The Water Cooler

Aaron Hall

12:57 AM

Reddit links people to a page they can't vote on.

enderland

4:15 AM

@Lilienthal she sometimes answers questions pretty late with amazing answers

Stack Exchange

4:48 AM

0

Q: Layout bug with election

I noticed a layout bug on the election screen. My choices overlap the edge of the text and blue background with the profile information. As you can see the "a" is clipped by my second choice and my third choice slightly overlaps the blue background with the profile information. I'm using Fire...

bug

Magisch

6:08 AM

@Lilienthal definitely

It seems that HNQ voters latch on to the current top answer and then boost it sky-high. I saw this happen to an answer of my own once which honestly wasn't that great. Somehow the better but later answers underneath it got completly buried though.

Masked Man

10:32 AM

[Protect HNQ questions from drive-by voting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions#comment935388_220099). That should do, but people don't listen. :)
*cough* Some people *cough* think that HNQ is perfect, and if it is causing problems, it must be your fault.

Richard U

1:16 PM

@Lilienthal I agree. If you want to get a high rated answer, make it about "sticking it to the man". If you want a low, or even negative score, speak to personal responsibility, sacrifice, putting up with bad conditions until you can get out, or putting in a few extra hours without pay.

Kaz

2:34 PM

I've got 11 answers that didn't go HNQ (or missed the wave), with an average score < 10. And then 3 HNQ top-answers that scored, respectively, 68, 93 and 164. The incentives (if you care about rep) are very skewed.

Richard U

3:16 PM

@Kaz One of my highest rated answers is a verbal dressing down of a manager who wanted to tighten the screws on a P.Eng who was passed over for a promotion which was instead given to someone incompetent. I went against "the man" and the crowd loved it. I wasn't trying for a high rated answer, the OP just sounded outrageous to me.

Kaz

3:43 PM

@RichardU I remember that one. The community response was pretty awesome

@RichardU I like this one:

VTC. We cannot give advice for someone who has been actively breaking the law. — Richard U 30 mins ago

Christopher Estep

I think it's pretty close to impossible to get a >20 score without HNQ.

@Kaz I got to that one too late to help close but I did cast a delete vote on it. It's unsalvageable.

Christopher Estep

4:03 PM

You'd think he could come up with a better excuse than "lost in a fire".

Richard U

@ChristopherEstep I think his dog ate it.

Christopher Estep

I can literally replace my I-9 documents by tomorrow if I needed to. Landlord for my lease, Power company for a bill, overnight birth certificate from MI. Then I go to my SS office and get a temporary SS verification. Head to DMV to replace license. BOOM

Admittedly, it helps that I live in a metro area where there is a SS office nearby. If I were in Michigan, I'd have to drive about an hour but I could still do it.

@RichardU LOL

Richard U

I'm seriously considering creating a parody page with variations on bad questions with the answers we'd LIKE to give.

2

Christopher Estep

I bet whoever says they'll undo a certain person's (i'm not going to name) arbitrary closures wherever they happen would win the election in a landslide.

Richard U

@ChristopherEstep I know EXACTLY who you mean.

@Kaz that P.Eng question was another case of someone seeking validation and got something else entirely. Especially the part where the OP said "how do I get him to smarten up". Oh, he seemed PLENTY smart to me. Moral of the story, never screw a key employee

Kaz

4:13 PM

@RichardU Pretty much. I got some visceral satisfaction just reading about it.

Richard U

@Kaz I don't usually experience Schadenfreude, but in that case, I made a wicked exception. I had a good laugh over that one.

The OP KNEW her company screwed the guy over, and instead of looking for the most expedient resolution, she wanted to punish him for reacting. Talk about doubling down on foolishness!

Christopher Estep

(and I'm kidding on doing that, for the humor impaired. When he truly reads the question he does a good job actually)

What's the P.Eng question?

Kaz

112

Q: How can I deal with troublesome Professional Engineer?

I currently manage a team of quite a few engineers in Canada. Things normally run smoothly, but we've had a serious problem with a senior engineer as of late. This engineer is the sole engineer on our team with his Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) designation, and we depend on him to evaluate secu...

professionalism conflict unprofessional-behavior conflict-resolution

Also worth reading the original question before the edits.

Lots of good context in there.

Long story short: Company has precisely one Professional Engineer. P. Eng. is like Heart Surgeon. Years & years of experience & training required to get it. By Law, they have to have a P. Eng sign off on their stuff. And trying to coerce, blackmail, or otherwise bribe one to sign off on things is all kinds of illegal.

Also means getting a new one in would need months (if not a year) of lead time in order to get up to speed on their org. and their products.

Then, they take this guy, and promote a nephew of one of the directors over his head to be the company's Principal Engineer.

So he made it perfectly clear just how much they need him. And just how badly screwed they are.

And the OP came to ask us how to get the Engineer to "behave"

See also Comment History

Richard U

4:44 PM

@Kaz that was a textbook example of how not to handle something. My ultimate advice, appease him or fire him would have remained the same even if I didn't think the OP was acting in bad faith. It's about what's best for the company, not ego. I wonder what ever happened in that case.

Christopher Estep

I would love to know how that turned out.

@RichardU Your advice was solid and actually very lawyerly. Once you pointed out the mistakes that were made and why, you gave the only practical advice one could give.

I don't' think she was acting in bad faith at first. I think ultimately her ego took over. "I'm not going to reward treachery" was BS. She sounds like she watches too much TV.

Kaz

Pretty much. When somebody has you over a barrel like that, you ask them what it will cost to get them to resign amicably and you pay them.

Richard U

@ChristopherEstep There's an old poem I rely on.

Here Lies the body of William Jay
Who died maintaining his right of way
He was right
Dead right
As he sped along
But he's just as dead
As if he were wrong.

Kaz

Context:

@peter The OP did say that the nephew was incompetent and has since been relieved of his position. That was in the comments that have since been deleted, but she did say it. — Richard U Aug 19 '16 at 13:31

There's more like that but, sadly, deleted.

If you read the question now, it seems far less unreasonable than the original version.

Masked Man

5:01 PM

Uh oh ... HNQ coming up ...

5

Q: How to deal with an extremely unprofessional in-house recruiter?

(Not posting on my normal account for obvious reasons, but I've been around since pretty much the very beginning.) I'm interviewing at a certain programming job. I've passed everything, the people doing the interview say they really like my skills and want me to join the team, everything's look...

professionalism recruitment unprofessional-behavior

Kaz

5:14 PM

Oh, I forgot on the HNQ discussion earlier. My one question (HNQ) got 135 votes, and the one other question I posted under a separate account also went HNQ and got over 100.

9

Q: How to deal with an extremely unprofessional in-house recruiter?

(Not posting on my normal account for obvious reasons, but I've been around since pretty much the very beginning.) I'm interviewing at a certain programming job. I've passed everything, the people doing the interview say they really like my skills and want me to join the team, everything's look...

professionalism recruitment unprofessional-behavior

Calling a recruiter unprofessional for trying to persuade you to take a lower salary seems, wrong?

Aaron Hall

5:31 PM

@Kaz Looks like a big part of it was redacted from the history.

Masked Man

@Kaz From the description, OP seems to be from USA, where It is not a common practice to disclose your current salary when you negotiate with a company (as I hear from this site). So yeah, pestering the OP with various indirect questions to find out his salary after he flatly refused to tell does sound a bit "strange" (to put it mildly). Just say what you are offering and be done with, don't keep bothering the candidate with "what ifs".

Aaron Hall

I don't necessarily agree on this:

4 hours ago, by Richard U

@Lilienthal I agree. If you want to get a high rated answer, make it about "sticking it to the man". If you want a low, or even negative score, speak to personal responsibility, sacrifice, putting up with bad conditions until you can get out, or putting in a few extra hours without pay.

It really depends on the circumstances. I think a lot of circumstances, as given by the Questioner, tend to be unfavorable toward the employer, however.

Small businesses can really push it in their treatment of employees, from what I can see.

Sometimes they get their fair entrepreneurial profit, sometimes they're trying to squeeze profit out of everyone they can. And some employees try to do the same.

If you find an employee asking about that - I think you can get high rated answers telling them to be responsible and put up with at least temporarily unsatisfactory work conditions - so long as you show them the light at the end of the tunnel.

I've done that a couple of times - at least I think I have.

e.g.: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/63016/…

and this: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/33892/…

Hourly work is highly transactional - you show up and clock in on time, work your hours, then clock out and leave. Answers telling those kinds of workers to do unpaid work or to sacrifice for the employer are highly likely to fail.

Salaried and knowledge work is much more relationship oriented.

If the relationship is strong, you can ask for or recommend some amount of sacrifice or long hours.

For some fields, like law, that may even be a prerequisite for success.

@JasonC welcome to The Water Cooler

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