[amputect]

> 14. Humiliate people in public.

If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the original one around to the entire office as an example of how not to do the paperwork, offering a prize to anyone who could spot all of the errors on it, and all-but-outright-stated that anyone who would submit paperwork in such shape was a moron.

I'm willing to believe that her boss is just a complete fucking idiot and meant it to be funny, but it was extremely cruel and totally uncalled for. Publicly humiliating your newest employee for the incredible crime of "volunteering to help take care of something when the person responsible is out sick" is really, really dumb and a great way to ensure that nobody ever helps anybody else with anything. It's working, because while we were on vacation she came back to a huge pile of work that nobody had even made an effort to handle, even though anyone in the office could have pitched in. And since she's a fast learner, she's also stopped helping other people when they're out sick, because it can only possibly lead to either 1) Her doing more work for no recognition, or 2) Her doing more work for no recognition and getting publicly mocked for doing something wrong.

For some mysterious reason, the office she works for has a hard time retaining employees and a hard time hiring new ones. People also take a LOT of (unpaid) sick days there, which are informally known as "sick of all the bullshit" days, because they're happier staying home without pay than coming to work and dealing with their manager.

[AndrewKemendo]

There is saying in the military that is pretty good rule of thumb for these kinds of things:

Praise in public, punish in private

[angersock]

Whenever I want to show my team better ways of doing things, I always pick on my own code or actions as the examples not to follow (if I can find them--otherwise I'll make some up). Then, I try to find examples from their work where they've exhibited the behavior I'd like (again, making up examples if needed).

You don't want to be the guy whose code is called out as garbage, unless you're doing it yourself.

[thirsteh]

I hope your wife finds a job at a company with an adult management team. The stress level you get from an environment like you describe isn't worth the cost.

[grecy]

> she's also stopped helping other people when they're out sick, because it can only possibly lead to either 1) Her doing more work for no recognition,

This rings especially true for me at my current company. Everyone says around here that the most important skill you can learn is "expectation management".

When given a task that is supposed to take 1 week, the absolute worst thing you can do is complete it in 2 days. Actually, 1 day, or 1 hour would be even worse.

Doing that will only open the flood gates to dump an ever increasing workload on you, while receiving zero recognition.

[frostmatthew]

Sounds like you need to make your current company your former company.

[fsckin]

This one also hit home for me. Founder bitched me out with 25 or 30 people within earshot (open office plan) for no good reason. I took care of their complaint 30 seconds later. After three years of loyal service, that's the level of respect I get?

I updated my resume and was gone in three weeks.

[com2kid]

I am of two minds about this.

On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...)

I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in.

I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good bug, I'll have it sent around to everyone as an example of what a good bug report looks like!

[steve_g]

Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK.

But as a manager, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of that tactic. Even if you've got awesome emotional intelligence (and I don't) it's easy to screw up. It's not worth it.

Really, don't do it. Because when you screw up, it hurts real people.

There are better ways to encourage people - for example, the positve feedback to the tester you described.

[hamburglar]

> Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK.

So true. I've had great managers that had great rapport with the team and everyone was tight knit enough that the manager could stand in the hall and say "hey, come over here and look at the ridiculous code Bill wrote" and it would all be in good fun, even for the person who was being mocked (being able to laugh at your own mistakes is important, IMO). And on the other hand, I've had terrible managers who aren't able to do it in a good-natured manner and it ends up being mean-spirited, condescending, and morale-killing. There's a surprisingly fine line between "lol, Bill, what were you thinking?" and "Bill wrote bad code and I'm going to call him on it, making everyone on the team uncomfortable, and thus cultivating an environment where everyone lives in fear of making a mistake."

[chris_mahan]

No. It's never, ever appropriate. Ever.

[hamburglar]

Appropriate versus inappropriate is irrelevant, in my opinion. Can it work? Yes. Is it more likely to backfire and make your team miserable? Yes. Is it something that creates a hostile work environment? Debatable, and definitely situational.

I would actually argue that when done right, this sort of smack-talk can be healthy and reassuring to the recipient. It's a bit perverse, but I like a situation where my coworkers respect me enough to make fun of my mistakes without me or them worrying that it actually calls my competence into question. I've worked with people who you can't poke fun at, and it's usually because they actually are somewhat incompetent and making fun of their errors would be cruel.

[chris_mahan]

poking fun at people? It's not funny unless it's funny for everyone. Poking fun in a hurtful way is bullying.

Hopefully we never work together.

[jiggy2011]

Some industries seem to have a culture of harsh negative feedback given publicly and it seems to work ok, but then people have an expectation of that going in to the industry.

[grayclhn]

Many of those industries have high attrition and burn-out.

[lauradhamilton]

There is a difference between being shamed for breaking the build because you didn't run the test suite (and well knew that you should run the test suite) and being shamed for making an innocent mistake because you didn't know better.

[jaggederest]

And honestly, even breaking the build, you get a pass on the first one or two times, everyone has to learn somehow, and tests can be heisen-buggy.

Not so much on pushing broken builds to production though.

[S4M]

You should not be able to push broken builds to production. Shame to your manager if you are.

[jackmaney]

High school is over. Grow the fuck up.

[chris_mahan]

If your organization needs shaming people publicly in order to be profitable, it won't be.

[dropit_sphere]

I can see the rationale for a dunce cap in an equitable organization answerable to no one but itself. Like, say, a founding team of four engineers each with 25% equity.

Otherwise I would not advise.