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Just don’t

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Re: Just don’t

#141

Post by ketzo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #105
andsoitis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if they complain about it chronically? are you then justified to offer unsolicited advice, or do you have to just listen (i.e. be their outlet)?

I think that's a very good question. I'll give an anecdote from group therapy. There was one member of my group who was having a difficult time motivating himself to make a particular change he wanted to make. I had long since learned the dangers of "advice giving", so really just asked why he felt it was so hard to make that change. He definitely had a lot of backstory that could explain his underlying fear. However…

I think you've unintentionally explained why your advice-giving worked in that moment, too -- Bob knew you were coming from a place of good faith!

You weren't "just"-ing him -- you knew the intricacies of his situation, and it's a lot easier for someone to take advice to heart if they can trust that you actually know the context.

Re: Just don’t

#142

Post by martinflack »

jcheng wrote: post #135
unsupp0rted wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed the orientation of the PDF as requested. This did not add any white space next to line items, since the line items table uses 98 % width either way, unlike when printing from Excel I guess. This is what I tried and failed to get heard yesterday. Also now in Landscape the cover page header takes up like 50% of the page. But hey “just make it landscape”. What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being…

Not sure why, but now I really want to know how this turns out!

At least the conversation hasn't progressed to printing it upside down or on the back...

Re: Just don’t

#143

Post by ketzo »

coldpie wrote: post #41
mbreese wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don’t want you to solve their issues. They just want you to listen and understand them. If someone asks for advice, that’s another thing entirely. But I’ve learned over the years that just listening and appreciating what someone else is feeling is the most helpful thing you can do.

This is one of those personality differences that I find utterly fascinating. I think you're right that most people feel the way you say, but I feel the exact opposite! If I'm talking about a problem, it's because I haven't figured out how to solve it and would be happy for ideas. Otherwise why talk about it? You're certainly not interested in my problems, and it's by definition a problem for me, so it's not like I e…

I'm the same way. Not to over-generalize, but in my experience that feeling is a big

1) guy thing

2) engineering-type thing

3) type-A-personality thing

and god help you if you're all three!

All three of those groups are overrepresented on HN, too, so at least you're probably in good company :D

I just learned that I need to stifle my automatic "problem-solving mode" when it comes to personal interactions, and all of my conversations got way better. Glad I was at least able to learn pretty early in my life!

Re: Just don’t

#144

Post by larrywright »

KIFulgore wrote: post #54

Funny... my roommates and I used "just" for comedic effect in college. I was stuck writing an algorithm and asked my more-experienced roommate for help. He briefly scanned my code and said, "well, you kind of just... code it." I looked at him quizzically and just blurted, "straight up?" "Yep, just straight up code it." Then we all laughed at the absurdity. He wasn't trying to trivialize the problem, to be clear, but…

This is very reminiscent of a favorite scene from the show Schitt’s Creek.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NywzrUJnmTo

Re: Just don’t

#145

Post by BlueTemplar »

sshine wrote: post #69

I stopped using the word "just" in the meaning "only" when I took math courses at university. The lecturers were so good to use that term ("trivially", "evidently", etc.) when it was anything but. The smartest students were good to follow up. Everyone else were quiet.

And yet in the introductory classes teachers heavily insisted that "obvious","evident","trivial" shouldn't be part of your vocabulary (you would lose points) and when using a shortcut you should always reference it... until you got several levels above it (you wouldn't do it for basic arithmetic when doing calculus of course, OTOH in algebra commutativity is not to be assumed...)

Of course teachers/researchers didn't always follow these best practices themselves...

Re: Just don’t

#147

Post by [deleted] »

blowski wrote: post #63
unsupp0rted wrote: post #7

I get a lot more mileage out of "have you tried..." than "why don't you just...". As a recent example, I wrote a system that auto-generates PDF packing slips from an order form, to send to a warehouse for picking and packing. Yesterday a client told me to "just make it landscape" while I was explaining why "just making it landscape" won't solve the problem of giving the warehouse whitespace to pencil stuff in, becaus…

Marriage has taught me to go even further than that. I now ask "are you telling me to get it off your chest, or you want help solving it?". If the former, I don't offer any solutions whatsoever, in any kind of format.

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#148

Post by rootusrootus »

I routinely remark to both our product folks, and some of our lower level senior leaders that 'just' is one of the most expensive words in the English language, and please avoid using it when you're trying to decide how much effort something will take. They're not intentionally trying to trivialize the effort, but they're causing themselves to misunderstand the effort involved by presuming it to be simple. Just ask the development team for a real estimate.

Re: Just don’t

#149

Post by justinlloyd »

Conversely I have learned to distrust any software developer's opinion on a subject of how easy it is to do something, especially when it comes to replicating the actions by a layperson, when they blurt out "Oh, it's easy, you just..."

"Oh, it'll be easy to distribute this update to our customers (who are Doctors), you just have FTP into our server, unzip it, and copy the files into your Program Files directory."

"Oh, that's an easy problem to solve, you just have to get the client site to standup a docker container on their infrastructure and..."

Just... don't.

Re: Just don’t

#150

Post by unsupp0rted »

jcheng wrote: post #135
unsupp0rted wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed the orientation of the PDF as requested. This did not add any white space next to line items, since the line items table uses 98 % width either way, unlike when printing from Excel I guess. This is what I tried and failed to get heard yesterday. Also now in Landscape the cover page header takes up like 50% of the page. But hey “just make it landscape”. What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being…

Not sure why, but now I really want to know how this turns out!

If history with this client is any indication, they will not realize I have offered these viable solutions at all.

A week or so from now the warehouse will complain vaguely that they have “no place to write”.

The client will blame me for the poorly designed packing slip and suggest we “just go back” to the Excel version (which required multiple hours a day of manual data entry by an employee who is no longer at the company and cost untold $ in human error).

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