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RitesOfPassage

(From JoiningaTeam)

Is anyone else seeing something like this? --DaveSmith 2007.01.30

Yep. And I have no patience with it. I expect people to do their jobs, which includes working with others - even new guys.

In addition to the social and "genius like us" I've also seen real testing of any kind of background other than "exactly like us." Fixing a gnarly bug is something the uber-geek coder gods appreciate - it's what they do, after all. Facilitating a meeting that isn't a complete waste of time, like every other meeting in that place might get you no clue-points at all. It's now what "we" do, so doesn't count.

This "every other kind of contribution is worthless" POV is very common when people have been told they are Pagan Gods. Web-folk pre-implosion. Hard-core OO gods of the "Smalltalk is the only true language" variety. God help us all when some single role or skill gets elevated over the rest of us.

- JimBullock (I suck at everything cool. It's a feature.) 2007.01.29

I'm wondering what you're seeing that you have no patience with, and whether it's anything like what I'm seeing, or if there was a loaded word in there ("hazing", perhaps?) that touched a nerve.

Development teams, like any other tightly coupled group of people, have rituals for letting new people in (and for ejecting people, though that's one for another day). The form of the ritual I've been seeing lately is, for my lack of better words, "friendly hazing", with an emphasis on "friendly". Call it "give 'em a bit of flack to see if they can dish it back."

It's not a matter of whether or not the team is willing to work with someone--everyone is being professional--it's a matter of how and when the new team member crosses that vague barrier that separates "working with us" to "being one of us". Rituals like this seem to be impervious to management. --DaveSmith 2007.2.1

I've seen many situations where this distinction doesn't exist: " . . . that vague barrier that separates "working with us" to "being one of us". . . . "

Too many times I've seen "not one of us" translate to "not working with us" meaning "we're not working with them, and don't have too." I have seen it degrade to shunning, rudeness and worse. Besides, are the only people worthy of joining your team the ones who share a particular gruff humor? Is that kind of kidding required to have a team? Maybe it's just a local preference. I have know folks who interact quietly with a kind of formal politeness and were as gelled as any team I've seen. Seemed odd to me, but I'm not them.

Probably "hazing" is what caught me. Hazing has some not-nice connotations for me, about keeping people out and seeing how much abuse they'll take to be in with the cool kids. I've seen "hazing" in tech teams that's quiz-kid sniping on details and even using folklore "they" couldn't possibly know. One wrong word and you're launched into space, kind of like the Python & the Holy Grail scene, interrogating the kinghts before they can cross that bridge.

Something a colleague said to me last week fits: "If they're looking for a reason, they'll find one." "Hazing" has that connotation for me.

Friendly hazing as you've described is fine, if you are aware of that other fine line where it stops being friendly. Noticing the line and stopping is a kind of care-taking actually, inviting the new guy in. "Friendly hazing" is itself a kind of invitation when it stays friendly. Thing is, what's an invitation for some people isn't for others. That line is what they think it is, not you or me.

The other hazing is about keeping the new guy out. Not such a good thing.

- JimBullock 2007.02.02 (Edits.) (What . . . is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?)

I read all the above this morning for the first time. I too am uncomfortable with the term "hazing." I never liked that in school and cringe when I hear of what some people consider friendly hazing (stories of what Navy enlistees go through to get to the chief rank).

I do believe, however, that there is a point when a new team member becomes a member of the team instead of "the new guy over there." Not sure how to describe that though.

DwaynePhillips 6 February 2007

However "friendly" the intent I would find this sort of comic book kid stuff totally unacceptable in any team that worked for me. And if I were the victim, I wouldn't play. I don't want to join a team that plays silly acceptance games. I came to work.

Oh...Do I sound like I feel strongly about this? Yep!--FionaCharles 6-Feb-2007

-DaveLiebreich 2006.02.06 (Do I really talk like this?)

Dave (Smith),

Perhaps I could understand your early statement about rites of passage if you gave a specific example or two. This sounds awful to me on the surface, but what I know of you, you wouldn't endorse something awful. I am a bit puzzled and would like clarity.

DwaynePhillips 7 February 2007

For example, we try to dine with the newcomers, at breakfast, lunch, and then take some of them out to dinner (Dutch treat, of course). We get upset when someone slips through the cracks and we don't get to spend time with them personally.

Maybe it's part of being "a different kind of conference," but we would NEVER resort to anything you could call "hazing." (If we're mistaken about this, I'd sure like to heaer about it so we can correct it.) It just doesn't fit with our model for the conference, or for human interaction generally.

I don't see any reason for it, unless you're trying to establish cognitive dissonance ("this is a crappy conference, but I suffered so much there, it must actually be good, or I would have been stupid to allow them to do that to me.") That may work for soldiers and frat boys, but if you need it for your conference or your work team, there's something seriously wrong with the conference or work team. - JerryWeinberg 2007.04.02

What he said.

I work with development organizations vs. conferences. I find enough grief is unavoidable in doing development that the cognitive dissonance effects are inevitable. "This must be important since it's so hard." kind of thing. If anything, when doing development we're better served by dialing back the discomfort, initial or ongoing, as much as we can manage.

In particular, when I'm the boss or even a team member I get a bit put off by hazing of the new guy. Being the new guy is hard enough. As a team member I want to know how to not be the outsider any more. I actually asked this, about six months in on one job - in principle a permanent hire. For the eleventy-seventh time one of the elect was holding forth: " . . . we decided that what we're about is . . . " So, I asked: "How do I get go be one of 'we?'"

The silence was deafening. Guess what I learned?

That's a different and IMO worse kind of hazing, actually. "Please sir, may I have another." there's a way to get there, at worst when the next freshman class shows up. If you're not "we" and never can be, well that's a game I'm not sure I want to play.

Yet, how often in software development do we do that to "those people" like, for example, testers, or those evil business types who want stuff? Not sure that's such a good idea.

-- JimBullock 2007.04.02 ("I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." - The Beatles, I Am The Walrus)

Jerry suggests that hazing may work with the military. In fact, it does not. "Full Metal Jacket" captures something of the Marine basic experience. But note, the "group" doing the "hazing" consists not of a bunch of insiders but rather of distant authority figures, more distant precisely because they are so close. R. Lee Ermey's DI is one of a small team of DI's for a recruit unit in real life. The team being formed doesn't include the DI's. That newly forming team can't afford outsiders as tragically shown in the movie.

Does hazing exist in the military? Oh yes. And as in software, that hazing is deeply detrimental to the team. While stationed at The Citadel in the early 1980's, teaching NROTC, I watched while the school's administration, led by a retired senior Army colonel, attempted to deal with the hazing of freshman that had taken root. In his frustration he exclaimed, while I was standing OOD and we were dealing with an incident, that hazing had nothing to do with military discipline. My current military reading notes that hazing is endemic in the current Russian Army, which is just beginning to establish a professional NCO corps, those distant but close authority figures. The Russian Army still depends on conscripts and all too often they act as stereotypical frat boys.

I hope that fraternity hazing is a false stereotype. Never having been a member of a frat, I wish someone here who has been would fill us in.

MikeMelendez 2007.04.03

Fortunately for me, the cognitive dissonance finally failed and I quit the college frat after being initiated. That didn't prevent them from trying to hit me up for money 50 years later as an "honored alum." - JerryWeinberg (who's maybe oversensitized to hazing as a result of his experiences)

P.S. At IBM sales school, some years later, they tried other forms of hazing, like standing up in front of the class and singing "Hail to Thee Mr. Watson," a cappela. Worse than coat hangers, in my opinion. -JW

Thanks, Jerry, That takes me a little deeper. Some of what we worked to stop at The Citadel mirrored what you experienced but not to the same depth and not related to fraternities. The closest I've come to fraternities was when my third son, Chris, rushed one at UMass Amherst three years ago. After several weeks of being asked to do ridiculous stuff, though nothing on the level you describe, he realized it was hurting his academics. As that to him was the fraternity's major selling point -- mutual study support -- he decided something was wrong. He also decided the ridiculous stuff was simply "Mickey Mouse", as he put it, having just completed Marine boot the summer before. So he stopped. It seems to me a Rite of Passage must have some teaching value. What you experienced, what I helped work on at The Citadel, even the bit my son found, none of it taught anything. Dave's original experience doesn't seem to have taught anything either. It just served as a barrier around a small turned inward culture, if that's a good name for it. -- MikeMelendez 2007.04.04

Hazing included paddling; lineups with quizs; gig books; cleaning the house and having your work signed off by a member; being left in the middle of nowhere (along some country road) in the middle of the night and and finding your way back; wearing burlap underwear and not being allowed to sleep for 72 hours the week before finals. The experience was stupid and degrading.

Some sadistic members truly enjoyed tormenting pledges. Most members went along with "tradition." A comment from an older members stands out for me, he said, "Everything we do has a reason." I have no idea what reasons he saw. I thought it was ridiculous. When I became a member, I asked the membership, "Are we trying to change these guys?." "Yes, of course." replied the members. "What are we trying to change them to?" I asked. No answer.

What did I learn from the experience? 19 to 22 year old males are the wrong people to control the initiation of 18 year old males. It doesn't surprise me that kids have died from some of the experiences.

I gather from my daughter's experience pledging at a sorority that girls aren't any better than boys. My daughter was smarter than me. She recognized the stupidity and quit a few days before initiation. As you might expect, the girls didn't take being spurned well at all. They were vicious.

SteveSmith 2007.04.04

One of my high school initiation hazings was having to obtain 20 different brands of cigarettes. (This was during WW II, and it was not easy to obtain cigarettes of any kind, let alone 20 brands.) Then we had to chain smoke them alll down to butts. I remember the last brand--a wartime cigarette called "Coffeetones" because it was mostly made from used coffee grounds. I was finishing it in the car on the way home when my body couldn't take it any more and I puked all over the senior's back seat. That was one of the highpoints of pledging. It would be well for would-be hazers to remember that the underdogs have their ways of gaining revenge, now or later. - JerryWeinberg 2007.04.05

It was one of the very few times I exercised my "J" component. I usually don't care. I am glad I did care tht night :-) CharlesAdams 2007.04.05

Maybe I was lucky not to live on campus. I simply avoided all the frosh week nonsense by not showing up. My high school had a sorority and I knew excessively affluent girls who belonged, but I was both a working class leftie and an intellectual snob and thought they were stupid. (One of them picked her university for "the social life".) I wouldn't have gone near a university fraternity/sorority for a flight to the moon.

This sounds critical of your younger selves, and in spite of my visceral reaction, I don't mean it to be. (I had the same reaction to Dave's original post that started this thread, and I have it to what I hear about reality TV shows.) My younger self made some really dumb choices, and was no doubt a serious pain in the ass. I was a committed outsider by the time I got to university, and didn't even try to make any friends there.

But I still think that slightly alienated existence more congenial than putting up with hazing. I really don't understand. Did you want to belong to those groups?

FionaCharles 5-Apr-2007

Steve hit on something that has stuck with me. "19 to 22 year old males are the wrong people to control the initiation of 18 year old males." In all the cases I am familiar with that I would label hazing, this is somewhat a constant. Maybe it's not so much fraternities (or sororities) but that they bring together a group of that nature. I know first hand that initiations can work and work well. My Navy time and a service group I belong to both involved initiations -- boot camp in the former and three two hour rituals in the latter -- that taught a considerable amount. In the latter case, the rituals were full of dignity and then used that dignity to set up experiential learning situations that included the initiates only as observers not unlike for most of us in Jean's sessions at AYE.

So how to explain hazing cropping up in more adult software organizations? Does it say something about the maturity or insularity of those involved? Jim Bullock offers some insight at the top that suggests both.

Thinking of Jerry's note that hazing teaches you, if it teaches you anything, that you should not join the group in question. Maybe hazing is better termed a "Rite of Non-Passage".

MikeMelendez 2007.04.06

I'm having a real hard time picturing either Jerry or Steve being all "Please sir, may I have another." - ever. Wow.

If either of you two like how you deal with such stuff now better than the way you dealt with it then, call it growth and good for you. It looks like an improvement to me, although mine isn't the opinion that matters.

Right now, I'm thinking that a "rite of passage" is when you learn something, becoming someone different and coming into more of your own because of how you handle some experience. The point isn't the experience or even how you handle it, but how you change yourself in handling it. I wonder if that isn't a good check on the situations you are offering other people. I'm pretty sure handling out-group, "You suck until we say you don't." type hazing is a weak source of strengthening choices for its targets. Seems a poor choice, mostly a waste of time for all concerned.

-- JimBullock 2007.04.06 (Can I not join your club? Thanks.)

1. In high school, I joined for the same reason inmates join a prison gang--protection. (You had to know my high school.) Later, I built my own prison gang and quit the fraternity.
   
   
2. I decided to go to college three days before school started. I had no plans, no preparation. I went because a guy I worked with in the summer convinced me that college was the way to meet girls who put out. And, as far as I knew from him, the only place you could live at college was in a fraternity house. (It was cheaper than the dorms, but I didn't even know about dorms until I'd paid up for the year, non-refundable.)

So, it was safety, sex, and ignorance. I was reasonably safe (only a few broken bones in high school), but I never got the sex. I did clear up some of my ignorance. - JerryWeinberg 2007.04.06

The book "Influence" by Robert B. Cialdini says that hazing makes membership in a fraternity "meaningful". As it does for adult membership in some African tribes: child-to-adult transition rituals in some African tribes are surprisingly similar to rituals that some fraternities do.

Take away hazing and the membership feels meaningless to members of the fraternity at least those members who went through the hazing to become members. Attempts to replace hazing with public service did not work, though some fraternal organizations did add public service to what members do after membership was granted. Attempts to outlaw hazing, or to involve adults to keep the hazing from going too far, have often failed.

-- KeithRay 2007.04.07

Physical safety would never have occurred to me as a reason to join a fraternity. Perhaps that's one way it was better to grow up female: not having to think about getting beaten up by one's peers, not in high school anyway.

Nor would sex, at least not as you described it. What (hopeful) innocents we all were, once!

FionaCharles 7-Apr-2007

Keith, I haven’t read Cialdini’s book and don’t know what else he had to say, but a conclusion like this begs a number of questions, mainly around who asked whom, and what they asked. I also wonder about the true value of membership in an organization whose “meaning” is so obscure that it needs hazing to validate it.

Many organizations and cultures have and historically have had initiation rites. The examples of which I have any understanding have much in common. They begin with a period (often long) of learning, where adepts induct candidates into the skills, knowledge, language and sometimes mysteries of the culture, craft, or organization. Often this ends with a trial, where the candidate shows her/his worthiness through a demonstration of the knowledge and skill s/he has attained. Successful candidates undergo a ritual initiation, which can be a powerful spiritual experience where the initiate is symbolically reborn into a different state of existence.

First Communion/Confirmation, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, mediaeval Christian knighthood, the progress from apprenticeship in a trade to Guild membership as a journeyman and then master, university graduation, even initiation as a fully-fledged Girl Guide/Boy Scout, all follow pretty much this pattern. (As do lots of other examples.)

They don’t routinely feature humiliation or physical abuse beyond cultural norms -- i.e., hazing -- and yet do seem to carry considerable significance and meaning for the initiates. Perhaps that is because membership represents something important, even essential, to the members.

I know that there are some cultures where initiation into adulthood is painful, with scarification and other forms of physical mutilation. We may or may not be culturally comfortable with those practices, but I think it’s more than a stretch to put frat hazing on the same level of meaning.

Getting back to the original subject of this thread, the acceptance rites of some software teams obviously represent neither a spiritual experience nor the abuses of real hazing. But as Jim Bullock pointed out, the mentality of “We is in; you is out, and you can only come in if We say so” is at least unpleasant, and at worst dangerous in the workplace.

What happens when the new team member is shy, socially awkward, low in self-esteem, or even just not good at the in-group games? When the in-group trades jokes or goes off for lunch or coffee, is s/he doomed to solitary outsider-hood forever? This sucks, IMNHO.

FionaCharles 9-Apr-2007

Or even have the games, jokes, lunch and coffee. How about we deal with the shy, eccentric team member in terms of what they contribute, and BTW if there's something that they could contribute that gets left on the table because they don't get the jokes, doesn't that cost in-group-us as well as them? Can we get past "Just like me." to add maybe "Weird but useful." "Surprising and that's OK." and even "Does stuff I don't understand and have no idea how, but we'd be sunk without it?"

How's this: commonality of goals but diversity of contribution. Isn't that the point? Now, what rites of passage help or hurt that? One might be celebrating the first round of doing something together:

"We just shipped 7.3 of WizzyWidget(tm). So, let's get Newbie, Tyro, Novice, and Babe-in-the-woods up here and give them a hand. It's their first time shipping something with us, and we're glad they were here to help."

Of course that sounds like management-speak B S because it's been stylized and corrupted, used in form but not in sincerity. Say it and mean it. If the new folks can't or don't actually contribute that's a separate problem. Make that the hurdle. That's quite enough. If you can't decide what matters, can't speak up about what you value or offer actual appreciation, you could work on that.

If the folks on your team can't or won't appreciate any contribution different from exactly what they imagine they would do, well that's at minimum a narrow, brittle bunch. At worst you are leaving most of the value outside, and will get creamed by folks who can hire from outside your demographic. You know. People who test the software - they are called "testers." Folks from other countries. Folks with different genders, ages, ethnic history.

But that's just me. I like to get things done, and find that people different from me are often helpful in this. Unfortunate, but true.

- JimBullock 2007.04.08 (We will encourage diversity. Exactly the diversity I am about to list, exactly this way . . .)

Jim mentions one of my pet peeves: "We will encourage diversity. Exactly the diversity I am about to list, exactly this way . . ." I learn too much from people who are different than me to want them to hide their differences...as long as I am allowed to express my own.

MikeMelendez 2007.04.10

I particularly like people of the category: "Does stuff I don't understand and I have no idea how." For me, to deal with such people I have to be in a pretty good place, "high pot" is one Satir-ism for that. It takes some energy, courage, and safety to be willing to address something you don't understand. If I feel safe, I can hang out with things I don't understand and be OK without understanding.

Personally, I rarely manage to feel safe without some level of understanding ideally having a model that tracks, enough data to feed the model and frankly an exit strategy or two. It is a lot like a lumberjack dropping a tree. You know where it is going to go, and where you are going to go if it doesn't. That's a strategy that works for me pretty well.

You'll get someone's strategies for taking care of themselves, whatever those might be, unless they feel safe enough. They will be good at them, and why not? They practice all the time. And why shouldn't they? Their strategies, whatever those might be, got them this far.

Of course, a lot of hazing is about making people "low pot", low potential, low energy, used up their courage, don't feel safe, and maybe even they are overwhelmed a bit. Then they under-perform. Duh. At a minimum it throws them back on their basic survival strategies, and we get to see those. Now we know their moves, while they don't know ours, and the one-up / one-down relationship continues. Of course if that kind of hazing persists all of this is the point.

Right now, my thinking is stuck on "rites of passage" that aren't artificial, disconnected challenges but recognizing performance vs. a meaningful standard. "Dude, you just swam the whole way across the lake. How cool is that?" is one thing. "You can't play with us until you swim the lake." is another. "Swim the lake, rookie. We'll leave you out there while you sputter and maybe drown." is a third. I'm getting a sense that "rites of passage" recognize and celebrate something, while "hazing" doesn't so much. It's about ushering someone in, not keeping people out.

But that's just me. I'm one who thinks that Groucho Marx didn't go far enough. If some club wants me for a member, I'd like to know what's in it for them, and what they have that I want that they'll pay me in turn.

- JimBullock 2007.04.10 (Drop and give me 20!)

Back to DaveSmith original "rites of passage." Yes, I have seen this many times and I am ashamed to say that I have probably participated in it sometimes in the past.

People do "kid around" at work and often "kid" the new person. If the new person laughs and "kids" back, then okay we have person with a sense of humor and we accept that person.

Gosh, that looks awful now that I have typed the words and read them.

Hazing - I have never been in hazing in either the receiving or giving end. I guess I wasn't attracted to such places or forced into them. I admit that someone may look at my life and point out that I did submit myself to what they would call hazing and what I wouldn't call hazing.

I thank JimBullock for his comments above on swimming the lake. That resonates with me and my experiences. I worked in a research lab while in grad school. The head of the lab would bring in a new grad student and "try him out" before offering financial aid. That may sound okay - "its a marketplace, if you can do the work, we will pay you."

I hated the way the lab head would "try out" new students. He would give them an assignment that could be done in a month. The assignment could also be done in two days if people who already worked in the lab gave the new guy five minutes of their time. The lab head, however, told people, "Don't help him. Let him work at it."

I truly believe that the lab head enjoyed watching people suffer.

This takes me to a question made on SHAPE this week, "What do you want to happen?"

I believe the lab head wanted to see people suffer. I don't believe he wanted to bring in capable people to accomplish work and advance research. If I wanted to accomplish and advance, I would help people learn faster instead of "make them work at it."

"Rites of passage" - What do you want to happen?

Do you want people to walk in dedicated to your cause?

Do you want to watch people suffer?

DwaynePhillips 12 April 2007

I believe the lab head wanted to see people suffer.

That may be true. I wasn't there to see how the lab head interacted with people or how he responded to their struggles. I can imagine that it may also be true that the lab head operated under a mental model that said:

-people don't value what they didn't work for

-individual effort matters more than collaboration

-people who ask for help are weak and dependent

-people learn more when they work things ouw for themselves.

Letting people struggle for a month does seem a bit much, though, in terms of accomplishing the goals of the lab.

EstherDerby April 12, 2007

I put a lot of teams together -- a new one for nearly every project I work on. But I don't "build" them. I help them focus, and then they build themselves. I've never seen any so-called team building exercises that can substitute for the mutual trust and appreciation for each other's strengths and weaknesses that come with real work. Then we have rites of passage: celebrations of what we've done -- and occasional laments for what we couldn't do.

As others have said, I want diversity on those teams. I look for people who will challenge me and each other: with ideas, with other ways of doing things, and other ways of seeing.

One of my favourite team members is a guy I rejected the first time around. I'd only ever seen his work from a distance, and I thought he was too geeky and too plodding. He'd never get his head around what I was trying to do.

Luckily there wasn't anyone else for a role I needed to fill, and I got a second chance. We've since done many projects together. He has an extraordinary mind, and is one of the kindest and most modest people I know, as well as a very effective problem solver.

But he's shy and doesn't interview well. He hates to present himself. He doesn't dress well, and is not very physically fit. Most people have the same reaction I did until they've had an opportunity to work with him. Then they want him back -- just as I do.

I don't think he'd fare very well with acceptance games. (And I know he'd hate them.)

FionaCharles 12-Apr-2007

"I put a lot of teams together . . . "

Yeah. That. -- JimBullock