5 ms·
My suggestion is to invert your strategy. Instead of telling someone what you are good at, start by asking them what their problems and needs are. Then you can
by GMoromisato 4y ago
My suggestion is to invert your strategy. Instead of telling someone what you are good at, start by asking them what their problems and needs are. Then you can easily steer the conversation to how you can help.
Imagine you're trapped in an elevator with the CEO of your company:
CEO: What department do you work in?
You: I'm a software engineer--but don't hold that against me.
CEO: Heh! Truth is I really value software engineers. [Ed: What else is she going to say?]
You: Of course, but I'm sure you've had your frustrations too. Some of us are better with machines than people.
CEO: You know, one thing that's hard is getting reliable estimates. One week I hear that everything is on track and the next week I'm told we're going to miss our deadlines. It's hard to know the reality.
You: Yeah, I get that. I think there some things with our development process that we could improve. If we had more visibility on the customers that sales is targeting, we might be able to anticipate new requirements. If we had known that we were going to sell to [CUSTOMER X], then we would have worked on [FEATURE A] sooner.
CEO: Interesting! Set up a meeting and we can talk about how to implement something like that.
Obviously, this is just a (lame) example. But the point is that no one cares that you're a polymath in the abstract. They only care about how you can solve a problem that they have.
The more you do this, the more people will remember you as "the person who solved problem X". Eventually you might even be known as the "expert in problem X." And if you end up solving lots of different and unrelated problems, eventually you'll get a reputation as a general problem solver, and people will seek you out.
- japanman425 4y ago>she Just use “they” instead of hamfisting gender equality. Which ironically you do in your first paragraph.
- GMoromisato 4y agoReminds me of this joke: A man and his son get into a horrible car crash. The man is killed instantly, and the boy is taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon takes one look at the boy and says, "Oh my god! This is my son!" Then the car crashes into the operating room and kills everyone. How is this possible? Answer: It was a Tesla in FSD mode. But in all seriousness, thank you for your feedback.
- smusamashah 4y agoCan someone shed a little explanatory light on this joke please?
- joedrago 4y agoWhen I first heard it, it was billed as a riddle, not a joke. It only really makes sense in any way as a riddle / brain-teaser if it successfully plays on your biases of the operating room doctor being incapable of being his mother (or other father, etc). In a 1950s, old-timey-wimey, nuclear family mindset, the father is the breadwinner and the mother is the homemaker, and there is no other reasonable possibility. Anyone that was taught to think that way will hear the father dying in the car accident and then be confused when someone else can also refer to them as their son. This came up a few years ago for the first time for me, and I tried it on my (elementary school) sons and they immediately said "uhh, its his mom, I guess?" Anyway, I hope that clarifies things for you.
- alexvoda 4y agoI get that the Tesla FSD crashed once, but did it hold some king of grudge and followed him to the hospital? Or did Tesla build Skynet and it was a second Tesla and they were coordinating the attack? Was the son named Connor?
- smusamashah 4y agoAh I get it now. Where I live this usually the family structure and doctors etc are mostly male anyway therefore I assumed surgeon to be the father too and got very confused. Thanks for explaining.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- splatzone 4y agoWhy do you think it’s hamfisted to use she? It doesn’t make their comment any less clear, and there are many female CEOs around the world
- japanman425 4y agoUsing she is male erasure and non binary exclusive… It’s actually worse than using he since he is almost unanimously used as gender neutral in internal language models
- mhb 4y agoMore hamfisted than the always-jarring use of a plural pronoun instead of a singular one?
- kooshball 4y agoin case you really didn't know, "they" can also be singular https://www.dictionary.com/browse/they https://www.dictionary.com/browse/they
- mhb 4y agoYeah, yeah, I know. And language evolves. Is the best way to address the lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English really to lazily adopt a word which is ambiguous in the vernacular? Be creative - make a new word!
- chownie 4y agoThe two genders, male and political.
- klipt 4y agoDepends on the context, if you're talking about e.g. nurses or domestic violence victims, it switches to "the two genders, female or political"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]