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> "They’re not making good progress, and someone’s asked you if you can help. You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from ex

> "They’re not making good progress, and someone’s asked you if you can help. You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” > This. Will. Not. Help. I wouldn't have thought to do this and would have appreciated this advice. I'm also not an SRE. Fixing issues/helping others isn't about sparing their feelings, it's about effectively solving a problem. Not that you should go out of your way to be hurtful, but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club.

coldpie 4y ago
> but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club. Aside from just being bad manners, this is a recipe for a hard cap on your career. Work is made up of people, not robots. Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort (not none!), and may mean you will be the one who gets the call next time an ex-coworker is looking for an acquaintance to recruit up the ladder at their new workplace.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  > Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort You snuck in a just. ;) My brain doesn't have working emotional processing. It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. As a result, I find being friendly and considerate taxing. At least I enjoy the challenge communicating correctly, otherwise I wouldn't consider it to be worth the effort. (ADHD and short term rewards... ugh)
  - coldpie 4y ago
    > It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. Yeah I feel pretty much the same way fwiw :) I wasn't saying one needs to be an outgoing social butterfly, just that being "that smart person that no one wants to talk to" is poison for your career, all emotional considerations aside.
dacohenii 4y ago
> Not that you should go out of your way to be hurtful, but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club. I agree that this could be useful advice and that you should _not_ hesitate to give it if you think it will be useful. However, I think it's rather extreme and short-sighted to say that such advice should be given entirely "without regard for emotion." Here's the thing. Your co-workers are human. Humans have lizard brains, and sometimes get defensive. In order to maximize productivity and harmony in the workplace, you want to avoid that. There's this thing called tact. Use it.
- gavinray 4y ago
  I have a hard time empathizing with this. I understand the principle, but here's where I come from/my experience: When many of my coworkers message me on Slack for example, they don't just leave me a message asking for what they want, they say "Hey, how are you", or "How was your weekend", or some other silly thing. I know they don't care about the answer to my question. Now, instead of being able to asynchronously answer their question, I have to spend my own energy (I'm slightly autistic, so it doesn't come easily to me) coming up with some reply to this, so that they THEN ask what they actually want to know. > [03 AM] COWORKER: Hey gavinray, how was your weekend? > [10 AM] gavinray: It was decent, what about yours? > [11 AM] COWORKER: Good. Hey, about ISSUE-123, do you... Now they have wasted both of our time and drained me of my lifeforce. Sometimes there are hours of delay between this/we are in different timezones. Just ask me for what you want, I know you're only talking to me because you want something.
  - eventhorizon77 4y ago
    This can be a cultural thing. In particular, if I understand correctly, in India it is considered rude not to make small talk before jumping into work. (I'm slightly autistic too but it's not completely useless. I ended up taking a trip to India at one point, and such trips are much easier if you've put in the effort to understand the culture, and your coworkers everyday lives.) I would suggest trying not to be so brief. Ask about their family, their commute to work, etc - get to know them a little better.
applesauce004 4y ago
There is another way to look at this situation (beyond the use of language and specific words). The takeaway can be as follows: Ask questions before doling out advice/help. What this means is, you are getting a better understanding of the current situation, you are being sympathetic and by the time you talk, you do so from a position of knowledge and not shooting from the hips. For e.g., if a colleague is stuck debugging a slow API call, it would be good to ask them. "Hey, what all have you tried so far to resolve the issue" If partitioning keys and adding more CPU cores has already been tried, then you could suggest - what about scanning logs for high-latency calls? I think the point the author is making is not just using the word "just". It is about being thoughtful and sympathetic before trying to solve the problem. At least, that was my takeaway.
- gavinray 4y ago
  Ah, I completely missed the point that it was over the word "just", I thought it was over the actions in their entirety. Agreed you could probably phrase it more delicately, though I do think the intent is justified.

coldpie 4y ago

> but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club. Aside from just being bad manners, this is a recipe for a hard cap on your career. Work is made up of people, not robots. Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort (not none!), and may mean you will be the one who gets the call next time an ex-coworker is looking for an acquaintance to recruit up the ladder at their new workplace.

kayodelycaon 4y ago
> Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort You snuck in a just. ;) My brain doesn't have working emotional processing. It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. As a result, I find being friendly and considerate taxing. At least I enjoy the challenge communicating correctly, otherwise I wouldn't consider it to be worth the effort. (ADHD and short term rewards... ugh)
- coldpie 4y ago
  > It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. Yeah I feel pretty much the same way fwiw :) I wasn't saying one needs to be an outgoing social butterfly, just that being "that smart person that no one wants to talk to" is poison for your career, all emotional considerations aside.

dacohenii 4y ago

> Not that you should go out of your way to be hurtful, but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club. I agree that this could be useful advice and that you should _not_ hesitate to give it if you think it will be useful. However, I think it's rather extreme and short-sighted to say that such advice should be given entirely "without regard for emotion." Here's the thing. Your co-workers are human. Humans have lizard brains, and sometimes get defensive. In order to maximize productivity and harmony in the workplace, you want to avoid that. There's this thing called tact. Use it.

gavinray 4y ago
I have a hard time empathizing with this. I understand the principle, but here's where I come from/my experience: When many of my coworkers message me on Slack for example, they don't just leave me a message asking for what they want, they say "Hey, how are you", or "How was your weekend", or some other silly thing. I know they don't care about the answer to my question. Now, instead of being able to asynchronously answer their question, I have to spend my own energy (I'm slightly autistic, so it doesn't come easily to me) coming up with some reply to this, so that they THEN ask what they actually want to know. > [03 AM] COWORKER: Hey gavinray, how was your weekend? > [10 AM] gavinray: It was decent, what about yours? > [11 AM] COWORKER: Good. Hey, about ISSUE-123, do you... Now they have wasted both of our time and drained me of my lifeforce. Sometimes there are hours of delay between this/we are in different timezones. Just ask me for what you want, I know you're only talking to me because you want something.
- eventhorizon77 4y ago
  This can be a cultural thing. In particular, if I understand correctly, in India it is considered rude not to make small talk before jumping into work. (I'm slightly autistic too but it's not completely useless. I ended up taking a trip to India at one point, and such trips are much easier if you've put in the effort to understand the culture, and your coworkers everyday lives.) I would suggest trying not to be so brief. Ask about their family, their commute to work, etc - get to know them a little better.

applesauce004 4y ago

There is another way to look at this situation (beyond the use of language and specific words). The takeaway can be as follows: Ask questions before doling out advice/help. What this means is, you are getting a better understanding of the current situation, you are being sympathetic and by the time you talk, you do so from a position of knowledge and not shooting from the hips. For e.g., if a colleague is stuck debugging a slow API call, it would be good to ask them. "Hey, what all have you tried so far to resolve the issue" If partitioning keys and adding more CPU cores has already been tried, then you could suggest - what about scanning logs for high-latency calls? I think the point the author is making is not just using the word "just". It is about being thoughtful and sympathetic before trying to solve the problem. At least, that was my takeaway.

gavinray 4y ago
Ah, I completely missed the point that it was over the word "just", I thought it was over the actions in their entirety. Agreed you could probably phrase it more delicately, though I do think the intent is justified.