Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 653 posts

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

#371

Post by zeroonetwothree »

gymbeaux wrote: post #362
_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…

My experience has been that people who say “you are not your code” use it as an excuse to be brash in PRs, and as someone who sees code as a sort of art, the adage is even less-appealing. Surely there is a way to be considerate enough in the code review process such that “you are not your code” need never be said at an organization.

Yes I agree. Some people are just rude or mean and they want to absolve themselves of behaving respectfully by claiming that it’s the other party at fault. But there are two people involved in any conversation and both are responsible for keeping it respectful.

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

#373

Post by zeroonetwothree »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #331
_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…

Anecdotally, I had the opposite experience! > 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. My childhood fits this. > "Anti-fragile attitude" when it comes to criticism is not built by tolerance I DID learn these by tole…

College is not late to learn this. Many people never learn at all.

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

#374

Post by dasil003 »

lumb63 wrote: post #312
_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…

I’ve heard similar statements from other people, and I have a disconnect that prevents me from understanding. Why would someone want to detach their self worth from what they do? If someone ought not feel a negative emotion in response to doing something “bad”, by what logic can they justify feeling something positive in response to doing something “good”? I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel pro…

I think these platitudes are just mental hacks people use to manage their emotions. Emotional responses are valuable information, but only up to a point. If you dwell on emotions and allow them to become the basis of narratives about yourself then you are becoming disconnected from reality. This applies to both good and bad things, you never want to get too high or too low. Ultimately what matters is your character and how you operate. If you put in the work, you’ll tend to get better outcomes, but nothing can insulate you from mistakes. Being able to learn from mistakes and be your best requires that you don’t let your sense of self-worth be tied to fragile narratives or heavy self-defense mechanisms that deny reality.

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

#375

Post by sverona »

layer8 wrote: post #359
_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…

> You are not your lines of code. I think you actually are, in a very real sense. Someone else would have written different lines of codes. The lines of code are a function of yourself, an inherent part of you. Criticizing the lines of code criticizes that part of you. You can’t criticize a novel without implicitly criticizing its author. When we criticize an LLM’s output, we are typically criticizing the LLM. Percei…

By god, that's Deleuze's music!

I disagree that the code I write is "part of me." It expresses a series of ideas that I had. And every therapeutic modality I have tried would have failed if I didn't have the implicit understanding that I have something like a soul or an essence that stands apart from my thoughts and feelings. My thoughts are just random noise in the grand scheme of things, including this sentence.

I can't stand the way that some people write, but that doesn't amount to a criticism of them as a person, unless I choose to make it about that.

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

#376

Post by Hossenffefer »

Imagine for a moment that every time you submitted your work the only feedback you ever heard was "Great" or "Thanks". How would that make you feel? Engaged or isolated? Would you wonder if they are even giving your work proper consideration? Feedback is critical to improvement. Improvement is a continuous never ending process. Try leaning into it, Actively asking "Where is this falling short?" "Where is my thinking flawed?" Soliciting comment in this manner makes you an active participant in the feedback process.

Having followed this approach for my entire career, I can say that it has paid off handsomely. Some of the most valuable criticism coming from professionals that would not have offered actionable feedback had I not pushed past their initial stock "looks good" response.

Most of the time criticism = engagement, a person taking time to pay attention to your output. Making yourself vulnerable in this way will encourage a subset of others to behave similarly, which could lead to some pretty awesome peer relationships. Certainly has for me.

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

#377

Post by maininformer »

Here is my approach:

It is okay to take criticism personally on the path to not taking it personally. Your thoughts and emotions are not you so first and foremost don't feel bad for feeling this way. I'm not saying you should act on them however.

I suggest sitting down and making time, remembering the feeling and then feeling it. No need to psychoanalyze, and have mental talk. Just feel the pure emotions and be curious about them. Where do you fee them? what shape do they have? how big they are? what texture do they have? etc

The point is to make the task of feeling your emotions interesting for your mind so it stays there enough to get used to it.

Hypothesis: When an emotion is causing us suffering it is usually because we don't want it, but unfortunately thats not how they go away, especially if they are big emotions.

After a while your mind will know the emotion so intimately that it will either be negligible or not come up at all.

Note however, if you go towards the emotion with the intention of it going away this will not work, there must be total acceptance. So cultivating that loving curiosity may actually be the hard part. The trick there is that I like to imagine myself as a child having these emotions and soothing this child as a caring adult.

There are other methods but this has been very helpful to me and I hope it will be helpful to you as well.

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

#379

Post by sf4lifer »

Park your ego at the door when you get to work.

Base your ego on the success of your relationships (mom, dad, siblings, wife, kids, gf, friends whatever you have today).

It will take investment, self awareness and ability to forgive and forget.

You could direct this investment to work relationships BUT more than likely none of those folks will be at your funeral.

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

#380

Post by kukkeliskuu »

linster wrote: post #350
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Fully agree.

If there is a person consistently giving hurtful feedback and I would be in a position to get the person fired, I would do it. (And I have done it.) And I would not work in such a work environment. At least 50% of programming work in typical organizarions is about getting along with people.

But I have found myself in environments where I needed to tolerate this to a degree. And the only thing you can ultimately change is your own attitude. If you can see that hurtful criticism may be even more truthful than other criticism, it helps to develop the right attitude.

Post reply on HN