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Toxic positivity does more harm than good

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Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#171

Post by trhway »

lostlogin wrote: post #121
spaetzleesser wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. I hate the celebratory management emails after crunch time. They feel insulting to me. I expect management to help during the project and not celebrating once everything is done. That while not having fixed obvious problems during the project. My partner is the other way. She loves and needs praise. The more the better. Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last projects. There was a sur…

What did the plaque say? This is amazing.

some demotivator like this https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/dedicat... ?

In general you can't trust/take seriously whatever the management says, except for 1. specific information reflected in the HR systems and 2. the specific tasks/deadlines/etc. assigned to you and the related progress/delivery/etc. discussions.

Specifically, when it comes to public praise, the manager publicly praising his team/dept/org is actually praising themselves while supposedly being publicly modest/coy by not explicitly praising themselves, and this is why management loves making those praises.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#172

Post by deanCommie »

Bayart wrote: post #96
hnarn wrote: post #80

I vastly prefer honest negativity over dishonest positivity. An example of this is the behavior of service personnel in the US compared to my native country, every time I go there I almost want to tell them to tone down the niceness, but of course there's no point because I realize I'm the odd one out. Of course I appreciate the effort of being "nice" but when you're not doing it out of genuine care for someone I'd m…

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

Canadian here.

Our culture tends to pick and choose from the best of either the American or the European approach. We don't always get it right, and the combination/middle ground isn't necessarily better than either of the alternatives, but I do feel like we have some general insight and sympathy to both the European and the American philosophies.

I've also lived as an ex-pat in Europe for 4 years working closely with both Europeans and AMericans.

In this regard, I think the American approach is superior.

1) Europeans are overly sensitive about "micro-friendliness". I've heard people complain that the cashier at the grocery store asks "How are you doing?". "They don't really care, why do they ask!"

I've had to explain that no, they don't care, but that moment of friendliness is still a pleasant one, and over the course of the day, all those moments add up to a generally positive contribution to one's existence.

Americans do take faux-friendliness over the top (especially if it's only reserved for the local in-group, see: southern "hospitality"), but I think the Europeans need to lighten up a bit.

2) While I don't need my waitresses to be so friendly to the point that they seem like they're flirting with you, the European waitstaff at restaurants are far from neutral, and are actively disinterested in your hospitality experience. This doesn't apply to fancy high-end restaurants, of course. But just a general casual lunch or dinner you're just not going to get the same quality of service as you do in North America.

While I abhor tipping, I can't help but think that it does create some positive incentives in staff here.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#173

Post by bigwavedave »

rglullis wrote: post #144
spaetzleesser wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. I hate the celebratory management emails after crunch time. They feel insulting to me. I expect management to help during the project and not celebrating once everything is done. That while not having fixed obvious problems during the project. My partner is the other way. She loves and needs praise. The more the better. Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last projects. There was a sur…

> between a Patagonia shirt and a plaque If I wanted a shirt, I'd buy a shirt. If the plaque truly reflected some effort done by the team that accomplished something big and deserved proper recognition, I get why people would prefer it. You can't buy respect. Now, of course the cynical me will argue that the whole thing is a trick question and that no one of the alternatives are good - downright offensive actually.

I agree. It reminds me a bit of an episode of The Office, where the top salesman (Dwight) is explaining how he was Salesman of the Month 13 out of 12 months the previous year. In lieu of a pay rise, management had given him two plaques for the month of February.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#174

Post by amelius »

shrimpx wrote: post #136
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

I've felt a lot of "false" positivity espoused by project managers, especially those in charge of agile ceremonies. Examples: "I'm really {proud,impressed} of all of you for your output this sprint", "You guys are {killing,crushing,owning} it", "You all should be very proud of what you guys did", etc. These aren't given after periods of crunch time, they're literally every week to the point where it feels so contrive…

This may sound a bit cynical but it's honest: When everyone else is gratuitously praising engineering, it sort of creates an atmosphere that feels like engineering is being taken advantage of by these other people: managers, sales people, execs. It feels like these people think you're their cash cow, and also that they think you're kind of stupid, and gratuitous compliments are enough to keep the cash cow going. That…

Next time you get such a compliment, maybe ask for a raise or a bonus? Then you know whether the compliment was real or not.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#175

Post by ciceryadam »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #154
ciceryadam wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From past experience I would LOVE to see some managerial acknowledgement of their fuckups that lead to crunch time. Praise is temporary, but if no changes are introduced from the other end of the work pipeline people will get crushed.

I'm kind of in a weird in-between role. Usually when crunch time happens we were well aware that the deadlines were aggressive or the feature was going to be a major PITA to implement and brought that up but executives pull ranked and basically said I don't care figure it out. We're all kind of defenseless honestly, it's just some of us are lucky enough where we're not directly responsible for creating the actual pro…

The executives might not care right now, but when the peons who do the actual crunch time leave, they'll end up with newcomers with no one to train them. Crunch time should be for real emergencies only.

When I learned that my all-weekender overtime was only to keep an internal deadline, I started look for a new position immediately.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#176

Post by tqi »

lrossi wrote: post #14

The article is mentioning Instagram as an amplifier of this need to fake being happy. But I think Facebook is responsible for it as well. I was once talking to a colleague who was showing me some old vacation pictures. Some tropical area. I commented that they were looking amazing. He said that actually there was a pile of garbage next to them, but they only put the good looking photos on Facebook. Everybody wants to…

I don't think the public nature of social media is driving this. After all people's private photo albums and slideshows back in the day were also heavily curated collections of "fake" happiness. I think the difference is thanks to the internet and the proliferation of smart phones, we are able to consume a much larger volume of these collections.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#177

Post by khalilravanna »

Bayart wrote: post #106

Give me feedback , not encouragement. I don't care whether you tell me my work is good or bad, but I very much care than you qualify that statement with data points or a new outlook that enable me to improve that work. I think a lot of technical guys see professional interactions that way, with pats on the back being at best an empty ritual, at worst a waste of useful time.

For me this is the key. Positivity and negativity are both harmful if they’re not specific. Saying “the team did a great job” is basically worthless. Cool, let’s all do the exact same thing we did last time with no variation so we can do another “great job”. Versus “the team did a great job communicating changed expectations mid project that meant we didn’t lose a client” can actually lend some insight.

Negative feedback is the exact same (keep it specific) though with the nuance of saving negative feedback that’s personal for 1:1 convos.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#178

Post by randycupertino »

didibus wrote: post #139
spaetzleesser wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. I hate the celebratory management emails after crunch time. They feel insulting to me. I expect management to help during the project and not celebrating once everything is done. That while not having fixed obvious problems during the project. My partner is the other way. She loves and needs praise. The more the better. Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last projects. There was a sur…

Haha, I feel I fall on both groups. Like, tell me how awesome I did and also better give me a bonus or I'll take my awesome self somewhere else (⌐■_■)

Sorry, in lieu of individual bonuses, management has decided to reward employees with a company team building boat trip!

:-/ Nothing is worse than being stuck on a company boat trip. You can't arrive late, and you can't leave early! Also no where to hide or duck out for a bit. Literally stuck on the boat.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#179

Post by Barrin92 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #122
Bayart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

I thought that was about Russians, not Europeans in general. In Russia it's considered a mental illness to smile without a good reason.

It's a thing in Germany as well. I remember that one of the reasons customers gave why they didn't want to go to Walmart when it opened a few shops in Germany was because they were freaked out by the happy act that employees had to put on.

The sort of always smiling, always laughing stereotypical American waiter or something would be perceived as juvenile, fake or not very bright over here.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#180

Post by gxqoz »

Trasmatta wrote: post #5

This has kind of been a problem at my workplace. Everything from the company's marketing material to its recruiting practices exudes an almost overwhelming amount of positivity. They put a huge emphasis on hiring "the nicest people in the world". Disagreements or arguments at the company are almost non-existent, because everyone tries their hardest to be positive and nice at all times. Every other sentence in Slack e…

I've been converted to using exclamation points after phrases like "thanks" in emails. The book Because Internet convinced me that the rules of email politeness have changed. I don't love it, but whatever. Language changes.
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