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Help me ask why you didn't just

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Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#131

Post by teekert »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #103

Last year I was on a project where we couldn’t get something to work despite all efforts. Pretty much all managers walked by some weeks in and asked “why don’t you just do X?”. Whenever I heard the J word I pretty much stopped listening and told them “no problem. here is the code. Here is the server. Just do it.”. It’s incredibly disrespectful to walk up to people who have worked on something for months and then you…

I think you would be a difficult person to work with if you get offended by that one little word. I understand that it can be annoying to be asked repeatedly but just work on an elevator pitch to explain why you didn't use X. You might even earn some respect in the process. The way you act now will "just" (sorry!) make people feel like that have to walk on eggs around you and handle your brittle mood with silk gloves. Next time they will ask someone else.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#132

Post by sudhirj »

I say “what was the problem with sshd”? This gives the other person the benefit of the doubt, and also compliments them on being rational actors who obviously evaluated this already and are now going to report their findings. If they haven’t considered it, they usually just say so, and if they have and their concerns have workarounds or are incorrect I address the concerns without making it personal. Or they might just right, and know something I don’t.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#133

Post by teekert »

Edman274 wrote: post #41

Here's the suggestion: don't ask! What are you going to do with the information? If you ask and the answers are reasonable , then ... so what? What have you meaningfully learned? You've learned that an existing solution does not completely solve a problem. Now you understand the problem a little better, and you understand the shortcomings or deficiencies of a pre-existing solution a little better, but you're signalli…

"Don't patronize someone by saying..." I'm sorry but a company where people confuse genuine curiosity into your work and chosen solutions with patronizing would feel so toxic to me that I would leave very soon. Don't be a snowflake, just answer the question honestly. Maybe you should have used sshd and you should stop wasting time doing what your are doing right now. Or maybe sshd doesn't cut it and the person asking you why you didn't use it is going to learn something new. Fear of patronizing is inhibiting honest open communication.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#134

Post by Dylan16807 »

k_sze wrote: post #117
Dylan16807 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two parts to the problem. You don't want to sound mocking, but you also don't want to come across as a doofus who thinks their ten seconds of thought is automatically insightful, even as you're the twentieth person to suggest turning if off and on again. When someone has been working on something for a week or more, a naive "What if we tried using sshd here?" fails that latter test pretty hard.

Perhaps. But if I'm the proverbial twentieth person to ask the same question, it's probably a hint that it should be documented/explained prominently - maybe in a README, maybe as a comment in the source code, maybe some other suitable place. And maybe it's just me. I'm a team lead and I have constant impostor syndrome. I was airborne into an existing team of junior devs who had no real team lead, but some of the dev…

> But if I'm the proverbial twentieth person to ask the same question, it's probably a hint that it should be documented/explained prominently

If you're joining a project, or it's published, sure.

If you're just having a conversation you don't start off by skimming a dozen pages of documentation. So put in a tiny amount of effort with your wording, to show you realize they might have thought of this already.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#135

Post by Dylan16807 »

Ma8ee wrote: post #121
Dylan16807 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also makes them look like a giant idiot if they actually made a mistake by not considering it. Maybe not the best thing to risk.

But that is kind of unavoidable. When I do screw up, I rather find out by an honest question, where I can be the one answering, "duh, I should have thought of that!", instead of gradually realising that the only one that doesn't know that I'm wasting my time is I.

It's partly unavoidable, but you make the embarrassment far worse if you act like it's so obvious that they clearly must have tried it, you don't even need to ask.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#136

Post by krngrvr09 »

I'd say "Hmm, what about sshd?" or "Hmm, what do you think about sshd?" I'd also say it's more about how you say it than what you say. If I were to use the aforementioned questions, I'd come from a place of self-doubt and I think which is exactly what "Response 2" in the article says it is.

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#138

Post by nothrabannosir »

luxuryballs wrote: post #129

You’d think this guy works in an adult daycare center, either that or I’m an asshole. Why didn’t you just ask the question and not worry about how it comes across instead of writing an article about it? :P

I’m happy somebody pays this much attention to what emotions they cause in others. Communication with humans is hard, and people get it wrong every day. The people who don’t realise this are either natural born communicators, or rough to be around, in my experience. People accommodate rude colleagues but it’s rarely pleasant. For the rest of us, this much introspection is what it takes to decrypt the codex.

If you find yourself thinking this article is over the top, either you’re lucky, or your colleagues are not :)

Re: Help me ask why you didn't just

#140

Post by rfrey »

luxuryballs wrote: post #129

You’d think this guy works in an adult daycare center, either that or I’m an asshole. Why didn’t you just ask the question and not worry about how it comes across instead of writing an article about it? :P

I think words matter, because they convey an underlying attitude toward a person's work, and that attitude matters.

Consider an extreme: "You're an idiot, any competent person would have done X".

Obviously that would be rude, disrespectful, and arrogant. Nobody would say that, but it suggests there is a continuum of responses from "I do not respect your work at all" to "I respect your work but think you might have overlooked something". There's a line somewhere on that continuum (which is going to vary by person) that separates useful input from arrogant drive-by criticism.

If I want my suggestions to be taken seriously, I should take care that I'm on the right side of the line. Using the word "just" implies that your proposed solution is obvious and trivial, and will probably be on the far side of the line for lots of people.

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