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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?

#581

Post by lazide »

matwood wrote: post #257
Dwolb wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Another adjacent PoV is improvement, not complete, is the steady state. What I mean is, throughout our entire schooling career we did work and turned in assignments that got graded. They were done. The work was over. Our professions aren’t like that. There’s no done. There’s always improvement. Therefore every piece of criticism, critique, or feedback has some data in it (sometimes layered in poorly worded ph…

> Therefore every piece of criticism, critique, or feedback has some data in it Extreme Ownership teaches a mind shift of looking at criticism and thinking of it as 'GOOD'. Criticism is an opportunity to improve.

It can be manipulated by bad actors however, keeping someone constantly 'doing' for the other parties benefit and not noticing they never seem to actually get paid for it. It tends to attract NPD folks in particular.

Like anything, it's about balance. Sometimes, it really isn't anything you should be doing to fix (or anything you should change).

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

#582

Post by 0xfaded »

Chill out, realize that if you hold to a higher standard, then everyone else will have to adhere as well.

If someone is asking for changes, that implicitly means they're willing to review those changes as well. If it's good feedback just comply. Realize that if that person is holding you to a high standard, they're probably holding others to the same standard, so your life will be easier.

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

#583

Post by lazide »

solarmist wrote: post #448
_popcornLurker wrote: post #207

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…

To add to this. Self-acceptance and compassion can only develop when you have a place where you feel physically, socially and emotionally safe as a base you can return to when you need to re-center. Safety gives you permission to take risks (financially, emotionally, physically, socially) by having a place to regroup.

Agreed. Right now a lot of very unsafe behaviors are ramping up (predatory and at work and in many of our some of our personal lives), and recognizing when it's actually time to withdraw and when it may be because we're not actually safe is important.

Additionally, physical health issues and pain can take away our feeling of safety, and sitting on our butts all day is REALLY not healthy. But it's hard to notice when it creeps up on us.

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

#584

Post by lazide »

byby wrote: post #433
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

No. This is false. Even senior engineers can have this problem. It's not a differentiator for success. This is counterintuitive but actually there is raw science to back the opposite fact up. I'm not joking. The more delusional you are as in the less ability you have to take and accept criticism the more likely you are to be successful. There is a positive correlation for this verified by science. It gels with my ane…

If the 'delusion' stops useful output, they won't be very successful.

If the 'delusion' is useful and produces better output, then is it really a delusion?

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

#585

Post by pclmulqdq »

moffkalast wrote: post #498
pclmulqdq wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had better believe that when artists get a commission, the patron gets a say in how the work looks. When you are in a band or ensemble with other people, they also get a say in how "your" part of the music sounds. This is the same for code. Code you create with and for other people isn't really your creation in that way: all of it is a collaborative effort.

I don't think that really changes anything, just restricts the effective criticism to that specific part that you did. Though I suppose the more it's intertwined the less it matters. I don't think anyone really cares about that one function in the company codebase that's been rewritten 20 times by different people, and far more about that part of the game they coded themselves at a gamejam. There's always external in…

To rephrase, criticism/review of your code doesn't reflect a value judgment of you as an individual any more than an artist's patron asking for more blue-ish tones reflects a value judgment of the artist. The patron doesn't think that you have any moral faults because they want more blue, they just want more blue. The same goes with criticisms of code.

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

#586

Post by tracker1 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #313
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

> What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. Fully agree. I tell people, if you cannot be humble about your code, you're going to deter yourself and others. It's okay to admit you may have "screwed up" (mistakes happen to everyone, even in production)…

+1 on the above. Your code is not you, and everyone makes mistakes. Literally the only singular person I couldn't work with was with the most blindly arrogant person I ever interacted with, and I left that job because of it. That's over several decades as a developer. In the end, your code isn't perfect and there will be better alternatives on how to do things discovered over time. Most of what you write won't live more than a decade, and if it does, feel sorry for anyone that has to deal with it.

It's about doing the best you can, and helping others to do the same. Critique on your code isn't critique about you as a person. Sometimes personal statements can leak in and that's different. I find that for the most part, critiques are only about the code, and it's the author that turns things personal which is where any argument is already lost.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with a given assessment, and they don't have to agree with your approach. As opposed to some other comments on this post, I will say that I think the best way to learn how to deal with it is to just keep working, and when you do feel yourself getting emotional, take a step back and review. You rarely are on the spot to respond at that moment, especially for typical PR processes and feedback. Try to put yourself in the mindset to assume at first you are wrong, and second that you are not interpreting the message as intended. Interpret the best possible view of the person and the message sent.

It's really hard to put yourself in that mindset, and it definitely takes practice, time and experience. The best thing that you can do from the start, is stay quiet, step away for a moment, and re-evaluate before responding if you feel emotional.

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

#587

Post by uptownfunk »

Beginner answer is first just start by not showing that you take it personally.

Senior and more evolved answer is you separate yourself from your work, "you are not your work". So someone critiquing your work doesn't mean their critiquing you.

More senior answer is that you are not attached to getting the best answer yourself, but more attached to getting to the best answer by any reasonable means (including someone else s*itting on your work).

Ultimately, you are trying to arrive at some truth, which you have produced through the lens of your own conditioning, someone is trying to provide what they think is the truth through the lens of their own conditioning. Behind it all we'd like to think there are good intentions which are all to aspire towards the truth but that when we express this idea and it gets "colored" in some sense by our own impressions of the world, it may not always come out the right way, and so you have to take a deep deep breath, to let it all just be, and press on.

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

#588

Post by cat_plus_plus »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

The paradox here is that I don't want to make others anti-fragile with my own feedback. If I have time and patience, I try to have a conversation with them about what they were trying to accomplish and why they have not considered other alternatives. In a sizable fraction of cases, I come away convinced that what they are doing is reasonable, or at least the effort of making changes is not worth the payoff. Otherwise, I hope that the process is of us coming to a conclusion together rather than me pulling my rank/seniority.

I am also not a fan of working with "you are an idiot and you are doing it all wrong" people. Even if they are technically 100% correct, they should have shown me some respect by having a conversation to double check their assumptions. I maybe physically robust, but I still enjoy being transported by a bus with well working suspension.

However, an out here is "time and patience". There is no way to know what all other people have on their plate, if they are tired or preoccupied with personal matters and so on. If they are being unreasonable, it's certainly worth keeping in mind that it may not be because of you.

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

#589

Post by sgtnoodle »

ericyd wrote: post #440
sgtnoodle wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed my point then. The goal isn't to reduce mistakes, although that is often a secondary benefit. My suggestion was to shift work habits to a form where they have ownership of design rather than ownership of code. Also, a key point was to front-load criticism to early in the development process rather than toward the end.

I don't think your suggestion is a bad one, but I'm not convinced it would have a meaningful impact on one's ability to accept the criticism in the first place. Just because it is occurring at a different phase in the process wouldn't (for me) change my reaction to receiving criticism. But fair point that in your experience this is a useful strategy to make criticism easier to receive.

It's fairly concrete advice I've given dozens of times to more junior software engineers over the years. People have a tendency to become emotionally invested in the code they write. A large part of that tendency seems to be due to a sunk cost fallacy. When you spend the majority of your time iterating on code in order to work through unanticipated complexity and system level interactions, the code is perceived to be the value of your work. People ultimately derive happiness from feeling useful, and so it hurts to be told that the thing you labored over is flawed in some way.

Lines of code aren't really valuable, though. They're technical debt. They're a liability. The valuable, useful thing is the final working system that solves other people's problems, or otherwise enriches their lives. The value of a software engineer's work therefore isn't the code, but it's all the design work that went into the code that made sure it made the system better rather than worse.

Whenever I personally write code without a backing design document, I consider it to be speculative, with a lower probability of ever getting merged somewhere useful. I expect any attempt to get it through code review to be relatively painful, and I go as far as mentioning the speculative nature up-front in the review summary so that the code reviewer is in the right mindset.

That reminds me of many years ago, when I did a lot of circuit design for solar car racing while in university. I developed a thick skin for technical criticism pretty early on in high school from FIRST robotics. There were plenty of fellow solar car team members that hadn't had the experience yet, and so it was often a source of inter-team drama. There's one effective trick I would use when mentoring newer team members in the art of PCB layout. After they spent 20+ hours sweating over completing their first ever layout, I would sit down with them and go through the dozen or so novice mistakes they had made. I would encourage them to share their story of personal pain, misery and self-discovery that went into the result that they were sharing with me. I would then apologize profusely as I hit the "unroute all" button, reminding them that they still had the file saved. I would then invite them to start over and do it again from a clean slate. After a few minutes of disbelief and frustration, they would get to work again. Without fail they would come back a few hours later, smiling ear-to-ear and excited to show off how much better the layout was.

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

#590

Post by mattkrause »

mnsc wrote: post #567
lumb63 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there is an objective ranking of worths of humans. What is valuable is inherently subjective. Everyone has a different value system. However, I believe there is a large amount of overlap, especially in the extremes. Most people find murder and rape deplorable, for instance. That is the group I was referring to when I said “criminals”. Personally, I believe members of that group to be below valueless, i.…

Two questions. Can a slacker goodfornothing McDonald's-working college dropout that only live day to day, party to party, feel self-worth or should they feel worthless? Can I as a senior software developer base my selfworth on the same value system as that college dropout even though I finished college? Aka if I made an honest mistake in my pr, I wouldn't have to feel bad and decrease my selfworth even though I think…

> Can a slacker goodfornothing McDonald's-working college dropout that only live day to day, party to party, feel self-worth?

Do they throw good parties?

Do they help their friends celebrate their successes and provide succor in times of need? If so, why shouldn't they feel some self-worth?

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