There's nothing wrong in being nice and some chit-chat.
Any kind of work, well most kinds of work, are about people and relationships.
Building something with people when people can't relate to one another is quite hard.
I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
31–40 of 335 posts
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#32This article spends a lot of words to tell us that we should be more succinct in our communication.
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#33Some of those examples are genuinely different as they convey different intent and certainty. Also some of the basic small talk level things are also there to gauge someone’s responsiveness right now. To ask directly can mean “I believe my issue is important enough to immediately change what you’re thinking about to my problem without checking first”. You might complain about breaking your flow, which is fine, but an…
Yeah, skip the fluff about my having a good weekend if you need me to fix something, but a lot of those uncertainty markers aren't fluff, they're essential to honest, accurate communication. Similarly, many times when you say a variation on "I know you're the expert on the codebase" or whatever, that's because it's true and important . Something I think is a problem, which this article wants me to phrase as a short,…
And as a writer: I find that my instinct to write caveats like "I know you're the expert on the codebase" corresponds to a process I need to follow to verify the information. Emails like this can take me hours to write, as I scour the codebase, logs, etc for the missing pieces of information demanded by "mere politeness". Here's an example of a reply I got:
> Thank you for your careful report, I will attend to it asap.
The response was short and to the point, because no other information was relevant. And, indeed, I have written emails like that in the past. But, from the article:
> The fact that you were stressed, or that you had inherited the config from someone else, or that the documentation was unclear3, or that you asked your lead and they said it was probably fine, none of that is relevant to the incident report.
Those things are often all relevant. I beg the author to read a book about system-theoretic process analysis (STPA). Some are freely-available from the MIT PSASS website: https://psas.scripts.mit.edu/home/books-and-handbooks/. Nancy G. Leveson's CAST Handbook is perhaps most directly applicable.
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#34> The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "your feelings about how I might receive this are your problem to manage, not mine, just give me the information."
Isn't it quite the opposite? The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "my feelings about the information and how I might receive it are my problem to manage, not yours, just give me the information."
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#35I agree to a certain point, but I think about it in different terms – some people want to avoid any form of disagreement in order to maintain a kind of politeness, but I want to work on a team where people care enough to disagree with each other if something is wrong: https://joshduff.com/2024-07-18-communication-culture.html
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#36I'd say I generally agree with this sentiment, but it's important to first build the proper rapport with the recipient. If you show them kindness and respect outside the bounds of technical conversations, they'll be much more likely to assume the best of you when you communicate straight-forwardly over technical matters.
You also should take care to avoid crossing the line into just being a jerk. This type of thinking is also often used by people who are simply arrogant and rude and are patting themselves on the back for being that way in the name of "directness" or "efficiency".
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#37Given the subject, it is funny to me that this post is meandering and repetitive.
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#38Eh pick your battles. This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as meetings that could be emails (or worse— a couple chat messages back and forth).
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#39This sounds absolutely perfect for interaction with an LLM. It should be a toggle switch in settings.
Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me
#40“My quirky autism excuses me being an asshole” is how most of this reads. “Maximally direct” people need to learn how to mask better, and if it costs them too much then they’re not suited for professional work anyway.
Being direct isn’t being an asshole. Sprinkling random compliments and self-deprecating comments into useful feedback in a professional environment is disrespectful of time.
I’m convinced that the root cause is people are afraid to be wrong. Either they’re fearful of being fired, or think people will respect them less if they admit not knowing; the result is that everyone dances around objectivity.
I don’t care if you make an honest mistake. Hell, I don’t even care if you make a careless mistake, as long as you fix yourself. Everyone messes up - it’s how you act afterwards that matters.