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

Take it as a gift. If someone didn't care about you and your work you would never hear a word.

That said, it of course can feel unpleasant! And if it interferes with how you function in the workplace, perhaps it’s not useful to you. So for instance, if it causes to lash out at your coworkers for their feedback, then it would be important for your relationship with them to not do that. But based on your description it already sounds like you aren’t doing that, so it sounds like mostly an issue that’s internal to you, right?

If that’s the case, and really the main concern is for your emotional and mental well being, then there are kind of two different dimensions on which to address this.

First, as I said before, if you receive criticism and take it personally (whatever that might mean for you - sadness, anger, various thoughts arising), the way you’re feeling at that moment is exactly how you’re feeling at that moment and it is a completely natural phenomenon. You can’t undo how you’re feeling, or go back and react differently. So if you can see your feelings as naturally occurring and not indicative of some fundamental flaw, over time, even if these “taking it personally” reactions occur, they won’t bother you quite so much. This is the dimension I might refer to as “how you relate to the content of your experience”. IMO this is the more important dimension because it’s really in our control and is universal to all aspects of our experience!

Second, there might be ways to consider and address what’s causing you to react the way you’re reacting, but that’s a bit harder without being able to ask some more questions about what you specifically mean by “taking it personally”. Is it anger? Sadness? Guilt? Is it fear that people will think you’re bad at your job? Do you feel bad yourself for having made a “mistake”? Investigating what specific assumptions are going into this (maybe with the help of a therapist or some other trusted party) might help uncover what’s leading you to feel bad when receiving criticism, and then perhaps address that directly. This is the dimension I might refer to as “addressing the content of experience”.

Without talking to you more I can’t help much with this second dimension, but I can say a few generic things to take a stab at it:

One thing I might point out is that you used the word mistake several times - so it sounds like you think there was a right way and a wrong way for you to have done the task, and you did it the wrong way, and that’s a Bad Thing, and these comments are pointing that out, and maybe you’re afraid that means YOU are bad (or that others think that). In reality, while yes, the first code you put up might have had a bug, that is not some kind of absolute failure on your part. The whole reason code review exists in the first place is people will always be writing bugs and bad comments! It’s a learning experience. Substantive patches are rarely approved the first time without comments. (You did even said they were “honest mistakes”, so it seems like you know it’s natural for them to occur - so maybe my comments here are off base with what you’re dealing with.)

On the other hand if you feel like other people don’t know it was an honest mistake, and you’re worried about how they perceive you, the thing that helped me with that concern was realizing that I’m exactly as good at my job as I am, and no matter how much I try to control the way I’m perceived, over time people will recognize if I’m bad at my job or will recognize I’m good at my job, and that’s just how it is.* So all I can do is try to do a good job and learn from my experience, and other’s perceptions of me will play out accordingly.

Again I don’t know if these last two parts help or address your particular concern without talking to you more but am including it just in case.

Also just in case, I want to say it’s possible that the team you’re on is not following best practices for code reviews and that their criticism is coming off as overly harsh for that reason. So it might also be worth looking online for some code review guidelines to see if people are acting accordingly or if they’re saying things like “Lol I can’t believe you forgot a semicolon here, jeez, what are you, a noob?” (Being silly on purpose here but there are more subtle versions of this that can make people feel not so great.) Even if that’s true all of the above still applies I think, but it might be good to know or address if people are commenting in inconsiderate or mean spirited ways.

Anyway best of luck!

* ignoring cases here of people who are somehow extremely manipulative to hide their incompetence, which I’ve fortunately never witnessed, and I assume most people don’t want to be like that anyway so I’m not addressing that

Humility I may be wrong, Empathy that if I get it wrong the customer will suffer (in varying magnitudes, of course)

Some of my first programs were in C. 100s of Hours and millions of switch to terminal, gcc, error message beat it into me -- "The computer isnt wrong, I am" . Now I am ok with hearing "This code has properties you didn't anticipate" because that's been true millions of times. And it's produced the humility, that I can't get it right on first try, and it's rare I get it right even by 3rd or 5th try.

Instead we implement, seek feedback (from compliler, tests, peers, more tests, datadog), iterate.

And I like to remind myself also of empathy. Do my feelings matter if it's going to affect the customer? If I get reactive and refuse to solve someones feedback, the customer will suffer. If I get reactive too often, it will silence the feedback (but not improve my coding). The customer suffers, so for that reason My feelings do not get a vote.

Edit: I'd also like to note the religious link that people have lost a spiritual connection of their self-worth[1], and in it's place have adopted a professional and materialism meaning when their professional work is criticized, so is the root of their identity.

Edit: Ok "millions" was hyperbole. A better estimate is something like half a million compilations/builds in my ~20 yrs writing code in a non-hobbyist context.

[1]: (at least in my religion it affirms your inherent value as God created and declared "Good" in design and nature, lets not turn this into a religious debate)