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Don’t point out something wrong immediately

blog.the-pans.com

171–180 of 180 posts

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#171
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.

But then you don't have enough time to reflect either.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#173
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about yelling...

Fair enough. I think I may have misread the tone of the post I'm responding to because it happened to sound similar to a line I had just heard in some media - which was used by the character to justify yelling at people. In that case, it's one of those weird brain associations that pops up. I stand by the rest, that being unpleasant or hard to work with will make it harder to do cool things. Unless you are literally…

> I stand by the rest, that being unpleasant or hard to work with will make it harder to do cool things. Unless you are literally Elon Musk, Steve Jobs or maybe a few others.

What makes you think it wouldn't [be | have been] easier for them too, if they'd [learn | have learned] to be less of an arsehole?

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#174
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

take your own advice. i noticed a cert was invalid or broken and mentioned it to a person who might care or know how to deal with it appropriately. In the meantime the site is less secure than it could presumably be. i'm not a paid consultant for the site so i didn't bother digging in and finding out which policy violation triggered a browser warning, but since you did, you can share it here or you can continue to ad…

How did you even find that site in the first place? It's not in their profile, it's not in the top duckduckgo results for "CIELO Enterprise Solutions". How long were you digging around to find something, anything, to try and pwn them about their high engineering standards comment?

Perhaps there is a language or nuance barrier. I "thanked" the parent commenter for sharing their view, did an "internet search" for their publicly listed company to see what kind of jobs they might have available, and then was warned about certs visiting their site... Now I'm having a terrible conversation with you for some reason, but I hope this helps dispel your confusion. Please feel free not to reply at all with anything.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#175
post #17

We had a DevOps engineer who was brutal this way. Personally I found it only occasionally annoying, but our PM almost fired him several times. I talked him down by pointing out that risk aversion is a good quality in an engineer. When we interview for engineers, we always ask candidates if they are risk-taking multi-taskers, because those are desirable qualities... In some other field.

I appreciate the sentiments. i think the cert for https://cieloconnects.com/ is expired.

Ah look at that! Nice catch. Yes, I can see that something is done to fix that, though I'm not on that team (I'm backend).

And to address the debate below, I do in fact appreciate risk-averse and focused engineers. The 'don't say no' thing I think has merit when interfacing with business. But within the team, as long as you're in your own lane I appreciate it very, very much when my coworkers help me find flaws.

Most of this comes up in planning anyway, when we're spit-balling best approaches. If the problem is difficult enough, someone will get a research spike to discover best practices and form a set of initial proposals and alternatives.

ETA: and yes this is my public profile. I don't mind. I'm proud of my work at CIELO.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the context. Just yesterday I was doing a data centre audit with a colleague, who is many years my junior, and I am her manager, and she has hardly been in a data centre. She’s also amazing by the way. So when I see her doing a few things that I wouldn’t have done, I could have just reacted and pointed it out and told her how it should be done. For sure I wanted to, I’m an engineer! Or I can have a bit…

Yes, when possible it is better to give people time to figure out things by themselves. That's how you learn. The question is why pointing out something wrong would have automatically damaged your relationship with her ? Everyone can agree that making mistake is natural. Can't people learn not to get upset when being told they made one ? One way is by exposure in an environment where the feedback is factual and witho…

I would have had no problem pointing the wrong thing out if she hadn't 'got it' herself, but I knew she would.

The thing to avoid here is being the know-it-all who tells everyone how things should be done when, given just a second, those people would figure it out anyway. Nobody likes that guy.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#177
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you even find that site in the first place? It's not in their profile, it's not in the top duckduckgo results for "CIELO Enterprise Solutions". How long were you digging around to find something, anything, to try and pwn them about their high engineering standards comment?

Perhaps there is a language or nuance barrier. I "thanked" the parent commenter for sharing their view, did an "internet search" for their publicly listed company to see what kind of jobs they might have available, and then was warned about certs visiting their site... Now I'm having a terrible conversation with you for some reason, but I hope this helps dispel your confusion. Please feel free not to reply at all wit…

[deleted]

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#179

Chesterton's Fence https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood

The Chesterton Fence AKA an undocumented obstacle from the perspective of anyone new.

Of course we need to understand the system before changing it.

But we shouldn't browbeat those wanting to improve the stuff we left no guidance about.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thanks for your feedback and advice, I appreciate that you took the time to write it, svilen_dobrev. "And do what you would have done/doing if you were already that wanted XYZ". I am asking how long to put a chicken in the oven for it to taste good. To be honest, your reply makes me feel like I am reading: "Just eat it as though it were already done cooking in the oven." I feel like some more specific guidance about…

Then pick one thing which ${your-sample-of-companies-around-want} and do it better. Not 10 things. overpreparation prevents the performance.

General advice goes thus far. noone knows what you situation is, to go any deeper.

as of raw-chicken-ish: what i said is: if you imagine already eating it, what good-taste means? Then pursue that

(which translated back from chickenish, might be: which company? which field? which environment? which kind of job? which kind of team? etc)

good luck, and do not despair

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