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The questions you bring up are really the questions I am asking? What do they think the weaknesses of the page are? Do they think rewriting the checkout will s

by larve 4y ago

The questions you bring up are really the questions I am asking? What do they think the weaknesses of the page are? Do they think rewriting the checkout will solve these problems? How much of the technical tradeoffs do they understand or care about? To recap: Is our checkout page not performing well? Will a new checkout solve our problem? Why do they think a technology change is a solution? Do they understand the implications of such a switch? Otherwise I won't be able to assess if react makes sense or not. It makes sense for some reasons, not for others. If I don't know why they think we should consider it, I can't provide a valuable answer. These are exactly the points you are bringing up as well: I don't know, and I need your input to clarify what we are trying to do. I understand there is a communication problem, but I'm most definitely not refusing to accept I am wrong. I haven't even stated anything that could be wrong. And because I have fully put the blame on myself, after this particular interaction, the fact that I am able to work perfectly fine at a very strategic level with other stakeholders in my new job shows me that it's not just about me.

Volundr 4y ago
Obviously I wasn't there and am going by your accounting of the conversation, but from the way you laid it out, the questions I brought up are the questions your manager thought they were asking you. Hence the confusion, followed by frustration. From my interpretation of the conversation, you thought the question was: "Should we rewrite the checkout page in React, yes or no?" And responded with "Why do you want to rewrite it in React?" (paraphrasing) Meanwhile the manager thought they were asking: "Please discuss the reasons why we should and should not rewrite the checkout page in React, including your recommendation on a course of action" And you responded with "Why do you want to rewrite it in React?" Spelled out like that it's hopefully a little clearer that the "why React" was part of the question. They don't know if the page is performing "well" or whatever that means (even from an engineering standpoint it's hard to define, render time? bandwidth? server CPU?). They might know if users are complaining about checkout being slow, but even then users tend to leave rather than complain. If you were to tell them that the checkout page was performing "poorly" and React could fix it, that's the kind of information they were hoping to obtain from this conversation. Similarly in my machine learning question, my CIO was actually asking me "how do you think machine learning can benefit this business?" And I responded with "how do you think machine learning can benefit the business?" He didn't know, he was asking me. He had just heard about the wonders of machine learning and was fishing for how it could benefit this business. Just like your manager had heard about React and was fishing for how it could benefit the business. If your manager were here replying to comments I'd advise them to remember that engineers in general (spectrum or not), tend to be the literal sort, and if you aren't getting the answers your looking for it's often useful to examine the words you used and ask if you are actually asking the question your hoping to get answered or relying on subtext. But for the engineer's side of this conversation, it's important to ask if the question your answering is actually what they are asking, or if you failed to parse their intentions.
- larve 4y ago
  Thanks for the response. I do agree to all of these suggestions, and honestly we can't just make up hypothetical scenario after hypothetical scenario of what the best way to phrase things are. It depends so much on me, the manager, the time of day, the team culture. I think my point in the article is to say: I am autistic, and I might not communicate the way you are expecting. If I am asking questions, it is for what I think is a good reason. What I am not doing is rejecting your question and not acknowledging I am wrong. If I wanted to reject your opinion, I would reject it, not mess around asking oblique questions. It's great that everybody seems to think this is my problem alone to solve, and I'm somehow doing this on purpose. I am not, I am trying very hard to get better, part of which is to share my experiences. Yet, that also seems to be criticized ("who puts so much effort into analyzing these situations?"). I have very productive relationships with other engineers and product managers and business owners, so clearly this can work out just well, but that's not what I wanted to cover here. I will in the future however, and I covered a tiny aspect of "digging deep into business questions, as an engineer" here: https://dev.to/wesen/worse-ux-for-a-better-product-how-to-think-in-outcomes-29hp https://dev.to/wesen/worse-ux-for-a-better-product-how-to-th...
  - pdenton 4y ago
    Instead of saying you're autistic, say you have autism. What you are is a human being, most likely. Having autism is just one of your traits. TL;DR Autism is what you've got, not who you are.
    - larve 4y ago
      Many autistic people prefer to say they are autistic. Hopefully it's become clear that I think this way, and I can't just not think this way. Thinking is my main way of interacting with the world, it's not just "a trait".
      - naasking 4y ago
        You can ignore the parent comment. It's become fashionable these days to not use certain descriptive labels in a traditional manner because a certain class of people feel it's dehumanizing by "reducing one to one's condition". For instance, someone isn't "diabetic" they're a "person with diabetes", because the diabetes is just something they have it's not who they are. You're not "autistic", you're a "person with autism", and so on. It's just a semantic game that is only making communication more verbose for no meaningful gain, as if everyone didn't already understand "autistic" to mean "person with autism".
Noos 4y ago
You are working with him to create a solution and should ask questions from a shared point of view. Your questions instead sound like you are doubting him. "How can this make our checkout page better?" "What benefits do other companies get from using React?" "Is it feasible to change technology at this time?" "There might be implications if we switch, like..." You are not understanding why they should consider it; you are subtly asking them to justify why they are bothering you.
- gongador 4y ago
  > Your questions instead sound like you are doubting him. Respectfully, I disagree: _to you_, the "questions instead sound like you are doubting him". Maybe it even sounds that way to most people. It doesn't to me. I have been in very similar situations, and having experienced the frustration of communications failure, I've tried to take other approaches. A few times I've prefaced my questions with something along the lines of: "In order to answer your question I'm going to have to ask some questions; a few of them may not make sense to you, but it's just the way I function". It has not helped. One time it was met with a kind of "gee, here you go again, giving a lecture on how special you are." The crux of the matter is that I _need_ to do that if I am going to give a helpful answer to the question that I was asked. Either the manager's question is important and warrants a thoughtful reply, or it's unimportant, in which case almost any kind of reply is ok. I think the problem, in a nutshell, is neurotypical people's absolute refusal to acknowledge when they're wrong -- for example about what a normal way for an employee to respond to the question: "should we switch to React?" is. There _is_ no normal way. But neurotypical people, stereotypically, labor under the incorrect assupmtion that there is one. And the discussion in this thread has, in my opionion, made that extremely evident.
  - gongador 4y ago
    To clarify: sure, I'm wrong in the sense that there is a normal way if we by 'normal' mean 'most people do it like this'. Unfortunately, 'normal' almost always also carries a meaning of 'the proper way'. Also, something that's normal (in the sense of 'most common') in, say, the US is not necessarily normal in, say Norway or Thailand or Zambia.

by larve 4y ago

Volundr 4y ago

Obviously I wasn't there and am going by your accounting of the conversation, but from the way you laid it out, the questions I brought up are the questions your manager thought they were asking you. Hence the confusion, followed by frustration. From my interpretation of the conversation, you thought the question was: "Should we rewrite the checkout page in React, yes or no?" And responded with "Why do you want to rewrite it in React?" (paraphrasing) Meanwhile the manager thought they were asking: "Please discuss the reasons why we should and should not rewrite the checkout page in React, including your recommendation on a course of action" And you responded with "Why do you want to rewrite it in React?" Spelled out like that it's hopefully a little clearer that the "why React" was part of the question. They don't know if the page is performing "well" or whatever that means (even from an engineering standpoint it's hard to define, render time? bandwidth? server CPU?). They might know if users are complaining about checkout being slow, but even then users tend to leave rather than complain. If you were to tell them that the checkout page was performing "poorly" and React could fix it, that's the kind of information they were hoping to obtain from this conversation. Similarly in my machine learning question, my CIO was actually asking me "how do you think machine learning can benefit this business?" And I responded with "how do you think machine learning can benefit the business?" He didn't know, he was asking me. He had just heard about the wonders of machine learning and was fishing for how it could benefit this business. Just like your manager had heard about React and was fishing for how it could benefit the business. If your manager were here replying to comments I'd advise them to remember that engineers in general (spectrum or not), tend to be the literal sort, and if you aren't getting the answers your looking for it's often useful to examine the words you used and ask if you are actually asking the question your hoping to get answered or relying on subtext. But for the engineer's side of this conversation, it's important to ask if the question your answering is actually what they are asking, or if you failed to parse their intentions.

larve 4y ago
Thanks for the response. I do agree to all of these suggestions, and honestly we can't just make up hypothetical scenario after hypothetical scenario of what the best way to phrase things are. It depends so much on me, the manager, the time of day, the team culture. I think my point in the article is to say: I am autistic, and I might not communicate the way you are expecting. If I am asking questions, it is for what I think is a good reason. What I am not doing is rejecting your question and not acknowledging I am wrong. If I wanted to reject your opinion, I would reject it, not mess around asking oblique questions. It's great that everybody seems to think this is my problem alone to solve, and I'm somehow doing this on purpose. I am not, I am trying very hard to get better, part of which is to share my experiences. Yet, that also seems to be criticized ("who puts so much effort into analyzing these situations?"). I have very productive relationships with other engineers and product managers and business owners, so clearly this can work out just well, but that's not what I wanted to cover here. I will in the future however, and I covered a tiny aspect of "digging deep into business questions, as an engineer" here: https://dev.to/wesen/worse-ux-for-a-better-product-how-to-think-in-outcomes-29hp https://dev.to/wesen/worse-ux-for-a-better-product-how-to-th...
- pdenton 4y ago
  Instead of saying you're autistic, say you have autism. What you are is a human being, most likely. Having autism is just one of your traits. TL;DR Autism is what you've got, not who you are.
  - larve 4y ago
    Many autistic people prefer to say they are autistic. Hopefully it's become clear that I think this way, and I can't just not think this way. Thinking is my main way of interacting with the world, it's not just "a trait".
    - naasking 4y ago
      You can ignore the parent comment. It's become fashionable these days to not use certain descriptive labels in a traditional manner because a certain class of people feel it's dehumanizing by "reducing one to one's condition". For instance, someone isn't "diabetic" they're a "person with diabetes", because the diabetes is just something they have it's not who they are. You're not "autistic", you're a "person with autism", and so on. It's just a semantic game that is only making communication more verbose for no meaningful gain, as if everyone didn't already understand "autistic" to mean "person with autism".

Noos 4y ago

You are working with him to create a solution and should ask questions from a shared point of view. Your questions instead sound like you are doubting him. "How can this make our checkout page better?" "What benefits do other companies get from using React?" "Is it feasible to change technology at this time?" "There might be implications if we switch, like..." You are not understanding why they should consider it; you are subtly asking them to justify why they are bothering you.

gongador 4y ago
> Your questions instead sound like you are doubting him. Respectfully, I disagree: _to you_, the "questions instead sound like you are doubting him". Maybe it even sounds that way to most people. It doesn't to me. I have been in very similar situations, and having experienced the frustration of communications failure, I've tried to take other approaches. A few times I've prefaced my questions with something along the lines of: "In order to answer your question I'm going to have to ask some questions; a few of them may not make sense to you, but it's just the way I function". It has not helped. One time it was met with a kind of "gee, here you go again, giving a lecture on how special you are." The crux of the matter is that I _need_ to do that if I am going to give a helpful answer to the question that I was asked. Either the manager's question is important and warrants a thoughtful reply, or it's unimportant, in which case almost any kind of reply is ok. I think the problem, in a nutshell, is neurotypical people's absolute refusal to acknowledge when they're wrong -- for example about what a normal way for an employee to respond to the question: "should we switch to React?" is. There _is_ no normal way. But neurotypical people, stereotypically, labor under the incorrect assupmtion that there is one. And the discussion in this thread has, in my opionion, made that extremely evident.
- gongador 4y ago
  To clarify: sure, I'm wrong in the sense that there is a normal way if we by 'normal' mean 'most people do it like this'. Unfortunately, 'normal' almost always also carries a meaning of 'the proper way'. Also, something that's normal (in the sense of 'most common') in, say, the US is not necessarily normal in, say Norway or Thailand or Zambia.