Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hand Licking Incident

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 358 posts

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#11

Post by delinka »

khazhou wrote: post #7
chasontherobot wrote: post #6

This article is about parenting, but I think it also applies to management. How often have you been dealing with a crisis at work when management is pressuring people to put in a solution, any solution and it ends up just making things worse or causing bigger issues down the line?

What's helped me cope with pressure from bosses was the realization that when they're shitting on someone, it's usually because their own boss is shitting on them (and on upwards). Then it's less personal, less an issue of someone in authority judging your performance, and becomes more of a team effort/problem: I will try to fix the issues, so that my boss's issue goes away, so his boss's issue goes away, and then we…

But a good manager is a shit umbrella, keeping the shit off you. I'm supportive of providing solutions so that everyone's lives improve, but one must be careful not to give the impression that the way to make the underlings perform is to let the shit roll downhill.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#12

Post by nvahalik »

chasontherobot wrote: post #6

This article is about parenting, but I think it also applies to management. How often have you been dealing with a crisis at work when management is pressuring people to put in a solution, any solution and it ends up just making things worse or causing bigger issues down the line?

People want to treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause. It's easier but far less effective.

Sometimes we as parents, colleagues, and partners forget that people sometimes have reasons (even if ones we don't understand) for doing things that don't line up with our own. We think people ought to act like us—after all we are the most reasonable people we know. :)

I've found in both my parenting and my professional life that remembering to ask the question "Why are you doing X?" or "What led you to take action X...": "Whether "X" is a commit or a strange habit, or even a destructive action more often leads to productive discussion. Sometimes, the other person's perspective can be interesting and informative.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#13

Post by khazhou »

Eh, this article was a bit "Reader's Digest". Parent tries to solve problem, gives up and lets fate have its way, problem goes away when parent wasn't looking, parent-child have a moment of trust which reveals that the problem was something simple all along. Life lesson learned.

How about when it's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but weird in middle school and socially+career-limiting in an adult. Or an aggression issue. Or one of the many spectrum issues, which won't go away by moving to a warmer climate.

I agree with the article on not getting angry, but I'm not going to get a new life lesson from "if your kid trusts you they will open up."

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#14

Post by braft »

khazhou wrote: post #9
toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing from tradition on a tech forum? I’m not sure I see the logic here, unless you’re the type who thinks that we made a mistake trading flint for bronze. Extremes aside, your argument could be applied equally well to bleeding people for “medicine” without changing more than the word “spanked” to “bled”. That should probably give you pause.

Your critique isn't much better, my friend. You are exaggerating his argument terribly ("bleeding people" like old times?) rather than looking at his actual point. He is saying that spanking was, and he claims is , still common. I don't personally have data, but I was certainly spanked, and I never thought it unusual. I hated it and vowed not to spank my own, which I never have. But I have no data on the rest of the…

Right. markdown was obviously not saying "children ought to be spanked because it's traditional and currently common," but rather, "you should not be 'amazed' that people feel that way because it is common."

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#15

Post by khazhou »

delinka wrote: post #11
khazhou wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's helped me cope with pressure from bosses was the realization that when they're shitting on someone, it's usually because their own boss is shitting on them (and on upwards). Then it's less personal, less an issue of someone in authority judging your performance, and becomes more of a team effort/problem: I will try to fix the issues, so that my boss's issue goes away, so his boss's issue goes away, and then we…

But a good manager is a shit umbrella, keeping the shit off you. I'm supportive of providing solutions so that everyone's lives improve, but one must be careful not to give the impression that the way to make the underlings perform is to let the shit roll downhill.

True, but I'm not saying it's a going thing to roll shit down... I'm saying that it would behoove people to realize that when their manager is angry, it's probably because their manager is angry at them. One can do with that insight what they will. Personally, it helps me cope with stressful situations, to realize I'm not the odd man out, and that everyone struggles to get it right.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#16

Post by Baeocystin »

georgebarnett wrote: post #2

It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour, rather than simply causing the issue to be hidden and breaking down trust and then later having it resurface many times worse.

Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I think she made the right choice the times she did.

To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of poking around outlets again. No, it did not make me resentful, and more dedicated to wirepokery than before; my parents were consistently trustworthy, so I took their fear reaction as something I should genuinely respect. And that very small amount of added fear in my life quite possibly saved it. If I got spanked for every little thing, I could easily see that shifting to resentment. But appropriately, rarely applied, I can say with certainty it worked for me.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#18

Post by GavinMcG »

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #8
markdown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour I think it's safe to assume that most humans currently alive were spanked as children and most parents alive today spank their children. If that assumption is true, than it's not amazing... it's just the norm.

Arguing from tradition on a tech forum? I’m not sure I see the logic here, unless you’re the type who thinks that we made a mistake trading flint for bronze. Extremes aside, your argument could be applied equally well to bleeding people for “medicine” without changing more than the word “spanked” to “bled”. That should probably give you pause.

I think you understood the comment to be endorsing spanking, where I read it as just an explanation of why people might assume violence is the answer.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#19

Post by peteradio »

khazhou wrote: post #13

Eh, this article was a bit "Reader's Digest". Parent tries to solve problem, gives up and lets fate have its way, problem goes away when parent wasn't looking, parent-child have a moment of trust which reveals that the problem was something simple all along. Life lesson learned. How about when it's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but…

I think the main lesson is not to lose your cool or act against your own instinct when others are in crisis or putting pressure on you.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#20

Post by sdrothrock »

khazhou wrote: post #13

Eh, this article was a bit "Reader's Digest". Parent tries to solve problem, gives up and lets fate have its way, problem goes away when parent wasn't looking, parent-child have a moment of trust which reveals that the problem was something simple all along. Life lesson learned. How about when it's not a simple underlying problem ("hands get dry in cold climate")? A speech impediment which is cute in a small kid but…

> I agree with the article on not getting angry, but I'm not going to get a new life lesson from "if your kid trusts you they will open up."

I think expecting life lessons from everything on HN is counterproductive -- we don't need to get something life-changing from every single thing here for anything to be worthwhile. I think there were a lot of takeaways about communication and relationships -- not just parent-child relationships -- that could be useful to almost anyone here.

For me, "Investing energy into fighting with someone because no one knows the solution is just an exercise in undermining trust." was worth the entire read. Someone could just come out and say that, but it was made more meaningful and memorable to me because of the story. I'd always been aware of this concept but had never seen it verbalized until now, and that was valuable to me.

Shortly after that is another line: "I had caved to pressure because I felt threatened."

This is another concept that I thought was really important in conjunction with the first and it was nice to have them verbalized together; together they probably explain a lot of conflicts within a team.

Just considering them is useful for me, since it brings up related thoughts, like "don't threaten people, they may cave to pressure instead of reacting reasonably."

Sure, these are all simple concepts, but I appreciate the stimulus that made me sit down and recall/consider them. :)

Post reply on HN