Hacker News Reader

Comment by JamesBarney | Hacker News Reader

There are two types of trust.

1. Will I trust this person to do their job competently?

2. Would I trust this person not to defect in a prisoners dilemma situation?

The second is what you need the personal connection for. There are two ways to work on a project, to make sure it has the highest chance of success, or to make sure when it fails you don't look like your to blame.

#2 is needed so that both parties take a chance on each other and don't optimize for throwing the other under the bus.

View on HN

Hum... People should not have to face prisoners dilemma situations against their coworkers. And there is an entire profession called "management" in charge of making sure of that.

People should be able to trust their coworkers on ways that the GP didn't capture. But those do not include adversarial situations. (And honestly, "Hey, how was your weekend?" can as easily add or remove all kinds of trust. None of this is simple.)

> People should not have to face prisoners dilemma situations against their coworkers. And there is an entire profession called "management" in charge of making sure of that.

It depends on the company. Quiet a few have this inverted (management is there to cause them). Basically every company that lays off workers that underperform according to KPI cause them by design, which is almost every multinational company.

I don't know what should means, but I've never worked anywhere where at one point a coworker doesn't subtly throw another one under the bus. "I would have gotten that done but I didn't get needed data until Friday". "John told me this was a higher priority." "Zach told me he'd have that done by Tuesday"

Many of the managers I've worked with spend as much if not more time thinking about CYA/metrics/etc... than accomplishing the tasks they're given. And the ones that don't spend a lot of time developing relationships instead.

... Failing to obstruct a post-mortem counts as throwing people under the bus?

I feel like thinking you have to take measures to prevent future potential betrayals by your colleagues demonstrates a profound LACK of trust in them.

Software projects fail in ways both big and small every day. By being over time or budget, to not accomplishing what it set out to do, to not being able to be sold.

When those products/projects inevitably don't deliver on some expectation, someone is going to ask why? It is pretty important when that happens the answer isn't "jamesbarney is an idiot".

Here's a subtle betrayal that can happen, it comes raise time, you've been busting your ass on something that is really beneficial for the project but doesn't help any of your KPIs. Is your boss going to go to bat for you pr are they just going to tell you how important your KPIs are and wish you better the luck next year.

That sounds more like the need for standard office brown-nosing than building trust with your colleagues. Note here that your boss is not your colleague, no matter what they may encourage you to think.

Your boss is absolutely your colleague. And many times you work more closely with them than the your peers.

No, your boss is your boss. Work closely or not, be friendly or not, you are never on the same level. Forgetting that is what leads to “betrayals”.

I mean, can’t you make your own case by your own technical excellence and if they don’t like it, you just go somewhere else? Even if that’s not true for you, I think many would prefer that than putting themselves in better positions for who’s-fault-is-it game.

Most companies only care about technical excellence as a means to an end. Given two otherwise identified people they'd love to hire the more technically excellent one. Given two employees they prefer results.

> Would I trust this person not to defect in a prisoners dilemma situation?

Do you work for the mob?

No, but I work with people, who are strangely tribal at every level and company ive ever worked at

Reply on news.ycombinator.com