Being Shy Is Just a Bad Habit, and You Can Break It With Regular Practice • Hacker News Board

Re: Being Shy Is Just a Bad Habit, and You Can Break It With Regular Practice

#61

Post by ajays » Sun, May 13, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #49

ajays wrote: post #21

As I read the comments, I see people becoming polarized very quickly. People are comparing shyness to homosexuality, etc. I think we need to calm down. As I read the article, it is saying that if you think you're handicapped (as in, at a disadvantage, before someone brings up physically disabled people) in society due to shyness, then it is possible to work on it and overcome the handicap to a large extent. If you ar…

Why you think you would necessarily enjoy conversation with random person you know nothing about, probably share no interests and have no common goals? Unless by "conversation" you don't actually mean conversation...

Discovering each others interests and performing an intersection of the two sets is also a conversation ... :)

Re: Being Shy Is Just a Bad Habit, and You Can Break It With Regular Practice

#62

Post by billybob » Sun, May 13, 2012, 10:41 PM UTC

slowpoke wrote: post #38

billybob wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'It's not OK to fire someone because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc; but firing someone because they are "shy" or "introverted" or "not a people person" seems to be perfectly acceptable and legal. Shouldn't that be considered discrimination as well? (Assuming that "being good with people" isn't a requirement of the job.)' What do you mean by 'a requirement of the job?' Is that a concrete, un…

I think the important distinction should be between "traits that have nothing to do with the job". and those that do. Race, gender, sexual orientation, spiritual creed etc almost always have nothing to do with your job (examples such as a priest naturally exist). Shyness or introversion pretty much also fall into this category, though with a bigger grey area. So no, I don't think shyness should be a protected trait b…

It's a huge gray area. To expand on your point, if you're a socialist Buddhist and I'm a libertarian Muslim, there's nothing legitimate about that difference that makes me unable to code alongside you. We might not hang out, but we can debate the merits of application designs and help each other with bugfixes.

But I'd say personality is very different. Personality is basically a summary of what it's like to work with me. If I'm too shy to express ideas or passive aggressive or so extroverted that I won't stop talking and let you work, that's a real, practical problem.

"I can't get along with you" is a perfectly valid reason for me to quit if you're my boss or fire you if you're my employee. Anything restricting that will create dysfunction. How can this be compatible with making personality a protected class?

Heck, personality isn't even clear-cut like gender or disability is; I'm not clear on how you could even write such laws.

Re: Being Shy Is Just a Bad Habit, and You Can Break It With Regular Practice

#63

Post by smsm42 » Mon, May 14, 2012, 12:31 AM UTC

ajays wrote: post #61

smsm42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you think you would necessarily enjoy conversation with random person you know nothing about, probably share no interests and have no common goals? Unless by "conversation" you don't actually mean conversation...

Discovering each others interests and performing an intersection of the two sets is also a conversation ... :)

Yes, sure, but you may pre-screen before - random selection of people happening to be in a particular bar at particular time is not the promising method. I'm not saying it can't work - I'm just saying it's not the one that people should be crushed if they're not having much success with it. It's like being depressed that playing lottery still didn't make you a billionaire and thinking there must be something wrong with you because of that.