Psychological Safety | Hacker News Reader

Psychological Safety

iamevan.me

Not a pyramid scheme... it is talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And the section about it was at best loosely tied to the rest of the article. The article would have been just as good, and possibly better, if that entire section was simply removed. It's addition took what was otherwise a quite decent article and made it feel like they were trying too hard to hook people in with a clever gimmick of a title.

When I realized this, I immediately stopped reading and made a mental note to avoid the site in the future.

I kept reading past that point and found that it's, so far, worth it. You won't necessarily find anything new if you do a lot of reading on the subject of workplace personal fulfillment, but you will find a reasonable restatement of what type of environment reinforces rather than erodes itself. I've definitely been in environments where I wish I could have shared something like this (but knew that if I did it would only increase the toxicity from others).

Throwaway because in 2020 this opinion can give me trouble but:

> Which environment would you rather work in: a technically brilliant project dictated by one or two people with no room for opinion or discussion; or a project outlined by a senior colleague who asked for feedback regularly and gave your opinion serious consideration and discussion even if it didn’t make it into the final product?

The former clearly. Many of the great technological advances of the last decades were made in the way of the former. Or do you think that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. prioritize(d) your psychological safety over everything else?

I think we learn most when we struggle* than when we have everything laid out in front of us from a more "senior person". Sure beginners should be given some slack and space to grow, but I've also seen bikeshedding and dozen/hundreds of hours spent trying to reach a decision that was actually never reached to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

*from a bit to moderate struggle. If the struggle is too big/unsurmoable, then it becomes too large of a burden.

> dozen/hundreds of hours spent trying to reach a decision that was actually never reached to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

This entirely misses the point.

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