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Just don’t

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Re: Just don’t

#191

Post by b3morales »

vsareto wrote: post #160

I'm all for cutting this out with medical advice and such (unsolicited advice, and importantly wrong advice), but this example annoys me: >You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” >This. Will. Not. Help. It's not fair…

The essay seems to be from someone who is more often on the giving help side than the asking side. And I read it from that perspective: starting from the assumption that you want to help, here's a thing that will make you more effective at doing so.

Re: Just don’t

#192

Post by kelseyfrog »

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.

Thank you for bringing this up. This was a life lesson that unfortunately had to be spelled out for me in a very embarrassing way.

My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. The result are on average better as people who want to vent are more put-off by advice givers than advice seeks who receive a good listener. It's also made me quite a bit more appreciative of times when I need to vent and someone is there to simply listen.

Re: Just don’t

#193

Post by derefr »

2devnull wrote: post #137
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…

The next trick to learn is that the customer will still blame you for not telling them that landscape won’t fix it. Then you’ll waste less time the next time your customer asks for something stupid. Fail fast can work well for client management.

Tangent, but the phrase "client management" makes me imagine asking a client's point-of-contact employee, if I can speak to their manager. I wonder how that would go?

Re: Just don’t

#194

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#195

Post by derefr »

huhtenberg wrote: post #45
andsoitis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "have you tried..." Or: "what have you tried?"

"Everything, nothing works". Few people like being asked open-ended questions when they are irritated.

"Can you give me three examples of things you've tried that didn't work?"

Re: Just don’t

#196

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#197

Post by vaidhy »

edw519 wrote: post #151
unsupp0rted wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the positive feedback! As a consultant or contractor or whatever (client doesn’t know the difference), I need to find a happy medium somewhere between “how can I personally reconfigure the business for you” and “I’m a mindless pair of hands that codes”. I can’t go so far as to change how the warehouse operates. But it wouldn’t hurt to answer my questions about how the warehouse operates and ask me to come…

I can’t go so far as to change how the warehouse operates. Why not? That's what differentiates those who sling code from those who do real Digital Transformation (not the crap our bosses spout off.) it wouldn’t hurt to answer my questions about how the warehouse operates and ask me to come up with solutions in line with that This says volumes about what they think about you and worse, what they think about their busi…

I was wondering why this answer was rubbing me the wrong way and I realized it is because your answer shows a complete lack of empathy for "the other side". I have worked on warehouses and it is complicated.

>This says volumes about what they think about you and worse, what they think about their business and the problem at hand.

Why is this bad? If someone who is not technical, asks you to explain in detail about how the networking is setup and why is it not possible to just rewire the entire network to support something small, I wonder what your answer would be..

Operations managers in warehouses hone their skill over many years, running a large, very variable labor force efficiently. There are many variations over every single process and they have to keep the flow going while people come and go. If you cannot deal with an abstract request without asking everyone undergo "digital transformation", maybe you are in the wrong business.

Re: Just don’t

#198

Post by 98codes »

lephty wrote: post #186
yboris wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the reminder -- it does feel like people can be in (at least) two different modes -- with a desire to vent and be heard, or inquiring about a solution. Yet it is not obvious which since the two can sound so similar. If someone is grieving it's probably time to just listen, but when someone is stuck with a social problem they may be rubber ducking with you rather than considering you to be a good approxi…

"Rubber ducking." As in speaking to your rubber duck with no expectation of a response? First time seeing this usage. Thanks.

Moreso than that, imagine a rubber duck floating in the water: silently looking at you, nodding in understanding.

Re: Just don’t

#199

Post by kudos200 »

lephty wrote: post #186
yboris wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the reminder -- it does feel like people can be in (at least) two different modes -- with a desire to vent and be heard, or inquiring about a solution. Yet it is not obvious which since the two can sound so similar. If someone is grieving it's probably time to just listen, but when someone is stuck with a social problem they may be rubber ducking with you rather than considering you to be a good approxi…

"Rubber ducking." As in speaking to your rubber duck with no expectation of a response? First time seeing this usage. Thanks.

I think they’re probably referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Re: Just don’t

#200

Post by kelseyfrog »

kweinber wrote: post #187
jakelazaroff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 to this advice. I've heard it as "do you want comfort, or solutions?"

This sounds really patronizing. I would be careful with that phrasing. People who don’t want their problem solved often know the solutions and don’t like the tradeoffs or change they entail. It is often not a knowledge problem.

It also implicitly discounts one of the most valuable processes: verbal processing. Some people, myself included, find themselves verbalizing a problem and the tensions in every choice and monitoring the logic and emotional response present in saying it out loud.

In this way, listening and solving aren't too dissimilar. Simply listening can give the speaker an appropriate environment in which to solve their problem. A listener can play a part in helping to solve the problem, but helping foster the environment in which the problem can be solved. Don't mistake this as a silver bullet, but simply recognize that being a listener is an underappreciated role and listener vs solver isn't as dichotomous as it sounds.

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