[InsideOutSanta]

>Those teams weren’t actually harmonious—they were conflict-avoidant.

In my experience, this is not true because, in high-trust teams, there is "harmonious conflict." People offer criticism without getting heated.

Getting heated often results from a strong opinion combined with a lack of faith that other people are genuinely considering your opinion. People who get heated feel they have to be forceful to convince others to listen. Knowing your opinion will be hard and carefully considered, you don't need to get heated.

[tetha]

From being in a company with places across all of Europe, I've also found that "heated" means very different things in different places. Like, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but the calm discussion where to get dinner in Spain can be a lot more energetic than a very heated discussion about a strategic problem between some Brits and Germans.

But with less jest - I think we have a very good discussion culture in the team at work. No one on the team is scared to disagree, or to point out that this doesn't seem to go towards a positive direction. It's just not a heated discussion.

At times during these planning sessions, we just sit in silent thought and maybe doodling something in Excalidraw or on paper for a few minutes until someone is like "I need more input on X", or "So I have a rough plan I think?" or "I think there is an issue with that idea", even if it's not clear why - if 2 or 3 people are vaguely not fine with something, it's probably a bad idea. And we've also started to learn each others tells if we're not happy.

[darkwater]

Interesting take, and most probably you are right. But this requires at least two people with a above-the-average emotional intelligence. And in our trade, in my opinion and experience, it's not easy to find people that excel in both emotional and practical problem solving intelligences. So, having a profound technical discussion in a team without heating it up at least a bit, it's difficult. Now, it can heat up and then it can be like nothing really happened, because as time passes and people can reflect on it, they soon realize it was just a technical discussion; but in the heat of the moment if you have the ego strong enough to defend your position, most persons will heat up as well.

[tekla]

I find the heated discussions happen in teams where things actually matter. If arguments never get heated, its because everyone knows it doesn't matter in the first place and you can just get by with silently nodding.

[InsideOutSanta]

The only two options you mention are "getting heated" and "silently nodding." Healthy teams exist between these two extremes.

[tekla]

Maybe, but if you're never getting heated, the work doesn't matter in the first place.

[InsideOutSanta]

I genuinely don't know how to respond to that. The idea of connecting anger to the relevancy of one's work seems so strange to me.

[jcelerier]

Had multiple girlfriends for whom having regular fights was an essential part of a "healthy" relationship, e.g. told me clearly the relationship was dead if we didn't have any conflicts. I guess that's the same mindset ..

[tekla]

Ok, lets go with this, because empathy is hard, and it seems that most here have not experienced working on complex projects. I've personally experienced this.

We have a project to develop a new engine, its teklaover budget, very late, and requires a ton more work and excuses are running thin.

My team is running barebones with 60-70 hour weeks trying to get the ratings done, the test team is waiting on us for the ratings to get their work done and THEIR manager is pissed because they're billing for time on their books waiting for us to get our shit together. There is no more room to delay the tests because another team also needs their project tested and has waited for the test team to free up.

Meanwhile, my bosses boss is pressuring my boss to submit what ratings data we have to get approved to start testing. The test teams boss is begging us to submit the data too so he doesn't have to bill time for being idle on standby.

Tired of fighting, we submit the ratings data and tests starts. And boom 2000 hours into testing the gearbox fails and blows out the back of the engine at 4am. The test facility is now inoperative until cleanup finishes and several hundred hours are now needing to be spent figuring out why a $3 million engine just blew itself up.

The cleanup team is now being paid a fuckton of overtime to clean up the mess, and an army of people are being summoned to provision a new test engine.

The test team now needs to spend extra time writing reports, the ratings team now needs to go overtime to detail why they fucked up and why we suck so much at our jobs, on top of their normal work, and the customer is super fucking pissed.

So yeah, there is no anger if stuff doesn't matter. When stuff does matter, anger happens. It's very easy to sit back and claim "no heated discussions" when it doesn't involve millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of other peoples time when its your team that caused the fuck up

[viraptor]

Have you considered you internalised and normalised working in environments that are messed up 5 steps before the final problem? Crunch, angry managers, thinking "(they're) waiting for us to get our shit together" when planning/communication failed at higher level, "boss is begging us to submit the data" which has likely no impact on your speed of work, "and several hundred hours are now needing to be spent figuring out" is a thing that you have a process for and you know it can happen so the risk should be accounted for ahead of time and not surprising, "why they fucked up and why we suck" when things you know can fail do fail, "the ratings team now needs to go overtime" means more planning failure, etc.

This is toxic BS and mismanagement. It's people not accounting for and communicating risk properly. None of that anger and finger pointing makes this work faster or better. Everything here could happen exactly as it happened, but without anger, if people communicated risks properly and took the failure (which will happen) as part of the process, people would be less stressed about it, and maybe they'd make fewer mistakes too.

Maybe it was correct to progress without better data, or maybe the cost of doing that was too high. Either way, someone should've redone the schedule to match reality, so blocked teams don't get anxious. Then someone should've done the risk/benefit analysis and signed off on the "proceed with testing anyway, we are aware of and accept the risk" path, so nobody talks about fucking up, but concentrates on doing the best they can instead.

[InsideOutSanta]

Nothing you describe is normal, healthy, worthy of emulation, or good.

I've worked in large cross-company teams on extremely complex products with millions of LOC and thirty-year-old obsolete code handling millions of US$s of bank transactions. I've been in situations where people made mistakes, systems went down, and transactions were lost. I've been in incredibly stressful situations.

Do you know what would have made none of these situations better? Anger.

[lioeters]

> it seems that most here have not experienced working on complex projects

The hubris in this sentence is chef's kiss. You have no idea.

> When stuff does matter, anger happens

No, anger is completely unnecessary. It's a poor way to act and communicate, often counter-productive and terrible for morale.

[cycomanic]

As the other poster said, this sounds more like a toxic work environment than like an environment were constructive (those are rarely heated) discussions take place that will actually improve a project. I mean maybe everyone was so busy shouting at each other that they forgot to actually properly plan and risk manage the project?

It sounds to me like lots of discussions should have been had before getting to this point? So sure at the point where you ended up, things get heated because everyone is overworked and frustrated and being pressured from all sides, but that's not really a function of a complex project, but more of a poorly managed/executed one?

[throwaway173738]

Sounds like a LOT of wishful thinking. It doesn’t matter what your boss wants. They were living in a fantasy land where they imagined the project going differently.