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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I have found that it is valuable seeing whether people gossip: if Mark starts gossiping about Steven, I know Mark will gossip about me with Steven as well. People (not even thinking about it) use revealing "secrets" or talking sh*t about others for bounding.

I try to stay away from these people, and while writing this post I realized that all of my closest friends rarely gossip.

I also noticed those kind of people in a work context are both a treasure and a peril. They are a treasure because they tend to give information for free, but they are also liabilities as these kind of people won't move far the social/corporate ladder.

People who give informations for free do not understand the value of information in the first place.

The second way I judge character is by checking how late they are at appointments, meetings, parties, video calls, whatever. People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.

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> People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.

More likely, they have a time management issue, which can have a range of psychological roots. It can also be a sign of avoidant behavior — you don’t want to be there before the group is already assembled, because you’re anxious about the social situation.

Adults have busy lives, all of us do, if you don't understand that being consistently late impacts other lives you have no respect for others, I don't care what childhood trauma you had.

I know no serial "sorry for being late" that isn't deeply self-centered.

I have known at least one such person.

In addition, I think it's incorrect to conflate being on time with the effort put into being on time. I know people who do not even have a calendar because they can keep every single time commitment in their head, and show up on time to each one. I know other people who spend significant time, effort, and energy on keeping track of their appointments and still sometimes let some fall through the cracks.

Does the person who is nearly effortlessly on time respect people more than the person who puts significant effort into being on time but still ends up late?

I understand judging by outcomes because most effort is invisible, but the map is not the territory.

Some people have legitimate medical reasons - they exist. I’m not saying it’s the norm, but you are overgeneralizing. Few characterizations can be absolute.

> It can also be a sign of avoidant behavior — you don’t want to be there before the group is already assembled, because you’re anxious about the social situation.

Thank you for saying this here. I expect that for many people it might not seem like an obvious reason, but it can be certainly true.

For some people any social gatherings can be extremely serious and lead to a lot of overthinking, even if they seem fine when they’re already there.

Such persons need to learn about Cognitive Distortions and learn how to turn off that irrational negative fortune teller who simply will not shut up in their head.

Hi, I’m one of those people. None of the stuff I’ve read and precious few techniques have helped. It’s kind of the hallmark of these cognitive distortions that they’re irrational and we know they’re irrational and yet they persist.

There is a book, but you don't need to read much past the first few chapters, named "Feeling Good", by Dr. David Burns. He and another (I don't remember the other doctor's name) developed the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy school of psychology.

The gist is there is a simple list of questions one can ask themselves that expose self deception in one's self conversation. Once the deceptive self conversation is identified, the deception naturally becomes nullified. These deceptions are things one tells themselves that are not known, not true, but the self accepts the statements and internalized them - causing imposter syndrome and a huge number of related negative emotional cycles. The simple act of identifying these deceptions causes one's own mind to re-evaluate, and if the new evaluation contains more deceptions that same Cognitive Distortion checklist can be reviewed and used to discard these new comforting lies or negative projections.

Note that this is not a casual pursuit. This a a "debugging and reprogramming your core beliefs". In cases where one has never performed such a self audit, I suggest doing so with the support of a licensed therapist; it is not a casual event, to reevaluate one's entire world view in light of realizing one's level of self deception.

I have seen amazing results, and experienced them myself.

Thanks for making a specific recommendation and going into what makes it work. I also appreciate the note of caution; people seldom talk about the negative affects of self inquiry.

Until you wise up, and you start using your own behavioral analysis as the avoidance mechanism.

> People who give informations for free do not understand the value of information in the first place.

I disagree. I learned most from very smart people who were willing to share their knowledge. They didn't mind providing such information for free.

Not everything in life is transactional. For example: Successful networking is not about maximizing the "profit" out of contacts you make.

> Not everything in life is transactional.

Thanks for saying this. Posts and threads like this read like real life is some kind of war zone with tactics and plans, as opposed to a beautiful dance in which we find ourselves pleasantly surprised with how things can turn out if we keep an open heart.

I urge these people to read less Art of War, and more fiction. Go and enjoy life without thinking of how to "win" all the time.

I do not believe that is the type of information being referenced. most people love to share their education knowledge, it is practically showing off. The point of people not understanding the value of information refers to organizational knowledge about how this collection of persons actually accomplish goals, rather than the official story - that's the valuable information referenced, not what one was taught in their schooling.

Even if someone is being transactional, giving out some information for free to see if it'll be reciprocated or not can be a good strategy, or to see if someone goes "they know something about X - maybe I can make a deal with them to find out even more". It's really not that different from giving out free samples of your product.

> People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.

A post-modern perspective would acknowledge that folks with an executive functioning disorder are very well aware of the importance of your time, but suffer from the unfortunate effects of time agnosia.

Conversely, a useful bit of advice I once found was to say good things about people behind their back, for exactly the same reason.

This is one of the reasons that I go out of my way to compliment people to others. I try not to speak ill of others not matter the cost. I do this because that's how I want to be treated.

If I have (dead)beef with someone, I go to that person to sort it out. Otherwise I speak to their good qualities. A favorite scripture of mine is "love hopes all things", that is 'love sees the best in others, hoping for their best characteristics'.

Gossipers are often very immature deep inside. They'll react to social stress that way, and over time it gets very tiresome.

About the corporate information game, I'm still a bit curious how it works (like many Ive seen my share of videos about social skills, and manipulation even, but i still don't see how this would work in real life) but everytime I'm tempted to play games .. I just feel drained. My soul is really not wired for that. Honesty is a supreme value.

it's completely normal to take part in gossip. in fact, it's a social skill. if you are afraid of what people say about you, then you are probably the problem here. i'm not going to go into why gossip isn't the worst thing in the world, but there are different levels of bad mouthing.

being late is also very normal. again, maybe it is you who are not being clear about your expectations or, more likely, are reading too much into it.

> if you are afraid of what people say about you, then you are probably the problem here

This is such a harmful sentiment for people who are socially awkward and/or anxious to be exposed to.

> The second way I judge character is by checking how late they are at appointments

How I judge character is if they leave work at exactly 5.00pm, consistently, even when problems come up.

So, people with hard commitments, such as picking up a child or senior from daycare renders such a person suspect? I know people with medical conditions such that their meal times are forged in stone, and have to take meal breaks on set intervals or they suffer serious issues. Do you check to see if such subjects arrive earlier than others, skip lunch or perform other compensations? Realize that many, many people have rigid time commitments they cannot control.

I worked at a startup where 'staying late' was expected. The best analogy I can give for it is that the technical staff were asked to work on a transport truck's engine as it drove down the highway at 150km/h, no stopping allowed, while the sales team airdropped (from a helicopter?) more and more load on the back of the truck.

I used to get texts at all hours of the night and day and learned to start to ignore them, then I eventually left.

A coworker who stayed a few years after I left told me that I did the right thing. Until you implement 'flow control' the demand side will _never_ get the signal that their incident coverage is not sufficient.

This was a particularly abusive situation, but this kind of experience always makes me suspicious of people who look down on others for not staying late.

All this 'staying late' moralizing indicates management that wants seamless incident coverage but is unwilling to pay for it.

Having said this, I am usually willing to stay a little bit late on occasion, because no one's planning is perfect. But when it becomes habitual, I take it as warning sign to look for another project or job.

That means they are smart enough to value their time and care for their family. The old people depending on the company's success to fund their pension can go starve.

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