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Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

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Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#181

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

35208654 wrote: post #143

There’s a hack hidden in this message, one that I’ve built an entire career out of: learn to not take anything personally in a professional context unless you absolutely must. Several times in my career I have heard someone say, “stay away from so-and-so, he’s an asshole.” And every time, literally every time, I have gotten along with them famously. Why? Because I discovered that that I could use the message these in…

It's the social version of The Robustness Principle/Postel's Law[1]. Be careful about how you communicate (and how your communication can be interpreted), be accepting about how others communicate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#182

Post by PragmaticPulp »

falcolas wrote: post #111

My 2¢: Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure). Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your b…

> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).

I had a manager who would quietly disagree with things we said, then try to gently steer us toward the answer he wanted by asking a lot of leading questions. "Socratic method", he called it. He thought he was doing us a great favor by helping us discover the correct answer through his questioning.

There was a problem: He was sometimes wrong. In certain domains, he was frequently wrong. He often misunderstood a situation and would launch into multiple days or weeks of leading questions designed to gently guide us to the "correct" answer, often leaving us with "something to think about" that we were supposed to ponder overnight.

Some times we'd spend days trying to guide him back to seeing where he was wrong, or why he was asking the wrong questions. Once he convinced himself he was right and we were wrong, it was hell to stop his socratic method questioning and get him to look at the facts again.

It was awful. I spent so much of that job trying to guess what he was thinking. We always had to reverse engineer what he wanted us to say with his questions, because he wouldn't just tell us like adults talking to each other.

If I learned anything from that job, it's that I can't stand working with people who won't communicate directly. We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#183

Post by s1artibartfast »

I think this principal has great application to political discourse, and I struggle everyday to apply it.

In terms of politics, the fundamental question can be reframed to ask, "are you trying to change someone's mind or are you trying to argue and feel self-superior".

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#184

Post by wruza »

yarg wrote: post #22
geraneum wrote: post #4

This reminds me of: “People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.” Richard J. Needham

I think that there's the need to a counterpoint to the world that says "you're beautiful, you're smart, you're perfect just the way you are.". A lot of the time the modern world tells us that feelings are more important than objective reality. It's bullshit.

It’s not bullshit, but yeah the line has to be drawn. Feelings are important until they are based on made up bs.

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#185

Post by eyelidlessness »

yarg wrote: post #164
eyelidlessness wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had cared about the consequences, it might have served everyone better (yourself included) if you’d found a constructive way to discuss concerns you’d had for months, so everyone involved would have a better chance of success. It’s possible you’d done that, but it sounds very much like you just left a situation in a far from ideal state until you chose to categorically write off a whole person who may not have…

It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented. And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks. Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it. (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through th…

> It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented.

Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong.

> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.

I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from your assessment of their person. Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient and faced a longer and harder climb to meet expectations (your own or external)? How much would it help you improve if you were designated not smart enough, full stop, no path forward?

> Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.

> (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)

I’m sorry but here I have to call bullshit. You have more informed criteria as a dev about testing than a layperson about construction. You probably have enough familiarity with the system under test to do an adequate job testing it even if you’re not well versed in the broader role of dedicated testing. I’m not saying you were in a position to mentor the tester, or that it was your job to do so. But you were definitely in a position to make more constructive recommendations than blurting out that a person is inadequate.

If I might be more constructive myself, it sounds like you might benefit from becoming more familiar with the testing role you’re evaluating individual competency for. If nothing else it’ll make you a better dev. Maybe you and everyone else will be lucky and you’ll be a little more able to help your teammates succeed, and know how to fill in gaps so you can succeed too.

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#186

Post by frankish »

lmm wrote: post #134

If it were possible to always deliver unpleasant truths kindly then of course we would prefer it. But in practice we have limited time and limited ability, so in reality the choice will often be between delivering an unpleasant truth bluntly and not delivering it at all. Whenever you say something that a reasonable recipient would find upsetting, it means you've failed, in the same way that when you have to add an ex…

As someone that feels they fit the "Super-reasonable" criteria, I personally struggle with this aspect: it takes me a long and stressful amount of time to be able to think of how to respond to people in a "Leveler" manner. In my opinion, it's impossible to do this because there is no objective criteria for how to satisfy it!

One might argue to stop at "good enough," but whose the judge on"good enough"? Again, no objective criteria!

I am strongly awaiting LLMs to at least automate "good enough" for me in communication, so that my perfectionism doesn't have to be directly involved.

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#189

Post by yarg »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #185
yarg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented. And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks. Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it. (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through th…

> It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented. Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong. > And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks. I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from…

> Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient

I've never been in a position where I lacked the ability to develop the skills that I needed to be proficient.

If I were ever that inadequate on a team project, I would leave of my own volition.

Re: Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

#190

Post by DoreenMichele »

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and mansplaining is a concept because what works for X person may not work for Y person no matter how hard they try. Two people doing the exact same thing can get different results because they are different people.

Science is the art of trying to suss out what is reliably true in physical reality and a lot of things are more art than science because context weighs so heavily on the detail of what's real or true or practical.

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