In Dynamics of Software Development, something I haven't read, Jim McCarthy gives a list of rules to deal with interpersonal and political relationships in software. One of these is "Don't Flip the Bozo Bit," cautioning us all against completely shutting down our relationship with someone we work with. Even if we don't like them, they may still have an idea worthy of consideration, so disregarding all of their professional contributions is weakening the team arbitrarily.
But here's the thing... "flip the bozo bit" is such an evocative term that I use it all the time. It so succinctly describes when I absolutely have come across people in public (not work!) ridiculous enough that the only way to cope is to flip that bozo bit and ignore them.
Have you ever gotten advice against something that ultimately put words to something you do, so maybe you do it more?
Positive outcomes preferred, of course, haha.
Top comments (3)
Haha story of my life, even though I think there's a difference between following advice from random strangers than following advice from a friend colleague or "superior" you don't like but I was never good at office politics anyway so please don't follow my advice 🤣
in Egypt we call that ( سيب الباب موارب ) which mean leave the door barely opened ...
anyway yah, i was once asked to stop caring much about writing code that look good, and instead write a code that simply works, without unit test .
i did not agree, so i went on writing readable code, and i explained that this is time well spent because in the end you will be able to update this code easily .
it did turn out well in the end,
I'll come back to this if I can think of a good specific example, but yes. Very much so.