{"id":1725,"date":"2011-02-25T00:18:59","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T04:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.red-sweater.com\/blog\/?p=1725"},"modified":"2011-02-25T00:33:40","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T04:33:40","slug":"must-be-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/1725\/must-be-nice","title":{"rendered":"Must Be Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read a piece by Mike Monteiro<\/a> of Mule Design, mostly about choosing clients who you can stand behind, but hinging on an anecdote about interviewing a prospective employee:<\/p>\n

I asked him if he agreed with how they made their money. He replied in the negative \u2014 he\u2019d just done the design. I told him we didn\u2019t take on any projects that we couldn\u2019t ethically stand behind.<\/p>\n

And here I\u2019ll quote him: \u201cMust be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when I decided not to hire him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Almost 15 years ago I was working my ass off at Apple as a junior engineer in the System 7 software updates team. I was trying to make a reputation in my new career, but also doing my part to make sure we shipped on time. In a historical sense, most what we built is hard to get excited about these days, but we were doing the exact same thing that Apple does today: iterating to give our faithful customers a reason to stay faithful.<\/p>\n

In a group that was primarily oriented around fixing bugs, my colleagues and I were especially susceptible to a problem that plagues many developers: once you’re on the tail of a bug it can be hard to stop hunting until the issue is resolved. Some days we worked short hours. A hard-won victory at 4PM might be grounds for calling it an early day. But other times, stumbling onto a glimmer of hope with an impossible bug that “had to be fixed by next week” was cause for camping out until the wee hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

One of these marathon bug-hunting sessions had a coworker and myself working until 2 in the morning, bleary eyed, but desperate for a solution. Usually I would recommend rest and resumption when it comes to this point, but we felt sure we were on the verge, and this was an important, difficult bug. We had a breakthrough, and spent another couple hours verifying a fix, testing it, and checking in the code. We went home exhausted but jubilant.<\/p>\n

I collapsed at 5AM and slept until 11, conscious that the bug-busting marathon was not over. My boss, my boss’s boss, and for all I know, his boss’s boss were all aware of what we had done. It was a significant win for the team, but there was plenty more to do.<\/p>\n

When I got into work after noon, my colleague was already there. He was talking, in the common area of our floor, with a humorless, long-time employee who worked in an administrative role with our team.<\/p>\n

“Where have you been?” she asked contemptuously. “We need to ask you about the blah blah blah.” I’ve forgotten the specifics.<\/p>\n

“Sorry, I was here late\u00a0last night and only got in a few minutes ago,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Must be nice,” she answered tersely. Her words stung. I was young, trying to prove myself, and had just returned to the fray after helping with an important victory. She had left at 5PM the previous night and had a long, restful night’s sleep. Or at least, that’s what I assumed she did.<\/p>\n

What irked me most about her “must be nice” comment was how profoundly void of empathy it seemed to me. I hated her for years because of this. In part because of her, I have since been extremely sensitive to these pithy, jealous expressions: they jump out like smarmy little diamonds. But when words like these occasionally get lobbed at me, I am not nearly as hurt as I once was. I tap into my own empathy reserves, imagine what a crappy life they me struggling with, and try to wish the best for them.<\/p>\n

It’s not so nice to be a person who says must be nice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read a piece by Mike Monteiro of Mule Design, mostly about choosing clients who you can stand behind, but hinging on an anecdote about interviewing a prospective employee: I asked him if he agreed with how they made their money. He replied in the negative \u2014 he\u2019d just done the design. I told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25,26,15,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-folklore","category-nostalgia","category-programming","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}