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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?

#341

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

Congratulations - you have already succeeded enormously by seeing that this is the case.

Stoicism.

If something that someone says or does causes a problem for you, it is something inside you that is the real cause of the problem.

It takes lots of work but you can eventually work on controlling your thoughts and you can learn to deploy counter thoughts. “I have a problem when people say this, so I can discount this particular negative thought that is occurring right now” etc.

I have found that informing others out loud about such struggles is awesome as well. “Thank you, I have had problems taking such and such feedback before, but I am working on it.” You can actually turn this weakness into your strength as people like people who are honest about working on themselves. They might package this feedback differently, or they might let you know in a sensitive way.

Edit: I’m no expert at this btw. Recently I had a realization that I don’t like taking feedback publicly, would rather receive 1on1. I had an EM who had a tendency to do things quite publicly and I always found those situations difficult to manage. When I arranged for a 1on1 and told him about it, it turned out that he had another quite different concern and rule around doing things publicly - he wanted more transparency in the organization. After understanding each other he backed off of being too harsh, and I started leaning more in on the public channels, helping him achieve this goal.

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

#342

Post by tambourine_man »

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…

The immune system metaphor is complicated because, while it is true that you build resistance, it's often not without some permanent damage, even if mild and neglectable. There may be an analogy for vaccines and constructive criticism somewhere.

Even muscle strengthening seems to require minor injuries to the tissue. Tougher but demaged.

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

#343

Post by macksd »

I had a job where they gave training on how to constructively engage with the open source community, and one of the big points was, "you don't suck, the patch sucks".

Oh you have a bug in the patch? No, there's a bug in the patch. Oh you missed an edge case? No, there's an edge case nobody had documented yet.

The point was mostly about how to give feedback on the patch, and to never phrase it about the person personally, but perhaps it would help to try and catch yourself thinking of the feedback this way and have your internal dialog look at the patch as being separate from you.

Yes, it's your work, but it's always a work in progress, and it's everybody's work to try and make incremental improvements to the code, to the process, etc.

I used to think I didn't like working with inexperienced engineers, but I noticed that what I actually didn't like was people who were unwilling to candidly discuss ways to improve, whether they were junior or senior - it's just a little easier to spot in people more junior than one's self. So kudos to you for recognizing this, because if you can learn to absorb constructive feedback it's a real game changer for you and for everyone around you too.

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

#344

Post by nperez »

Sometimes it can sting a little to know that I did a crappy job at something, but I see a lot of value in learning from it.

When my brother was in art school many years ago, he asked me to critique his work. After a few polite comments, he explained that I wasn't being helpful and the end result would be better if I didn't hold back on brutally ripping it apart. That mentality has stuck with me. I want people to tell me if my code is crap.

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

#345

Post by ericyd »

My most successful strategies for my personal growth in this area have been

1. Work to separate my personal identity from my work. This is really hard for me and takes regular reflection and work, but over time it is possible to separate the two.

2. Frequently remind myself that everybody makes mistakes, it is simply part of being human.

3. Practice humility by welcoming the feedback and expressing gratitude for the ability to learn and grow. A little self-deprecating humor doesn't hurt either, and can soften the intensity of the feelings associated with receiving criticism.

Best of luck in your personal growth journey

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

#346

Post by jonnycomputer »

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…

A defect of being solo developer.

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

#347

Post by davidguetta »

moffkalast wrote: post #290
davidguetta wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as i like the concept in general in life, in this case its just "you are not your lines of code". Also people who criticize people make a mistake kind of. Always criticize the code, not the person.

Well it is not unlike criticising an artist's paintings. The things you make are a mirror of who you are because you use your life experiences, knowledge, and preferences to make them. By criticizing what you make, they are also criticizing you by proxy. Now sure it depends on the type of criticism in question. Finding a bug or other practical problems obviously isn't, but talking shit about a way something is arbitr…

The problem is that it's just unprofessional.

Code is made to be efficient in a compagny, it's not "personal" or here to make you have feelings. So if you can't discuss efficiency because you'll hurt people it's just bad. If you do art, you create art with respect to your own sensibility emotions so yeah be weary of criticizing someone's art.

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

#349

Post by davidguetta »

DonHopkins wrote: post #311
davidguetta wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as i like the concept in general in life, in this case its just "you are not your lines of code". Also people who criticize people make a mistake kind of. Always criticize the code, not the person.

I once worked with an absolutely horrendous programmer named "Sam" who enjoyed the smell of his own farts so much that he he always smurfed his own name or possessive prefixes like "sams_" and "my_" in variable and function and file and form field and database column names. And he loved to get "artistically creative" with "elegant variation" of variable names and naming conventions, permuting and mutating them at eve…

you should make it a post of its own ><

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

#350

Post by linster »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #243
endorphine wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes all criticism is made with good intentions. However that is not always the case.

The criticism can be useful even if it does not have good intentions. Usually those who want to hurt you, know just what to say to hurt you. If the criticism is completely baseless, it often does not make you angry, as you can trivially say why it is baseless. So it often such criticism also has an element of truth. If you are angry, it is difficult to discern what are the truths. So it is useful to approach criticis…

I’ve been in this relationship. If someone knows what to say to hurt you, and uses it with precision to cause that hurt, they’re not on your team, even if their criticism isn’t “baseless”.

In the professional world, giving feedback with tact and respect for the contributor is what we get paid for and enables a team to contribute to the company’s success.

If someone on the team doesn’t feel like they’re treated with respect, even when their work needs improvement, it doesn’t matter whether the feedback was given with good or bad intentions.

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