I am absolutely amazed at your luck with teams. Never to be interrupted ever? In my own experience, there's always someone in an office who just doesn't want to stop talking, who uses run-on sentences without giving you a chance to interject something or who just can't wait their turn and interrupts. Could it be that engineers are more like that than developers? I would say that it is me but I've seen other people being interrupted, too, and when I see this happen, I often speak up for them.
Two other experiences stand out in my mind. One was when a manager complained to my manager during a large meeting that he should stop hiring people who were not knowledgeable enough about a particular technology. A co-worker and myself were who he was referring to and we were at the meeting! It was humiliating. Another incident was when I became the lead engineer on a project, a person under me told me with a direct stare and wagging finger that he had managed just fine without me so far and would prefer that I did not interfere with his part of the project.
I have had many good team experiences but enough bad ones to know that I can expect things like this. I have always tried to set things straight first with the offender in private and usually that is all that is required. Most people seem to be unaware that the behavior was hurtful but sometimes what they were unaware of was that I would actually complain about it. But for times that my authority was not accepted, I've had to complain and luckily I've always been supported.
Do you think it could be the nature of engineers?
