How to deal with difficult people on software projects

What a toxic little website. Do not follow the advise here. Do not label your co-workers. Trust them, listen to them. If you see them exhibit traits you perceive as negative (and fall into these crude buckets) - talk to them, and give them feedback. Chances are, they will appreciate it, and your working relationship will improve.

What archetype can we attribute to someone categorising their colleagues into some pseudoscientific archetype?<p>This is an extremely toxic way of dealing with other people and should be avoided. People are much more than a stereotype.

I think its a great Illustration of the different problematic behaviors you encounter when you work pretty much anywhere. However, the solutions although quite straightforward and make sense, in real the situation is not so simplistic. For e.g. you have the dictator PMs that refuse to do anything that didn&#x27;t come from them. The solution is to have the upper management talk to them. In my work, we have a PM who is literally sitting at the top of the chain (reports to CEO) and displays those characteristics. Pretty everything anyone has tried to solve this problem in the last 10 years, hasn&#x27;t worked and people have destroyed their own careers over trying to fix the behavior. In cases like this, the only thing that works is either do what they say or find another job.

Software engineers have the privilege of being at or near the top of the food chain when it comes to job mobility.<p>I follow a very simple rule - if I hate something about my job and it can&#x27;t be fixed in the mid term, I look a new job. Overthinking this easily leads to burnout and frustration.

Whilst technically leading a software project, I worked with a contractor who was so arrogant it defied belief. He told me he was smarter than everyone else in the organisation, and repeatedly told me that he used to work &quot;at board level&quot; whenever he wanted to override my decisions. You know what - I&#x27;m fine for anyone in a team to express different opinions and happy to take them on board, but there&#x27;s a way of going about this without being so hostile. You don&#x27;t accuse colleagues of being &quot;stupid&quot; (which he repeatedly told us) and then go on to make massive errors in the codebase, over-engineer everything and refuse to read documentation because &quot;I know better&quot;. He seemed to really have it in for me, which is odd considering I&#x27;ve worked with plenty of software contractors some of which still message me years after they left just to say &quot;hello&quot;.<p>I was ready to walk out the org but then COVID hit and thankfully I no longer manage him.<p>I was ill SO much during the time I worked with the guy - my body was definitely trying to tell me something.<p>I guess he would fall under &quot;The Diva&quot;?

Throwaway as I don’t want to admit I am one of these negative ones (soldier) with my main.<p>The negative reaction to this seems like ego. “I’m special, unique, and complex so you can’t profile me this way.”<p>The thing is, people aren’t. Social media companies have demonstrated that most people can be broken down into categories and targeted in very specific and effective ways.<p>And yes, as the article says, try as people might, if you work with me, you will never learn why I am that way.

The author is clearly a developer, as there are some positive stereotypes in that category, but no positive stereotypes in any other category.<p>I&#x27;m guessing their perspective on the related roles is either only through the lens of a developer, or through no lens at all, just squinting from afar.

Speaking from experience. Talk to your superior about the issue. If they are the issue (my case) or if the issue is not addressed as you see fit then leave the company. This is not an extremity. There are plenty of companies looking for good devs- even remote. You will be happier and perform better. Let the swamp be the swamp - not your job to fix it.

Almost every single one of these problems can be solved by talking to the groups involved.<p>How do you talk to people about actual issues in a way that&#x27;ll get them to be honest&#x2F;realistic with you? Create safety. Make sure it&#x27;s clear that nothing they do&#x2F;say will hurt them or you, or come back to do so later.<p>What I don&#x27;t see here, what I don&#x27;t see anywhere, is how to deal with a legitimate bad actor. I wish more of these kinds of things would talk about how destructive a person with intent to do damage can be, and how to effectively handle someone like that when you can&#x27;t simply get rid of them.

Can recommend another couple of anti-pattern archetypes, but maybe adding a level above product about the form the organizations themselves take could provide some additional insight. It could be helpful to look at the incentives for why these figures emerge. Nobody wants to become these, but they do it to survive. They only do it because it works for them, and we get what we reward.<p>These political animals also need a habitat, which means food&#x2F;water, cover, and space. The stage of the organization sets up the conditions for these anti-pattern characters to thrive. The main incentives I&#x27;ve seen in organizations have to do with company stage. Institutions are their own kind of pseudo-soviet crazy, but companies have a life cycle with a finite set of stages, outs, and consequent incentives.<p>It depends on things like how much runway you have, committed revenue, investor horizon, and executive management character. Maybe there&#x27;s a potential update.

While most of those advices (or rather tricks like go around or hire replacement and ask to train them) would work sometimes, they lack empathy and reproduceability. In fact might even be counter effective. From my experience it works best to build good relation, give honest feedback and ask for reasons of bad behaviour. It might be because of some factor that we do not know or control (eg someone has problems at home, has different understanding of their role, are not aware of the scale of effect of their actions). Only after, if it won&#x27;t improve, clear boundaries should be shown, which when overstepped would result in well defined consequences. If behaviour is noxious to the team, it is much better to let offender go early on clear notice, not as results of playing some psychological ticks on them.

If this is made for a quick, tongue-in-cheek laugh I think it&#x27;s pretty harmless and kind of funny.<p>If this is posited as actual guidance for interpersonal communication, run.

How do I go about using this without knowing which label I fall under?<p>I would assume that to know how to work with X I need to know how my strengths and weaknesses as Y relate to them—otherwise this is just another way to see the world as &#x27;me vs them&#x27;

I hovered over each item under the appropriate category, and I clicked the one that best described me. The description was 100% accurate, and outlined my flaws perfectly. Now I know what I need to do, thanks.

If the author is reading this. I think this website would have been much better if you presented these flaws as biases as opposed to labels. You can also make it clear that bias is something that you can change about yourself by being conscious about it and changes over time.

Which personalities displayed in this article sum up for a developer which is also lead developer, CTO, very oriented on functionalities delivery, strict about new ways (always wants to write an article about something, always wants to do research, to the point where I as a 10 years of experience dev feel like he does not trust me)? And yes he is someone who does not trust if I do not back my ideas, opinions or methodologies with googled articles. He also has no sense of humour, or does not show up with it in the team. I sometimes think about him he is a robot...

I&#x27;m sensing a pattern in these answers:<p>&gt; There is no “solution” to The Rockstar Developer<p>&gt; It is impossible to solve The Aspiring Manager<p>&gt; The Extreme Overestimator... is fixable, but there is no will to fix it.<p>&gt; if The Incompetent Developer had the capacity to learn software development, they would have already<p>&gt; All in all, [The Soldier is] nearly an impossible problem to fix.<p>&gt; There is no fixing The Legacy Maintainer<p>At least having disabused ourselves of the ability to <i>actually try to address issues</i>, we can now get rid of management since they clearly have no work to do!

Where is the category for devs that will weasel out of any work by claiming a ticket is out of scope, or that the responsibilities for handling a certain piece of work lies with some other team, or that you should go through the project manager so that the work can be done 5 sprints later?

Author&#x27;s podcast: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neilonsoftware.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neilonsoftware.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;</a><p>p.s. interesting views, so am looking forward to learning more

Curiously, the author doesn&#x27;t bother to categories difficult <i>executives</i>. He exhibits a willingness to criticize everyone except for the ones far above him.<p>The rest of his advice reads pretty poorly. He claims that non-technical managers don&#x27;t hurt projects and that the remediation is just for developers to not rely on them to arbite technical disputes. At this point in my management career, I&#x27;ve witnessed several non-technical managers unknowingly misrepresent their teams capability, causing projects to fail without developer meddling.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t take this website seriously.

I&#x27;d be interested in discussions on the Silos, the CYA , the NIMBY and the NIH archetypes. Silos is generally indicate a bigger org problem. CYA blames everyone else, the NIMBY refuses change, and NIH reinvent everything.<p>Nothing more frustrating when working with soldiers who say they were just following orders and miss the forest surrounding the tree. In the end multiple levels of missed opportunity to provide feedback which points to a process problem.<p>Also don&#x27;t let your QA team get too powerful...

Previous: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24792568" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24792568</a>

This gets posted every few months. I&#x27;m surprised to see that it&#x27;s getting such a negative reaction this time.

Its funny but you may find you might take some of these negative labels over your career. I have been a number of these but it depends where I am in my life, career and the project. Currently I am a &quot;Rockstar&quot; developer.. and looking at the door. Luckily this project has a specific end date I can plan on.

This website led me to a bit of self reflection, I enjoyed figuring out which categories I could place myself in.

I&#x27;m fine being labeled an idealist. Depending on the client or employer, this role has served me well. On occasion, there is no space for an idealist and if alignment can&#x27;t be carved out, I&#x27;m happy to move on.<p>Now. Where can a 57yo idealist find a job in today&#x27;s world?

It&#x27;s interesting that you can categorize a number of the top comments according to this list.

I don&#x27;t see a single reference to backstabber, empire builder, or middle management machiavelli. Maybe ladder climber, but who in &quot;management&quot; isn&#x27;t in the ladder climbing business?

All these archetypes can be consolidated to one: &quot;narcissist&quot;.

This is a horrible website and you will likely experience diminished tenure if you follow it&#x27;s advice.<p>First, there is a complete lack of empathy for the person being labelled. What are the motivations and constraints that led to this person acting this way? A key question and the foundation for building healthy productive relationships.<p>Second, the &#x27;solutions&#x27; are horrible. &quot;Go around the person&quot; is terrible advice for anyone on a team. If you follow the advice from this website you will end up being the problem.<p>I would argue that this website is almost sociopathic-- completely ignoring the perspectives of anyone but the reader and suggesting damaging solutions and labels.

Reading some of the comments here (and the vitriol), am I wrong in thinking that this site was meant as a joke? Because I totally read it as such...

The Disenfranchised Designer is spookily good

thank you for confirming that my &quot;Rockstar&quot; status is ironically the only problem that I can&#x27;t solve :)

How do I deal with working with the sort of person who would make this website?

I for one want to see a Security section.<p>I am the PITA security guy that never has good news.

I got stuck on the first one &quot;Product Manager&quot;. Do the newer companies have this role? I mean, for the companies that are consumer facing and not enterprise oriented. IMO, this is a spillover role from the enterprise heavy 90s&#x2F;2000s into today. Am I wrong?

I have the same categorical feeling of revulsion seeing this kind of pseudoscience today as I did when I first saw it a year ago. This is basically corporate astrology. It&#x27;s unfalsifiable, patronizing, reductionist and amounts to unwarranted adversarial psychological aggression. If you ever used this in the corporate setting at any place I&#x27;ve ever worked at, you&#x27;d be laughed out of the room so fast it would make your head spin.<p>Stereotyping people into these jungian archetypes makes the error of presuming personality flaws and individual agency rather than load bearing organizational sociopolitical vectors, historical decisions and cruft that needs to be unwound, high level executive directives, and market conditions. That is to say, context, history, and structure; goals and incentives -- all this rather than theory which sounds good but is unfalsifiable (much like modern astrology).<p>It&#x27;s borderline irresponsible and unethical to give these ideas the time of day, because they are intrinsically unfalsifiable and based on stereotypes. Constructively approaching any of the issues seen here requires concretely addressing reality -- how can you find evidence of previous challenges, how can you bring said person to understand those challenges, what are they interested in from their perspective (rather than what your stereotype presumes), and is there materially enough to work with to move forward with the working relationship in a constructive manner?<p>This kind of management consultant voodoo is a pox upon the industry. We should leave it in the past, where it belongs. You&#x27;ve got to ask yourself, what&#x27;s your goal with these situations? Is it to be &#x2F;right&#x2F;? Or is it to &#x2F;fix problems&#x2F;? If you want to do the latter, you&#x27;ve got to connect with the other person, and get the solution to come from within &#x2F;their head&#x2F;. And frankly, drawing facile, degrading comparisons between them and barnyard animal stereotypes rooted in some blogger&#x27;s desire to pathologically taxonomize isn&#x27;t going to get you anywhere.<p>To end on a constructive note, I&#x27;m a fan of Camille Fournier&#x27;s writing on management. I have found it to be very practically focused with a good blend of strategy as it pertains to the people side of things. If you&#x27;re interested, read her blog [1] and her book [2]. There are also other classics like Moral Mazes [3] that I&#x27;ve seen come highly recommended from my network but haven&#x27;t had the time to fully complete (and yet have liked so far). Start there rather than with this stuff.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.elidedbranches.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.elidedbranches.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;33369254-the-manager-s-path" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;33369254-the-manager-s-p...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;279812.Moral_Mazes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;279812.Moral_Mazes</a>

what about finance?

Learn from the best:<p>Force difficult people to borrow money from adversaries, the marxists, the jihadis, the drug cartel.<p>Take the difficult people&#x27;s money.<p>When the loan comes due, dump them in the ocean. Good luck collecting.<p>There will be a standoff with your adversaries. To hell with nuclear weapons. How about using recent developments in fusion and matter waves to turn the sun into a giant microwave? Or, better yet, pair production and coherent control to turn the black hole the sun orbits into a giant microwave, and then melt a couple billion people off the earth as easy as adjusting the volume on my speakers.<p>The article mention heart surgeons. Not like any heart surgeon ever defrauded the public, cashed out in crypto, and flew to Mumbai from Canada with USB stick in their shoe. And not small town surgeons either. Heads of big pharma and research universities.

I don&#x27;t see the Seagull<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Seagull_management" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Seagull_management</a>

I kind of like it. All the comments saying not to categorize your co-workers are right, but---to an extent, we are what we do. I think it&#x27;s a useful list of <i>behaviors</i> people can fall into, without making comment on their eternal soul.

THIS IS SOOO GOOODDDD!!! I&#x27;m thinking how to make this a team activity to kindly label each other and understand how to address them as a group. Though i guess this requires a maturity that is rare...