tldr; a lot of times, 'constructive criticism' is just a dressed-up personal attack that you are probably perceiving correctly as a personal attack. I have got

tldr; a lot of times, 'constructive criticism' is just a dressed-up personal attack that you are probably perceiving correctly as a personal attack. I have gotten honest, sane non-trivial constructive feedback/criticism of my work before, but I don't tend to remember it unless it was extraordinary - like someone went way out of their way to pump me up before burning me (my work) down with some accurate and correct criticism. I like managers and senior co-workers like that, good on them. I don't necessarily remember the specifics of bad criticism, but I feel like bad criticism is bad because it is either designed to be taken personally, or is so careless that it is inevitable that it will be taken personally -- that is, it actually _is_ a personal attack, dressed up as work criticism. I have vague recollections of various project managers and lead/senior engineers during various tenures that I have butted heads with due to their insecurities, incompetence, etc. There are petty people all over the place, esp in a 9 to 5 environment -- wage slavery can be a breeding ground for all sorts of bad behavior. I do like working with smart, confident, nice people -- not an easy combination to find in a single person, much less an entire team/company. That said, I like the whole 'mindfulness' approach to life, think it's worthwhile, don't necessarily see it as 'killing part of yourself' like i used to, more like a necessary evil in this very crazy world.