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Joe Hobot
Joe Hobot

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What are some co-worker attitudes you dislike?

I've been in IT Industry since 1999 and been working with many people, however there was always that one co-worker that just rub me the wrong way..

For me it was always one of those co-workers "Know it All" or "Let me try to put you down upfront of 20 people and act like I know sh**"

So what's your most disliked attitude in workplace?

(Btw if you feel like sharing comment anonymously hit sloan@dev.to)

Latest comments (25)

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itsasine profile image
ItsASine (Kayla)

I'm currently sitting annoyed and bored at work, so this is more venting about my day than my coworkers ^^;

  • "You know I'm not technical" -- okay, but this is your job. There should be some responsibility for learning and growing into your role, not just saying it isn't something you know so you shouldn't be held accountable for it. See: QAs being moved from manual to automation, PMs writing Acceptance Criteria that isn't feasible in the slightest
  • Eating cereal during the 9 am to noon meeting marathon, slurping the whole time and I can hear you chewing. The meetings are dull and dead aside from 1 person talking and 1 person slurping, so it's super loud and noticeable.
  • "What would you say.... you do here?" -- The guy who thinks his code is perfect and either 1. QA is out to get him or 2. QA is useless and everyone should just develop all the time, but also gatekeeps development work as only for true, trained engineers while simultaneously having only an art degree. This one is highly specific, and I'm mostly just salty about his lack of self-awareness. I can ignore Know It Alls fine, but when their gatekeeping would keep themselves out, I just can't.
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tvanantwerp profile image
Tom VanAntwerp

Oh, I'm just not good with technology!

It's 2019, and the entirety of your job takes place on a computer. You're just making excuses for your laziness, and I will not give you a pass.

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johnvmofficial profile image
John4Chelsea

Trying to make fun of you by insulting or cracking a low grade joke. Another one is calling some funny names which are kind of Cheap behavior. I respond in a funny way at times, but you can't always be smiling to it, at times people can be in different mood, they might be going through something which they won't reveal and they do this to you, it can hurt and the reply could be harsh.

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hellkat_ profile image
hellkat_ • Edited

The CEO of my company has a background in economics, where to draw conclusions there's usually first a set of "assumptions", such as, "Assuming a perfect market, insert generalization about market economy".

I had a coworker that no matter how complicated the project proposal, he nods and says "no problem, everything looks good". Then when we would actually begin development, I ended up in endless meetings where he takes issue with every detail of the user flow, the UX plan, the component layout, all of it.

Seems to me he was "assuming he's smarter than everyone else" and a perfect dev, and whenever he encounters an obstacle, he's content to blame it on everyone upstream instead of working out a new solution. It was to the point where we had to take his objection meetings into account when giving development estimates.

"Well, Developer X will probably cry about a lot of this later, so instead of 20 hours we better say 30..."

Obv no one knows everything, and saying "I don't know" is not a crime

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mountainmanjon profile image
Jon Luke Harvey • Edited

I'm a pretty easygoing guy and so I don't find too much trouble with a lot of people. But I've noticed that one of the main ones is I have a co-worker who is easily angered. I don't like being angry, or being around angry people. But half of the time I'm around this co-worker he'll get angry very easily over fairly minute things. Sometimes he'll slam stuff, or just start yelling or cussing vulgarly. Not a big fan. I am unaware of how common this is, but I presume that it is not so uncommon in the world of IT since people have to constantly deal with computers, and it can certainly be frustrating!

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joehobot profile image
Joe Hobot

No its not common at all and it is hostile environment.

Individual 1 probably has some anger issues and needs to solve that before it escalates. Either at work or home..

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htrob profile image
holographer

There is frankly little that bothers me about interaction with other devs as long as dialogue is maintained on a respectful level.

But there is one thing that annoys me to no end,

It's an almost infantile, but also very authoritarian i-think-i-know-it-all, there-is-only-one-way-to-do-it attitude that can be subsumed as the arrogance and hubris of acrobats prone to heroically jumping without a net.

Ten times out of ten, turns out that the acrobat didn't really know, and the team is left to clean up the splattered mess left below the spotlights of the trapeze artist's bars and ropes.

If you combine that with a strict adherence to matters of form over function, you have a perfect nightmare in your hands.

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craignicol profile image
Craig Nicol (he/him)

The Ostrich.

They know they have a problem. They know they're going to be late. But they hide it. They don't own it.

I understand why a lot of people can be like that though. Many companies will chew you up for admitting you don't know. I'm prepared to give Ostriches the benefit of the doubt and I've developed a few techniques to help them speak out. As a boss, I want people who own their mistakes early and reach out. If they don't feel safe to do that, it's on me. But if they can't even admit to themselves they're wrong or they need support, there's nothing I can do.

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htrob profile image
holographer • Edited

I've seen that. There's also a related behavioural pattern that makes the Ostrich pale by comparison, and it's sometimes seen in Dilbertian bosses from hell who instigate ostrich-like behaviour when they refuse to accept that planning errors, unrealistic deadlines, and performance prediction mistakes can sometimes happen.
Force too many people to behave like ostriches in any organisation and you end up with the most dysfunctional bureaucracy you have ever seen.

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craignicol profile image
Craig Nicol (he/him)

I've worked with plenty of organisations like that, which is why I try not to blame the Ostrich at first. In a situation like that, it's a valid defence mechanism. Any organisation that blames individuals instead of process will wrap itself up in red tape and stop achieving anything.

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bowlendev profile image
Ryan Bowlen

I am totally over and repulsed by passive aggression.
-Some will have issues with work direction and flow while others think it's perfectly fine.
-Some will adopt an attitude of needing to "tell it like it is" and complain about "people getting their feelings hurt" which really is just them justifying being mean.
-People begin to split into counter-productive cells of communication.

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hellkat_ profile image
hellkat_

YES. these days people are quick to proudly announce they "tell it like it is" or they "don't care if the truth hurts people's feelings", but honestly, that's just a cop-out to take no responsibility for being really mean to people who disagree with you

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atyborska93 profile image
Angelika Cathor

It drives me crazy when coworkers completely disregard email notifications from GitHub and I have to write them a special invitation on Slack for every single PR, and every single comment in a PR that I need a reply for.

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joehobot profile image
Joe Hobot

Then switch to Slack only, to be honest our culture is just like that.
Email usually notifies us that PR has been merged but its much faster to know that PR is out there to be approved/changed.

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panditapan profile image
Pandita

The "I SHARE MY SCREEN WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT" coworker hahaha

--

I'm going to be honest, I'm the complainer type coworker :c I complain because I care way too much but, normally I try to have a solution to my complaint, it just sucks that there's no feedback. So I don't complain much anymore, just to people I trust X)

But it's a thing I'm trying to change since forever and it's hard since I've been this way all my life! lol.