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Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
151–160 of 438 posts
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#152“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Or just be yourself, don't give a f* about what people think and don't be an asshole just for the sake of it.
Interacting with people is like driving: you have to avoid crashing into others, but sometimes you make a mistake and others will avoid crashing into you. And wear seat belts.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#153“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud? Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into. I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a…
Did you ever consider the fact that you may simply be an insufferable asshole?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#154Salary negotiation. (Not great at it now, but I don't feel embarrassed to ask for more).
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#155“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud? Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into. I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a…
I do agree that most people are boring if you don't try and figure out what's interesting about them.
Discovering what's interesting about someone is an art. The totality of people you will meet have a much wider variety of experience than you could ever accumulate on your own. When I meet someone new, the first thing I try to find out is what it is they have done that I have not, and then I ask them about that. Often, I learn something new and interesting.
In general, people will never realize on their own what you'll find interesting about them, so you have to seek it out actively.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#156“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud? Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into. I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a…
If you find everyone else around you, I would suggest that perhaps you are the problem.
You really can't find anything in common with someone that you find interesting to talk about?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#157“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Or just be yourself, don't give a f * about what people think and don't be an asshole just for the sake of it. Interacting with people is like driving: you have to avoid crashing into others, but sometimes you make a mistake and others will avoid crashing into you. And wear seat belts.
That's a good advice unless "being yourself" sucks. "Be yourself" is non-advice. It can be both good and terrible advice depending on many factors.
Everyone is complex. There are aspects we're comfortable with and others we are not. So you want to improve the latter and stick with the former as long as they work for you, in a sense they help you achieve what you aim for.
Some aspects of yourself aren't really working in some environments so you would just be an idiot to display them while failing to get the results in life you really want to.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#158The two things I've been working on most, recently:
Giving credit where due, particular to more junior colleagues when they have made a good contribution to a team effort.
Speaking in a more straightforward way - I'm English, and it's common for us to speak indirectly and suggest stuff, rather than say it outright, but I'm working in a mostly non-native English environment, and it has lead to issues once or twice.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#159Not everyone responds the same. I hated when people would use fluffy language: "would it be okay if you could do X?" Dammit...just tell me to do X. I know you're not really asking me you're just trying to be nice for something that has to be done. Well... turns out just because I like to hear feedback or orders directly, doesn't mean everyone else does. Part of why your manager treads carefully is because they have t…
I disagree. If somebody asks you "would it be okay if you could do X?" it's easier to say that it's a bad idea, or if it's not a priority, or there could be alternatives, or if this needs to be talked about with the team...
It opens up more of a conversation than just saying "Do x".
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#160“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud? Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into. I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a…
You need to recognize, that just like some people find wine, sports, their kids, or gardening to be an interesting topic of conversation, you find introspection, philosophy, history, and/or literature to be the things that interest you most in discussion.
Is there an objective ranking of those topics? Are some of them universally better or worse?
Some people think so. This causes them to feel disdain for the others who don't share their topics of interest.
Some people are truly awful conversationalists and it is difficult having a flowing conversation with them. I've found that the topic is not the issue. The person's conversation skills are. At times I feel that I am the bad conversationalist, not knowing anything about the finer details of this year's soccer lineup. If I did not try to be interested and engaged in such a conversation, the other person could plausibly find me dull. I get to decide how to proceed and what experience they get to base their judgement on. When I do so, I do sometimes find myself learning a lot about things I knew nothing about, and sometimes pleasantly engaged in a conversation about a topic I would generally consider to be not interesting to me.