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> Ask HN: How to challenge trends without appearing like a luddite? Wherever possible try to have ready an alternative answer to the need, niche or opportunity

by tCfD 8y ago

> Ask HN: How to challenge trends without appearing like a luddite? Wherever possible try to have ready an alternative answer to the need, niche or opportunity vacuum into which the trend is growing. It's very difficult to get people to drop a habit- that they have already invested time, reputation and personal capital (let alone money), into. At best you may be able to entertain some of the more patient victims with articulate and substantive criticisms of the trend that hooked them, but if you don't have an alternative ready to redirect their sunk experience cost into, they will in all likelihood promptly forget any persuasive arguments you made and go right back their trusty pint of (say) blockchainism they've been refilling down the blockchain pub with their new blockchain friends.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
try to have ready an alternative answer Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I think this is bad advice personally. Imagine if you complained about sexual harassment and were told to “bring solutions, not complaints.” A complaint is useful feedback that can alert you to a coming problem or an unintentional pain point or a previously invisible suffering group of people. It’s exactly attitudes that try to undermine the purpose of a complaint by trying to implicitly shift the burden of a solution onto the complainer that create an air of fear or timidity that mere feedback is not acceptable, and will be treated like it is the same as whining, preventing people from using the complaint as a mechanism to alert a wider group of problem solvers to the issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s complaining to the police about a loud neighbor, complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered, complaining to HR about sexual harassment or complaining to the waiter that your food was brought to you cold. It should be seen as a perfectly polite, reasonable, and useful thing to complain and leave the solution up to someone else. In cases when it’s appropriate for you to also propose a solution, because you have relevant skills or experiences or something, even better. But you should never make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    In the context of trying of get things done at work, which this question is apparently framed as, where the issue is not sexual harassment, I have found it to be a very effective rule of thumb. I think you are reading in meaning that isn't there. It is a rule of thumb for precisely this type of goal. It is not a rule of thumb for how to deal with situations where you are clearly being wronged and it is clearly someone else's responsibility to right it. But it works really, really well for trying to insert your agenda where doing so may not be all that welcome and where you are potentially stepping on toes politically, toes that could potentially cost you your job if they find you offensive enough. If you have a better way rather than just a criticism, it tends to be much, much better received.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      I disagree even in that case. When my colleague complains that a certain software module is overly complex, say, that’s really useful feedback even if they don’t have time to itemize the specific reasons why or propose alternatives. In terms of delegating and scheduling, it might just fall on someone else to take the complaint and look into whether the code can be simplified. Raising a complaint long before having a full alternative is really useful in matters of team conventions, design principles, adoption of different tooling, workflow policies, etc. I would always want to foster an environment where teammates could feel free and empowered to speak up about a topic that doesn’t sit right with them, and never feel implicit pressure to be quiet or keep to themselves if they cannot already propose an alternative. I like to say that it’s all about empathy, but people often think about empathy completely backwards, from their own point of view, just “not wanting to hear it” or getting annoyed with a particular colleague who is often vocal just because they irrationally wish the person would be quiet and not introduce extra work via some complaint that needs looking into. This is backwards because you should be happy and welcoming for people to tell you all this stuff. Part of being a professional is increasing your capacity to absorb complaints to make other people happy by solving their problem when they alert you to it, and not getting upset or annoyed (or at least not letting it affect you), and thinking they should be holding back for your sake. It’s a natural extension of a lot of the advice in, “How to win friends and influence people,” applied to the workplace.
- SI_Rob 8y ago
  I would largely agree, though in a corporate environment the pressure to influence change in the organization is less driven by purely voluntary motives than the "trend jamming" (for lack of a better label) ambitions of the GP. In both contexts, I would guess the key is recognizing that a trend exists because it answers a wide array of needs - many if not most of which have more to do with the geometries that govern the crystallization of social influence into familiar structures regardless of which novelty happened to seed them.
- flukus 8y ago
  > Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow. It's fantastic if they give you time to explore solutions, more often than not it can be translated to "work out a solution without pay on your own time and we'll consider adopting it". And even then the solution has to be obviously better and they have to be able to acknowledge the problem in the first place instead of saying "we've always done it that way". "Bring solutions not complaints" is just corporate BS for "stop complaining".
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Bring solutions not complaints" is just corporate BS for "stop complaining". No, not in this case. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547196

by tCfD 8y ago

DoreenMichele 8y ago

try to have ready an alternative answer Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I think this is bad advice personally. Imagine if you complained about sexual harassment and were told to “bring solutions, not complaints.” A complaint is useful feedback that can alert you to a coming problem or an unintentional pain point or a previously invisible suffering group of people. It’s exactly attitudes that try to undermine the purpose of a complaint by trying to implicitly shift the burden of a solution onto the complainer that create an air of fear or timidity that mere feedback is not acceptable, and will be treated like it is the same as whining, preventing people from using the complaint as a mechanism to alert a wider group of problem solvers to the issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s complaining to the police about a loud neighbor, complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered, complaining to HR about sexual harassment or complaining to the waiter that your food was brought to you cold. It should be seen as a perfectly polite, reasonable, and useful thing to complain and leave the solution up to someone else. In cases when it’s appropriate for you to also propose a solution, because you have relevant skills or experiences or something, even better. But you should never make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  In the context of trying of get things done at work, which this question is apparently framed as, where the issue is not sexual harassment, I have found it to be a very effective rule of thumb. I think you are reading in meaning that isn't there. It is a rule of thumb for precisely this type of goal. It is not a rule of thumb for how to deal with situations where you are clearly being wronged and it is clearly someone else's responsibility to right it. But it works really, really well for trying to insert your agenda where doing so may not be all that welcome and where you are potentially stepping on toes politically, toes that could potentially cost you your job if they find you offensive enough. If you have a better way rather than just a criticism, it tends to be much, much better received.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I disagree even in that case. When my colleague complains that a certain software module is overly complex, say, that’s really useful feedback even if they don’t have time to itemize the specific reasons why or propose alternatives. In terms of delegating and scheduling, it might just fall on someone else to take the complaint and look into whether the code can be simplified. Raising a complaint long before having a full alternative is really useful in matters of team conventions, design principles, adoption of different tooling, workflow policies, etc. I would always want to foster an environment where teammates could feel free and empowered to speak up about a topic that doesn’t sit right with them, and never feel implicit pressure to be quiet or keep to themselves if they cannot already propose an alternative. I like to say that it’s all about empathy, but people often think about empathy completely backwards, from their own point of view, just “not wanting to hear it” or getting annoyed with a particular colleague who is often vocal just because they irrationally wish the person would be quiet and not introduce extra work via some complaint that needs looking into. This is backwards because you should be happy and welcoming for people to tell you all this stuff. Part of being a professional is increasing your capacity to absorb complaints to make other people happy by solving their problem when they alert you to it, and not getting upset or annoyed (or at least not letting it affect you), and thinking they should be holding back for your sake. It’s a natural extension of a lot of the advice in, “How to win friends and influence people,” applied to the workplace.
SI_Rob 8y ago
I would largely agree, though in a corporate environment the pressure to influence change in the organization is less driven by purely voluntary motives than the "trend jamming" (for lack of a better label) ambitions of the GP. In both contexts, I would guess the key is recognizing that a trend exists because it answers a wide array of needs - many if not most of which have more to do with the geometries that govern the crystallization of social influence into familiar structures regardless of which novelty happened to seed them.
flukus 8y ago
> Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow. It's fantastic if they give you time to explore solutions, more often than not it can be translated to "work out a solution without pay on your own time and we'll consider adopting it". And even then the solution has to be obviously better and they have to be able to acknowledge the problem in the first place instead of saying "we've always done it that way". "Bring solutions not complaints" is just corporate BS for "stop complaining".
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Bring solutions not complaints" is just corporate BS for "stop complaining". No, not in this case. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547196