Work with people who tell you when you're stupid | Hacker News Reader

Work with people who tell you when you're stupid

gkogan.co

63 pointsgk126 comments

Thomas Sowell — "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."

I do agree. I’ve been working on a month long hackathon recently with a team & one of the issues we have is that since none of us know each other well, we’re a bit more reserved. This has meant that some team members have gone down really stupid paths or coded with extremely bad style (tons of magic numbers, xyz as variable names, no type hints, etc) with nobody to stop them. I wish I had the ability to call them out but when they’re an Oxford graduate and you’re just a Cardiff nobody, it’s hard to say anything without angering the whole group.

It must be hard working with people who strongly identify with their college like that. My team is remote so they wouldn't recognize the name of my college if I told them, and I don't know where they studied.

We do reviews on every PR, so we got used to saying "try it this way instead" or at least asking "why is it like this and not like that?"

I've gotten into the habit of just trying what was suggested. Often it's in an area that was a bit neglected and can use a brush up anyway. If it doesn't end up well we can look at the commit and agree that the improvement isn't there, and discuss where to go. Revert or push further. Or maybe I misunderstood. And often I'm surprised that what looked like an equivalent alternative to me, turns out to be much nicer.

It requires broad agreement on the way the thing is to be built. Otherwise haggling over details is not useful.

You have the ability, you are choosing not to act on it for fear of reprisal.

There isn't another industry I can think of in which you can become top of the heap without formal education like you can in tech.

If you have questions, ask them. If you have suggestions, try to pose them tactfully but confidently.

If they look down their nose and scoff based on school status, you know exactly who is placing emphasis in the wrong things, and you can somewhat discount their perspective.

The best teams are the ones in which the intern can pipe up in a senior meeting and be taken seriously based on their merit, not social standing.

psh. call them out and denigrate their oxford degree while you're at it. People from Oxford should know better! I went to Cardiff and I can see that's stupid, so surely you, with your better upbringing can see that it's totally obvious that it should not be done this way.

let them be mad at you. unless they have firing authority over you, who cares?

I'm fortunate to work in a biotech startup where the CEO actively encourages people to push back on him and he seems to relish it. In fact, one of my colleague's unofficial job titles is "devil's advocate", particularly around statistical claims (e.g., anti-p-hacking).

It helps that the team members are all fairly experienced, have a previous history of working together, and are generally mature individuals. I'm not sure it works without that filter, which is possible for us because our CEO is a serial founder with a deep network of competent people.

You don't only need to think about literal p-hacking, think "If I was using Bayes would this still be a problem?" For a lot of the more subtle stuff, the answer is "Yes."

I want to be nice, but there is "write bad code" stupid, and then there is "pay for your business travel yourself" stupid. How did his manager never pull him aside and tell him to stop it?

It really depends on your background. I grew up poor and while I never quite was at his level of self-immolation, I also would book (on the company dime at least!) the cheapest possible options at my own personal expense. Staying in a slightly more expensive hotel to be closer and more convenient simply was not an option that ever crossed my mind due to my upbringing and relationship with money.

Luckily I had great people I worked with who helped show me what was acceptable and not rather early. I still find myself doing this now even at an executive level 25 years into my career. I suspect I will be battling this mindset the rest of my life.

It’s self limiting and puts you at a significant disadvantage off then at compared to your peers in many early career situations - but the mindset does come in handy once in a while in the course of running a business.

When you get your first “real” job these things are not obvious because below a certain level you are expected to show up on time and at location at your own personal expense.

Your case is at least somewhat more reasonable. You were just being frugal with company funds, which can be reasonable depending on the company size, market, etc. The OP was literally paying for business trips out of pocket. That is truly insane.

I think you missed their point. Their frugality went beyond what the company size/stage/etc necessitated, and it's because of their upbringing. I'm the OP and I can relate.

I grew up both poor and was an immigrant. My parents took up blue-collar jobs and were themselves trying to understand how things work in this country. I grew up in a community of immigrants so all my friends were in the same boat.

If you don't have anyone in your life who goes on business trips or tells you about their white-collar job and how things work, how are you supposed to know? Well, through your own experience! Which unfortunately involves doing something stupid at first and learning a lesson from it.

> I also would book (on the company dime at least!) the cheapest possible options at my own personal expense

This contradicts itself — you paid for it or your company did?

I think they meant non-monetary personal expense. As in "I'll book the crappy motel that requires me to take the subway for 45 minutes, rather than spend an extra $25/night for the lovely hotel that's right next to where I need to go".

Yep this. I hastily typed that on my phone right before a meeting. Thanks for clarifying for me!

No offense taken. :)

Steve is extremely nice and probably didn't want to push the issue. Also, their monthly fee to me made the travel cost insignificant, and he knew that.

In my defense, this stuff just isn't taught anywhere. That day I was one of the 10,000 people who learned something that "everyone knows." (https://xkcd.com/1053/)

There's another story where I worked for the Dept of Defense and on my first work trip I stayed in a run-down Howard Johnson motel in the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, because I thought we were supposed to book the cheapest possible lodging.

Turns out the policy was we had to book the cheapest rental car, but for hotels we could just get the standard government rate at any hotel chain like Marriott or Hilton. So while my coworkers cozied up on 500-threadcount sheets I watched a car get repossessed outside my window while the front desk receptionist was stealing my card on file. :)

i agree, however, because ive seen people unironically argue otherwise, i’d expand it a little: work with people who are intelligent enough to give constructive criticism.

i have more than enough experience building teams to know with confidence that if alice is naive enough to tell bob, mallory and eve they are stupid—no matter alice’s skill level—the majority of time her team will not perform as well as the other team where david has learned how to give constructive criticism.

criticism is one of the key mechanisms a team needs, but someone skilled at delivering that criticism is every bit as valuable as the unicorn.

IMO, too many people think that calling people stupid makes them smart. Delivery does matter!

No! You have it all wrong. We have to be positive all the time and never ever say anything that might be construed as negative or critical.

I've been part of groups like this. Anti-contention becomes an unwritten article of faith and the group becomes incapable of cleaning it's own house.

I've been a part of groups who operate antithetically to this. They are terrible in their own ways. Everyone leaves and what remains is a group of folks who can't attract talent because they conflate being antagonistic with truth and honesty.

People telling me I am stupid would be redundant information. I already know this, and I do not try to come off as anything superior. I am only concerned with how I can harness the same stupidity for improvements.

The people who most need to hear this cannot hear this.

Yes and, I hate working with people who think this means you can literally say “you are stupid” and that this the same as providing helpful feedback.

If you are blunt to the point of being rude, then any communication you’re attempting is going to get lost behind the other person getting angry. People, generally, don’t think productively if they feel attacked, diminished or insulted.

You’ve gotta phrase what you want to say in a way that won’t elevate someone’s emotions beyond the point that they can actually hear your real feedback.

As long as they can take it too.

That is: When I decide you're being stupid, it's not always you who's being stupid. Sometimes it's me. Sometimes when I tell you you're being stupid, it turns out that I am. If I'm going to tell you, I need to be open to finding out that, no, actually I'm being stupid on this question.

> Work with people who tell you when you're stupid

...and who you trust to deliver that info: re ++knowledge, --agenda

Other info (like having bad breath or taking-up-1.2-parking-spaces-in-a-full-lot-is-bad) can be trusted from anyone.

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