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Be Kind

briangilham.com

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Re: Be Kind

#201

Post by edraferi »

justifier wrote: post #87
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

this is a great anectdote, but the reason i am replying to your comment is because of your user name i am a huge fan of the turn of the century dancer isadora duncan and her lover who she first had a child with, the theatre set design theorist, edward gordon craig who she affectionately called endymion a complete aside, but if you have, or anyone reading this has, yet to read duncan's autobiography 'my life' i highly…

That is some really quality nerd stuff right there. Thanks!

Re: Be Kind

#202

Post by bluetwo »

I've worked with dozens of companies of various sizes over my career, and I've always found that this type of attitude starts at the top of the company. If managers are kind, curious, and tolerant of risks that might reap rewards, it is an indication the person at the top is running it that way.

If people are "blame-first, ask questions later" types, the person at the top is inevitably running the show by focusing on mistakes and miss-steps and their people follow suit. As result, people become wary of taking risk and run to assign blame, even before existence of an issue can be validated.

As a result, I don't think you can change these organizations. If their temperament doesn't match your own, you have to live with it or craft an escape plan.

Re: Be Kind

#203

Post by scrollaway »

southphillyman wrote: post #39
crush_xc wrote: post #17

This was literally the biggest issue for when I started at my first job. We had a team member who was terribly condescending and talked down to everyone but especially me. You could tell that he hated the fact that he was on a team with a junior developer and took every chance he had to made sure I knew I wasn't as good as him. It makes a terrifying environment to ask questions because who knows what kind of response…

Maybe I have just had bad experiences but a lot of developers do this thing where they answer a question with a snarky question. Sometimes it's annoying to be asked basic questions but behaving in a condescending way lends to people not asking questions at all and not communicating issues. It doesn't matter if the person is Jr. or Sr. I've seen good capable Sr. developers miss stories because they would rather be sil…

> Maybe I have just had bad experiences but a lot of developers do this thing where they answer a question with a snarky question.

Extends far further than the workplace. A few minutes in some of the more popular IRC channels on Freenode, you'll get the same experience. It's extremely frustrating, especially seeing it happen as an outsider to communities you like.

I feel like, in the same way that power generally corrupts people, "feeling smart" can corrupt the same way, coming down to the same attitude of feeling like you have an advantage over other people. Regardless of whether you actually are smart or not.

Re: Be Kind

#204

Post by 77pt77 »

masklinn wrote: post #130
77pt77 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except those people are disproportionately represented in positions of authority and you really can't cut them off without effectively becoming a pariah.

That seems to be a scenario more or less completely unrelated to TFA or the discussion.

I believe the SJW lingo you are looking for is "derailing".

Re: Be Kind

#205

Post by wyago »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #169
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

There are two schools of thought, especially in stock trading. 1) Reversion to the mean. This is what the above person believes and that this likely won't happen again. 2) Indication of a trend. The pilot is actually incompetent, and this will happen more frequently with this pilot than an average pilot.

I know you're probably not implying regression to the mean is causational, but that was my initial reading so I want to clarify for those who may not be familiar with the concept.

Regression to the mean is simply that any given datapoint is most likely to be the mean, or close to it. This means that any exceptional data point,up or down, can be expected to be followed up by the mean.

The example of this being misinterpreted that I am familiar with is that of a flight instructor's belief on training. When a pilot performed well, they wouldnt comment. If a pilot performed poorly, they would be punished. They believed this was better because when they praised a pilot, they would usually do worse the following run, and when they punish them they do better. This isn't technically wrong, they are just ascribing causation where there is none. I think I saw this example in Signal vs. Noise, but I'm not sure.

Basically, regression to the mean isn't a reason to pick someone who did poorly, it's a reason that that person will do no worse or better than they do normally.

Re: Be Kind

#206

Post by edraferi »

overgard wrote: post #181
scraft wrote: post #109

Nice little read. There is that little answer in the back of my head of: "It is a good question why I caused this problem. It is weird to think there is a competent company that has been around for so many years, yet they have no procedures in place to stop this from happening. You would think that any changes that could cause downtime on a clients website would go through an automatic test suite and only after passi…

Think of what you're saying on a meta-level here. You would basically be telling this guy, "I fucked up, but I'm blaming you for treating me like an adult instead of a child. You screwed up by giving me enough autonomy that I could make a mistake." That might not exactly be a smart career move.. On a more personal level, if someone shows you kindness in the face of a mistake, the last thing you want to do is throw it…

Good point. It's important to take responsibility even if you think there should have been guardrails.

Re: Be Kind

#207

Post by kbenson »

coldtea wrote: post #124
spenczar5 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to avert anyone else's confusion: Bob Hoover didn't die. Not sure what coldtea is referring to.

I was giving a different twist to the story to point that things can (and do) go differently to the rosy picture painted in it ("oh, you did a mistake once == you'll never make it again"). That's why in the except I kept, I didn't keep any reference to Bob Hoover. It's about the idea in the story, not some particular pilot.

This is one of those situations where "trust but verify" takes on a whole new importance.

There's a world of difference in how you should treat someone you know almost nothing about that makes an mistake that is almost fatal for you and someone you know to be fairly responsible. That doesn't mean don't be nice if you can, relative to the situation ("nice" when someone has almost killed you doesn't necessarily mean be cordial, it may mean cool down for a sec before attempting to get them fired), but it would be stupid to assume the same mistake won't happen again without knowing a bit more about how it happened in the first place.

Re: Be Kind

#208

Post by toomuchtodo »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #186
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

In my experience, while someone might be extra careful not to repeat a mistake that has burned them in the past, making a serious mistake is often a sign that someone is careless, and more likely to make other, different mistakes in the future.

> making a serious mistake is often a sign that someone is careless, and more likely to make other, different mistakes in the future.

Or under external pressures they have no control over.

Re: Be Kind

#209

Post by hx87 »

77pt77 wrote: post #192
kbenson wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps your mindset, and possibly your situation, might be improved if you assumed less about other people's thought process and motivation, or at least if you didn't assume you were correct. It's very easy to come up with ideas about what someone is thinking and why, it's much, much harder to be correct about that. By assuming you know why people are doing things, you've already biased yourself against futu…

I've had many of these people explicitly state that this is their state of mind after they realize they can't get their way. They'll do it in private so that their social standing doesn't suffer but they are very explicit about it. Not a lot of room left for assumptions after this. Downvote away.

> many of these people

How many, out of all the people you interact with? It's safe to make your assumption the people who revealed their workings to you, but not with everyone else.

Re: Be Kind

#210

Post by organsnyder »

77pt77 wrote: post #88
masklinn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except in real life people sometimes A minority of people are toxic, you start by cutting them slack as you'd do anyone else, then you cut them off. It's not really a problem.

Except those people are disproportionately represented in positions of authority and you really can't cut them off without effectively becoming a pariah.

In my experience, most of the time those people in positions of authority aren't actually malicious. They're either misinformed (the higher you get, the less you're able to have both depth and breadth of knowledge), or they have competing priorities.
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