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Don’t point out something wrong immediately

blog.the-pans.com

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Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#141

Post by OJFord »

hinkley wrote: post #51
the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

> we never got the time to fix it The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France. "We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness. Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity…

I've turned really against this, and 'busy', annoys me when people say it now - we all have exactly the same amount of time; how we allocate it and to what is up to us.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#143

Post by maccard »

madeofpalk wrote: post #134
hinkley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we never got the time to fix it The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France. "We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness. Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity…

Sometimes you just don't have enough time. If you don't have enough time frequently, it's time to reflect.

I have maybe 10 or 15 of those tasks at any given time that _should_ be fixed, but there's not really any time to do them. There's definitely an element of YAGNI/If it ain't broke, but in many cases the right thing to do is just leave it alone, even if it's not best practice.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#144

Post by Sammi »

accountLost wrote: post #116

I can't agree with that. If there is something wrong, it must be dealt with as soon as possible. We engineers must learn to be professional and not let our ego get in the way. Maybe it is a cultural thing ? I worked once in Germany and thought at first that the error pointing was brutal. But you get used to it and learn not to involve your self esteem. And retrospectively I found it to be a fair and effective work en…

"If there is something wrong, it must be dealt with as soon as possible."

The article was short, but I don't think it disagrees with you. It's more about how you say things. Try to lean into your curiosity and ask questions, instead of just straight up saying "that is wrong". Because asking curious questions makes the other person want to engage with you, while pointing out mistakes makes them defensive and likely to distrust you.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#145

Post by watwut »

accountLost wrote: post #116

I can't agree with that. If there is something wrong, it must be dealt with as soon as possible. We engineers must learn to be professional and not let our ego get in the way. Maybe it is a cultural thing ? I worked once in Germany and thought at first that the error pointing was brutal. But you get used to it and learn not to involve your self esteem. And retrospectively I found it to be a fair and effective work en…

Germans are careful and deliberate in a way they phrase criticism. They don't just go full in nor randomly criticize everything.

And above all, they don't phrase things for maximal emotional impact. They dont exaggerate. They dont go out of way to make criticism sound funny. Which is unlike majority of "nerdy" or "geeky" criticism found online in tech circles.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#146

Post by xxs »

sgjohnson wrote: post #58
unnouinceput wrote: post #52

Pointing wrongs is for noobs. An expert hoards them like CIA/NSA hoards zero days and you deliver them on the day of performance review.

But this benefits absolutely nobody. Not even the manager doing that. I know that in my workplace a manager would get chewed out for that, as this practice is explicitly banned by policy. Any issues should be raised the moment they are discovered. Even without the said policy, it doesn’t benefit the business, because if it’s a problem employee, you’re pointlessly keeping them on a payroll, and it doesn’t benefit the…

I guess the comment (GP) was sarcastic (you can tell but the opening phrase alone)

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#147

Post by xxs »

arvinsim wrote: post #111
financetechbro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are overthinking it. An alternative to “spot flaw” here would be “point out flaw”. The author is just giving an example on how engineers have a habit of pointing out flaws

> The author is just giving an example on how engineers have a habit of pointing out flaws It's strange that finding flaws is framed negatively. This ability is a positive trait in software development.

...and to expend finding flaws is vital. Often times dealing with flaws, while being the next guy, is no fun and it may require workarounds.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#148

Post by xxs »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #16

> "feel sad" -> "eat chocolate" -> "feel good" cycle. > For engineers, the cycle is "see a problem" -> "spot flaws" -> "feel good". Maybe I'm missing some aspect of the text? AFAIK, "feel sad" and "eat chocolate" are different things (with a cause and effect relationship) and "see a problem" and "spot flaws" are the same thing expressed in different words, so what's the cycle here?

The relation of sadness and chocolate is so out of place, and by many accounts it doesn't improve anything - "just makes you fat".

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#149

Post by gjadi »

_9omd wrote: post #87

Yes, please don't be that guy. I was a lead at the last startup I was at, and we hired a guy who loved to point out everything we were doing "wrong". Literally weeks into the job and he's already writing up huge docs about everything we need to improve, with having almost no context for why we made certain decisions. The majority of things he assumed to know better on we also knew better about, but there simply wasn'…

I think an important distinction to keep in mind is:

- Do not criticize without understanding the root issue

- BUT, ask questions about the issues you encounter AND, document/explain the quirks/history as you go

IMHO the important thing is to learn that:

1. you don't know the whole context, ask around before criticizing

2. keep your eye open for quirks, don't let a general "laissez faire" attitude take over you

update:format

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#150

Post by svilen_dobrev »

logicallee wrote: post #120
hinkley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we never got the time to fix it The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France. "We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness. Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity…

I actually really like the linked article ( https://blog.the-pans.com/wrong/ ), I think it is supportive of ideation and prototyping. It really made me glad to read that. When learning a new language or environment, there's no place to get an expert to pair program through it (or is there?) Baby steps always look wrong, especially when the baby keeps falling over. It's just part of growing up. Case in point I recentl…

> become a better candidate is this a (worth) goal in itself? better person, better engineer, better manager, .. maybe. but Candidate.. eh. Think about it.. And do what you would have done/doing if you were already that wanted XYZ.
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