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

1. I stopped seeing my work as a labor of love a long time ago. I love what I do, but my passion is with the technology, not the day-to-day commits. My work is generally good and I'm confident that I'll continue to be valued, but my job output isn't some kind of masterwork (nor does anyone want it to be).

2. The whole point of code review is to find issues. If my code was perfect, we'd skip review. But it's not, and I accept that my mortal flaws will inevitably show in what I put up for review.

3. Criticisms are one of the few feedback mechanisms for your real, tangible job output. It's important to remember that you grow technically by others pointing out mistakes. If you got nothing but praise, you're not actively refining your skills. Catching mistakes before you submit for review is indeed a skill that must be honed.

If the feedback you get is snarky or mean spirited, that's a culture issue. Reply politely, thank them for pointing it out, ask if they have suggestions for what to do better if the right answer isn't obvious. Establish a norm of treating code reviews as a place for being decent. If you don't get respect in return, take it up with a manager: code reviews at work are no place for someone to make you feel belittled.

One technique can be listening to the self-discovery of others. This is germane to your concern: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTREgGosr/

This individual explains how their process of sharing feelings on something is often perceived as an accusation by others.

This is such an insightful comment. Thanks!

> To take it even further...why see it as criticism at all? You are not your lines of code.

You are not your work. You can write incredibly crappy code and still be a fine person. You can write beautiful, elegant code and be a terrible person. Separating your work/code from your self-worth is hugely important.

I find it very hard to not take criticism seriously, if I’ve invested a lot of effort and especially if the criticism coming out of left field.

Here’s my story: Just over a year ago, I was working at a FAANG co and got head hunted by a recruiter for a promising growth stage startup. Everything was great, until they hired a non-technical director for engineering, and the founders handed the reins of engineering to this guy and mentally checked out from all things engineering. A few months later, he goes on to hire a pseudo technical slacker who cannot code without CoPilot/ChatGPT as my team lead(hard to believe, I know). I kept asking to switch teams, but it fell on deaf ears. Finally after getting a stellar 6 month performance review, my non-technical manager gave me a needs improvement rating for the 2nd year end perf. And this was in spite of being the most prolific engineer in the whole company, with ~20 engineers. It turns out that my manager always wanted me out, and had been building a fictional narrative behind my back, out of my requests to switch teams for months. Needless to say, I wanted to leave at that very instant, but resigned served the notice period and left soon thereafter.

Now, I’m working on my own startup for over a month now. I’m working super hard and I haven’t been this happy in a long time. Life IMO, is too short to put up with toxic BS like what my manager put me through.