"No Feigning Surprise"

"No Feigning Surprise"
wizardzines.com

I was really impressed with how successful RC is at maintaining an environment where people can learn and grow. Part of that is certainly selection effects- the point of center is self directed growth around programming, and there's an interview process that I assume filters especially hostile people.

But I think the social rules do a lot too, and have been trying to pay attention to the effects on others when someone breaks them at work. No Feigned Surprise is a particularly important one around people who are trying to learn and already a little insecure. It's great when they've learned a new thing, and you want to celebrate that, not meet it with denigration!

For the last 5 or so decades we've been transitioning from a world where everyone watches the same 4 TV channels to a world where everyone is in their own niche, and the tendency to be surprised that someone doesn't know about some cultural phenomenon is directly proportional to age. The way boomers gape and stutter when I said I don't know much about The Beatles...

The social rules work so well that I wish tech cos would just adopt these as baseline. They make interacting with other technical folks much more enjoyable.