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Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity.

Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity. It is more prevalent in other industries, but tech has grown so fast that we have a serious mentoring problem. There isn't enough good mentors, people with decades of experience, to go around. I grew up in part of the industry where people had been working for 3 decades before I got there; their mentality is much different than what I've found in young companies with young (as in age) staffs.

mfoy_ 8y ago
Reminds me of part of that poem by Kipling... "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:" (I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Not that long.) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if--- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
- sesteel 8y ago
  Thank you for sharing.
- balabaster 8y ago
  ...and which is more, you'll be a man, my son. This poem was hung on my bedroom wall for my whole childhood. Great poem. It taught me everything about finding the patience to be understanding of other people.
  - richardhod 8y ago
    This, of course, is the worst part of the poem, belying its Imperial age genesis, where men were men, and women were ignored. But, if you can ignore the wince-inducing ending, it's a very worthy poem and comes top of British polls of favourite poems almost every time.
    - balabaster 8y ago
      > "of course"? You say this as if a foregone conclusion, a statement of fact. There's zero wrong with considering what it means to be a man. Just because I don't address what it means to be a woman doesn't make me sexist. It's not toxic to consider who you are and what values you hold dear. Perhaps the wince that's induced in you is projection on your part? It doesn't make me wince. Nor do I apologize for it. I don't look at this poem as sexist. It addresses who I want to be as a man, no more, no less. It has no bearing on my thoughts of women. I'm not a woman, therefore my thoughts and feelings about what women should be are largely irrelevant... at least as irrelevant as to Rudyard Kipling who didn't address this topic at all in the poem.
      - andromedavision 8y ago
        This is what I have a problem with; one cannot even share a simple poem without it degenerating into a virtue signalling debate. Now you're forced to defend something that you had nothing to do with. Yuck.
        balabaster 8y ago
        Unfortunately, that's the world we live in at this moment where too many people need to find validation by belonging to some virtue group or another because they care what other people think. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I even cared enough to defend my position. Perhaps I'm not so different as I'd like to hope.
        andromedavision 8y ago
        No, you're alright.
        Baeocystin 8y ago
        Letting people know your honest thoughts in a straightforward manner is important. I know plenty of folks who hold opinions along the same line as the person you replied to. They are usually various degrees of shocked when I give them civil yet straightforward pushback, and more often then one may think, when done in person, it leads to real discussion, and ideas outside of normal worldview enter both our minds. It is a good thing.
- Baeocystin 8y ago
  What a delight. I'd never read that before. Thank you for posting it!
ratling 8y ago
"Remaining outcome agnostic." i.e. I'll be fine no matter what happens and no matter your emotional state. Also called "Keeping frame." Not letting other people's shit tests affect you. Amusingly, these are red pill concepts. I don't follow that belief system (many of it's proponents range between pathetic to downright unhinged) but I did read about it. There were some corn kernels of truth worth picking out of the turd of a viewpoint.
- lilactown 8y ago
  TRP has done a great job of appropriating decent life advice and using it to make their misogynistic message more palatable. They're not the first group, nor the last, to employ this technique. The ideas can be found in various philosophy and culture including Stoicism and eastern philosophy. "Shit tests," though, that's just the misogyny. Skip the turd, go read philosophy.
  - ratling 8y ago
    I probably missed all that because the one philosophy teacher I had was an obnoxious douche.
behringer 8y ago
Also they need to stop working 80 hour weeks just because the manager asks. They need to say no and be willing to walk away. It's not healthy for anybody to work that much.
hindsightbias 8y ago
> 3 decades ago IT used to be a comparatively stable environment if you were supporting servers or infrastructure. How do you mentor someone in environments where chasing the latest fad every year is the norm?
- Izkata 8y ago
  Abstract out a level. I've been getting some decent results recently by going over conceptual stuff, based on my CS degree, with new hires who got into development bootcamp-style.
- sesteel 8y ago
  I guess that is what "leaders" and mentors are supposed to do; lead people around or away from problems. The fact that people feel like they are "chasing the latest fad every year" is in and of itself a problem. They obviously are missing out on the financial advantage stability provides and getting poor returns on their investments. A shop like that might be better off running on all junior staff. So, in my humble opinion, either the wrong people are in charge or employees are misplaced, which again, reinforces that the wrong people are in charge. A piece of hilariously cynical advise I got from one of those people with decades of experience was, "If you can't change your workplace, then change your workplace." Which is to say, if you don't feel empowered to make changes, then you need to think about why you are there. Is your role simply to be a cog? Hopefully, you are still improving in some way, but if not, you can probably find a better use of your time. Regarding your question (yikes). Things are very cyclical and problems tend to be recurrent in some form. Thus, things that are new tend to be like things that have existed and some old lessons still apply. Generally, I've tended to mentor on processes, expectations, and alternative techniques.
  - hindsightbias 8y ago
    Sadly, don’t get to school the youts in my end-job, but when I look at my peers, they would just be seen as gatekeepers. For me, old-dog-learns-new-tricks, I spent the weekend debugging why an ansible script failed. This would be the fourth in the last half year. Now, I appreciate the work people did, but in the end, I had to figure out why packages x, y and z and dependencies a, b and c would not play on distro N. The deeper I go, the less google is my friend. I agree that everything is cyclical, but if I was 20-something, I’d just go to a bootcamp for mainframes. 30 years ago, my worst case was RTFM, and damn if the answers weren’t in there. Today... your mentor is barely keeping it together. I am so blessed to have entered when I did. But even then, the road was littered with peers who are not the same.
gerbilly 8y ago
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work. We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.
- Glench 8y ago
  > Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I think this means more, "however things might go, the outcome is not taken personally", the person's selfhood and worthiness is independent of the work they do. I also agree that integrating work with deep care, passion, and excitement is worthwhile. Imagine if more people were finding purpose and meaning in their work, how happy and energized they would be!
  - sesteel 8y ago
    Yes, passion about how you go about it, not about how it ends up.
- sesteel 8y ago
  I don't hold the same opinion. Being detached helps you to remain objective and consistent. Focusing on the process which creates the outcomes, gives you a means to improve in an objective way. That is why people have widespread religious debates about tools and methodology, but less so about outcomes. Certain tools and techniques work well and lead to better outcomes overall, they just can't be applied to all situations. Learning when to apply what technique to a given situation is what maturity and wisdom are. You gain that through failure or though guidance. This isn't to say outcomes don't matter; but from a practitioners point of view, they matter only so much as they inform those involved on what works and what doesn't. In general, measure what you care about, but be careful because you WILL get more of what you measure and there are often unintended consequences (cobra effect). edited for additional clarity
BeetleB 8y ago
I can certainly see how that can normalize behavior where death threats are part of the job (see other comments). Pro tip: Don't work for any place where "maturity" means becoming less human.

mfoy_ 8y ago

Reminds me of part of that poem by Kipling... "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:" (I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Not that long.) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if--- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

sesteel 8y ago
Thank you for sharing.
balabaster 8y ago
...and which is more, you'll be a man, my son. This poem was hung on my bedroom wall for my whole childhood. Great poem. It taught me everything about finding the patience to be understanding of other people.
- richardhod 8y ago
  This, of course, is the worst part of the poem, belying its Imperial age genesis, where men were men, and women were ignored. But, if you can ignore the wince-inducing ending, it's a very worthy poem and comes top of British polls of favourite poems almost every time.
  - balabaster 8y ago
    > "of course"? You say this as if a foregone conclusion, a statement of fact. There's zero wrong with considering what it means to be a man. Just because I don't address what it means to be a woman doesn't make me sexist. It's not toxic to consider who you are and what values you hold dear. Perhaps the wince that's induced in you is projection on your part? It doesn't make me wince. Nor do I apologize for it. I don't look at this poem as sexist. It addresses who I want to be as a man, no more, no less. It has no bearing on my thoughts of women. I'm not a woman, therefore my thoughts and feelings about what women should be are largely irrelevant... at least as irrelevant as to Rudyard Kipling who didn't address this topic at all in the poem.
    - andromedavision 8y ago
      This is what I have a problem with; one cannot even share a simple poem without it degenerating into a virtue signalling debate. Now you're forced to defend something that you had nothing to do with. Yuck.
      - balabaster 8y ago
        Unfortunately, that's the world we live in at this moment where too many people need to find validation by belonging to some virtue group or another because they care what other people think. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I even cared enough to defend my position. Perhaps I'm not so different as I'd like to hope.
        andromedavision 8y ago
        No, you're alright.
        Baeocystin 8y ago
        Letting people know your honest thoughts in a straightforward manner is important. I know plenty of folks who hold opinions along the same line as the person you replied to. They are usually various degrees of shocked when I give them civil yet straightforward pushback, and more often then one may think, when done in person, it leads to real discussion, and ideas outside of normal worldview enter both our minds. It is a good thing.
Baeocystin 8y ago
What a delight. I'd never read that before. Thank you for posting it!

ratling 8y ago

"Remaining outcome agnostic." i.e. I'll be fine no matter what happens and no matter your emotional state. Also called "Keeping frame." Not letting other people's shit tests affect you. Amusingly, these are red pill concepts. I don't follow that belief system (many of it's proponents range between pathetic to downright unhinged) but I did read about it. There were some corn kernels of truth worth picking out of the turd of a viewpoint.

lilactown 8y ago
TRP has done a great job of appropriating decent life advice and using it to make their misogynistic message more palatable. They're not the first group, nor the last, to employ this technique. The ideas can be found in various philosophy and culture including Stoicism and eastern philosophy. "Shit tests," though, that's just the misogyny. Skip the turd, go read philosophy.
- ratling 8y ago
  I probably missed all that because the one philosophy teacher I had was an obnoxious douche.

behringer 8y ago

Also they need to stop working 80 hour weeks just because the manager asks. They need to say no and be willing to walk away. It's not healthy for anybody to work that much.

hindsightbias 8y ago

> 3 decades ago IT used to be a comparatively stable environment if you were supporting servers or infrastructure. How do you mentor someone in environments where chasing the latest fad every year is the norm?

Izkata 8y ago
Abstract out a level. I've been getting some decent results recently by going over conceptual stuff, based on my CS degree, with new hires who got into development bootcamp-style.
sesteel 8y ago
I guess that is what "leaders" and mentors are supposed to do; lead people around or away from problems. The fact that people feel like they are "chasing the latest fad every year" is in and of itself a problem. They obviously are missing out on the financial advantage stability provides and getting poor returns on their investments. A shop like that might be better off running on all junior staff. So, in my humble opinion, either the wrong people are in charge or employees are misplaced, which again, reinforces that the wrong people are in charge. A piece of hilariously cynical advise I got from one of those people with decades of experience was, "If you can't change your workplace, then change your workplace." Which is to say, if you don't feel empowered to make changes, then you need to think about why you are there. Is your role simply to be a cog? Hopefully, you are still improving in some way, but if not, you can probably find a better use of your time. Regarding your question (yikes). Things are very cyclical and problems tend to be recurrent in some form. Thus, things that are new tend to be like things that have existed and some old lessons still apply. Generally, I've tended to mentor on processes, expectations, and alternative techniques.
- hindsightbias 8y ago
  Sadly, don’t get to school the youts in my end-job, but when I look at my peers, they would just be seen as gatekeepers. For me, old-dog-learns-new-tricks, I spent the weekend debugging why an ansible script failed. This would be the fourth in the last half year. Now, I appreciate the work people did, but in the end, I had to figure out why packages x, y and z and dependencies a, b and c would not play on distro N. The deeper I go, the less google is my friend. I agree that everything is cyclical, but if I was 20-something, I’d just go to a bootcamp for mainframes. 30 years ago, my worst case was RTFM, and damn if the answers weren’t in there. Today... your mentor is barely keeping it together. I am so blessed to have entered when I did. But even then, the road was littered with peers who are not the same.

gerbilly 8y ago

> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work. We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.

Glench 8y ago
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I think this means more, "however things might go, the outcome is not taken personally", the person's selfhood and worthiness is independent of the work they do. I also agree that integrating work with deep care, passion, and excitement is worthwhile. Imagine if more people were finding purpose and meaning in their work, how happy and energized they would be!
- sesteel 8y ago
  Yes, passion about how you go about it, not about how it ends up.
sesteel 8y ago
I don't hold the same opinion. Being detached helps you to remain objective and consistent. Focusing on the process which creates the outcomes, gives you a means to improve in an objective way. That is why people have widespread religious debates about tools and methodology, but less so about outcomes. Certain tools and techniques work well and lead to better outcomes overall, they just can't be applied to all situations. Learning when to apply what technique to a given situation is what maturity and wisdom are. You gain that through failure or though guidance. This isn't to say outcomes don't matter; but from a practitioners point of view, they matter only so much as they inform those involved on what works and what doesn't. In general, measure what you care about, but be careful because you WILL get more of what you measure and there are often unintended consequences (cobra effect). edited for additional clarity

BeetleB 8y ago

I can certainly see how that can normalize behavior where death threats are part of the job (see other comments). Pro tip: Don't work for any place where "maturity" means becoming less human.