The Water Cooler

1:05 AM

@ChristopherEstep Apart from the poor English, I don't see much problem with that question. It is more or less company-specific though.

user161151

1:27 AM

workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/87585/… in this question, did i not actually have a goal? my goal is to know why my mentor is asking such questions and if necessary, ask him to stop making such remarks.

Richard U

3:23 AM

@user161151 we cannot possibly read your mentor's mind. We have no idea why he, or anyone esle says anything.

Masked Man

4:09 AM

@user161151 You seem to have misread the close reason: Questions require a goal that we can address. Guessing what your mentor is thinking is a challenging and interesting goal, but it is not something that we can address.

Feeds

5:16 AM

1

Q: Can we reopen this? "How to deal with a colleague being rude to the customer during meetings?"

How to deal with a colleague being rude to the customer during meetings? Closed because: "Questions require a goal that we can address. Rather than explaining the difficulties of your situation, explain what you want to do to make it better." The goal seems to be to deal with a colleague being ...

Christopher Estep

1:33 PM

@MaskedMan Thanks, I couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Now we have an interesting situation 4 reopen votes and 2 delete votes.

Masked Man

What do you guys think about the "reputation precedes you" effect? Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing, or you feel indifferent? We cannot do much about it if it is a problem, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Oh, by that, I mean, votes on the answer are influenced by the user's reputation.

@ChristopherEstep Yeah, I deal with poor English day in and day out. It is almost like I know a new language. :)

Christopher Estep

I guarantee it happens. Not by me though. I know this because if someone who irritates me makes a good point, I'll still upvote it and be annoyed that it deserves it. I'm petty, but only in my head. :)

Masked Man

As a result, I can usually guess what people really mean even from their poor English and can translate it into reasonably good English.

Christopher Estep

Wow, someone must be really bored to try to close 3 year old super-high vote questions. This just showed up on the review queue.

285

Q: What is a 'friendly' way to let managers know that having good developers is a privilege?

I work for a small company, where we recently had a change of managers. The new manager has no experience managing developers, and the old manager has moved into a development role to fill in gaps left by senior developers leaving the company and being unable to find replacements. I was recently...

software-industry management time-management

Richard U

@MaskedMan I think it's a positive and a negative. I get at least one down vote on every answer now, no matter what that answer is, but I think I get more up votes as well.

@ChristopherEstep either that or a "boy scout" who thinks he's keeping the community clean.

Christopher Estep

1:39 PM

I don't know who that could be. :)

@RichardU Yeah, there are probably tons of people who say "I'm not even going to read what Joe Strazzere said. I'm sure it's great. <click> :) enderland too. lol

Richard U

@ChristopherEstep Kilisi and I are two who seem to draw downvotes. Joe Strazzere could post what he had for breakfast and get up votes, for some strange reason.

Masked Man

@ChristopherEstep There are still a few things to be clarified on that question. Since the OP is an "unregistered" new account, I decided not to expend too much effort until the OP comes back.

Even with all those ambiguities, I have an answer for him, but if it doesn't get reopened, I won't chase it too much. If the OP does come back to the question though, I might open a meta post to get it undeleted and/or reopened. At the moment though, it is not worth that effort. :)

Masked Man

1:59 PM

@ChristopherEstep I just experienced the opposite though, that got me thinking.

5

A: Is it ethical to make my team pay for a team bonding activity after work?

Sounds like a fantastic idea for team bonding ... except that it may work differently from what you expect. For maximum benefit, make it mandatory, do it in the weekends or after work hours, choose an activity that nobody likes and one which is exorbitant. This will ensure that the team members w...

I had hoped to grab the "Peer Pressure" badge from this answer. The clever plan seemed to go well with the first 2 downvotes, but then things turned around and I got 7 upvotes. I am sure if an "unregistered" user had written that answer, it would have been flagged NAA and downvoted to the bottom of hell.

I guess I should settle for the "Disciplined" badge now :P

enderland

2:21 PM

@MaskedMan ugh that question should get some delete votes imo

@RichardU I think Joe gets upvotes because he communicates exceptionally well and concisely

his answers are almost all accurate and very clear and concise

@ChristopherEstep that's a blast from the past

Christopher Estep

@enderland No question and he's also exceedingly nice in his answers, a talent which many of us occasionally lack (including myself of course). It's just fun to tease because he's like the Captain America of Workplace. :)

enderland

42

A: Congratulations to Joe Strazzere for 100k rep!

I often find myself wanting to answer a question, only to see an answer from Joe that says what I wanted to say. So I just cast my upvote and wait for the next chance... You are also the only person with the Legendary Badge - this means you have hit the 200 reputation cap 150 times (at least, th...

Christopher Estep

And that was 60k rep ago.

Richard U

@enderland well, yeah, that's what I was trying to suggest in a round about way.

enderland

I was searching for my answer here and noticed that you now have 100k rep too! — enderland ♦ 5 secs ago

HLGEM has over 100k now too

Richard U

2:29 PM

I have to focus on not offending people. Joe has a natural talent.

Masked Man

@enderland We also "forgot" to congratulate Kilisi on the Legendary badge. When I noticed that, it was already 4 months late, so I decided to leave it alone.

Masked Man

2:52 PM

Can I get a Gold Badge version of "Disciplined" if I delete an answer with a score of +10? ;-)

Richard U

Can we have a badge "obsequious" for sufficiently pandering answers?

Masked Man

I did not know what obsequious meant, so I got the following definition: adj. Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.

Now I just need to figure out what servile and fawning mean. :|

Richard U

@masked man think "Renfield" from Dracula.... YES master, of COURSE, master

enderland

3:12 PM

ughhhh why do I care about getting teams to work together better /rant

Masked Man

@enderland In my experience, these so-called team building events usually cause more fractures than they mend. Although my answer was intentionally sarcastic, it was based on some fond memories, especially the "events that nobody likes" part.

enderland

@MaskedMan nah, it's not official team building, but unnofficial

there's a team here that's... difficult to work with generaly

Erik

3:34 PM

"You WILL come to this event and you WILL enjoy it". Yeah, that really works :)

Christopher Estep

Firings will continue until morale improves

Richard U

Happiness is mandatory

Masked Man

3:48 PM

@enderland The team building events that I have been forced into usually start this way: a PHB in middle management looks up the internet or his contacts for an "Event Manager", then a self-called Event Manager is roped in, he comes up with a schedule of "exciting" events for the evening. Everyone is forced to participate because the PHB is "organizing" the event.

Erik

That sounds pretty horrible. Makes me happy I haven't had any "mandatory fun day" events as of yet. The events I've been part of have generally been fun (and optional, even though most people showed up)

The only one that left a bad taste so far was the company hackathon, which was organised during our company outing and thus required for everyone who came on the trip. And involved the whole company, including folks with 0 technical or other useful skills for such an event.

Masked Man

One particularly memorable event was a "tug of war". The rope was strong enough to have 5 people on each side, but of course, the PHB wanted "team building", so it was decided to put 20 people at each end. I blurted out "the rope will break", but was ignored because "I was a nobody and he was the PHB", so I backed out with a convenient phone call. 2 seconds after the "event" started, the rope broke. I wasn't very good at hiding my feelings and ended up doing a "I told you so" gesture.

Erik

You're lucky nobody got hurt

Masked Man

Not sure about team building, but a couple of guys at the back of the unfortunate teams ended up breaking their hips.

Erik

Oh. Nvm that last comment, then.

Masked Man

3:54 PM

:|

I did have some damage control to do though due to my gesture, which was something like this.

Erik

yeah... ever since the XKCD on tug-of-war I've had a new sense of respect for the sport. It can be downright dangerous, especially if you don't even check if your rope is strong enough for the forces you're putting it under

Masked Man

5:24 PM

It has become rather fashionable these days to complain about other people's downvotes on someone else's question.

-2

Q: Re-negotiating after getting a second offer?

I received an offer for new position from company A (senior engineering position), and tried to negotiate a for slightly higher salary. They accepted and gave me 4 days additional to submit final decision in writing. Two days later, I am getting a second offer from company B (also a senior posit...

salary job-offer new-job negotiation benefits

More so to post a comment saying "I upvoted, I wonder why others downvoted". I wonder what's the purpose of keeping vote counts then.

gnat

122

A: How can we discourage over-downvoting on questions?

The main problem I see here is that downvotes are taken so damn personal. A downvote does not mean "you are a bad person and you should feel bad, go die in a corner". But that's how they're often understood. Try to see SE as a collaboratively edited knowledge base. New entries are created on an a...

Richard U

Usually, but not always, I include an explanation of my down votes. After all, if we are trying to be constructive, a bit of constructive criticism is warranted.

Masked Man

5:42 PM

@RichardU I am ok with people asking to explain the downvotes even if it is not strictly necessary to provide an explanation. What gets on my nerves is passing judgements such as "downvotes are being misused" and "I upvoted, I can't believe why anyone would downvote".

Richard U

@MaskedMan agree 100%

Masked Man

In that case, people have already concluded that the downvotes were "wrong", without even the need to ask for an explanation.

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