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> Would you be offended by someone else's curiosity? Me personally? No. Do I know others who would be? Yes. Always a tricky line trying to be thoughtful about

> Would you be offended by someone else's curiosity? Me personally? No. Do I know others who would be? Yes. Always a tricky line trying to be thoughtful about how someone might react to a particular question, especially when you're just genuinely trying to learn something about them. But, given this person is likely a relatively unknown party, not having any trust built up means that there can be misunderstandings even from simple questions like, "Yo, what's your job?" That being said, if your company culture is such that everyone you hire responds well to that style of question, great! Certainly no problem on my end with that type of questioning. I merely was being a bit more elaborate in my earlier response to account for someone not necessarily taking something that brief, well.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers? Do people some people think it's appropriate to guffaw at simple questions like, "What do you work on here?" If somebody were offended by that question, I would imagine it is not due to any overreach on my part. It would take an especially megalomanical (or highly confidential) work environment where superiors would dismiss work related inquiries outright. I can imagine in other countries with clear hierarchies, this might be different. But I imagine even in such places it can be advantageous to be social and informed in the work place.
- wjossey 7y ago
  > Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers? In some cases yes, in other cases, no. As an example, say you're a product manager in Department A. You, previously, had to work with Software Team B on a deliverable, and it was a really rough experience. The team was curt, challenging, and often spoke down to you because of your role. There's some turn-over on Team B over the year, and there are a few new hires. You know of them, but don't really know them at all, as you no longer interact with that team. One of the new hires walks up to you at lunch one day and says, "Yo, what is it that you do here?" Now, a rational approach is to just take that person as just being curious. Assume best intentions, assume they're just curious, assume it's very genuine. In that brief moment though, your frustrations with Team B surface up, and you react, rather than act rationally. You assume that someone on the team was bad-mouthing you, as you had heard the team lead previously say "I don't know why we even have product managers here anyway." Now this new hire is coming over, asking what it is that you even do, and now you've got to deal with this stuff all over again... Or, perhaps someone who is from my generation, hearing "What is it that you do here", would just immediately think of Office Space, and immediately enter into a "defend your role" sort of mentality, rather than just taking it as some honest inquiry. Just to reiterate. I'm not saying one should react the way I'm describing above. But, I will personally say, I don't always react to questions in a way that's healthy. How a question is worded to me can make or break my response. So, whenever possible, especially when giving generic advice on HN, I try to give suggested phrases that will hopefully avoid any unnecessary reactions, within reason. Obviously, one can't be possibly remotely aware of the challenges each and every one of us have had in our lives, and so misunderstandings are inevitable- But, thoughtful phrasing can go a long way and help to establish great relationships over the long term.
- sidlls 7y ago
  * Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers?* Depends highly on the context. Highly dysfunctional organizations make it easy to be distrustful of coworkers.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago

Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers? Do people some people think it's appropriate to guffaw at simple questions like, "What do you work on here?" If somebody were offended by that question, I would imagine it is not due to any overreach on my part. It would take an especially megalomanical (or highly confidential) work environment where superiors would dismiss work related inquiries outright. I can imagine in other countries with clear hierarchies, this might be different. But I imagine even in such places it can be advantageous to be social and informed in the work place.

wjossey 7y ago
> Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers? In some cases yes, in other cases, no. As an example, say you're a product manager in Department A. You, previously, had to work with Software Team B on a deliverable, and it was a really rough experience. The team was curt, challenging, and often spoke down to you because of your role. There's some turn-over on Team B over the year, and there are a few new hires. You know of them, but don't really know them at all, as you no longer interact with that team. One of the new hires walks up to you at lunch one day and says, "Yo, what is it that you do here?" Now, a rational approach is to just take that person as just being curious. Assume best intentions, assume they're just curious, assume it's very genuine. In that brief moment though, your frustrations with Team B surface up, and you react, rather than act rationally. You assume that someone on the team was bad-mouthing you, as you had heard the team lead previously say "I don't know why we even have product managers here anyway." Now this new hire is coming over, asking what it is that you even do, and now you've got to deal with this stuff all over again... Or, perhaps someone who is from my generation, hearing "What is it that you do here", would just immediately think of Office Space, and immediately enter into a "defend your role" sort of mentality, rather than just taking it as some honest inquiry. Just to reiterate. I'm not saying one should react the way I'm describing above. But, I will personally say, I don't always react to questions in a way that's healthy. How a question is worded to me can make or break my response. So, whenever possible, especially when giving generic advice on HN, I try to give suggested phrases that will hopefully avoid any unnecessary reactions, within reason. Obviously, one can't be possibly remotely aware of the challenges each and every one of us have had in our lives, and so misunderstandings are inevitable- But, thoughtful phrasing can go a long way and help to establish great relationships over the long term.
sidlls 7y ago
* Do you and they not have a baselevel implicit trust simply due to being coworkers?* Depends highly on the context. Highly dysfunctional organizations make it easy to be distrustful of coworkers.