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Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybod

Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasive and argumentative, just different. This is often called "difficult", because most managers and HR can't be bothered to actually engage with that person. So isn't that people can't do it, just the lesson is "you're better off if you don't say it". Political correctness also doesn't help IMO. I feel like one of my favorite Mitchell and Webb sketches, "Kill the poor", describes this quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

empath75 10y ago
Don't mistake being a contrarian with being a critical thinker.
- maehwasu 10y ago
  Totally agree, and I would add that critical thinking leads quickly to positions that are not generally accepted.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  That was the point I was trying to make when I said "not abrasive and argumentative, just different". Maybe I should have said different perspective. Incidentally, I find working with people with different perspectives hugely helpful when problem solving, although you can see how vastly different perspectives can also cause problems in understanding. I suspect there's a sweet spot, depending on your role/company/environment.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - gameshot911 10y ago
    Ironically you just mistook a contrarian with a critical thinker.
    - guitarbill 10y ago
      Oops. Maybe I don't understand "contrarian" as well as I should. Wikipedia says "A contrarian is a person who takes up a contrary position, especially a position that is opposed to that of the majority, regardless of how unpopular it may be", which to me reads like a reactionary thing. People with different views, that's just how they think. They don't do it for kicks to antagonize people. Right?
      - gameshot911 10y ago
        The way I think of 'contrarian' is someone who takes an opposing position strictly because it is in opposition to others, and not due to sincerely help beliefs or the actual merits of the position. But I think I should apologize to you and the parent post. I just saw an opportunity to come off as being a little clever. I have no idea if the parent poster was actually trying to be contrarian or not. And while I'm just trying to boost my ego, here you are still actually trying to have a meaningful conversation and to understand where others are coming from. Good on you, that's truly admirable. I wish I did the same more often.
        can09 10y ago
        Thank you for reminding me why I read HN comment sections. I appreciate this sort of earnest, well-intentioned dialogue. It is unfortunately not so prevalent on the wider web.
        ofir_geller 10y ago
        I have a different understanding, it's not resistance for resistance sake, it's the willingness to dissent when you disagree. The first thing that pop to my mind is a book by Christopher Hitchens called "Letters to a Young Contrarian". While he enjoyed arguments he did not argue for argument sake for a position he did not hold.
- dghughes 10y ago
  We need contrairian people as a balance to people who think they are infallible. Both should be a small percentage of society with the remaining majority willing to change if needed.
  - lomojj 10y ago
    Being a contrarian is no more valuable than being a yes man. Neither has any societal value.
    - sbov 10y ago
      I can't disagree more with this statement. Echo chambers are dangerous. Just because everyone in the room agrees doesn't make it a good idea. The kinder term for contrarian is devil's advocate. If no one else will, you need someone to present an opposing viewpoint.
dilemma 10y ago
Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.
- cryoshon 10y ago
  nailed it. corporations can't handle grassroots change, so the values which promote grassroots change are denigrated even when those same values are enshrined at higher positions.
  - kemiller2002 10y ago
    I think you're absolutely right. What I find really funny about this, at least in software development, is the "adoption" of the "agile" process they want to strive for which puts the majority of authority into the hands of the people doing the work. In the meetings talking about how wonderful it is, they are all on board, until they realize when they try to put it in place, and suddenly they realize they aren't in control. Then, they blame the process for failing them.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  At some point, things need to get done or a company goes out of business.
  - zepto 10y ago
    How is that relevant to the comment you are replying to?
- votr 10y ago
  A chapter from The Originals talks about that. Specifically a junior CIA agent who got sidelined for her suggestions and ideas, only to have them taken seriously once she was senior enough.
- avindroth 10y ago
adekok 10y ago
> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo. When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Sure, but that's sad. Q: Why not get everybody involved with #1-#5? A: Because that's more effort for management, and they'd have to trust their staff. (Sometimes it depends on how well you go about this, aka. soft skills, but often there's no way to sell it other than get involved with company politics for 2+ years) I'd also argue that at large companies, getting stuff shipped isn't usually the hardest part, not stagnating is. "How could we do things better" can be a pretty huge and valuable question in large places.
- dustingetz 10y ago
  i think command and control management structures have a lot of benefits at scale. Maybe at scale a company's competitive edge is essentially about executing on information, and information asymmetry, which is why things like trust and politics are more important than shipping efficiently. Just an idea.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Not sure I'm following. Can you elaborate?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- dingbat 10y ago
  in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".
Retric 10y ago
Don't confuse critical thinking with disruptive behavior. I often think the current approach is dumb, but I also accept I don't know everything. So, I generally just toss an idea out there, give it 15-30 seconds of support and move on. People that dig in even if they are correct and I agree with them are much harder to work with. Further, doing something even if it's a poor solution is often better than continuing to look for the right solution.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Disruptive behaviour in school is often caused by boredom. In a professional setting, I guess it could also be for ego/political reasons. But if somebody is thinking along and asks genuinely good questions, it isn't usually for ego reasons - they want to learn. I think it's worth pursuing: either a) you find somebody knows why it was done a certain way, and it's good to spread that knowledge (and get to know other people in the org) or b) everybody has left/forgotten why it was done that way, and it's good to increase/regain that knowledge. By the way, acceptable answers for doing it a certain way include "politics", "time pressure", and "we didn't know any better". These are way better than "don't know", because they're valuable knowledge. "Don't know" can also easily translate to "we don't understand the risks, so there's no way you're going to be allowed to change this". "don't know and we'll never know/don't care" is the easiest way out. My advice to anybody who keeps hearing this is start looking for your next job - this place will never care about personal development and helping you grow.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Disruptive behaviour is caused by frustration, and frustration in school is often caused by boredom (it's not like there are many other sources compared to the workplace). The problem with workplace politics is that there are usually two kinds of critical thinking: thinking that boils down to "we are doing OK, but we could do better if we did X" which is the type of critical thinking everyone loves, and then there's "we are doing something obviously wrong and we need to stop", which is literally critical thinking and is invariably risky (it's criticising people, often management). Organisations always say they want independent and critical thinkers, but they hardly ever do. They want yes men who will cheerlead for the side. That's tough on people who genuinely care about an organisation or want to see it succeed because strange or dysfunctional behaviour (ignoring customer feedback for example) can easily occur in almost any workplace, and sometimes there's no positive or upbeat way to say "we should probably listen to our customers" or "maybe that process you just put in place is a waste of time", or whatever the problem of the day is.
turar 10y ago
I found that this collection of Chomsky snippets expands on this quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPp69gKVe9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPp69gKVe9o
- thecrow1213 10y ago
  Good ol' Chomsky :)
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
The WSJ isn't encouraging critical thinking here - it's making self-described "critical thinkers" feel like they're important and valuable people, thus convincing them to read the WSJ.
etangent 10y ago
> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. In my experience, there is a specific experience threshold at which critical thinking switches from being an annoying trait of a young and garrulous employee to the most valuable asset a more senior person could have.
blablabla123 10y ago
I made a similar observation, critical thinking seems to be something undesired and it easily gets suppressed. However I truly believe it can work but it needs some sort of personal communication strategy. For example timing is critical. An obvious example is when shit hits the fan and coming up with reasons what could have been done better in the past. It's better to postpone that when things are fixed. But when working with people that generally dislike critical input, one needs to combine this with other things. Like saying such criticism only 1:1 (never in meetings), staying cool and thinking out things before saying them. Sometimes it's better to not answer certain people instead of giving a half baked answer that can be used for attack ground. Yeah, life isn't easy but there are ways.
tlogan 10y ago
Yes - but that is how corporations are organized. As an employee, your primary goal should be to make your boss happy: and any changes or initiative will hurt your career. If you are young you might make mistake, but people are not stupid they learn from their mistakes. So you have to go the point where your "boss" are customers / users of your product. Then critical thinkings works well.

empath75 10y ago

Don't mistake being a contrarian with being a critical thinker.

maehwasu 10y ago
Totally agree, and I would add that critical thinking leads quickly to positions that are not generally accepted.
guitarbill 10y ago
That was the point I was trying to make when I said "not abrasive and argumentative, just different". Maybe I should have said different perspective. Incidentally, I find working with people with different perspectives hugely helpful when problem solving, although you can see how vastly different perspectives can also cause problems in understanding. I suspect there's a sweet spot, depending on your role/company/environment.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- gameshot911 10y ago
  Ironically you just mistook a contrarian with a critical thinker.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    Oops. Maybe I don't understand "contrarian" as well as I should. Wikipedia says "A contrarian is a person who takes up a contrary position, especially a position that is opposed to that of the majority, regardless of how unpopular it may be", which to me reads like a reactionary thing. People with different views, that's just how they think. They don't do it for kicks to antagonize people. Right?
    - gameshot911 10y ago
      The way I think of 'contrarian' is someone who takes an opposing position strictly because it is in opposition to others, and not due to sincerely help beliefs or the actual merits of the position. But I think I should apologize to you and the parent post. I just saw an opportunity to come off as being a little clever. I have no idea if the parent poster was actually trying to be contrarian or not. And while I'm just trying to boost my ego, here you are still actually trying to have a meaningful conversation and to understand where others are coming from. Good on you, that's truly admirable. I wish I did the same more often.
      - can09 10y ago
        Thank you for reminding me why I read HN comment sections. I appreciate this sort of earnest, well-intentioned dialogue. It is unfortunately not so prevalent on the wider web.
      - ofir_geller 10y ago
        I have a different understanding, it's not resistance for resistance sake, it's the willingness to dissent when you disagree. The first thing that pop to my mind is a book by Christopher Hitchens called "Letters to a Young Contrarian". While he enjoyed arguments he did not argue for argument sake for a position he did not hold.
dghughes 10y ago
We need contrairian people as a balance to people who think they are infallible. Both should be a small percentage of society with the remaining majority willing to change if needed.
- lomojj 10y ago
  Being a contrarian is no more valuable than being a yes man. Neither has any societal value.
  - sbov 10y ago
    I can't disagree more with this statement. Echo chambers are dangerous. Just because everyone in the room agrees doesn't make it a good idea. The kinder term for contrarian is devil's advocate. If no one else will, you need someone to present an opposing viewpoint.

dilemma 10y ago

Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.

cryoshon 10y ago
nailed it. corporations can't handle grassroots change, so the values which promote grassroots change are denigrated even when those same values are enshrined at higher positions.
- kemiller2002 10y ago
  I think you're absolutely right. What I find really funny about this, at least in software development, is the "adoption" of the "agile" process they want to strive for which puts the majority of authority into the hands of the people doing the work. In the meetings talking about how wonderful it is, they are all on board, until they realize when they try to put it in place, and suddenly they realize they aren't in control. Then, they blame the process for failing them.
WalterBright 10y ago
At some point, things need to get done or a company goes out of business.
- zepto 10y ago
  How is that relevant to the comment you are replying to?
votr 10y ago
A chapter from The Originals talks about that. Specifically a junior CIA agent who got sidelined for her suggestions and ideas, only to have them taken seriously once she was senior enough.
avindroth 10y ago

adekok 10y ago

> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo. When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.

guitarbill 10y ago
Sure, but that's sad. Q: Why not get everybody involved with #1-#5? A: Because that's more effort for management, and they'd have to trust their staff. (Sometimes it depends on how well you go about this, aka. soft skills, but often there's no way to sell it other than get involved with company politics for 2+ years) I'd also argue that at large companies, getting stuff shipped isn't usually the hardest part, not stagnating is. "How could we do things better" can be a pretty huge and valuable question in large places.
dustingetz 10y ago
i think command and control management structures have a lot of benefits at scale. Maybe at scale a company's competitive edge is essentially about executing on information, and information asymmetry, which is why things like trust and politics are more important than shipping efficiently. Just an idea.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Not sure I'm following. Can you elaborate?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dingbat 10y ago
in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".

Retric 10y ago

Don't confuse critical thinking with disruptive behavior. I often think the current approach is dumb, but I also accept I don't know everything. So, I generally just toss an idea out there, give it 15-30 seconds of support and move on. People that dig in even if they are correct and I agree with them are much harder to work with. Further, doing something even if it's a poor solution is often better than continuing to look for the right solution.

guitarbill 10y ago
Disruptive behaviour in school is often caused by boredom. In a professional setting, I guess it could also be for ego/political reasons. But if somebody is thinking along and asks genuinely good questions, it isn't usually for ego reasons - they want to learn. I think it's worth pursuing: either a) you find somebody knows why it was done a certain way, and it's good to spread that knowledge (and get to know other people in the org) or b) everybody has left/forgotten why it was done that way, and it's good to increase/regain that knowledge. By the way, acceptable answers for doing it a certain way include "politics", "time pressure", and "we didn't know any better". These are way better than "don't know", because they're valuable knowledge. "Don't know" can also easily translate to "we don't understand the risks, so there's no way you're going to be allowed to change this". "don't know and we'll never know/don't care" is the easiest way out. My advice to anybody who keeps hearing this is start looking for your next job - this place will never care about personal development and helping you grow.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Disruptive behaviour is caused by frustration, and frustration in school is often caused by boredom (it's not like there are many other sources compared to the workplace). The problem with workplace politics is that there are usually two kinds of critical thinking: thinking that boils down to "we are doing OK, but we could do better if we did X" which is the type of critical thinking everyone loves, and then there's "we are doing something obviously wrong and we need to stop", which is literally critical thinking and is invariably risky (it's criticising people, often management). Organisations always say they want independent and critical thinkers, but they hardly ever do. They want yes men who will cheerlead for the side. That's tough on people who genuinely care about an organisation or want to see it succeed because strange or dysfunctional behaviour (ignoring customer feedback for example) can easily occur in almost any workplace, and sometimes there's no positive or upbeat way to say "we should probably listen to our customers" or "maybe that process you just put in place is a waste of time", or whatever the problem of the day is.

turar 10y ago

I found that this collection of Chomsky snippets expands on this quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPp69gKVe9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPp69gKVe9o

thecrow1213 10y ago
Good ol' Chomsky :)

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

The WSJ isn't encouraging critical thinking here - it's making self-described "critical thinkers" feel like they're important and valuable people, thus convincing them to read the WSJ.

etangent 10y ago

> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. In my experience, there is a specific experience threshold at which critical thinking switches from being an annoying trait of a young and garrulous employee to the most valuable asset a more senior person could have.

blablabla123 10y ago

I made a similar observation, critical thinking seems to be something undesired and it easily gets suppressed. However I truly believe it can work but it needs some sort of personal communication strategy. For example timing is critical. An obvious example is when shit hits the fan and coming up with reasons what could have been done better in the past. It's better to postpone that when things are fixed. But when working with people that generally dislike critical input, one needs to combine this with other things. Like saying such criticism only 1:1 (never in meetings), staying cool and thinking out things before saying them. Sometimes it's better to not answer certain people instead of giving a half baked answer that can be used for attack ground. Yeah, life isn't easy but there are ways.

tlogan 10y ago

Yes - but that is how corporations are organized. As an employee, your primary goal should be to make your boss happy: and any changes or initiative will hurt your career. If you are young you might make mistake, but people are not stupid they learn from their mistakes. So you have to go the point where your "boss" are customers / users of your product. Then critical thinkings works well.