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0 pointszer00eyz1y ago0 comments

Years ago I had a boss who, in a moment, threw a chair at me. (this is much less dramatic than it sounds).

I would work for that man again in a heart beat. Because for as much as he was apt to yell, or dress me down, he was also willing to give good advice, to elevate, to teach.

The office is not a safe space. You seem to know what's wrong, IM sure you have asked nicely. I am sure you offered the carrot, but does your team know you have a stick?

> The same people leave detailed comments on others' merge requests

Call these people out, in public, for doing good work. Tell everyone they are setting the bar and others are not living up to it.

> People blindly accept suggestions

Coaching, lots of one on one coaching about finding and having a voice. Lots of "team building" where you level out the playing field with the strong vs weak voices. Figure out what those quiet ones excel at and do a fun activity around that. Let them find legs...

> People send their MRs to side channels or other teams

Stick. Harshly worded emails. Down dressing in public. Telling your team that in no uncertain terms that "this is unacceptable behavior"

As for the chair thrower... He was always fair, he always had his team first, I grew as a person, a manager and an engineer working for him. Its not growing happy go lucky good times while I get a pay check, its Growing pains, spreading that (pain) around is part of your job.

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lazyasciiart1y ago

As far as dodging projectiles goes: yes the office is supposed to be a safe space, and if someone threw a chair at me, one of us would not work there the next day. (Add normal caveats for "maybe they threw the chair to save you from the ninja creeping up behind you".)

zer00eyzOP1y ago

The "chair" in question was 3 coat hangers and 2 frisbees... I have no idea how it held a human up.

The "throw" was more of a shove and the thing went flying in my general direction.

The only thing that chair was going to hurt was my feelings.

It was far less scary than the office where I sat on an ammo shipment.

lazyasciiart1y ago

I'm shocked, shocked, that you actually were just lying about your experiences to make whatever point you wanted. The one time I worked with a guy who lied about throwing chairs at people it turned out he was a wanted serial killer, and the company almost went bankrupt. Of course none of that is true, but if it was, it would be a colorful way to back up my refusal to work with people like that!

01HNNWZ0MV43FF1y ago

How courageous of you to do a scary job, not to protect other people from having to live hard lives, but so you can be a prick to them on bulletin boards. Maybe I should have done that lol

pavel_lishin1y ago

> The office is not a safe space.

It well fucking should be a space where I'm safe from my boss throwing large projectiles at me.

seadan831y ago

Some work cultures are too conflict adverse. I think it comes down to personalities of course, I want to generalize it to West coast people being conflict adverse. In these examples, it's all the ra-ra cheerleading you'd find on Linked-In, everything is awesome and super fast shipping squirrel

In these situations I find conflict is buried rather than resolved in a calm & understanding way. Without the latter being the example, the incentives are to go along to get along - meanwhile there is no longer a mechanism to resolve a disagreement. Suddenly then in review, you're "that guy" that is delaying things, and the both reviewer and reviewee don't have a healthy culture to talk through the issues.

Sorry for the rant, I think the downvotes are a reaction to the shock that some teams can have healthy conflict and work through them - and it can look like yelling sometimes (often yelling is just that, yelling.. but when a team is actual friends with another - they will have their own unique ways to address conflict).

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0 pointszer00eyz1y ago0 comments

Years ago I had a boss who, in a moment, threw a chair at me. (this is much less dramatic than it sounds).

I would work for that man again in a heart beat. Because for as much as he was apt to yell, or dress me down, he was also willing to give good advice, to elevate, to teach.

The office is not a safe space. You seem to know what's wrong, IM sure you have asked nicely. I am sure you offered the carrot, but does your team know you have a stick?

> The same people leave detailed comments on others' merge requests

Call these people out, in public, for doing good work. Tell everyone they are setting the bar and others are not living up to it.

> People blindly accept suggestions

> People send their MRs to side channels or other teams

Stick. Harshly worded emails. Down dressing in public. Telling your team that in no uncertain terms that "this is unacceptable behavior"

0 comments

lazyasciiart1y ago

zer00eyzOP1y ago

The "chair" in question was 3 coat hangers and 2 frisbees... I have no idea how it held a human up.

The "throw" was more of a shove and the thing went flying in my general direction.

The only thing that chair was going to hurt was my feelings.

It was far less scary than the office where I sat on an ammo shipment.

lazyasciiart1y ago

01HNNWZ0MV43FF1y ago

How courageous of you to do a scary job, not to protect other people from having to live hard lives, but so you can be a prick to them on bulletin boards. Maybe I should have done that lol

pavel_lishin1y ago

> The office is not a safe space.

It well fucking should be a space where I'm safe from my boss throwing large projectiles at me.

seadan831y ago

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