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Just don’t

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Re: Just don’t

#331

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

#332

Post by scrozier »

vasco wrote: post #262
kelseyfrog wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you do though? Just stand there quietly nodding? When I try to do this I end up basically saying "that sucks", "hmm hmm", "yeah", etc which is very frustrating to me as I'd hate someone doing that to me. Or worse, sometimes I get the feeling that those "that need a listener" actually want mindless agreement with whatever the situation was or I feel like I'll be reinforcing insecurities. Let's say someone is t…

It's very cool that you are sensitive to how frustrating saying "that sucks" is for you. Many people are looking for just that, though. It might be informative to try out "that sucks" enough times to see what response it gets from the person you're interacting with. You might be surprised. (I was.)

Re: Just don’t

#333

Post by Max-q »

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…

Now I got really curious why just making it landscape wouldn’t solve the problem. It would give white space on the side regardless of which document format was used to print the page, wouldn’t it? Is it due to a different size of the printed label?

Re: Just don’t

#334

Post by bryceacc »

JackFr wrote: post #110
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…

I had an office mate, who after our abusive and demeaning boss would leave our office, would quote Gene Hackman from Superman III: “I ask you to kill Superman, and you're telling me you couldn't even do that one, simple thing.” (Sometimes if she was still in earshot he would say it in Spanish which somehow made it even funnier.)

"it's simple, we kill the batman"

Re: Just don’t

#335

Post by Gigachad »

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…

Personally I like both. Listen first, listen completely and then offer suggestions. While some people will let you get a few lines in and then start blurting out useless suggestions without hearing the full situation.

Re: Just don’t

#336

Post by arkh »

When estimating tasks difficulty, every time we hear the word "just" it gets bumped one more level. Experience tells that this small word always hide a world of hurt and not thought out edge cases or legacy code.

Re: Just don’t

#337

Post by daenney »

My favourite one is “surely it’s as simple as…” or other equivalent things of “I have no clue how to do your job but will tell you anyway”.

Re: Just don’t

#338

Post by ceras »

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.

Curious, does this apply to romantic partners too? Personally, I'd be sad if my wife didn't share things troubling her that she didn't need my help solving. I like knowing how she's feeling about things.

But at work, I understand this mindset. Though personally, I still actually don't mind hearing people complain. And since I'm a manager, complaints are a very useful signal for me: even if I'm just in listening-mode, they give me more clarity on precisely what's going on in my team.

Re: Just don’t

#339

Post by arkh »

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…

> Some people diagnose and troubleshoot by starting simple -- this is especially true if they've been roped into an incident in progress and no one has caught them up. Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Have you power cycled it? Have you done other simple things that humans tend to forget when dealing with a crisis because we aren't perfect?

Usually when it's not a person you're often working with you'll start by a little speech like "I've been asked to come help. I'm not up to speed so I'll ask stupid questions. Please don't mind it, I just want to cover the bases before we can start the hard work".

Re: Just don’t

#340

Post by seabriez »

quelltext wrote: post #79

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…

Yeah, agree here. People are pending over backwards parsing language, you can take any word and make the same argument. Even phrases like "consider", "other", "alternative" can be interpreted in wildly different ways, essentially making conversation much more muted and passive agressive. Meanwhile the core issue is not discussed, which is; maybe we shouldnt inject mental health into words that are meaningless in that context. Maybe this should be handled with direct conversation instead of passive aggressive ways of inserting some kind of special meaning into random words.
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