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

Accept it. Let it hurt for a moment, think about it, own the mistake and then fix it.

The good news is that pain is what's going to help you learn, we form memories better when we experience an emotion than when we feel detached.

You'll feel good about it the next time when you get to apply the learning!

TL;DR - it helps to learn about patterns of thinking, particularly cognitive biases

Long version: Plenty of good advice here, but I wanted to add something that helped me in this regard. I grew up in a household where everything was criticized for any and all reasons, most of which could be boiled down to "I feel bad and in order to make myself feel better, I'm going to do something that makes you feel worse than me." Being born into that kind of atmosphere makes it very difficult to understand that a) it's not normal, and b) criticism (when used appropriately) isn't about making a person feel bad, it's about trying to improve something. It was just never used appropriately in my household growing up.

So many (way too many) years later, I started getting into the skeptical movement. What initially attracted me was that it was about tearing apart stupid ideas (so pretty similar to what I grew up in). Someone would claim to have a photograph of Sasquatch or a UFO, and people would show how the photo wasn't what it claimed. But it was a lot deeper than that. There were doctors debunking bogus medical cures, and people pointing out that businesses were scams, etc.

That was all well and good, but as I read more and more about how to get better at spotting these sorts of things I read a lot about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Something soaked in because I found as I understood my own thinking better, I had a better understanding of what could and likely couldn't be other people's motivations for saying the things they said. Whereas before I might think, "Oh that person's just saying x because they dislike me," or "because they're jealous that I have y," or whatever, these days I'm better at saying, "Well, they might just be saying that because they don't like me, or it could be they don't have the same experience as me, and don't understand my motivation for why I think like this. I can try explaining my motivation and see if they understand or not. And maybe they'll understand or maybe they'll explain something to me to help me understand their point of view." (It's more complicated than that, but it's hard to explain in a comment.) Anyway, a lot of the pain of getting criticized evaporated when I could reason better about other people's motivations.

As an engineering leader I always insist that everyone follows the "ice cream" rule in any debate or discussion about how something should be done. Only technical merit counts. Never personal taste.

Whether it is a design pattern, deployment strategy, or choice of language, if your argument has no technical advantage then you are just expressing your taste preference. This is where someone will likely call you out by asking, "are we discussing technology or ice cream flavors?"

Being able to look at your own code and notice what's wrong with it is the first step.

There are always at least trade-offs made between conflicting quality goals. Understand that others will value trade-offs differently. In a team, their preferences count as much as yours.

You wrote the code, but it is not you. Critique of the code is not critique of you.

You should try to develop an accurate and nuanced view on your skillset. I am simultaneously quite proud of my guitar playing and acutely aware of my deficits. For me, when someone points out a problem I did not realize/perceive, I am thankful (if it comes from the right place). Building your own skill, confidence, and humility (as you try and fail) is the best way to develop resilience against criticism.

You also should develop a supportive peer group. I cannot emphasize how important this is. You probably will not find it at your job. Find friends you admire, and try to be the kind of person they admire.

Constructive criticism should always flow freely both ways. In most professional environments, this does not happen. (Criticism flows down the Org chart.) This is an inherently toxic situation.

Keep in mind, insults can masquerade as criticism. Snarky comments are insults masquerading as criticism (though they may be well intentioned).

Work environments are tough. I have had situations where a manager far less technically skilled than me criticized an architectural recommendation, the business now deals with the consequences of those decisions (bugs, instability, excessive resource usage), and I am comfortable (bemused) because events proved I was recommending the correct decision and I have a support network outside of work. This sort of situation is toxic to improvement if you are not careful. I suspect many people find themselves in these situations professionally so often they just consider it normal.