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Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#331

Post by parthdesai »

wesammikhail wrote: post #272
NeutralCrane wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but I mean this, earnestly: get over yourself. If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person . You bemoan that you find almost everyone a "paper shell". And yet you are the one who has restricted your opinion of interesting people and topics with a PhD attached to it. You dismiss pursuits…

Not sure how this is helpful to the parent comment. > If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person. And I don´t really understand how you can come to that conclusion. That´s like 2+2 = duck In fact, > have limited relevant context outside your very limited definition of what is interesting If the per…

>> If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person.

> And I don´t really understand how you can come to that conclusion. That´s like 2+2 = duck

No, it's more like if everyone you talk to is an asshole, it's most likely that you are the asshole.

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#332

Post by criddell »

asdfman123 wrote: post #282
criddell wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An old saying among musicians: "Be careful how you treat people on your way up, because you'll meet them again on your way down." Speaking of musicians, I wish I had learned to play music. Every place I've worked there have been some very talented musicians working there and I wish I had the skills to play with them. I currently keep an electric guitar in my office and picking it up and playing (unamplified) is a g…

It's not hard to get good at an instrument, but how you practice is the difference between accelerating skill and perpetual struggle. Don't "noodle around" as a beginner, because practice makes permanent and good form is everything. Do you want to be actually good and not just okay? Take weekly lessons, follow online tutorials carefully, and practice at least 30-45 minutes 6 days a week, giving it an absolute laser-l…

I bought my guitar in 1996 and have taken lessons 4 different times since then. The last stint of weekly lessons I had was last year for a few months. I've recently signed up for Fender's service and it's pretty good.

I'm decent at switching between the basic open chord shapes, can barre some of those shapes fairly consistently, know power chords on the low E and A strings, and know a couple of scales fairly well (pentatonic and major).

An enormous problem for me is a total lack of any sense of rhythm and a poor ear for tone. For example, I've learned a lot of Nirvana's About a Girl and if I try to play along with the CD I'm okay until the vocals start. At that point I start strumming the rhythm of the lyrics rather than following the beat. If I focus on my rhythm, then I start messing my chord changes and as soon as I focus on the chords, I lose the rhythm. A lot of my practice is with a metronome and I think I've developed a dependence on the click.

The only song I've learned from start to finish in over 20 years of playing (other than toy songs in exercise books) is a simple version of Dylan's Knocking at Heaven's Door. Oh - and I know 90% of The Breeder's version of Drivin' on Nine.

The lessons were a mixed bag. The Suzuki school was the worst because they made sure there was no fun to be had. The best was probably my first teacher that I met through a night school community college learn-to-play-guitar course I took in 1996.

In that time I've become a father and my kids have taken music lessons. Watching how quickly they learned their instruments and seeing how great their hearing is (one kid has perfect pitch the other has very good relative pitch) really makes it clear how poorly I've done with this.

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#333

Post by jknoepfler »

lookathrwaway wrote: post #77
whiddershins wrote: post #19

“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 think you've completely missed the meaning of the term "unexamined life." Socrates chose death, you've chosen exile.

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#334

Post by Jach »

shoes_for_thee wrote: post #215
lookathrwaway wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's less about sharing their interest in those things -- sports, wine, kids -- and more about being interested in the person: "why did you find yourself interested in wine?" "what was it like having kids?" etc. learning to ask very open-ended questions is really helpful here. you don't need to have knowledge of their interests to share in their interests.

This is what peeling back a single layer is. I can only understand and sympathize with the GP's position to some extent, a lot of these "check yourself" replies seem very well put, but it's absolutely the case that there are people who for lack of a better term can be called unthinking. A more insulting turn of phrase might be "NPC". "Why did you find yourself interested in wine?" Not unrealistic answer: "Haha I dunno I just like the flavors, was introduced to it by x." Circle around to the topic again, they'll repeat that, and might not even remember you already talked about it. Trying to decompose "flavors" with them (whether you care or not) is unlikely to bear fruit.

Talking about their relationship with X is a logical follow on, of course, and has more fruit-bearing potential. I think one can have interesting conversations with everyone and it's important to converse with a variety of humans (fellow office workers of any profession being a tiny sample) but sometimes you can only hope to go for breadth, not so much depth. It takes the patience and training of a clinical psychologist to get anywhere with some people, and it's not often worth it.

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#335

Post by BeetleB »

ps101 wrote: post #150
ajxs wrote: post #14

I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Wi…

> It's generally a policy to keep pay and pay negotiations confidential. I know that your general point is about the personal relationships, but I want to point out that this policy is bullshit. You can legally disclose your salary with anyone (including in the US). From my experience in the UK employers don't even try to pull any of these 'policies', although often employees don't go around discussing their salaries…

>You can legally disclose your salary with anyone (including in the US).

You can legally do lots of things in the US. At will employers can also legally let you go without a reason. It's not going to be easy to show that they let you go for a legally protected reason.

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#336

Post by BeetleB »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #250
ajxs wrote: post #14

I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Wi…

colleagues ARE NOT friends... they are competition. Don't tell a colleague anything personal you wouldn't tell an enemy. I've too have learned this the hard way.

I think the lesson I would have learned in that situation is not to work there.

But who am I kidding? I DO work there!

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#339

Post by 1PlayerOne »

noname_jabroni wrote: post #2

We were born with 2 ears and 1 mouth - listen more than you speak... I found that this drives all other areas of interpersonal interaction: you need to understand where someone else is coming from / what their motivations are before trying to "fix" things or "pitch" them... sometimes people just want to be heard above all else Honestly and simplicity are the best policy. Don't bs, don't overpromise, own up to your fa…

Your sentiment was codified a long time ago in a book[1]

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

[1] https://ctext.org/art-of-war/attack-by-stratagem

Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

#340

Post by collyw »

NeutralCrane wrote: post #254
lookathrwaway wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No offense, but I mean this, earnestly: get over yourself. If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person . You bemoan that you find almost everyone a "paper shell". And yet you are the one who has restricted your opinion of interesting people and topics with a PhD attached to it. You dismiss pursuits…

That's pretty much what I wanted to say, but am not eloquent enough to put it in to words.
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