Seems like a recipe for creating snowflakes. People should just grow a thicker skin and move on with their lives instead of taking offense and getting depressed that someone told them "just"
Just don’t
281–290 of 464 posts
Re: Just don’t
#282I'm all for cutting this out with medical advice and such (unsolicited advice, and importantly wrong advice), but this example annoys me: >You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” >This. Will. Not. Help. It's not fair…
Yeah, I don't think that example works very well.
The "just" isn't diminishing the problem, it's diminishing the debugging step. And that debugging step is legitimately simple.
There's definite room for improvement. The sentence is better if we either remove "just" or change it to "let's start by just scanning". But it's not the same problem as the overall article is describing.
Re: Just don’t
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, in my experience, migraines in particular are the worst for this because a ton of the common "justs" are actively conflicting "Just cut out caffeine/just try some caffeine when you feel one coming on!" "Just get more exercise/just make sure you're not exerting yourself too hard!" "Just get more sun/just make sure you're wearing sunglasses when you go out!"
Part of the reason why some of these suggestions conflict is because a lot of people with "migraines" have never been diagnosed, and are just complaining about a bad tension headache. Then many people are misdiagnosed. Finally, there are several theories about causes of migraine. Still, 100% true that people are usually unhelpful with their flippant medical advice.
> "Just cut out caffeine/just try some caffeine when you feel one coming on!"
The very "best" part of my journey was seeing a migraine specialist very early on. I told him that I thought maybe caffeine had something to do with it. He brusquely told me that caffeine had nothing to do with it. Twenty years later, I went to the same guy, because I had learned some new things. Again, I mentioned how much caffeine I was drinking, and he cut me off, and, again, brusquely told me that this was my whole problem. When confronted with the contradiction, he mumbled some things, and I got out of there. I was peeved. He retired not long after.
Another, very-thoughtful doctor I saw, explained that the East Coast / West Coast research hospitals are actually divided on the issue of how much caffeine contributes to migraines, so it's not like it's exactly clear.
In my experience, I can confidently say that caffeine withdrawal headaches and migraines are 2 different animals, but they can present with the same intensity of pain at times, so it is confusing.
Re: Just don’t
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I go with "my first impulse is to suggest..." which IMO adds the diplomatic nuance of admitting an incomplete understanding of the problem and/or the person experiencing the problem. Same here, with a slight variation. I usually say "my first thought is to try ..." or "the first thing that comes to mind for me is ..." Depending on the situation I might also use the old "Have you tried ..." phrasing.
I also like “could you try…” as a way of acknowledging that it’s a suggestion that may be unworkable for reasons I don’t know, and that I’m willing to hear that.
"could we try"
Re: Just don’t
#285Seems like a recipe for creating snowflakes. People should just grow a thicker skin and move on with their lives instead of taking offense and getting depressed that someone told them "just"
I dont think you are right about that, but for the sake of this comment lets assume that you are right and that this will create snowflakes.
Even if that's true on the macro scale its still incredibly useful to keep in mind the impact your language has on the mind of the person you are communicating with. If my goal is to get the person I am communicating with to do a thing, most of the time idgaf about whether or not I contributing to them becoming a snowflake. It does not matter why the persona you are talking to is getting offended. Offending people is counter-productive, so it should be avoided if you can avoid it.
Re: Just don’t
#286I'm all for cutting this out with medical advice and such (unsolicited advice, and importantly wrong advice), but this example annoys me: >You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” >This. Will. Not. Help. It's not fair…
It reminds me of the Robustness Principle [1] which states: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" I think this advice about the use of "just" applies. You should be liberal in accepting "just" statements from others but conservative in sending "just" statements to others. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
Credit where credit is due. That's Internet pioneer (Jon) Postel's Law:
> Perhaps his most famous legacy is from RFC760, which includes a robustness principle often called Postel's law: "an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior" (reworded in RFC 1122 as "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send").
Re: Just don’t
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
The next trick to learn is that the customer will still blame you for not telling them that landscape won’t fix it. Then you’ll waste less time the next time your customer asks for something stupid. Fail fast can work well for client management.
Solid advice. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to get heard. Should have just made it landscape (which took minutes) and let it fail. The trick is balancing that against wanting to be a consultant to them (i.e. somebody who knows what he’s doing and offers viable solutions that they themselves can’t think of) rather than a mindless pair of hands that gets directed by them to throw code at a wall.
> Solid advice. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to get heard. Should have just made it landscape (which took minutes) and let it fail.
Not necessarily. You'll just get back, "that's not what I meant by landscape".
Re: Just don’t
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I changed the orientation of the PDF as requested. This did not add any white space next to line items, since the line items table uses 98 % width either way, unlike when printing from Excel I guess. This is what I tried and failed to get heard yesterday. Also now in Landscape the cover page header takes up like 50% of the page. But hey “just make it landscape”. What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being…
> What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? maybe they have a scanner somewhere that works better with the landscape format ? some regulation to comply with ? I find it absolutely insufferable wh…
> have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? maybe they have a scanner somewhere that works better with the landscape format ? some regulation to comply with ?
Sure, which is why asking "why?" is so crucial. Or are you suggesting they try to comply to some regulatory requirement without actually knowing that they're doing so or what regulation must be complied with, so they can actually confirm compliance? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
Re: Just don’t
#289I thought this aversion was just my own insecurities.
I once had a manager that used to start every ask with this.
I finally shared with him that every time he throws the word "just" into an ask, it seems to minimize the actual work required to get X done. He acknowledged that he understood that things don't JUST happen, and to his credit, I want to say he stopped using can we just as his lead in.
It be became.
Can "we"
We.
Re: Just don’t
#290As soon as you recognise the word 'just' is problematic it can be very useful. As in, 'why don't you just'. If you find yourself about to say 'just', it's a great time to pause and think about why the person hasn't 'just' done what you're about to suggest. It usually gives a deeper insight into the problem - usually (but not always) it's a harder problem than it initially looks. And even if the solution really is obv…
this is an interesting technique. it sounds a bit difficult, but i will give it a try.