There is a difference, I think, between healthy and unhealthy conflict. This team was clearly averse to both. It was likely an awful team.
My advice to anyone in a similar situation: work on the classes of behavior that are actually problematic, namely blaming, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Then you can have a healthy argument about ideas.
If a team has problems listening to actual, clear evidence that what you did was correct, they are perhaps at fault here. Of course, if you show contempt, then the right thing for a healthy team to do would be to:
1) Address the contempt head-on, and then
2) Examine the data dispassionately.
It seems this team failed at both.
Probably a good thing to get fired from such a place, though it hurts to not be given an opportunity to move on on your own terms! This particular org appeared to be a pretty bad place to work anyway.
While I agree with you, reading this showed and ego coming from the writer, but in his place probably should have handled it better in a new environment. What I was reading felt more skewed towards "I was right and got fired, but made no attempt to communicate sans telling people they were wrong".
> There is a difference, I think, between healthy and unhealthy conflict. This team was clearly averse to both. It was likely an awful team.
I didn't draw that conclusion at all. It didn't sound like he was advocating healthy discussion. He came off to me as being brand new to a team and insisting on his way, while not being open to any explanations of why that either wasn't a priority or wasn't viable at the moment.
Walking into a team as a new member and immediately insisting on sweeping changes is never a good idea.
The practices the author describes are actually horrible, and objectively bad practices though. Truly, obviously, inescapably bad practices.
Do you just go along with it? What do you do? I personally try and avoid places like that like the plague because it will mean my technical skills will vanish with the wind the more time I spend working in such a code base.
My advice to anyone in a similar situation: work on the classes of behavior that are actually problematic, namely blaming, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Then you can have a healthy argument about ideas.
If a team has problems listening to actual, clear evidence that what you did was correct, they are perhaps at fault here. Of course, if you show contempt, then the right thing for a healthy team to do would be to:
1) Address the contempt head-on, and then 2) Examine the data dispassionately.
It seems this team failed at both.
Probably a good thing to get fired from such a place, though it hurts to not be given an opportunity to move on on your own terms! This particular org appeared to be a pretty bad place to work anyway.