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You Have to Feel It

mitchellh.com

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Re: You Have to Feel It

#111

Post by johnfn »

pendenthistory wrote: post #101
johnfn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're trying to tell me that I don't actually enjoy my work? That seems observably untrue from my perspective? If you don't enjoy your work, that's fine, but trying to tell people who do that they actually don't doesn't make any sense to me.

Whenever someone claims to enjoy or love their job, I'm extremely suspicious. Usually it's some form of cope, because without it how could you stand having to work 8+ hours a day for 40 years? Easier to tell yourself you actually love it. I'm sure you enjoy aspects of your work. But I would guess if you won $100m you wouldn't keep going. If you truly enjoyed it, you would do it for free.

Dismissing anyone who isn't already aligned with your world view as "just cope" seems an unproductive strategy to having a discussion.

If I won 100M, I wouldn't work the exact same job - I'd probably move into an adjacent role that was more ambitious and took on a lot more risk, because I would be a lot less concerned if the company I was working for crashed and burned. The outlines of my role would stay the same.

I feel I've been clear-headed about my feelings about work. It took a lot of thinking to get to a place I enjoy. I haven't always enjoyed my work; I've worked at places that I hated and places that were just meh. But yeah, my current work is awesome, I happily do it nights and weekends just for fun (much to the chagrin of my girlfriend). Most people I work with, and most friends I have outside of work, feel similarly. I'm sorry you don't feel the same, but I encourage you to think before telling other people they feel a different way than they actually do.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#112

Post by Wowfunhappy »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #76
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever you think about Apple, I find it hard to believe that the team that developed the original iPhone could have done so without feeling it. Perhaps that was just the magic of Jobs, who definitely felt things . But he didn't make the iPhone single handedly.

I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

> something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market.

I agree, but I don't think it would have been as polished as the iPhone out of the gate.

> Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the Newton was perhaps better than you're giving it credit for, but my point isn't that Apple makes great products, it's that it's possible at certain times for certain teams within large companies to "feel it".

Perhaps entertainment could be another example. Do you think the team that made Wall-E didn't "feel it"? What about Zelda Breath of the Wild?

Re: You Have to Feel It

#113

Post by LoganDark »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #99
hakunin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew to believe that feelings have hard-to-recognize rationales that can be explained if you dig deep enough. Very few people ever do however. Recognizing the rationale is a great skill to have in many circumstances where you give feedback, like code reviews for example. It's also a skill that makes you a better teacher.

I’m on board with the idea here, but the way you worded it makes it sound like “rationalizing” which is generally considered harmful. Is this different from rationalizing? Or are we saying that rationalizing is okay if you are sufficiently attuned to your feelings?

I get the impression you're using 'rationalizing' to mean finding a reason for an emotion that doesn't necessarily match the true source of the emotion. This is different from recognizing the existing rationale, which is exactly why it's generally considered harmful. If one gets in the habit of finding new rationales for their emotions that sound more favorable, they can also get in the habit of no longer keeping their true rationales in check, which I would assume tends to result in sociopathic behavior.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#114

Post by elktown »

mitchellh wrote: post #36
mosselman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring and feeling are not mutually exclusive. This is just the frame that the author is trying to prop up in order to sell us their shallow, meaningless piece. I wouldn’t normally even comment something like this about someone’s article, but I see this pattern a lot in “influencer” content that people sometimes share with me and I am worried that if we don’t point it out, we will lose our ability to spot nonsense…

(Author of the linked blog post). Look at my other posts and you'll see I'm not like an "influencer content" person. I purposely made this piece shallow to encourage more people to read it and discuss the core idea, rather than get distracted by specific examples or points. I've blogged long enough on a personal level, done corporate PR long enough at a professional level, to know that the more words there are, the m…

I couldn't help but laugh when reading this, knowing that 80% of this thread would be picking apart any specific example if you provided one - completely missing any kind of "reading between the lines" message.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#115

Post by dmichulke »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

> You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded One of the worst hires I ever worked with was excellent on paper, came with good credentials, had an impressive resume, and did objectively well on the interview questions. However, everyone who interviewed him felt uneasy about him. He failed the vibe check, even though he checked all of the boxes and knew all the right thin…

You call it "vibes" but I believe this is due to your not recognising the manipulative behaviours as they occur:

- not answering questions (e.g. by asking counterquestions or giving long-winded non-answers)

- not taking responsibility in bad outcomes (when asked about problems they were facing)

- not saying "I don't know"

- using "we" for bad outcomes and "I" for good outcomes (socialising loss, privatising profit)

...

Re: You Have to Feel It

#116

Post by LoganDark »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

> You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded One of the worst hires I ever worked with was excellent on paper, came with good credentials, had an impressive resume, and did objectively well on the interview questions. However, everyone who interviewed him felt uneasy about him. He failed the vibe check, even though he checked all of the boxes and knew all the right thin…

That person sounds exactly like a sociopath (someone who lacks empathy).

Re: You Have to Feel It

#117

Post by henrebotha »

hakunin wrote: post #81
mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

I grew to believe that feelings have hard-to-recognize rationales that can be explained if you dig deep enough. Very few people ever do however. Recognizing the rationale is a great skill to have in many circumstances where you give feedback, like code reviews for example. It's also a skill that makes you a better teacher.

Various studies have shown that trying to explain the reasons for a decision can often cause people to make worse decisions. I remember there was one where lay people were able to taste and rate jams with a high degree of correlation to the ratings of expert tasters; but when asked to explain _why_ they rate one jam better than another, their ratings suddenly drastically disagreed with experts'.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#119

Post by kibwen »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #112
paulryanrogers wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

> something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. I agree, but I don't think it would have been as polished as the iPhone out of the gate. > Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often. As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the Newton was perhaps better than you're giving it credit for, but my point isn't that Apple makes…

> as polished as the iPhone out of the gate

I think people are forgetting how extremely unpolished the iPhone was out of the gate. No app store. Even something as fundamental as copy/paste took until years later.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#120

Post by ksec »

I think that shows if you are a product person. And product people are a rare breed. Within them, you will need to find someone who could do or understand business, operation, sales and marketing. Something every successful entrepreneur will eventually acquired.
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