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Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#101

Post by mnky9800n »

dusted wrote: post #95

At some point, I realized that there's a disconnect between "me" and "my work". My work is a result of circumstance, like, what my mood was when I did it, how well I know the particular domain, if I've seen solutions to similar problems before, what tools were available and understandable to me at the time. In other words, the quality of my work depends much more on what the particular task was, than on some inherent…

George Lucas said that "you make a movie, given the circumstances". I really like that idea because it makes it immediately clear that your ideal of what you want to do, create, etc. Will change because of the chaos and unpredictability around you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#103

Post by ArchitectAnon »

Go to Architecture school for 5 years. Tutors used to keep scores over how many students they could make cry. Anything else will seem tame in comparison. At the end of it you come to think of your work as something you can discard at a moment’s notice, you’ll have no sentimental attachment to it at all, if anything you’ll slightly hate it already anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#104

Post by jerjerjer »

1. Don't care too much about my job/code/etc. Does it really matter?

2. Is this suggestion a good one? Then I will use it, regardless of how it was worded. Is there something to disagree with? Let's talk why it's a bad (or good) idea.

3. Having feedback is better than not having feedback. Or being in a situation where people do not question your technical desisions and just follow along. Non-ideal feedback is inevitable part of that.

4. Do you always give perfect feedback? Think about that next time you see a junior dev submitting a O(n^2) solution to O(log(n)) problem.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#105

Post by Shorel »

My current strategy is twofold:

- First, allow yourself to feel whatever you will feel. This is unavoidable. Let it be. Not only you are not your work, you are not what you feel.

- Also, recognize that no right decision can be made in a state of anger. So if you are feeling any negativity, you must postpone whatever decision you have, writing an email, or any other (within reason of course).

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#107

Post by plaguepilled »

At one stage in life I had this problem regularly. It was very stressful.

It dawned on me that I was feeling like my own value was bring questioned when I was criticised. The material reality of whether I was actually being criticised fairly or if I even believed it was reasonable to be criticised didn't even factor in. In short, I was having an ego panic.

The fix was unfortunately just a lot of patient introspection. Why do I feel a certain way? Why is one thing my first response instead of something else? Do I like that I do that? Those were the REAL issues. Being contradicted just highlighted it.

Best of luck overcoming your troubles. I am sure you will succeed if you are diligent.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#108

Post by kqr »

mnky9800n wrote: post #101
dusted wrote: post #95

At some point, I realized that there's a disconnect between "me" and "my work". My work is a result of circumstance, like, what my mood was when I did it, how well I know the particular domain, if I've seen solutions to similar problems before, what tools were available and understandable to me at the time. In other words, the quality of my work depends much more on what the particular task was, than on some inherent…

George Lucas said that "you make a movie, given the circumstances". I really like that idea because it makes it immediately clear that your ideal of what you want to do, create, etc. Will change because of the chaos and unpredictability around you.

Similar to "men make their own history, just not under conditions of their own choosing" or however people usually simplify that Marx text.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#109

Post by rawoke083600 »

Yea that is a hard one, one data-point (not a real answer) is I noticed when a code review was done by a friend or someone I trust (and or get along with), they can almost be as harsh as they want. I won't take it personally. Seems it's like a trust issue.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#110

Post by cs02rm0 »

It is personal.

I've had 18 months working on a project where code reviews were going badly wrong so my perspective might be a little different than it was before this and maybe needs some realigning, but your PRs probably aren't anonymous and reviewers absolutely do change their comments depending on who the submitter is.

If they're genuinely constructive comments made in good faith by a warm and open reviewer prepared to take the time to help you address them, I don't tend to find people take them badly. If that's what's really happening then maybe some retrospection is in order. Your code isn't you, it can be changed and improved and once committed it isn't yours alone if it even was before then.

Reviews inherently revolve around social dynamics, personal relationships every bit as much as a dispassionate, logical view of code. As such, they're fraught with difficulties.

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