12 ms·

How I learned to stop giving advice

266 points by javery 13y ago

batoure 13y ago
Irony?
IvanK_net 13y ago
His whole post is one long advice :D
- javery 13y ago
  Actually it isn't - it's a story about how I learned to better help others. :)
onion2k 13y ago
That's all very well, but often people haven't thought of whatever you might tell them. By saving them from possible offence[1] you're limiting what ideas they have available to use. When I was running a startup I was more than happy to hear the same advice and ideas over and over again from mentors because just occasionally you got something that was new that you'd not considered before. That was far better than being saved from listening to people who might be suggesting things I'd already considered. Advice and ideas that came from proven and experienced people were often better and more useful but only because that meant I didn't have to spend so much time researching them to see if they might work for me or figuring out the potential pitfalls - the ideas themselves were no better or worse than if they'd come from someone "unqualified". Regarding the 'impostor syndrome' problem, that doesn't really enter into the equation if the person listening to your ideas and advice is sensible. No one just blindly goes and does what someone outside of their startup tells them to do, regardless of how much respect they might have for that individual. [1] Anyone who gets offended by someone offering well-meaning advice is an idiot and probably wouldn't have listened even if that advice was based on a mountain of prior experience.
- reboog711 13y ago
  If they ask for advice that is one thing; if it is offered "For free" it can be a huge pain. Honestly; I've founded many different businesses over the past 20 years (of varying levels of success), and I get really tired of people telling me everything I'm doing wrong. If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife.
  - Goopplesoft 13y ago
    > If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife. Interesting because I think generally the experience is quite the opposite. Parents & spouses (never had one) tend to be over encouraging and much less critical. So I can see how you found that redundant since the critiquing was coming from another source in your life.
    - general_failure 13y ago
      You got what he is saying right? It want meant to be taken literally.
      - ihaveajob 13y ago
        It probably depends on the person, but in my case, my parents' work life has been so diametrically opposite to mine that this rings quite true.
    - reboog711 13y ago
      You have very different relationships with your parents than I have with mine, then. It took 10 years for my mom to stop asking when I was going to get a "real" job.
  - kordless 13y ago
    That's the basic intent behind Non-Violent Communications. Stating opinions and experience is fine, but when you start speaking for someone's (or their company's) interests, you end up crossing a line that causes the recipient to react negatively. Nobody wants to be told what they are doing is wrong. They must choose to figure it out on their own.
raymondduke 13y ago
Nice diary entry. How'd this get to the top of HN?
- roryokane 13y ago
  I’m guessing a lot of readers feel that this is helpful information to keep in mind when they are asked for help by others.
aragot 13y ago
I have the same problem. I'm an asshole. I pray every day that I won't get anyone angry. Last in date: I subscribe to a coworking space, and on Sunday I couldn't find the IP of the printer. The next Monday when the agent gives it to me, I immediately write it on a label on the printer, to help the next guy who would have the problem. She hates me since then. Previous one. Accepted in a (young) incubator. I sat there and there's a cold stream of air in my feet. On day 3, I asked the president (they're just 6 volunteers) to take care of the heating (Well, members participate 350€ to the fees so I feel entitled). I has ass-kicked out and she discredited me to other colleagues. So yes, I give advice, tell opinions, take initiatives, have requirements and more generally feel entitled when I should. It really is hard to balance between taking the room that you're entitled to while not hurting others. If you have experience to share, I'm listening.
- polarix 13y ago
  Why would the agent hate you for labeling the printer with its IP address? I'm confused.
  - themckman 13y ago
    I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he labeled the printer and everything to do with how he did it.
    - LordIllidan 13y ago
      Agreed - a simple "Do you mind if I write this down? This way I won't need to bother you again next time!" wouldn't have done any harm..
  - Casseres 13y ago
    Some people don't like other people fixing their stuff/problems. It hurts their pride.
  - aragot 13y ago
    That could have been her job. Also it's not my printer, I'm not supposed to change anything. Of course I'm half guessing since she didn't talk much with me after that first day.
arfliw 13y ago
This is probably why speakers at YC tell stories based on their experiences - and thus do not just give blanket advice.
piyushpr134 13y ago
Adzerk ? Seriously!
krmmalik 13y ago
I mentor alot of startups. This is exactly how I work. Also the peer to peer coaching i did with Joel from Buffer uses similar principles. we only asked each other prodding questions but never gave an actual answer. It was all about leading them to a discovery that could work for them.
- wslh 13y ago
  Since I am looking for more external advice I would like to know how startups or companies usually recompense the advise?
  - krmmalik 13y ago
    It's a fixed fee per session. Some start-ups like to have a session every week/2 weeks, others prefer to do it on an ad-hoc basis. The pricing scales based on the size of the start-up. If you'd like a free session as a trial you're most welcome. There's no obligation or commitment necessary. Contact details: krmmalik.com/me
- seren 13y ago
  Are you describing a kind of socratic questioning ? I am just curious about your method.
  - mdda 13y ago
    How would you rephrase your question so that your suggestion of Socratic Questioning isn't pushed into the answer? eg: I'm curious about your method, could you give me an example or two of a prodding question?
    - krmmalik 13y ago
      To be honest our method sounds similar to the socratic method. A simple example would be: Person A: I have to fire my new employee, i dont feel i can do it Person B: - Why do you need to fire him? - Can someone else do it? - What would happen if you didn't? - Is it the method of firing, the person, or you? etc etc But obviously the questions adapt based on the responses. Does that help? Happy to explain further via email or on skype if you like. Contact details in profile
thelogos 13y ago
Not just with startups, but with life in general. It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it. The only time I break this rule is with my parents. Most people will not feel any gratitude if your advice turns out to be good. They will, however, mentally blame you if it turns out to be bad advice, whether justified or not.
- aestra 13y ago
  >It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it. Most times people just want to chat or vent. As engineers and hackers we tend to want to "fix" things, to come up with solutions. Most of the time people don't want unsolicited solutions or to be told what to do, they just want someone to listen.
yoha 13y ago
Main quote from the article: > "Members don’t give advice; they speak from priorexperience, letting you draw your own conclusions on how to best proceed.” I can totally relate from when I was teaching programming or explaining math related stuff to other people. Telling what to do is like giving the solution right away: they will solve the problem but without making the mental connection for it to be able to reproduce the reasoning. As a wannabe teacher, I just try to make sure people I teach encounter bugs, or make wrong computation, or biased proofs. He forgot a semi-colon? Good, let the compiler throw an error at him so that he actually gets negative feedback; if he does not understand what the compiler says, I'll help him get it and, when he fixes the typo and get the source to compiler, he'll get the positive feedback for himself. There is a common bias when teaching. You don't expect to be waiting, so you try to drive people's thinking in the right direction. But good teachers make sure you don't give up in front of an error. Great teachers make you want to get errors. Algrith, it was not exactly business-related, but I think it connects someway. tl;dr: teaching is about catalyzing the process of encountering errors, not avoiding them
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  I remember a class back in tech school. The teacher sent us off for a break, mangled the insides of our work computers, and had us fix them. I think I got a loose video card. Someone else had to reassemble the whole thing. We learned a lot from experience and observation. This was the same class where we had to plan a new server room together even though the course was aimed at desktop support. And the same teacher who had us break our Fedora installs just to see if we could fix them. That was where I got comfortable with Linux.
chris_wot 13y ago
This is a confusing article. He's giving advice about the best way to stop giving advice?
- ralmeida 13y ago
  I didn't seem to find any imperatives even saying that you should follow the same method. So, in essence, he is doing exactly what the article says: telling his experience (about telling experiences instead of giving advice), and letting the readers figure it out if they will take any action based on that by themselves.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Fair comment.
- base698 13y ago
  It's confusing that you don't understand the difference of a blog that you have to click on and choose to read vs a personal interaction or meeting where you can't leave.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- chaz72 13y ago
  The title is "How I learned to...", so I think he's following his own advice here.
3minus1 13y ago
I don't think this guy was being an asshole for offering advice when people sought him out as an expert. Perhaps he is being more tactful with his new approach, but he definitely wasn't being an asshole imo.
- Zmetta 13y ago
  Though I agree, I think many people mistakenly interpret direct suggestions as being commentary on the junior-person/company Y's flaws and might be seen as more aggressive (asshole-ish)than having a senior-person/company X point out their own flaws. That makes X seem more humble, and more importantly, depicts success in the face of struggle as more attainable. I really think that's what provides the most benefit from his new approach; successful person/company X is not some mysterious deity that simply exists, it is the product of actions taken throughout the same process junior person/company Y has recently faced, is facing, or will face. Junior person/company Y may make, or have already made, different decisions or actions at various steps and, for better or worse, will be different because of it.
andykmaguire 13y ago
This is a really good, thoughtful article. I've had the same experience as more founders reach out and seek advice, but rarely do I strongly suggest a path that hasn't already been considered. Even if they disagree, just telling them to go a different way for xyz conceptual reasons isn't going to change their mind. Given them specific experiences to compare against is much more effective. Thanks for putting this out there.
ZenoArrow 13y ago
Is it just me, or does any one else here actually enjoy brainstorming solutions to issues, even if the issues are my own? I think the difference is that if someone gives you advice you don't agree with, it's important to (politely) say why you see things differently. Perhaps the problem is less that people share their advice, and more that there is a reluctance to engage with others to work something out. I really enjoy a good debate.
hosh 13y ago
Furthermore, narratives are powerful ways of communicating. In the old days, we had teaching stories around the campfire. We have folklore, myths, and origin stories. These days, they are now novels, and inspirational speakers relating experiences. It's fun to sit around a campfire in the dark, though I suppose the smell of coffee is a good substitute :-)
- hosh 13y ago
  To followup on my comments above and respond a bit to some of the other comments. I used to do exactly what that guy did a lot, though the advice I dispensed were not with startups. Now, I am relating from my experience, partly because I have experience to relate to, and partly because the attitude I assume is one of offering or making available the experience. It's an invitation to hear it, rather than me trying to be a hero and fix something that's wrong. One tricky thing is that it doesn't appeal to everyone. There are a class of people who are so inside their own narratives, they resent it when someone brings up their narrative. They feel that I am trying to horn in on their drama. Typically, these days, I've been practicing the acceptance of people as they are, right now. If someone actually asks me for advice, I do the best I can. I still sometimes slip and say something, but (with the kind of inner work I am doing) that has been becoming less and less frequent. It does screen out the people who are still inside their drama; I watch them, practice compassionate witnessing, and just let 'em be.
  - ZenoArrow 13y ago
    I like your approach, and you've helped me understand something just now about the 'invitation to hear'. The 'inside their own narratives' makes sense too.
peterwwillis 13y ago
How I learned that HN-whoring bloggers are deluding themselves to keep blogging.
seanhandley 13y ago
Good advice +1
pothibo 13y ago
Unsolicited advice are a pain in the ass 99% of the time. The biggest problematic with advice is that you gave them against information you have received. Vision is much more than a few sentences. Outsiders' short-term advice are most of the time contradictory to long-term vision.
bane 13y ago
Slightly off topic, I have a very dear friend who calls me up all the time to talk about his constant life drama. It seemed to me for a long time he was framing the conversation as looking for advice, since when advice was given the conversation seemed to move along rather well. The thing about advice is it almost requires you to invest yourself a little in the other person's problem and advice starts turning into involvement, which can be frustrating when the other party doesn't follow the advice, as my friend almost never does. Over the years I found that he'd typically ignore good advice, get himself into trouble, come back for more advice/a way out of his disaster and then repeat until I was getting way too involved in his business. Which left me in a foul mood and our friendship on the rocks. It's tempting for the receiver to take that advice/involvement as most people are looking for a little bit of help through problem areas. But I've learned from him that it's often better to not get involved at all in other people's business, even if it's just advice,...no matter how tempting it is. They have to make the mistakes and learn from the experience themselves. And if they can't learn from that experience, maybe they shouldn't be involved in doing whatever it is they're doing. This is really hard to do though, especially for engineer types who view the world as a sequence of problems. There's a lot of pop-sociology that men like to fix things and women like to talk about things, which is used to explain the constant need for guys to give advice, and often results in relationship counseling like "just listen to your girlfriend/wife, that's all she wants, she's emotionally processing". I think it's a bit too gender biased so I've taken that idea and reworked it to "most people just want to vent or verbally process their issues". Just listen to them, nod a bit, if you have a similar situation try and and talk about it too, but don't focus on how you solved it, just dialog. For many people, it's about ordering their thoughts so the solution presents itself to them. For my friend, he's started to realize where lots of his life faults are, and is slowly coming to the realization that they aren't good long-term things to carry around. He's looking at lots of digging to get himself out of some bad problems he's gotten into, so he keeps looking for an easier alternative/other way out. But letting him talk things out helps him see that he's really only got one choice, and it's going to take a long time to do it.
- hosh 13y ago
  It is gender-biased, since generally everyone is emotionally processing in some way or another. It's just that, typically (but not always), men have a habit of "fixing the problem" as a way to avoid emotional processing. Before you can solve a problem or take action, you first have to accept that there is a problem and action needs to be taken. That acceptance is an emotional thing. It isn't a product of reason or intellect. It's not so much that men do not emotionally process, but rather, people who are not in tune with their emotions and suck at it will try to use reason to talk themselves into acceptance. And it never works. For people who are more in tuned with the heart of things, watching someone like that is like watching someone going around and around in circles, using the wrong part of their consciousness. Furthermore, the only way to be in tune with your emotion is to acknowledge and experience those emotions. You cannot force someone to fully experience something. The powers of human denial and aversion are very creative. However, once you've emotionally accepted that there is a problem and action needs to be taken, it is from there that reasoning and problem solving skills allows you to quickly get stuff done. Mindfully listening to someone as they speak allows them to feel safe to touch those emotions within themselves. It's called "holding space". And this practice requires you to stop "waiting for the other person to speak". You are simply witnessing someone work this stuff out.
brianmcdonough 13y ago
Giving advice doesn't make OP an asshole. In fact, listening and making adjustments to a life strategy is one of the hardest things to do on a personal level, in my opinion. Glad to see you are blogging again and quite effectively at that. This was at the top spot on HN this morning.
andyl 13y ago
There is a related phenomena called 'well actually'. http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Heh. Some people I follow on twitter often get people responding to their jokes and intentionally non-factual tweets with "Well, actually…". Which led to their labeling this practice "#ACTUALLY" and the people who do it "#ACTUALLY twitter". I really dig how people are starting to nail the social tone-deafness and misplaced pride in trivial knowledge this involves. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're dumb in a way you probably don't even grasp.
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  also known as Oppositional Conversation Style http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2013/09/ever-been-stuck-talking-to-someone-who-keeps-telling-you-how-wrong-you-are/ http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2013/09/ever-...
ntaso 13y ago
This is one of the reasons I decided to start up this blog again. I stopped blogging largely because I learned how much I didn’t know and felt I had no right to be telling others what to do when there are more knowledgeable people out there. Thanks for that. I never started blogging although I wanted to, because whenever I write a blog post, I feel it's kind of obsolete already, because it has a view point that's too limited, too narrow. I "outgrew" my blog post in the moment I finished it. Maybe by framing it as stories and experiences, they get more valuable.
jcampbell1 13y ago
I believe I learn nothing from failure, and a ton from success. When something fails, I don't know if it was a bad idea, bad execution, bad timing, the wrong people, etc. When something works, I generally learn a ton and it inspires other good ideas. It is not until you have racked up a bunch of failures and successes that you realize an idea braindump isn't particularly helpful. When someone starts offering a braindump of ideas, I generally assume the person just hasn't had a bunch of success and failures that are relevant. I think the author's change is natural, as you can't say "Here is what worked for us..." until you have actually had some wins.
soneca 13y ago
I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for one I learned to have patience for the other I learned to ignore. I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences. But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and mentors, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they know what is your problem, and they know what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale". TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off. But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  edit: lol im banned, wonderful, thanks HN
- edanm 13y ago
  Do you mind explaining why you think such advice is BS? I assume there are at least some people who are exerts, or who have experience, who're worth talking to?
  - soneca 13y ago
    Not with a 10 minute talk. The point is the one the OP learned. Talk about their own lessons learned. When you read Paul Graham and Steve Blank you read someone who has passed through a lot and spent a lot of time thinking about it. So when you read one of these essays you can understand how that apply to your business. Is the same when you start a conversation with someone and he says "When I tried to sell to big corporates I did this and worked and I did that and that didn't work". That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author. But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts. I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.
fring00 13y ago
One last one to end them all.
plg 13y ago
isn't this actually veiled advice-giving, i.e. "don't give advice" ?
- stevesearer 13y ago
  I think the author's point is more along the lines of "don't offer ideas veiled as advice" and that advice is rooted in experience.
triggity 13y ago
clearly, you didnt learn very much if youre telling us this
mtrimpe 13y ago
The talk "How I learned to stop fixing and start facilitating" from DareConf 2013 [1] really describes the core issue here very well. No matter how much you want to, you just can't always fix things for people in the small interactions that you have with them. And even fixing it for them isn't actually helpful unless you'll be there in the long run to take that responsibility for them. That's why, even though it's hard and will make you feel less powerful, all you can do in these small moments is facilitate. It's about not asking the question "How should (s)he fix this?" but "What can I do in this amount of time we have together to have the greatest positive impact on you?" [1] http://2013.dareconf.com/videos/wachter-boettcher http://2013.dareconf.com/videos/wachter-boettcher
badman_ting 13y ago
I appreciate the humility in this post. I have often had much the same reaction the author mentions - annoyance with some asshole's "obvious" suggestions after thinking about something for three minutes that other people think about for large portions of their lives. And of course you can always come up with ways to make a fundamental lack of humility and empathy sound anodyne ("well who knows, maybe they didn't think of it!"). Good post.
incision 13y ago
>"such an asshole", "had the nerve", "What an asshole" In my experience, only the most cocksure of people would react to the kind of simple brainstorming suggestion cited in that way. Perhaps those people are over-represented among those who have self-selected as entrepreneurs and this is appropriate for that context. For dealing the rest of the world I'll go ahead and be a flaming asshole by advising that learning to stop being mortally offended by well-meaning, benign suggestions might be worth looking into.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
This reminds me of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Stereotype Woman wants to talk about her problems, for the sake of venting. Stereotype Man wants to offer solutions and fix things. Hilarity ensues and sitcom writers get rich. I wrote "Stereotype" because all of us can be in either role. As a founder, sometimes you just need to vent to someone who can empathize. The only "help" you want is for someone to listen. You're not asking for fixes. Whereas engineer/founders are especially likely to go into problem-solving mode automatically. Even when that's not really what someone wants, or needs from you. EDIT: After writing this, I realized it's a bunch of unsolicited advice. So....yeah.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  The older I get, the more I understand and believe the stereotypes in that book.
wpietri 13y ago
Giving advice like this is awfully tempting. But I've learned that even if I am right, which I probably am not, it doesn't do any good. When I take my hard-won rule and follow it to a good outcome, it generally works not because of the rule, but because of all the thinking and experimenting I took to get to the rule. What I try to do now is to ask good questions. If I suspect something is wrong with their business model, instead of saying, "You should do X", I'll try to ask questions that help them uncover the flaw in their thinking. Sometimes that actually happens. Sometimes they just aren't ready to learn the lesson, which is fine; maybe they'll remember the question. And sometimes I uncover a flaw in my thinking. That's valuable twice over: not only did I learn something about the domain, but I learned to be a little more humble.
- wpietri 13y ago
  And for the record, I started out writing that very comment in advice mode. I've been trying to correct that habit for maybe 3 years at this point. Changing behavior is hard. Especially behaviors with a short-term win (asserting status, getting to feel smart) and a long-term loss (irritating people, not helping them as much as I'd like, feeling like an asshole when I think back on my blowhard behavior). But given that I spent 30 years building the habit, as long as I break it in less than that I'll count it as a win.
davmar 13y ago
I'm a member of EO (entrepreneurs' organization) to which he referred in the article. He's referring to the "gestalt protocol". You can read more about it here: http://www.chiefoptimizer.com/357/entrepreneur/gestalt-protocol/ http://www.chiefoptimizer.com/357/entrepreneur/gestalt-proto... Another value is, when speaking in a group (we call it 'forum'), experiences benefit everyone who listens whereas advice is only applicable to the intended listener. An illustrative example is "I did X and Y was the outcome" vs. "You should X". Sometimes we find it limiting however, and ask that people not use the gestalt protocol. That's the exception to the rule.
- arnarbi 13y ago
  That link is a 404, both in your comment and in the updated post.
  - davmar 13y ago
    odd. it worked when i posted it and it's still in google search results. maybe they pulled it today. here's another one: http://www.stathakis.com/blog/leadership/bid/320702/What-is-Gestalt-and-Why-You-Need-To-Know-It http://www.stathakis.com/blog/leadership/bid/320702/What-is-...
jhwhite 13y ago
A couple of things come to my mind when I start reading this. It frustrates me when I start telling a story and people interject to try and solve a problem that I don't have based on a partial story. Sometimes I'm just relating an anecdote, there is no overall problem, I don't need 3 suggestions on what to do next. The next is already solved. You just haven't let me finish the story. This is possibly not related but the article says to speak from experience. Can this be applied to job interviews? In previous interviews I've started with my experience stating what I've done in the past only to be interrupted and told they don't care about what I've done in the past, how would I do it in the future. When I explain my approach to Project Management or QA Testing, or whatever, sometimes I get asked if that's how I've done things in the past and when I say yes the interview is very short. Maybe that second paragraph is how I phrase things, but if you've got experience in a subject matter you're going to base what you would do, on what your experience has taught you. Sometimes it sounds like people want a completely new process that's never been done before, or at least isn't attributed to some other company having done.
bigchewy 13y ago
EO (where the OP first heard of this concept) was life changing for me. The key thing that I learned was that gestalt (as Don't Give Advice is called in EO) helps conversations stay positive rather than defensive. When I receive advice, I sometimes perceive it as "why haven't you done this yet" and my internal response might be "hey, I'm friggin' busy' Experience sharing gives me the opportunity to say, "hey, that makes sense. I'd like to do [X] and can you help me explore how to do it?" Since EO, my conversations, both on the giving and receiving end of advice, have been far far more productive.
xivzgrev 13y ago
Wow. This is a really interesting article, probably the most I've seen for a while on here (guess you can see what I value). I've been on both sides of this issue. Thanks for the post.
mhaberler 13y ago
fixable by sticking to a simple rule: never give help (including advice) nobody asked for.
dragontamer 13y ago
I dunno. If you don't know what you're talking about, its that much more important to talk about it. Otherwise, you'll forever be ignorant. It sucks when you talk about something and then learn that you're an idiot. But more importantly, you _learn_ that you're a dumb idiot, and then you try to do something about it. Teaching someone else (even if they know the subject better than you) is sometimes the best way to learn a subject. So continue being the dumb guy who gives advice. It helps you become smarter.
elwell 13y ago
I saw a lot of advice in that article, but not one recount of an actual experience where it worked well. /tongue-in-cheek
MyNameIsMK 13y ago
"But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup." YES. YES. ON POINT.
vonnik 13y ago
isn't this a sort of indirect form of advice? reminds me of this: http://imgur.com/NIqQB http://imgur.com/NIqQB
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
I guess this is good advertising for Adzerk, I never heard of that and never knew there were that many people banging down the door to get at its founders. Interesting.
levlandau 13y ago
The following kinds of interactions are useful to founders: 1) Simply talking about another person's startup with them for more than an hour makes that person feel like they are not alone in a world seemingly filled with Googlers and Facebookers. I think the feeling of solidarity here sometimes even trumps whatever silly advice you might be giving. 2) Making meetings feel more like brainstorm sessions helps. I think there is value in "experience" and "expertise" or even just raw intelligence. I'm pretty sure that it's wise to listen to PG's thoughts on your idea even if it's to sharpen your views and beliefs. But the key to these being productive is people asking questions, thinking from first principles and being honest about the experiences they are trying to relate to each other. Needless to say people shouldn't force things on founders and founders should be smart enough to test things quickly and discard them if they are silly.
richardjordan 13y ago
I'm very careful with advice. Even more so in personal contexts. The challenge is that there's a four square matrix of outcomes: they follow vs they don't follow; the outcome is a success vs a failure. If they follow and have success they're a genius for evaluating options and coming to proper conclusions. You don't get any credit for the advice. If they ignore your advice and it works out well then they just remember you're an idiot who can't be trusted. If they don't follow your advice and things work out well they can resent you for the imagined "I told you so". But worst is if they act consistently with your advice (or at least believe they have) and have a negative outcome. Your advice can cause people to avoid accepting their own agency in the outcome, and fail to learn key lessons while passing the blame to you. Giving advice offers little upside with a lot of downside particularly in relationships you value. I like the suggested approach of talking anecdotally about similar situations in my own life or career, and my thinking and choices, and as far as possible some objective accounting for outcomes. Humility and support is better than overconfident prescriptions.
agumonkey 13y ago
This impatience to project my own point of view onto everything cost me a lot. I don't dismiss my ideas now, but I try to investigate people's history and current state of affairs. Maybe they didn't think about it, but even then, they're not in a position to handle a change, or even the idea of a flaw that may be fixable.
mindcrime 13y ago
Good stuff, @javery. But you know I'm always down to hear your advice, or stories, or whatever! That said, the biggest thing I agree with here is this: You can't really gain a proper appreciation of someone's problems, their thought processes, and the full context of what they've already tried, thought of, discarded, considered, reconsidered, etc., in a few minutes. Of the "annoying" advice I've gotten, it's usually been the kind that leaves me going "Dude, that totally has nothing to do with the business we're in" OR "Yeah, yeah, we already tried that and it doesn't work" or whatever. That's why I like your (current) approach. I pretty much never mind hearing somebody relate a story, and if it isn't helpful, well, whatever. But at least it doesn't present the air of presumptuousness and arrogance that just blasting into "oh, do this" and "oh, do that" does.
alabut 13y ago
Paul Buchheit said something similar at startup school years ago and I watch the video every once in a while to remind myself not to be similarly prescriptive when I meet new people. His key takeaway slide was a simple equation: Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice The full video has more info on how to get past the advice you hear and actually process feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E
jpdavy 13y ago
James, have to say that I have shared this notion. I stopped taking meetings a little while ago for this reason. I think this is a great experience that you have related here, and I love the conclusion you arrived at.
marincounty 13y ago
I don't take advise from guy's who come from rich families. Yes--it might sound like envy, or class warfare, but I have found their world is very differnt than mine. What worked for them usually won't work for me. My world is loaded with wealthy know-it-alls. They always leave out the part where Daddy paid for this, or that--or the family lawyer quietly set up everything. I have found one truth; It seems like the most ingenious ideas, and talent came from individuals with modest upbringings. This goes 10 fold for artists and writers. I once hear George Soros complain that his writing isn't taken seriously because of his wealth. I read some of his rants and that's not the reason George. At least you were honest about how you made your money though? (George Soros is one of the 1 %'s). I once heard the best advise is no advise. I think that is way too extreme. I just wish people with the real talent, or insight would step forward. But no, they always seem to be at the back of a room, or quietly trying to hold on their own sanity. Yea--but this is about programming, and basking in the glory of a great Start-Up. The Gold Rush?
hyp0 13y ago
advice is opinion, experience fact
richardw 13y ago
It's great advice not to be that type of asshole when you've done nothing, but it's also true that one of the pillars of YC success is someone who doesn't necessarily know your niche telling you what you're doing right/wrong. Sometimes advice is about the niche, sometimes it's about time management, time-to-market, hiring, firing, whatever. The answer has to be about balance - sometimes you know better, sometimes you don't.
Cowicide 13y ago
This is very similar to the tactic Ben Franklin would use to avoid mindless back-and-forth arguments with people that put ego ahead of rationale. He'd simply try to show by example and leave it at that. I'm not sure it works very well online all the time, but in person it does work, IMO.
bharatFNS 13y ago
Listen to everyone and do what I find best, this has been my philosophy in life. I hate self-helps, I think you are better off not trying to tell people your way of live thinking them to follow. Crap!
udkl 13y ago
You sir need to read "How to Win Friends ... " ... what you describe/realized is but a basic communication rule .... though you describe a nice result ...

266 points by javery 13y ago

batoure 13y ago

Irony?

IvanK_net 13y ago

His whole post is one long advice :D

javery 13y ago
Actually it isn't - it's a story about how I learned to better help others. :)

onion2k 13y ago

That's all very well, but often people haven't thought of whatever you might tell them. By saving them from possible offence[1] you're limiting what ideas they have available to use. When I was running a startup I was more than happy to hear the same advice and ideas over and over again from mentors because just occasionally you got something that was new that you'd not considered before. That was far better than being saved from listening to people who might be suggesting things I'd already considered. Advice and ideas that came from proven and experienced people were often better and more useful but only because that meant I didn't have to spend so much time researching them to see if they might work for me or figuring out the potential pitfalls - the ideas themselves were no better or worse than if they'd come from someone "unqualified". Regarding the 'impostor syndrome' problem, that doesn't really enter into the equation if the person listening to your ideas and advice is sensible. No one just blindly goes and does what someone outside of their startup tells them to do, regardless of how much respect they might have for that individual. [1] Anyone who gets offended by someone offering well-meaning advice is an idiot and probably wouldn't have listened even if that advice was based on a mountain of prior experience.

reboog711 13y ago
If they ask for advice that is one thing; if it is offered "For free" it can be a huge pain. Honestly; I've founded many different businesses over the past 20 years (of varying levels of success), and I get really tired of people telling me everything I'm doing wrong. If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife.
- Goopplesoft 13y ago
  > If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife. Interesting because I think generally the experience is quite the opposite. Parents & spouses (never had one) tend to be over encouraging and much less critical. So I can see how you found that redundant since the critiquing was coming from another source in your life.
  - general_failure 13y ago
    You got what he is saying right? It want meant to be taken literally.
    - ihaveajob 13y ago
      It probably depends on the person, but in my case, my parents' work life has been so diametrically opposite to mine that this rings quite true.
  - reboog711 13y ago
    You have very different relationships with your parents than I have with mine, then. It took 10 years for my mom to stop asking when I was going to get a "real" job.
- kordless 13y ago
  That's the basic intent behind Non-Violent Communications. Stating opinions and experience is fine, but when you start speaking for someone's (or their company's) interests, you end up crossing a line that causes the recipient to react negatively. Nobody wants to be told what they are doing is wrong. They must choose to figure it out on their own.

raymondduke 13y ago

Nice diary entry. How'd this get to the top of HN?

roryokane 13y ago
I’m guessing a lot of readers feel that this is helpful information to keep in mind when they are asked for help by others.

aragot 13y ago

I have the same problem. I'm an asshole. I pray every day that I won't get anyone angry. Last in date: I subscribe to a coworking space, and on Sunday I couldn't find the IP of the printer. The next Monday when the agent gives it to me, I immediately write it on a label on the printer, to help the next guy who would have the problem. She hates me since then. Previous one. Accepted in a (young) incubator. I sat there and there's a cold stream of air in my feet. On day 3, I asked the president (they're just 6 volunteers) to take care of the heating (Well, members participate 350€ to the fees so I feel entitled). I has ass-kicked out and she discredited me to other colleagues. So yes, I give advice, tell opinions, take initiatives, have requirements and more generally feel entitled when I should. It really is hard to balance between taking the room that you're entitled to while not hurting others. If you have experience to share, I'm listening.

polarix 13y ago
Why would the agent hate you for labeling the printer with its IP address? I'm confused.
- themckman 13y ago
  I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he labeled the printer and everything to do with how he did it.
  - LordIllidan 13y ago
    Agreed - a simple "Do you mind if I write this down? This way I won't need to bother you again next time!" wouldn't have done any harm..
- Casseres 13y ago
  Some people don't like other people fixing their stuff/problems. It hurts their pride.
- aragot 13y ago
  That could have been her job. Also it's not my printer, I'm not supposed to change anything. Of course I'm half guessing since she didn't talk much with me after that first day.

arfliw 13y ago

This is probably why speakers at YC tell stories based on their experiences - and thus do not just give blanket advice.

piyushpr134 13y ago

Adzerk ? Seriously!

krmmalik 13y ago

I mentor alot of startups. This is exactly how I work. Also the peer to peer coaching i did with Joel from Buffer uses similar principles. we only asked each other prodding questions but never gave an actual answer. It was all about leading them to a discovery that could work for them.

wslh 13y ago
Since I am looking for more external advice I would like to know how startups or companies usually recompense the advise?
- krmmalik 13y ago
  It's a fixed fee per session. Some start-ups like to have a session every week/2 weeks, others prefer to do it on an ad-hoc basis. The pricing scales based on the size of the start-up. If you'd like a free session as a trial you're most welcome. There's no obligation or commitment necessary. Contact details: krmmalik.com/me
seren 13y ago
Are you describing a kind of socratic questioning ? I am just curious about your method.
- mdda 13y ago
  How would you rephrase your question so that your suggestion of Socratic Questioning isn't pushed into the answer? eg: I'm curious about your method, could you give me an example or two of a prodding question?
  - krmmalik 13y ago
    To be honest our method sounds similar to the socratic method. A simple example would be: Person A: I have to fire my new employee, i dont feel i can do it Person B: - Why do you need to fire him? - Can someone else do it? - What would happen if you didn't? - Is it the method of firing, the person, or you? etc etc But obviously the questions adapt based on the responses. Does that help? Happy to explain further via email or on skype if you like. Contact details in profile

thelogos 13y ago

Not just with startups, but with life in general. It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it. The only time I break this rule is with my parents. Most people will not feel any gratitude if your advice turns out to be good. They will, however, mentally blame you if it turns out to be bad advice, whether justified or not.

aestra 13y ago
>It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it. Most times people just want to chat or vent. As engineers and hackers we tend to want to "fix" things, to come up with solutions. Most of the time people don't want unsolicited solutions or to be told what to do, they just want someone to listen.

yoha 13y ago

Main quote from the article: > "Members don’t give advice; they speak from priorexperience, letting you draw your own conclusions on how to best proceed.” I can totally relate from when I was teaching programming or explaining math related stuff to other people. Telling what to do is like giving the solution right away: they will solve the problem but without making the mental connection for it to be able to reproduce the reasoning. As a wannabe teacher, I just try to make sure people I teach encounter bugs, or make wrong computation, or biased proofs. He forgot a semi-colon? Good, let the compiler throw an error at him so that he actually gets negative feedback; if he does not understand what the compiler says, I'll help him get it and, when he fixes the typo and get the source to compiler, he'll get the positive feedback for himself. There is a common bias when teaching. You don't expect to be waiting, so you try to drive people's thinking in the right direction. But good teachers make sure you don't give up in front of an error. Great teachers make you want to get errors. Algrith, it was not exactly business-related, but I think it connects someway. tl;dr: teaching is about catalyzing the process of encountering errors, not avoiding them

mkr-hn 13y ago
I remember a class back in tech school. The teacher sent us off for a break, mangled the insides of our work computers, and had us fix them. I think I got a loose video card. Someone else had to reassemble the whole thing. We learned a lot from experience and observation. This was the same class where we had to plan a new server room together even though the course was aimed at desktop support. And the same teacher who had us break our Fedora installs just to see if we could fix them. That was where I got comfortable with Linux.

chris_wot 13y ago

This is a confusing article. He's giving advice about the best way to stop giving advice?

ralmeida 13y ago
I didn't seem to find any imperatives even saying that you should follow the same method. So, in essence, he is doing exactly what the article says: telling his experience (about telling experiences instead of giving advice), and letting the readers figure it out if they will take any action based on that by themselves.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Fair comment.
base698 13y ago
It's confusing that you don't understand the difference of a blog that you have to click on and choose to read vs a personal interaction or meeting where you can't leave.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
chaz72 13y ago
The title is "How I learned to...", so I think he's following his own advice here.

3minus1 13y ago

I don't think this guy was being an asshole for offering advice when people sought him out as an expert. Perhaps he is being more tactful with his new approach, but he definitely wasn't being an asshole imo.

Zmetta 13y ago
Though I agree, I think many people mistakenly interpret direct suggestions as being commentary on the junior-person/company Y's flaws and might be seen as more aggressive (asshole-ish)than having a senior-person/company X point out their own flaws. That makes X seem more humble, and more importantly, depicts success in the face of struggle as more attainable. I really think that's what provides the most benefit from his new approach; successful person/company X is not some mysterious deity that simply exists, it is the product of actions taken throughout the same process junior person/company Y has recently faced, is facing, or will face. Junior person/company Y may make, or have already made, different decisions or actions at various steps and, for better or worse, will be different because of it.

andykmaguire 13y ago

This is a really good, thoughtful article. I've had the same experience as more founders reach out and seek advice, but rarely do I strongly suggest a path that hasn't already been considered. Even if they disagree, just telling them to go a different way for xyz conceptual reasons isn't going to change their mind. Given them specific experiences to compare against is much more effective. Thanks for putting this out there.

ZenoArrow 13y ago

Is it just me, or does any one else here actually enjoy brainstorming solutions to issues, even if the issues are my own? I think the difference is that if someone gives you advice you don't agree with, it's important to (politely) say why you see things differently. Perhaps the problem is less that people share their advice, and more that there is a reluctance to engage with others to work something out. I really enjoy a good debate.

hosh 13y ago

Furthermore, narratives are powerful ways of communicating. In the old days, we had teaching stories around the campfire. We have folklore, myths, and origin stories. These days, they are now novels, and inspirational speakers relating experiences. It's fun to sit around a campfire in the dark, though I suppose the smell of coffee is a good substitute :-)

hosh 13y ago
To followup on my comments above and respond a bit to some of the other comments. I used to do exactly what that guy did a lot, though the advice I dispensed were not with startups. Now, I am relating from my experience, partly because I have experience to relate to, and partly because the attitude I assume is one of offering or making available the experience. It's an invitation to hear it, rather than me trying to be a hero and fix something that's wrong. One tricky thing is that it doesn't appeal to everyone. There are a class of people who are so inside their own narratives, they resent it when someone brings up their narrative. They feel that I am trying to horn in on their drama. Typically, these days, I've been practicing the acceptance of people as they are, right now. If someone actually asks me for advice, I do the best I can. I still sometimes slip and say something, but (with the kind of inner work I am doing) that has been becoming less and less frequent. It does screen out the people who are still inside their drama; I watch them, practice compassionate witnessing, and just let 'em be.
- ZenoArrow 13y ago
  I like your approach, and you've helped me understand something just now about the 'invitation to hear'. The 'inside their own narratives' makes sense too.

peterwwillis 13y ago

How I learned that HN-whoring bloggers are deluding themselves to keep blogging.

seanhandley 13y ago

Good advice +1

pothibo 13y ago

Unsolicited advice are a pain in the ass 99% of the time. The biggest problematic with advice is that you gave them against information you have received. Vision is much more than a few sentences. Outsiders' short-term advice are most of the time contradictory to long-term vision.

bane 13y ago

Slightly off topic, I have a very dear friend who calls me up all the time to talk about his constant life drama. It seemed to me for a long time he was framing the conversation as looking for advice, since when advice was given the conversation seemed to move along rather well. The thing about advice is it almost requires you to invest yourself a little in the other person's problem and advice starts turning into involvement, which can be frustrating when the other party doesn't follow the advice, as my friend almost never does. Over the years I found that he'd typically ignore good advice, get himself into trouble, come back for more advice/a way out of his disaster and then repeat until I was getting way too involved in his business. Which left me in a foul mood and our friendship on the rocks. It's tempting for the receiver to take that advice/involvement as most people are looking for a little bit of help through problem areas. But I've learned from him that it's often better to not get involved at all in other people's business, even if it's just advice,...no matter how tempting it is. They have to make the mistakes and learn from the experience themselves. And if they can't learn from that experience, maybe they shouldn't be involved in doing whatever it is they're doing. This is really hard to do though, especially for engineer types who view the world as a sequence of problems. There's a lot of pop-sociology that men like to fix things and women like to talk about things, which is used to explain the constant need for guys to give advice, and often results in relationship counseling like "just listen to your girlfriend/wife, that's all she wants, she's emotionally processing". I think it's a bit too gender biased so I've taken that idea and reworked it to "most people just want to vent or verbally process their issues". Just listen to them, nod a bit, if you have a similar situation try and and talk about it too, but don't focus on how you solved it, just dialog. For many people, it's about ordering their thoughts so the solution presents itself to them. For my friend, he's started to realize where lots of his life faults are, and is slowly coming to the realization that they aren't good long-term things to carry around. He's looking at lots of digging to get himself out of some bad problems he's gotten into, so he keeps looking for an easier alternative/other way out. But letting him talk things out helps him see that he's really only got one choice, and it's going to take a long time to do it.

hosh 13y ago
It is gender-biased, since generally everyone is emotionally processing in some way or another. It's just that, typically (but not always), men have a habit of "fixing the problem" as a way to avoid emotional processing. Before you can solve a problem or take action, you first have to accept that there is a problem and action needs to be taken. That acceptance is an emotional thing. It isn't a product of reason or intellect. It's not so much that men do not emotionally process, but rather, people who are not in tune with their emotions and suck at it will try to use reason to talk themselves into acceptance. And it never works. For people who are more in tuned with the heart of things, watching someone like that is like watching someone going around and around in circles, using the wrong part of their consciousness. Furthermore, the only way to be in tune with your emotion is to acknowledge and experience those emotions. You cannot force someone to fully experience something. The powers of human denial and aversion are very creative. However, once you've emotionally accepted that there is a problem and action needs to be taken, it is from there that reasoning and problem solving skills allows you to quickly get stuff done. Mindfully listening to someone as they speak allows them to feel safe to touch those emotions within themselves. It's called "holding space". And this practice requires you to stop "waiting for the other person to speak". You are simply witnessing someone work this stuff out.

brianmcdonough 13y ago

Giving advice doesn't make OP an asshole. In fact, listening and making adjustments to a life strategy is one of the hardest things to do on a personal level, in my opinion. Glad to see you are blogging again and quite effectively at that. This was at the top spot on HN this morning.

andyl 13y ago

There is a related phenomena called 'well actually'. http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

badman_ting 13y ago
Heh. Some people I follow on twitter often get people responding to their jokes and intentionally non-factual tweets with "Well, actually…". Which led to their labeling this practice "#ACTUALLY" and the people who do it "#ACTUALLY twitter". I really dig how people are starting to nail the social tone-deafness and misplaced pride in trivial knowledge this involves. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're dumb in a way you probably don't even grasp.
trustfundbaby 13y ago
also known as Oppositional Conversation Style http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2013/09/ever-been-stuck-talking-to-someone-who-keeps-telling-you-how-wrong-you-are/ http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2013/09/ever-...

ntaso 13y ago

This is one of the reasons I decided to start up this blog again. I stopped blogging largely because I learned how much I didn’t know and felt I had no right to be telling others what to do when there are more knowledgeable people out there. Thanks for that. I never started blogging although I wanted to, because whenever I write a blog post, I feel it's kind of obsolete already, because it has a view point that's too limited, too narrow. I "outgrew" my blog post in the moment I finished it. Maybe by framing it as stories and experiences, they get more valuable.

jcampbell1 13y ago

I believe I learn nothing from failure, and a ton from success. When something fails, I don't know if it was a bad idea, bad execution, bad timing, the wrong people, etc. When something works, I generally learn a ton and it inspires other good ideas. It is not until you have racked up a bunch of failures and successes that you realize an idea braindump isn't particularly helpful. When someone starts offering a braindump of ideas, I generally assume the person just hasn't had a bunch of success and failures that are relevant. I think the author's change is natural, as you can't say "Here is what worked for us..." until you have actually had some wins.

soneca 13y ago

I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for one I learned to have patience for the other I learned to ignore. I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences. But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and mentors, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they know what is your problem, and they know what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale". TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off. But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.

rfnslyr 13y ago
edit: lol im banned, wonderful, thanks HN
edanm 13y ago
Do you mind explaining why you think such advice is BS? I assume there are at least some people who are exerts, or who have experience, who're worth talking to?
- soneca 13y ago
  Not with a 10 minute talk. The point is the one the OP learned. Talk about their own lessons learned. When you read Paul Graham and Steve Blank you read someone who has passed through a lot and spent a lot of time thinking about it. So when you read one of these essays you can understand how that apply to your business. Is the same when you start a conversation with someone and he says "When I tried to sell to big corporates I did this and worked and I did that and that didn't work". That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author. But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts. I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.

fring00 13y ago

One last one to end them all.

plg 13y ago

isn't this actually veiled advice-giving, i.e. "don't give advice" ?

stevesearer 13y ago
I think the author's point is more along the lines of "don't offer ideas veiled as advice" and that advice is rooted in experience.

triggity 13y ago

clearly, you didnt learn very much if youre telling us this

mtrimpe 13y ago

The talk "How I learned to stop fixing and start facilitating" from DareConf 2013 [1] really describes the core issue here very well. No matter how much you want to, you just can't always fix things for people in the small interactions that you have with them. And even fixing it for them isn't actually helpful unless you'll be there in the long run to take that responsibility for them. That's why, even though it's hard and will make you feel less powerful, all you can do in these small moments is facilitate. It's about not asking the question "How should (s)he fix this?" but "What can I do in this amount of time we have together to have the greatest positive impact on you?" [1] http://2013.dareconf.com/videos/wachter-boettcher http://2013.dareconf.com/videos/wachter-boettcher

badman_ting 13y ago

I appreciate the humility in this post. I have often had much the same reaction the author mentions - annoyance with some asshole's "obvious" suggestions after thinking about something for three minutes that other people think about for large portions of their lives. And of course you can always come up with ways to make a fundamental lack of humility and empathy sound anodyne ("well who knows, maybe they didn't think of it!"). Good post.

incision 13y ago

>"such an asshole", "had the nerve", "What an asshole" In my experience, only the most cocksure of people would react to the kind of simple brainstorming suggestion cited in that way. Perhaps those people are over-represented among those who have self-selected as entrepreneurs and this is appropriate for that context. For dealing the rest of the world I'll go ahead and be a flaming asshole by advising that learning to stop being mortally offended by well-meaning, benign suggestions might be worth looking into.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago

This reminds me of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Stereotype Woman wants to talk about her problems, for the sake of venting. Stereotype Man wants to offer solutions and fix things. Hilarity ensues and sitcom writers get rich. I wrote "Stereotype" because all of us can be in either role. As a founder, sometimes you just need to vent to someone who can empathize. The only "help" you want is for someone to listen. You're not asking for fixes. Whereas engineer/founders are especially likely to go into problem-solving mode automatically. Even when that's not really what someone wants, or needs from you. EDIT: After writing this, I realized it's a bunch of unsolicited advice. So....yeah.

auctiontheory 13y ago
The older I get, the more I understand and believe the stereotypes in that book.

wpietri 13y ago

Giving advice like this is awfully tempting. But I've learned that even if I am right, which I probably am not, it doesn't do any good. When I take my hard-won rule and follow it to a good outcome, it generally works not because of the rule, but because of all the thinking and experimenting I took to get to the rule. What I try to do now is to ask good questions. If I suspect something is wrong with their business model, instead of saying, "You should do X", I'll try to ask questions that help them uncover the flaw in their thinking. Sometimes that actually happens. Sometimes they just aren't ready to learn the lesson, which is fine; maybe they'll remember the question. And sometimes I uncover a flaw in my thinking. That's valuable twice over: not only did I learn something about the domain, but I learned to be a little more humble.

wpietri 13y ago
And for the record, I started out writing that very comment in advice mode. I've been trying to correct that habit for maybe 3 years at this point. Changing behavior is hard. Especially behaviors with a short-term win (asserting status, getting to feel smart) and a long-term loss (irritating people, not helping them as much as I'd like, feeling like an asshole when I think back on my blowhard behavior). But given that I spent 30 years building the habit, as long as I break it in less than that I'll count it as a win.

davmar 13y ago

I'm a member of EO (entrepreneurs' organization) to which he referred in the article. He's referring to the "gestalt protocol". You can read more about it here: http://www.chiefoptimizer.com/357/entrepreneur/gestalt-protocol/ http://www.chiefoptimizer.com/357/entrepreneur/gestalt-proto... Another value is, when speaking in a group (we call it 'forum'), experiences benefit everyone who listens whereas advice is only applicable to the intended listener. An illustrative example is "I did X and Y was the outcome" vs. "You should X". Sometimes we find it limiting however, and ask that people not use the gestalt protocol. That's the exception to the rule.

arnarbi 13y ago
That link is a 404, both in your comment and in the updated post.
- davmar 13y ago
  odd. it worked when i posted it and it's still in google search results. maybe they pulled it today. here's another one: http://www.stathakis.com/blog/leadership/bid/320702/What-is-Gestalt-and-Why-You-Need-To-Know-It http://www.stathakis.com/blog/leadership/bid/320702/What-is-...

jhwhite 13y ago

A couple of things come to my mind when I start reading this. It frustrates me when I start telling a story and people interject to try and solve a problem that I don't have based on a partial story. Sometimes I'm just relating an anecdote, there is no overall problem, I don't need 3 suggestions on what to do next. The next is already solved. You just haven't let me finish the story. This is possibly not related but the article says to speak from experience. Can this be applied to job interviews? In previous interviews I've started with my experience stating what I've done in the past only to be interrupted and told they don't care about what I've done in the past, how would I do it in the future. When I explain my approach to Project Management or QA Testing, or whatever, sometimes I get asked if that's how I've done things in the past and when I say yes the interview is very short. Maybe that second paragraph is how I phrase things, but if you've got experience in a subject matter you're going to base what you would do, on what your experience has taught you. Sometimes it sounds like people want a completely new process that's never been done before, or at least isn't attributed to some other company having done.

bigchewy 13y ago

EO (where the OP first heard of this concept) was life changing for me. The key thing that I learned was that gestalt (as Don't Give Advice is called in EO) helps conversations stay positive rather than defensive. When I receive advice, I sometimes perceive it as "why haven't you done this yet" and my internal response might be "hey, I'm friggin' busy' Experience sharing gives me the opportunity to say, "hey, that makes sense. I'd like to do [X] and can you help me explore how to do it?" Since EO, my conversations, both on the giving and receiving end of advice, have been far far more productive.

xivzgrev 13y ago

Wow. This is a really interesting article, probably the most I've seen for a while on here (guess you can see what I value). I've been on both sides of this issue. Thanks for the post.

mhaberler 13y ago

fixable by sticking to a simple rule: never give help (including advice) nobody asked for.

dragontamer 13y ago

I dunno. If you don't know what you're talking about, its that much more important to talk about it. Otherwise, you'll forever be ignorant. It sucks when you talk about something and then learn that you're an idiot. But more importantly, you _learn_ that you're a dumb idiot, and then you try to do something about it. Teaching someone else (even if they know the subject better than you) is sometimes the best way to learn a subject. So continue being the dumb guy who gives advice. It helps you become smarter.

elwell 13y ago

I saw a lot of advice in that article, but not one recount of an actual experience where it worked well. /tongue-in-cheek

MyNameIsMK 13y ago

"But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup." YES. YES. ON POINT.

vonnik 13y ago

isn't this a sort of indirect form of advice? reminds me of this: http://imgur.com/NIqQB http://imgur.com/NIqQB

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

I guess this is good advertising for Adzerk, I never heard of that and never knew there were that many people banging down the door to get at its founders. Interesting.

levlandau 13y ago

The following kinds of interactions are useful to founders: 1) Simply talking about another person's startup with them for more than an hour makes that person feel like they are not alone in a world seemingly filled with Googlers and Facebookers. I think the feeling of solidarity here sometimes even trumps whatever silly advice you might be giving. 2) Making meetings feel more like brainstorm sessions helps. I think there is value in "experience" and "expertise" or even just raw intelligence. I'm pretty sure that it's wise to listen to PG's thoughts on your idea even if it's to sharpen your views and beliefs. But the key to these being productive is people asking questions, thinking from first principles and being honest about the experiences they are trying to relate to each other. Needless to say people shouldn't force things on founders and founders should be smart enough to test things quickly and discard them if they are silly.

richardjordan 13y ago

I'm very careful with advice. Even more so in personal contexts. The challenge is that there's a four square matrix of outcomes: they follow vs they don't follow; the outcome is a success vs a failure. If they follow and have success they're a genius for evaluating options and coming to proper conclusions. You don't get any credit for the advice. If they ignore your advice and it works out well then they just remember you're an idiot who can't be trusted. If they don't follow your advice and things work out well they can resent you for the imagined "I told you so". But worst is if they act consistently with your advice (or at least believe they have) and have a negative outcome. Your advice can cause people to avoid accepting their own agency in the outcome, and fail to learn key lessons while passing the blame to you. Giving advice offers little upside with a lot of downside particularly in relationships you value. I like the suggested approach of talking anecdotally about similar situations in my own life or career, and my thinking and choices, and as far as possible some objective accounting for outcomes. Humility and support is better than overconfident prescriptions.

agumonkey 13y ago

This impatience to project my own point of view onto everything cost me a lot. I don't dismiss my ideas now, but I try to investigate people's history and current state of affairs. Maybe they didn't think about it, but even then, they're not in a position to handle a change, or even the idea of a flaw that may be fixable.

mindcrime 13y ago

Good stuff, @javery. But you know I'm always down to hear your advice, or stories, or whatever! That said, the biggest thing I agree with here is this: You can't really gain a proper appreciation of someone's problems, their thought processes, and the full context of what they've already tried, thought of, discarded, considered, reconsidered, etc., in a few minutes. Of the "annoying" advice I've gotten, it's usually been the kind that leaves me going "Dude, that totally has nothing to do with the business we're in" OR "Yeah, yeah, we already tried that and it doesn't work" or whatever. That's why I like your (current) approach. I pretty much never mind hearing somebody relate a story, and if it isn't helpful, well, whatever. But at least it doesn't present the air of presumptuousness and arrogance that just blasting into "oh, do this" and "oh, do that" does.

alabut 13y ago

Paul Buchheit said something similar at startup school years ago and I watch the video every once in a while to remind myself not to be similarly prescriptive when I meet new people. His key takeaway slide was a simple equation: Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice The full video has more info on how to get past the advice you hear and actually process feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

jpdavy 13y ago

James, have to say that I have shared this notion. I stopped taking meetings a little while ago for this reason. I think this is a great experience that you have related here, and I love the conclusion you arrived at.

marincounty 13y ago

I don't take advise from guy's who come from rich families. Yes--it might sound like envy, or class warfare, but I have found their world is very differnt than mine. What worked for them usually won't work for me. My world is loaded with wealthy know-it-alls. They always leave out the part where Daddy paid for this, or that--or the family lawyer quietly set up everything. I have found one truth; It seems like the most ingenious ideas, and talent came from individuals with modest upbringings. This goes 10 fold for artists and writers. I once hear George Soros complain that his writing isn't taken seriously because of his wealth. I read some of his rants and that's not the reason George. At least you were honest about how you made your money though? (George Soros is one of the 1 %'s). I once heard the best advise is no advise. I think that is way too extreme. I just wish people with the real talent, or insight would step forward. But no, they always seem to be at the back of a room, or quietly trying to hold on their own sanity. Yea--but this is about programming, and basking in the glory of a great Start-Up. The Gold Rush?

hyp0 13y ago

advice is opinion, experience fact

richardw 13y ago

It's great advice not to be that type of asshole when you've done nothing, but it's also true that one of the pillars of YC success is someone who doesn't necessarily know your niche telling you what you're doing right/wrong. Sometimes advice is about the niche, sometimes it's about time management, time-to-market, hiring, firing, whatever. The answer has to be about balance - sometimes you know better, sometimes you don't.

Cowicide 13y ago

This is very similar to the tactic Ben Franklin would use to avoid mindless back-and-forth arguments with people that put ego ahead of rationale. He'd simply try to show by example and leave it at that. I'm not sure it works very well online all the time, but in person it does work, IMO.

bharatFNS 13y ago

Listen to everyone and do what I find best, this has been my philosophy in life. I hate self-helps, I think you are better off not trying to tell people your way of live thinking them to follow. Crap!

udkl 13y ago

You sir need to read "How to Win Friends ... " ... what you describe/realized is but a basic communication rule .... though you describe a nice result ...