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I kinda have a hard time judging this because in Sweden we generally don't judge dev performance in any strict way.
I'd say jokes about giving people a worse rating or ruining their holiday can be okay. In a team with a very relaxed culture where hard work, performance, etc is never brought up. (or example: in my team we do joke about shit like that but we have worked together for years and someone can say "I didn't get anything done this week" and that's 100% fine. It would not be fine if we started measuring performance for real, and people were stressed out.
Also: What is TT? -
@donkulator i can sympathize with you , but that's not related to this post?
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@jiraTicket 1000% correct, thank you!
in our team if we say i finished my tasks early, i think i can go for a coffee, the next Position-in-power person sitting by me would say, oh really well let me give you another task, we got tons of stuff hahaha
i usually respond to this with " yeah sure, i am happy to take another task after my coffee" , thinking that they are just joking, but then they do really come up with another task, which is not even a priority task, just a "stay busy" task. which kinda makes me feel being penalized for completing my task early as well joking about it -
@dotenvironment I'm not sure how safe you feel within your team but if I was you I would mention that the way things are currently going you often feel stressed out. People may not realise that is how you feel - they might be trying to help.
We had a situation like that in my team: a guy from another team worked with my team 1 monday per week. He asked to be kept "in the loop and make sure I got some stuff to look at for monday" - we interpreted that as he would appreciate us mentioning him in a few interesting slack threads during the week that he could look at later.
But on monday we found out he had been stressed out and interpreted that as we demanded him to read these slack threads instantly. And he was a Slack-noob so he had a hard time keeping track of old messages, so he'd prefer if we waited until monday before we mentioned him.
So one example where people around you might seem like they're rushing you - but they didn't mean it that way. Where a talk is needed. -
…and as a follow-up: in my org we even have a recurring anonymous poll where people can answer if they feel stressed out about work. And if there’s a bad result - all teams have a talk about how no one should feel that way and if anyone wants to voice an opinion about why they feel stessed we could figure out how to reduce the stress.
(Some cynics will say ”anonymous? I doubt it!” but I believe it - we’ve had those talks in my team and everyone said they were fine - but still lead to a good talk over how to communicate to keep our team stress free) -
I think if they're joking about bullying it's actually the opposite and they won't ever bully
as a social tactic it's meant to confer safety
toxic people are passive aggressive, they won't joke about their tactics. they will deny ever using them and gaslight you for mentioning the possibility. if a boss jokes about misusing his power, you can now claim he said he would do it and get him canned -- so joking about misusage of power is actually a way for them to be humble, because it puts them in a vulnerable position in the office politics. and someone with a lot of power putting themselves with their belly up vulnerable to you should theoretically make you feel safe and not like you're being beared down upon by a big angry monkey that you can't do anything about. you can quote all his jokes and tell management they weren't jokes. he showed you his throat. showing his throat means he wants not to be your boss but equals, and your status, serotonin should be the same as his. partners -
if someone is trying to justify something and the boss chimes in and supports them that's the boss saying through body language "I support those under me". it is not credit stealing, it is showing that the boss extends his power / status to support those beneath him. this is actually very nice. it should reduce stress in the group, because if your boss supports you it means you have leeway, autonomy. lack of autonomy is what causes occupational stress
idk about the mess up thing
I don't think they're making you "remember" that they're in power. they're just in power. maybe you have authority issues or something? like I don't think someone being in power would bug me. only if they were missing that power and this guy sounds nice from your examples so I'd vibe with him -
you're told about other people and team things because that's called transparency and that also confers trust. seriously this guy sounds awesome.
transparency can lead to creativity and natural support between team members. on one hand you know how the project is doing, where it's weak or struggles to deliver, but also teammates where they struggle (and hopefully also where they're good at things). if you're inclined, and this isn't ordered but voluntary, the people he says struggled with something you can come up and say you have some free time or experience in that area and help them, teach them, and they would improve as developers; either in their time management skills, priorities, or technical skills. this is voluntary and not an order (voluntary actions are not stressful, orders are). this is just the things I do though -- the thing with transparency is that _you_ can do anything you want with that information. they trust you and you can find your own unique way to help out -
@dotenvironment if I finish a task and report I I wanna be given a new task. what else am I gonna do? I'd be bored. if I have a job and there's no work to do I just wanna die. so what did I do? just sit here and do nothing?
so I do think it's very nice they give you more tasks. perhaps they misunderstand what you meant when you talked to them
say something like, "I just finished X, going to go clear my head to recuperate from it" or something. if you make it seem like the task was easy and you'll be bored they'll give you work.
something else that could happen; I complete a task but my code is a mess, so I take a break to come back later and rewrite it better. or I still have documents to update, like design documents to management, architecture documents, the wiki, README's, emails to answer, stakeholders to contact to make sure what I built is the perfect thing they want, I wanna do more tests, I wanna mess with the UX more, etc. all these are breather + self reflection activities -
@jiraTicket yeah quite honestly this seems like a big misunderstanding
I don't know why but I think this workplace is awesome. I love chill dudes that give me work. fuckyeah
the problem in some ways of just throwing up "stress" flags is what I'm seeing is their actions to reduce stress are being perceived AS the stress. this is odd and makes this complex. so some sort of soul searching or more detailed communication might be required? I don't know to be perfectly honest -
@jestdotty not missing their power but misusing their power*
"so what do I do?" and other such typos. ffs can't edit. whatever -
@jiraTicket i missed your question, TT stands for table tennis
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@jestdotty Umm, I am having a hard time digesting your point of view. I work in a company where the perception of something is valued more than the reality .
like imagine being a new student in a school and the first day , your class mates come and talk about how steict the principal is and how you don't want to be on the wrong side of him.
Then the teachers come and they also talk about him as if he is some omnipotent, powerful and dangerous person.
Then at the end of the day, the principal actually comes to your class, and you see teachers and students trying to butter him, while he is being cool, funny and relatable, bit at the same time trying to subtly and joking imply strictness and rules. -
As a student, i would be somewhat confused and a bit afraid. like everybody buttering some guy would make me fear his authority, but his jokes and nature would make me wanna trust and adhere to his words. but then the students discussing about his words and extracting the "scary" implications would again make me wanna fear him more.
this is basically our VP. and i have already put 2 instanves of my TL who would often randomly become highly aggressive and start shouting our mistakes on us, and often times flex/threaten with their power.
and again, in an environment where fear of power is valued more than the person itself, i don't feel very awesome.
Also our VP is not part of our daily meetings . he works from another office and occasionally joins our meetings/ comes to pur office to visit.
Thus the highest position of power is tl without their boss in the same office and I don't think she worry about the fact that someone might call out her power flexing in front of her boss -
@jestdotty but i guess i should rather try to see things like you do in order to be happy. I think i do have authority issues as the person who was tl before her, i also ended up having grudges with his way of doing things. I would feel that he is quite incompetent and ready to push us under the birdge in front of his bosses. atleast with the new TL, we have got a reduction of direct passive aggressive meetings with the VP, but rather got more aggressive-aggresive meeting with the TL
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@dotenvironment idk how else you would expect a workplace to work
it's not about being happy. I use empathy to read people and get a feel for the situation, but I think your imagination is running off. so you're seeing the actions and instead of checking how people respond to those actions emotionally, you view it mechanically, which unhooks you from the atmosphere of the company and lets you make your own interpretations of the situation, then for some reason it's like that. but ok, if that way to run a compay is wrong then how else are you supposed to keep people still working on the work you have to do? there has to be a baseline of work ethic of some sort and you have to be able to criticize each other at some level
I don't think there's fear of power. break a rule and see. would I be going too far to say you had authority issues growing up? like a parent that flaunted their authority and made you afraid? because this honestly looks like that therapy stuff to me
how do you deal with workplace bullies? or is it just me who feels certain types of talks and actions are a bit intimidating and contributes to a hostile workplace environment?
i usually feel this around people of power. like say you are a TL and you are casually flexing the power to impact X guy's KPI scores in response to a funny taunt about holidays, while some guy Y from same team is in proximity whose leaves are not yet approved, isn't it some kind of intentional bullying?
or like there is some discussion goin on with TL and dev, where dev is trying to justify some reason for something, and suddenly the SSE jumps in between, start agreeing with the TL, adds a few jokes deviating the situation and the dev is left with his reasons and justifications undermined?
or like when some messup occurs by the team and TL suddenly pulls out a threatening card citing "people spending extra time in tt/leaving early" or some other reason as cause/punishment of messup?
Why do people of power need to make us remember that there is someone above us? and why does this need to be done in public?
lets say even if there are some notorious elements in team, who does take leaves on important days, and who are giving poor performance due to slacking/TT/early signoff, why should i be also told about it? just to get a warning?
And let's assume that there ARE people whose work is not causing the mess. They ARE doing good timely work and there are no complaints (not even the ones that don't reach public ear) , how should they not get intermediated by such situations?
I will not say i am the most perfect person doing the best of coding, but if i am being constantly kept in an atmosphere of fear and power; and being constantly cut/over powered during my discussions, i might end up doing mistakes as well
rant