than 10 people). My boss wants to hire another developer and asked me to look around for people. I don’t feel particularly strongly about this team. I’ve been there for about a year, but I don’t imagine myself working there for another twelve months. I don’t want to refer my friends because I don’t want them to join a team I don’t feel good about. On the other hand, I want to work with great people. I see how other devs may enjoy working in such an environment, but it’s just not for me. In the long run, I obviously want to leave this job, but what would you recommend doing in short term? Is hiring under such circumstances really that different than hiring if I liked this team?

It takes more than great database normalization skills to be a great engineer. This is episode 110 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 engineers about non-technical subjects. I really have nothing. You want to normalize those databases? I mean, I do. I can't think of a dumb joke about that and soft skills.

What even is normal, though, really? yeah that's the soft skill in there probably yeah i mean you're making a value judgment there i think to that we have to turn to philosophers i'll bet philosophers don't have four levels of normal maybe we'll find one you know this ancient greek philosopher did arrive at at acid huh through the fourth normal form yeah all right we have a bunch of patrons we'd like to thank thank you so much to these patrons who are donating at the 20 a month level thank you to nick canter dimitro neonilla david jackson chris fitkin ken howard sean clayton and dustin coats thank you all so much for your support and thank you to everyone else who is supporting the show

i have said a hundred times probably so far that we're using it to fund things and we actually are we were planning on doing it and hadn't paid anyone money yet and we have started to pay other people money to make the show better so your your donations are helping make that happen thank you so much all this time i thought the money was just going to pay for your yacht well that's the long-term play right we we get these donations we invest 100 of them in the show and then we get one percent more donations and if we do that for long enough millions and millions of years you could make one month of yacht payment yeah all right you want you want to read our first

question i totally do this is from a listener named cindy how do i help foster team spirit in a newly created team for context we've just gone through a merger all the team members me included have worked for the same company pre-merger for at least the last couple of years i think highly of my new teammates but we're not used to working in a team so we're not good at asking or offering help sharing knowledge having productive discussion and all the other good things teams are supposed to do p.s love your work so glad you started this podcast there's nothing else like it we are one of a kind if there is we will approach them and merge and then there will be nothing else like it the oligopoly of soft skills podcast you have been

absorbed so newly formed team that came together after a merger have you ever been through something like that um trying to think yeah kind of i've been at the existing company that acquired other companies that's happened to me twice where other people kind of got merged in i want to go back to what team spirit is though my understanding from the nirvana song is that's actually slang for marijuana do you mean teen spirit yeah wait isn't that that song isn't about team spirit the whole time dave for oh man that was like 25 years ago that song it smells like team spirit i was pretty sure that's what it was um we've just gone through a merger all teammates blah blah i think the the thing i remember from just going through the merger is this palpable aura of fear

around all the new people they had come to a new place they didn't know what was going to happen they didn't know how things worked they didn't know if their jobs were secure they didn't know like what the company they were joining really did i mean they kind of knew from i don't know you can google it and hear the pitch a little bit but you don't you don't actually know so there's just all these unknowns it's it's like being forced to change jobs but without actually i mean you don't get a pick where you go right yeah so i think one of the most important things you can do is like calm the fears i don't know how much control you have over the actual circumstances as far as like maybe their jobs are in jeopardy hopefully not but you have to balance

like do i just straight up lie to them with do i do i help them not worry about things that they can't really control but the broad point of just just try and calm things down and make this place of security and stability and kind of carve out a little safe place so i think that's that's a big thing you can do i think the way that i would do that is i'd walk over to them look them right in the eyes and say don't worry everything's going to be great and then a big smile would that work hold that eye contact yeah just hold it and then break it and then you walk to the next person one desk down in your open plan office yep it's gonna be and then you get to the last person and you just make eye contact but you don't

say anything that will put people at ease nothing makes engineers feel more comfortable than prolonged silent eye contact oh it's like a nice blanket yeah i found myself getting worse at holding eye contact the older i get really yeah i don't like it man it used to not bother me and now i so what's going on in your head when people lock into lock eyes with you maybe i'll fall in love with them maybe they'll fall in love with me maybe you have accumulated so many misdeeds that you're afraid they'll see into your soul yeah when you were young and innocent you had nothing to hide now you have like 20 years of tax evasion under your belt yeah there's layers of crud next time i see you in person i'm just gonna lock eyes with you just gonna lock in

see who breaks first jameson i will cure you of this right now i'll break first because i don't like it easy i'm gonna like hold your face and pry your eyelids open force you to confront your fear like a clockwork orange style all right okay now that we've given out good things yeah i think that when any two groups of people come together there are all of these like back of the mind fears that maybe you don't even verbalize like are these going to be rational people you know like are they going to be crazy um yeah and uh i think one really good way to put that fear to rest is to organize a team activity that you do together that's low pressure not work related easy and fun and gives everyone a chance to just let their guard down and enjoy each other's

time or rather enjoy an activity together so it's something positive something fun there are lots of different things you could do but you got to make sure that it's inclusive of everyone so that everyone can participate and i've seen those kinds of things do great work for a team they work more smoothly they are not leery they're they're not mistrusting after something like that it's not like a silver bullet like a one-time fix you know and everyone's happy and perfect but it i think it can help jumpstart a process in a situation like this that's the classic team building exercise right that's right that's right i know it's cliche but it works i mean it can also fail spectacularly well how so like if you pick something that everyone hates well actually

you know what even if you pick something everyone hates it still might work because now they have a common enemy which is you um but they can bond over that so like the drill sergeant mode isn't that the thing they do they just are huge jerks to to make everyone unite against them yeah yeah as you can surmise i have not been through boot camp nor have i so i have heard about this this is like a classic businessy pop psychology thing have you heard about the forming storming norming and oh i have stages of team evolution yes do you feel like those do those are those even worth reading um i don't i don't think so like i don't think i've ever been on i've been on a team and i'm like okay we're storming right now next step is norming this feels a little stormy to me

well i don't know why i asked you because i'm going to talk about it anyways the the model goes like this your team starts in the forming phase and people are kind of polite and they're not really pushing back against each other they don't really understand the boundaries very well so people are on on kind of good behavior um after they get to know each other a little bit they move to storming which is where they're a little more comfortable uh pushing back um there might be some conflict as people who have very different beliefs start to like express those conflicting beliefs there's norming where people kind of resolve things and hopefully things are gelling and like you and the person you think is an idiot because they think the

opposite about everything is you are you don't think they're an idiot anymore you just think like sometimes you disagree but you can still work together productively and i don't understand performing it's just like more norming i guess things are even better norming faster yeah more good good or norming i think the helpful thing about this model is this idea that it just kind of takes time and there might be some bumps along the road to forming a productive team that new people coming together might i think it's okay that there are some hiccups it sounds like from the question that things aren't quite clicking yet but that's okay i think that process takes time as long as you make clear what your expectations are and as long as you provide that

environment of safety i think people i think most reasonable people will work it out i guess i think one of the things one of the problems i have with this model is that it assumes this blank slate empty canvas starting point you know the team comes together they're forming and then they move on to storming but most teams i've been on don't work that way it's like individuals come on one at a time and those individuals have to go through a forming phase i guess but the rest of the team is already on to norming or storming or whatever you know if if that's actually the fact that they all rhyme makes me think it's much less it makes me think much less highly of it i just feel so stupid when i say all these words in a row you're like look you're just grasping

for rhyming words here there's no way that the universe's laws of human interdynamics actually came up with four rhyming words no but i'm pretty sure the laws of what will sell a lot of copies of my business leadership book did come together to make these principles absolutely i feel like i've been on in high growth companies that are just constantly in the forming phase because it's like we're adding new people at a breakneck pace and every time we do we have to reorg you know like we add enough people and now our old organizational structure doesn't work anymore so now we have to reorg and now we have new people working in with people they haven't worked with before so it's just like permaforming oh wait a minute i thought of the fifth one it goes forming

storming norming performing and then terraforming oh the team goes to mars and converts it to a beautiful green blue earth-like planet that is the end goal of any team that's right i learned that from playing uh civilization where one of the win conditions is your society evolves enough that you can build technology to get to alpha centauri nice and you think your team is building a to-do list but if you get good enough at it an item will appear on that to-do list which is get to mars and then your next sprint planning will be like well we got to get this done it's on our list i can commit to that for the sprint so if i was in the situation where i had two teams coming together for the first time and i was leading this team i think i would try to prioritize

a task that the team can accomplish together really quickly so that the team can feel what it's like to deliver a result with each other for the first time because that will give you all these opportunities to to gel through the full life cycle of what your team needs to do and having them feel that firsthand will i think preempt a lot of these questions like i wonder what it's like to respond to a bug with this team i wonder what it's like when there's an outage and we have to deal with it or i wonder what it's like to negotiate with product management all these things that you have to do as an engineering team get through them in as short a time span as possible so you can move past all the phases and then they don't have to ask these questions

anymore like what you know how do we do things now you know like you saw something get done yeah yeah that makes sense i also think we've talked a lot about how the team works together but the question is about team spirit which to me is asking a little more about how they feel about things too yeah true how do you make people happy and engaged with the mission of the team and one of those one answer to that could be make sure the mission of the team is clear i think this is this is an especially important thing to do as a leader of the team that's one of your roles is to make sure there is a purpose besides do the tasks assigned to me because individual tasks can be fun they can also be really crappy but putting those tasks in the

context of what this work will accomplish and what our team is trying to accomplish makes it a lot easier to um i don't know to believe in the mission i guess and there's still room you can still go work somewhere for money and go home and have a normal life you don't have to be fully committed to creating the best to-do list app that has ever existed but i think while you're at work the work can be more engaging if you feel like yeah i basically know what i'm doing And I think I understand the end goal here. I understand if the team does well, here's how it would affect the company or the customers or the outside world.

And I think that helps a little bit with team spirit. I personally also find it a lot easier to feel like there's some kind of team spirit if there are shared values that are talked about and agreed upon and followed by the team. So here are the kinds of behavior that we like. here are the kinds of things that we reward and i don't i have a personal belief about what they should be i don't think it matters too much what they are as long as they're vaguely good and it depends on the team for sure but as long as they're positive things that the team believes

that's kind of giving you a target of like this is the kind of behavior that we like i don't know it just eliminates some of the ambiguity of like just come and type on your computer and and everything else is a big vague question mark i love that maybe you're the silly hats team we didn't talk about dumb gimmicks wait dumb gimmicks well okay yeah not dumb i'm i apologize not dumb gimmicks yeah as if you even need that adjective in this sentence at all on this team we wear superhero themed but also actual figurines of superheroes glued to the top of our hats hats you get pulled into a meeting with your vp like why is there a spider-man dangling from your brim like it's part of our values it's our core value

and you say watch this and you whip your head to the side and the web extends and he like flings over and sticks to your keyboard and starts the build for you starts out yeah that's why types out a wicked for loop yeah any more questions you whip your head back and it comes zooming back and attaches to your hat i think i have a startup idea i will be back in 18 months with a kickstarter campaign yeah with a series a round and a gold chain around my neck all right well i think i think on that note this question is answered good luck cindy do you want to read our next one yes indeed let me uh let me pull it up here

okay this one comes from an anonymous listener who says i work for a small startup of less than 10 people my boss wants to hire another front-end developer and ask me to look around i don't feel particularly strong about this team i've been here about a year but i don't imagine myself working here for another 12 months i don't want to refer my friends because i don't want them to join a team i don't feel good about on the other hand i want to work with great people i see how other devs may enjoy working in such an environment but it's just not for me in the long run i obviously want to leave this job but what would you recommend doing in the short term is hiring under such circumstances really that different than hiring if i liked this team

uh yeah it is pretty it is different i was talking to dave before the show usually me not wanting to refer my friends is the leading indicator that i'll be quitting that job in six months leading as in it comes ahead uh comes it comes before i discover that i want to quit my job wow so it's like i don't know if it's that way for everybody you stopped referring your friends you're probably gonna quit in six months and you're like no yeah no things are fine like i just don't it's just not the right place for them but it's fine for me it's just not the right place for anyone else yeah or anyone i know and then in six months i wake up and think

i have to quit my job and then i do it that day i wish you were joking yeah i'll do better next time okay anyways tangent uh accomplished i would say this assignment based on the wording here my boss wants me to my boss wants to hire another developer yeah and asked me to look around for people that's a pretty easy commitment to dodge i think yeah yeah if you're not a recruiter or a hiring manager if if your boss is just asking you hey do you know anybody it's very easy to just mumble and then i don't know yeah fine i asked all my friends and they were happy in their jobs so i'm sorry yeah i really tried to pitch them hey come over here it's really great

and they they didn't i don't know i just couldn't make the sale yeah i tried because i'm a software developer not a recruiter yeah yeah so you're saying the the expectation of effort on this on on your part is pretty low that it's basically look around see if any of your friends both want a new job and and want this new job yep and there's a chance like you said that this job is actually right for someone who's not you so i think you could genuinely approach those people and say i think this job would be great for you and even if you end up leaving a few months after they start i don't think that's the end of the world um if you really want to be super transparent you might tell them look i'm i'm planning to leave but i think you would really like this job

you know that that would be okay but i don't even think that's necessary yeah yeah i thought about that too that there might you might be able to identify the kind of person who would enjoy it and be successful there even if you feel like you're struggling with some things there maybe there are things that i mean maybe you really don't like bureaucracy but some people are okay with it or maybe you don't like that's probably less likely at a small startup maybe you don't like um not having any plans ever or constantly shifting wildly from one direction to another and maybe maybe some people are like oh that's fine i'll just do the important thing today and if it's different tomorrow i'll do that important thing there there are lots of different kind of

people and maybe maybe they enjoy the excitement right like yeah every day is a new adventure what's our what's our business model today who's gonna be our time for a pivot oh boy i love pivoting yeah uh pivoting in place is just doing a pirouette and i am an expert at ballet so this is the job for me but yeah there could be things there could be things that won't bother people or things that they'll enjoy about a challenge that you don't enjoy yeah maybe the front end is really really bad and gnarly and there's someone that really loves coming in and cleaning stuff up versus someone who wants to come in and like work on this pristine beautiful code base yep absolutely and i think you should just go right after those people if they exist

i like coming in and cleaning stuff up but the point is that there might be things that make it a good fit for someone else that you could honestly say i think you would like it here even if I don't instead of just saying well I hate it here and I'm gonna quit so no one should work at this company yeah yeah there are definitely also things that make it that way so don't don't feel like you need to encourage people to join a toxic or or abusive or right very negative culture right definitely and I've actually been in the situation where people have recruited me to a company or to a team and then left shortly after I joined and you know what I don't hold any ill will toward those people i came in knowing what the team was all about and even though the people

who invited me to join have left i don't have a problem with that and and quite frankly in some cases i think it gives you a great opportunity for growth because it's like okay you're on your own now you know this person was your bridge to get here but that bridge is gone so now you have to spread your wings and fly little bird i just imagine you sitting down for a pair programming session with the person who recruited you and they just look over at you and then they stand up and start walking away and you're like but what okay i'm on my own yep huh well what else um well depending on how much backbone you want to exhibit here this is an opportunity to tell your manager your boss who's making this request why you don't feel comfortable recruiting and maybe

this is an opportunity for you to say, look, there are some things about this place that make me not want to invite my friends to come work here. And if you feel like you could actually make a difference by doing that, this is your opportunity to do that. But boy, it's going to take a bit of backbone. It's going to take a bit of diplomacy. And you have to be pretty proactive to want to do this. I mean, obviously, in this case, the easy route out would be to walk away from the job and find one that suits you better but if you really want to make a difference and try to do something super challenging that might actually help a lot of people then this may be your chance and if you think about your co-workers there's a really good chance that you're not alone

in the way you feel about the company now if it's like what jameson was saying earlier where it's just well i don't like startups with 10 people you know that's you're not going to change that with a conversation that's that's a case of you need to find a better job for you but if there actually are things about the company that you think could be improved this is your chance to bring it up yeah and the fact that the company is that small means you theoretically have a higher chance of making a difference in it if you worked at a company of 10 000 people you could exert local influence on your team but you're unlikely to be able to change the direction of the company immediately take a lot of work in a long time but at a startup they're used they're used to pivoting

yeah that's just pivot their culture yeah absolutely what were you gonna say i was gonna say that at a company of 10 000 people i'd say the probability of changing it is about three orders of magnitude smaller yeah so what would you recommend in the short term it sounds like a recommendation is like maybe you maybe you have that one friend who just would fit and you could refer them maybe you tell them up front hey i'm leaving maybe you mumble very quietly on twitter or wherever your network is use the mumble yeah or or maybe you have a frank conversation with your boss about about things maybe you get a new job right away that's true maybe you decided to have this whole

issue by just quitting today i mean that was that's what jameson would do i i definitely think you're under no obligation to like sucker your friends into a bad situation though i mean your boss can ask you for referrals but you don't have to you don't owe your boss that right you owe them the time while you're employed but you don't owe them you don't need to harm your friends or your network by putting them in a harmful situation so yeah yeah it's their job to make it a good place to work well i guess it's kind of yours too but you know that that is definitely shared ownership especially if you're a member of a 10 person company yeah you are 10 of the problem yeah have we answered the question i think so i think we can let this one run now

good luck anonymous listener let us know what you do good luck and we'll never know anyone could him we could impersonate this person and say oh i just ended up putting on clown shoes and that made everything better i was that a listener we'll believe you we have no way to authenticate you yep but i frankly the clown shoes are authentication enough i think only one developer would wear clown shoes bob is that you where uh where should people go if they want their own questions answered go to our website at softskills.audio where you can also support the show with patreon by making a small monthly pledge which we very much appreciate as jameson said uh if you'd like to share the show tweet

about us on twitter you can also follow us at soft skills eng you're welcome to send us direct messages share tweets of the show we also share our own tweets occasionally with interesting tidbits of knowledge as well as episode announcements all right we'll catch you next week