Ask HN: It's always the people isn't it?

Pinning it all on the people can be disengenious in my opinion. Remember, you are going to be one of those people for somebody else. We cannot forget either, that people are heavily influenced by their environments, even moreso in the workspace. So, I think it's perhaps better to analyse the environment that causes people to behave in these ways.

Not in my experience - any time I've wanted to move it's been because I've felt that I'm underpaid, or that I'm not learning / making any career progress, or because I wanted to work on different kinds of problems. It's never been the people, people have been great, it's mostly [job description / organisational problems / lack of progress / lack of learning / salary].

Eh, not necessarily. I've definitely left companies because of terrible bosses/managers, and because I didn't get along with the team, but it's just as often been due to other reasons too. Including:

1. I knew I was stagnating, and there wasn't much room for growth. The companies weren't bad places to work, in fact they were opposite. The teams were nice, the offices were nice enough, you could mostly do what you want and life was pleasant in general.

But I realised I wouldn't be happy just working on the same thing for decades on end, and coasting along like so many company lifers. So I left.

2. Pay. Yeah, it's cliched to say that, but every time I switched job I got a pay increase, so I always ended up looking for new opportunities as a result.

Honestly, I've only left one programming job because of the people. Mostly it's that I've hit a wall in the learning I can do. I've got nothing left to build. I mean the company might, but I've accomplished everything I think the company will let me do. Now the only way I can find a new challenge is to move to a different domain.

I've come close one other time, but when I spoke to my recruiter, they said I should wait because they suspected the contentious person was moving on. That person quit a week later and many took a collective sigh.

Not always, no. I'm leaving a role where the people are wonderful and doing their best, and the role is satisfying from a professional aspect. But I am leaving for other reasons - and they aren't people or salary related.

Not really but of course being surrounded by good people you can learn from can make me stay despite other things not being optimal.

There is a saying in HR "People join companies. They leave managers." #my2cents

If it’s always the people… it might be you.

My reasons are usually related to processes or the rate of growth for me as a person within the company. I can work just fine with jerks by aligning on the process for collaboration. What I can't work fine with, is a place that disregards processes and people.

Genuine question: What else would it be? Companies are just groups of people. Anything you like or dislike about a company is always, ultimately, about people (whether that is management, peers, clients, support staff, etc).

It's usually the people - but don't rule out that sometimes the reason people are behaving strangely, let's say, is that there are financial, business, or somewhat corrupt pressures they are unwilling to talk about.

Which is probably also a clue to run away, terribly fast.

Yes. It's always people.

hard agendas, sociopaths, outright hostile middle management. You need to look after your own mental health and financial resources - noone else will. Also very very uncommon for loyalty to pay.

All of society, the businesses that sit atop them, the business rules, the targets the deadlines, the unreal expectations, etc.--at their base, they exist because people. If you dig far enough there's someone causing issues. The same can be said about positive effects too though. So yea, it's always people, unless you're doing it as a hobby and are in control.

HR always say "People don't leave jobs; they leave managers." That is, in my opinion, a cop out.

I've worked for brilliant managers in great teams - and left because the business wasn't able to support my growth. Or because the company was ethically dodgy. Or because they just couldn't pay enough.

And, yeah, sometimes I've left because of a bad boss or grim team members - but that's been a rarity.

But, at the end of the day, a job isn't your life. You don't need to find meaning there - you don't even have to like your co-workers - as long as you have a life outside of work.

Perhaps you’re not a team player?

(This is aimed at programmers)

Being a programmer is hard in that respect. There are many professions and positions where the individual has much more autonomy over their part. A typical setup in a small company may have a team of programmers and many other positions which are a team of one; graphic design, legal, HR, business dev, etc etc. Sure, all of these can grow into teams at some point but most jobs in programming mean being part of a team, which means being able to compromise (sometimes even when it’s BS) and gain the favor of your peers.

Team programmers are not sought out based on their sense of artistry, by that point the job is basically a grind.

Yes and no. It's the system in which people act (which, in turn, is created by people). For example, I once left a company where people were discussing endlessly, passionately and often by yelling at one another. On the surface, I left the company because of the people, but in reality, it was the fact that there was no clarity about who is able to take which decision and the fact that the CEO, who wanted to be treated as an equal, still was able to overrule every decision, that created this toxic environment in the first place.

Many of the people in that company would probably be fun to work with in a different environment.

It depends on what you mean with it.

In the end an organisation is made out of people, and yeah people are then naturally the problem.

It sounds like you get into conflicts sooner or later, and this is what gets to you.

I've also people been slowly suffocated by non-conflict, so it's not always the assholes. Often burn-out, from what I've personally seen is mostly the pressure people put on themselves. Although this is anecdotal.

But back to you it could be you've been exclusively working in companies with high stress environment, for instance agencies. Stress brings out more anger in people.

Out of the 6-7 teams i've worked in in the last decade, there were a few conflicts but none ended in it, and except for one all got resolved.

Always is a bit of a stretch but I'd say it is the overwhelming major reason.

The specifics of the work (whether you code in X or Y etc.) might affect you but that's dependent on your personality and even then not to a big degree.

People on the other hand are much more intense. They can make things much better or much worse. They can also amplify or attenuate good things. e.g. It's hard to enjoy working on your favourite language/technology when you have to pair program with an annoying engineer with a micromanager looking over your shoulder. It's much more pleasant to code in a language that you're not particularly fond while pairing with an intelligent and interesting colleague.

The final line is the people themselves and that can be improved a little through hiring practices. However, an active effort to keep the company culture "good" is also necessary and that has to come from the top.

Reminds me of a blessing from an old boss of mine "May all your problems be technical." Those are the easy problems to solve.

I believe the cause of the dysfunction in our tech industries is the complete lack of any professional communications training in the software/engineer education. How many times are you in a meeting were no one is listening to the speaker, they are simply waiting to speak? How many times are you encountering useless documentation, pep-talks, and other developers you have a hard time communicating? Our industries are over run with the frustrations caused by poor communicators and the confusion that causes.

It’s people, but also their separate egos being incentivized separately. If people could see their ego tied with the well being of others many things would be different. But that would (reductively) require positive sum games/competition. Like that moment in “Beautiful Mind” where Nash sees all those equations and has an epiphany about cooperation in the bar scene.

This can be done. But it requires a community effort and “community policing” for people instilling zero sum/negative sum mindset into the community. But instead of prison or a negative giving them the opportunity to change.

I’ve actually been wondering whether employee owned corporations and other cooperatives address this “naturally” or not.

You're seeing this from the limited perspective of a mortal, finite person stuck inside of events as they're happening. The reason the technology matters and we talk about it is because it endures. Does it matter at this point what personalities were involved in the inventions of the wheel, mill, axe, spear, hammer? They're still here and they're still useful and, not knowing the history personally, may have been independently invented by many different groups of people who never even met each other. They exist today because the technology works.

It's possible and even likely that whatever you've worked on most of your career isn't going to be like that. Most products disappear quickly and few people care if they didn't personally profit while they existed. But the products that do matter and will still exist in a thousand years, will do so because of the technology, not because of the people.

None of that is to say people don't matter. There is no point to creating and using technology if no one ever gets to live a more satisfying life because of it. And one of those people may as well be you. So, by all means, go and find your bliss if you can, but don't believe that organizational effectiveness requires the people in it to be satisfied and happy with what they're doing. Slaves built the pyramids. I'm sure the vast majority of soldiers in the Red Army didn't want to be there and served at the threat of execution, but they nonetheless swept over the Nazis and shaped world history to this day.

As for me personally, I've liked the people everywhere I've ever worked, and the very first software job I ever had remains the most interesting and challenging technology I ever worked on. Every time I left, it was for more money. Ultimately, the life outcomes of every future generation I'm ever responsible for, as well as my own, depend more on socioeconomic status than how much I like my co-workers. They come and go pretty frequently anyway, whether you change companies or not, whereas family is for life. Better relationships with them matter a lot more.

Not always. Sometimes FAANG cold-calls you out of the blue and offers you 2x what you are currently getting paid, so there's that.

Without knowing anything about your specific situation, if you regularly find that you have bad relationships with your colleagues, then perhaps there is an opportunity for you to make a change somewhere in your own life? In my personal experience I haven't had too many problems with coworkers and on the rare occasion that I did, with hindsight I was at least partly responsible for the difficulties I encountered and perhaps initially blamed on others. Everyone has their own story and their own troubles, and while that is no reason to tolerate genuine abuse, a little understanding can go a long way in many other cases. Also it's important to recognise that no-one is perfect (cliché though that is) - usually people are doing their best, and we all make stupid mistakes.

Of course there are still slackers and people who want to take out their problems on others and there's not much you can do about that except perhaps develop other ways of dealing with such people, assuming you need to. Stoicism can be a useful mindset for situations like that.

Another thing to consider is your job hunting filter; perhaps you're not effectively excluding dysfunctional organisations?

We are all people, right ? So yes, it's almost always people. Almost, because I have doubts for some of the HN crowd. But sometimes it's just more money, especially in the beginning of one's career. After a while, money becomes less of a problem. It also depends on your role and line of work.