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I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

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Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#81

Post by KingMob »

manbitesdog wrote: post #15

Maybe this is a bit US-centric, direct negative feedback is very common in many cultures, e.g. Dutch

Definitely sounds like the US.

When I worked a Radboud University in the Netherlands for a summer, they were definitely more direct than I was used to, and kept work more work-focused. But they also combined that with a culture of quitting on time, and going out to socialize a bit before dinner, which I think was vital to sustain interpersonal connections.

I liked that style a lot, but Americans are very bad about quitting on time, which necessitates more socialization at work itself.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#82

Post by retsibsi »

tombert wrote: post #65
gib444 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm they didn't really mean /any/ question, and weren't inviting directness. Just like "hi how are you" from a stranger isn't an invitation to respond that your cat just died and your transmission needs replacing Of course they didn't want to move forward. That's what you had decided/wanted though right? I can't imagine you hoping for any other outcome with that kind of question and follow up?

> That's what you had decided/wanted though right? I can't imagine you hoping for any other outcome with that kind of question and follow up? The job paid really well so a small part of me still wanted to move forward, but I will admit I was pretty annoyed. I should provide a bit of context; the recruiter that the company “valued directness” on their copypasted job description. Regardless, if you show up late halfway…

I'm not going to pretend I'm great at reading social situations, but I think your approach in this story would have annoyed 99% of interviewers, even if they genuinely valued directness. If they'd asked for feedback on the interview process, then sure, they'd be a hypocrite if they claimed to value directness but got mad when you told them honestly that you were bothered by their lateness. But when they ask for questions, they're not inviting criticism, and framing the criticism as a question is always going to come across as passive aggressive. (edit: Or maybe 'snarky' is a better word here, as you did follow it up with a direct criticism, so 'passive aggressive' might not be quite right.)

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#83

Post by tombert »

andrewflnr wrote: post #73
tombert wrote: post #53

Everyone says that they value directness, and from what I can tell the vast majority of people actually don't. For example, I had a job interview a couple years ago where the interviewer showed up fifteen minutes late for a thirty minute interview. Eventually he did show up, and the interview proceeds more or less fine, and near the end he asks if I have any questions. I said "is it common to show up fifteen minutes…

A passive-aggressive interview "question" is a hilariously bad example of "directness". Nah dude, you were just a jerk.

Probably. I would argue that showing up extremely late for an interview that you scheduled is considerably more jerk-ish.

It also wasn’t passive aggressive, or at least it wasn’t intended to be. I actually wanted to know if that was just a thing that was common in the company so I could plan accordingly.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#84

Post by tombert »

retsibsi wrote: post #82
tombert wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what you had decided/wanted though right? I can't imagine you hoping for any other outcome with that kind of question and follow up? The job paid really well so a small part of me still wanted to move forward, but I will admit I was pretty annoyed. I should provide a bit of context; the recruiter that the company “valued directness” on their copypasted job description. Regardless, if you show up late halfway…

I'm not going to pretend I'm great at reading social situations, but I think your approach in this story would have annoyed 99% of interviewers, even if they genuinely valued directness. If they'd asked for feedback on the interview process, then sure, they'd be a hypocrite if they claimed to value directness but got mad when you told them honestly that you were bothered by their lateness. But when they ask for quest…

Being annoyed is fine but I would argue that they should deal with it if they’re going to make me waste half the interview time sitting around.

I’ll admit to a bit of douchiness on my end but I think they should have understood the snarkiness in this situation if they value directness.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#85

Post by qaadika »

kixiQu wrote: post #23

> If the payment service went down because a config value was wrong, the incident report should say: the payment service went down because config value X was set to Y when it needed to be set to Z. The number of junior engineers I have had to coach out of this way of thinking to get the smallest fragment of value out of a postmortem process... dear Lord. I wonder if this person is similarly new to professional collab…

Yeah, I wonder if the author has been in a situation where a brief explanation was taken by a higher up (or a cc'd higher-up x2, or x3) as "It was entirely my fault and I'm withholding details that would further implicate me and giving only the facts that don't."

I've had to work to balance emails like this between "they don't want the nitty gritty, they just want to be satisfied the issue is solved" and "They will definitely want the nitty gritty and think something is up if the details seems suspiciously sparse". Especially if the recipients are technical, and they know that you know that they're technical. what are you hiding, Qaadika? you're usually more verbose than this.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#86

Post by Antoniocl »

makach wrote: post #69

Seems very vulcan. Works with vulcans and to some extent vulcan wannabees. Words have meaning, and how we express ourselves through our words is how we lead and share knowledge. There is nothing wrong with being honest, but honesty without love and care is brutality.

I see your point, and think one of the merits in OP's argument is precisely what you're saying: words have meaning, and saying something like "I think that X is probably the case" when you're virtually certain that X is the case dilutes the meaning of words.

That said, I think throughout the post OP is mixing different dimensions of communicatiom together in a way that confuses the conversation - namely conciseness, directness, and explicitness - which while often overlapping aren't exactly the same.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#87

Post by exe34 »

I've been wrong enough times to make me want to preface anything I think is wrong at work by something along the lines of "Am I misunderstanding this or are you doing x, because I think that will clash with y". let them decide if it's worth looking at or not - I've been right enough times that they will want to.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#88

Post by rich_sasha »

The discussion shows just how many different communication styles there are. So many comments about "XYZ is the right way", "ABC is always wrong" or "I did UV to someone who says they like UV and they took offence".

It shows me:

- there are many communication styles and people tend to think their preferred one is obviously right

- people are often unclear on what they actually value in communication (and might like the opposite of what they say they value)

- people seem also to, at times, confuse other people's different communication style for rudeness, indecisiveness or small-mindedness.

So I guess the reasonable policy is to adopt a hybrid approach. Be tolerant of other people's comms style, try to be concise with enough politeness added in that you don't offend people, even if they say they want you to be ruthlessly direct. When you need to, try to steer the conversation towards your preferred style. Maybe "ok, I understand the background, let's try to distill the facts now", or equally "I feel I need more context before we continue, let's slow down and...".

For example, I have worked in a number of medium sized (50-200) companies that were so proud of being flat structured meritocracies, where anyone can say anything directly to their superiors. Every single time it turned out to be BS, higher ups wanted deference and following chains of command. But that sounds less catchy.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#89

Post by debo_ »

Look man, people are going to talk they way they talk. Just let them do it and deal with it for God's sake.

This reminds me of a front-page post a little while ago where someone wrote how much it stressed them out when people routinely apologized for delayed responses. Get over it.

I also sometimes wonder if folks writing these articles have had to work closely with people from culturally different places. I've had coworkers that literally could not be direct if their life depended on it for that reason, and I learned to deal with it.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#90

Post by eucyclos »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #75

This post is a poor exposition of Crocker’s Rules. Crocker’s Rules were a reaction to the avoidance of direct discussion of topics where some people treat the mere act of discussion in any capacity as offensive. Sacred cows and taboos for which there are social consequences even when asking honest questions. Crocker’s Rules, practically speaking, were a declaration that no good faith discussion was intrinsically offe…

This sounds like a refutation of the concept of taboos as a useful category, by the definition I use a taboo is something that may not be discussed openly. There's a theory that a culture without taboos is past it's peak in some important way- does crocker have any response to that criticism?
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