4 ms·

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better

by larve 4y ago

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges) and then discuss strategy (amongst which there is technology). If me asking what the goal is is perceived as patronising, when I’m just trying to do my best, then sure I can work on that. But that requires good faith on the side of the manager. It’s not my decision to shut things down.

UncleMeat 4y ago
I think that this approach limits leadership. Often people are asked to solve both technical and nontechnical problems. People can reasonably ask you both to define "better" and to achieve it. If you expect requirements for everything then you'll place a limit on your influence.
- morelisp 4y ago
  This is what I was going to say but phrased better. The issue isn't autistic vs. allistic, the issue is that you've decided you don't want to devote any brainpower to questions which are not directly technical. Sometimes that's fine, but it also means you are probably at the apex of your professional development. So do it, but also realize it means you're unlikely to get promoted further, and your opinion about technical topics will (rightly!) get ignored because you weren't in the rooms necessary to see any bigger picture.
  - jart 4y ago
    I thought it was. The alistic manager wanted to plug into the social gravity of React and the autistic employee wanted an explanation for his labor he could understand. All people regardless of autistic or allistic are usually self-interested and not consciously aware of what motivates their desires. For example, I doubt the manager was capable of explaining what attracted him to React any more than the OP could understand why being part of a famous community might benefit them. Only thing that helps in these situations is for one side to know the other side better than they know themselves. It's easier to work with people if you can mentally model what motivates their desires. That's called empathy and whether or not you've got it distinguishes senior from junior engineers. It should also be a hard requirement for managers.
    - larve 4y ago
      Thank you for commenting. I love working at the intersection of business/product/technology, and as much as I love new frameworks and shiny ideas, the best technology is usually the one that is already there. If you ask me about exactly that intersection, I do need to understand the bigger context. Otherwise my answer would just be “yes we can rewrite the checkout in React” which doesn’t really help anybody. As for motivation, it is of course very hard to understand one’s own motivations, and even more so other people’s motivations. It took me (please don’t laugh) 30 years to realize that I could get paid being an engineer (because I just assumed I would never be worth anything seeing how much I didn’t know about software). And only at age 40 did it dawn on me that most people are not motivated by building the best product they can, but instead do care about money, career, social prestige. It’s ironic that this is then framed as a one-sided “can’t understand other people”, when really many people don’t understand my motivations either. And seeing how carelessly dismissive some of the comments here are, don’t even care to.
      - jart 4y ago
        It wouldn't matter if a person just cares about status if the environment incentivizes them getting it by building a better product. Also understanding is power. If Person A can peer into the motivations of Person B and predict what they'll do, while Person B thinks Person A is a mysterious and enigmatic black box, then which one would you say is more senior?
        larve 4y ago
        Indeed. If anything, the point of the article is that this goes both ways.
- yobbo 4y ago
  In fairness, the author's response is demonstrating a better understanding of goals and tradeoffs than the manager. Asking questions as "in what way do you hope to improve it?" will help the manager understand. Just giving the explanation will sound rude.
gnfargbl 4y ago
Well, if you actually asked what the goals of the manager's proposed evaluation/comparison were, great! If you had probed around the context of the discussion a little bit by asking some open questions like "So why did this article pique your interest in relation to our company?" or "That's interesting, I wonder how their approach compares to ours. What do you think?", then even better. However, that isn't quite what you say in the article: instead you relay that you appear to have shut down the discussion immediately by getting stuck at "this isn't broken and I don't understand why you're asking me to fix it." That is the part that I perceive as patronising, becuase it contains the implicit assumption that your knowledge of the business/tech crossover is superior to your manager's.
- larve 4y ago
  I agree. I am pretty good at being social and suave in the workplace (so well I never would have thought I was autistic until age 40), but of course I can be in a bad mood or phrase something wrong. But even if that is the case, shutting down a business conversation because you think your engineer sounds patronizing is just… not great business/tech crossover, to be honest.
  - cloverich 4y ago
    I understand and empathize with your angle. But it is important to know -- nobody likes being patronized. Whether it is actually happening, or only perceived to be happening, this is a universal truth of social interactions. The vast majority of people in all social settings -- professional or otherwise -- will not collaborate with someone who is patronizing unless forced, even if it will be mutually beneficial. This is something you cannot change.
    - larve 4y ago
      I know quite well. This article is in many ways me trying to figure out how to do just that. I know I can't just say "I know a lot about this, trust me and just answer my question." But if just asking the plain question is perceived as patronizing, how can I move on? Sometimes, getting some maneuvering room and empathy from the other side helps tremendously. I legitimately do not know what patronizing is. I have an abstract understanding of it, and it baffles me why anybody would do something like that. Yet it is an abstract force with very real consequences I have to deal with.
rdsubhas 4y ago
> I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges I think you have answered your own conscience. You say you don't care about the goals. The only thing you care about is whether the tech is interesting to you or not, which is purely subjective. Your manager probably already knows this. He knows you are asking a question to which you completely don't care about the answer. It's just that you're not interested. There is a clear difference between asking questions to learn — and trolling. This is easily visible to any human. I'll be honest: If you are expecting 100% fulfillment, then it most likely means you have an impossibly high opinion of yourself. If you really wish that, become a freelancer, then go ahead and reject everything you hear. At work, nobody needs to convince your heart and soul for every single thing. Deal with it.
- larve 4y ago
  I am not sure why you are so aggressive, nor reading my words charitably. I do care about solving the technical challenges to fulfill the goals in the best way possible. I don't care what the goal is "about," if the business wants to target a specific vertical or wants to grow internationally or wants to prioritize backend tooling. I care about knowing the goal and then doing the best work possible. This is the opposite of trolling.
  - rdsubhas 4y ago
    It's disengenuous to say that a manager came one random day, asked a question about react and immediately dismissed you in the first sentence and went away. And all that just by reading an article overnight, as you want to believe. There is something missing in your story. For example, how long is too long for continuing your questioning, how you deal with rest of your obligations if you don't agree with the answers, how you collaborate with others, whether others in your team agree with you or not, etc. We programmers are so privileged that we are blind to our privilege. Edit: grammar
yomkippur 4y ago
Sorry but I don't think this is an issue of autism spectrum, but an issue of how much you hold yourself above others, narcissism to be frank. Narcissists love to deflect blame and assume the world is against them because they believe that the world should revolve around them.

by larve 4y ago

UncleMeat 4y ago

I think that this approach limits leadership. Often people are asked to solve both technical and nontechnical problems. People can reasonably ask you both to define "better" and to achieve it. If you expect requirements for everything then you'll place a limit on your influence.

morelisp 4y ago
This is what I was going to say but phrased better. The issue isn't autistic vs. allistic, the issue is that you've decided you don't want to devote any brainpower to questions which are not directly technical. Sometimes that's fine, but it also means you are probably at the apex of your professional development. So do it, but also realize it means you're unlikely to get promoted further, and your opinion about technical topics will (rightly!) get ignored because you weren't in the rooms necessary to see any bigger picture.
- jart 4y ago
  I thought it was. The alistic manager wanted to plug into the social gravity of React and the autistic employee wanted an explanation for his labor he could understand. All people regardless of autistic or allistic are usually self-interested and not consciously aware of what motivates their desires. For example, I doubt the manager was capable of explaining what attracted him to React any more than the OP could understand why being part of a famous community might benefit them. Only thing that helps in these situations is for one side to know the other side better than they know themselves. It's easier to work with people if you can mentally model what motivates their desires. That's called empathy and whether or not you've got it distinguishes senior from junior engineers. It should also be a hard requirement for managers.
  - larve 4y ago
    Thank you for commenting. I love working at the intersection of business/product/technology, and as much as I love new frameworks and shiny ideas, the best technology is usually the one that is already there. If you ask me about exactly that intersection, I do need to understand the bigger context. Otherwise my answer would just be “yes we can rewrite the checkout in React” which doesn’t really help anybody. As for motivation, it is of course very hard to understand one’s own motivations, and even more so other people’s motivations. It took me (please don’t laugh) 30 years to realize that I could get paid being an engineer (because I just assumed I would never be worth anything seeing how much I didn’t know about software). And only at age 40 did it dawn on me that most people are not motivated by building the best product they can, but instead do care about money, career, social prestige. It’s ironic that this is then framed as a one-sided “can’t understand other people”, when really many people don’t understand my motivations either. And seeing how carelessly dismissive some of the comments here are, don’t even care to.
    - jart 4y ago
      It wouldn't matter if a person just cares about status if the environment incentivizes them getting it by building a better product. Also understanding is power. If Person A can peer into the motivations of Person B and predict what they'll do, while Person B thinks Person A is a mysterious and enigmatic black box, then which one would you say is more senior?
      - larve 4y ago
        Indeed. If anything, the point of the article is that this goes both ways.
yobbo 4y ago
In fairness, the author's response is demonstrating a better understanding of goals and tradeoffs than the manager. Asking questions as "in what way do you hope to improve it?" will help the manager understand. Just giving the explanation will sound rude.

gnfargbl 4y ago

Well, if you actually asked what the goals of the manager's proposed evaluation/comparison were, great! If you had probed around the context of the discussion a little bit by asking some open questions like "So why did this article pique your interest in relation to our company?" or "That's interesting, I wonder how their approach compares to ours. What do you think?", then even better. However, that isn't quite what you say in the article: instead you relay that you appear to have shut down the discussion immediately by getting stuck at "this isn't broken and I don't understand why you're asking me to fix it." That is the part that I perceive as patronising, becuase it contains the implicit assumption that your knowledge of the business/tech crossover is superior to your manager's.

larve 4y ago
I agree. I am pretty good at being social and suave in the workplace (so well I never would have thought I was autistic until age 40), but of course I can be in a bad mood or phrase something wrong. But even if that is the case, shutting down a business conversation because you think your engineer sounds patronizing is just… not great business/tech crossover, to be honest.
- cloverich 4y ago
  I understand and empathize with your angle. But it is important to know -- nobody likes being patronized. Whether it is actually happening, or only perceived to be happening, this is a universal truth of social interactions. The vast majority of people in all social settings -- professional or otherwise -- will not collaborate with someone who is patronizing unless forced, even if it will be mutually beneficial. This is something you cannot change.
  - larve 4y ago
    I know quite well. This article is in many ways me trying to figure out how to do just that. I know I can't just say "I know a lot about this, trust me and just answer my question." But if just asking the plain question is perceived as patronizing, how can I move on? Sometimes, getting some maneuvering room and empathy from the other side helps tremendously. I legitimately do not know what patronizing is. I have an abstract understanding of it, and it baffles me why anybody would do something like that. Yet it is an abstract force with very real consequences I have to deal with.

rdsubhas 4y ago

> I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges I think you have answered your own conscience. You say you don't care about the goals. The only thing you care about is whether the tech is interesting to you or not, which is purely subjective. Your manager probably already knows this. He knows you are asking a question to which you completely don't care about the answer. It's just that you're not interested. There is a clear difference between asking questions to learn — and trolling. This is easily visible to any human. I'll be honest: If you are expecting 100% fulfillment, then it most likely means you have an impossibly high opinion of yourself. If you really wish that, become a freelancer, then go ahead and reject everything you hear. At work, nobody needs to convince your heart and soul for every single thing. Deal with it.

larve 4y ago
I am not sure why you are so aggressive, nor reading my words charitably. I do care about solving the technical challenges to fulfill the goals in the best way possible. I don't care what the goal is "about," if the business wants to target a specific vertical or wants to grow internationally or wants to prioritize backend tooling. I care about knowing the goal and then doing the best work possible. This is the opposite of trolling.
- rdsubhas 4y ago
  It's disengenuous to say that a manager came one random day, asked a question about react and immediately dismissed you in the first sentence and went away. And all that just by reading an article overnight, as you want to believe. There is something missing in your story. For example, how long is too long for continuing your questioning, how you deal with rest of your obligations if you don't agree with the answers, how you collaborate with others, whether others in your team agree with you or not, etc. We programmers are so privileged that we are blind to our privilege. Edit: grammar

yomkippur 4y ago

Sorry but I don't think this is an issue of autism spectrum, but an issue of how much you hold yourself above others, narcissism to be frank. Narcissists love to deflect blame and assume the world is against them because they believe that the world should revolve around them.