If we tallied up all technical projects in the Western world that failed, how many would be failing due to lack of kindness versus, say, straight-forwards incompetence? Because 100% fall in the latter category in my experience. One of the problems with engineers counter-signalling engineering values (like actual technical competence) is that we live in a world where those values are extremely underrated while every m…
Opposing view - most large scale projects fail because of political and financial reasons rather than technology. Even the bad tech decisions are usually downstream of politics.
If you’re wanting to build a high speed rail line, space rocket or nuclear power plant; a propaganda specialist is probably going to be more useful than an engineer.
I think the advice given by the author is a bit simplistic and obvious, but not wrong. I just wouldn't sum it up as being "kind" As someone who works in a "kind" culture (Taiwan) - there is an infuriating flip side If everyone is constantly worried about being kind, it becomes very difficult for people to say "unkind" things. - It's hard for people to give you important critical feedback - People will not give their…
I wonder if the middle ground is when one needs to be "unkind" in words, they should be "kind" in action. I worked on a team that had been moved to a project, in part because that project was behind schedule, haphazard and under-staffed. In our first months we were often (and to my dismay) unkind in words without kind actions to follow through. All of our critiques were correct. All of them were important and needed to be addressed. All of them were real problems. And often the critiques were blunt for the sake of being clear to management. But being right didn't stop that unkindness from stinging the other teams that were there before us. We were resisted and drew quite a bit of (understandable) animosity from those other teams. When we changed tack (partially in response to realizing we were being unkind, partially because we'd finally built up the knowledge we needed to do so) and started accompanying critique with solutions or at a minimum viable demonstrations of the solution, things were received much better. We still said hard things, we still brought in half bakes thoughts. But because we were being kind in bringing more than criticism to the table, it was much more effective.
So you want to be kind only for utilitarian motives, not because it’s a good thing in principle ?
fun experiment: let's try to have the most charitable interpretation of this comment ^ My best is: they are saying it is worth taking a step back and making a prioritized list of our values. If we do this, we may place "being kind" over "being productive" I think their warning here is about: what happens in a situation where being kind is NOT productive? Will you just drop it? I think I agree with the broad strokes o…
Great sum up ! You can have both, but for me being productive is more important than not offending others
Ever since that back and forth about "East Coast being kind vs West Coast being nice" thing a while back[1], I think it's important to distinguish the two. Because they are noticeably different (at least to me) and shouldn't be used interchangeably. I want someone to be kind to me in a meeting. I think niceness could seriously inhibit progress. A kind person will tell me that an idea I have won't work, but they'll of…
"Tough love" is kind but not nice. There doesn't seem to be a good phrase for the opposite in English but there should be.
Ever since that back and forth about "East Coast being kind vs West Coast being nice" thing a while back[1], I think it's important to distinguish the two. Because they are noticeably different (at least to me) and shouldn't be used interchangeably. I want someone to be kind to me in a meeting. I think niceness could seriously inhibit progress. A kind person will tell me that an idea I have won't work, but they'll of…
This is real.
When the car broke down in a turn lane in the rain: lots of honking behind me
When the hazard lights came on: honking stopped, people materialized to help push it back out of the road
If we tallied up all technical projects in the Western world that failed, how many would be failing due to lack of kindness versus, say, straight-forwards incompetence? Because 100% fall in the latter category in my experience. One of the problems with engineers counter-signalling engineering values (like actual technical competence) is that we live in a world where those values are extremely underrated while every m…
I think you could argue that long term lack of kindness at all levels of an organization leads to organizational technical incompetence. It creates hostile work environment where employees don't feel valued which leads to talent attrition.
Yes, only valuing kindness with valuing technical competence is not ideal but so is the inverse. You want both.
The problem with content like this is it’s not realistically actionable for most people: it really amounts to saying (if you’re not already a temperamentally kind person), “fundamentally change your personality”, without offering actionable steps to accomplish that.
It also doesn’t wrestle at all with the complexities and tradeoffs of how we deal with people in different scenarios. Be kind to bullies and assholes? There’s a way to do it, sure, but there’s a lot of technique and nuance involved, and this post doesn’t scratch the surface.
just a few people are going to miss the smartest in the room, but everyone is going to miss someone kind How is the goal of having people miss you related to achieving business goals ? On the contrary if the smartest is able to produce a lot, people are going to miss him On that topic, I’d rather have people trying to not become offended for little things, seems easier than faking kindness for personal benefits
The idea is to be genuinely kind, not to fake it.
Right, Im just assuming this kind of idea would push someone to look for environment with kind people over productive ones