Notice how it was OK for him to be mean while Facebook was growing up it's infrastructure. Being right unfortunately is a necessary evil for the first wave in any project. In the nascent stages a project often needs firm almost machine like guidance. As the project matures the sense of stability trickles down organically to it's members. Some make the transition well while others dont. Often the best of our champions don't make the cut. The author has rightly pointed out the importance of Kindness, but that's not enough. The leadership should also be kind and help these mean incumbents make the transition.
Be Kind
291–300 of 401 posts
Re: Be Kind
#292Has anyone tried Loving Kindness meditation? "Empty your mind" type of thing never did much for me but Loving Kindness meditation featured in New Scientist so I gave it a go out of curiosity.
I found it remarkable. If you spend deliberate concentrated time imagining someone you know or might meet and them becoming happy, you later get a weird sense of joy when you do meet them. You anticipate and look forward to nice things happening to them and unconsciously strive to make that happen. What's fascinating is that it works with people you dislike/have trouble with. It really does foster empathy.
Kindness when treated as just a behaviour will be an uphill struggle, there will be conflict between what you want to do versus a correction. However when your first instinct, your desire without thinking about it, is to be kind - its no bother.
Re: Be Kind
#293Re: Be Kind
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why bother learning how to write software? I should have focused on sales if that's the only skill that matters.
chances are you're not nearly good enough to warrant being a torvalds-esque dickhead.
Nobody is good enough to warrant being a torvalds-esque dickhead.
"get away with" is entirely different.
I think the world would be a better place if Torvalds took a couple martial arts classes and 1) got his ass handed to him a couple of times and 2) felt physically self confident enough that he no longer felt the need to verbally beat every body else up before they got a chance to do it to him.
Re: Be Kind
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly r…
A subset of your (a) that I see here a lot is when I write a 500 word essay arguing some point, and the first reply comes in and says something to the effect of: "On word 348, you said 'all'. Here's a counter-example that proves that you should have said 'some' instead! I found the word that is wrong in your statement! See? Your entire argument is invalid!" Nit-picking and pedantry is toxic in real life and on messag…
I agree with you 100%. They waste time and energy in a toxic way. Do you or anyone else on here have any ideas on how to fix it?
Re: Be Kind
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being kind also mean being more open-minded. I visit HN not to argue about the right or wrong, but to get more informed and educated. The more you know, the more you'll be humble and kind to those who you disagree with. The notion that there is not absolute correctness even for a most trivial problem may be hard for engineers to understand, but I've learned it the hard way. I've learned a lot and working better with…
> Being kind also mean being more open-minded. Should I be more open-minded about climate change deniers when NASA has stated multiple times human activity is affecting it? I have better things to do with my time.
Yes.
And you'll know more and save more time for better things.
Re: Be Kind
#297I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence af…
How to be kind?
Re: Be Kind
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and it's one of Paul Graham's recommended books (see http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html ), along with the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. There's also "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", which is often recommended in the same breath.
I did a lightning talk a while back called "7 Habits of Highly Effective DevOps", adapting the habits and the organization of them to doing DevOps well.
Would you mind sharing your notes on that, if you have any?
Re: Be Kind
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Being kind also mean being more open-minded. Should I be more open-minded about climate change deniers when NASA has stated multiple times human activity is affecting it? I have better things to do with my time.
Yes. And you'll know more and save more time for better things.
Because if there's one place everyone can go to be better informed about climate change, it's definitely not NASA.
This is why people like you get dismissed in the first place. I can choose to spend time worrying about why you would think that, or I can go on with my life.
I choose to go on with my life. It is not true that all opinions are created equal.
Sorry, that's just the way it is.
Re: Be Kind
#300I don't agree with the author. Did that my first sentence above just hurt the feelings of the author or or many of the readers over here? Please read on. This kind of philosophies (be kind-hearted, be tolerant etc) are the ones making humanity loose their natural vigor and push people into unnatural soft-minded, lame and vulnerable population. These self-restricting rules makes you neutral and weak against someone wh…
I don't agree with you. I don't know what your environment is like, but I notice a lot of people who are pointlessly aggressive and competitive, or who premise their aggression on being right about something they're actually wrong about. That doesn't make these people stronger and it doesn't make the world better. It would work better if everyone just focused on doing their own best job, and constantly checked themse…
Speaking as someone who has been painted with this brush from time to time:
I try to limit myself to getting into arguments over things that will at some point become my responsibility to fix. On some projects, with certain people, that can be a pretty big fraction of the code and so I'm, well... pretty damned nosy. I try to be rough the way you'd expect a good coach to be rough. Not like some snotty know-nothing asshole. But some people don't see it.
The way I see it is something like this:
Think back to the last four or five Big Emergencies you had. Split everybody into two groups. Team A is all the people who were still working hard on a fix right up until the end. Team B is all the people who gave up, or merely looked on with concerned expressions instead of being helpful.
You listen to the people on Team A. Even the people who were part of the problem in the first place (unless there's a pattern of "Test it in Production"). Why? Because Team A is living with the consequences of the bad decisions. The people on Team B get to raise concerns, offer suggestions, and disagree, but they're really spectators.
The people who are on Team B -and- who are involved in the problems are the people you really have to watch out for. They have poor judgement and don't clean up after their own messes. Honestly these people should be on performance review, but for reasons I'll never fathom we always seem to forget these indiscretions at annual review time. I honestly wish I knew why. If anyone has a theory, I'd love to hear it.