11 ms·

Don't soften feedback

176 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

vmception 5y ago
yeah weed them the f* out. thats why Netflix's old culture document was so interesting and great, they went straight for the Machiavellian route and straight up said "if you want a 'family', go join a startup"
janto 5y ago
I prefer a shit sandwich: "Something highly undesirable made triflingly more palatable by attempting to surround it with more tolerable things." https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit_sandwich https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit_sandwich
- Hayarotle 5y ago
  It's an useful technique and I've already used it many times, but what do you do if there isn't enough genuine positive feedback for you to give to the person to make the constructive feedback more palatable? I find it to be a bit of a crutch. I prefer instead to make the constructive feedback itself palatable and not "shit". If it's an opportunity for growth then I frame it as that. If it's just factual feedback without any harmful consequences for the person's career or employment, I make that clear. In those situations we should be able to give harsh feedback without making it unpalatable. If it does have harmful consequences for the person, then it should be made clear and we should provide help to them (and frame it as just that, as help rather than as an accusation). If the consequences are immediate, then it isn't just feedback and should be dealt with appropriately.
- lcall 5y ago
  I think it is better called a "compliment sandwich". With practice, I think one can usually find something to praise about someone. Books called "difficult conversations", "crucial conversations", or similar (I have a couple, not at hand at the moment, and some material re this topic at my web site) are helpful in saying what needs to be said, while ALSO expressing true caring for the person as a valued human being. Someone wise said something like: "the primary feeling in any interaction should be love", and, "never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved". It takes practice, and probably a supporting belief system. They didn't mean romantic love, but a sense of really caring about the person and their well-being, as more important than any putting them down or $ or whatever. I think I said that better at my web site (in profile), under something like "Other / Life Lessons learned" / maturity models / social / ...." Edit: another way to look at it is to be sure to say what you are NOT saying: "First of all, thanks for your efforts. One thing that happened is X did not actually help with Y, but it might in the future if it were more Z. (smile) I am definitely not saying you are are a bad person or something, or should be fired [if you can say so honestly]. We all have room to improve, I know I do, and I hope you will tell me so when you see ways I can improve. And I appreciate your efforts, and you have really good potential. Let's go forward together on this project from here." (Everyone does have good potential, in some context, I believe, and maybe it is almost always good to say "I think we can go forward on ___ with ___. I can be wrong, and thanks for listening!! That is kind of you. I will try to do the same." [then do so, asking questions, you can always say "interesting, I should probably give that some thought"... in a pinch.) There are many good ideas out there. Asking questions and listening and observing, among them. (some edits.., including correcting navigation notes about my web site)
  - janto 5y ago
    If you give a human a "compliment sandwich" they are likely to take the compliments and throw away what they don't like. It will weaken your intent behind initiating the dialog. A commitment to positive regard and support from your side is fine, but the way you expressed it in your examples feels manipulative and will lead to future compliments and interactions feeling inauthentic. I've preferred to call it a "feedback sandwich" in the past but that feels like cop out management from Office Space, like firing someone on a Friday to minimize backlash. If we're talking about a place of work then I might sandwich it by implying their skill is needed and, hopefully in a skillful way, that I like having them around. If these are the issues needing to be addressed then that's what makes it a "shit sandwich". At the end of the day, I am responsible for only my own emotions. I can truthfully express what our relationship means to me and thereby provide some contextual buffering that they can rely on, if they want, but I don't want to push a desired reaction down their throat. That's a problem with an appeal to their kindness.
    - lcall 5y ago
      I find the sandwich helpful because I really do mean it, and otherwise I can be awkward with people and miscommunicate, easily. I think we agree that honesty is always important. The reason for the whole prioritization of kindness generally is this: I have learned for myself that God is real, and our choices really do matter in this life and beyond, and the way I learned it means many other things follow as a result: the need to love God with our all, and our fellow humans as ourselves; and the importance of service to others, in the growth process we are all experiencing. I also appreciate your point that you are only responsible for your own emotions. Sometimes remembering that helps me too -- especially if I consider those emotions to be a choice, or something that the person can choose, if they choose to act in that regard, rather than just being acted upon. Somehow balanced with the importance of serving/helping others appropriately when possible. There are a variety of situations of course, as you imply. And just a quick aside as it occurs to me: I found from experience that if the only feedback is negative, the recipient will likely eventually quit listening or quit participating, or become destructive in some way. I think we all need a positive concept of future possibilities, i.e., hope, in order to move forward. Part of a leader's job is to be to motivate, and/or to know when that is needed, and providing that hope is important. There is a short book ~ "Leadership and the One Minute Manager" that talks about 4 different kinds (maturity levels) of reports, and the different treatment each needs, depending on their high or low levels of confidence and competence.
SkittyDog 5y ago
This is a great article, but unfortunately I don't think most of the advice is particularly actionable for most people. Soft-pedaling our criticisms if each other is deeply ingrained in many/most people. From a very young age, we're taught to not "rock the boat", and we fear (often rightly) that other people will retaliate if we criticize them. If you want to turn this into actionable advice, I would recommend mandatory, short staff courses in some kind of Non-Violent Communication (NVC)... I liked Crucial Conversations a lot, but I know there are plenty of others... NVC has become a touchstone in a lot of therapists' offices, 12-step meetings, etc. It really works, and it's easy to teach.
- ochronus 5y ago
  A huge +1 for this. NVC should be part of basic education!
- chillacy 5y ago
  I'm partial myself to two books from the Harvard Negotiation Project (Douglas Stone, Shiela Heen, et al): Thanks for the Feedback (on how to receive feedback), and Difficult Conversations (on how to give feedback). I imagine books about the topic tend to all provide similar frameworks, I happen to like these two because they're very structured and I do well with that.
- quelltext 5y ago
  Wikipedia on NVC states that critics say: The method requires a substantial amount of effort (time) to learn and apply, and assumes a certain level of education. Not that I know or could tell that the critics are right, but is it really just that easy to teach and learn? I feel like there's always something odd about some of these taught communication techniques, where I feel like there's a reason these communication styles don't come naturally to us, and there is a bit of a manipulative aspect to them.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I think certain principles of it are very simple yet may take time for people to learn. I also have found that sometimes I've felt overwhelmed with the number of steps of NVC and sometimes how it seems to require two people to participate. So I created a three-step process that may be similar to NVC but with just three steps and only requiring one person, I find it pretty easy to remember and have seen people learn (the basics of) it quickly. Step 1) truth Step 2) fair play Step 3) love 1) tell the truth about how you actually feel: most of us don't do this and when we do, other people will often better trust what we say. 2) tell the other person how you imagine they might be feeling: let's them know you're considering how they feel, with an emphasis on not knowing for sure. 3) say one thing to connect with love: I'm sorry, I hope you have a good day, etc. I've found this to work very well in my life, and have had people use it successfully with very little training. At the same time, i feel confident it will take a lifetime to master :-) Anyway, I hope that helps and you find it relevant to your repsonse.
quadrifoliate 5y ago
I feel like there is a fair amount of literature on empowering managers to sugarcoat (or not, as this article says) negative feedback. An alternative point that perhaps a lot of managers have trouble considering – it's perfectly okay to not have any critical or negative feedback if things are going well. If things are fine, just go ahead and say that. Negative feedback or criticism should be relatively rare. I have noticed a pattern where managers, especially new managers, tend to take articles like this and others at face value, and nerdily try to maintain some kind of weird ratio in their feedback. They feel like they have to say something critical every time they give feedback to their reports. This leads to situations where there is no actual problem but they are spinning minor things into critical feedback just so they have something to say in that "column", which quickly becomes off-putting. It causes individual contributors to think, "I would rather get off this constant criticism treadmill, and work for someone more peaceful". Story time: I watched a new manager tear apart an otherwise great team like this once; six months after they took charge, 3 out of their 5 engineers had left for new jobs and higher salaries because the manager kept telling them "Weeeeell, you could have improved upon <inconsequential minor point>" every week, when actually they were doing a stellar job under time pressure and hitting all their targets. The appropriate response should have been "Great job, thank you, and please let me write you this large bonus check for year end".
- quelltext 5y ago
  This applies to peer feedback as well. Every few months we have to choose peers to evaluate us (not anonymously) and vice versa and the official peer feedback forms always ask for feedback on how the peer could improve. Real feedback isn't provided. You always have to come up with both positive and negative feedback. And obviously nobody wants to be an ass, so the negative feedback is extremely muted or some fake ideas for development are provided. I just want to tell someone and their manager how good a job they did, or in some rare cases help identify issues. It seems like a farce, really. I also had quarters in which I got glowing peer reviews where folks declined to fill in the development piece, and my very off hands manager came up with some made up generic negative feedback for me that did not come up before.
  - 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
Some advice to people that receive straight-forward feedback: If your manager has stated things in factual, logical and respectful manner, with no sense of passive aggressive tone, confront it - I think of feedback, especially difficult digest ones to be very motivating. If your manager has misevaluated still after introspection, tell him exactly how you thought about it and how it is not quite correct due the reasons you shall state. Keep a level of professionalism for each other and smile.
- Decker87 5y ago
  Accepting feedback is a skill, and a manager has to deal with vastly different skill levels in the people they provide feedback to. The manager's manager also has to be supportive. I had a manager once who, when one of my directs complained that I was "mean", told the direct that I shouldn't have been so direct. This undermined my ability to give direct feedback, and deprived my employee of the opportunity to practice the skill.
jbay808 5y ago
It might be considered softening, but I think it's always essential to express your "confidence level" when giving feedback. The article does advise focusing on facts and tying feedback to outcomes, but managers don't have a godlike view. You don't necessarily know all the facts of the situation, and you can't always be certain of the business outcomes, especially when giving feedback to a highly-skilled team member who might have their own reasons for doing things a certain way. Presenting feedback overconfidently can provoke defensiveness that humility would have avoided.
- pdpi 5y ago
  In a way, what the article is describing is sort of like building a scientific hypothesis: your feedback needs to be concrete enough to be falsifiable. You don't have to know all the facts, and you don't have to come across as overconfident. You should present the facts as you understand them. This gives the other person the ability to contextualise the feedback you're trying to give them, but also the necessary context to contradict you if they think the feedback is wrong. Likewise, putting it in terms of business outcomes means that they can counter your argument with what their intended outcome was, where appropriate (which is an especially important conversation with senior/high skilled people). All the caveats you're describing are pretty damn important, but they're all pretty much part of what the author means by "be kind".
shoto_io 5y ago
I’m feed up with feedback. It’s probably because I have worked in companies with regular 360 and performance reviews. It has somehow numbed me down to the point that I think: why should I care? What’s the thing with this obsession to become better and better all the f-ing time?
- specialist 5y ago
  aka Stalinism. Or maybe organizational kabuki. Or a mass game of Prisoner's Dilemma in the form of "Guess what I'm thinking?" These attempts at introspection somehow weaponize feedback into another tool of dominance and oppression. Woe be to the persons of good faith who speak honestly.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  As somebody who works in Operations (Production Engineering), mostly I've found OKRs, etc. a distraction from the daily marathon of high-priority availability and reliability issues. I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on the pluses and minuses of "regular 360 and performance reviews"?
- verve_rat 5y ago
  The best bit is when the feedback and implied improvements are completely decoupled from pay rises and promotions. But actually though, why _should_ I give a shit. Just leave me alone for a while, it'll be fine.
- atoav 5y ago
  Feedback is totally obsolete if you don't get the people on board who are meant to receive it. If there is e.g. someone in your team that feels they are doing you a favour, giving them casual negative feedback is a very weird thing to do. The won't be able to receive it, because they already believe they are better than you deserve. If you don't provide the time or resources (room, tools, education, ...) for your people to do their work properly negative feedback can be down right destructive. Because they will rightfully say to themselves: "Why on earth should I try to do a better job if my boss isn't willing to create an environment that makes it possible?" Another good one is when your manager is the person creating all the chaos and they end up giving you negative feedback on something they caused, because they didn't follow the usual procedure because $importantcustomer stressed them out so much they went directly to the shelve and took $inventarizedproduct without using the inventary system, which them makes shipping a custom job, which then makes returning the item a custom job, which then makes shelving the item back a custom job — a custom job all shifts have to know. Then there is good feedback. It is when a manager provides you all the resources, makes sure you and them have the same goals, they understand what you are doing and they provide feedback that helps you to get better at the things you care about.
Jensson 5y ago
The problem is when the manager gives out quick, direct harsh feedback, but the manager himself doesn't accept any from his reports. That is a very toxic environment. So if you want to do this then you need to make sure that you yourself can handle it. If a report gives you harsh feedback, don't get angry and retaliate for no reason, that feedback is just a piece of information, instead just explain why you did what you did. By the way, any programmer accepts direct feedback, otherwise you can't work with a compiler. Feedback should be direct, quick and fair. I see no reason to do anything else, and if someone feels uncomfortable with that you can just train them to get used to it, everyone who programs can get used to it quickly. However you can't train your manager to accept direct feedback as he will just fire you if he can't already handle it.
- barrenko 5y ago
  My pet theory is this is why tech beat out basically every other industry in management and company culture. You work with an unforgiving compiler for a couple of years? You know something about feedback. (Personal favorite F#) Also final point, BS managers are dime a dozen. As a manager you should welcome getting feedback as it gets you to be like Juggernaut from Marvel.
  - atoav 5y ago
    Interesting thought, I think IT people indeed deal with feedback differently.
  - sideshowb 5y ago
    I'm not sure I buy this argument. Compiler feedback is 100% logical and deterministic. Human feedback, even when precise (which it often isn't) is still influenced by the whims of others. The programmer archetype finds the latter frustrating.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > My pet theory is this is why tech beat out basically every other industry in management and company culture. I dunno, tech management always striked me as pretty bad.
trabant00 5y ago
It all depends on circumstances. Like all these articles it can be very good or very bad advice. Great if you have a small team that you afford to hand pick, bad for larger ones where you also need to employ people who just can't handle the truth (large percentage of population). Insincere motivational speeches exists for a reason: they work.
klodolph 5y ago
I do see some criticism of techniques like non-violent communication here on HN and then I see articles like this that reinvent it half-way. You don’t need to sugar-coat your feedback as often if you provide context and ground your feedback in facts. That’s a big chunk of NVC right there. If you don’t have a good strategy for giving people honest feedback, then what you do is you stumble around trying different strategies to sugar-coat feedback and end up doing more harm than good. We humans, very naturally, are just trying to feel good most of the time and we want people to like us. That’s why we don’t like giving people feedback. We try all sorts of different ways of giving feedback so we can keep feeling good and make people like us, and it's easy to end up falling into the trap of being brutish (delivering feedback with careless disregard for other people) or into the trap of being manipulative (distorting feedback because we value people’s feelings more than our stated goals).
iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
well, if you hurt a persons feelings enough, they'll quit so like all things, it's a trade off to be played entirely to the context of the situation i'm not a fan of this cultural backlash in management writing. we had a period of was was essentially "stop being a dick, your reports are humans" and now we have a push in the opposite direction. i appreciate the pushback as reconciling it will cause innovation (probably) but i stand firmly on the side of dont be a dick. there will be many opportunities to offer feedback. you only get one relationship with a person and people largely quit jobs because of managers
- ido 5y ago
  I agree - there is usually a way to be honest without being brutal.
djmips 5y ago
Like others have said, feedback is not directed against your ego but simply the advice of a coach who wants you to improve.That being said, a mean or bad coach is terrible to work for. Perhaps the worst thing is getting plaudits, thinking everything is fine and then being shown the door.
atoav 5y ago
One thing about negative feedback is, that to give it to subordinates you have to tick a few boxes first, otherwise your feedback won't make things better, but worse: - if they cannot get better because you don't provide the environment, tools, time, resources (even if you think you do), they will read your negative feedback as you having unrealistic expectations or no clue of the real world - if you are the cause of the things you are critizising (e.g. you are the one creating chaos, taking time away from their actual tasks etc), giving negative feedback is like critizising the person who held the door open for you: extremely rude and shitty, says more about you than them. - if you always give negative feedback, because you believe there must be always something to improve, they will start to ignore negative feedback, because it doesn't indicate whether they did good or not - if you fail to get them on board with actually getting better. In some jobs the salary and the involvement they expect from you doesn't align. You cannot expect someone to tear out their leg for a job where they feel like they are doing you an favour. The solution is to help them getting better at something where they feel they are giving themselves a favour. If you tick any (or god forbid multiple!) of those boxes, you are better of with not giving negative feedback and telling them on how you plan to improve those points.
- piinbinary 5y ago
  Another thing I'd add to that list: - make sure your facts are right. Ideally, make sure they are right well before you give feedback. You can end up in awkward situations where a manager says "you promised to deliver this in a month but it's taken the whole quarter" but the one month timeline was the PM's idea, and you told everyone it would take 4 months.
  - atoav 5y ago
    This is a good one. The classic example would be: "why didn't you tell me $x" When you told them $x in the first line of an email you sent to them 2 times.
- dukeyukey 5y ago
  > if you are the cause of the things you are critizising Manager: "you need to spend less time helping you colleagues and more time getting work done" Me, most experienced developer on a team of 75% newbies, without a lead or even official senior developer: "Wat?"
higeorge13 5y ago
I feel that this kind of articles mostly apply to some dream company, and not in the real world esp. outside SV and top talent. Context is king. There are people who wouldn’t accept honest feedback, they wouldn’t even accept honest PR reviews. There are teams which were formed by someone else and cannot meet your standards, so how many times should you give negative feedback to people used to work in different mentality? You give up and try to be motivational instead. There are also managers who don’t give feedback only when they want to fire someone and give the harshest out-of-the-blue feedback they can give. And then there are company- or country- cultural issues, where some employees would take harsh feedback as a warning that they will get fired and their job security will go into garbage. And so many more cases and examples.
- ozim 5y ago
  I don't think it is about dream company. It is just that you don't give honest feedback to people with who you don't have a relation. Before someone can give/take feedback there has to be relation of trust. It is more of emotion management that simply telling someone do start doing things differently.
4monthsaway 5y ago
I used to send these monthly massive 'update' emails to all the execs at my tech job. While it's not feedback, at some point I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested. I was pleasantly surprised when the CEO gave a huge 'THANK YOU FOR THE TLDR version' in a reply all. The 'bottomline' comment kind of reminded me of that haha.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  > I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested. Yep. That's a good practice. I write a 2-4 sentence blurb at the beginning, that just says the key idea, point or request, followed by some empty space. And then a row of asterisks with the word "details" in it, where everything gets properly fleshed out in the right order. Never got feedback for that, but I know it works because it has helped to halt email-thread-diarrhea. I started doing this because there are SO MANY people who literally only read the first few sentences of an email, respond to the first thing that comes up and ignore the rest.
micheljansen 5y ago
This is the central thesis of Kim Scott's book "Radical <s>Focus</s> Candor". A book which poignantly summarises itself in the diagram on the cover (see https://twitter.com/kimballscott/status/1410707132572266501 https://twitter.com/kimballscott/status/1410707132572266501). Good feedback requires genuinely caring personally and being direct, which is much easier said than done. She calls softening feedback in a misguided attempt to avoid hurting someone's feelings "ruinous empathy". Early on in my career I fell into this trap far more often than I like to admit and this book really gave me a mental model for improving that. Edit: fixed the name of the book
- bartread 5y ago
  Do you perhaps mean "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott, rather than "Radical Focus"?
  - micheljansen 5y ago
    That's exactly what I meant! Radical Focus is obviously also worth a shout, for entirely unrelated reasons :)
alligate 5y ago
I often see people wrap their feedback in a "just thinking out loud" style of speaking, that leaves everyone confused. "Well you're not handling this error here, so maybe it would be good to think about doing that, or maybe we don't need to. Well it's definitely a good idea to think about it" and so on. It took me years to have the confidence to, after a ramble like that, directly ask what the suggestion was. There's only so much definitely maybe thinking about possible good ideas I can do.
specialist 5y ago
I can't provide constructive feedback. I just don't know how. Most of my attempts have failed, been counter productive, or worse. I can't think of an instance that I didn't later regret. (Which might be some kind of negative selection bias.) I think maybe role playing would help. Like taking improv classes. I had this notion while reading Voss' "Never Split the Difference". It's about using the latest hostage negotiation techniques in normal life. Like when asking for a salary increase. Entering a negotiation cold (no practice) is doomed to fail. Expecting someone (eg yourself) to be good at giving constructive feedback without training and practice is kinda silly. Back when I had to do a lot of public speaking, I hired people to help me. Stuff like stump speeches, practice debates, endorsement interviews. They recorded grilling me and then we'd review the tape. Hard but helpful. I wasn't ever very good, but they helped me be not terrible.
PaulHoule 5y ago
I had that problem with being too easy on correcting a black student and having it cause a lot of trouble including being accused of being racist. The good news is that we got it straight, he received the correction and succeed in the next class. The bad news was that failed the next class so bad that he went to jail and didn't pass go.
tristor 5y ago
My biggest issue with the feedback I receive in a work setting is that it's not /actionable/. One of the things I inculcated in my practices as an operations engineer was to never trigger an alert that wasn't immediately actionable, because it trains operators to ignore alerts. Alerts are not informational, they are interruptions. Feedback is the same thing. I don't want informational feedback, that's something you should be getting regularly outside normal windows. Feedback is an interruption, and interruptions should be actionable. I have never once been bothered by how soft or blunt the feedback I received was. I have never had my feelings hurt. I have, however, been consistently frustrated by receiving feedback which is effectively meaningless. I want to improve in my career so I get promoted, so I can gain the political capital in the organization necessary to be effective, and so I can succeed and improve my social standing, all very human and very normal desires. If your feedback doesn't help me to actionably reach those goals, and you as a manager who help determined promotion outcomes aren't leading me to a promotion by following your feedback, then you are doing me a disservice and I will likely eventually quit and move on out of frustration. It's pretty much that simple. Don't soften it, don't be an asshole, just provide feedback that is actually actionable and useful. If you have no actionable feedback, say nothing.
- avemuri 5y ago
  I've encountered various situations that could all be described this way but for very different reasons. eg. 1) The feedback is not actionable because the manager is themselves not clear in their head or is skirting around the real issue on their mind. 2) The feedback cannot be actionable because the manager only has partial information and can say there is an issue, not diagnose it and recommend corrective action. They are relying on their report to introspect and diagnose themselves. 3) The feedback is actionable, but the person wants the action plan itself to come from the manager. Not always possible. In my experience the answer to all three is to develop the action plan together. Any blind spots and vagueness on both sides get cleared by this forcing function. Helps set expectations too.
dekhn 5y ago
I was nearly fired from Google for giving a coworker feedback (I said they did a bad job that impacted the whole team and they cried). Since then I've learned that being honest, even in a polite way, can have severe consequences.
- cvhashim 5y ago
  Feel like there’s more to this story than a coworker crying from negative feedback
  - dekhn 5y ago
    no, the director just used it to force me off the team and get me in trouble with HR. Other than that, nothing interesting.
baby 5y ago
My issue with feedback is three folds: 1. It’s often given as part of performance review, and as such is shared with others (not just for you) and can negatively affect your career / promotions. Also, due to that, people game the feedback system and it becomes more of a reflection of how many allies you made. 2. In the US, with employment at will, feedback can be seen as a gateway to getting fired 3. It supports a culture of “you always have to improve yourself”, which rubs me wrong. I do believe that feedback does improve people though, but I wish there was a system in place where feedback was 1:1 and not part of a broader performance review process.
Dumblydorr 5y ago
The article seems to be struggling to state its purpose: give useful feedback, but don't be a jerk. The author dances around English vocabulary definitions in this article: soften, kind, nice, actionable, rude, useful, direct, bottom line. It'd be much clearer to title the blog: how to give useful feedback. I seem to dislike many chosen titles of blog authors. They're incentivized to have great titles regardless of the bottom line of the article. This article doesn't take its own advice, which is to get to the bottom line. There's so little about "soften" in here, why is it in the title?
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> But by softening the feedback so much that it becomes fuzzy, the feedback-giver has inadvertently set up their teammate to fail. I'm reminded of the idea of Yes, and... [0]. Seems like a great idea for improv comedy, but it's a terrible idea for clear and mature argumentation, where the goal should be to find the root of disagreement rather than to pretend no disagreement exists. Hard to imagine serious philosophers using that kind of approach, for instance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and
artifact_44 5y ago
Tldr.. fonts suck. Article could have been 5 sentences and been more digestible.

176 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

yeah weed them the f* out. thats why Netflix's old culture document was so interesting and great, they went straight for the Machiavellian route and straight up said "if you want a 'family', go join a startup"

janto 5y ago

I prefer a shit sandwich: "Something highly undesirable made triflingly more palatable by attempting to surround it with more tolerable things." https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit_sandwich https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit_sandwich

Hayarotle 5y ago
It's an useful technique and I've already used it many times, but what do you do if there isn't enough genuine positive feedback for you to give to the person to make the constructive feedback more palatable? I find it to be a bit of a crutch. I prefer instead to make the constructive feedback itself palatable and not "shit". If it's an opportunity for growth then I frame it as that. If it's just factual feedback without any harmful consequences for the person's career or employment, I make that clear. In those situations we should be able to give harsh feedback without making it unpalatable. If it does have harmful consequences for the person, then it should be made clear and we should provide help to them (and frame it as just that, as help rather than as an accusation). If the consequences are immediate, then it isn't just feedback and should be dealt with appropriately.
lcall 5y ago
I think it is better called a "compliment sandwich". With practice, I think one can usually find something to praise about someone. Books called "difficult conversations", "crucial conversations", or similar (I have a couple, not at hand at the moment, and some material re this topic at my web site) are helpful in saying what needs to be said, while ALSO expressing true caring for the person as a valued human being. Someone wise said something like: "the primary feeling in any interaction should be love", and, "never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved". It takes practice, and probably a supporting belief system. They didn't mean romantic love, but a sense of really caring about the person and their well-being, as more important than any putting them down or $ or whatever. I think I said that better at my web site (in profile), under something like "Other / Life Lessons learned" / maturity models / social / ...." Edit: another way to look at it is to be sure to say what you are NOT saying: "First of all, thanks for your efforts. One thing that happened is X did not actually help with Y, but it might in the future if it were more Z. (smile) I am definitely not saying you are are a bad person or something, or should be fired [if you can say so honestly]. We all have room to improve, I know I do, and I hope you will tell me so when you see ways I can improve. And I appreciate your efforts, and you have really good potential. Let's go forward together on this project from here." (Everyone does have good potential, in some context, I believe, and maybe it is almost always good to say "I think we can go forward on ___ with ___. I can be wrong, and thanks for listening!! That is kind of you. I will try to do the same." [then do so, asking questions, you can always say "interesting, I should probably give that some thought"... in a pinch.) There are many good ideas out there. Asking questions and listening and observing, among them. (some edits.., including correcting navigation notes about my web site)
- janto 5y ago
  If you give a human a "compliment sandwich" they are likely to take the compliments and throw away what they don't like. It will weaken your intent behind initiating the dialog. A commitment to positive regard and support from your side is fine, but the way you expressed it in your examples feels manipulative and will lead to future compliments and interactions feeling inauthentic. I've preferred to call it a "feedback sandwich" in the past but that feels like cop out management from Office Space, like firing someone on a Friday to minimize backlash. If we're talking about a place of work then I might sandwich it by implying their skill is needed and, hopefully in a skillful way, that I like having them around. If these are the issues needing to be addressed then that's what makes it a "shit sandwich". At the end of the day, I am responsible for only my own emotions. I can truthfully express what our relationship means to me and thereby provide some contextual buffering that they can rely on, if they want, but I don't want to push a desired reaction down their throat. That's a problem with an appeal to their kindness.
  - lcall 5y ago
    I find the sandwich helpful because I really do mean it, and otherwise I can be awkward with people and miscommunicate, easily. I think we agree that honesty is always important. The reason for the whole prioritization of kindness generally is this: I have learned for myself that God is real, and our choices really do matter in this life and beyond, and the way I learned it means many other things follow as a result: the need to love God with our all, and our fellow humans as ourselves; and the importance of service to others, in the growth process we are all experiencing. I also appreciate your point that you are only responsible for your own emotions. Sometimes remembering that helps me too -- especially if I consider those emotions to be a choice, or something that the person can choose, if they choose to act in that regard, rather than just being acted upon. Somehow balanced with the importance of serving/helping others appropriately when possible. There are a variety of situations of course, as you imply. And just a quick aside as it occurs to me: I found from experience that if the only feedback is negative, the recipient will likely eventually quit listening or quit participating, or become destructive in some way. I think we all need a positive concept of future possibilities, i.e., hope, in order to move forward. Part of a leader's job is to be to motivate, and/or to know when that is needed, and providing that hope is important. There is a short book ~ "Leadership and the One Minute Manager" that talks about 4 different kinds (maturity levels) of reports, and the different treatment each needs, depending on their high or low levels of confidence and competence.

SkittyDog 5y ago

This is a great article, but unfortunately I don't think most of the advice is particularly actionable for most people. Soft-pedaling our criticisms if each other is deeply ingrained in many/most people. From a very young age, we're taught to not "rock the boat", and we fear (often rightly) that other people will retaliate if we criticize them. If you want to turn this into actionable advice, I would recommend mandatory, short staff courses in some kind of Non-Violent Communication (NVC)... I liked Crucial Conversations a lot, but I know there are plenty of others... NVC has become a touchstone in a lot of therapists' offices, 12-step meetings, etc. It really works, and it's easy to teach.

ochronus 5y ago
A huge +1 for this. NVC should be part of basic education!
chillacy 5y ago
I'm partial myself to two books from the Harvard Negotiation Project (Douglas Stone, Shiela Heen, et al): Thanks for the Feedback (on how to receive feedback), and Difficult Conversations (on how to give feedback). I imagine books about the topic tend to all provide similar frameworks, I happen to like these two because they're very structured and I do well with that.
quelltext 5y ago
Wikipedia on NVC states that critics say: The method requires a substantial amount of effort (time) to learn and apply, and assumes a certain level of education. Not that I know or could tell that the critics are right, but is it really just that easy to teach and learn? I feel like there's always something odd about some of these taught communication techniques, where I feel like there's a reason these communication styles don't come naturally to us, and there is a bit of a manipulative aspect to them.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I think certain principles of it are very simple yet may take time for people to learn. I also have found that sometimes I've felt overwhelmed with the number of steps of NVC and sometimes how it seems to require two people to participate. So I created a three-step process that may be similar to NVC but with just three steps and only requiring one person, I find it pretty easy to remember and have seen people learn (the basics of) it quickly. Step 1) truth Step 2) fair play Step 3) love 1) tell the truth about how you actually feel: most of us don't do this and when we do, other people will often better trust what we say. 2) tell the other person how you imagine they might be feeling: let's them know you're considering how they feel, with an emphasis on not knowing for sure. 3) say one thing to connect with love: I'm sorry, I hope you have a good day, etc. I've found this to work very well in my life, and have had people use it successfully with very little training. At the same time, i feel confident it will take a lifetime to master :-) Anyway, I hope that helps and you find it relevant to your repsonse.

quadrifoliate 5y ago

I feel like there is a fair amount of literature on empowering managers to sugarcoat (or not, as this article says) negative feedback. An alternative point that perhaps a lot of managers have trouble considering – it's perfectly okay to not have any critical or negative feedback if things are going well. If things are fine, just go ahead and say that. Negative feedback or criticism should be relatively rare. I have noticed a pattern where managers, especially new managers, tend to take articles like this and others at face value, and nerdily try to maintain some kind of weird ratio in their feedback. They feel like they have to say something critical every time they give feedback to their reports. This leads to situations where there is no actual problem but they are spinning minor things into critical feedback just so they have something to say in that "column", which quickly becomes off-putting. It causes individual contributors to think, "I would rather get off this constant criticism treadmill, and work for someone more peaceful". Story time: I watched a new manager tear apart an otherwise great team like this once; six months after they took charge, 3 out of their 5 engineers had left for new jobs and higher salaries because the manager kept telling them "Weeeeell, you could have improved upon <inconsequential minor point>" every week, when actually they were doing a stellar job under time pressure and hitting all their targets. The appropriate response should have been "Great job, thank you, and please let me write you this large bonus check for year end".

quelltext 5y ago
This applies to peer feedback as well. Every few months we have to choose peers to evaluate us (not anonymously) and vice versa and the official peer feedback forms always ask for feedback on how the peer could improve. Real feedback isn't provided. You always have to come up with both positive and negative feedback. And obviously nobody wants to be an ass, so the negative feedback is extremely muted or some fake ideas for development are provided. I just want to tell someone and their manager how good a job they did, or in some rare cases help identify issues. It seems like a farce, really. I also had quarters in which I got glowing peer reviews where folks declined to fill in the development piece, and my very off hands manager came up with some made up generic negative feedback for me that did not come up before.
- 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

Some advice to people that receive straight-forward feedback: If your manager has stated things in factual, logical and respectful manner, with no sense of passive aggressive tone, confront it - I think of feedback, especially difficult digest ones to be very motivating. If your manager has misevaluated still after introspection, tell him exactly how you thought about it and how it is not quite correct due the reasons you shall state. Keep a level of professionalism for each other and smile.

Decker87 5y ago
Accepting feedback is a skill, and a manager has to deal with vastly different skill levels in the people they provide feedback to. The manager's manager also has to be supportive. I had a manager once who, when one of my directs complained that I was "mean", told the direct that I shouldn't have been so direct. This undermined my ability to give direct feedback, and deprived my employee of the opportunity to practice the skill.

jbay808 5y ago

It might be considered softening, but I think it's always essential to express your "confidence level" when giving feedback. The article does advise focusing on facts and tying feedback to outcomes, but managers don't have a godlike view. You don't necessarily know all the facts of the situation, and you can't always be certain of the business outcomes, especially when giving feedback to a highly-skilled team member who might have their own reasons for doing things a certain way. Presenting feedback overconfidently can provoke defensiveness that humility would have avoided.

pdpi 5y ago
In a way, what the article is describing is sort of like building a scientific hypothesis: your feedback needs to be concrete enough to be falsifiable. You don't have to know all the facts, and you don't have to come across as overconfident. You should present the facts as you understand them. This gives the other person the ability to contextualise the feedback you're trying to give them, but also the necessary context to contradict you if they think the feedback is wrong. Likewise, putting it in terms of business outcomes means that they can counter your argument with what their intended outcome was, where appropriate (which is an especially important conversation with senior/high skilled people). All the caveats you're describing are pretty damn important, but they're all pretty much part of what the author means by "be kind".

shoto_io 5y ago

I’m feed up with feedback. It’s probably because I have worked in companies with regular 360 and performance reviews. It has somehow numbed me down to the point that I think: why should I care? What’s the thing with this obsession to become better and better all the f-ing time?

specialist 5y ago
aka Stalinism. Or maybe organizational kabuki. Or a mass game of Prisoner's Dilemma in the form of "Guess what I'm thinking?" These attempts at introspection somehow weaponize feedback into another tool of dominance and oppression. Woe be to the persons of good faith who speak honestly.
redis_mlc 5y ago
As somebody who works in Operations (Production Engineering), mostly I've found OKRs, etc. a distraction from the daily marathon of high-priority availability and reliability issues. I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on the pluses and minuses of "regular 360 and performance reviews"?
verve_rat 5y ago
The best bit is when the feedback and implied improvements are completely decoupled from pay rises and promotions. But actually though, why _should_ I give a shit. Just leave me alone for a while, it'll be fine.
atoav 5y ago
Feedback is totally obsolete if you don't get the people on board who are meant to receive it. If there is e.g. someone in your team that feels they are doing you a favour, giving them casual negative feedback is a very weird thing to do. The won't be able to receive it, because they already believe they are better than you deserve. If you don't provide the time or resources (room, tools, education, ...) for your people to do their work properly negative feedback can be down right destructive. Because they will rightfully say to themselves: "Why on earth should I try to do a better job if my boss isn't willing to create an environment that makes it possible?" Another good one is when your manager is the person creating all the chaos and they end up giving you negative feedback on something they caused, because they didn't follow the usual procedure because $importantcustomer stressed them out so much they went directly to the shelve and took $inventarizedproduct without using the inventary system, which them makes shipping a custom job, which then makes returning the item a custom job, which then makes shelving the item back a custom job — a custom job all shifts have to know. Then there is good feedback. It is when a manager provides you all the resources, makes sure you and them have the same goals, they understand what you are doing and they provide feedback that helps you to get better at the things you care about.

Jensson 5y ago

The problem is when the manager gives out quick, direct harsh feedback, but the manager himself doesn't accept any from his reports. That is a very toxic environment. So if you want to do this then you need to make sure that you yourself can handle it. If a report gives you harsh feedback, don't get angry and retaliate for no reason, that feedback is just a piece of information, instead just explain why you did what you did. By the way, any programmer accepts direct feedback, otherwise you can't work with a compiler. Feedback should be direct, quick and fair. I see no reason to do anything else, and if someone feels uncomfortable with that you can just train them to get used to it, everyone who programs can get used to it quickly. However you can't train your manager to accept direct feedback as he will just fire you if he can't already handle it.

barrenko 5y ago
My pet theory is this is why tech beat out basically every other industry in management and company culture. You work with an unforgiving compiler for a couple of years? You know something about feedback. (Personal favorite F#) Also final point, BS managers are dime a dozen. As a manager you should welcome getting feedback as it gets you to be like Juggernaut from Marvel.
- atoav 5y ago
  Interesting thought, I think IT people indeed deal with feedback differently.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  I'm not sure I buy this argument. Compiler feedback is 100% logical and deterministic. Human feedback, even when precise (which it often isn't) is still influenced by the whims of others. The programmer archetype finds the latter frustrating.
- watwut 5y ago
  > My pet theory is this is why tech beat out basically every other industry in management and company culture. I dunno, tech management always striked me as pretty bad.

trabant00 5y ago

It all depends on circumstances. Like all these articles it can be very good or very bad advice. Great if you have a small team that you afford to hand pick, bad for larger ones where you also need to employ people who just can't handle the truth (large percentage of population). Insincere motivational speeches exists for a reason: they work.

klodolph 5y ago

I do see some criticism of techniques like non-violent communication here on HN and then I see articles like this that reinvent it half-way. You don’t need to sugar-coat your feedback as often if you provide context and ground your feedback in facts. That’s a big chunk of NVC right there. If you don’t have a good strategy for giving people honest feedback, then what you do is you stumble around trying different strategies to sugar-coat feedback and end up doing more harm than good. We humans, very naturally, are just trying to feel good most of the time and we want people to like us. That’s why we don’t like giving people feedback. We try all sorts of different ways of giving feedback so we can keep feeling good and make people like us, and it's easy to end up falling into the trap of being brutish (delivering feedback with careless disregard for other people) or into the trap of being manipulative (distorting feedback because we value people’s feelings more than our stated goals).

iovrthoughtthis 5y ago

well, if you hurt a persons feelings enough, they'll quit so like all things, it's a trade off to be played entirely to the context of the situation i'm not a fan of this cultural backlash in management writing. we had a period of was was essentially "stop being a dick, your reports are humans" and now we have a push in the opposite direction. i appreciate the pushback as reconciling it will cause innovation (probably) but i stand firmly on the side of dont be a dick. there will be many opportunities to offer feedback. you only get one relationship with a person and people largely quit jobs because of managers

ido 5y ago
I agree - there is usually a way to be honest without being brutal.

djmips 5y ago

Like others have said, feedback is not directed against your ego but simply the advice of a coach who wants you to improve.That being said, a mean or bad coach is terrible to work for. Perhaps the worst thing is getting plaudits, thinking everything is fine and then being shown the door.

atoav 5y ago

One thing about negative feedback is, that to give it to subordinates you have to tick a few boxes first, otherwise your feedback won't make things better, but worse: - if they cannot get better because you don't provide the environment, tools, time, resources (even if you think you do), they will read your negative feedback as you having unrealistic expectations or no clue of the real world - if you are the cause of the things you are critizising (e.g. you are the one creating chaos, taking time away from their actual tasks etc), giving negative feedback is like critizising the person who held the door open for you: extremely rude and shitty, says more about you than them. - if you always give negative feedback, because you believe there must be always something to improve, they will start to ignore negative feedback, because it doesn't indicate whether they did good or not - if you fail to get them on board with actually getting better. In some jobs the salary and the involvement they expect from you doesn't align. You cannot expect someone to tear out their leg for a job where they feel like they are doing you an favour. The solution is to help them getting better at something where they feel they are giving themselves a favour. If you tick any (or god forbid multiple!) of those boxes, you are better of with not giving negative feedback and telling them on how you plan to improve those points.

piinbinary 5y ago
Another thing I'd add to that list: - make sure your facts are right. Ideally, make sure they are right well before you give feedback. You can end up in awkward situations where a manager says "you promised to deliver this in a month but it's taken the whole quarter" but the one month timeline was the PM's idea, and you told everyone it would take 4 months.
- atoav 5y ago
  This is a good one. The classic example would be: "why didn't you tell me $x" When you told them $x in the first line of an email you sent to them 2 times.
dukeyukey 5y ago
> if you are the cause of the things you are critizising Manager: "you need to spend less time helping you colleagues and more time getting work done" Me, most experienced developer on a team of 75% newbies, without a lead or even official senior developer: "Wat?"

higeorge13 5y ago

I feel that this kind of articles mostly apply to some dream company, and not in the real world esp. outside SV and top talent. Context is king. There are people who wouldn’t accept honest feedback, they wouldn’t even accept honest PR reviews. There are teams which were formed by someone else and cannot meet your standards, so how many times should you give negative feedback to people used to work in different mentality? You give up and try to be motivational instead. There are also managers who don’t give feedback only when they want to fire someone and give the harshest out-of-the-blue feedback they can give. And then there are company- or country- cultural issues, where some employees would take harsh feedback as a warning that they will get fired and their job security will go into garbage. And so many more cases and examples.

ozim 5y ago
I don't think it is about dream company. It is just that you don't give honest feedback to people with who you don't have a relation. Before someone can give/take feedback there has to be relation of trust. It is more of emotion management that simply telling someone do start doing things differently.

4monthsaway 5y ago

I used to send these monthly massive 'update' emails to all the execs at my tech job. While it's not feedback, at some point I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested. I was pleasantly surprised when the CEO gave a huge 'THANK YOU FOR THE TLDR version' in a reply all. The 'bottomline' comment kind of reminded me of that haha.

crispyambulance 5y ago
> I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested. Yep. That's a good practice. I write a 2-4 sentence blurb at the beginning, that just says the key idea, point or request, followed by some empty space. And then a row of asterisks with the word "details" in it, where everything gets properly fleshed out in the right order. Never got feedback for that, but I know it works because it has helped to halt email-thread-diarrhea. I started doing this because there are SO MANY people who literally only read the first few sentences of an email, respond to the first thing that comes up and ignore the rest.

micheljansen 5y ago

This is the central thesis of Kim Scott's book "Radical <s>Focus</s> Candor". A book which poignantly summarises itself in the diagram on the cover (see https://twitter.com/kimballscott/status/1410707132572266501 https://twitter.com/kimballscott/status/1410707132572266501). Good feedback requires genuinely caring personally and being direct, which is much easier said than done. She calls softening feedback in a misguided attempt to avoid hurting someone's feelings "ruinous empathy". Early on in my career I fell into this trap far more often than I like to admit and this book really gave me a mental model for improving that. Edit: fixed the name of the book

bartread 5y ago
Do you perhaps mean "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott, rather than "Radical Focus"?
- micheljansen 5y ago
  That's exactly what I meant! Radical Focus is obviously also worth a shout, for entirely unrelated reasons :)

alligate 5y ago

I often see people wrap their feedback in a "just thinking out loud" style of speaking, that leaves everyone confused. "Well you're not handling this error here, so maybe it would be good to think about doing that, or maybe we don't need to. Well it's definitely a good idea to think about it" and so on. It took me years to have the confidence to, after a ramble like that, directly ask what the suggestion was. There's only so much definitely maybe thinking about possible good ideas I can do.

specialist 5y ago

I can't provide constructive feedback. I just don't know how. Most of my attempts have failed, been counter productive, or worse. I can't think of an instance that I didn't later regret. (Which might be some kind of negative selection bias.) I think maybe role playing would help. Like taking improv classes. I had this notion while reading Voss' "Never Split the Difference". It's about using the latest hostage negotiation techniques in normal life. Like when asking for a salary increase. Entering a negotiation cold (no practice) is doomed to fail. Expecting someone (eg yourself) to be good at giving constructive feedback without training and practice is kinda silly. Back when I had to do a lot of public speaking, I hired people to help me. Stuff like stump speeches, practice debates, endorsement interviews. They recorded grilling me and then we'd review the tape. Hard but helpful. I wasn't ever very good, but they helped me be not terrible.

PaulHoule 5y ago

I had that problem with being too easy on correcting a black student and having it cause a lot of trouble including being accused of being racist. The good news is that we got it straight, he received the correction and succeed in the next class. The bad news was that failed the next class so bad that he went to jail and didn't pass go.

tristor 5y ago

My biggest issue with the feedback I receive in a work setting is that it's not /actionable/. One of the things I inculcated in my practices as an operations engineer was to never trigger an alert that wasn't immediately actionable, because it trains operators to ignore alerts. Alerts are not informational, they are interruptions. Feedback is the same thing. I don't want informational feedback, that's something you should be getting regularly outside normal windows. Feedback is an interruption, and interruptions should be actionable. I have never once been bothered by how soft or blunt the feedback I received was. I have never had my feelings hurt. I have, however, been consistently frustrated by receiving feedback which is effectively meaningless. I want to improve in my career so I get promoted, so I can gain the political capital in the organization necessary to be effective, and so I can succeed and improve my social standing, all very human and very normal desires. If your feedback doesn't help me to actionably reach those goals, and you as a manager who help determined promotion outcomes aren't leading me to a promotion by following your feedback, then you are doing me a disservice and I will likely eventually quit and move on out of frustration. It's pretty much that simple. Don't soften it, don't be an asshole, just provide feedback that is actually actionable and useful. If you have no actionable feedback, say nothing.

avemuri 5y ago
I've encountered various situations that could all be described this way but for very different reasons. eg. 1) The feedback is not actionable because the manager is themselves not clear in their head or is skirting around the real issue on their mind. 2) The feedback cannot be actionable because the manager only has partial information and can say there is an issue, not diagnose it and recommend corrective action. They are relying on their report to introspect and diagnose themselves. 3) The feedback is actionable, but the person wants the action plan itself to come from the manager. Not always possible. In my experience the answer to all three is to develop the action plan together. Any blind spots and vagueness on both sides get cleared by this forcing function. Helps set expectations too.

dekhn 5y ago

I was nearly fired from Google for giving a coworker feedback (I said they did a bad job that impacted the whole team and they cried). Since then I've learned that being honest, even in a polite way, can have severe consequences.

cvhashim 5y ago
Feel like there’s more to this story than a coworker crying from negative feedback
- dekhn 5y ago
  no, the director just used it to force me off the team and get me in trouble with HR. Other than that, nothing interesting.

baby 5y ago

My issue with feedback is three folds: 1. It’s often given as part of performance review, and as such is shared with others (not just for you) and can negatively affect your career / promotions. Also, due to that, people game the feedback system and it becomes more of a reflection of how many allies you made. 2. In the US, with employment at will, feedback can be seen as a gateway to getting fired 3. It supports a culture of “you always have to improve yourself”, which rubs me wrong. I do believe that feedback does improve people though, but I wish there was a system in place where feedback was 1:1 and not part of a broader performance review process.

Dumblydorr 5y ago

The article seems to be struggling to state its purpose: give useful feedback, but don't be a jerk. The author dances around English vocabulary definitions in this article: soften, kind, nice, actionable, rude, useful, direct, bottom line. It'd be much clearer to title the blog: how to give useful feedback. I seem to dislike many chosen titles of blog authors. They're incentivized to have great titles regardless of the bottom line of the article. This article doesn't take its own advice, which is to get to the bottom line. There's so little about "soften" in here, why is it in the title?

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

> But by softening the feedback so much that it becomes fuzzy, the feedback-giver has inadvertently set up their teammate to fail. I'm reminded of the idea of Yes, and... [0]. Seems like a great idea for improv comedy, but it's a terrible idea for clear and mature argumentation, where the goal should be to find the root of disagreement rather than to pretend no disagreement exists. Hard to imagine serious philosophers using that kind of approach, for instance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and

artifact_44 5y ago

Tldr.. fonts suck. Article could have been 5 sentences and been more digestible.