[dc2447]

Bit of a mixed bag here:

> Inadequate rewards

In my experience it's very rare for someone to leave for a 5% uplift in compensation.

> Awful office space

Bang on the money. What is even worse is when engineers have a great space that gets changed. Always churn after that.

> No self development

Typically the people who say this are the people who are most likely not to get much from free time to learn new stuff. if you are the type of engineer to learn new stuff then formal training and free time is not going to change your ability to pick things up. If you come to me and say I could not learn X because I had no free time, I am generally sceptical.

> Inefficient collaboration

Generally means other teams / people do not recognise what an awesome thing I did. Generally implies your awesome thing was not massively awesome.

> Negative people

Totally true. The most devastating thing that can happen to teams is to have negative personalities.

> Fear of failure

Did not understand this.

> Lack of clear goals

bang on the money.

> Micromanaging bosses

it's different strokes for different folks. Whilst lots of engineers like the freedom to get to the goal by themselves there are some who actually really enjoy the directive style.

> Useless meetings

Is this still an issue in 2014?

> Wasting your team's time

I sort of get this but again it varies per engineer.

[doomslice]

> > No self development

> Typically the people who say this are the people who are most likely not to get much from free time to learn new stuff. if you are the type of engineer to learn new stuff then formal training and free time is not going to change your ability to pick things up. If you come to me and say I could not learn X because I had no free time, I am generally sceptical.

I used to feel the same way -- I would spend practically all of my time after work reading about new technologies, best practices, and trying them out in some prototypes that I could then apply to my work. Then I got married. Then I had twins. My priorities have shifted so much that if I'm not given the chance to explore and learn _during_ work, then I'm probably not going to do it anymore. Many companies allow this without explicitly calling it 20% time; other companies will tell you that any time not spent working on a story is wasted time.

[jasonwocky]

>> Inefficient collaboration >Generally means other teams / people do not recognise what an awesome thing I did. Generally implies your awesome thing was not massively awesome.

I really don't think this means what you think it means.

[ThomPete]

Fear of failure means whether you work in an environment where it's ok to fail. Environments where it's not ok to fail are normally counterproductive and hinders people sometimes form doing the right things.

[mratzloff]

If failure has no stigma then people won't worry about, especially if it only causes externalities. Failure is not OK when it's due to laziness or apathy, or when it's chronic.

[ThomPete]

And I am pretty sure that is not what the post means.

[sfk]

Chronically positive persons can be devastating, too, especially if the "negative" persons do all the actual work.

[jiggy2011]

There a difference between being disengaged and being negative. You can be highly engaged and also quite negative.

[talmand]

I agree. It can depend on how one defines being negative as well.

I'm often the guy that's tagged as the negative one in meetings because I point out the potential problems we'll have to address in the positive person's great idea.

I was once told by a manager to stop being so negative in a meeting that one of the owner's of the company was attending. The owner told him to shut up because I was only the person in the room not kissing his ass over his great ideas.

I'm paraphrasing there, he didn't actually say it like that.