4 ms·

The comments here really demonstrate how this is a culturally-nuanced topic. FWIW, the author comes from a North-American background.

camdenlock 3y ago
Would be interested to hear anecdotes from your culture. In the NA culture, we’ve reached a “kindergarten” sort of stage, where the prime directive is to protect feelings and reduce “harm”. I suspect this may be due the growing influence of academia on the private sector.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
johnnyanmac 3y ago
The comments here show they need to get a job that doesn't abuse them. You shouldn't be so scared of a compliment because it will be used against you by your boss or coworkers. You'll never get work done if you spend all your time looking over your back. EDIT: looking through the 2020 thread, it's intersting how different the conversation went, especially wrt stack rankging. It felt like it was focusing more on process at companies. Here, it feels a lot more "personal". More about "well I just want it straight" or "compliments can inadvertently hurt people". Can't call it better or worse objectively, but one feels a bit more surface level than the other.
- mulmen 3y ago
  The issue here is that you are making a decision for someone else.
  - whats_a_quasar 3y ago
    No, you're not, you're making a decision to talk about your work experience with the other manager. Coworkers can talk to each other about work, what people work on is not secret information
    - mulmen 3y ago
      You're talking about someone else to their manager. That is the person you are making a decision for.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I can see how it comes off that way, fair enough. But I'll clarify: Abuse can be subjective and you shouldn't be abused based on your personal lines of abuse, which I of course cannot decide. If you are not comfortable in your work environment and have the capacity to leave, I hope it isn't a controversial take to suggest leaving. full time work is a good chunk of your life after all, and abuse will bleed into the other parts of your life even after you leave for the day. If you have intrinsic reasons to stay despite having that capacity to leave, then I suppose you value those reasons above your personal mental health. Which is unfortuante, but your call. ---- This goes a bit beyond the topic of compliments. But such a topic seem to bring so many experiences of office politics out in this iteration of discussion, so I felt it be worth mentioning. As I edited in my above post, this post feels a lot more "personal" than the discussion 3 years ago.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      You’re still not getting it. You’re projecting a personal fantasy on your peers in a way that hurts them in service of an idea that proves you aren’t a trustworthy peer. Taking a personal stand is admirable. Taking a stand at someone else’s expense isn’t.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        You're reading a lot into a comment that simply says "find a job you're comfortable with". It's not a fantasy when I'm reading comments in this very thread thst say they are afraid of getting fired over standing out too much. Well, the comments themselves can be fantasy, but thars not a healthy way to approach a forum like this. There is no stand, merely a suggestion. Feel free staying miserable but many people in a community like this aren't minimum wage workers struggling to pay rent. It's your choice to stay miserable by that point. I'm glad I'm in environments where people can use their words about their boundaries without fear and I don't have to assume people are the way you are currently projecting them to be.
        mulmen 3y ago
        You’re still missing the point. Not everyone has the option to change jobs. Your unsolicited feedback has the potential to cause harm. So why not just ask first? It’s so easy to do. “Just get a better job lol” is a ridiculously privileged response to “your good intentions may have unintended consequences.”
  - alex_lav 3y ago
    Only in the abstract, I guess. If you drop 5 dollars and I pick it up and tell you that you dropped it, I also made a decision for you, no? That you'd want to be informed of such things? I believe that consent is good, and I believe that voluntarily crossing a person's boundaries is bad, but I also believe that participating in a society means we cannot entirely control all aspects of how we're engaged with and perceived. An employee talking to a vested party about an experience they had is a perfectly normal, healthy and expected behavior. The example we're talking about is even a positive! So some amount of "making a decision for someone else" (even though I reject that concept as existing here) is normal, healthy and expected.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      > If you drop 5 dollars and I pick it up and tell you that you dropped it, I also made a decision for you, no? No, you didn’t. What decision do you think you made except your own?

camdenlock 3y ago

Would be interested to hear anecdotes from your culture. In the NA culture, we’ve reached a “kindergarten” sort of stage, where the prime directive is to protect feelings and reduce “harm”. I suspect this may be due the growing influence of academia on the private sector.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

johnnyanmac 3y ago

The comments here show they need to get a job that doesn't abuse them. You shouldn't be so scared of a compliment because it will be used against you by your boss or coworkers. You'll never get work done if you spend all your time looking over your back. EDIT: looking through the 2020 thread, it's intersting how different the conversation went, especially wrt stack rankging. It felt like it was focusing more on process at companies. Here, it feels a lot more "personal". More about "well I just want it straight" or "compliments can inadvertently hurt people". Can't call it better or worse objectively, but one feels a bit more surface level than the other.

mulmen 3y ago
The issue here is that you are making a decision for someone else.
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  No, you're not, you're making a decision to talk about your work experience with the other manager. Coworkers can talk to each other about work, what people work on is not secret information
  - mulmen 3y ago
    You're talking about someone else to their manager. That is the person you are making a decision for.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I can see how it comes off that way, fair enough. But I'll clarify: Abuse can be subjective and you shouldn't be abused based on your personal lines of abuse, which I of course cannot decide. If you are not comfortable in your work environment and have the capacity to leave, I hope it isn't a controversial take to suggest leaving. full time work is a good chunk of your life after all, and abuse will bleed into the other parts of your life even after you leave for the day. If you have intrinsic reasons to stay despite having that capacity to leave, then I suppose you value those reasons above your personal mental health. Which is unfortuante, but your call. ---- This goes a bit beyond the topic of compliments. But such a topic seem to bring so many experiences of office politics out in this iteration of discussion, so I felt it be worth mentioning. As I edited in my above post, this post feels a lot more "personal" than the discussion 3 years ago.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    You’re still not getting it. You’re projecting a personal fantasy on your peers in a way that hurts them in service of an idea that proves you aren’t a trustworthy peer. Taking a personal stand is admirable. Taking a stand at someone else’s expense isn’t.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      You're reading a lot into a comment that simply says "find a job you're comfortable with". It's not a fantasy when I'm reading comments in this very thread thst say they are afraid of getting fired over standing out too much. Well, the comments themselves can be fantasy, but thars not a healthy way to approach a forum like this. There is no stand, merely a suggestion. Feel free staying miserable but many people in a community like this aren't minimum wage workers struggling to pay rent. It's your choice to stay miserable by that point. I'm glad I'm in environments where people can use their words about their boundaries without fear and I don't have to assume people are the way you are currently projecting them to be.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        You’re still missing the point. Not everyone has the option to change jobs. Your unsolicited feedback has the potential to cause harm. So why not just ask first? It’s so easy to do. “Just get a better job lol” is a ridiculously privileged response to “your good intentions may have unintended consequences.”
- alex_lav 3y ago
  Only in the abstract, I guess. If you drop 5 dollars and I pick it up and tell you that you dropped it, I also made a decision for you, no? That you'd want to be informed of such things? I believe that consent is good, and I believe that voluntarily crossing a person's boundaries is bad, but I also believe that participating in a society means we cannot entirely control all aspects of how we're engaged with and perceived. An employee talking to a vested party about an experience they had is a perfectly normal, healthy and expected behavior. The example we're talking about is even a positive! So some amount of "making a decision for someone else" (even though I reject that concept as existing here) is normal, healthy and expected.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    > If you drop 5 dollars and I pick it up and tell you that you dropped it, I also made a decision for you, no? No, you didn’t. What decision do you think you made except your own?