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Andy Warren
Posted Thursday, November 10, 2011 9:57 PM
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item First Impressions

Andy
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Post #1203906
david.wright-948385
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 12:54 AM
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Categorisation can help if you must relate to many less well known people, but it's important to realise that one person will fit into many categories. Trying to fit a person into one category achieves nothing but subtraction... unless of course you're prepared to go for the real world solution and have a specific category for each person
Post #1203943
tilew-948340
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 3:59 AM
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I agree on categorizing people. It is a surviving thing inside each of us from being eaten by some animal or being beaten by... well, some animal too.

I agree to continually have "the first moment" on someone as we must known that people changes all the time: burn out, sickness, drugs, season, age and "month periode", to name only those, change the way people thinks and reacts.

So, I have a "first impression" every time I meet someone and I am ready to change the category I have put him the previous time, and my beahaviour toward that person, just in case I met him at the wrong moment e.g. a moment that made him a better or a worst person than he is...

Trusting someone comes from the experience you have with that person and from which category that person puts himself on different situation. But even there... you never know
Post #1204018
david.wright-948385
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 4:06 AM
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Mmm, just one category then.
Post #1204023
tilew-948340
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 6:39 AM
Mr or Mrs. 500

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david.wright-948385 (11/11/2011)
Mmm, just one category then.


yes, but which one depends on how you fill and how he fills in a specific moment
Post #1204081
Steven Willis
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 10:35 AM
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My first thought on this topic had nothing to do with people per se.

I inherit a lot of databases and sometimes architect databases that I pass along to others later. The first time I open up someone's tables and stored procedures I get a strong first impression of the developer who created them.

I can't tell you how may times I've seen 1000-line stored procedures with no comments or formatting and dozens of nested if-else statements and variable names like @a, @b, and @c. Yikes!

Or all the tables are heaps with no indexes or FKs or 10 columns to hold 10 variations of some attribute in the main table--or even worse--a delimited string that must be parsed before it can be used.

Talk about bad first impressions! But thank you lazy developers...your poor work is usually why you've been fired and I got the job.

 
Post #1204389
djackson 22568
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 10:57 AM
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Steven Willis (11/11/2011)
My first thought on this topic had nothing to do with people per se.

I inherit a lot of databases and sometimes architect databases that I pass along to others later. The first time I open up someone's tables and stored procedures I get a strong first impression of the developer who created them.

I can't tell you how may times I've seen 1000-line stored procedures with no comments or formatting and dozens of nested if-else statements and variable names like @a, @b, and @c. Yikes!

Or all the tables are heaps with no indexes or FKs or 10 columns to hold 10 variations of some attribute in the main table--or even worse--a delimited string that must be parsed before it can be used.

Talk about bad first impressions! But thank you lazy developers...your poor work is usually why you've been fired and I got the job.

 

I once had to write a word processing application to replace the old one we had in the software. The original developer was a VP by that time. He was pretty brilliant. The issue was he was pretty brilliant and knew it.

Having the ability to do bitwise operations in C to save memory does not mean you should, or need to. Making function calls to a function that calls another function that calls another function that calls another function that calls another function that then calls a C base language function, when the ones along the line add no value, does not make it easy to understand your code.

I spent about a week writing the word processor. I spent two months going through his code to find out what he did, so we could duplicate his functionality. Functionality that looked at who owned the software, and verified that the owner was listed in the document being written, to prevent someone else from stealing the software and using it to write a letter.

My word processor did everything Word did at that time. His, the one being replaced, did everything Microsoft Write did at that time. Months were wasted because someone felt the need to show off their C skills.

Talk about first impressions! Or second, third, fourth... He was very smart, but man did he waste his intelligence proving it to everyone.

Dave
Post #1204407
djackson 22568
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 11:04 AM
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First impressions are almost always wrong. I know someone who came here from Tennessee. Southern, good ol' boy accent. Doesn't sound like anyone who should work in technology. A lot of Southern slang, phrases, and things that come across as "uneducated" or worse.

He is one of the smartest people I have worked with. Took to the job running, never looked back, and has improved the performance in that position 10 times over the last person.

Frequently people in our industry get a bad rap. We "can't talk like normal people", we "use too many acronyms", we need to "stop showing off" or "communicate like normal people". I hear this about my peers from people in other positions that drop more acronyms than techies ever do, that expect everyone to fully understand what they are talking about and never want to take the time to explain. They view us as difficult or stupid.

The fact is people are all different. We all have areas we are strong in, and areas we are weak in. Generalizing based on a limited number of conversations is not only wrong, it is unprofessional. Even the most difficult people I have worked with can be easy to get along with if you take the time to get to know them somewhat. We don't have to be friends, but we do need to take our time.

Tech is fast paced. It is hard to slow down in a meeting and take time to understand how someone communicates. Failing to do so is a bad idea and usually comes back to us in the form of more work.

Dave
Post #1204413
SQLRNNR
Posted Friday, November 11, 2011 11:19 AM


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While first impressions do count, I find myself relying on them very rarely. My impression of someone can change very quickly from that first impression.

I also find it important to try and not let that first impression (or any impression) get in the way of being able to work with that person.


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Post #1204421
david.wright-948385
Posted Saturday, November 12, 2011 1:09 AM
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Those last two replies (djackson 22568 and SQLRNNR) are what I mean. Categorisation it at best a poor and time-limited approximation performed for convenience or speed. People fit into many categories and (as SQLRNNR pointed out) they change all the time. As geeks (some of us with poor interpersonal skills ) we need to take people as they ARE, not as they appear to be: less still from a single category that we placed them in. Even if we place them in a different category each time we meet them, we're still losing the person.

People are people, not categories. Each person you meet is different from all the people you've met in the past. If you can't see the difference(s) you either haven't looked, or you haven't known them long enough.
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