I go with "my first impulse is to suggest..." which IMO adds the diplomatic nuance of admitting an incomplete understanding of the problem and/or the person experiencing the problem. You either get a "good suggestion, I'll try that" as a response or you get "you might think it's a good idea but I already considered it and XYZ problems occurred" and you can work from there.
Oh, I might have to borrow that! I've sometimes used "for my own understanding, is there a reason we're not doing X?"
Similar: I like “maybe a dumb question, but tell me about X”. I am never shy about being possibly redundant or asking “dumb” questions.
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.
I'd prefer we live in a world where idle complaints are not entertained. If you want advice, complain. If you do not, keep silent.
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…
> It's not fair to ask people for help and then complain about their word usage when trying to help. This is a situation where solicited advice was asked for.
... yes it is. You can be forced by circumstance to ask for help from an unempathetic jerk and then still feel like they are an unempathetic jerk.
Incidentally, it is nerdy 'hacker' types who are especially guilty of putting down people when asked for help. But not all uses of the word 'just' have that effect. You can usually tell the people who are using it out of consideration versus those who are using it to demean and belittle.
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…
As an engineer, I once opined to a fellow engineer, I wonder how Static Guard works? And he said, "You know what causes static electricity?" Naturally, I said yes. He said, "It makes that go away."
An almost-correct answer if you remember your elementary school science class with charges on glass and amber... Amber being elektron (ἤλεκτρον) and the root of the word electricity. If you coat the amber (or polyester) so it no longer holds a charge, by pairing its charge carriers with molecules that hide them, then you have static guard.
Not saying it's not good to learn about how "just" might be perceived or avoided but I am surprised this article is getting so much support. I feel like in the environment I'm in "just" never implied anything negative (e.g. lack of understanding on the receiver's part, making it seem like they should have considered ... but didn't, etc.), rather: - I don't yet understand why steps x, y, z are necessary. To me it woul…
Is it a surprise that people don't all work in the supportive environment that you have? Here's a more accurate example for me:
"This feature will take about 3 weeks to ship."
"Why so long? It's just a button that does stuff. Can't you just..."
When the other side of the argument is a PM who can't describe what an HTTP call is, it's hard to look at it as a good faith discussion.
what is the warehouse actually trying to pencil in? Wow! Great question! This tells me that the root problem here is that development was done before analysis. Broken process. Often broken results. And most certainly broken management. OP is nitpicking semantics while unsupported is identifying something so much larger: an opportunity to avoid OP's conundrum by doing things right in the first place. Best wishes, unsu…
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…
From past experiences (don't work freelance anymore) I think consultant and contractor cannot be the same person.
For example:
If you are paid to give advice and then develop, wouldn't you recommend the most expensive thing?
Too many times I lost energy and renounced money to recommend not doing extremely dumb stuff instead of doing it.
And I was even wrong in doing so! I'm not the entrepreneur, I'm not the one organizing resources, so I should not have a say unless specifically paid.
If I were to work again as freelance, I would only do either consultancy or contracting, never mix the two
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.
The only problem is that you often hear the same variation of the problem multiple times with no action taken to resolve it in between.
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.
I'd prefer we live in a world where idle complaints are not entertained. If you want advice, complain. If you do not, keep silent.
Venting is a pretty normal and healthy way of dealing with emotions.