Why I Stopped Helping People and You Should Too | Hacker News Reader

Why I Stopped Helping People and You Should Too

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33 pointsfforflo20 comments

The reason you don't give unsolicited advice is not because people don't deserve it (points 1 & 2 in the article) but because if they didn't ask for it then they probably aren't prepared to act on your advice; or they don't view the subject of your advice as a problem; or they are already fully aware of your advice but a bigger issue is blocking them; or due to some other information that you don't have so you don't fully understand their problem and they resent your assumptions about their problem.

I strongly suspect this is a gendered issue. The author is a woman. I am a woman. I have watched men be helpful to someone and have it come back to them as a professional connection. When I do the same thing, I seem to mostly get one of three responses: 1) romantic interest 2) the expectation that I should be helpful for free because, I guess, I am supposed to care about everyone in a motherly way (and most of the world seems to ascribe to an abusive Giving Tree mental model of motherhood) or 3) people stop speaking to me (I have opinions about some of the reasons for that, but this is not the place for that).

What I never seem able to establish is a "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" expectation of tit for tat professionally. The thoughts expressed in this article may not apply so much if you are male. Male helpfulness seems to be received differently in the business world than female helpfulness. For women reading this article, my opinion is that she makes some useful points, but it is probably incomplete without analyzing the role that gender plays here, which the article does not do.

>When I do the same thing, I seem to mostly get one of three responses: 1) romantic interest

I'll bet a LOT of men wish that they'd receive some romantic interest when they're helpful to people, even if it means they have to decline some of it. I think it kinda says something that men pretty much never get any romantic interest (they always have to initiate it, even in this supposed age of gender equality), and that women complain about men showing romantic interest, but men doing this is precisely the only way they're ever going to have a romantic relationship because women never show romantic interest themselves. Women demand for men to always be the initiators, but then complain when men initiate (presumably because it's not the men they're interested in). Maybe if there were a lot more equity in romantic initiation, this wouldn't be such a problem.

>3) people stop speaking to me (I have opinions about some of the reasons for that, but this is not the place for that).

This one's just weird, and I would like to hear your opinions here.

I sort of get where he is coming from but I don't live my life that way (and it has paid off). When I started my company I got advice from the guy who started Sun (avb), the guy running Redhat (Bob Young), lots of people who were farther along than I was helped me. I've returned the favor in a pay it forward sort of way. My wife used to ask me why I gave of my time so freely and I don't have a good answer other than it's how I'm wired.

I don't know OP but if I met him I'd ask him to think about the people who have helped him.

I am sympathetic to some of what s/he said. If the demands are so much that you can't get your own work done, ouch. If people don't value your time, yeah, time to move on. But I wouldn't turn that into "No help for you!" as a way of life. To each their own I guess.

She/her.

Publishing an unsolicited article about how you no long give unsolicited advice is somehow flawed.

“Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve.”

― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

i might've misunderstood the intent of your post, but i think one is headed for a life of unnecessary emotional pain -- and a stunted career trajectory -- if one responds to people with 'wrath' whenever 'your courtesy is not returned'.

some alternatives i'd suggest: - persuasion - magnanimity - disengagement

If the goal is a happy, well-adjusted life, I have a hard time thinking of anyone whose advice I would be less likely to take. This quote is just more confirmation of that.

LaVey was a charismatic person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bsAnXPhCOA

Why would you think he didn't have a happy life?

Charisma is orthogonal to happiness, at best.

His relationships didn't seem to generally go very well, but beyond that, I just find his extremely selfish worldview pretty sad and shallow. Not the world I want to live in.

Many people I know in person and online would disagree, but that's ok. I don't generally think of many of them as very happy either.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."

I don't know so much about LaVey's relationships, probably you can help me there! Solomon's relations weren't that good either though. :-)

This topic is in my opinion one of the most difficult ones in life. What is right to do? Of course to just always take an eye for an eye is an extreme, but so is to turn the other cheek.

Moreover, there are a lot of people who don't love themselves enough. This leads to a vacancy that needs to be filled somehow by others, they seek endless confirmation or only find "purpose" in higher powers.

It's a very deep topic and I think I will need a lifetime to understand it. I think it's also very difficult to tell if other people are happy. I definitely don't ask often enough if people are happy. :-)

What's so wrong with that quote? He even advocates following the Golden Rule, at least at first. It sounds like pretty decent advice to me, except maybe the "wrath" part is a little too strong. But if I treat someone nicely (like I'd want to be treated), and they act like a dick to me, I'm not going to continue to be nice and helpful to them, I'm going to stop being helpful and try to get away from them.

It sounds like you're advocating that people put a lot of energy into being helpful to people who are assholes and take advantage of them. I don't see how that's a good philosophy at all. That's exactly the kind of philosophy that enables sociopaths to climb to power in society so easily.

Alternatively "...be nice until it's time to not be nice"

a life must be balanced around certain principles; we feel it and we see the undesirable results when it is unbalanced; recalibrating -- adjusting boundaries in our lives -- is often necessary, as Pham illustrates. these boundaries must be derived from a respect for one's self, one's work (regardless of whether you are paid for that work or not -- e.g., a poet often is not), and one's family.

however, we must never throw magnanimity out the window wholesale; it would be a travesty to abandon such an essential virtue.

"Why I Quit Being So Accommodating" is a great essay that showed up on HN some time back; worth a read for a fuller treatment of this topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4969041

It's true for professional work. But when parents ask you to do something then do it, and learn to do it properly.

When I've watched my parents' plants, they gave me a list of how much water each one needs, and how often. Evidently neither she or her parents thought to communicate about how the plants should be watered.

This article is just plain stupid.

Holy shit, this is awful.

So disagree.

aka "Why I'm an asshole and why you shouldn't judge me"

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