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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?

#481
It really depends on the type of criticism. People criticize for different reasons, some are constructive and some are not. I feel that the onus of good behavior lies on both the criticizer and criticizee. People should strive to listen to and accept valid and well-meant criticism, and try to take that small pain from it as motivation to do better. In the larger picture, organizations and teams will only be able to be better when people accept their mistakes and hone their skills. Having the ability to tolerate discomfort and growth is much like lubricant in a machine that prevents it from overheating, and it's necessary.

However, some people who criticize excessively do it for not entirely altruistic reasons or they lack the emotional intelligence to understand when they are breaching someone's limit of tolerance. Even valid criticism should bear in mind quantity, frequency, and severity of impact on the individual being criticized. I think most people who are being thoughtful in the moment will do this, and try to suss out someone's limits and temperament before unleashing a volley of criticisms, but there are some who use such learning opportunities or their position of authority to vent their sadistic urges, or they simply do not understand healthy boundaries and just criticize relentlessly regardless of impact or effectiveness. I strongly believe that this latter category should not be normalized or accepted.

So you've got to ask yourself, are the people criticizing your code probably doing so with the intention to make you better, or the team better, without undue malice? That's usually the case. Try to focus on their intent to help you do better instead of the disappointment of the criticism itself. But, if you've found yourself in the unfortunate situation of being carpet-bombed with criticism maliciously you don't necessarily just have to put up with that and it would be a good idea to try to find an organization with healthier communication. People who have been in such unhealthy environments before (or had unhealthy family environments) will likely overreact even in healthy environments later, and it can take some time to learn that not everyone is out to get you, they just want you to do better next time.

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

#482
post #312

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…

There’s a few things I see in your post.

One is an implied notion of objective rankings of worth of humans, and binary labels for people. Your post explicitly categorized “all criminals” and “all my friends” at disjoint sets. I can’t speak for your friends, but many of mine are “criminals” in the sense of disregard for drug laws. If you’re willing to sweep minor traffic violations under the heading “criminal” you’d probably sweep up most individuals with drivers licenses. Is the hypothetical person stealing so they (or their children) can eat irredeemable to you? There are certainly folks who on net do more harm than good, but rare are the people who truly only do bad to the world.

Second is a matter of perspective. If your friend started a new thing today, say learning the piano if they’ve never played an instrument, would you expect them to be good? If not, would you think less of them for trying? What if they’ve been playing for years, and one time when playing a song they’ve practiced many times they miss a few keys? Now replace the friend with yourself. Does your feelings about any of these change?

It’s not uncommon (especially in programmer types) to allow others more grace than we allow ourselves. You can be disappointed by your failures, and thrilled by your successes without impacting your sense of self worth.

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

#483

Come work for Amazon and write a few design docs and get them reviewed by the PEs. You will solve this issue in 90 days flat.

I have seen shit reviews by PEs who are so far away from customers and nitpick things that don't matter. It is almost as if they carry the burden to prove their PE-worthiness and hence need to find something to assert their technical prowess.

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

#484
I'll take this one step further.

I am currently writing code that I think is, from a design-perspective, completely wrong. But I've learned to completely disassociate myself with what I code. I'll do the best that I can to accomplish because THAT'S MY JOB. That's how I frame everything. I will protest, I will point out flaws, but once the dust has settled, if my boss says she wants it a certain way, I'll do it. I'm happy to just be coding and if they don't want to listen to my advice then I'll just do what I'm told, go home and enjoy the money that I make by doing the things I want.

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

#485
I had to take so much criticism from people who through bizarre turn of luck had to manage me, but were so pathetically bad at what they were doing, I just learned to ignore the criticism.

The difficult part is to make myself take people seriously when they criticize something I did.

For example, I had a boss who didn't like that I used Emacs and tried everything in his power to get me fired because of that. He would change the text of the ticket I worked on the last moment to look like I haven't done what was requested, or deliberately assign me to worthless / tedious manual-labor kind of projects, specifically assign me to work on various design / documentation documents which were stored in Perforce in MS Word format etc. I could quit any time, but the thought that he'd suffer more from having me around than I would from having to deal with his antics won. I realized that watching stupid people suffer as the result of their stupidity is kind of fun. Also, I got paid to do nothing of value. That was ironic, given I could actually do quite a bit for the company I worked for. But, hey, I bought myself a very fancy bike eventually, when I decided to move on, with all that severance money!

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

#487
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not under your control. Whereas your reaction to the criticism is under your control.

That probably flies straight in the face of neuroscience.

If you truly have no control over what you think and feel, then you are lucky. You can satisfy yourself with enjoying the ride, free from the burden of being responsible for yourself. If you have so little control that you cannot even take solace in the knowledge that you have no control, then obviously this philosophy will only bring misery to you. In which case, why adhere to it? If you have so little control that you cannot even free yourself from a philosophy that makes you miserable, then try hitting your head with rocks or hard drugs. With enough brain damage, anything can be forgotten. Even unproductive philosophies.

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

#488
Constructive feedback is useful. Why should I feel bad about it? I feel grateful that someone helps me improve.

In the case of a snarky comment, I would assume the reviewer has some personal issues. I feel bad for them, not me.

A honest mistake is not really a mistake. I would do the same thing again if I were in the same situation. The fact that I couldn't have known about it is someone else's mistake.

Maybe dig a little deeper why you feel bad about it: Do you consider your self-worth lowered? Do you worry how others think of you now? Trace your bad feelings to a reason as specific as possible. Then figure out if is actually true. For example, you made an honest mistake, a team mate pointed it out in a review, and now you think the tech lead considers you a bad coder. If you dare, you can directly ask the tech lead. Just thinking about it might already help you realize it is silly though. Ok, to be honest you could realize that it is actually the case that your tech lead now hates you. That is still progress because now you have a concrete problem instead of vague bad feelings.

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

#489

I had to take so much criticism from people who through bizarre turn of luck had to manage me, but were so pathetically bad at what they were doing, I just learned to ignore the criticism. The difficult part is to make myself take people seriously when they criticize something I did. For example, I had a boss who didn't like that I used Emacs and tried everything in his power to get me fired because of that. He would…

This kind of attitude strikes me as an excellent way to avoid ever pursuing introspection or self-improvement. Do you have any examples of criticism you’ve received in the past which you would deem worthwhile?
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