Cut toxic people out of your life asap. they can't be fixed or reasoned with. Avoid like the plague.
second this one
Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
71–80 of 438 posts
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#72I hate to admit it but one of my bosses taught me that building consensus is a double edged sword and it can be used as weapon. Up until working with him I naively assumed we could all get in a room, hash out our technical differences and agree to a solution. That only works when everyone is (from your perspective) not a bad actor. But how do you deal with an Executive Director who will bald-faced lie and say whateve…
Can you share more details of the situation? I'm curious what they were lying about and how you pinned them down.
Yes but it's 1 AM here. I'll reply in the morning when I can give a cogent answer.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#73How to manage expectations. That communication is incredibly important. That the higher up the org chart someone is the busier they are. So what you spend 40 hours a week thinking about they might not spend 45 minutes thinking about. So over-communicate and remind them of important information about the project. Because they will forget lots of important details, and things that are glaringly obvious to you won't eve…
In some cases, it is more important to distill vs. over-communicate. Senior leaders are reliant on you to sweat the details. Finding out what is important to them can be an art form--or a simple conversation sometimes.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#74Soft skills - how to deal with anxiety, stress and how to stop procrastinating such that is causes problems down the road.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#75I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Wi…
It's not that employers care about friction. They don't want poor negotiators realizing that could have had more. Unions have had known pay rates for years. Causes no friction whatever if it's clear what gets you what pay. Employers just want employees to undervalue their work so they can pay them less. It's a perfectly valid thing for an employer to lie to you about why and even to try to get the most work for the l…
The friction I'm describing is what inevitably occurs when workers start openly discussing pay and realise that some among them are paid much more than others. I've seen it happen multiple times in different workplaces. Some longer-term employees discover that more junior, less experienced employees are being paid maybe 30% more and pretty much mentally check out instantly. They become instantly absolutely demoralised and will end up on a spiral downwards which either ends with them resigning or being given a massive pay-raise.
I've heard someone describe the phenomena as 'contractor rot', when a full-time employee discovers how much more contractors earn.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#76Learning to effectively communicate with others is the single most important skill you can learn. It will help you improve your relationships with others, clearly communicate your own ideas, and address areas for improvement in ideas and others in a way that is constructive. There's been quite a few great books on this thread already. Here's some I haven't seen.
* The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes - good even if you're not in sales
* The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker - Great book overall
* The Phoenix Project - good for understanding project flows and silos.
* Thinking in Systems - good for how to set up processes so that even if you step away the job still gets done. Essential for getting promoted, no one can promote you if you're impossible to replace.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#77“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did. Some important ideas - Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with…
Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud?
Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.
I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
It's like you try to peel back a single layer of why people believe what they believe and there's nothing there. No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing.
Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
How do people put up with it?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that employers care about friction. They don't want poor negotiators realizing that could have had more. Unions have had known pay rates for years. Causes no friction whatever if it's clear what gets you what pay. Employers just want employees to undervalue their work so they can pay them less. It's a perfectly valid thing for an employer to lie to you about why and even to try to get the most work for the l…
The friction I'm describing is what inevitably occurs when workers start openly discussing pay and realise that some among them are paid much more than others. I've seen it happen multiple times in different workplaces. Some longer-term employees discover that more junior, less experienced employees are being paid maybe 30% more and pretty much mentally check out instantly. They become instantly absolutely demoralise…
Yes and this isn't your fault, no matter how much employers want you to feel. It's entirely up to a company how much they offer employees. Think about this, they could at any moment increase the pay off every employee without as single complaint from employees. They make a conscious choice to not increase the pay of more senior employees intentionally because they know the employees won't leave to get more money. You shouldn't feel bad because of choices the company makes. The friction isn't your fault or your concern. As I stated before companies tell you not to share because it benefits them, not you. No one feels bad when someone leaves the company for more money elsewhere, there are even companies that ask their employees to take a cut and they do and everyone feels okay with it because you're all in it together. The only time this friction occurs is when a company chooses to bring someone in for money they choose not to offer to another employee. You stated yourself that you became demoralized before sharing, in fact it was the company that brought it on. The company is trying to make you feel bad for sticking up for yourself in a contract negotiation, don't let them do that to you. You're worth more than that, both as a person and as an employee. The contractor makes other sacrifices including benefits and stability as part of their wages. If the company can't explain that it's on them, not you.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
If everyone followed that advice, nobody would ever express their opinion and nobody would ever say anything negative. Being able to critique things is really important. It's essential for identifying problems, developing good ideas, and improving systems and products and well as people's personal development. You say to explain how things could be improved rather than talk about the problems with them. The problem w…
Without commenting on whether I agree with their advice or not, I just want to point out that "if everyone x then y" is a poor argument against x. Plenty of the things we do that are good for us would turn out poorly for us if everyone did them. Plenty of the things we do that are good for the groups we belong to would turn out poorly if everyone in the group did them.
I took their argument to be saying that ideally nobody should share their opinions or say negative things.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If everyone followed that advice, nobody would ever express their opinion and nobody would ever say anything negative. Being able to critique things is really important. It's essential for identifying problems, developing good ideas, and improving systems and products and well as people's personal development. You say to explain how things could be improved rather than talk about the problems with them. The problem w…
People might be sensitive to negativity, but positivity can absolutely change somebody's outlook. It's hard to time it just right but when somebody does, on their own, something that they previously would not or could not, praise will work wonders.
I didn't say anything against positivity. I'm just saying that critique is important. It's not the only thing that's important but it is important.