201–210 of 279 posts
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It was directed inward, too. "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard," was a common phrase at MS in the 90s.
fwiw that kind of phrase isn't necessarily 'jerky.' As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her, and are just disagreeing with their idea, then it can be fine. It's a risky communication strategy, but I wouldn't condemn everyone who uses it.
Well, let's look at it from the "the jerk"'s perspective. How would feel if other people accomplished 1/10th what you did? What if they got paid 80% of what you got paid too? What if teaching them took so much of your time that it was faster to do it yourself than hand-hold them through the process? What if, despite producing more than the rest of the team combined, management saw you as a problem, and wasn't interes…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
fwiw that kind of phrase isn't necessarily 'jerky.' As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her, and are just disagreeing with their idea, then it can be fine. It's a risky communication strategy, but I wouldn't condemn everyone who uses it.
It's hard to feel respected when you're constantly hearing all about how "fucking stupid" your ideas are. I know in theory you're supposed to separate criticism of your ideas from criticism of you, but in reality that isn't always easy when the statements being made are so strong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
fwiw that kind of phrase isn't necessarily 'jerky.' As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her, and are just disagreeing with their idea, then it can be fine. It's a risky communication strategy, but I wouldn't condemn everyone who uses it.
> As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her what kind of person would say that with full vitriolic sincerity to someone they respect? Why say that when you could say, "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." or something else similarly diplomatic and actually productive?
That kind of bland vocabulary makes one's statements sound like limp static. Corporate dialect is contrived to remove strong (corporate-environment-inappropriate) emotion from your speech. If you're well acquainted with your colleagues, then I'd hope you could express yourself more genuinely. You're probably more relatable than a peppy talking head who never offends anyone.
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Fire and courtesy are hardly incompatible. But it's more than twice as hard to achieve both as to manage one or the other. It's also a question of circumstance. Right now, for example, I'm working to mitigate, and eventually to resolve, a morale crisis on my team, which exists for good and cogent reasons that don't merit discussion here. Now is not the time for fire - and fire alone in any case works only when the vi…
Fire is not always the solution to any problem of course, but a lack of being results driven can make for large morale problems in itself - especially in engineering where you can keep working on one insignificant detail or another in perpetuity. I've spent months constantly asking for business goals to be set so we can meet them and being told to hang tight. I've left those companies because the environment becomes…
In any case, I'm not trying to argue with you, and I hope I don't come across as if I were. It's just that I feel like there's a strong reaction in this thread to a bias, whether perceived or actual, on the part of the article author and in the direction of courtesy. So my purpose here is to sound a cautionary note, and attempt to keep visible in the discussion what I regard to be the nuance of the matter.
Especially since a lot of engineers default to brusqueness, which I totally understand while finding often counterproductive. It can work in a collegial setting, among secure peers who share mutual respect, but in any other context it just looks like asshole behavior - and that is exactly what it is.
To understand one's audience, and adjust one's persuasive style to suit, is a fundamental aspect of rhetoric, and given the ubiquity of office politics and the necessity thereof - a topic meriting its own essay, which I will not write on a phone - such understanding and adjustment is important to professional success, as well. I think that's something it is easy for us to overlook, because computers only need to be told and then sworn at, not persuaded.
Also, all else equal, it's both more ethically sound and more useful not to act like an asshole. Leaving a trail of hurt feelings behind you is no way to go through life. Sure, we might excuse it in someone with a vision on par with that of Steve Jobs. But no one here is on par with Steve Jobs.
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Hey that's me! I had a frustrating moment the other day where a colleague said that float(5) was more explicit and personally preferred in Python than a literal 5.0 I realised I was being pedantic but I genuinely believed in "good craftsmanship" when I really pushed him to change it. I need to get better at this because the social friction I caused may cost more than the poor craftsmanship. But the other part of me i…
Unless you can prove that one method is significantly faster or the other structurally dangerous, it is just a matter of coding style and opinion. Agree to disagree, or let the lint tool be the referee.
$ python -m timeit '5.0' 100000000 loops, best of 3: 0.00719 usec per loop
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> As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her what kind of person would say that with full vitriolic sincerity to someone they respect? Why say that when you could say, "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." or something else similarly diplomatic and actually productive?
Most people can see through "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." as a euphemism for "your idea is stupid, and this is why..." And the more you emphasize "strongly" in the former, the more likely "fucking" materializes between "is" and "stupid" in the latter. That kind of bland vocabulary makes one's statements sound like limp static. Corporate dialect is contrived to remove strong (corporate-environment…
http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/35-Brilli...
> A “No Jerks” Policy Must Be Built Into Your Culture. It is entirely possible to be extremely passionate (and even brilliant) without being a jerk. A “no jerks” policy must be preached and practiced from the highest levels. Following simplistic rules like this is usually what leaves us knee deep in the proverbial. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never worked with anyone who's as much of a jerk as described in the ar…
I agree... usually when a truly brilliant developer is causing more harm than good, it's because they aren't being effectively managed. That doesn't mean managing them is easy, but you want to pick and choose what problems you give them, who they work with, and how they work with customers. Of course, that's not my job :^)