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Don’t point out something wrong immediately

blog.the-pans.com

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Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#71

Post by cespare »

Another problem with reflexively pointing out something wrong is that it's easy to be mistaken when you're hasty. Then you have the walk back the criticism and admit you were wrong. (Or double down and quibble about what exactly you meant, if you're that kind of asshole. Dealing with these folks is very tiresome.)

This is a big reason why batch-based code review systems are great. I can quickly work through a pull request and point out every little thing that I notice because it's all a draft. Then I go back through and review my review. Sometimes things that I thought were problems are just things I didn't understand yet. Sometimes things I pointed out initially aren't even worth bringing up. And for the remaining points I can check that my feedback has the right tone and will come across well.

I really miss this cycle when I need to use something like google docs as a feedback mechanism, where all the comments I leave are immediately mailed out.

Slack is another system that encourages hasty responses. My critical feedback is better when I'm writing up an email and not participating in a realtime conversation.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#72

Post by chernevik »

lr4444lr wrote: post #61

I just don't agree. Much better to set a culture where people are encouraged to put their ego aside and accept being corrected immediately and politely. The repetition and fast iteration is good for learning.

This. Let's please not make engineering another field where our first concern is whose feelings are hurt.

There are, of course, better and worse ways to raise concerns. "Why did you do it this way? It seems to me that . . . " leaves the conversation open to the possibility that there is good reason for something you don't understand. And if there are major problems, it might be better to privately approach someone (and/or their supervisor?) rather than torching them in public.

But if there is a problem, you aren't doing anyone any favors by keeping quiet.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#73

Post by sitkack »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
kodah wrote: post #6

I've learned to ask questions instead of utilizing call-out culture. I can ask what some component is doing, strategy to scale, etc... That usually works very well in place of me saying that I perceive something is "wrong". Example I saw empathy in the tags. How does empathy apply to this post?

Yes, this a very good approach - it gives people the opportunity to double check and spot it themselves, and it gives you an out if you're wrong. Bit of the old socratic dialogue.

One has to be very careful with socratic techniques, they can quickly become trite, patronizing and segue nicely into splaining. They are extremely useful and help give space to the state of things, but if the people you are interacting with ever felt like they are being led down a garden path, it can feel like a big setup to getting owned. This advise comes from working on teams where the socratic method was used as a setup for being made a fool.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#74

Post by whatshisface »

chernevik wrote: post #72
lr4444lr wrote: post #61

I just don't agree. Much better to set a culture where people are encouraged to put their ego aside and accept being corrected immediately and politely. The repetition and fast iteration is good for learning.

This. Let's please not make engineering another field where our first concern is whose feelings are hurt. There are, of course, better and worse ways to raise concerns. "Why did you do it this way? It seems to me that . . . " leaves the conversation open to the possibility that there is good reason for something you don't understand. And if there are major problems, it might be better to privately approach someone (a…

If you're talking to workers from another company, they're going to be bound by what I can only call "loyalty" to not tell you why it happened (what are they going to say, "we think our boss is dumb and he made us do this?") and instead will make up reasons, doubling down on it and starting an argument where one side has a duty to be disingenuous. It's a mess, don't start it.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#75

Post by whatshisface »

hinkley wrote: post #65

A particular flavor of this I've become familiar with over the last few years deals with how you enumerate problems rather than bringing up a single one. It is, I think, a variant of Burying the Lede where you start out with the serious issue, but then you keep going on and on for so long that eventually everyone forgets that the first point you brought up was "The building is on fire." Sometimes the lede should go a…

When you're burying something, the dirt gets shoveled on after it's put in the hole, so what you're describing might actually still be described as "burying" the lede.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#76

Post by [deleted] »

donatj wrote: post #40

This has been the hardest thing for me as I become more and more … old. I want to be like "this is wrong" "do it this way" etc. For a while there before I realized I was burning bridges, I was… for lack of better phrasing actively an asshole. There's value in letting the juniors flounder a bit. I had a conversation with my manager about this just a couple weeks ago. One of our junior developers was having trouble get…

[deleted]

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#77

Post by HWR_14 »

chernevik wrote: post #72
lr4444lr wrote: post #61

I just don't agree. Much better to set a culture where people are encouraged to put their ego aside and accept being corrected immediately and politely. The repetition and fast iteration is good for learning.

This. Let's please not make engineering another field where our first concern is whose feelings are hurt. There are, of course, better and worse ways to raise concerns. "Why did you do it this way? It seems to me that . . . " leaves the conversation open to the possibility that there is good reason for something you don't understand. And if there are major problems, it might be better to privately approach someone (a…

Whether someone's feelings are hurt should be a primary concern. That doesn't mean you cannot correct people making errors, you definitely should. But if you're hurting people's feelings regularly you are bad at providing feedback. I notice the only "softening" of the message you suggest is to allow pushback if you happen to be wrong. It seems you are more likely to cause persistent fixes by treating people as people and correcting them in a way that doesn't hurt their feelings.

I guess what I'm saying is that "hurt feelings" is most often a result of how feedback is provided, not what feedback or even how much feedback.

Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#78

Post by buzzard1 »

the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

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Re: Don’t point out something wrong immediately

#80

Post by tbrownaw »

hinkley wrote: post #51
the_duke wrote: post #8

This is the hardest lesson I had to learn in my consulting work. It is is especially important if you are not familiar with the full context - which is almost never the case. The main insight for me was that yes, things can be "wrong" due to lack of knowledge or incompetence. Sometimes. But more often than not there is a good reason. Like: * we know this is stupid, but we had immense time pressure and this was the on…

> we never got the time to fix it The older I get the more convinced I become that this is Learned Helplessness. "We didn't have time." is essentially the same dodge as "C'est le guerre" was in France. "We don't have time" is a conversation killer. "We are working on that bit by bit" is essentially the same statement once you've subtracted the helplessness. Nobody is ever gonna schedule time for you to have integrity…

Perhaps rephrase it as "the expected value vs expected effort never sorted that to the top of the backlog".
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