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Curing the Superhero syndrome in software engineering

Bartosz Mikulski on April 28, 2019

How often do you meet programmers who think that they need to do everything themselves? People who don't take days off because, in their opinion, t...
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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

Obviously, you expect gratitude, but instead of that your effort gets ignored, and people start complaining about your control issues and negative attitude.

If this happens, then your colleagues are being ungrateful. If you're actually being a control freak, sure, criticism is warranted. But if you're only overly dedicated to your work, you deserve to get acknowledgement for it.

Somebody working too much is no reason to begrudge them. They have their life, and are making their choices. There's no reason not to praise and reward somebody who works overtime, postpones vacations, and puts work before them self.

At the same time, you should speak to them about work-life balance, and try to help them. It's bad to make assumptions about why they work too much -- or that it is even too much for them. Many people are trapped in the position they are in, and don't know how to get out on their own. Looking down on them will only make the situation worse.

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Timothy McGrath

I think the problem with a coworker who constantly works extra long hours is that it makes everyone feel like that is the expectation.

When you are getting emails and pull requests from a coworker on a Saturday, it makes you think that maybe you should be working too. And then you develop a culture that is trying to outwork each other.

If you are someone who wants to do some work on Saturday becuase you enjoy the work, there's no reason to alert everyone to it. If you send a Saturday afternoon pull request it's likely you're just trying to show everyone how hard you are working.

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Katerina Solstad (katya sorok) • Edited

It is very rude to do this. In fact, if any other job was doing it to a worker, it would be illegal. Days off are days off. If someone chooses to do work during those hours, he really cannot bother anyone with pull requests unless he was asked to do so. I imagine myself working on weekends because I consider myself a slow worker but to bother anyone on the weekend with any requests... well... this is just not right.

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Anthony Marquez

You skipped the points where the aforementioned "superhero" is looking down on others and questioning their abilities to work on the same project.

If people want to essentially live at work, cool, they just shouldn't expect others to do so as well which is inevitably the problem. Critiquing someone's control issues and negative attitude (following the framing of the original post) does not make a person(s) ungrateful.

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Alex Lohr

I think here's an underlying issue of the "Superhero", in this case his unprofessional refusal to accept constructive criticism of not involving the team.

With experience, you will become faster and it's easier to leave your team behind when you're going full speed ahead.

Full disclosure: I've been found guilty of playing the superhero at the expense of my team in my earlier career. So when I got duly criticized for it, I accepted the criticism and was able became a better member of the team and thus a better developer.

I still might pull some extra hours after the kids are asleep, but I'll get my team up to speed next thing in the morning in the daily.

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dwebster300

I laughed as I read this because I imagined many of my coworkers reading right along with me saying, "yup, that's you. And there too... Wow did someone who worked here write this?"
Spawned quite the self reflection. Until you covered the motivation. I'm not trying to prove anything, and would actually love the coding company. But not too many care as much. For me, coding is a love as well as a career choice, so work life balance may be stilted sure, but it's not work for me. It's a problem to solve, and I enjoy it. I do get frustrated by lack of recognition, but I think for some, the bar raises where recognition of accomplishments become relative to who created them. Save the day, um thanks. Someone else creates a report, wow! Great report!!! Lol.
It is frustrating, but I've consoled myself that I'm here for the experience, not the accolades. I do get a lot done in an environment where not too many others want to do this. But I do have to be less Superman and more Clark Kent so superego does turn me into Lex Luthor.

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Darius

I think there's two different strands to pull apart here:

  • Person works day and night, with little other life
  • Person is significantly more competent than their average colleague

And, within those, there are good and bad aspects, and good and bad ways of dealing with the situation.

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Timothy McGrath

Now I'm worried that I'm the superhero... 😀

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John Farrell

I think there are a lot of great thoughts here.

Personally, it's the unsolicited advice from the hero's that annoys me the most.

If you are working on fixing a problem it feels bad when the hero comes in with their solution before you've even spent a couple of minutes debugging the problem.

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Marko Bjelac

Why are you writing superhero in quotes - as if they aren't a real superhero - and they are! ;)

But seriously - the only superhero is the one who makes others superheroes too. Work on your own redundancy!

Nice article, but I don't agree with your remark:

There is nothing we can do about Superheros. For them, it is already too late...

You sound like a "Superhero". :)

I think everyone can change, they just need to want to.

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John Till

What about casual crime-fighting outside of work? What if you do have special powers? Should you just quit your dev job and go work for a newspaper? Asking for a friend...