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Just don’t

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Re: Just don’t

#351

Post by [deleted] »

quesera wrote: post #304
j6zauas4gz wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

I agree with you, because in the real world I do need to talk to people -- and people come in all psychological shapes and sizes! But on the flip side, there are few things I personally dislike more than being spoken to by someone who is being cautious of my feelings. It's slow. It's tedious. Most of them are bad at it. And honestly it's more disrespectful to imagine that you are going to upset me, than to just brave…

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#352

Post by TaylorAlexander »

actionablefiber wrote: post #17
unsupp0rted wrote: post #7

I get a lot more mileage out of "have you tried..." than "why don't you just...". As a recent example, I wrote a system that auto-generates PDF packing slips from an order form, to send to a warehouse for picking and packing. Yesterday a client told me to "just make it landscape" while I was explaining why "just making it landscape" won't solve the problem of giving the warehouse whitespace to pencil stuff in, becaus…

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. You either get a "good suggestion, I'll try that" as a response or you get "you might think it's a good idea but I already considered it and XYZ problems occurred" and you can work from there.

Everyone here is looking for ways to make unsolicited suggestions in a diplomatic way. Even with extra language this can be irritating to reply to. I’ve learned to first ask if there is anything I can do to help, rather than immediately making suggestions. Often times people are doing just fine working through a problem, and may want to communicate the status without receiving advice on how to solve it.

For interpersonal situations, people often just want to be heard without any advice being given. A simple “I hear what you’re going through and I’m here if you need anything” is way better than finding ways to immediately offer advice, but I believe this applies to professional situations as well.

Re: Just don’t

#354

Post by usefulcat »

This is a great example of the value of avoiding extraneous adverbs. In the given examples, ‘just’ is never necessary, and avoiding its use avoids condescension.

Re: Just don’t

#355

Post by travisjungroth »

mindcrime wrote: post #136
photochemsyn wrote: post #114

For the case of helping someone with a technical problem, as author notes. words like 'simply', 'merely, 'just' are downplaying the person's efforts and inherently cause unnecessary strife, discouragement, resentment, etc. Sometimes, letting them work through it for a while longer on their own is the better course. In the situation where help is clearly needed, 'let's consider possible solutions' is a better entry po…

In the situation where help is clearly needed, 'let's consider possible solutions' is a better entry point, along with 'let's ensure we don't make it worse' - i.e. take a snapshot of the current situation, store the current working file, etc. Meh. Just goes to show how communication is a very subjective and personal thing. To my ears, both of those phrases would sound extremely condescending and patronizing. If I wer…

Same. That's way worse. For technical problems where an obvious and easy solution comes to mind, I'm fine saying something like "just" and fine with having it said to me. I'm expecting to either hear why the obvious solution won't work (learning more about the problem) or, less likely, give them help by pointing out something easy they happened to not think of.

"I'm really struggling to set up external authorization for the /download endpoint."

"Why don't you just use @external on it?"

Hopefully leads to either

"This endpoint needs to...[extra constraints]."

"Ah, gotcha."

or, less likely

"There's an @external?"

"Yeah, let me show you."

There are some differences between this and questions like "Why don't you just go for a walk to stop feeling depressed?". Maybe the biggest difference is these tech solutions are not paradoxical. Someone's depression may be defined by their inability to do something like go for a walk and enjoy it. Suggesting they do that is not helpful.

The questions are also more sincere. Like, I literally want to know why you're not doing the easy solution. I'm actually assuming that there's a good reason, like some extra constraint. That's why am I asking "why not?" instead of speaking in the imperative.

There's also a critical difference of the offered solution being much easier than the one attempted, or very easy overall. I might say "Why don't you just sort it alphabetically?" but I wouldn't say "Why don't you just make a DSL?".

I guess it's just that I think it's okay to act like something is small when you really believe it is for the person you're speaking with.

Re: Just don’t

#356

Post by wkimeria »

bigiain wrote: post #327
kelseyfrog wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for bringing this up. This was a life lesson that unfortunately had to be spelled out for me in a very embarrassing way. My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. The result are on average better as people who want to vent are more put-off by advice givers than advice seeks who receive a good listener. It's also made me quite a bit more appreciative of times when I need to vent and…

> My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. Eve when it’s not listening to someone who’s venting, that can be really powerful anyway. The best sys admin I’ve ever work with used to keep a teddy bear on the end of her desk. When people came to her with a question or problem she’d say “talk to the bear”. It’s astounding how often explaining the problem to an inanimate object results in the sol…

This is why "rubber duck debugging" works.

I've had good luck explaining any thorny technical problem to any inanimate object on my desk. Often times, the mere act of doing this makes me really pay attention to my assumptions and the information I have gathered.

Re: Just don’t

#357

Post by [deleted] »

bigiain wrote: post #327
kelseyfrog wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for bringing this up. This was a life lesson that unfortunately had to be spelled out for me in a very embarrassing way. My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. The result are on average better as people who want to vent are more put-off by advice givers than advice seeks who receive a good listener. It's also made me quite a bit more appreciative of times when I need to vent and…

> My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. Eve when it’s not listening to someone who’s venting, that can be really powerful anyway. The best sys admin I’ve ever work with used to keep a teddy bear on the end of her desk. When people came to her with a question or problem she’d say “talk to the bear”. It’s astounding how often explaining the problem to an inanimate object results in the sol…

[deleted]

Re: Just don’t

#358

Post by enneff »

croo wrote: post #271
vasco wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do though? Just stand there quietly nodding? When I try to do this I end up basically saying "that sucks", "hmm hmm", "yeah", etc which is very frustrating to me as I'd hate someone doing that to me. Or worse, sometimes I get the feeling that those "that need a listener" actually want mindless agreement with whatever the situation was or I feel like I'll be reinforcing insecurities. Let's say someone is t…

You could try to associate this with the rubber duck trick where you just tell your problem to anyone, just to articulate the problem may very well solve it. You don't need input. In my experience this is also a women-men difference in brain wiring. Men often looks for help when he fails to solve a problem, women always looking for emotional support before solving a problem. If you give a solution for someone looking…

Also a lot of emotional problems don’t need to be solved, you just need to process the feelings and move forward.

Re: Just don’t

#359

Post by smcin »

bigiain wrote: post #327
kelseyfrog wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for bringing this up. This was a life lesson that unfortunately had to be spelled out for me in a very embarrassing way. My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. The result are on average better as people who want to vent are more put-off by advice givers than advice seeks who receive a good listener. It's also made me quite a bit more appreciative of times when I need to vent and…

> My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. Eve when it’s not listening to someone who’s venting, that can be really powerful anyway. The best sys admin I’ve ever work with used to keep a teddy bear on the end of her desk. When people came to her with a question or problem she’d say “talk to the bear”. It’s astounding how often explaining the problem to an inanimate object results in the sol…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

(At first I thought “talk to the bear” was some sort of folksy Eastern European way of telling the asker to go to hell)

Re: Just don’t

#360

Post by adenozine »

Alternatively, if you’re not fit for work, then don’t be at work?

I mean, at what point is it over the line to be useless at a job you’ve agreed to do, and that you demonstrated competence for and interviewed for?

Many times I’ve said things like “just restart the cronjob for this” or “just tag this issue to so-and-so if you can’t get it, they wrote the original” etc.

I’m all for taking care of yourself, but if you can’t handle the literal word “just” then maybe there’s bigger issues riding on your shoulders than my vocabulary.

These types of article are alienating to me, a bit. I’ve lead teams in government sector contracts, private mil, *-int, and many different analytical capacities and I’ve never heard someone criticize me for saying “just restart rstudio” or “just put a cache in and tag the issue to me for later”.

Truly bizarre. I don’t think the youth are this soft. The young folks I work with, granted are graduate age and older for the most part, are often very cordial and respectful and slick. Occasionally I see some hangovers, some sick calls, some romance drama, the usual bullshit, but never anything as microscopic as this.

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