141–150 of 401 posts
This hits so close to home for me personally. I recently got some feedback that seemed very similar (it seemed much more useful and constructive than what boz got) and I recently had a similar realization about my friends putting up with me. Thanks for writing and publishing this. It's very good.
If you received or find good ways to actually make these changes, please write about it.
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> "People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant." The addition of "retail staff" here surprised me. I'm a techie who took a break from tech and startups the past few months to help out my S.O., who owns a retail store. I worked the front counter, ran inventory, etc. for the past 3 months. I had neve…
Not the OP, and cool story; however, what they're paid doesn't matter, it's a red herring. It's their JOB to deal with people and and it's not my job as a shopper to validate the emotions of the counter worker or my co-workers. Ring up my stuff, take my money, and let me leave. You're chastising him for his "attitude"; what attitude? He's correct and he didn't display any attitude other than simple honesty.
I had a completely different interpretation of the incident at Facebook. He had developed some key features that were now important. Instead of mentoring him to work better with others, his boss demoted him. The boss was giving someone else a favor, making them the lead of this now-important project, some up-and-coming hotshot. He made up an excuse about "bad attitude", while just using it as cover for backstabbing h…
> The boss was giving someone else a favor, making them the lead of this now-important project, some up-and-coming hotshot. He made up an excuse about "bad attitude", while just using it as cover for backstabbing him. so, basically someone who was competent and agreeable was favored by his boss to get a promotion, and the person who acted like a know-it-all dickhead 24/7 got sent to the basement. that's a real shocke…
From the viewpoint of a dickhead, an honest and intelligent person is a dickhead. The honest and intelligent person has the potential to expose the dickhead as a dickhead, so the dickhead will do everything he can to convince everyone else that the honest and intelligent person is a dickhead.
A dickhead would see an honest and intelligent person as a dickhead, and be able to lie convincingly enough to establish it as fact in the eyes of others.
In fact, a highly skilled dickhead can convince an honest person that "standing up for yourself" is a dickhead behavior.
I have no way of telling if the OP is a dickhead or not, because I haven't met him. My guess is "not a dickhead, he was just convinced by dickheads the he actually was the dickhead".
So, he learned to act in a manner least likely to offend dickheads. I don't want to work with dickheads, so I don't bother with that skill.
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Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep…
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…
I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about.
In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
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> It's perfectly OK to disagree with someone; but please consider doing so in a respectful and thoughtful tone. The problem I've found is I literally get ignored and end up repeatedly dealing with the same mess until I stop being "kind" about it. I generally have to do literally 10x as much work to be "kind" than when I'm less generous about it. The problem with kindness is its frequently taken [in IT, in places I've…
This is confusing "kind" with "nice". If your audience can handle some directness, be direct. It's okay to say, "This is a horrible idea, and I can't believe we're considering this." That can be kind when you care about the person you're talking to. What's unkind is saying, "You're an idiot, and that's a ridiculous idea." Attacking people is not kind, but directness _can_ be kind. On the other hand, you deserve to be…
I don't call people idiots at work but I can behave in a way some people view as "adversarial".
> On the other hand, you deserve to be shown some kindness too. If your coworkers don't listen to you, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job.
Oh, they listen they just don't agree. That is the problem with the general "kindness" bit. People simply assume if you are being kind about it that it isn't a big deal.
Many, many people operate on the "If you are not upset, this is not a serious issue". After all, if it only impacts them rarely...it isn't important to them personally.
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> The boss was giving someone else a favor, making them the lead of this now-important project, some up-and-coming hotshot. He made up an excuse about "bad attitude", while just using it as cover for backstabbing him. so, basically someone who was competent and agreeable was favored by his boss to get a promotion, and the person who acted like a know-it-all dickhead 24/7 got sent to the basement. that's a real shocke…
You're confused about how the dickhead non-dickhead spectrum works. From the viewpoint of a dickhead, an honest and intelligent person is a dickhead. The honest and intelligent person has the potential to expose the dickhead as a dickhead, so the dickhead will do everything he can to convince everyone else that the honest and intelligent person is a dickhead. A dickhead would see an honest and intelligent person as a…
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I rather liked that book and want to disagree with many of the points it tries to make, but find myself choosing not to. It is not economically or socially beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but my personal morality triumphs over both of those. If someone is wrong, they are wrong and I will let them know they are wrong. It won't win me any friends and it isn't beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but I…
my personal morality triumphs over both of those. If someone is wrong, they are wrong and I will let them know they are wrong. So, your personal morality requires you to not only offend people, but to reduce the odds of them hearing what you're saying because you choose to deliver it in an unkind manner. This is absurdly self-serving of you, and really only goes to show that you're not actually interested in "[lettin…
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Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?
"Text does not communicate tone" is a huge problem. You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. Being kind can be more concise. Here is an example that my fiance recently pointed out... I think the single biggest mistake people make in communication is reminding the other person they are incorrect when that does not change the content. "As I told you Monday, the rea…