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Just don’t

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Re: Just don’t

#251

Post by MikePlacid »

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.

> 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?"

I may be much slower to adapt. My wife of (almost) 30 years usually starts with explicit “I am telling you this to just get it off my chest”.

Re: Just don’t

#252

Post by jamincan »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34
sfpotter wrote: post #8

I mentor students on research projects. I think it can be fine to use the word “just” in this context exactly to telegraph that I think a particular task should be easy. Student says, “But what about X?” I might say, “Oh, just do Y.” It’s fine if they feel the tension of me knowing how to do something and thinking it’s easy and them not. The key part is providing a supportive environment so that they know they can as…

The main differentiation is whether it's used to trivialise a problem someone may have, especially if you're not in the same situation as the person. The mental health one is great, in that there's so many people that will say things like "just go outside" or "just do yoga" or "just do drugs".

As someone who struggles with depression, I definitely relate to that example. Part of the frustration is that those things are already voiced in my head. The other part of the frustration is that I've already cycled through worse and better periods, and in retrospect, the positive cycles leading out of my worst depressive periods always seem that simple - it always starts with something that seems stupidly trivial like picking up dirty laundry off the floor - which lends credibility to the voice in my head and which makes it oh so agonizingly frustrating when such a simple thing feels impossible.

Re: Just don’t

#254

Post by edw519 »

vaidhy wrote: post #197
edw519 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

shows a complete lack of empathy for "the other side"

I must have misspoke or I'm just not the writer I used to be because this is exactly the opposite of what hundreds of warehouse and shop people have said about me for over 40 years. (about 10% of that work is mentioned here: edweissman.com)

Why is this bad?

Because NO ONE is working the real problem (which is certainly not changing report orientation to leave enough white space for "out of the ERP system" notes). Everyone's dancing around it with semantics, jerry rigs, and workarounds. I.T. should be a trusted business partner. And unsupported's management should be putting them in a position to work the real problem. Instead, they're just another nerd who should shut up, put in a meaningless fix, and stop threatening their managers.

I have worked on warehouses and it is complicated.

Agreed. All the more reason to find out what notes they're adding to reports. Mission critical "notes" outside the system is a giant red flag. I'd rather work the red flag than make people happy. If it's important enough to put on a packing slip, it's probably important enough to be part of the system of record. A good old VSM should identify that and reduce that complication.

Re: Just don’t

#255

Post by Scarblac »

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.

A way to deal with really perplexing bugs is to just carefully explain the code to an actual rubber duck.

"This code is obviously correct, right duck? Look here, this line first does x, then y happens and here... Wait a minute, that doesn't do z at all!"

Re: Just don’t

#256

Post by [deleted] »

blowski wrote: post #238
Aeolun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That frustrates me.

I'm guessing it frustrates you because you like solving problems? You hear someone stuck in a rut and you want to help them out of it? Totally with you on this. I'm a solutions architect by day, and my entire skillset is helping people solve problems. Do a role-play: someone comes to me complaining about how it's really frustrating having to type all this crap into Excel, so I suggest using OCR, or taking a course on…

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#257

Post by mcguire »

thegrimmest wrote: post #202
blowski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should probably not say this sort of thing in public as it may cause people to view you as an emotional or intellectual cripple.

Re: Just don’t

#258

Post by deanCommie »

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…

> It's possible it's just a habit of speaking they've developed.

That's not an excuse. If your habit of speaking causes problems, sometimes the problem is you. Language evolves. Societal norms evolve.

Re: Just don’t

#259

Post by mcguire »

jcelerier wrote: post #220
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…

> What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? maybe they have a scanner somewhere that works better with the landscape format ? some regulation to comply with ? I find it absolutely insufferable wh…

"If they ask you to dig in a hole and then fill it back after you do it."

This is a recipe for a really crappy career.

Source: my career.

Re: Just don’t

#260

Post by MikePlacid »

blowski wrote: post #229
thegrimmest wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And responding to venting with advice/criticism is also (clearly) perfectly normal right?

Sure, nobody's saying "you're a bad person for offering advice". In some contexts, though, offering advice can feel like you want to close the person down rather than listen to them, that you think their problems aren't serious enough because you'd solve them easily. I'm guessing you've had at least one occasion where you have a work issue, and your manager is casually dropping solutions that didn't work, and you wer…

> that you think their problems aren't serious enough because you'd solve them easily

That would be a rather strange reaction. A single brain gets easily stuck on a problem, so if involving the second brain helps that does not mean that the problem was easy. Or that the first brain was defective. (Frankly, I think it was evolutionary “cheaper” to implement the rule “if stuck - consult” than to implement an unstuckable brain).

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