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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?

#651
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…

> The only difference between those people is “what they do/have done”.

This is a very consequentialist framing of values. There are other ways of conceptualizing values, like virtue ethics and deontology, so if you're actually interested in understanding a different modality, those are keywords you can Google.

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

#652
The answer is, be humble, in your comments, and your criticism

If people could read my thoughts, half the time they'd think I was insane, but I know they're insane too :D

It is short term vs long term thinking.

Do you want to feel good for ~ 1 minute, or for the rest of your life?

Just pause, and think, before you answer. Pretend your mother, father, or your children are in the room with you, and you'll do alright

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

#653
> Everything from an unintentionally snarky comment in a PR

To avoid this, teams need to come together and learn how to be respectful during code reviews. I find this article to be a very good resource:

https://www.michaelagreiler.com/respectful-constructive-code...

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