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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

"Its about feeling safe, respected, and sharing the load."

You know, I think it's worth pointing something out about the word "safe" given the sense it has been used in lately. In this case, it means people feel safe to express dissent. Not "safe from dissent", as the term is often used nowadays.

Of course the two usages shouldn't be overlapping much anyhow. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a team where people actually attack each other's personal identities is not going to be very effective! But it's still worth pointing out the two very different ways the term can be used, and important not to accidentally substitute one definition for the other.

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Something the Recurse Center also put a lot of work into is making it safe to express lack of understanding/knowledge. There's a huge difference between a meeting where someone feels able to say "I'm totally lost, can we rewind" and one where they just quietly panic.

That's somewhat in tension with being able to express dissent, in that being able to dissent constructively requires both social skill and an underlying environment of trust.

It's easy to cultivate only one of those (eg most OS mailing lists choose dissent) but cultivating both is harder and I haven't seen it ever happen by accident - all the communities that come to mind are ones that direct a lot of attention and effort to community structure and expectations.

The Recurse Center's social rules are really well thought-out. After I learned about them, I started to see how people who violate the "no feigning surprise" rule can make team members feel excluded and belittled, often unintentionally. This includes myself, and have since changed my behavior.

I feel the "social rules" are quite valuable both inside and outside the workplace. I wish more employers and groups practiced them: https://www.recurse.com/manual#sec-environment

> Not "safe from dissent", as the term is often used nowadays.

I don't think that's a fair characterisation of what "safe" in "safe space" means.

Observations differs it seems.

I noticed the article also mentioned that being highly sensitive to other people's feelings was also very important, not just safety from dissent. In fact the piece seemed to focus on how groups with highly socially sensitive individuals tended to fare better.

Is that not a safe space?

It's reciprocal, which is the real thing missing from the collegiate-type "safe space", which only flows to certain people. You need to be able to disagree, and, reciprocally, when disagreed with you need to handle that gracefully, or you aren't doing your job. You not only get your feelings taken into account, but you must equally take other feelings into account. You've got rights, but you've also got responsibilities too.

Contrariwise, the collegiate-style safe space makes it so that the certain people have boundless rights to be offended, but no corresponding responsibilities to consider other's feelings. In a team context this leads straight back to exactly the failing the article is primarily about, one person/group speaking a great deal more than the other.

(And please do not insult my intellectual integrity by claiming that collegiate-style safe spaces are supposed to be safe spaces for everybody. That is transparently false, to the point that you are just discrediting yourself if you try to claim otherwise. It is abundantly obvious who they are for and who they are aggressively not for.)

I do apologize, I didn't realize we were talking about exclusively collegiate safe spaces. I was under the impression we were expessing something more common than that. Given that I haven't read any studies on collegiate safe spaces, nor have I extensively participated in many myself, I've got no opinion. Do you have any studies marking the style and results of a collegiate safe space you're claiming?

"Collegiate" safe spaces? Huh?

This makes me wonder if your only exposure to the concept is through the media, which tends to complain about students a lot.

I can feel safe even if I really disagree with the decision someone has made.

Or I can feel unsafe even if technically we are perfectly aligned but I know they are going to backstab me in front of my boss anytime they feel like.

I can work or even share room with an Atheist, a Buddhist and a another Christian for weeks on end and we didn't bother another.

I think it is usually enough to respect another, and that includes for the easily offended part (often me) to respect others right to don't care about my customes as long as they don't mess with me.

I do however feel a tiny bit unsafe (for the lack of a better word) in online foras whenever I see people getting online-lynched for not having the correct opinion.

You are so close to understanding that what Google is doing is the same thing the safe space movement is doing, but now it's cool because a hot company does it.

It's interesting how you choose to represent the safe space culture by its most annoying examples, but chose to represent tech company management culture by it's most positive examples.

There is a huge fundamental difference between attacking someone's ideas vs. there identity.

However, most people let there identity and there ideas get tied together. So, it can feel similar.

Yes, there is a huge difference.

And it is the responsibility of the person on the "attack" to make that clear using whatever approach works in the situation. Otherwise you have a communication problem, and it is primarily your fault for being inarticulate.

This is not at all meant as a know-it-all pedantic attack, but I found it much more difficult to read your post because of "there" being used where you meant "their". I hope this helpful instead of annoying!

Their and there are generally pronounced the same. Would you have had similar issues if you had heard that sentence? Or where you just being snippy?

I'm honestly not sure if I would have had similar issues verbally. I think they maybe sound very slightly different when most people pronounce them, but there's a good chance that's just my brain adjusting based on context. But I don't think reading is the same, and I definitely think some misspellings, even of homophones, can throw me off and cause me to re-read.

In any case, I went out of my way to not be snippy! I just thought it might be helpful to you to know that the mis-use slightly tripped up at least one person. It's hard to know who will find it helpful to have things like that pointed out (like some non-native speakers trying to learn) and who will just get annoyed. Mis-judged this one!

That's odd. I suspect we process written language completely differently as I don't notice when someone swaps homonyms.

Also, they really are pronounced the same, if your hearing a difference it really is just in your head.

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