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Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

improveyoursocialskills.com

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Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#61

Post by kempbellt »

wisty wrote: post #43

Why are social skills always focusing on the positive? A lot of programmers often seem to be more nice guys than anything else, and need to be able to be more assertive / aggressive. Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a…

I agree with this. I value high-friction environments where people are encouraged to compete and fight to support their ideas, where they feel valued for fighting for themselves, rather than patronized...

The real world doesn't coddle you. Work should reflect that to some degree - with some respect to being a decent person in general. Just knowing that you know your shit, and it's okay (preferred even), if you fight to be your own advocate.

There's a balance between negative and positive reinforcement. We can't simply look at being "nice" to each other all the time as an optimal solution. It's a great way to get completely side-swiped by someone who is even only slightly aggressive.

If I have a terrible idea, I'd rather hear someone tell me that it's a shit idea than patronizingly tend to my "feelings" on the matter.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#62

Post by groby_b »

allovernow wrote: post #45

>In a nutshell, you inspire me when something that you share makes me want to share something, too. Notice the word "want" in that definition. Inspiration does not make your partner feel obligated to share. It makes them want to share. This is the part that I've been stuck at for years. And I imagine other technical people hit this roadblock as well. Being able to talk with people when you have little in the way of c…

"since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code, or tech, or any of the things HN types tend to dedicate our lives to"

This is an open invitation to you to ask questions. "What are you really fascinated by? Do you have a thing that you dedicated all your free time to?"

And as for talking about code, don't talk about code - talk about why it's fascinating to you. What do you see there that makes it this spectacular thing?

And don't see it as "finding intimate partners", but "finding interesting people". If you're both interesting to each other, there's a much better chance of intimacy. (But still far from guaranteed)

It's not guaranteed to succeed, but "tell me about you" is a pretty good invitation, and "tell me about what motivates you" is good inspiration.

(And, as a side bar: It's worth finding one or two things outside code. Not to be more interesting, but because having a single focus is a good way towards burnout some years later)

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#63

Post by groby_b »

BlameKaneda wrote: post #27
slowhand09 wrote: post #25

My version. 1. Be polite 2. Ask questions. (Interesting people like to talk about themselves) Elicit more than Yes/No answers. 3. Answer questions put to you with more than Yes/No answers. (Interesting people like to learn more about interesting people)

| Interesting people like to talk about themselves That, or they love hearing themselves talk.

Of course they do. We all like having an audience. The trick about good conversations is to give that mutually.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#64

Post by saagarjha »

username90 wrote: post #47
ShteiLoups wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Engineering is a team sport" - me You need to be able to work with others to produce things, unless you always work alone. Social skills are a very important part of that.

The ability to partition work into independent chunks is way more important than social skills when you work as a software engineer with other software engineers. Then they can work on their things and you can work on yours with little need for further communication. And don't come saying that divvying up technical tasks is a social skill, it really isn't.

At some point your work needs to interact with other people's.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#65

Post by geoffreyhale »

wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

Empathy

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#66

Post by etagobla »

rafa1981 wrote: post #55
etagobla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but there's a certain line that a good software engineer should not cross and that's where their improved social skills make local gf attainment feasible, because then they'll start devoting their time to other things. In my case I can already see my increased HN karma pulling me away from our tablegen spec. With a gf I'd be useless.

Some people downvoting you may be lacking skills to detect that this, even if partly true, is a joke. For me it was good.

haha they don't like me today

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#67

Post by kempbellt »

allovernow wrote: post #45

>In a nutshell, you inspire me when something that you share makes me want to share something, too. Notice the word "want" in that definition. Inspiration does not make your partner feel obligated to share. It makes them want to share. This is the part that I've been stuck at for years. And I imagine other technical people hit this roadblock as well. Being able to talk with people when you have little in the way of c…

> since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code

This may reflect your subjective experience, but I have had a different experience and would (kindly) give you the heads up that this is a borderline sexist generalization. I've met women in the industry that are just as capable as nerding out over new tech as I am - even if it hasn't been very common (in my experience).

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#68

Post by Cyberdog »

christiansakai wrote: post #15
etagobla wrote: post #2

I feel like this is anti-progress. My industry's success depends on me sitting in my room coding and not having a gf.

I have a wife, I code, exercise, play weekend music gig, do aquascaping, and read various theological books and random books in random topics. . . . . . . Too bad I suck at all those above, and still suck in my social skills.

Is your wife still with you? Are people still paying you to code and play music? Has the exercise contributed positively to your health?

If yes, then you probably don't suck very much at those things after all.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#69

Post by wisty »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #58
wisty wrote: post #43

Why are social skills always focusing on the positive? A lot of programmers often seem to be more nice guys than anything else, and need to be able to be more assertive / aggressive. Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a…

I find people who are normally not assertive/aggressive overcorrect and lose even more respect. Just advocate for yourself and the things you care about. It's not always easy, but that doesn't necessarily mean aggression.

It's not just "overcorrect" it's also doing so in an incompetent way.

It's like asking out someone on a date. If you have less experience, you'll probably do so in a dumb way and are more likely to seem like you're harassing them.

There's a lot of gaslighting that the line is aggression / assertion line is primarily about your internal state (mind reading arguments are often a good sign people are wrong), but the line is often about competence.

Pretending people should never be assertive means we aren't letting them develop competence except through experience. Developing competence through experience (without any clear direction) is like letting people learn to drive by letting them crash a bunch of times and learn from it which is hardly optimal.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#70

Post by throwaway07Ju19 »

wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

I've taken this even further. I no longer correct any factual mistakes or misspoken words unless the person making this error is either a student or someone who reads. Even then it may be best to not say anything.
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