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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?

#271

Post by reality_inspctr »

Dwolb wrote: post #249
_popcornLurker wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm...I have to chime in here. "Anti-fragile attitude" when it comes to criticism is not built by tolerance. Quite the opposite actually. It is a common misconception. While making yourself numb against criticism IS a solution but not by far the best one. A high criticism tolerance is learned by understanding that ones self worth is not attached to output or delivery. (This is hard in our industry) It comes from self…

Agreed. Another adjacent PoV is improvement, not complete, is the steady state. What I mean is, throughout our entire schooling career we did work and turned in assignments that got graded. They were done. The work was over. Our professions aren’t like that. There’s no done. There’s always improvement. Therefore every piece of criticism, critique, or feedback has some data in it (sometimes layered in poorly worded ph…

it can be helpful, for some, to give up on the notion of retirement altogether.

exist to exist the whole way through. do what you gotta do.

many SV people have probably also seen anecdotal evidence the $B crowd has this mindset. it's the $M crowd sweatin the small stuff.

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

#272

Post by katzgrau »

_popcornLurker wrote: post #207
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

Uhm...I have to chime in here. "Anti-fragile attitude" when it comes to criticism is not built by tolerance. Quite the opposite actually. It is a common misconception. While making yourself numb against criticism IS a solution but not by far the best one. A high criticism tolerance is learned by understanding that ones self worth is not attached to output or delivery. (This is hard in our industry) It comes from self…

Getting stronger through stress is not the solution, but a common initial path to the larger solution.

I think you're closest when you say "A high criticism tolerance is learned by understanding that ones self worth is not attached to output or delivery"

The compassion part is unnecessary.

Any criticism you take personally is ultimately a fictitious story you're choosing to accept about your identity. We are the ones choosing to take an event like a comment, apply a label of snarky, and allow it to set our emotions in the moment.

The snarky comment itself has no objective meaning. It only takes on meaning when we decide to interpret it negatively. We could just as easily screen the comment for actual valuable feedback, and if there is, implement it. And now you have a win. How smart of you, you should feel good about that.

The real approach is rising above and seeing things for what they really are, and seizing opportunities to look at things differently for an optimal outcome.

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

#273

Post by vanjajaja1 »

> I see this as one of my major flaws and try hard to mask how I feel. But I just hope to learn to stop feeling bad for honest mistakes

I propose this change in attitude: this is a part of you, accept it & learn to use it to your advantage.

Some people don't care when they're criticized, some do. Who performs better at a task: the person who doesn't care or the one who does? Use this desire to not be hurt to fuel you to improve yourself (you've already started with this post, i'm just redirecting the energy.)

The other thing to be aware of is to make sure you're not blaming the other person for the bad feelings. Your feelings are a signal to you, a signal that something is wrong and that you need to do something to fix it.

It sucks at first, to be extra sensitive, but in the long haul it is an advantage.

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

#274

Post by dom96 »

latexr wrote: post #262
dom96 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assume positive intentions from the other person. This works well in professional settings, but falls apart in certain online communities. How do you deal with people that don't have positive intentions, but actually have the precise opposite intentions, i.e. they want to attribute any perceived problem with your work as it meaning you are a bad programmer. Not taking that personally is far tougher.

> This works well in professional settings, but falls apart in certain online communities. If you’re part of an online community where bad intentions are the norm, I’d recommend moving on to another. Why spend your time with a group that frequently makes you feel bad on purpose? > How do you deal with people that don't have positive intentions, but actually have the precise opposite intentions You move on to the thir…

> If you’re part of an online community where bad intentions are the norm, I’d recommend moving on to another. Why spend your time with a group that frequently makes you feel bad on purpose?

Indeed, that's precisely what I ended up doing after what has been ~3 years of trying to make the community better.

What's somewhat interesting is that it seems the community in question went downhill as soon as the pandemic started, the underlying issue was a lack of serious moderation and an unwillingness of the powers that be to introduce it and while that was okay for many years, once a critical mass of people with bad intentions arrived the environment just became toxic because they were largely unchecked.

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

#276

Post by lr4444lr »

Anyone who dishes out criticism should be able to take yours seriously and change his own code. That means you're partners in helping each other get better. Anyone of your peers who thinks his $%^& smells like roses and everyone else's stinks should be avoided, passive-aggressively if needed (not talking managers who should tell you what to do).

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

#277

Post by grvdrm »

I struggled with this quite a bit throughout my career until about a year ago. For context, I've worked in the insurance industry for 17 years.

So, what changed/helps:

1. I do a weekly therapy session. It doesn't have to be about or related to work, but I noticed that my propensity to take things personally tied to many other broader issues in how I was raised, grew up, etc. It's probably not happening just by chance. Sorting through my broader mental/emotional balance really helped.

2. A lot of folks have the impulse to react and interrupt when receiving feedback. I think, instead, it's easier to simply let that person exhaust their comment to you, and then take a moment collect your thoughts if you actually need or want to respond, which takes me to my next point...

3. Have a framework for deciding whether that feedback is worth it. You don't need to respond in the moment with any particular comment other than to say "thanks." Never write something out and send/post/etc. immediately without taking a step back, re-reading, and calmly evaluating how appropriate that writing really is.

You can then dissect your feedback with a series of questions to understand if the feedback is worth ingesting or not, like: - what can I learn from that feedback? - was that person stressed about something when delivering feedback? - was I stressed when delivering feedback? - how important was the topic relative to the broader goal or priority list of the company? - Etc.

4. Everyone makes mistakes. Even those people you're thinking about in your company that don't. They make mistakes too. There's lot of subjectivity in mistakes as well, which is another way of saying that no one is perfect. The best way to deal with mistakes is transparently own them and then move on rather than dwell - easier said than done - but effective.

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

#278

Post by tbrownaw »

neilv wrote: post #121

Don't feel like you're the only one. It seems very common for people to have different flavors and degrees of feelings like this. Some inexpert questions to maybe consider: * Where you work, does it feel safe in general to acknowledge mistakes? Is there a culture of humility, and the team supporting each other? Are the most skilled/experienced/respected the first to point out when they made a mistake? How do managers…

> Where you work, does it feel safe in general to acknowledge mistakes?

Is it actually in fact safer than hiding them?

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

#280

Post by danesparza »

_popcornLurker wrote: post #207
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

Uhm...I have to chime in here. "Anti-fragile attitude" when it comes to criticism is not built by tolerance. Quite the opposite actually. It is a common misconception. While making yourself numb against criticism IS a solution but not by far the best one. A high criticism tolerance is learned by understanding that ones self worth is not attached to output or delivery. (This is hard in our industry) It comes from self…

"You are not your lines of code."

Agreed. And nobody's lines of code are perfect.

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