Should You Fight Dirty to Climb The Tech Ladder?

[@HealthyDev]

Have you had to resist playing dirty to get ahead? What happened to other people who didn’t? ►► Get your free Healthy Software Development career guide → healthysoftwaredeveloper.com/guide/

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Honesty and fairness have became weaknesses after extrovert narcissists took over the industry.

[@XDBjoernXD]

As soon I figure out people are wired to be this way at the workplace I have to leave, so I don't inhabit this bad mindset. I found out that in the past I subconsciously adopted this bad behavior and had to fight it. There are no excuses to be an asshole.

[@adaptivedeveloper]

I worked with one pretty talented guy, who slagged a lot, criticised everything others did, and tried to position himself as the best of the best. I thought that maybe he's just insecure. People leaned more towards me, while we were strangely positioned as shared leads in the startup (origin of the issue). He started to play dirty. Some complaints hit the management. He got sacked. For years he stalked team mates, tried to sue some, and purchased domains with my name. I still felt he was more a victim and chose to not respond in any way and just ignore him. I keep hearing he burned bridges in most companies in the area we worked together and got himself in legal trouble. Some people just chase negativity until it consumes them. I made many mistakes as a dev and manager, but being a good person towards the team and focusing on the actual goals helped me to stay sane and get some recognition. It's worth it in the long run.

[@Dsalas96]

Jayme, I really enjoy the videos you put out. Espicially this one! I got laid off from my recent job as a software engineer, and while It is a bit devastating, it is a blessing to be honest. My product owner and managers were one of the most toxic coworkers I have ever worked with. PO would always add more tasks in the middle or the end of our sprint, always argued with me or any of the developers that disagreed with him, and was always with me in one-on-ones with my manager, because they just seemed to always stick up for each other no matter what. I worked 80 hours one week and it just caused me to burn out and cycle into a severe depression and take medical leave. Your videos did help me to toughen through after I came back on the job, and even though I was displaced, it's probably a good thing because there is a less toxic and better workplace out there waiting for me

[@MrFlynn-bt6mt]

Good for you, man. 80 hours a week is mad!

[@HealthyDev]

I agree with MrFlynn - 80 hours is nuts. Glad to hear you are in a more sustainable place now, though it sounds like you went through hell to get there!

[@janco333]

Is it even lawful to make an employee work 80 hours. In my country overtime is capped at 10 hours a week, so max 50 hours.

[@StrayCatInTheStreets]

Document everything, for you. Seriously. 1) document your work on the company site/wiki. This gives you visibility and keeps the bullies or bullshitters away. They see your visibility and will see it as not worth the fight. 2) Keep a internal service record of what you do and deliver even spikes, prototyping or trying out tech on your laptop. Keep it rolling. Have exports of your commit record, stories/epics done etc. Link to your service record. If you ever get jumped and put on the spot about your value or productivity you can use this as an audit trail. Regardless if you do both of these things and you use them to defend your position you will send signals you are solid and cannot be fucked with. I had to adopt this as a contractor.

[@HealthyDev]

I experienced the same as a consultant. Golden advice.

[@Budulai89]

In other words, have integrity.

[@BillClinton228]

While everyone else is backstabbing, gatekeeping and generally trying to make you look like a criminal for making the smallest mistake.

[@watcher1326]

Only half way through and already an informative video. Thanks.

[@MrFlynn-bt6mt]

Nice guitar work bro

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks! It's the music I wrote for my wife's podcast about her childhood trauma, "a past, repainted".

[@vivekkaushik9508]

Thanks for the insights. Going through the rough phase of my career myself. I wanna quit this industry completly but I'm sticking for now. Maybe I can still learn and grow in it.

[@Meritumas]

In the same boat; I am moving to solo dev / teaching. I am done with politics and fake teams.

[@adaptivedeveloper]

It pays off to let the team take credit for lead work. They remember it

[@gsit80]

To avoid fighting dirty I removed myself from an architecture that was very interesting. This is useful.

[@VictorOliveiraDev]

I like to put it this way: there's a risk to adapting. You might put up with things you shouldn't and you might become someone you didn't want. Rejecting/getting rejected by a dirty environment can steer you to a good one.

[@nexovec]

This hasn't really happened to me, but it's a useful reminder what some people are like nevertheless.

[@AntonVilanov]

Hey man, just discovered your channel and absolutely love the content and advices. Extremely relatable and I find it particularly helpful coming from someone with such long experience in the industry. Appreciate your perspectives, they helped sooth work-related worries in a very unexpected way. Thank you! 🙏

[@HealthyDev]

Hey nice, to meet you Anton. Welcome to the channel!

[@iaminterestedineverything]

Companies encourage this behaviour by intentionally not rewarding, and at worst putting people on PIPs if they are introverted and/or carrying a burden for the team by doing the unglorified work. I've seen it time and time again by management - those put on shiny projects often aren't those most capable at technical work or architectural work either. Rule #1 is to look after your own interests but job hopping is tedious also. A benefit of working for a small company is that they don't generally have this problem.

[@HealthyDev]

Interesting take. I've had to position myself to be on more visible work to move ahead sometimes. But that can be done without lying, being manipulative, or deceiving people. It usually takes a combination of good fortune and working smart for the right opportunity.

[@iaminterestedineverything]

@@HealthyDev absolutely. When I say you need to look after your own interests, it means to protect yourself if you're an introvert by keeping your resume updated. If you're keen to progress by getting on an interesting project, it may also be better to look around rather than play games, should you find yourself not being chosen time and time again.

[@DridgeDEU]

Hello! Love your videos. I just wanted to add a suggestion - could you perhaps make a video about conflicts? As in, handling disagreements, fights etc? I searched through your video history but couldn't find anything on the subject. For context, I feel that there's a lot of conflict in software engineering, both spoken and unspoken. At least personally, I feel that I have no idea how to handle these situations. I've been already in a couple of bad moments at work, at different employers, involving different people and situations - conflicts are just bound to happen at some point it seems like.

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for the suggestion. Before offering any approaches for dealing with conflict, I felt it was important to help people get their heart in the right place. Kind of like nuclear power can be used for powering homes or hurting people, techniques for dealing with conflict have some ethical implications if used improperly.

[@cheeyeo7612]

The short answer is yes and it seems yhe dirtier you play the higher you climb. I had an experience with a lead developer who didnt want me in his new team, and he went behind my back to spread rumours about my performance to his superiors even though he appraised me weekly on my 1 to 1s. End result i was laid off by HR and he was promoted. Im still bitter sbout it till this day but it made me stronger and gave me the push to.improve my skillset. But there was no need for any of it. I can only hope that the same thing he did to me happens to him one day.

[@HealthyDev]

Ouch. I'm so sorry. If you've watched any of the videos in my "Software Project Stories" playlist you know I've been a victim of politics like this too. Never feels good.

[@megabyte01]

I think I know how you feel. I went through a similar thing four years ago. The good thing is that I came out of the crisis with the experience to trade up to a new job almost immediately, even in the beginning of the pandemic. Still, it sucked. I had been at that company long enough to make friends and start to think of it as home (advice from this channel aside). It was hard to let go of what was and what could have been. I'm still working through it TBH. What brings me clarity is to remember the following: 1. Learn to trust others again 2. Learn to trust the process again 3. Learn to trust yourself again

[@HealthyDev]

@@megabyte01hard to do, but excellent advice.

[@yuyuchen09]

I had seen offshore workers almost carbon copied my documents I put together detailing a major project I’d accomplished not long ago, that I designed, prototyped, implemented and gone through the entire SDLC. He followed the format, redrew a similar architecture diagram, with his new parameters in the same table format, WITHOUT any reference to my work, and my manager was impressed by his “speedy” work. I commented to him during team meeting, “you need to reference” my documentation. This is not only taking credit but is plagiarism. It happens at work, may or may not with some cultural context. We need to own our work, talk about it, publish it, present it, each one of us are part of the culture we built collectively, at least, while I am still “here” by choice.

[@HealthyDev]

Yikes. That sucks. I once was on a project for the consulting agency I worked for and the client turned in the diagram I had completed the week before as his deliverable the following week. We didn't say anything about it, we just laughed (the other consultants on my team).

[@mheinzle]

Unfortunately the company I work at is a very toxic environment and putting everyone else down to get ahead is a very normal behaviour here. But I’m very proud to say that this does not apply to our IT team. I’ve worked hard to make the “ethical behaviour” our default and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

[@Cylinderstruck]

That's really inspiring man. Wish there were people like you in Indian IT as well.

[@diamantberg]

One of your most important speech, which I would also like to recommend to everyone else here. I think it's nice that you apologize for the mistakes you've made so that you can truly get the message across to the newcomers. These are things that have always been important to me too. I've seen people play dirty games. Sometimes even unknowingly, because it determines their character. Ergo, they were blind to how they really acted. I also have to admit that I didn't always tell the whole truth and left out important information for my personal gain. Through your channel, I realized quite early on that I can and should deal differently in many situations. Thank you very much for every of your words.

[@vulpixelful]

It doesn't seem worth it to play dirty. Even if I "succeed" I know it would be too stressful to keep having to do that to keep my job. It's not worth it karmically either, from a Buddhist perspective. Better to keep my lifestyle needs at what I think I can make on average, so I don't feel the need to compromise myself for a high paycheck at a toxic company.

[@j2csharp]

I think I can admit that I let my principles and values be set aside because someone else wanted me to act or be a certain way. It took several jobs to see that I do have values, morals, and principles. Now, I just need to stick to those. I hope others can be more aware of their value systems and how they may not align with the company's culture or values. This way they can make a decision to do something different, such as speaking up or leaving the company, rather than constantly compromising.

[@HealthyDev]

It took a lot more than several jobs for me to realize this! Glad to hear you're wiser than me earlier in your career. Hang in there, hopefully you find the personal peace is worth it.

[@millertime6]

It’s funny because I was thinking about this today. In the past when I’d start a new job people would jump at the “negative branding” or “smear campaigns” as I call them. “Oh, he drinks” or “he’s high” or “he stole that code.” Sad

[@Erik_The_Viking]

Short answer: No. Take the high road. They will get their karma in due time. Your reputation matters, especially in smaller markets and industries where everyone knows each other.

[@kenjimiwa3739]

What I never understood about someone taking credit for someone's work is the proof is all there and trackable. Commits, tickets, the documentation of work is all there.

[@HealthyDev]

Yeah. The problem is you've got to have someone actually look at it. I've had people pay me to write documents many times in my career and they never read them. It's really frustrating sometimes!

[@kenjimiwa3739]

For performance reviews I've tried to make it as easy as possible on managers to see my contributions by creating a Google doc, grouping projects and then linking to PRs with brief note. Sure they probably won't go through all the links but it's irrefutable proof of contribution.

[@HealthyDev]

@@kenjimiwa3739that's very wise.

[@Someoneelse_XD]

I, in general, like your positive attitude. However, I have seen a lot of people working hard and not getting rewarded and people that are really just talking, getting promoted. The larger the company, the more I have noticed that career networking and sugar coating outperforms good work. That's unfortunate, but it's also part of the truth.

[@HealthyDev]

Yep. Evil people have always gotten ahead in some aspects. It's a personal decision whether we choose to get drawn into it.

[@yurisich]

​@@HealthyDevthat's a really good point that I feel the video glosses over. If you watch it again, you're almost left with the impression that eventually, everything will work itself out. Which isn't completely incorrect, it's just not what the viewer might be thinking -- that everything will work out the way they hope it will, where good triumphs in the end. This is the exception, not the norm. It's better to mentally prepare yourself for the gut wrenching statistics, but I admit it's powerful self preservation to focus on what you can control, which is where your faith comes from. Great video, again!

[@HealthyDev]

I think you got it. Having realistic expectations going in. The last thing I want is to encourage people to fall into despair and nihilism. We can rise above it, even though the wicked may prevail temporarily.

[@harleyspeedthrust4013]

Funny this video was recommended to me today because I just witnessed this for the first time in my career. Our team has been responsible for onboarding a new team of new hires in a foreign country. That responsibility has fallen mostly on the shoulders of me and one other developer on the team. Well today my teammate was reviewing some technical documentation that the new team had written, and he noticed that it contained some internal product names that were about 2 years out of date. After a bit of digging he found that the team had taken two old documents and spliced them together as if it was their own work. There was little to no original work in the final document, and no indication that the final document was not their work (they heavily implied that they had written it themselves without explicitly stating that). Now this is just internal technical documentation, so plagiarism here is not as serious as it is in academia, but despite this I was very disappointed. I had been helping this new team, answering their questions, getting on calls with them very early in the morning to give them some guidance, explaining things to them, etc. - so after witnessing this I felt like they didn't actually want to learn. Sometimes I would explain something in writing and find that they had taken my words verbatim and pasted them into a code comment. Not a big deal - English is not their first language. But what happened today gives me the suspicion that they have little to no interest in learning and may actually just be taking advantage of our willingness to help them.

[@HealthyDev]

Wild. I was once working at a consulting company where me and 4 other consultants were working to help a client. The client had 3 of their own people "helping" us each week too. I submitted a diagram I'd created of the system one week. The next week one of their own people changed the title of the diagram and submitted it as their own, in a meeting where all of us were present. The 4 of us (the consultants) laughed pretty hard about it privately afterwards. We knew the client had just seen it the week before. Their leadership must have been like WTF? about their own people.

[@wavereader8847]

Most of the developers I've worked (over twenty plus devs) are professional and wouldn't do something dirty except one or two. One was somewhat incompetent and a slacker but he was slick so at any opportunity he'd sound like he would get things done but this guy would talk smack and put down me. I ended up leaving anyways because the direction of the company was looking bad (financially and development wise). They ended up not delivering the project he worked on and he got switched to a project doing a wordpress webportal. Another one was not so much incompetent or a slacker but wanted to just do managerial work because she knew the game. Her work was alright but the nature of it was that it's difficult stuff so she wants to be a managerr fast. Once she was, she delegates all her senior level duties to the newbies. It was harrowing how the project turned out. She moved up the ladders but didn't last as long at the big companies. Honestly I've worked with some really professional developers too, like they know their stuff and help you when you needed and never put anybody down, even the ones that didn't know what they were doing. The managers are like what was said in the videos. Some of them talk smack about other people, even though they're new. Some of the managers are not tech saavy but they're made CTOs. I wonder how they got the position. For example, one company I interviewed at had a CTO and a dev and that was most of their budget. This guy doesn't do much and said that they have no QA and said that they don't do QA. All this guy was looking for was a react developer. I guess the other developer that he had couldn't do all the React development. I had zero React experience but had other experience in Angular and experience in tons of other stuff and the guy was clueless and rude. Now I'm working on a React project, guess how long it took me to learn React? About one week I was able to get the ball rolling. Some of the managers play the office politics game to get ahead and are clueless about everything else.

[@wafazorgui9066]

So truuue im in that Phase right now. I Took few Sick days and vacation days to cool off my Head reconstruct my health and energy, set my priorities and step up to the game head up !

[@Rick104547]

I believe that staying close to your own values and focusing on the facts is what counts long term. Do you want to look back on a career of undermining others so you can get a better position or do you want to be actually proud of what you have done? This is hard to do sometimes. You might come across ppl who might feel threatened and try to undermine you. Don't just accept their toxic behavior. Focus on the facts and lead by example. Maybe they will change maybe they won't but more likely others will see you and appreciate it. This might not work at every company but if that's the case that company just doesn't fit you and it's time to leave. Staying for years trying to change a company is a trap. Changing how a team functions is one thing (and to be fair not easy) but changing how an organisation functions is a whole other challenge and often impossible to do from our position.

[@HootanHM]

I've been a victim of unethical things for 3 times in a corp that brag about "doing the right thing" And those unethical guys promoted, and right before anyone knows how crappy their are they changed company! And got a new garden to poop on. Once, I tried to speak up, and I got accused for lying 🤥 Finally, some managers noticed what I'm doing for the company, I received some thanking and recognition emails, but nothing visible on my pay check 😅 For me the count down has started, and soon I'll be leaving this amazing corporate, and letting them dream the right thing. I'm sure the road is not over yet, and there are years to come, and I'm sure they will get some life lessons. Or maybe I get some lessons, and finding new definition for "right" and "ethics". We will see😅

[@theaccountant666]

There is a ladder? normally that can disappear in secs, whatever the C-Suite feels like to improve the bottom line

[@5daboz]

I tend to move away from such people if I can. I do not like thinking bad thoughts. The most challenging is when you can not move away. A few weeks ago my parents and my aunt (near top in country's ministry) rounded me at the table talk, telling me how I should lie more, be more nasty, more willing to "compromise" (it means doing whatever you are told, examples she gave were not 'meet me halfway'), in short, I should be a worse person. It was hard. And it was right after due to some other people in government doing me dirty, threatening my financial stability, making me want to kill myself out of desperation and feeling of tiredness over trying very hard for very long. So I told her, she is just before her pension "if this country continues as it is, you might live longer than me". And she didn't get it. Because of course she didn't, you play to win, why would you choose to lose. Well, because I have a choice, I can prove her wrong, I do not need to be bad, I can be just dead. Anyway, I decided I will stay away from her from now on, we were quite close before, she is bad from my health, I do not want to die, it is just really tempting when you talk with her.

[@kravaa2]

Very good guitar video, with some nice dev talk in between

[@HealthyDev]

🤣

[@beardedlonewolf7695]

There are so many boot-lickers in IT companies, I have too much integrity and professionalism to do that, unfortunately I did lose some perks and positions in my 10-year career so far, but I feel much better with my decisions and myself. If I was a boss I would never trust nor respect a boot-licker, but the bosses we have nowadays like the attention no matter the poor skills they have.

[@keddycameron2723]

Any advice for new devs trying to break into the market ?

[@geriatricprogrammer4364]

Being good at the job will get you nowhere on the corporate greasy pole.

[@oleg4966]

Of course it won't; being good at the job you're doing has no connection with whether other people expect you to be good at the job which you _aren't_ doing yet. But where do you want to get on the pole and why do you want to get there? If the answer to 'why' is anything but "I love playing politics" or "I want this specific position because I did it before and it matches my competencies"... eh, you'll probably find a better way to get what you want. Climbing poles is exhausting, and staying on them is even more so. The long-term ROI isn't that great, either, unless you have a very specific goal in mind and will stop climbing immediately after you get there. So personally, I'd leave pole-climbing to people who like the _process_ of climbing poles. They get enjoyment out of it, at least.

[@ltxr9973]

Yes. Because if you don't other people will and they'll beat you that way. If you care about being at the top you need to fight dirty. Maybe caring about being at the top is dumb to begin with but people are different, really depends on the personality if it's important. For me a peaceful situation becomes boring really quickly. I'd rather be in the company where chairs are getting thrown in meetings.

[@alias_tetrial]

On the other hand, how to stop diminishing your own achievements?

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there. In my experience, what's good is to talk up the benefits to the product or business due to what I accomplished. People are turned off when someone directly compliments themselves, so this fights against this. Like instead of saying "I finished the Oauth login.". Saying "customers can now login so they can get access to their account". I know this contrived example might seem silly but you can try extrapolating it to the work you've done and putting it in business terms.

[@alexleung842]

I found there's a lot of politics around getting people to use the framework they own and preventing others from changing that framework too much

[@adambickford8720]

The junior will move up to senior once they finally understand their politicking is more important than technical merit. Like it or not, we're all in 'sales'. Or if you want to buzzword compliant: EQ > IQ.

[@HealthyDev]

I agree completely we need to learn to raise the visibility of our work sometimes to get credit and then get rewarded. I think people don't always realize this can be done ethically though, especially considering how many times we've probably seen it done by tearing someone else down.

[@slimjimjimslim5923]

People think work is like a video game where you levelup and thing get easier and there's an end boss. No lol most work goal isn't clearly defined so people keep climbing and getting more work and stress for some compensation. But it's never equal. When you get your next promo, chances are you get more work/stress and some more money. You gotta evaluate if that is where you want to stay or move or something. Otherwise the corporate climb is never ending and you end up working yourself to death. Sure you might end up earning 400k a year but the price of health, family, friends, experience, mental health, time, how much are you willing to let go of. Companies aren't dumb, they aren't going to pay you 400k a year for you to do nothing. XD

[@HealthyDev]

Well put.

[@zxccvb4462]

"you would be suprised up in the higher levels of companies how often that actually happens" - no, it's impossible (between these employees). On these levels you cannot steal anything, because there are only 'blah blah' 'workers' who already stole some engineer's work.

[@hellome3046]

is there anyone who can help me in learning we rtc in mern

[@vitalyzhynov557]

We need a resource that would solve the problem of anonymity in reliable reviews - not all reviews are made publicly for fear of potential consequences, unfortunately. At the same time verified anonymous reviews aren't enough, because pieces of shit are not lazy for writing anything(!) about you, believe me, they will be the first to do it or have already done so. It is necessary to combine people with similar values - this will solve the problem of simply different values and at the same time will be a lesson for parasites, because something tells me that they will not last long in the environment of people like them. For example you have two people with direct negative reviews to each other -> some people support one side, other - second side -> you have an information for group creation. Because just endure - not a very good advice to my opinion during times when people sometimes have to work for half of their rate that was 2 years ago.

[@ForgottenKnight1]

Companies that have high competition, usually have low collaboration, because these 2 aspects are in conflict, unless managed in an assertive way (which rarely happens). Do you have a manager take credit for your work ? Let them have a slice, but always make sure you have yours too. The first project you were on was a management confusion. Why did you assign a team of .NET engineers on a Java codebase :) ? Should have been obvious that they will favour .NET over anything else and build a case on it. If a company tolerates toxic gossip, lack of transparency, sabotaging and other unethical practices you should start looking for another job at another company. From my own experience, becoming a contractor can help you avoid a lot of the political corporate BS and also gives you better control of your carreer. No matter your form of employment you should always interview, at least a couple of times each year and also be aware of what skills you should evolve to stay relevant on the market.

[@HealthyDev]

This was when .NET was in beta and we were already well into a Java project. I was leading a team of 12 people and half of them didn't like me. Not because I was incompetent, but because they were 10 years older and jealous. .NET was a distraction to try and take control of the project. You can watch the episode where I explain the whole crazy drama here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmXLd4SvqrCJntU

[@gzoechi]

On every job for 35 years the first thing was that an asshole superior started playing dirty games like sabotaging and spreading lies and many other shit. I'm pretty sure in the vast majority of cases this was sanctioned by the owner. As you can imagine, productivity in these companies is at the theoretical minimum most of the time. I'm not made for this kind of games. I also don't get what people get out of working at the shittiest companies or owning them. I never stayed long.

[@wavereader8847]

I had one DB lead not believe what I was saying on how to optimize some SQL queries using indexes and casting types in the queries. Like I had seen it done before in another project for the same company. Like literally this was two different team for the same company where one of the team had figured out how to optimize these queries and I was on that project. I literally had to show it to another developer what was done and once some of these queries returned results in 1 seconds, they had a big meeting and acted like it's some brand new discovery or something. Like wow. This dude is still there doing DB stuff then deprecating them and redoing it in another way.

[@wafazorgui9066]

Best solution ist self employment

[@Budulai89]

The answer is Yes.

[@dvg-in-eu]

This misinformation and taking credit for other people's work is happening for the first time in my career. I hate these assholes and just keep thinking about changing companies 😢

[@HealthyDev]

Oh man, I'm so sorry. I hope you're able to find a better team soon.

[@ffatheranderson]

It is impossible to avoid the corporate grind…. It is just “life”. In this life we have to compete if we want to survive. Previously (long time ago, hundreds years ago) we were competing mainly against the environment, now we compete against each other…

[@HealthyDev]

Not sure if you're disagreeing with me, or just adding commentary. I would agree we have to compete to survive. The question is, can we compete ethically?

[@ffatheranderson]

@@HealthyDev ☺️ I could say that message I left was a result of impulse of anger. Not towards to you, but as a result of helplessness just because the life is that way. I see you trying as much as possible to speak about positive sides of software development. I personally already lost faith in ethical working environment. The reason I lost that faith is because each person when they do some action - they believe that this is the best action that they could have done at that point of time in their life with available at that time resources/knowledge. And no matter what they do - they do it coming from the best intentions for themselves, and they can’t act otherwise(against their own interest). Here is an example: People will hire somebody who is of their own ethnicity, because of the feeling of comradery. Especially in the multinational environment like USA. They will do so because it will be beneficial for already created environment. Let’s say - if recruiter is Indian person and development team already consists of 5 developers from India - they are unlikely to hire somebody from another culture because it just naturally will introduce dissonance into their already existing environment where they all have similar values and beliefs as a result of growing in the same environment. The reason I do not believe that it is possible to escape corporate grind lies in the nature of work and life itself. The purpose of the work is to create something as effective as possible and as cheap as possible and as quick as possible. It implies that in order to do that - we as a producers of that creation - have to put our own time and power into creation process. And with age - we become weaker as a result of aging, but if we have family - we have to support our own family as a men. And prosperity and success of our own offspring is more important then success of other people. With a time we will face situation where we are not smart/quick/strong enough to compete with other younger generation which will be ready to work cheaper and quicker (for some period of their life). And the dilemma at that point will be “What should I sacrifice? Should I admit that they are better and deserve more (and by that I will get less and my family and offspring will suffer), or should I use available to me resources (lie, misguidance, being closer to the people at power) to get ahead and get more benefits to myself even if I do not deserve them (but I have to be responsible for my family and my offspring)?” So all in all this life is about grind…… To avoid grind (corporate or any other type of grind) is to avoid life.

[@ffatheranderson]

@@HealthyDev☺️ the answer to your question is “no, we can’t compete ethically”. Power decides who wins that competition. It is the competition of life and there is no ethics when question comes to “who is allowed to live and who should die”. Ethic is a word which different people are giving different meaning to. And one’s man decisions are ethical for one man and are unethical to another man. It is just a game where the strongest wins.

[@HealthyDev]

I'm sorry you've had such a hard run. I can understand that view. I held a similar one until about 6 years ago. I hope you find peace in whatever happens to you.

[@Roadrunner65553]

The tech lead fights dirty. People are not immune from competing dirty.

[@whatwhat9519]

always fight dirty and never forget you brash knuckles

[@cherubin7th]

Its like pooping, very dirty but you gotta do what you gotta do.

[@thesheep6248]

No

[@JonasThente-ji5xx]

yes please

[@rohitdutkunwar8705]

Non coders do.

[@Anna-jw2qq]

When you play dirty you are literally hurting others and do stuff to them that you wouldn't want someone to do to you. Why make this world a worse place?

[@TedSeeber]

Surprise, software developers are human too.

[@HealthyDev]

😉

[@DM-rc8sp]

❤

[@DawidCech]

🎉

[@aaronk9740]

I hoped at least to hear about defending from some dirty tricks and description of them. Not very informative video - tl dr - work hard and don’t play games, that’s your advice. Not much info for me…

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for the feedback. Before I offer any defense against dirty tricks, I want to make sure people's hearts are in the right place. That's the purpose of this video, to gut check whether you are willing to stick to your principles when dealing with opposition. I'll take your feedback as consideration for future episodes, thanks.

[@Leonhart_93]

Not sure why this is surprising, programmers are the same humans as everyone else, and they fall for the same things.

[@TezukaKohei]

Jamie! A video you made 10 days ago ("Clueless Coders" which i just commented on) contradicts about 75% of what you're saying here. Re-watch this video and repent for you have forsaken yourself! You're better than this! This video is correct. The other one is not!

[@HealthyDev]

Help me out here. Be specific about how I'm contradicting it, then I can respond.

[@dinoscheidt]

😮‍💨 Fact of life is that humans have been tribal, emotional and associative for thousands of years. Why do you think, that just because you find yourself in that relatively new playground called business or corporate that all this doesn’t apply? I am a tech lead that is the son of a psychiatrist, first studied psychology myself and just later found the connection between my computer science education and group dynamics. That being said, I absolutely disagree with the notion of this video. If you proclaim yourself to be “above it all”, you already are below it all. A false logical syllogism… After all: Being paid, or paying others, in money for work is after all…. also just another dirty trick. A video about binary lines in an analog world. -This video should be about how to deal with a messy, grey and “dirty” world. You can’t stand above it. Never. Instead learn how to combat, call out and wield the interactions of emotional infused discourse. It’s 90% of what you experience in live…. believing to have a “high road”, standing above it all, will just set you up to for either resignation or capitulation. You are human. Like everybody else.

[@HealthyDev]

I'm not sure I understand the conclusion of your statement. Are you basically saying it's OK to be unethical?

[@dinoscheidt]

@@HealthyDevno, what I am saying is there is no such thing as “ethical”/“unethical”. There is no binary line (whole lecture halls are filled depending on culture, norms and settings on what is or isn’t). Aka, believing you found a binary line you stand above is a set-up for failure. And something that is commonly taught in transactional analysis (deescalating conflicts, Thomas Harris). The simplified synopsis for your video is: If you try to survive in a world, where you are not able to identify what drives a person to behave “unethical” in your perspective, you yourself are playing dirty by just drawing conclusions.

[@dinoscheidt]

❤ Also: Greetings from berlin. (Generally) love your videos, and share them a lot.

[@HealthyDev]

I respect your difference of opinion. Personally, I believe lecture halls and analysts are not what we should base our principles on. This is the reason I became a Christian. Pluralism is incredibly popular these days, and for good reason. It lets us justify treating people however we want on the basis that everyone's truth is relative. If we really believe there's no such thing as right and wrong, we should all become drug dealers. It would be much more lucrative.

[@dinoscheidt]

@@HealthyDevWell I studied social sciences + computer sciences with empirical research regarding humans and groups. So I have nothing to say about religion or such. And in that the stance is: There are no bad people, just bad systems and circumstances.