Thanks for sharing this. Venting is good, and in this case a win-win, since this is good info (very relevant in a thread about encountering "bad codebases"). Hopefully OP sees it. You could well be "the other developer" where OP is.
Open question: how does one fight against what's been described in this comment? What specific sorts of communication skills? One thing that comes to mind is learning when and how hard to push-back, and how to argue with force when necessary.
The reason I ask such a specific question is because I'm not great at confrontations. I don't dread locking horns, but I'm not good at it. The more force I tend to apply, the more crass and less refined (okay, rude/arrogant) I come across, entirely unintentionally. Diplomacy seems to me to equate to "die a bit more inside, burn some more of your own wick to deal with the frustration, don't say anything, and wait and see how things work out". So I end up not engaging at all. I know I'm missing something huge here and I don't know what it is.
Open question: how does one fight against what's been described in this comment? What specific sorts of communication skills? One thing that comes to mind is learning when and how hard to push-back, and how to argue with force when necessary.
The reason I ask such a specific question is because I'm not great at confrontations. I don't dread locking horns, but I'm not good at it. The more force I tend to apply, the more crass and less refined (okay, rude/arrogant) I come across, entirely unintentionally. Diplomacy seems to me to equate to "die a bit more inside, burn some more of your own wick to deal with the frustration, don't say anything, and wait and see how things work out". So I end up not engaging at all. I know I'm missing something huge here and I don't know what it is.