I recently found myself in a situation where I was working with someone who wasn’t doing a very good job. At first I resisted the urge to say something. Nobody wants to be the new guy who comes in and starts crapping all over everything. Eventually, though, my frustration grew to the point I had do it. I had to say something to the manager.
I nervously awaited a response. When it came, it was positive. They too had noticed the problem and had a talk with the responsible party. Buoyed by that, I let loose the torrent and made my complaints known regularly. I didn’t really notice I wasn’t getting a response until it was too late.
The next thing I knew, I was persona non grata. I couldn’t get any kind of response, to anything. None of my concerns were addressed. None of my questions were answered. Work was getting duplicated and time was being wasted. I was so frustrated, I was ready to throw in the towel on the whole endeavor.
I asked myself, why does that always happen? Am I the only person on earth who values the meritocracy über alles? Is the new guy always wrong? Is it that I don’t know what I’m talking about and everyone can see it but me? Or is it just that no one likes a critic?
Oh, so I guess I’m the asshole?
Sometimes when you find yourself asking that sarcastic, rhetorical question, the answer is yes. Yes, actually, you are the asshole. That’s because being right and being a douche bag are not actually mutually exclusive. It turns out there are actually valid reasons why no one likes a critic.
For one thing, anyone who’s ever wielded a red pen knows it’s easier than wielding a black one. It’s literally easier to see another person’s gaffes than it is to see your own. This blog is a good example of that. I read and reread every entry. I even try tricks like having the speech synthesizer read it to me and listening for mistakes.
Still, errors get through. Misspellings, wrong usages, dropped words, and bad, ungrammatical constructions all find their way past this editor and into the finished product. It’s a well known phenomenon, which is why there’s such a thing as an editor in the first place.
You need other people to read your work. You need people who don’t know what you’re trying to say to tell you what you’re actually saying. Everyone needs that, because everyone makes mistakes. Do you really want the person who catches your itso to make a federal case out of it and treat you like an idiot because you did something even though you knew better?
When you’re an ungraceful editor, you’re setting yourself up. You will never be able to meet as high a standard as that to which you can hold others. If you’re not publicly and humbly cognizant of that, you’re going to hurt your own credibility and even your valid criticism will become suspect.
You don’t kick another man’s dog
Or so goes the saying around DMHQ. It means that, even though someone might openly criticize their wife, kids, employees, or friends, that doesn’t mean you get to. It’s not even a matter of privilege, it’s just basic human loyalty.
If I’m in a bar and someone gets into a fight with my friend, I’m going to take my friend’s side. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong. I might even actively disagree with my friend’s opinion. What is friendship but always having the other’s back? There are no exceptions. In my book, friendship with caveats is called acquaintanceship.
When you criticize a team member, you’re putting the manager in an awkward position. Even if they don’t particularly like their employee, they’re still going to defend them from an attack. If they don’t, they’re a lousy manager. Given your position, you might be able to get away with one clean hit, but after that, you’re just making yourself into an enemy.
There’s something else at play as well. The person you’re criticizing may well be lousy at their job, but that doesn’t make them a bad person. It’s been my general experience that most people are actually pretty decent on the inside. I bet even a blowhard like Rob Enderle is good company if you get a few drinks in him and talk about something else.
There’s a decent chance any manager knows their team members pretty well. They know what kind of people of they are outside of work. If you only know them at work, and you let your idea of their work selves become your idea of their home selves, you can develop a pretty good frothing hatred for them that nobody else will consider justified.
I don’t know what art is, but I know what I like
There are two kinds of managers: those who understand what their employees do, and those who don’t. My current boss knows what I do much, much better than I do. My last boss had no idea what I did. If you were to complain to both managers about a piece of my code that was inefficient, inelegant, wrong-headed, and bad, you’d get two very different reactions.
Wil would look at the code and say, “Yes, you’re right. That code is dog shit,” while my previous boss would have said, “Oh, really?” To put it another way, if you complain to my boss they are either going to be able to understand your complaint, or not. Either way, you’re not going to get very far by complaining about it.
That’s because Wil doesn’t need you to tell him when my code is dog shit. He knows what bad code looks like. If I’m doing bad work, he’s going to figure it out sooner or later. My previous boss, on the other hand, would have no way of knowing whether your complaints were valid, and would ultimately have to give me the benefit of the doubt.
At the end of the day, your complaining hasn’t made a difference, but it has made for an unpleasant, awkward work environment. That is the ultimate truth behind the truism. No one likes a critic, because critics don’t make things better. They just make things more annoying.
Just shut your mouth, start kicking the football
I hate performance reviews. I think they are bullshit for two reasons. First, what’s with the passive aggressiveness? Why do you have to pretend I’m doing a good job all year, then sit me down and tell me how I messed up? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to just tell me that when it happens?
Second, I’ve never had an honest performance review. The worst one I ever had came with the caveat that, since times were tight and the company couldn’t afford raises that year, everyone had to receive a lackluster review.
What kind of shit is that? Any employee worth having is going to take pride in their work, not in their paycheck. If you tell me I’m doing a good job but you can’t afford to pay me, I’m going to feel a hell of a lot better than if you tell me I’m doing a shitty job but you are going to give me a raise anyway.
Even an honest performance review is still a lie. Nobody ever sits down and writes out, “You did a good job on this, but you need to improve on that.” It’s always some form that you have to bend your review to match, full of things that don’t apply, nebulous goals, and this terrible construct of “meeting expectations.”
What are expectations? “Mike, you’re a smart guy so I expected more out of you. Since you failed to meet expectations, you get no raise. Frankly, I’m surprised Bob can even wipe his own ass. That he comes to work most days with his pants facing forward exceeds expectations, so he gets a ten percent raise, and a little gold star.”
Despite being subjected to performance reviews in my last job, my biggest yuck was actually a lack of criticism. I didn’t have Wil to tell me my code sucked, why it sucked, and how to make it better. That’s the kind of criticism I want. As painful as they sometimes are, I love code reviews. One of the things I am most looking forward to is shipping this damned app so Wil can tell me what an idiot I am.
Of course, the big problem with reviewing old code is that, chances are, I’ve already grown past that mistake anyway. I don’t want to hear about code I wrote last month any more than I want to hear about an essay I wrote in high school.
Realistically, I’ll take my lumps. Wil’s pretty good about only harping on something until I say uncle. If it takes me a day to know why a piece of code stinks, we’ll argue about it for a day, but once I get it, he’ll move on. There’s no need to dwell on something I know when there’s still so much I don’t.
To bitch, or not to bitch
Criticism can be a force for change, and change can be good. Ultimately, the best kind of criticism isn’t really criticism at all; it’s teaching. If you are wrong and I help you to become right, I’ve not only made you better, I’ve made the project better. If you’re too lazy or stupid to benefit from my help, well, management’s job is to see that and deal with it, without my pointing it out.
That said, there are certainly times when you may have no choice but to vent your spleen and lodge a complaint. Just remember that criticism is expensive magic. Even though it may damage your enemy, it will also damage you. Moreover, the more you use it, the worse it backfires, so use it sparingly.
No one likes a critic, because critics don’t make things better. They just make things more annoying.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
No One Likes a Critic
