Comment by superpope99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by superpope99 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm talking about trust in a slightly different sense.

I'm talking about trust in a sense of - if I give you some feedback on something e.g.

"Hey I noticed that in our Zoom meetings you've had your camera off recently - we have a team working agreement that we try to keep cameras on in meetings to make remote work more tolerable. It makes me worried that you're checked out"

If there is a baseline level of trust in the relationship, that means the recipient trusts that I have their best interests at heart, and I am trying to help them through feedback, not attack them. The giver of the feedback trusts that the message will be well received.

Having this kind of trust encourages feedback, which leads growth. If you don't have this trust, everyone follows the path of least resistance of not giving feedback.

I think that especially in remote work, peer to peer feedback is such an important avenue for professional growth. Especially when a manager has 8 reports and doesn't really know what's going on.

Perhaps you disagree on the importance of feedback. But if not, then perhaps you disagree on the importance of trust in giving feedback. If so I'm curious as to whether you always find it easy to give and receive it regardless of who you're talking to?

> "Hey I noticed that in our Zoom meetings you've had your camera off recently - we have a team working agreement that we try to keep cameras on in meetings to make remote work more tolerable. It makes me worried that you're checked out"

I'm having a horrible period in my home life. My wife and I are getting ready for a divorce, my mother is sick, my child can't stand his own father. The house is always a mess and so am I. I can barely look at myself in the mirror without crying so I can't stand the idea of colleagues looking at me in a webcam.

This is hyperbole. But how would you respond in a 'trusting' environment to this?

So here's the counterfactual - If there's no conversation about it, what happens? If that is the reality of that person's situation what are the outcomes if it goes unaddressed? I guess either it blows over and the person happens to pull through, or it builds up to an intolerable point and then suddenly without explanation there are 2 weeks of sick leave while the person has a breakdown?

I've had periods of my own life where I've been through tough stuff that has affected my ability to do my job - I guess I feel lucky to have had managers and colleagues who I've been able to talk to fairly candidly in these situations. In all cases I've had signal that they were grateful I shared.

In answer to your question - I would imagine a more realistic conversation might go:

"Hey I noticed X thing, what's up?" "Yeah, I'm having some trouble in my personal life I haven't been myself" "Anything you want to talk about?" "It's complicated to be honest" "Ok well take the time you need and let me know if you need anything".

That's from manager->report. Between colleagues at the same level I guess this scenario could be a bit more complex to navigate. One trivial example I can think of though is in the company I worked at during the pandemic - many moments on team meetings or 1:1 calls where people opened up about their experience of lockdown and how painful it was to be stuck inside in a shoebox of a flat in London. These moments bring people together

I also recognise that peoples' feelings on these matters are hugely cultural - I think huge chunks of the dialogue that happens in the HN comments is just people with different cultural frames of reference talking at cross purposes, but the anonymous feel of the comments section blurs this and makes it feel like everyone works at a FAANG in silicon valley.

> I would imagine a more realistic conversation might go:

Thanks for the answer. There’s two points this realistic conversation make me think of: one would be that this would put a little crosshair on me (or larger depending on the socio-cultural aspect you mentioned) and ultimately it would end up in the same counterfactual scenario you proposed. I can’t realistically take as much time as I need to fix the situation and will end up ultimately passing it or breaking down.

Thanks again for answering, but I’m still struggling to understand bringing personal baggage in a work scenario where deep friendship is not involved.

I'm glad you raised this -- as a person who tends to isolate when things get hard, this pretend conversation reads as fairly manipulative (the agreement and such)

That's likely not even the intention... but, something well meaning can go wildly wrong - particularly when someone is stressed

Confusing care for supervision in a way, interesting internalized response I'm chewing on

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