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RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

jswong05 — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:11:21 GMT

oh, no, you don't want a person that"Yes, boss, I will do what you told me to do!"Can you manage that?

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

GSquared — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:14:47 GMT

Best rule I know for moderating that kind of behavior is to remember that it's perfectly okay to think you're the most important person in the world, just so long as you understand that everyone else is too.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

TravisDBA — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:15:33 GMT

Lack of an arrogant, condescending, self serving attitude goes along way to being "easy to work with". Technical skills are crucial, but so can developing the "softer skills" as well, depending on the situation at hand. Afterall, when it comes right down to it in this industry, you are dealing with people, bottom line. No one really cares how much you know if you are a complete 14 carat gold bunghole to deal with. It eclispses everything, and I have seen many decent DBA's ultimately lose their job because they were flat out jerks to deal with.. There are ways to be firm, yet diplomatic at the same time as well. It is a crucial learned skill set too, too bad they don't teach that to MIS and CS majors in college. Office politics 101, you might say. :-D

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

The Learner — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:48:49 GMT

Seems to me that many have missed the point of "easy to work with" and assume it means someone who rolls over and eschews taking on problems up front. I didn't get that from Andy's article. I think he was referring to attitude and personal interaction - i.e. the curmudgeon! I rarely see the benefit of having a curmudgeon on the team, regardless of their talent. One can be emphatic or a perfectionist, and convey their point of view without being brash, arrogant and/or self-righteous - i.e. difficult to get along with.I have no problem working on a team with people with different points of view or those with a passion for doing things right the first time. I have an issue (as either a manager or a team member) working with someone who, because of their attitude, becomes unapproachable or simply one you want to avoid because of their combative and oft arrogant responses.Another type of difficult person that I think is detrimental to the workforce, regardless of their talent or skills, is the one who has to do everything on their time. The one who ignores deadlines, meetings or hates joint development because they view themselves as being superior to others and have the attitude that "I'm so good and important, that I can't be let go, so I'll make everyone bend to my schedule and view of what is important and what is not". As soon as someone becomes bigger than the company or team, it's time for an attitude adjustment (which rarely works), or time for them to go regardless of their ability.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

L' Eomot Inversé — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:19:17 GMT

People who are easy to work with find me easy to work with. In fact most people find me easy to work with. On occassions I can be very difficult, because on occassions it's neccessary (I don't put up with anyone trying to coerce or intimidate my people - I'm the only one allowed to do that; and I don't permit accountants or salesmen to dictate technology choices - that's for me and my team to do, subject to budget constraints; but I don't mind accountants or salesmen suggesting design solutions or technologies, sometimes they have really brilliant ideas that wouldn't have occurred to anyone on the technical team). It's essential for technical people to gain some understanding of the business and get on well and communicate with business managers - and I've very rarely found that business managers don't want to get on well and communicate with technical people. Being very lazy, I like doing things right - it's less effort in the long run; part of doing things right is making sure that what the technical team is doing is what the busines actually needs, rather than some geek's concept of the perfect system; another part of doing things right is allowing team members to have views about things, respecting those views, and letting them do things their way not mine unless I have an extremely good reason not to; yet another is getting the team to communicate freely and happily both amongst themselves and with the business people. Of course I can't always do it all right, but I can at least try.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Andy Warren — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:26:39 GMT

Being easy to work with doesn't mean you can't be the one fighting for a better solution, or challenging an idea in progress. Being easy to work with means you can do it in a way that people understand why and how the conversation is needed. It doesn't mean you will never take an unpopular stance either, sometimes that is necessary.For me it falls into the category of I know it when I see it. Vague but true!

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

majorbloodnock — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:54:55 GMT

[quote][b]Mork (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]"Sometimes it takes someone who plays Devil's Advocate, who challenges, who dictates, who is single-minded, whose convictions are unshakeable".I am glad you used the word "sometimes". I know a person difficult to work with. Communication is a two way negotiated process - it is a mediocre and cold manager who does not understand this and misses out on human-to-human interaction.The manager who only "dictates" from afar, delivers communication only via electronic means and is too aloof and standoffish to speak directly is what I call the "snuffleupagus" manager and quite frankly a smart computer chip could do a similar job.I once told this to a prior manager...it sent vibrations right up the management hierarchy and low and behold I soon was made to look like Big Bird - all fluff and no knickers.[/quote]Absolutely. My style happens to be very much one of interaction, discussion and consensus, so the dictatorial character I laid out is one I personally find very difficult to work with. However, whilst I feel that attitude is rarely appropriate in the teams I've worked with, I can't deny I've seen those sorts of characters get results I would have been unable to achieve. I also realise there are very effective teams whose dynamics I would find absolutely abhorrent.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

call.copse — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:39:43 GMT

[quote][b]Elliott Whitlow (11/23/2011)[/b]I've worked in small to ginormous organizations and without exception I've seen shody business requirements in all of them. The ones who say "here do it" are the worst because they don't understand how it actually works. The ones I've seen be successful are the ones where the development group gets the requirements, disects them and then asks for clarifications or gives pushback. In many cases a couple sentences which appeared to mean very little to the business accounted for hundred of hours of work without them knowing what they meant. And when informed they either took them out or told us what they REALLY wanted. I worked for a company that then wrote functional specifications, basically, this is how we read your requirements and this is how we plan to implement them. These were signed off by the business, this removed in most cases the ability to say, thats not what we wanted, because they signed off saying it was.. Then we built a technical specs document that laid out exactly how we were going to code it, how many sprocs, how many tables, how it would work at the base level. This document was available to the business analyst but he was not allowed to challenge it, technology used was the purvey of the development group. [/quote]I've been there and worked like that - it never really helped enormously and often worked out (possibly counter-intuitively) relatively unprofitably. We tended to find that the documentation would not be properly digested and understood. When the client received the goods they would be all like 'Where's this bit?' or 'How are you accounting for this?'. Totally unreasonable of course but they are the ones fronting the cash and at the end of the day it's pointless if you don't give them what is required. So we ended up quoting for the amendments, going through the process again, blah blah. Now we assume a level of change and try and be a bit more agile - not in a formal process way - I've found decent project management is better than trying to nail everything down. Of course if your clients are experienced in commisioning software or you are a very large corporate this may not be the case.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Jeff Moden — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:53:07 GMT

[quote]They’ve learned that the perfect is the enemy of the good, that some projects require inelegant solutions,...[/quote]While I agree that some projects don't require rocket science and the added scope that goes with it, I've found that a lot of people use that notion to take short cuts that just shouldn't be taken. The first things to suffer are embedded documentation, readability, and any chance for code to actually be scalable. That's provided that the code actually works according to the requirements. I agree that "perfect is the enemy of the good" but I've found that there are a whole lot of people who don't know what "good" actually means. ;-)

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Mork — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:01:05 GMT

"Sometimes it takes someone who plays Devil's Advocate, who challenges, who dictates, who is single-minded, whose convictions are unshakeable".I am glad you used the word "sometimes". I know a person difficult to work with. Communication is a two way negotiated process - it is a mediocre and cold manager who does not understand this and misses out on human-to-human interaction.The manager who only "dictates" from afar, delivers communication only via electronic means and is too aloof and standoffish to speak directly is what I call the "snuffleupagus" manager and quite frankly a smart computer chip could do a similar job.I once told this to a prior manager...it sent vibrations right up the management hierarchy and low and behold I soon was made to look like Big Bird - all fluff and no knickers.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Evil Kraig F — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:40:25 GMT

[quote][b]WolforthJ (11/23/2011)[/b][hr][quote]When the team does the equivalent of locking the door to the cubes and finds that a meeting with the business people the equivalent of an hour of water torture, it comes across and they can't be bothered either, they're busy too. Get and keep them involved, and you'd be amazed at how rarely that occurs.[/quote]I find the common perception is that IT causes this, as noted here with your "lock the cubes" analogy. Certainly the classic half-door gateway to the old mainframe shop is a symbol of that. In my experience of being hard to work with, I have found that if I ask the business to be involved it is perceived as if I am asking them to do work for me or making excuses for not just coming up with the solution. Ask them to participate in testing, that sounds like I should have tested better, ask them for more detailed definition, I should know those answers, ask them to consider the financial consequences of asking for more bandwidth, forget about it.[/quote]I've found phrasing to be as important as the involvement there. An example: Hey, can you make sure this works? is going to be taken wrong. "Hey, I've done the data level and interface testing that I can, can you take it through its paces for an average work day for you and make sure it's doing what you expect?" to be a lot more acceptable to the business.I can't just come up with a solution, nor do I know the ins and outs of their jobs, and I explain that to them. "My specialty is technology, yours is 'x'. I can't do your job, but we can meet in the middle. Can you explain to me how you would approach this process?" If they're used to a 'snooty' IT department I could see how that could happen.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

PaulB-TheOneAndOnly — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:26:53 GMT

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Elliott Whitlow — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:27:45 GMT

[quote][b]SQLRNNR (11/23/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]Elliott Whitlow (11/22/2011)[/b][hr]Depends on the topic.. If you want to do something monumentally boneheaded in SQL then I'm going with No, VERY difficult.. [/quote]I probably am in the same boat. I try not to be - but it is verrrrrrry hard![/quote]Where I'm really coming from is that locally I'm considered the expert and I try to offer suggestions in general, I'd rather not dictate where I don't need to. I try and trust my developers to do the right thing. In the past when someone was hell bent on going down a bad or really bad path I would squelch it, but even if I didn't agree with the path they were going that didn't generally mean they couldn't do it. I just put my foot down on a few things and in other cases a small change could get it back into line..I've worked in small to ginormous organizations and without exception I've seen shody business requirements in all of them. The ones who say "here do it" are the worst because they don't understand how it actually works. The ones I've seen be successful are the ones where the development group gets the requirements, disects them and then asks for clarifications or gives pushback. In many cases a couple sentences which appeared to mean very little to the business accounted for hundred of hours of work without them knowing what they meant. And when informed they either took them out or told us what they REALLY wanted. I worked for a company that then wrote functional specifications, basically, this is how we read your requirements and this is how we plan to implement them. These were signed off by the business, this removed in most cases the ability to say, thats not what we wanted, because they signed off saying it was.. Then we built a technical specs document that laid out exactly how we were going to code it, how many sprocs, how many tables, how it would work at the base level. This document was available to the business analyst but he was not allowed to challenge it, technology used was the purvey of the development group. CEWII

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

SQLRNNR — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:37:37 GMT

[quote][b]Elliott Whitlow (11/22/2011)[/b][hr]Depends on the topic.. If you want to do something monumentally boneheaded in SQL then I'm going with No, VERY difficult.. CEWII[/quote]I probably am in the same boat. I try not to be - but it is verrrrrrry hard!

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

WolforthJ — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:16:45 GMT

[quote]I approach the stakeholders and warn them I'll be regularly trying to pick their brains so I can properly understand their needs.[/quote]It has been about half and half for me. I try to find those reasonable people, usually the ones who do the work or are in the lower management tiers, and I have built good relationships with them and help to build my reputation. Eventually I run into higher management that doesn't understand how IT works and middle managers who are more interested in their territory than getting the job done. I've never stayed at one job for over 5 years.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

majorbloodnock — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:28:42 GMT

[quote][b]WolforthJ (11/23/2011)[/b][hr][quote]When the team does the equivalent of locking the door to the cubes and finds that a meeting with the business people the equivalent of an hour of water torture, it comes across and they can't be bothered either, they're busy too. Get and keep them involved, and you'd be amazed at how rarely that occurs.[/quote]......In my experience of being hard to work with, I have found that if I ask the business to be involved it is perceived as if I am asking them to do work for me or making excuses for not just coming up with the solution. Ask them to participate in testing, that sounds like I should have tested better, ask them for more detailed definition, I should know those answers, ask them to consider the financial consequences of asking for more bandwidth, forget about it....[/quote]Really? That has never been my experience.At the beginning of any project, I approach the stakeholders and warn them I'll be regularly trying to pick their brains so I can properly understand their needs. Without exception, they've been gratified at being both consulted and involved, even if it costs them extra effort. This point is driven further home by the number of these stakeholders who then come back to me again after the project is finished and present me with a new challenge. I make sure they're involved, they then view me as a problem solver and seek me out again. It's a clear, strong, demonstrable and measurable link.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

WolforthJ — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:16:04 GMT

[quote]When the team does the equivalent of locking the door to the cubes and finds that a meeting with the business people the equivalent of an hour of water torture, it comes across and they can't be bothered either, they're busy too. Get and keep them involved, and you'd be amazed at how rarely that occurs.[/quote]I find the common perception is that IT causes this, as noted here with your "lock the cubes" analogy. Certainly the classic half-door gateway to the old mainframe shop is a symbol of that. In my experience of being hard to work with, I have found that if I ask the business to be involved it is perceived as if I am asking them to do work for me or making excuses for not just coming up with the solution. Ask them to participate in testing, that sounds like I should have tested better, ask them for more detailed definition, I should know those answers, ask them to consider the financial consequences of asking for more bandwidth, forget about it.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Evil Kraig F — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:37:46 GMT

[quote][b]peter.row (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]However what you said is totally one sided. You seem to be saying that the business people can get away without explaining to you or helping you understand what they want (even when you ask) and that it should be acceptable that they have no responsibility to aid the project you just have to lump it and accept their complaints.[/quote]I would disagree with that being what was said here, at least by Andy. I brought the business as a primary point into the discussion, Andy was mostly about the tech side of the team. A good portion of that is because I try to keep the business in the team, to avoid that exact scenario.Most of the time in my experience when you have scenarios like that it's because IT has become the black box. When the team does the equivalent of locking the door to the cubes and finds that a meeting with the business people the equivalent of an hour of water torture, it comes across and they can't be bothered either, they're busy too. Get and keep them involved, and you'd be amazed at how rarely that occurs.You have to have buy in on that from the general atmosphere of the company, but it does work well.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Evil Kraig F — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:27:33 GMT

[quote][b]JP Dakota (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]Just happened yesterday, if you're wondering. A DBA added a column in the middle of the existing columns in a critical table. No kidding.Other than that I'm exacting, but generally easy to work with.[/quote]Was it me? There's a reason I consider SELECT * to be the enemy and as long as our sourcing tool reflects the changes you should have been good to go. I'm sure as heck not going to report to the entire team every time I make a minor schema change, like including a new column.EDIT: Heh, guess I'm not easy to work with! ;-)

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Elliott Whitlow — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:14:42 GMT

[quote][b]JP Dakota (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]Just happened yesterday, if you're wondering. A DBA added a column in the middle of the existing columns in a critical table. No kidding.[/quote]Generally I agree with your points, however, although I'm not a fan of unilateral changes adding a column in with other columns doesn't seem like such a crime since good coding practices will generally not cause a failure because of this new field..So is it the addition that aggravates you or that it broke something?CEWII

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

JP Dakota — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:48:32 GMT

Hmmm.................I think I'm generally easy to work with barring a few notable exceptions.When I'm instructed to [i]massage[/i] data in order to influence others or change business plans, that violates my sense of ethics. I'm pretty intractable about ethics.When a person screws up, and we all do at one time or another, but refuses to take responsibility or even lies about it, I'm pretty hard to work with. I don't respond well to that kind of thing.When other DBA's, IT personnel, or contractors make unilateral changes to database structure without consulting even one person, I get annoyed. I'm down right hard to work with if the changes break my reports and tools. Just happened yesterday, if you're wondering. A DBA added a column in the middle of the existing columns in a critical table. No kidding.Other than that I'm exacting, but generally easy to work with.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Eric M Russell — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:40:05 GMT

I agree with the quote "perfect is the enemy of good", and I'll be the first to compromise. Here is the problem: Ask 100 people to define their idea of a "Perfect" something (user interface, president, pizza, anything) and you'll get 100 different answers. Perfect is a subjective concept that is artificially made objective only within the context of a set of documented requirements, which ideally the group has collectively and intelligently settled on. However, we typically don't start out with anything close to Perfect information, and external circumstances or new information make the stated goals of the requirements no longer optimal, functional, or useful. At that point the team would ideally change the requirements and thus change the definition of Perfect. If not, then Perfect is the enemy of good.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

BarbW — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:06:53 GMT

Any relationship requires give and take. I like to work with people who communicate and seek to jump the hurdles to success on the project. I prefer managers who request the project, including any specific known requiements and then let us get the job done. We will provide status and results. If a team member is not working up to capacity, peer pressure will motivate them.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

majorbloodnock — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:36:01 GMT

[quote][b]laura davis (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]When we are hiring, I look for someone with good hygiene, who will show up & actually get the job done, and that I want around 40 hrs/wk.[/quote]Well, now that's just being picky... :Whistling:

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

peter.row — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:16:42 GMT

[quote][b]WolforthJ (11/23/2011)[/b][hr]Whenever I hear "perfect is the enemy of good" is usually means, "I like my idea and I don't understand your idea, so do it my way". I have been told "stored procedures are too hard to work with, I like to see the SQL right there in my code". I have been easy to work with and accept it when someone says "we'll deal with that obvious problem later", then later comes and they did nothing and I'm the one who has to deal with the consequences. If I point that out, I'm told I complain too much. Computers expect logic, if you don't start with that, you're going to have a difficult time working with them. Obviously it's good to be nice and consider the business issues, but when they took off their "engineer" hats and put on their "manager" hats at NASA, we lost a space shuttle. I'm being dramatic, but it is the same, just a difference of scale, when businesses are short sighted and tell you to cut your estimate in half and just get it done with no understanding of the long term cost of that decision.[/quote]I totally get where you are coming from.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

laura davis — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:16:11 GMT

When we are hiring, I look for someone with good hygiene, who will show up & actually get the job done, and that I want around 40 hrs/wk.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

WolforthJ — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:13:43 GMT

Whenever I hear "perfect is the enemy of good" is usually means, "I like my idea and I don't understand your idea, so do it my way". I have been told "stored procedures are too hard to work with, I like to see the SQL right there in my code". I have been easy to work with and accept it when someone says "we'll deal with that obvious problem later", then later comes and they did nothing and I'm the one who has to deal with the consequences. If I point that out, I'm told I complain too much. Computers expect logic, if you don't start with that, you're going to have a difficult time working with them. Obviously it's good to be nice and consider the business issues, but when they took off their "engineer" hats and put on their "manager" hats at NASA, we lost a space shuttle. I'm being dramatic, but it is the same, just a difference of scale, when businesses are short sighted and tell you to cut your estimate in half and just get it done with no understanding of the long term cost of that decision.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

GSquared — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 06:23:25 GMT

I am definitely easy to work with, and anyone who disagrees will be shot! :-D

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

majorbloodnock — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:06:41 GMT

In general, I agree with what you're saying, Andy. The ability to mesh with others in your team is an important part of working as part of a team, and is therefore hugely valuable.However, let's not forget that there are times when the best person to achieve what the business needs is someone who is definitely not easy to work with. Sometimes it takes someone who plays Devil's Advocate, who challenges, who dictates, who is single-minded, whose convictions are unshakeable. Quite a few of the most effective leaders in history have been exasperating to those working most closely with them.I mention this not as a mandate to ignore how you affect the rest of your team, but simply to remember that a cohesive and closely-knit team doesn't guarantee it'll be a productive team.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Dwayne Dibley — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:12:29 GMT

[quote][b]Evil Kraig F (11/22/2011)[/b][hr]... As a brief example, I've gotten half of the projects at my current position shot down after explaining why the difficulty of what they're asking for would take so much time with the tools currently in use.To your specific point, I've learned to never say 'No' unless it was truly out of reach. I've learned to try to speak business' language in every one of my contracts, and explain the risks and cost. The decision in most cases must be left up to them if a $10/hour assistant is more profitable than what I, or another, can offer.[/quote]Agreed. Sometimes, an idea sounds great in theory but is difficult to implement with current technology. Sometimes it is easier to hire somebody to perform a function as they will be a lot more flexible than a technological solution.Now [url=http://xkcd.com/974/]pass the damned salt.[/url]

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Pradyothana Shastry — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:55:51 GMT

Depends on Topic and Interests of indivisual

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

peter.row — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:37:48 GMT

I guess I would have to answer that I'm probably not easy to get on with based on your descriptions and explanations.However what you said is totally one sided. You seem to be saying that the business people can get away without explaining to you or helping you understand what they want (even when you ask) and that it should be acceptable that they have no responsibility to aid the project you just have to lump it and accept their complaints.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Evil Kraig F — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:09:09 GMT

Thank you for bringing this topic to light, if briefly.You're absolutely right, and it's why I prefer to bring on employees who were contractors in one point in their life. If you can't grok, truly grok, that the business must be able to their jobs better... you're doing it wrong.Sometimes you need to toss things in front of an end user as quickly as possible. Sometimes you see the long term effects and create a function to 'pass the salt'. You have to understand the long term business user. If you can't, you're going to drive me crazy when I follow you in.Easy to work with doesn't mean bending over and taking it, however, which I don't believe you illustrated well in your very brief discussion. Easy to work with can mean explaining to the business the hurdles involved in reaching their goal, and helping them understand what the technical challenges will be in vernacular they will grasp. As a brief example, I've gotten half of the projects at my current position shot down after explaining why the difficulty of what they're asking for would take so much time with the tools currently in use.To your specific point, I've learned to never say 'No' unless it was truly out of reach. I've learned to try to speak business' language in every one of my contracts, and explain the risks and cost. The decision in most cases must be left up to them if a $10/hour assistant is more profitable than what I, or another, can offer.

RE: Are You Easy To Work With?

Elliott Whitlow — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:47:57 GMT

Depends on the topic.. If you want to do something monumentally boneheaded in SQL then I'm going with No, VERY difficult.. CEWII

Are You Easy To Work With?

Andy Warren — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:27:34 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Are You Easy To Work With?[/B]