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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

#131

Post by pibaker »

smartbit wrote: post #128
manbitesdog wrote: post #15

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

IMHO the Dutch are more direct for the same reason they are less sensitive to authority and approach their superiors as equals. Netherlands effectively being a River Delta, there always was the threat of water, a force greater than anyone. IOW if a flood comes, both the king and the peasant start digging. This is completely different from neighboring countries UK and Germany, which both traditionally had strong sense…

> IOW if a flood comes, both the king and the peasant start digging.

By the same reasoning, India, Bangladesh and China — all ancient civilizations threatened by great rivers — should have developed similar egalitarian cultures but the reality is the polar opposite.

Maybe something as complex as human civilizations can't be the result of just one geographical feature.

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

#132

Post by tejohnso »

> Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong

Absurd. You can point out how and why someone is wrong without insulting them by calling them a moron. Telling someone they're a moron is only stating your personal opinion in an offensive way, without any useful proof.

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

#133

Post by rkomorn »

gilleain wrote: post #127
rkomorn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the subject is the code/system/product/organisation, which has no feelings and hence can't be offended This is like saying that telling someone their artwork sucks is not offensive because "the artwork has no feelings."

Someone's artwork _should_ be possible to (negatively) criticise. Of course, just saying "it sucks" is not constructive or helpful. You can definitely hurt someone's feeling with unconstructive criticism of thier art. However, pointing out areas to improve should not be too painful to the artist, as they can make newer, better works. I suppose a difficuly can arise if people get too attached to things they make (art,…

I think my roundabout point is that companies, code, policies, etc aren't just "things without emotions that can't be offended" because they're all made (or maintained) by people (like art).

I agree with all your points.

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

#134

Post by mcherm »

Many people are taking what I believe to be the wrong message here.

I believe the author's intent was (or should have been) to describe how THEY wanted to receive communication, not how EVERYONE should.

A skilled communicator will craft their message for the audience. Some want "just the facts" with no social lubricant. Others want the banter to build person-to-person relationships. Some want a quick statement of context for everything. If you can adjust the message to the audience you will be more successful at working with them.

I have begun including "how I want you to communicate with me" as part of my standard "introduce myself to new team members" talk.

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

#135

Post by allreduce »

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…

What's the mistake here? Shouldn't an incident report start with this and then continue with an analysis of the process, without too much "internal perspective"?

In my mind, the internal perspective might be useful to jot down when doing the analysis, but is too noisy to be useful to disseminate.

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

#136

Post by neogodless »

Am I the only one confused by the very first quote?

> "your feelings about how I might receive this are your problem to manage, not mine, just give me the information."

Followed immediately by

> a person receiving a message bears responsibility for their own emotional reaction to its content

So it's not "your feelings about how I might receive this" but rather "my feelings about how I might receive this are my problem to manage."

EDIT: Ooops I found a comment expressing this thought: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372043

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

#138

Post by tmoertel »

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…

Quick question: When the interviewer arrived late, did he start by apologizing?

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

#139

Post by mikkupikku »

rendaw wrote: post #126
eucyclos wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've heard of taboos forbidding discussion in religious contexts, for religious (superstitious) reasons, but what definition of taboo are you using that it doesn't just mean "forbidden"? There's a taboo to marrying your blood sibling, but discussing such marriages is fine. If a culture generally allowed marrying such a sibling I think it'd be past its peak, maybe. But I don't see how discussing it would contribute to…

Try to start up a conversation about the relative merits of marrying your siblings and I bet everybody else in the room will suddenly get very uncomfortable. They'll be thinking "Of all possible things we could talk about, why this??"

You're right that taboos also concern actions, not just discussion, but in this case it's probably both.

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

#140

Post by jrmg »

It’s been my experience that those that most loudly say they value extreme directness like this are also those with the most fragile egos. If you directly tell them something they did is wrong or non-optimal, they conclude that you’re an idiot, don’t change anything (or, worse, double-down), and will sometimes even berate you (directness!). You need to couch your discussions with them more than is usual with others.
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