Hacker News Reader

Comment by tkt | Hacker News Reader

Learning to give and receive feedback is one of the skills that will make you and your team better and is an important part of communication. Effective communication is crucial, no matter the size of the team. The list of the distinctions between 'criticism' and 'criticism' in this article is particularly valuable.

Criticism passes judgement — Critique poses questions; Criticism finds fault — Critique uncovers opportunity; Criticism is personal — Critique is objective; Criticism is vague — Critique is concrete; Criticism tears down — Critique builds up; Criticism is ego-centric — Critique is altruistic; Criticism is adversarial — Critique is cooperative; Criticism belittles the designer — Critique improves the design

View on HN

Perhaps it would be better to copy the processes of companies/teams notable for outstanding design - or any other process.

I wasn't aware that Facebook was an authority in design.

There's beautiful/functional design all over the web. But my experience of FB is that the UI is somewhere between "Mostly OK, I guess" and "That really doesn't work very well and it's annoying."

If it's taking two hours of review time a week to create that, the process may not be optimal.

Just remember, Facebook are designing a UI for 1 Billion people. That's going to require a lot more "common understandable simplicity" than most applications.

That's going to require a lot more "common understandable simplicity" than most applications.

Whether or not that is true doesn't matter when facebook is very much not "common understandable simplicity."

Facebook's interface is a bewildering mess to use anything other than their chat or twitter clone.

I disagree. Criticism is awesome. If people can't handle criticism then they should change profession. If 1 person says something negative. Then there's 1000s more who feel the same who say nothing.

Constructive criticism is even better.

Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it egocentric. Criticism is on vague when it is not constructive. Criticism only belittles if it is targeted at the person and not the thing being critiqued.

Feedback has been and always will be a two way street. It's on the critiquer to word their comments in an impersonal, constructive manner just as much as it is on the critiqued to receive comments with grace and poise. Feedback is an active collaboration for a better product and all involved parties are on the hook to contribute in a manner that allows all other parties to also contribute.

>Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it

That usually begins with the person doing the criticizing.

“He who takes offense when offense was not intended is a fool, yet he who takes offense when offense is intended is an even greater fool for he has succumbed to the will of his adversary.” ― Brigham Young

That said, I do think the GP has a point: it is possible to divide feedback according to the two sets of criteria mentioned, and that things go better when we craft our communication to be the nicer one (he called it critique, you call it constructive criticism).

I'm not going to use the fact that people should be able to handle criticism to give mean feedback. And I think that's the point he's making - we should choose to be nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com