[HN Gopher] Unprofessionalism (2013)
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Unprofessionalism (2013)
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 49 points
Date : 2024-08-01 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (allenpike.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (allenpike.com)
| buescher wrote:
| Contrast to this: https://philip.greenspun.com/seia/writeup
| janalsncm wrote:
| One way this manifests is in online profiles. You can have a
| professional blog, where you discuss professional things like how
| you squashed an annoying software bug or a little-known quirk of
| your favorite language. The purpose of this is to bolster your
| career prospects, although there can be sub-goals like forcing
| yourself to learn a new thing.
|
| And you can have a personal account where you anonymously discuss
| things that are important to you. Maybe some of these things will
| irritate some people. Most opinions that aren't completely banal
| will.
|
| And the two can never touch.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Here's to hoping mine here stays anonymous
| jarsin wrote:
| I didn't save the comment but a long time ago I saw an
| account saying that there were people in google who could dox
| their coworkers on hacker news.
|
| When you click threads its shows username in the url, so if
| you access at work someone could figure out who you are.
| janalsncm wrote:
| What do you mean? HN uses SSL so my understanding is the
| network just sees requests to HN from your device. Of
| course if you're logged in on a work device that's a
| different story.
|
| Also I suppose side channel attacks are possible but it
| really depends on what your threat vector is.
| jarsin wrote:
| My bad you're correct. My impression was they were
| implying it had something to do from within their setup
| at work. Should have left my comment at that.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| And then your opsec fails and the two touch.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| And then it blows up! https://youtu.be/uPG3YMcSvzo
| dakiol wrote:
| The problem usually lies in the intersection: you want to write
| about an important work topic (management, broken tech
| interviews).
| janalsncm wrote:
| It's going to be really juicy when Blind is hacked one day.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Unprofessionalism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961188 - Dec 2013 (87
| comments)
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I consider blocking Nickelback a professional courtesy.
| monksy wrote:
| Personally I would consider it to be an effort towards world
| peace but tomato tomatoh.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| So the example here is a feature that refuses to play Nickelback,
| and the argument for this "unprofessional" feature is that it's
| "human".
|
| I don't care that it's "unprofessional"--I don't care about being
| unprofessional at all. I care about doing what's right and kind.
| And... this isn't kind, I think. It's just ganging up on
| Nickelback and their fans with everyone else in 2013 when this
| was written. I guess you could say this is human, but it's an
| example of human's worse impulses to bully, albeit a minor one,
| and it's not one I would want to lean into.
| keybored wrote:
| Right. A lot of things you do that are _huuuman_ are
| "unprofessional" because they are inappropriate in a
| "professional" setting even though they are kind gestures. Like
| kissing someone.
|
| But some have the attitude that "if you are not pissing some
| people off you are not expressing yourself". Which is kind of
| different.
| monksy wrote:
| I think your comment is a great example of a ruthless and
| cuthtroat nature that we're seeing with "insensitivity pushed
| policies". To call something unkind when making an option to
| refuse to play nickleback is absurd and an overrecation.
|
| Contextually (for those who didn't suffer through the
| Nickleback age) Nickleback was a highly overplayed ban that
| produced similarly sounding songs with very weak albums with
| "one hit wonders". It spawned it's own genre called Butt Rock.
| It's a sign of a monopoly held by the music industry to
| influence what you heard and how much you heard it on the
| radio.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Butt%20Rock
|
| The way I see it is that the feature is a confirming nod to the
| users' sense of humor and it gives an application a bit of
| personality. We used to have easter eggs, boss modes, and
| suprises in applications. (I think excel had a full on game
| built in)
|
| Now it's all about a commoditize labor pushing code out to
| deliever underdeveloped features on an unreasonable timeline.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _To call something unkind when making an option to refuse
| to play nickleback is absurd and an overrecation._
|
| I don't agree, especially considering that the option was
| enabled by default.
|
| Taste is something that's often dear to a person, and telling
| someone they have bad taste is rude.
|
| I've been trying over time to stop saying "this sucks" and
| instead say "I'm not a fan of this", when talking about
| pretty much anything subjective that's a matter of taste:
| music, TV, movies, art, food, architecture, etc. It's a way
| to recognize that I'm not the absolute arbiter of taste, and
| that what I like and don't like doesn't represent any sort of
| absolute positive or negative about anything.
|
| > _The way I see it is that the feature is a confirming nod
| to the users ' sense of humor and it gives an application a
| bit of personality._
|
| No, it's a nod to the _developer 's_ sense of humor.
| Regardless of Nickelback's provenance and their style of
| music (I was not a fan of them back then, but, again, I'm not
| the arbiter of what is good and bad, and neither are you),
| there were some people who did genuinely like them. Shitting
| on those people (especially when you're selling a product!)
| is just tacky and rude.
|
| > _We used to have easter eggs, boss modes, and suprises in
| applications. (I think excel had a full on game built in)_
|
| Yes, and, by and large, those things are positive, joyful
| things. They weren't dissing a particular type of person who
| likes a particular type of $THING or $ACTIVITY. And when they
| were, they tended to fall flat, like this music app's unkind
| option.
|
| I agree that there are unfortunately fewer easter eggs out
| there now, but I don't think that has anything to do with
| whether or not this particular feature is a good or bad
| easter egg.
|
| I'll close with:
|
| > _I think your comment is a great example of a ruthless and
| cuthtroat nature that we 're seeing with "insensitivity
| pushed policies". To call something unkind when making an
| option to refuse to play nickleback is absurd and an
| overrecation._
|
| Maybe look in the mirror a for a bit; calling the GP's
| comment "ruthless and cutthroat" is the real absurd
| overreaction here.
| azthecx wrote:
| As an aside to changing your wording so slightly, everyone
| with two fingers of forehead will very quickly determine
| that whenever you say "this sucks" it's your biased
| personal opinion. Maybe such a strong statement from you
| will cause some people not to mention that they actually
| like X but, functionally, they will just ignore your
| opinion on this topic and move on.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| If someone goes out of their way to say Nickelback sucks,
| sure, obviously that's their biased personal opinion. But
| the bias that leads to saying Nickelback sucks is going
| to show up in all sorts of other areas and cause much
| worse problems.
|
| If you hate Nickelback because it's popular to hate
| Nickelback, I have to wonder what other things do you
| hate because it's popular to hate them?
| monksy wrote:
| (cause much worse problems) Like what, making Chad Kuger
| make more IG reels where he's annoyed by still touring
| and people who don't go shitting on the band?
| monksy wrote:
| > Taste is something that's often dear to a person, and
| telling someone they have bad taste is rude.
|
| The perception of rude is in the eye of the
| beholder.(Within context of course)
|
| I could see a much better argument here if this was for a
| specific small struggling artist. But we're not, we're
| talking about a multi-platinum RIAA over promoted band.
|
| > I've been trying over time to stop saying "this sucks"
| and instead say "I'm not a fan of this", when talking about
| pretty much anything subjective that's a matter of taste:
| music, TV, movies, art, food, architecture, etc. It's a way
| to recognize that I'm not the absolute arbiter of taste,
| and that what I like and don't like doesn't represent any
| sort of absolute positive or negative about anything.
|
| Congrats. I think it is great that you're self
| acknowledging and modifying your own behavior. However,
| your decision not to put in a harsh description of your
| opinion "this sucks" comes off as an insecurity rather than
| an improvement. You're softing your language over fear of
| perception. It's not adding anything to the conversation.
|
| Tell me that Scala sucks... I won't take offense. Telling
| me it sucks tells me you've had experience here and there
| were things that you really didn't like. This leads me to
| ask "why? what happened?"
|
| Tell me that you're not a fan of scala... this comes of as
| a thing that you didn't even try here. You don't even have
| an emotional response enough to indicate that you had any
| investment into it.
|
| > not the arbiter of what is good and bad,
|
| Yea you are. Your decisions, your preferences, your
| experiences shape that. You're not what many would be
| considered to be a trusted arbiter.
|
| -----
|
| Where I was going with the easter egg and
| ruthless/cutthroat commentary: What I'm talking about is
| that we're seeing applications that are extremely ridged,
| minimally featured only for their value on the market, and
| we're seeing an elimination of the individual who created
| them. Saying that a "ban nickleback option" is unkind is
| promoting the idea that the creator should not be perceived
| as unkind.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > I think your comment is a great example of a ruthless and
| cuthtroat nature that we're seeing with "insensitivity pushed
| policies". To call something unkind when making an option to
| refuse to play nickleback is absurd and an overrecation.
|
| 1. You don't know me at all if you think I'm pushing
| "insensitivity pushed policies". I'm not pushing "policies"
| at all, I'm encouraging people to be kind and to use their
| brains to figure out what "kind" is, instead of piling onto
| hating something.
|
| 2. You drastically overestimated the tone of my post if you
| think it's "ruthless and cutthroat". I don't think it's kind
| to ridicule a band or it's fans, but it's not that big a
| deal. Remember where I said, "albeit a minor one"?
|
| If hating something as bland as Nickelback is the hill you
| choose to die on, I dunno man, maybe pick better battles?
|
| > Contextually (for those who didn't suffer through the
| Nickleback age) Nickleback was a highly overplayed ban that
| produced similarly sounding songs with very weak albums with
| "one hit wonders". It spawned it's own genre called Butt
| Rock. It's a sign of a monopoly held by the music industry to
| influence what you heard and how much you heard it on the
| radio.
|
| Eh, I wouldn't say I like Nickelback; their music bores me a
| bit. But a) they're people, and b) people are allowed to like
| what they like.
|
| > The way I see it is that the feature is a confirming nod to
| the users' sense of humor and it gives an application a bit
| of personality. We used to have easter eggs, boss modes, and
| suprises in applications. (I think excel had a full on game
| built in)
|
| Yeah, and those things are pretty different from a mean-
| spirited joke at someone else's expense.
|
| > Now it's all about a commoditize labor pushing code out to
| deliever underdeveloped features on an unreasonable timeline.
|
| Bro, look at my comment history. I'm definitely not about
| commoditizing labor. :D
| dleink wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily "bullying", but if you want to
| include humor in your product, it should be original or at
| least funny. Ragging on nickelback was a hack joke then as it
| is now. Porkbun is a great example of a company doing humor
| well.
| kelnos wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. The kind of "unprofessionalism" that
| brings us easter eggs and silly features should come from a
| place of positivity and joy, not from a place of negativity and
| unkindness to others.
|
| I wouldn't add a feature like this simply because it's not nice
| to mock people, regardless of what I think about the music they
| like.
| lliamander wrote:
| "Kind" is at best a context-dependent virtue. There are plenty
| of situations where being critical or divisive is the right
| thing.
|
| And even when the harshness doesn't come from the best place,
| we still need it to some extent or we become fragile and blind
| to our own flaws.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > "Kind" is at best a context-dependent virtue. There are
| plenty of situations where being critical or divisive is the
| right thing.
|
| Obviously.
|
| Is hating Nickelback one of those situations?
|
| > And even when the harshness doesn't come from the best
| place, we still need it to some extent or we become fragile
| and blind to our own flaws.
|
| That's a fairly nuance-less view of kindness. Criticism, in
| the right context, _is_ kind--it 's not kindness to let
| problems stagnate when they can be fixed. For example, that
| is why I decided to criticize the author of this blog post.
|
| But hating Nickelback, especially when it's just dogpiling
| onto a frankly boring meme, isn't trying to fix any flaw or
| problem. It's just being a dick in a way that it's popular to
| be a dick, because you can't be arsed to think for yourself
| about your own actions.
| drewcoo wrote:
| More gatekeeping. Rules written on the fly by gatekeeper taste-
| makers.
| misanthr0pe wrote:
| if you love nickelback just slide the option off. this is a non-
| issue. its a friggin joke and i think its funny, whoever the band
| is.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Better to be funny, quirky or 'unprofessional' without being mean
| (e.g. to Nickelback and their fans).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nah, the old world of software development had easter eggs and
| shit. It's all right. They can exist in non-critical software.
| The world won't end. Let some people get upset. All that will
| happen is that they'll get you some publicity on social media.
| Who cares about them.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Where does professionalism ends and corporate soulless behaviour
| begins?
|
| Anyway, this particular example is the textbook definition of
| "you can't please everybody": on one hand, you'll have the usual
| radical relativists banging on their "de gustibus non est
| disputandum" drum and the "no fun allowed" corpo-drone crowd, and
| on the other people finding it funny and bold in today's
| generalized lack of risk taking.
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