Ask HN: How do you talk about what you're working on without being a douche? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you talk about what you're working on without being a douche?

22 pointsgood_vibes26 comments

Try to find an angle that the listener might find interesting, rather than trying to puff it up to make it sound as cool as possible.

For instance: I was working with the development team for Time.com to fix a major security vulnerability. It basically took 3 days of staying up all night debugging and going back and forth with their team, and we finally found it - some dumbass included a javascript library that has a well known bug hidden in a minified mess.

Why is this bad? Namedropping (time.com), puffing it up to sound bigger than it is (debugging something for three days is perfectly normal, if you're staying up all night then it's down to your own poor time management), name calling and blaming others (the dumbass), jargon (javascript library, minified), assuming knowledge that there's no reason for them to have (well-known).

Instead: I got to work with one of our really big clients to figure out a security vulnerability that was really stumping everyone. We spent a couple of days debugging it, so that's probably why I've had my head in a cloud lately because I've just been thinking about it non-stop. In the end, we found a bug hidden in a really big block of third party code that's written in a way that makes it very tough for humans to read it, but luckily it's a known bug that some other company had documented, and someone found a blog post about it that let us connect up the dots. All six of us working on it were really relieved when we figured it out!

Why better - gives credit to others, explains why it was difficult, doesn't use any technical language, leaves openings for more questions (why is the code hard for humans to read? who was the big client?), doesn't try to exaggerate the severity of it.

I love this. It's the only one, of the answers so far, that actually addresses a problem and gives a potential solution.

Understandably, without context, the original question is a little vague, but the main takeaway from this response is to practice empathy and understanding that others may come from different backgrounds.

The only thing I would add is that I generally try to give a brief overview of something in an ELI5 approach and if they're interested in more then they'll ask questions.

Noted. This is the kind of answer I was looking for, I'm not too far off the mark. I could do better though.

I'm trying to mold myself from the wisdom of this community little by little. I just want to build something of value, that makes life more fulfilling for the people who use my platform. I try not to talk about it unless the conversation drifts towards 'what are you working on?'. At that point, I mention what it is in bare bones terms and that's it.

Also I've learned that people react differently based on their feelings about themselves. Talking to people who are happy with themselves, they like to hear more and we go back and forth. Other times, people change the subject to sports or weather.

Right, so it sounds like the people who are happy with themselves have lots of emotional capacity for being interested in your thing, but other people can't do it so they change to an easier subject. The key is to make it about them. Is your project something they can use in their life? Don't tell them they can use it - ask about the pain points you're trying to solve with your thing, and see if they have those pain points. Make it about them. If it's uber for dogs, the conversation is about their dog. If it's about Jucero for meat, it's about their eating habits. Then you mention that you're working on something that you hope will make x easier for people like them, and leave room for them to ask questions, rather than jumping in with a sales pitch.

Thanks! This is a good framework for me to use going forward. I want to keep everything casual while collecting valuable feedback/pushback. I learn a lot in casual social settings, the best ideas are useful to people in everyday situations. That's my belief at least.

I'd go further and say that as long as a person can keep the listener's attention, they won't sound like a douche. It's finding out all the confounding variables which makes them sound annoying (e.g. how close you're to the listener, assuming knowledge, mentioning stuff irrelevant to the story).

Talking about what you're working on and being a douche are entirely orthogonal.

I feel like you have this whole interaction framework in mind (a certain social context). If you were to explain that you might get more useful answers.

On the other hand perhaps enough people can guess the situation you're in such that you get useful answers.

It's around my cousins who are engineers or trying to be engineers. They always try to 'compete' with me even though I don't with them, I'm just doing what I love doing.

I just asked here to learn from the community for future reference.

Some people are consistently more focused on status signalling than actual communication.

They're difficult to be around. I've never figured why, maybe it's insecurity? But I honestly can't say.

In general the people I know like that aren't just that way about projects or work though, they're like that about everything...

I have to admit that I just spend no more time with them than I have to, although cousins is a trickier situation.

I never find it douchey when someone talks about what they're working on -- unless they're trying to sell it to me.

I find it depends who I'm around. When I'm around people are geeks like me, who want to make things better/simpler, we just have fun talking. No one is seriously competitive, it's playful at most, it's just science nerds talking about their projects.

Today I was around a group of people who play this game called 'dick swinging', where they try to prove to the others how much better they are than the others while the others act like they don't notice while they think of a way 'get the high score'.

I'm not good at games like that. I just like to talk about science, tech, music, economics, food, etc.

That sound like a not very fun game, and I'd try and find other people to hang out with.

Honestly, this is one of the things I didn't realize when I was younger. There are lots of people in the world, the majority of them I probably wouldn't like to hang out with (at least in a social group). It takes time and effort to find people who you like and want to be friends with.

In this case, it's family so I really can't. I get the feeling that they feel intimidated by me by the fact that I am a dropout with better career prospects than them who have degrees and can't get an interview. Life is full of irony.

That sounds like a tough situation.

Even with family, I don't think I could engage with a game like that. I guess in your situation I'd try and be friendly and kind to them but also try and find friendship/support outside your family.

Just because they're family doesn't mean you have to fully engage with everything they do.

I think we all have topics that are taboo around family. Perhaps career achievements are one of yours, as unfortunate as that sounds.

I just turned 40 and in those 40 years, I have never gained a single thing from dick swinging. Rather, in that time, I have learned that the kinds of people who want to play that kind of game are completely useless to me and the path that I want to follow.

Simply put, dick swinging comes out of place of low self esteem and a serious lack of confidence. We should feel bad for those kinds of people while also realizing that they are emotional vampires who will make us feel bad about ourselves.

Invest in high quality relationships with humble, mature people. As you get older, this will become more important because it gets harder to find time to invest in personal relationships.

> Today I was around a group of people who play this game called 'dick swinging'

I haven't had this experience since I was in college with a bunch of rich, entitled douchebags who went on to work at Wall Street. Perhaps they matured later on. I don't know.

My point is that it's possible never to be in this environment. Maybe if you're in SV, NYC, or one of the big tech companies, you can't avoid it -- I don't know. But I'm not in any of those places and only work with people (across the country and in Canada) who are humble and mature (or at least know enough to pretend they're mature).

Well with the beeing a dick game I can't help, maybe just stop playing that.

Other than that, for people not in the field:

- keep it short

- if you want to tell more, pick something easy to explain, maybe even relatable (you can build a bridge with some comparison for that) and rather interesting (most things are interesting in some details).

I don't play, I just stand there.

I've thought about it some and the only real thing to do is 'show HN'...go from something I'm working on to a viable company. Done.

Avoid saying the words "changing the world" or any other bullshit buzzword that deceptively gives your work a nobler, tone than it deserves. Trust me, if you are changing the world, people will figure it out from what you are doing; you don't need to mention that specifically.

Be happy disengaging from the game with non-competitive responses like "yeah probably no one will use it, but mostly I just want to have fun" or "Yeah it sounds like a waste, but I get my paycheck".

Might be mistaken for a humble-brag though.

Unless they are vaguely techy, i generally just say "with computers", or perhaps "safeguarding data for disaster recovery, for a company in Movies/Advertising"

I ask what they're working on first, and then listen.

Pitch it like a startup would pitch a 2-slide deck to an investor. Then wait for the questions. Let them run the talk.

I simply describe what I'm doing factually.

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