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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?

#31

Post by HellDunkel »

jxf wrote: post #19

You've got some good advice already, but one that I'll add here is adopting the principle of charity [0]. Every time someone talks to you, interpret their words in the way that is most favorable to their argument and your mutual interactions. This assumption goes a long way to short-circuiting any negative thoughts you might have about their intentions. For example, if there seem to be two interpretations of a commen…

I think this is great advice and would like to add that this is best done without questioning yourself too much but rather as an exercise to completely „overhear“ negativ comments while focussing solely on the outcome.

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

#32

Post by pxc »

molly0 wrote: post #8
brudgers wrote: post #7

For me, I put my mistakes in perspective. Did anyone die? No? Then on the scale of important consequences the mistake was statistically inconsequential. My day is ok.

This is rational, I wish I could just do this but my ego is in the way and I don’t like being wrong.

One thing to keep in mind is this:

Wise people are often wrong.

Smart people make dumb mistakes all the time.

Diligent workers still don't get to approach every single problem with meticulous attention to detail.

Rational, reasonable people nonetheless inevitably hold some inconsistent beliefs.

... and so on.

You can be wrong without being bad.

It can be hard to remember this at an emotional level, especially if you have a history of being belittled for making mistakes, or you feel like you're not taken seriously enough. But it's true! Remind yourself of it. :)

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

#34

Post by gwnywg »

I had similar problem early in my career. I improved myself by applying the mix of three:

1. If the change requested was not major I was making mental push to agree and just do it, in many cases comments were not about the very substance of what I was working on but they were sliding on the surface

2. I was learning to read my work and see if reviewer is actually right, as I'm not a genius and there are times I get something wrong

3. I was learning 'the art of not giving a f*ck', well, sometimes this is what you need to do to keep sane :)

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

#35

Post by gloryjulio »

Personally I never cared about it. The only goal I have is whether it's right on pointing to the direction of work better(which in turn makes more money for me).

If it's point out something that can be done better. I can take it regardless how it's phrased. That is the only thing on my mind when I am working

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

#36

Post by Double_a_92 »

ajuc wrote: post #22

The reason I took criticism of my work personally was that I build my identity around the fact that I'm smart and good with computers. If you think of yourself as having value BECAUSE you're good at X - it's almost impossible not to take criticism personally. You can pretend not to care, because it seems professional - but inside you'll still be hurting, and by default you'll still act to prevent the damage to your e…

Usually review feedback is not that harsh though. It's not like "This is complete shit, please start over!" It's usally things like "If you used this pattern in this area, it would become easier to read" or even more trivial "This variable has a generic name, please make it more expressive" or whatever...

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

#37

Post by bcrosby95 »

I don't have great advice. This is just how I think about it:

Nobody is perfect.

I stopped taking it personally after working on an app about 15 years ago. I was reading the code and had an epiphany: it was buggy as shit. Less experienced me probably thought it was fine. But if timings were just right, there were some bugs that would cause all sorts of errors.

But they hadn't ever happened, despite the system running for 3 years at about 10k requests handled per second. So, did the bug matter? I dunno. I fixed it, sure. But it gave me a new outlook. It's impossible to avoid all mistakes. So try your best, and don't beat yourself up over the ones you miss.

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

#38

Post by StanislavPetrov »

Try viewing it as input, and not criticism. Imagine you were cooking a stew, someone tasted it and said, "it isn't salty enough". Are they attacking you because your stew tastes like garbage? Or are they, in good faith, offering their opinion on how you can make your stew better? If it is the latter, you should be grateful they were took the time to taste your stew and offer their honest opinion. It is then entirely up to you to incorporate their input into your project, and add more salt, or discard their opinion, and leave your stew how it is. Either way, going forward, it is useful to know that at least one person thought it needed more salt, and try to be grateful that they offered the input, rather than viewing that input as an attack on your stew-making abilities.

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

#39

Post by padolsey »

I have always taken feedback poorly, and my brain has been very unkind to me during performance reviews. I don't really trust people who claim to "love feedback" or find it "good for personal growth". It sounds so faux. But ya know, great for them. With PRs, I try to imagine myself in my reviewers' shoes, and try to form some kind of internally-consistent vicarious defence for why they're behaving or talking that way. Maybe they're having a bad day? Maybe they're annoyed and busy at the sheer persistence of interruptions? Or maybe I'm just incredibly sensitive? It's usually the latter. I have a persistent desire to please people. And in deficit of being able to, my brain convinces me that they don't like me. And that I should therefore feel rotten. I've discovered these brain cascades are mostly from mini-traumas of historic social interactions and upbringing. FWIW therapy helped me a lot. Also remember: people, including those in positions or knowledge and power, can be wrong, or unkind, or insensitive. It's not always you.

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

#40

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

I always try to take the view that anyone pointing out my mistakes is just being helpful, and to be grateful for it instead of being offended.

I used to struggle with this like you describe, and still do to some extent, but I think the fundamental cause is just insecurity, at least in my case.

I just have to remind myself that everyone makes mistakes all the time, and that's why we have code review. If someone spots a mistake in my code in review, they just saved me from looking even dumber down the line when something breaks in prod. I've also learned that feedback from others is the single most powerful way of identifying holes in your knowledge.

Over time, by forcing myself to look at things in this framing, I've come to mostly enjoy constructive criticism, and see it as an opportunity rather than be offended.

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