You should never be angry at work
If you routinely “get heated” at work, the best-case scenario is that you’re part of a tight-knit team of confident people who aren’t put off by it. No harm, no foul. But the second someone comes onto your team who’s not so confident, or you have to communicate outside of your team, it becomes a big problem. It’s a bad way to treat your colleagues — even undirected or casual anger intimidates and alienates the people around you — and it makes you a less effective engineer.
18 replies
Hating on Jira and Confluence together is a great team bonding experience.
Why is the start stand up button in a hidden menu while complete sprint not? One you do daily, the other once a sprint.
There's a start stand up button?? I've never seen that - what does it even do?
It's used for stand up meetings, puts everyone in a list on the side too go through their tasks
When I get genuinely frustrated and irritated, when I communicate that it's typically still with a smile. Dark humor, if you will. I'm mostly thinking of team-external factors, though.
Within team, it's mainly about one specific colleague's work. I've voiced issues and frustrations, to them, teammates, and HR. Nothing fundamentally helped, though. By now, I try to act and think in damage-control mode. To not waste too much time and effort or mental capacity on their work. Still a waste to go through review iterations you feel are useless and wasteful, that they should have noticed and solved beforehand on their own.
Only once have I used harsh, blunt wording in an email to an admin after prod was down yet again, and there was no upfront or at any point communication regarding that they made some changes. It didn't have a lasting (negative) effect, at least.
I'm dealing with similar issues except it's most of my team.
That sounds like it's unmaintainable. No chance to guard against (severe) consequential issues(?).
It's insane, I've burned the candle at both ends, I'm looking for a new job now
Nah, it’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to express that anger as hostility.
This is valid not only for engineers. Possibly for all work situations.
A lesson I too had to learn the hard way.
OTOH expressing anger in your life must be possible. Maybe it's possible to do that constructively.
I don't regret the times I show anger at work, but it's a definitely a fine line that can leave me feeling a bit uneasy afterwards. It's one of the "social capital" things; you need to earn enough good will to spend your anger on the battles that really matter to you.
I used to care more about work. But this job pays garbage and is frothing over AI, so fuck them.
That sounds more like frustration and resignation than (heated) anger.
Or do you mean you don't care about the fallout of getting angry?
tell this to my fucking manager LMAO
Flips table
Yeah there's no need to get angry. It's just a job. If it doesn't work without anger you can always get another one (or probably most people here can anyway).
I'll just go down to the job tree.
I mean if you're a decent programmer, totally! AI hasn't destroyed the job market quite yet. But I wouldn't wait too long...