Tech stories: Get stuff done (and don't complain)
Tags: watercooler, devlife, worklife, story
Published: 2021-01-12 21:54:12

Humans have a remarkable ability to subvert any nice rule. The same book to preach for peace can be used to preach for annihilation and so on.

It is true in corporate life as well. This article is about a rule that sounds nice but can be abused to achieve something more sinister.

## `try {` Get stuff done, otherwise... `}`
The positive reading of the saying _getting stuff done_ is that the employees are encouraged to
- find new, innovative ways to get around problems
- go at great lengths to help the customer

However the negative reading is this: 

> "Stop complaining about ineffective tooling, messy processes, buggy internal apps, corners being cut for short term gratification! Get that s### done!"

For a quick example, if you tell engineers that they can make `design decisions` you can later use it to offload half of the design work to them and expect them not to complain.

The same is true for the codebase or the infrastructure; putting up with bad tooling might double engineering efforts - you _can_ be your own devops engineer, yay!

> The heroes of _"getting stuff done"_ might actually counterintuitively contribute to a slow and agonizing death of engineering efforts...

Since they just shut up about that
- dev environment that was a house of cards
- tool that always requires 2 other engineers to start up
- ball of mess that adds 2 days to any feature being made...

Instead of loudly asking for time for a much-needed refactor - which is a totally normal side effect of [iterative software development](https://www.georgefairbanks.com/ieee-software-v32-n4-july-2020-ur-technical-debt).

But there is more to this. There is something very familiar about "stopping complaining and getting stuff done"... Oh yeah! I remember! 

> "Stop crying and [man up](https://www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/man-up-continues-men-s-mental-health-message-with-moving-ad)!"

We see the effect of this great advice in the male suicide epidemic. Also having these company mottos inherently have some connection to [toxic positivity](https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/).

_Stop the negativity Eastern European angry developer! Only Positive Vibes at the meetings!_ 😜

/nervous chuckle/

## `catch {` How to fix it humanely `}`
**First** of all try not sound like a B-grade life coach just coming back from Bali. If you wish to have company-mottos test them out on your _friend's mom_ or on similar other neutral-positive observer. If she says _"you sound a lot like a cult"_ then maybe you should rephrase them until you sound like how normal people speak.

**Second** is that company leadership from the team leads to C-level executives must always listen to complaints coming from below. It can be simple noise or they can point to some hidden internal problem. Punishing (🤫) or silencing (🤐) these will only result in people who care just to leave the company when they have the right chance. 

Most of us who have well-paid, respectable jobs already care enough not to just f### around until work is over.

`// comment:`
I am not saying here there are no personalities that are very pessimistic or negative, but I do think these people are very rare and it's better to be reactive about and not _proactive_, i.e. discouraging people to voice their dissent.

And **third**, complaining might be cultural. I live in Hungary, for many of us complaining about something when your friend asks _"How are you doing?"_ is not rude but a conversation starter.

> This means that it's never a bad idea to invest in getting to know more about the cultures and the countries your company has employees from. 😉

## `finally { }`
It's great to encourage people to help customers and go at great lengths to find solutions for real problems. However it's better to reward and motivate creativity than to punish the sensitive.