[aphextron]

>I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to say. My managers think I'm a high performer who also makes valuable social contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises.

i.e. the Gervais principle [0]

[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

[JimboOmega]

Real question - is this possible to do as a woman? I often feel like the games of the office, especially the engineering office, are much more naturally suited (and familiar to) men.

I've known people who seem to coast to leadership positions (showing no aptitude, and often, even interest in them!), people who are automatically first pick whenever a promotion becomes available almost from the moment they walk in the door... and they've always been men.

Although I've never been on a team led by a woman, in practice it feels like when I'm on sub-teams with other women they function quite differently; the style is "cooperative dyadic relationships that are more emotion-focused and characterized by unstable hierarchies and strong egalitarian norms" is a pretty accurate description and empirically observed to quote[1].

It's also something I've observed directly - for instance, the women's communities I'm part of (be it WomEng, or outside of work) have a very large number of leads, who each lead a small aspect of things, e.g., there might be one person who is in charge of scheduling; another who sets the agenda, and a third who runs the meeting itself. Hierarchies come and go on an as needed basis, it just... operates very differently overall. A recent reorganization of communities requested that the communities all have 2 clear leads, and it was only WomEng that had a problem with that (one that almost dissolved the community as a result)

It often feels that my biggest secret to continued employment is that I'm very good at talking to HR, which has been, again in practice, entirely women. Women view me as a strong contributor and highly capable; men view me as "untrustworthy" and lazy. At my previous job, I basically had to have HR in my one on ones to "translate", for instance.

It's like two very different games; playing the men's one is unnatural and surprisingly difficult. My gut feeling is that this has more to do with personality differences that tend to exist between men and women, and not, say, sexism directly.

Anyway... have you seen women play this game well? If so, how? Where did they learn, and what?

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/taking-...

[jama211]

Women definitely have it harder, as they have to work pretty hard just to be seen as contributing.

The golden rule is though, the tricks still work, and doing real work is usually one of the least efficient ways of making yourself seen as contributing. As they say, 'play to the rules they set out'. As a general rule, the metrics that people use within companies to determine performance are hopelessly bad, they will reward easy but visible work far more than hard and important but also not that visible work. As such, optimise your moves to peak the performance figures they're looking for, which almost always have very little to do with what actually needs to be done to keep the company performing well.

The women I have seen succeed have used the exact same tactics, perhaps with a bit of extra assertiveness and extra work put in to look the part as well, for example virtue signalling professionalism via clothing etc, which men don't usually have to do because of the awful patriarchy. Just my thoughts, anyway.

[JimboOmega]

Not only does what's best for the company not matter, but what is stated in the rubrics doesn't matter so much either. Interestingly, how the rubric itself gets interpreted seems to vary; for the right people, it's a list of guidelines and the things you do well stand out; for others it's a checklist and the things you didn't do are emphasized. For some people (not me, though other WomEng complained about this) doing things that are part of the rubric at higher levels doesn't help you if your boss finds a gap at the current level; for others it gets you promoted fast. In the former situation people have shared experiences like "it's great that you really helped with the interviewing process, but why didn't you use that time to write more code?"

There was actually a huge debate about the interpretation on slack, and no conclusion was ever reached even on something simple like "Is this a checklist or not?"

In my experience doing what my boss tells me to do paradoxically leads to the worst outcomes; I've determined the best strategy is to ignore him entirely. For instance, he sort-of threatened me with a PIP, claiming a list of explicit things I hadn't done; I fired back with a list of all the times I'd either done the things, or asked him for the opportunity to do the thing (often repeatedly, with no action on his part, and documented that it was so). That fizzled out very fast.

I think the real origin of the confusion with him is that he's getting pressure from a level or two up; he is very concerned with how my work appears to his lead and his skip lead. The indirection layer is the problem. He came up with a list that was divorced from reality since he hadn't honestly been paying attention (otherwise he'd have mentioned it before), and boy did that blow up in his face (nobody won in that situation, but he definitely lost).

No joke; he retracted the huge list and said, basically, forget all that - don't play with your phone at your desk so much, and we'll be fine. Appearances are what matters.

Regardless, spending energy trying to figure out what he wants just leads to worse outcomes for both of us. Not that it matters; I've figured out the optimal strategy in my position is to simply hold off a PIP and then milk the internal transfer process to get to the position I want. My goal is to be an EM, which isn't technically a promotion at my level, and so it's a lateral move I can make that somehow has nothing to do with what my existing team thinks of me (as long as I'm not on a PIP, of course!)

Oh, and my other strategy, if I was to decide to remain an IC, is to manager shop. Especially after the huge discussion (with no resolution whatsoever!) on the subject of interpreting the rubrics, it feels like the trick is to simply find a manager (ideally a woman) whose interpretations line up with what you do naturally. My habit of investing in communities of women is always going to be of minimal help because they're all so low level (because tech is like that), but oops, it matters to me, so invest in it I shall - why not shop around for a manager who values community engagement? Most are primarily concerned with pleasing their skip lead which community engagement doesn't do, but there are some who value it.

BTW Virtue signaling via clothing is really difficult, because being attractive is good, but the more attractive you are the less competent you are seen as. Actually, this is generally true; being seen as feminine is being seen as attractive is being seen as less competent. There was a big NPR podcast on the subject of voice; how a lower voice is seen as less attractive but more competent, but it's easy to go too far and seem "bitchy" or undesirable. The flipside is true; a higher pitch is seen as attractive but ditzy. That's generally true across aspects of presentation, especially in male dominated fields.

[punchclockhero]

I kinda stumbled onto a viable "build" for this game by being a socially awkward neckbeard, but female. No makeup, conference t-shirts with jeans and hikers, video games and 4chan for water cooler talk topics. I get automatically considered more competent than I actually am.

[HammockWarrior]

It helps if you work for the right company. Some are looking to bend over backwards to bring in and promote women engineers so they can showcase their newfound diversity. A higher up at my company was literally suggesting women hiring quotas (not sure how that's legal but whatever).

[kreck]

Thanks for the link. This is awesome.

[gorn]

Great read! Thanks.