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If you’re working with me, please don’t follow this article’s advice. Please communicate with me with direct language and with a goal to advance our project.
by repiret 2y ago
If you’re working with me, please don’t follow this article’s advice. Please communicate with me with direct language and with a goal to advance our project.
If I have a terrible idea, or am over complicating things, just tell me. And tell me why, and maybe I’ll see it your way, or maybe I’ll convince you the complexity is essential, but we’ll be better for it either way.
- andrei_says_ 2y agoThe possibility for healthy candor is the result of a trusting relationship. In the absence of trust, one often needs to resort to passive, blameless, less direct language. So I work on creating the trust and noting where it is impossible so I can adjust. Who defaults to corporate speak is often an indication to how much they can be trusted.
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- anal_reactor 2y agoYes, precisely. I can only be direct with someone if I trust that they won't get mad and will focus on the core of my message.
- cam_l 2y agoYeah, nah. Those who default to corporate speak are those who have no power to speak plainly. Sometimes they have no power because they cannot be trusted. But more often it's because whoever they report to cannot be trusted, and maybe also they don't trust whoever they are speaking to. And to drill down into this a little further, the process of building trust is one where you each show the other person that the longer term relationship (personal or professional) is more important than any short term gains you might get by using their plain speaking against them. It is harder to do with a power imbalance, because one person isn't risking as much as the other.
- ghostfoxgod 2y agoTotally agree with you on this, it was meant to be satirical but I started to realize that there are many places and people to which these type of conversation is really the only medium to communicate, its sad and in an ideal world I would want that people communicate directly without the need of twisting the words, but I am happy that you advocate and appreciate direction communication over something like this.
- throw27273 2y agoI guess I'm the opposite. If you're working with me, please use nicer and kinder language when talking to me.
- whiplash451 2y agoIt is possible to be nice and direct. Obnoxiousness sometimes hides into convolutions.
- ujkiolp 2y agoI will defer to your judgment on this as I am not passionate either way and I trust your expertise.
- myst 2y agoPathetic
- dxdm 2y agoIt's comments like this that remind me to stop scrolling hacker news and do something nice instead - so they're good for something, I guess.
- myst 2y agoYou are welcome, brother.
- majkinetor 2y agoYou nailed TLDR.
- majkinetor 2y agoWhy are adults behaving worse than little kids?
- 2y ago
- squeaky-clean 2y agoI'm like this too, and was on a team with another fella like this for a few years. It was great, our other team members thought we absolutely hated each other and didn't understand why we hung out every Friday after work to play board games. It's certainly not a common attitude in the workplace though.
- wruza 2y agoEven when I do that on HN, it’s usually unappreciated. I doubt that anyone would risk their job in that cool “what I really mean” society you built there.
- majkinetor 2y agoI don't work with people doing this kind of politically correct BS. I want brutal honesty, even if its missplaced.
- anal_reactor 2y agoEh. My experience is that 99% of people who tell me to be direct eventually get offended because I'm too direct. I've noticed that Americans claim to be laid-back and casual, but in reality they're very formal, it's just that they're not posh. Fortunately, I've developed the skill to communicate both efficiently and professionally, I'm the master of practical corpo speech that gets shit done, but it's so radically different from my natural way of speaking that nobody who only knows me privately believes that I'm even capable of taking part in a work meeting without causing a scandal.
- unsupp0rted 2y agoPeople say that and then get upset by terse replies. Even programmers sometimes, albeit less often. A lot of the suggestions on "How to professionally say" are not only more polite, but also more helpful than the original knee-jerk reply. "This is not my problem" -> "I recommend directing this issue to <Name> as they have the proper expertise to best assist you"