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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

> The doubt worshippers. Starting with a seed of believing in logical thought and debate, they now live and see life through doubts, first, instead of possibilities tempered by doubts. They look at everything with what they believe to be a critical eye, but it is one of doubt, and not possibility. Great things only get accomplished in the realm of possibility and creativity.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I can't stand these people. I've worked with one directly. The most frustrating part of the experience is even when you prove time and time again, that the goals they are so pessimistic about are achievable, they do not alter their outlook on future goals! It's as if their only comfort is in predicting failure and then passively ensuring it.

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One really important lesson I learned early in my career came about 4 years in. I had finally moved to Silicon Valley, and I was still relatively junior, but always had ideas on tweaks or features we could add to the product. The senior engineer was very scruffy and cantankerous at times, which made him unapproachable to many people. But he was very good and very experienced.

However, every single time I brought an idea to him about a change I thought would be useful, he never said no. Not once. We would talk about it, and usually say "okay, well give it a shot." Of course, not all my ideas were winners, but he never shot them down outright. He was extremely supportive of other people's ideas, even from a junior person like me, and it really made a very deep impression on me.

As other people have said, it's very easy to say no, point out why something won't work, and kill further discussion to keep the status quo. It's a lot harder to say that someone's new idea is a good one and even harder to lend support to it. To this day, every time I talk with someone about a feature or idea, I think about my experiences with him, and try to pass that support that I received along to the more junior engineers I work with.

I think sometimes when a senior person has so much experience in how the dots connect, interact, how the data impacts other data, they might run into a groundhog day syndrome where people keep making the same "discoveries" over and over, without looking to see if an idea has been tried before.

There's an ERP implementation I oversaw and I did turn a little scruffy and cankerous some days for this reason.

I learnt from the owner of the company on how to overcome it: despite it all, anyone who approached me with a curiosity and a question of could this work, was welcome to experiment within reason. Anyone who blindly made a statement about this will work cuz it's so simple and go back through re-learning what the organization already had learnt 10 years ago was met with a little resistance. The more you know about a system, the more you know to blindly assume.

One thing that can get to be tiring is when non-technical people make baseless assumptions and trivializations. Having to constantly walk people through the building blocks of why a certain thing upstream will break something else downstream will wear on anyone.

Dealing with management by committee, design by committee, over-trivialization by people who can't understand the details / aren't technical are all very real challenges, and maybe his scruffy exterior kept certain behaviours at bay, for better or worse.

I've had similar problems with people who think everything and anything is possible in just 4 weeks. People with positive attitudes who over-commit a whole team is bad enough, but when I try to say 'what you're talking about isn't possible, let's scale back the requirements' I'm told I'm a pessimistic person. The most frustrating part of the experience in when you prove time and time again, that the goals they are so optimistic about are more complex than they think, they do not alter their outlook on future goals! It's as if their only comfort is in predicting success and then passively ensuring failure and burnout.

Of course when hard time constraints are involved, things actually become impossible. Even the universe has a fixed limit how far you can go in an amount of time.

Nobody (besides you) is saying that "scaling back requirements" is pessimistic. Where is that coming from?

> It's as if their only comfort is in predicting success and then passively ensuring failure and burnout.

How is predicting a success and then failing a comfort? Mine was: predicting a failure and then failing, which would make the prediction a comfort because it was correct. Yours, as a whole, is not comforting, because it was incorrect.

> The most frustrating part of the experience in when you prove time and time again, that the goals they are so optimistic about are more complex than they think, they do not alter their outlook on future goals!

That's not exactly a bad thing, considering the alternative. I would so much rather someone never lose optimism than pessimism, even if they are wrong every time. With optimism, you're dumb enough to try again. With pessimism, you're dumb enough to never try.

Do these people have no clue about technology? My post was aimed largely at developers with some sense of reality, lol.

Yeah, I don't think you're alone at all.

If I may go even more meta for a second, developing software is like developing a psyche to me.

We meet lots of self proclaimed open minded people every day that still judge a book by it's cover or a sound bite they heard 10 years ago that they still think is relevant. It's in some parts likely remnants of the ignorant and bigotrous past that the better part of society works hard to uplift and out educate. We get our education about the world from tv and people instead of taking a minute to turn a stranger (or a strange way of doing something) into a person we can relate to, or an experience we can relate to.

The issue you raise about pessimism.. If common sense was so common... why isn't it everywhere already?

What are the critical stumbling blocks that are occurring in the paths of individuals who choose to live by insecurity instead of finding some authentic personal sovereignty over their ability to take in, process, and contribute positively to the benefit of all of mankind?

I wonder sometimes if it's the drop of enlightenment syndrome.. where a drop of self-understanding leads someone to think they now will know everything they come across in an instant.

This conversation is more about a symptom though, from a lack of positive and healthy inner dialogue, which prevents positive and healthy self development that fuels unity instead of division.

It's just easier to say you're dumb and I know the right thing instead of being able to be open to change.

I've always thought the person discovering a universal truth in an argument is the winner, they got to learn and grow as a person. The person who may have helped deliver that truth might have strengthened their own belief by reviewing why they believed those things, but beyond that, it can feed insecurity to put on the facade of ego.

I think I'm at my quota of HN for the day, thanks for the cool comment about future goals, I liked that a lot.

Yeah, I mean, the world would be such a great place if it weren't for all of those other people who aren't like us.

> The issue you raise about pessimism.. If common sense was so common... why isn't it everywhere already?

The non-sequitur game! I love it! My turn:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann...squirrels!

I will humor your mocking :)

There are universal values. Like kindness, goodness, empathy, compassion. You know, the obvious ones

No one owns these. Many beliefs have tried, but the important lesson is to help keep kindness and goodness fashionable.

Either we're a part of uniting, or dividing.So, no, I don't mean those other people at all, or for anyone to be like me.

I only have beef with those thought pasterns that seek to deride, debase and jeer at others, know what I mean?Being unique doesn't mean being a douche. Do your thing, just don't take the easy way out and be lazy with your words.

* I will humor your mocking :)

Thank you! My mocking was meant to be humored 8-)

* There are universal values. Like kindness, goodness, empathy, compassion. You know, the obvious ones

There are universal values. This seems to suggest that they are only the obvious ones. I don't think you think that.

* No one owns these. Many beliefs have tried...

Those silly beliefs! They just keep trying. But they do mean well.

* ...but the important lesson is to help keep kindness and goodness fashionable.

* Either we're a part of uniting, or dividing.

So a butcher can't breed his own stock. Got it.

* etc.

Ok, time for prose, lest my purpose be misguessed. I don't mean to mock. But I don't think you are paying close attention to what you are saying, and the result is that you repeat clichés, chain non-sequiturs, dangle participles, use foggy pronouns, and say things that I can make no sense of.

If we're to talk about something as important as universal values, we should do better.

By paying close attention, do you mean paying close attention with my mind, heart, or gut?

I respect that others might see or feel otherwise. My words are from lessons learnt the hard way, not reading books, pontificating, and being a keyboard warrior. Most importantly, I'm open to look at myself.

I hope you are too, but I'm not sure. There's a way to talk with someone, instead of talking at someone. I'm not sure what you feel about anyone's experience that isn't exactly as yours, so I won't be quick to judge about what you are or aren't being short sighted about or need to pay closer attention to.

I'll choose to give you the benefit of the doubt, because I like living in possibilities instead of doubting you.

If you're interested bring this back to a discussion of ideas instead of positions, or about my personality or yours, feel free to reach me by email.

In my experience it's "big company-itis". Work at a big company very long and literally everyone starts adopting this kind of mentality. You kind of have to because if you don't everyone is going to start using you and your own tasks will start falling behind.

The trick is, once you get out of a big company you have to let that mentality go instantly. Some can do this better than others.

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