You are judging yourself and others in the wrong way and have bought into the falsehood that people are good or bad based on performance. You therefore take criticism as a threat to your virtue. Don’t judge yourself or others by performance. Once you’ve fixed that problem with the way you view others, it will also fix your own self esteem problems.
Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
291–300 of 653 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#292Your code is bad sometimes, so is everyone else around you. I've seen people who have been doing this for 30 years and think they are gods because they refuse criticism. In reality all they are doing is creating an environment of hostility and suffering because while they were awarded the seniority they hadn't earned the responsibility to own it until they can admit the first critical step
All code sucks, your job isn't to make great code it's to make great products and do your best to reduce the stress on your team, code quality will follow but first you have to be honest, open, and compassionate and sometimes a JR will take that personally and that's ok, eventually they won't or they will find out this industry isn't for them.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
You appear to have replied to the wrong post
No, your post comes across as sarcastic. “Please rename a variable” is in no way an indicator that you are borderline being PIPed. Additionally, that’s not even scratching the surface for HR documentation that is required for underperformance. It needs to be blatant “you are not meeting expectations” phrasing.
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Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#294What works for me is to just ask everyone for everything that is not great with my code and really encourage them not to hold back. By doing it this way I get a lot of great feedback, and it gets less dramatic somehow.
If people can sense that you can't take this kind of feedback they will behave differently and you might pick up that they are unconfortable, making you feel like you suck even more :D
Good luck
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#295It's probably a bit late now. But be deliberate in your choices. So if you get critique of them you have a reason and a new view to grapple with.
If you follow trends, or just do what others did because thats what they did. Well then you'll find critique hard because you were just a follower. But if you made a choice, cut a corner because of a reason, and got called out on it then you can reflect on that and all of the ego stuff just slides away.
I solved it this way, because a bad solution now was better than a great solution two days from now etc etc.
Make deliberate decisions.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#296First, think about if want to do good work (that you can say this is good).
How to know if you are not convinced of that? If it feels like you need courage to fix or redo something. Similarly, if you boast about your courage.
To me that's the difference between an A and B player, both are good but for B doing good work is somehow painful.
To answer your question, since nobody is omniscient, realize that if you feel bad for making an honest mistake you are fighting Nature.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#297What 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'll find that the people that break down at the slightest criticism the most are those that were criticised the most as children as well. Those that had no room for being anything other than perfect. Where value was obtained from performance.
It took me a long time to realize this applied to me. I don't ever remember explicitly being criticised as a child but I reached adulthood with a wicked need for perfection and "achievement" and a subconscious aversion to criticism. I still find it hard to feel valid and valuable in the world other than through work. But all of these behaviors have undoubtedly held me back in work and relationships.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
You appear to have replied to the wrong post
No, actually - right post, but I might not have been specific enough. In particular that: This variable has a generic name, please make it more expressive is an indication you're heading to a PIP and a firing seems to be reading a huge amount of negativity into a comment that isn't warranted. Different cultures and work environments perhaps, but I've often written and received similarly terse statements on code revie…
That's... self-contradictory. Your edit is in complete agreement with me.
Baseline working relationship has trust and respect: "should be private"
Otherwise: "This is supposed to be encapsulated. Please make this variable private."
Stilted, formal, directive language is not a hallmark of a healthy working relationship, and the number of replies to my comment here that seem to take the opposite position... is not encouraging.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#299I actually sometimes do, but then I just remember that I am not my work.
Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?
#300You probably won't see my comment as it's late to the party, but these things help me:
- You are not your work. Try to take any demerit toward your work as pointed at the work, not at you as an individual.
- Make an effort to do the best job you can given your resources, knowledge, and deadlines. Sometimes you have to make trade offs because of an aggressive deadline and it's not the best situation to put out the highest quality code possible. Make sure it's known and try to get back to fixing it the best way when there is time.
- In code reviews, use it as an opportunity to learn from your seniors and to try to come up with ways it won't hurt you or others in the futures. If you made a mistake that affected a model or some code in another area, ask how they knew that would affect it? Is it documented anywhere? Are there tests? Is there a better way to handle this so that it won't affect things negatively downstream? This will help you and others avoid that mistake next time
- Assume that the person making the comment isn't doing anything intentionally to be snarky or shitty, but call them out on it if it's a repeated offense. It's very easy to come off meaner/short/curt through text than speech and some people just don't realize it. Alternatively, they do realize it and they're being an asshole to not just your but others. Either way, this will challenge them to think and act more professionally