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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?

#391

Post by ajxs »

asdfman123 wrote: post #263
bnjms wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say white kind of warning signs were on display? This sounds like something I would walk into.

The world is full of fairly nice people who will spill anything you said to them to anyone for any reason in the workplace. And I'm not cynical about people, I just think it's the truth. There are no warning signs. Just pretend everything you say to a coworker is on a public ledger. In some cases the true, actual friends you make in the workplace, the ones you'd still hang out with years after your employment, ca be…

> pretend everything you say to a coworker is on a public ledger

Very succinctly put. I probably could have distilled my post down to just this. If there's any one takeaway from this thread, that's it.

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

#392

Post by easymodex »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #388
plutonorm wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone is being a little rude and reactionary here. People enjoy what they enjoy, it's not ok to demand that they change. Suppose you lived in a world where everyone was obsessed with Pokemon. No one talked about anything else. Everyone around you had the mind of a 10 year old, in terms of intellectual and emotional development. How would you feel, could you really feel like you belonged? There are people o…

Is it generally true that people of extreme intelligence have richer lives in terms of emotional and spiritual development? This is definitely not the case in my circle, where the MENSA candidates tend to sound a little bit like the Throw away comment, and if they don't have outright disdain for typical human connections and spiritual pursuits, they definitely don't spend the average amount of time on emotional or sp…

I'd say if you're not intelligent enough to also develop your emotional or spiritual development (it doesn't have to be forced you just need to not be closed to it), then you aren't really extremely intelligent, you're just trying to come off as one or more accurately your idea of how one would be like.

Last I heard MENSA has an annual fee, isn't that already a nice indicator of the intelligence of its members, to pay for an "I am smart" badge?

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

#393

Post by cannonedhamster »

barking wrote: post #164
cannonedhamster wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the higher up you go, the higher the likelihood you'll be dealing with sociopaths and psychopaths. While sociopaths can be very effective executives, psychopaths should always be watched it for as they thrive on the drama and power. Sociopaths just lack empathy which makes them highly useful in making emotionally difficult decisions. For a Star Trek reference sociopaths act like Vulcans when it comes to empathy…

I thought that sociopaths and psychopaths behave identically. The difference is that one was born that way while bad life experiences made the other that way.

No, but there's definitely been a muddying of the definitions so it's understandable. Sociopaths actually have a purpose in society. Psychopaths are a detriment. Sociopaths can be very good and productive members of society. There's evidence to suggest that it's both a gene that needs to be present as well as the correct conditions during upbringing to trigger it.

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

#394

Post by cannonedhamster »

watwut wrote: post #108
cannonedhamster wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're debating you've already lost the debate. The effective way to win a debate is not to have one. You either convince the other person the idea was theirs, which is easier than it sounds, or you get them to argue your point for you at which point it is their idea. Learning how to do this takes effort and a willingness to realize how little one truly knows about the art of effective speaking. You'll also begin…

> You either convince the other person the idea was theirs No. I used to read and follow advice like this. End result is that your ideas are considered other peoples ideas. They get credit and are rewarded, not you. Doing this regularly literally harms you and makes you to be perceived submissive, unsuitable for leadership positions. Moreover, it makes you great target for bad actors.

As someone who used this very technique to get into a leadership position, there's a difference between using this to give other people credit and using this to get people into your side. The idea is to have a win-win situation where your needs and theirs align. You should have something to consider a win for yourself out of this. As an example, you have a customer who defines success as X. In order to get to X you need feature Y. By having a conversation with the product manager you use leading questions to get the product manager to suggest Y. You agree, the product manager gets a win in a new useful feature the customer loves, your workload goes down and the customer sees you as invaluable. Customer retention goes up and you get to celebrate that win for yourself.

It seems like a lot of work, but if you do this continually then you build trust with other teams, and you become more skilled with the process. Bad actors generally aren't smart enough to realize when you're giving them rope to hang themselves so this same technique can be used against them and they will look insane blaming others for their own bad ideas.

It sounds as if you could use a mentor to guide you through the technique and avoid the pitfalls you fell into. I'd also suggest learning how to effectively market yourself. I'm nothing special, don't have a bachelor's degree, and used to have terrible people skills. I'm now highly in demand and effectively can make my own roles wherever I go. It's definitely possible for anyone to do.

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

#396

Post by cannonedhamster »

ajxs wrote: post #107
cannonedhamster wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and this isn't your fault, no matter how much employers want you to feel. It's entirely up to a company how much they offer employees. Think about this, they could at any moment increase the pay off every employee without as single complaint from employees. They make a conscious choice to not increase the pay of more senior employees intentionally because they know the employees won't leave to get more money. You…

You're completely right. I'm glad to see that you're taking the side of the employee in instances like this. In this particular case, it wasn't me who became critically demoralised. It was another good employee who'd been there for years, who discovered he was being paid much less than everyone else. He resigned within a short time period of the group discussion. You're totally right about individual bargaining power…

There's nothing wrong with capitalism or companies trying to extract the best deal they can get, but I can't stand people feeling devalued. It took me longer than it should have to realize my economic and personal value. If I can help just one other person to realize that they are valuable and more than just their work then that's a success in my book. It took my getting diagnosed with a terminal disease to get me to realize what I wanted my legacy to be and I'll spend every day I've got left trying to make this world a little bit less sucky every day.

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

#397

Post by cannonedhamster »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #132
cannonedhamster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've had to learn with larger organizations is that the logic at the top isn't always conveyed to the bottom. Perverse incentives play heavily into this. An example of this is executive bonuses. Everyone knows that for long term health of a company short term gains should be subservient to long term gains. Bonus structures are typically structured for short term, which means that in order for an employee to…

This. I have several mental models for this. The first goes "most people are wrong about most things". You have to include yourself in that one or it just sounds arrogant, but it's true. Mostly we have a toy understanding of how anything really works if we are asked to scratch any deeper than the surface and the sheer amount of mental models required to begin to somewhat accurately map to reality vs. the search cost…

I actually say I believe specifically when I want to convey I may have doubts, usually followed with "please correct me if I'm wrong" but I have worked hard to foster an environment without blaming my team. If there's a need to correct an action after it's been done we correct the action and define it within the process documentation. We've also worked very hard to solidify expectations so that if decisions need to be made without guidance they are clear on the intent of what their actions should be and respond accordingly. It's not a perfect system but it allows us to respond quicker to customer needs without waiting for management decisions.

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

#398

Post by james_s_tayler »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #397
james_s_tayler wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have several mental models for this. The first goes "most people are wrong about most things". You have to include yourself in that one or it just sounds arrogant, but it's true. Mostly we have a toy understanding of how anything really works if we are asked to scratch any deeper than the surface and the sheer amount of mental models required to begin to somewhat accurately map to reality vs. the search cost…

I actually say I believe specifically when I want to convey I may have doubts, usually followed with "please correct me if I'm wrong" but I have worked hard to foster an environment without blaming my team. If there's a need to correct an action after it's been done we correct the action and define it within the process documentation. We've also worked very hard to solidify expectations so that if decisions need to b…

Sounds exactly like the kind of thing I like.

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

#399

Post by ryannevius »

Mindfulness / awareness meditation.

Seriously, if there's one thing I could tell my 18 year old self, it would be to learn to meditate and trust in the process. I tried very unsuccessfully to start a few times (guided meditation really isn't my jam), but quickly formed a habit once I found what works for me. It has been seriously life changing and has improved my relationship with myself and others at work and at home.

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

#400

Post by shmooth »

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 love this comment

I love it because it feels angry, so at least someone out there is alive

I often feel this way but it’s not constant

I dig social situations and banter and all that often

But

If I’m at work I’m often thinking HOW DO WE CRUSH THE COMPETITION MORE AND FASTER FORGET YOUR VACUUM CLEANER’S INABILITY TO PICK UP DUST PROPERLY (and this usually requires that I forget about whatever damage I/my company am/are actually doing in the world)

if I happen to be in ‘start my next project’ mode I couldn’t dream of going to an actual social event to talk about anything else because I’d have to get smashed just to temporarily forget about WHAT I WANT TO THINK ABOUT

I think part of it is just cultural/economics/etc. Like back in the day a lot of people read or at least thought about things deeply/carefully, and now it’s all ‘professional wrestling’ — tv, propaganda, etc.

I really dig smart PhDs while accepting PhDs can be as monstrous as anyone else, just with more power

The idea that you could train smart, passionate people to figure something out that could be good for humanity and then set them loose — it’s just awesome.

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