[HN Gopher] Kind Engineering [video]
___________________________________________________________________
Kind Engineering [video]
Author : thejokersthief
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-07-02 12:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.usenix.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.usenix.org)
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| Q: How to be kind? A: To not be aggressive.
|
| The problem is, depending on the environment and personal
| positions, kindness isn't necessarily the most useful option, and
| even if everyone likes it, kindness doesn't necessarily sustain
| itself.
|
| The most important new information about aggression I've got in
| years is from Prof. Robert Sapolsky's lectures on Human
| Behavioral Biology. Mind blowing, totally recommend you watch it
| on Youtube.
|
| In the conclusion to his 4-lecture series on the subject of
| aggression (https://youtu.be/BqP4_4kr7-0?t=6081), he says:
|
| We have this general notion that if we are rational, if we are
| learned, if we are scholarly, if we respect thoughts and truth
| and all of that, we will make the world a better place.
|
| All of us who are professorial have somewhere in there this
| totally ridiculous belief that if you're allowed to lecture at a
| subject long enough, it will give up and go away. And that will
| be the cure for the world aggression. If everybody could be
| lectured to about the frontal cortex, it will solve world
| violence. But the basic problem is that aggression is such a
| messy set of behaviors.
|
| Schizophrenia - no question about it, bad news. Alzheimer's
| disease, childhood cancer, global warming, all of these
| unassailably bad news. But aggression is a whole lot more
| complicated, because of that point where we started with, which
| is, the same exact behaviors, and depending on the context, it
| could be something that would get a medal for someone, someone
| you will want to mate with, vote for, reward, cheer on, join in.
| And in another setting, it is the most frightening thing that can
| happen to us. And it's the same behaviors in all those cases.
|
| And it's for that reason, that violence is going to be the
| hardest subject for us to understand biologically. And it's for
| that reason, that it's always going to be the one we have to try
| hardest to understand.
| jes wrote:
| I fully agree with you on the value of Robert Sapolsky's video
| series on HBB.
| zerop wrote:
| Aggression is also important in certain scenario when it
| demands. The problem is when it's expected in everything you
| do. If aggression and obsessions are part of your everyday
| that's when it becomes problem and one starts feeling need for
| kindness.
|
| Good video out there.
| vincent-toups wrote:
| I'm not sure that I buy you're assertion that kindness is
| either necessarily or sufficiently described by a lack of
| aggression per se.
|
| Kindness is maybe better described by keeping the the inner
| life of your fellow beings in the forefront of your mind and
| treating them with respect relative to that inner life and your
| own hopefully well though out ethical frame. I can certainly
| see how that would often limit the amount of aggression you
| would employ but I see that as a secondary effect.
| grouphugs wrote:
| kindness is largely earned. a lot of folks just really don't
| deserve it. especially some 4ch piece of shit that's going around
| on a harassment rampage because they started a campaign to
| "toughen" people up with sexual abuse and sexual harassment
| because they think people are too "sensitive"
| mdoms wrote:
| I often wonder what it is about the software profession that
| brings this stuff out. Is it that very sensitive people are more
| likely to be drawn to software? Or is it that software industry
| culture breeds this kind of thing?
|
| I have friends across many different industries, from government
| housing to tourism to accounting to logistics to teaching to
| rubbish collection. None of them would dare talk about "kindness
| engineering", "psychological safety" or any of these kinds of
| topics at work. They come in at 8, do their work and go home at
| 5.
|
| Every workplace has assholes, highly empathetic people, drones
| and whiners to varying ratios. That's just human beings.
|
| Sometimes it feels to me like some corners of the software
| industry have been co-opted by self-help gurus (styled as
| "happiness engineers" or whatever title they conjure up) because
| frankly it's a lucrative industry and they've spotted a good
| target.
| groby_b wrote:
| We're an expensive industry, where treating people like dirt
| turns out to cost a _lot_ of money.
|
| And so we're one of the few industries where treating people
| with respect is actually of interest to leadership. Due to a
| still-lingering belief in Taylorism and an educational
| environment that's suboptimal, we're still burdened with a lot
| of people who think fear-based management ("they wouldn't dare
| talk about X" is about the fear of speaking up) is useful, so
| we keep needing to teach people that this doesn't really work.
|
| The idea that "all workplaces have assholes" assumes that
| somehow being an asshole is an immutable quality. For the vast
| majority of people, it isn't. They've been trained via fear and
| obedience, and they believe it's the way to results. Teaching
| them that it isn't helps both get them on a better path, and it
| makes the overall environment better. Maybe we can't get
| completely rid of people with negative traits, but we _can_
| shift ratios.
|
| Yes, there are some people who revel in being an asshole, or
| just can't change. They're very few. It's worth helping the
| rest. (Because training somebody is _much_ cheaper than
| replacing them)
| drewcoo wrote:
| I made it about 10 minutes through the video of someone telling
| me what I needed to do without telling me why. Basically it was
| all "be cheerfully compliant!"
|
| It would be wonderful if "software engineers" just had some code
| of ethics like actual engineers instead of having to invent this
| self help dreck. But I suppose that wouldn't be "disruptive."
|
| Example:
| https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html
| joshtynjala wrote:
| When I was attending university, one of my professors pointed
| out the ACM code of ethics: https://ethics.acm.org/
| noduerme wrote:
| I've worked for a lot of unsympathetic people who didn't put
| themselves in my shoes, or who had their own personal issues that
| caused them to tonelessly say degrading things to me as a young
| coder. But I was lucky enough - or sympathetic enough - to get
| through to them _as their employee_ with questions that made them
| see _me_ as someone they could help and improve. This wasn 't
| even their choice; it was mine, to tease those explanations out
| of them. I sure wish most employers and corporate structures had
| this sort of kindness in mind, but on an individual level it
| really comes down to forming a co-sympathetic relationship (as an
| employee). Now as a boss, I find myself extremely sympathetic to
| anyone who asks intelligent questions, but very short on the fuse
| with people who don't take the time to look things up for
| themselves. Is that me becoming more of an asshole with age? Or
| is it that I put myself through the process and I expect others
| to as well?
| username90 wrote:
| Most of the time when someone ask a question answering it isn't
| very easy. You have to look things up, go through the code,
| maybe run some test to figure out what the solution is. That is
| how you work with the code and that is what they need to do to
| work in the code.
|
| The problem here is that they expect that answering would be
| easy for you, but it is not, so you tell them to go figure out
| themselves since you don't have the time to do all that work
| for them every time they get "stuck". Since in fact, you
| yourself are "stuck" like that every day, being "stuck" is a
| major part of being a software engineer, it never ever goes
| away and junior engineers often thinks that being "stuck" is
| bad. It really isn't, that is what your life will be from now
| on, you just got to learn how to handle being stuck and nobody
| can really teach you that.
|
| Anyway, when you dragged the answer out of those other people
| you did the work to unstuck yourself. Those people couldn't
| just have told you the answer from the start since they didn't
| know until after the long discussion with you, that discussion
| was the work. Now that you are on the other side you get a lot
| of "unintelligent" questions, ie questions you can't easily
| answer, and therefore feel frustrated with these new engineers.
| It has nothing to do with kindness, its just that the junior
| engineers needs to understand that finding the answers to these
| questions is their job and not something that just juniors have
| to deal with.
|
| Example with overly simple question:
|
| Junior: How do I center a div in html?
|
| Senior: Just look it up on Google.
|
| Junior: Why can't you just tell me?
|
| Senior: I just told you how to do it, that is what I do every
| time I need to center a div!
| intrepidhero wrote:
| I agree and want to add a few thoughts.
|
| I've found the best way out of these kinds of questions,
| where the asker hasn't put in even the lowest level of effort
| is to say, "I don't know, but here's what I would do first to
| figure it out." Most people will be glad to find out there is
| a path forward and take it themselves. If they're not willing
| to pick it up there and do the thing you've suggested then
| you are dealing with someone who doesn't value your time and
| setting a boundary is the right thing to do. The kind way to
| respond at that point is simply, "I'm sorry I don't have time
| to figure this out right now. You can try [the thing I
| suggested] and come back if you still have questions."
|
| The crux here is there is no kind way to just make people go
| away. If your role is mentoring, and any of us with
| experience should be in that role at least a little, then
| some of your time is going to be spent on this interaction.
| The most valuable thing you can do for yourself, the other
| person and the company is lead them toward finding the answer
| themselves. That's going to require a balance of helping and
| honestly and kindly saying no to doing their work for them.
| Not easy.
| spikej wrote:
| "I put myself through the process and I expect others to as
| well". Resonates with me. I expect people to at least process
| things to a degree on their own so that we can have an
| intelligible conversation.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > Is that me becoming more of an asshole with age?
|
| Sort of, but I don't mean that in a bad way!
|
| Many of us experience rough times coming to terms with how to
| function in an organization and how to develop professionally.
| In my opinion, after that experience becomes internalized we
| end up behaving in various different ways when the tables are
| turned and we become "part of the landscape" for newcomers.
|
| Some people believe that others must face the same challenges
| they had, that suffering is not only inevitable but required as
| part of the path to mastery. It's very much like a Calvinistic
| way of thinking where people must prove themselves worthy
| before they are given consideration in the eyes of god (or in
| the case of a workplace, senior practitioners). I think of this
| as "the stackoverflow" approach. It helps people out because it
| forces the student to formulate valid questions and uses reward
| or punishment as incentives.
|
| Others, seem to model their behavior in an opposite way. They
| remember the confusion they experienced and strive to help out
| the newcomer. They try to provide some measure of "guard rails"
| so the newcomer doesn't have to crash and burn as much as they
| did. These people tend to take the "answering" of questions
| more seriously, and often end up asking questions to the
| student instead of just answering, evaluating their responses,
| and then asking more questions. This is like a Socratic
| approach and it challenges the student to come up with their
| own answers. It ALSO works.
|
| Which of these is correct? Neither (or both). They're just ways
| of responding and everyone has encountered both modes and
| probably behaves in either way depending on the situation. Some
| of us have personalities that naturally tend towards one or the
| other.
|
| I think that whatever approach is taken, it is super important
| to not dismiss the student. People do need encouragement, not
| necessarily with every interaction, but they need to know it's
| OK to "not know" and that their suffering is something we all
| experience. This helps to create a sense of psychological
| safety.
| specialist wrote:
| > _...it really comes down to forming a co-sympathetic
| relationship..._
|
| Trust?
|
| Young me was told that trust was crucial to effective
| management, high performance teams. Ok. How to do that? What
| does that look or feel like?
|
| I've had exactly one trustful peer relationship. People used to
| joke that we acted like a married couple. We have no idea why
| we just clicked. We accomplished so much, worked so hard, had
| so much fun. Sadly, once you experience authentic trust, any
| thing short of that just feels like a waste of time.
|
| I've trusted maybe 2 of my many bosses.
|
| You'd have to ask my direct reports if any of them trusted me.
| I hope some would say "yes".
|
| --
|
| Older me reflecting back on all this stuff...
|
| I had hoped life would be more win-win, a la Robert Wright's
| book Nonzero. But it was mostly transactional relationships,
| power dynamics, zero sum games (win-lose), so much energy
| wasted on guarding my boundaries, and then getting exploited
| whenever I didn't.
|
| Basically, it all sucks.
| sdwr wrote:
| Could you say more about that trustful relationship? How did
| it start, did you have similar backgrounds, was it work-
| focused or get into personal stuff? Signs to look for/ aim
| towards for people who aspire to meaningful, trusting
| relationships.
| specialist wrote:
| I'll try to be brief.
|
| Mid-90s. Mid-sized company. Very engineering driven.
| Founder President was unteachable, largely absent, prone to
| drive-by management (disruption). VP of Sales was a
| complete dink ("All I want is free, perfect, done
| yesterday. Is that too much to ask?"). "Visionary" VP of
| Engineering with goal of being Director or better at
| Microsoft, most of his time building a fiefdom, protected
| his power by encouraging infighting. Tech Support was very
| powerful and in open rebellion.
|
| I got things done. Mostly by being a bulldozer. Not
| popular. Eventually promoted to Engineering Manager over a
| suite of products. I was very interested in empowerment,
| process, execution, shipping products customers wanted.
| Major influences were Luke Hohmann, Deming, Eli Goldratt,
| and so on.
|
| I had a crazy notion: instead of engineering dominance,
| model team after quality circles (a la Ford Motors) and the
| US Constitution's balance of powers. So initially,
| Marketing role would own scope and price, Engineering would
| own cost and schedule, Quality Assurance would own
| releases. Eventually expanded to include Sales, Tech
| Support, Docs & I18N.
|
| Through pure luck I got paired with a skilled Marketing
| person, who also had domain expertise, first time doing
| software. She wanted to learn "software" and I wanted to
| learn "marketing". So we taught each other, mostly by
| example and answering questions.
|
| Empowering QA assurance was a lot more troubled. Wonderful
| person, we got along very well. But she struggled to
| balance my way of doing things with how her peers (and
| their teams) were doing SQA. In a nutshell, I wanted her to
| be in charge, whereas her peers were stuck in Kem Kaner's
| mentality of victimhood and self-disempowerment. For
| example, I insisted we have our own test lab, she balked
| when her peers insisted on a shared lab run by the test
| group. In other words, I wanted a product & team focused
| org chart, and the rest of the company wanted to keep
| functional silos.
|
| [Per the E-Myth's advice, I served the role until I could
| hire someone. So I did my own thing. Think "The Joel Test"
| and Code Complete, back when that stuff was controversial.
| The lightest weight ticket tracking system. Automated
| builds and testing. Front loading as much work as possible
| (eg always have a shippable product instead of Big Bang
| integration at the end). I say to show I took SQA very
| seriously and walked the talk.]
|
| --
|
| So the way that it played out, my Marketing Manager and I
| were on the same page. Meaning she could speak on behalf of
| both of us. She could make decisions without my input. She
| was savvy enough to know when I'd want to be in the loop.
| And vice-versa. In turn I went to trade shows, met with
| dealers and customers, and interacted with Marketing and
| Sales (in her absence) as her ambassador. We prepped each
| other, took notes, then debriefed.
|
| I didn't have that relationship with my QA Manager, much as
| we tried. And we tried. Despite a great personal
| relationship, work wise we just ground gears.
|
| When I switched to another team, to bring another troubled
| product back from the dead, my team was eager for my
| replacement, who was "nice" and very well liked.
|
| New guy promptly disempowered everyone, threw away all of
| the team's processes (eg speed triage), became the sole
| gatekeeper (aka control freak), morale tanked, releases
| stalled.
|
| About 3 months later my former SQA manager took me to
| lunch, told me she finally grokked what I was trying to do,
| and that she'd rather work her ass off shipping product
| with an asshole like me than be a drone working for a nice
| guy.
|
| Bittersweet.
|
| As for the people who worked for me, my job was to protect
| them, do whatever it takes to help them succeed. Most did
| great. Some excelled. Others were total time sinks, causing
| endless heart ache. Like I said previously, you'd have to
| ask them if any of them trusted me.
|
| The managers I trusted treated me the same way. Just tell
| me what needs to be done, remove any blockers, help me stay
| on track. That's happened only 2 or 3 times. Everyone else
| needed constant upward managing, or worse.
| sdwr wrote:
| Thank you!
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Not the parent.
|
| I have noticed there are two kinds of trust relationships.
| The first is pure office politics. You have long term
| creditability, therefore everyone knows not to try their
| manipulative tactics on you, engage with you
| professionally, and therefore you have a trust
| relationship. This is akin to being a made man.
|
| The second kind of trust relationship I have encountered
| are with very religious devout people who believe they are
| doing God's will to help others and with people who have
| sense of humor that builds people up not take them down.
| They don't take themselves too seriously and just want do a
| good job and get along with everyone.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| My experience is the same. As a young engineer I got things
| to work on time and with minimal issues. My reward for being
| good at my job is to be loaded up with work from my boss and
| by my peers and even by those who were outside of my team.
| When I refused because I said I have my priorities. I was
| called out for not being a team player. I once even had a
| come to Jesus meeting by someone who was not my boss for
| refusing to work on his emergency ticket. This tech lead who
| was on another team was later forced to apologize to me.
|
| Essentially there are two classes of people. Those who want
| to master their craft and develop their skills. And those who
| think their job is boss around others and that other people
| exist to make their life easier. I have noticed this sense of
| entitlement is especially common among younger engineers who
| think I owe it to them to mentor them. Hmm. I don't owe you
| anything.
| elcapitan wrote:
| I think it's fine as long as both sides are aware of the
| expectations. But managing those expectations might be better
| suited to a manager position, rather than the senior/junior
| developers actually involved in it. The job of a manager is to
| enable people to do their job.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The job of any person whose output other people depend on is
| to enable those people to do their jobs.
|
| A junior software developer's job is to enable customers to
| do their jobs (as customers). An architect's job is to enable
| developers, sysadmins, etc to do their jobs. We are all part
| of a team, and we all depend on each other.
| elcapitan wrote:
| "do their job as customers" yeah that totally doesn't sound
| like bullshit :D
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's an indicator of a lack of empathy, which can come from
| many places. You need to find empathy for those people who
| don't take the time, and barring that, compassionately help
| _them_ reach an empathy for you and others they might be
| frustrating.
|
| I have a short fuse any time I think people aren't helping
| their coworkers or don't put in the work so others can do their
| jobs, and it's making other people quite frustrated. For me it
| comes from a couple places (perfectionism, ego, self-criticism,
| differing priorities). I'm still struggling with it, and I'm
| very lucky my boss is very understanding.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I don't agree. People are hired to do a job. If they can't do
| a job because they don't have the skills and must depend on
| someone else to help them, they should not have been hired in
| the first place. This has nothing to do with empathy. This is
| common sense. If you can't do the job, why are you here?
| musingsole wrote:
| > If you can't do the job, why are you here?
|
| Because you're the best the company could find and afford
| to get into the position to maybe fix the problem.
| Lamenting an unskilled workforce or not having the perfect
| developer for a given task is just professional
| entitlement.
|
| Your job is to work with the team and the resources you
| have. Why are you daydreaming about things you don't?
| thrower123 wrote:
| There's often an issue where people do not make any
| progress towards becoming useful, and do not show any
| promise of being capable of becoming a net contributor.
|
| At this point, you can fire them, silo them off the
| critical path, move them into other work, or just keep
| jamming a square peg in a round hole. But it wears on the
| people who have to take up the slack and do, or re-do,
| that person's work.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I get things done with the team I hired. I don't hire
| people who can't do their jobs and question those who
| hired them.
| hluska wrote:
| Common sense suggests that > 95% of companies don't have
| access to the highest grade of engineers. If we work for
| companies like that, our job is to work within the system
| and get shit done. That often means being kind and
| mentoring.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > Or is it that I put myself through the process and I expect
| others to as well?
|
| I have no answer for sure but I've seen this pattern in just
| about every aspect of life. Older people who did X are very
| very angry if younger guys refrain to do X
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| I can't bring myself to watch the video. "Kindness Engineering"
| just radiates Orwellian vibes. People aren't being "kind" enough,
| and so we're going to apply scientific processes to people to
| "engineer" "kindness".
|
| What a sinister title.
|
| Doing a quick jog through the video...
|
| - "Be yourself, because who you are is brilliant..."
|
| - Psychological safety
|
| - No blame
|
| What a load of toxic advice. Engineering is not an affirmation
| cult.
|
| I have the feeling that we got to this place by putting the sum
| of our existence into our git commits. And if people criticize
| your git commits, they're criticizing your existence, and this is
| "harmful", so we need to engineer "psychological safety" into our
| engineering reviews.
|
| The real psychologically unsafe practice is making your code the
| sum of your existence. Accept that you can fail as an engineer,
| and still have worth as a person. That's the solution, not
| "kindness engineering".
| topkai22 wrote:
| I read the deck not the videos, but their is a section on
| "nice" versus "kind" slice that is the complete opposite of
| your straw man. Direct feedback about your work that covers
| both the good and the bad is considered kind and encouraged.
|
| In fact, psychological safety is what creates an environment
| where actions and decisions can be discussed and critiqued
| rationally rather than emotionally. The blameless part is
| shorthand for focusing on the system rather then the person.
| After all, if Alice took down production by modifying a config
| file she thought was on the dev environment it makes far less
| sense to focus on blaming Alice did versus discussing why
| someone was able to modify production without appropriate
| checks in place.
|
| The "bring the whole person" and "be yourself" concepts need
| work though. There are fair number of people I know who I
| really would not want to just "be themselves" at work.
|
| edit-- minor typo
| acituan wrote:
| > I read the deck not the videos, but their is a section on
| "nice" versus "kind" slice that is the complete opposite of
| your straw man
|
| Thanks for drawing attention to the existence of the slide
| deck, that was much more easier to read than the video.
|
| I think I understand why OP is reacting to the word "kind",
| it is a bit of a misleading branding, and the content is also
| not exactly coherent about it. There is an extra emphasis on
| considering the other persons' reception of the
| communication, but then there is an inclusion of assertive
| communication as you've pointed out. A more realistic title
| would have been "how to work and communicate effectively".
|
| > In fact, psychological safety is what creates an
| environment where actions and decisions can be discussed and
| critiqued rationally rather than emotionally.
|
| Again I think the connotations of term is problematic, in
| comparison to your pretty good of an explanation of what it
| should be about. After all psychological safety depends on
| the other side's psychology, so for a narcissist that would
| mean actually not threatening their myth of personal
| superiority, and bringing rationality to discussion would not
| necessarily be comfortable for them.
|
| I think a much better approach can be considered through
| virtue ethics. There is no being fair to the other people
| while not being fair to ourselves. So there is a golden mean
| between giving consideration to their point of view vs.
| requesting consideration for our own point of view and there
| is no algorithmic approach that can find that point for us.
| We can't get lost in emotional contagion with the other
| persons' feelings (think of a surgeon unable to operate a kid
| because they are empathizing too much), just like we can't
| get lost in our own feelings (every callous, bullying manager
| or lead we've encountered).
|
| Also "engineering" kindness sounds very objectifying and
| manipulative. Please do not engineer me, I am a human. Tell
| me the good reasons to be kind, and let me decide for myself.
| If being kind is "good", people would naturally take it up.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Disclosure: I read the slides, but have not watched the
| video.
|
| What the author is doing is disentangling accountability
| and support. The nice-kind distinction is reminiscent of
| the permissive-restorative distinction in the social
| discipline window[1]. This disentangling into a 2x2 sets
| the stage for analyzing feedback.
|
| [1] https://workplaceconflict.ca/wp-content/uploads/Social-
| Disci...
| acituan wrote:
| Fantastic way of putting it, thanks.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| You say the things I want to say, but can't find the words.
| Thank you.
|
| Your paragraph on virtue ethics is perfect. This is exactly
| what should be taught, and is being replaced with "Kindness
| Engineering".
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| I've never considered a good code review to be "kind" -- and
| I don't think much will change that.
|
| Helping an old lady cross the street. Buying a friend a
| coffee and listening to their troubles. That is kindness: an
| ethical consideration for others, and a pleasant disposition.
|
| It's absolutely essential to have design reviews be rational,
| and to untangle complicated emotions. The reason flight
| travel is so safe today is because of these principles --
| crash reviews are not about assigning blame, but finding the
| cause of the crash to prevent further loss of life. But
| "kindness" does not come into play here, and introducing it
| will create problems, not solve them.
|
| I agree with you, that the "bring the whole person" and "be
| yourself" part is unrelated good engineering practices. But
| these are the grounding framework of "psychological safety",
| which puts the responsibility for my well being in your
| hands. That's a responsibility that no one can (or should)
| bear.
| [deleted]
| throwaways885 wrote:
| I think you're conflating kindness and niceness. People are
| nice to protect the feelings of others, whereas kindness
| has a more logical component, e.g. being honest when the
| truth can hurt. You can be kind without being nice. But I
| believe you're right that people need to take their
| emotions out of their work.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Most of what we do, including _writing code_ , is not
| rational. We are emotional beings with heuristics. You make
| irrational decisions in your code all the time. Hell - the
| fact that your code doesn't come along with a formal proof
| is evidence of irrationality; do you think the code you
| hand-crafted doesn't have bugs?
|
| Kindness is a tool we use to accomplish work with other
| emotional irrational beings. The NTSB crash investigations
| wouldn't work without kindness. You can't run around asking
| insensitive rude questions in an insanely
| important/sensitive situation and expect to get
| cooperation! We are all responsible for each other whether
| we like it or not, and our ability to work together we'll
| hinges upon good relationships, which among other things,
| depends on whether we're kind to each other.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > Most of what we do, including writing code, is not
| rational.
|
| Wow. I knew I was pulling on an ugly root when I started
| writing against the inclusivity dogma, but this is a
| little more than I was expecting to unearth.
|
| Humans do not need formal proofs for things they do to be
| considered rational. Full stop.
|
| > You can't run around asking insensitive rude questions
| in an insanely important/sensitive situation and expect
| to get cooperation!
|
| I mean... you did just say the majority of what I did is
| irrational :'D But. To say that kindness does not factor
| into NTSB investigations does not mean that the
| alternative is insensitivity and rudeness.
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| Psychological safety is so critical.
|
| I'm almost certain you have, at some point in your career,
| correctly implemented a feature, only for an operations or
| product counterpart to blame you for some piece of out of scope
| functionality not being there.
|
| How did that make you feel? Did you alter your behavior to be
| less helpful in the future? Did you start recording meetings so
| that you had a source of truth on explicit scope?
|
| If team members think or feel that they "need to cover their
| ass," that hurts the company's mission, and wastes resources.
| Worse, it can lead to managers pushing for excessive due
| diligence, which saps the motivation of ICs.
|
| Blame is ultimately a waste of energy. Every team member is
| going to make mistakes if they are taking sufficient risks. You
| can fire people who have a negative contribution level or
| chronically underperform without leaning on blame.
| ropeladder wrote:
| You have built up a terrifying straw man based on a video you
| admit you didn't even watch.
|
| You're right that we should put less emotional stake in our
| code--the video actually lays some healthy ways to do this.
|
| More generally, it's important that we recognize that people
| have emotions, otherwise it makes it easy and convenient for us
| to treat them like shit. ( _hint hint_ )
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| I've been reading things the "inclusivity" crowd writes for
| some time. There's nothing really new in anything that's
| said, it's all the same.
|
| They promise a better, kinder, more "inclusive" world. They
| deliver "cancel culture", and self censorship under fear of
| public struggle sessions.
|
| No thank you. If it's truly a choice between "psychologically
| safe cubicles with padded walls" and caustic code reviews
| where people trash every line of code I've ever written --
| I'll take the latter.
| hobs wrote:
| There's no enforced dichotomy here, and tbqh you can take
| the sliding slope right out the door.
|
| Nobody delivers "cancel culture" and those railing against
| the consequences of their actions are generally assholes.
| glued wrote:
| One challenge I've seen in practice is that psychological safety
| is often used as an excuse for why someone is under performing
| instead of holding them accountable and helping them.
| McGlockenshire wrote:
| > psychological safety is often used as an excuse
|
| citation needed
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