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I feel like "be more passive" is almost a synonym for "gives less fucks" in a lot of these cases. It's a hard pill to swallow, but there are times when being overly zealous or passionate about your opinions or arguments becomes more damaging rather than helpful.
If you're valued for your opinion or your analysis, it's important to stand your ground, but sometimes you just got to feel the waves and guestimate whether if you're trying to push your opinion too aggressively and might be stepping on some toes you don't really want to step on. Mostly this is just a quick path to stressing yourself out and not being on good terms with everyone.
It's a fine line between being too aggressive with your opinions and not aggressive enough. Sometimes you just have to accept that others might be making decisions that you 100% believe are stupid or wrong, but you just have to let it slide and pick your battles. -
@Ison
Definitely.
I've also discovered that especially younger generations are much more sensitive about negativity.
Not even talking about blatant toxicity or criticism aimed at individuals —just acknowledging that something isn't part of their perfect fairytale seems to be difficult for many.
So, even when you're *right*, and have evidence about how right you are, telling the truth isn't always right.
Or it's not always effective.
Sometimes you can tell someone they're about to step on a rake, they'll step on it anyway and then they'll find a way to blame you for it.
So although it's against my nature, I'm going to mind my own business a lot more often. -
@bittersweet well I guess it depends on how negativity is worded, but yeah people get easily triggered by criticism instead of trying to understand the issues at hand. It's annoying.
Personally I thrive on constructive criticism and ask people for it but people are scared to speak up. I blame it on this inclusive and equity bullshit that corporate american companies all seem to have now. To me, it's censoring any sane criticism we have. -
@aviophile
Arrogant dick syndrome?
Yeah sure, that's me, at times.
I am often completely right in my criticisms, because I only speak up about things I'm knowledgeable about.
But it's more like:
Even if you're a good chef yourself -- if you meet your parents in law for the first time over dinner, and they ask whether you like the baked potatoes, the correct answer is not "It could use less rosemary". Even if it's objectively the fucking correct answer because there's a giant shrub of the stuff on your plate.
Social nuances, and stuff.
I've always felt that things like "The best idea should win" and "All ideas/proposals should be backed by empirical evidence" resonated with me.
And I still find that important.
If someone tells me: "You're wrong, and this is why", I really do stop to listen, and admit that I was wrong.
But being on the other side of that equation, being right about something...
Sometimes it's just not worth the energy 🤷♀️ -
@bittersweet lego's are in deed way more important
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@bittersweet sounds unnecessarily rude with extra steps :/. Do you go yell at terminal stage cancer patients that they will die soon?
Unless you are asked technically ina chefs competition, you should hold your criticism. If someone cooks for you, just shut up about rosemary 😀 -
@aviophile That's what I meant.
The technically correct answer, even when someone asks for it, is not always the socially desirable answer. -
@aviophile
At work it's often more nuanced though.
Someone not adding database indexes in a migration. I remind them, again and again. Even offer to write migrations for them.
Despite me being quite friendly about it, my feedback is perceived as "whining about technicalities".
Past me would have debated back and forth with coworkers.
Future me will make a note about my concerns to the CTO, and carry on with other things. -
@Benutzername Fuck yeah man, preach
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@Wisecrack
Well I'm being paid, quite well. Overpaid even, for my position.
The issue is not salary, or benefits, etc. And yeah any wage slave would call my complaints crazy.
Instead of being a thorn in people's sides at work, I could easily watch Netflix all day, not be fired, and still be paid 6 figures.
But your passion turning into your work also has disadvantages.
It stops being about a wage in exchange for labor.
Being handed a chisel by a manager when you're trying to create a painting is just fucking frustrating. And when it happens again and again, it feels like an insult to your craft.
I'm not even talking about "This junior in my team doesn't understand indentation" levels of frustration.
I'm talking "A critical financial service is down for 14 hours because the whole DevOps team went on holiday simultaneously, and the manager says with a big fake corporate smile that we're on track for the reliability key result" levels of frustration. -
And when you're even slightly honest ("Hey I think that incident had quite a negative impact on our customers, shouldn't we create a post-mortem and followup plan?" ) you just end up shooting yourself in the foot.
It feels like that stupid new movie where an asteroid is heading for Earth and everyone is being a positive little mindfullness-practicing snowflake, waving away all criticism and red alerts.
Because everything is amazing if you just smile, exhude positivity, and believe in yourself.
I don't feel like blowing whistles anymore. Can't fight em, join em, ignoring the whistles from now on. -
@bittersweet Upper-level management doesn't care until it starts affecting them. Thats always how it was. The usual tactic applies, voice your concerns (use a third non-existent person to direct your anger to) then just sit and watch the world burn. When they get defeated and finally want to fix it, "come up" with the same solution you did when you warned them and you are golden. They will listen after a damage is done, just try to make it minimal (if you can do backups thats even better). You become a problem-solver.
For the people under you, setup automated processes and let juniors wallow in despair because their PR got auto-rejected for the N-th time because they cannot learn that there are some rules to things which they need to learn instead of just "doing things and expect them to work". When they come to you for help, refer them to the process document link and go an play Factorio. 😁
Not worth your time or stress to do the same things anymore. -
@arekxv I fucking love Factorio, where do I apply?
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@bittersweet watch the world burn. Hang out and build stuff with your daughter. 👌🏻
* Go to sleep at reasonable times
* Watch some of those anime I never quite finished
* Read more books
* Becom...
Be more passive
I always get involved in everything, at every company. Not to further my career through ass-kissing and overperforming.
I regularly piss off people. When C-level has a discussion about strategy, I'm usually ahead of them, ask too many questions, criticize every detail they've missed, cause frustration by making them look incompetent.
Can't help it, when I see retards destroy a great product I have to intervene.
Some people appreciate it. I often defend both devs and end users, when others don't dare speak up.
But fuck it, I'm getting older. I'm gonna coast a bit more. Sit back, relax.
If a product manager doesn't prepare enough tasks — that's cool, I still have a Factorio savegame to work on.
If another team designs an incredibly stupid feature — they'll discover the issues eventually by themselves. Maybe I'll warn once, just to be nice.
*Pours another chocolate milk*
Also gonna spend at least 4h/d with my daughter. She's a better human than most of my coworkers, and the work we do using her Legos is honestly more important for humanity than the Jira backlog.
rant
wk293