Diagnosing difficult behaviour
When the same conversation keeps repeating with different people, the problem is usually structural - and this guide will help you tell when it isn’t.
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Someone on your team keeps complaing, nitpicks every code review, or stays quiet in meetings but then complains to you in 1:1s.
Maybe they’re being “difficult”.. There is a chance though that it’s the environment around them.
Most advice on how to deal with “difficult” engineers revolves around having hard conversations with them. These conversations help for sure, but if you have to be having them often, you might be treating the symptom instead of the cause.
A lot of “difficult” behaviour comes from how the team is set up, what gets rewarded, and what gets tolerated.
This a…
