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Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

mlthoughts2018

I think this is bad advice personally. Imagine if you complained about sexual harassment and were told to “bring solutions, not complaints.”

A complaint is useful feedback that can alert you to a coming problem or an unintentional pain point or a previously invisible suffering group of people.

It’s exactly attitudes that try to undermine the purpose of a complaint by trying to implicitly shift the burden of a solution onto the complainer that create an air of fear or timidity that mere feedback is not acceptable, and will be treated like it is the same as whining, preventing people from using the complaint as a mechanism to alert a wider group of problem solvers to the issue.

It doesn’t matter if it’s complaining to the police about a loud neighbor, complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered, complaining to HR about sexual harassment or complaining to the waiter that your food was brought to you cold.

It should be seen as a perfectly polite, reasonable, and useful thing to complain and leave the solution up to someone else.

In cases when it’s appropriate for you to also propose a solution, because you have relevant skills or experiences or something, even better.

But you should never make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too.

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In the context of trying of get things done at work, which this question is apparently framed as, where the issue is not sexual harassment, I have found it to be a very effective rule of thumb.

I think you are reading in meaning that isn't there. It is a rule of thumb for precisely this type of goal. It is not a rule of thumb for how to deal with situations where you are clearly being wronged and it is clearly someone else's responsibility to right it.

But it works really, really well for trying to insert your agenda where doing so may not be all that welcome and where you are potentially stepping on toes politically, toes that could potentially cost you your job if they find you offensive enough. If you have a better way rather than just a criticism, it tends to be much, much better received.

I disagree even in that case. When my colleague complains that a certain software module is overly complex, say, that’s really useful feedback even if they don’t have time to itemize the specific reasons why or propose alternatives. In terms of delegating and scheduling, it might just fall on someone else to take the complaint and look into whether the code can be simplified.

Raising a complaint long before having a full alternative is really useful in matters of team conventions, design principles, adoption of different tooling, workflow policies, etc.

I would always want to foster an environment where teammates could feel free and empowered to speak up about a topic that doesn’t sit right with them, and never feel implicit pressure to be quiet or keep to themselves if they cannot already propose an alternative.

I like to say that it’s all about empathy, but people often think about empathy completely backwards, from their own point of view, just “not wanting to hear it” or getting annoyed with a particular colleague who is often vocal just because they irrationally wish the person would be quiet and not introduce extra work via some complaint that needs looking into.

This is backwards because you should be happy and welcoming for people to tell you all this stuff. Part of being a professional is increasing your capacity to absorb complaints to make other people happy by solving their problem when they alert you to it, and not getting upset or annoyed (or at least not letting it affect you), and thinking they should be holding back for your sake.

It’s a natural extension of a lot of the advice in, “How to win friends and influence people,” applied to the workplace.

I think you are seriously reading in a huge amount that isn't there. There is no edict here to keep silent or something.

There are lots of circumstances where it's fine to voice criticisms. But where you have a clear agenda to oppose specific things at work and you want to insist on change happening, how you bring that up matters and just loudly complaining and insisting it is someone else's job to fix it isn't a best practice.

I don’t agree. I was responding to the parent comment that said this:

> “Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow.”

It’s clearly talking about a general office culture, and not restricted to long-running agendas or anything, but rather having good “corporate citizenship” by not complaining or something, an institutionalized mantra to equivocate complaining with whining— I don’t think it involves reading anything extra into it in order to see that in the parent comment.

Seeing as how I wrote the parent comment, I think I am the ultimate authority here on what I intended. Given the context in which I was making the comment, I didn't feel I needed to make a long list of provisos clearly delineating that it applies to x, y and z context and should not be assumed to be a written in stone commandment one should follow upon pain of death. "Rule of thumb" seemed to me to be adequate to convey such.

I have now delineated some of those previously unstated assumptions. If you want to continue to insist I have no idea what I myself think or intended, then I don't think there's any point in discussing it further.

But you specifically say to use it as a general rule of thumb (a general cultural norm in your workplace), and that’s precisely the point I was disagreeing with.

If you both literally said, “It's a great rule of thumb to follow.” but also did not mean it should be a general workplace norm, then I cannot see any consistent way to interpret your original comment.

If anything, the rule of thumb would be to charitably and patiently listen to complaints earnestly, and only delineate special cases when complaining would be discouraged.

Stop beating your wife with switches smaller than your thumbs. Both of you. /s

Also. Kind of going to back the complaint being reasonable side of things. In Quality Management, it is more important that the signal is raised, recorded, and put in a pipeline to be dealt with, than to encourage only raising the signal when a possible solution is in hand.

On the other hand, yes, in general, when expressing cross-departmental complaints, come with a suggestion or offer of help to solve the problem in hand. If nothing else, it builds bridges, goodwill, and shows you care about making their lives, not just your own, better.

No. I did not use the word general. I did say this as the lead in:

Something I heard at my corporate job:

Although I can see where that would be interpreted as indicative of a general cultural expectation, it was a saying of one specific manager in my department. It was not some kind of cultural edict. I intentionally chose to not say that as I felt that detail was a pointless derail. I was merely offering a pithy alternative saying for the point someone else made.

It is, in fact, a rule of thumb I find works well for many things. But, given the specific context in which my remark was made, you have seriously read in a lot of assumptions that are wholly unwarranted.

If this comment fails to clear up this misunderstanding, then let me suggest you just ignore the entire thing and stop trying to parse it. Far too many words have already been written about this silly misunderstanding.

I would always read “rule of thumb” as a general rule, something you would consult in your mind as potentially being applicable in any given circumstance (and hence is general, by definition, even if you did not use the word “general”).

I feel like I’m being chastized here for defending a reasonable, obvious interpretation of your comment, while you are doing mental gymnastics to try to add qualifications to it.

I’m fine to drop the issue from this point, sure. But it feels rude to me that I am being told to stop talking about it even though reading back through the comments after sleeping on it, it seems obvious that my original interpretation was right, that I described my counter point in a perfectly civil way, and that your replies don’t seem fair.

You aren't being told you can't talk about it, nor are you being chastised. You are being told -- repeatedly -- that what I meant is not what you heard and then you insist you are in the right and I am in the wrong when I know best what I intended and no one else seems to have some big issue with my wording, which suggests the misunderstanding is likely primarily on your end, not primarily rooted in terrible phrasing on my end.

You and I obviously see the meaning of rule of thumb differently. I'm not going to look it up and get into some pedantic argument here about which of us is "right."

I don't know why you feel some need to repeatedly inform me that what I think I meant is not what I meant. But this discussion is fundamentally a waste of everyone's time if you are going to simply insist that your interpretation of what I intended is correct and true and my attempts to explain what I intended are somehow bad behavior of some sort.

I don't know how more clearly to convey that. I think I have been extremely patient myself here with trying to find some means to communicate while you appear to be dead set on telling me I don't know what I meant, which just sounds like a rather crazy assertion on the face of it.

It's reasonable to state that it sounded to you like I meant X. It is not reasonable to insist I couldn't have possibly intended something else since X is not the meaning you personally got out of it.

I intend for this to be my last reply. You've taken more than enough of my time over this matter. If that upsets you again for some reason, so be it.

I'm only saying that after reading and reflecting on your follow-up comments, the thing that seems most likely to me is that your original comment was meant to offer general advice that I felt it was valuable to state a disagreement with. The follow-up comments don't provide evidence, discussion or any information that causes me to revise that belief. It seems more likely to me that you're retrofitting an explanation to your comment because you don't happen to like my line of disagreement with you or something like that. I am not even sure why it matters so much to you to repeatedly insist there was a different intended meaning to your comment. So what? In a LessWrong-style way, the meaning of your words is what gets induced in the mind of the reader, and not what you have in mind when you wrote them. It would be super easy for many other people to read your original comment the same why I did, and that alone makes the follow-up discussion about disagreeing with it a valuable thing, totally decoupled from what you meant or even what you personally believe. It's about how people will read and understand that particular comment, not about what you meant by it (although, I still think the most likely scenario is that you did mean something like a general rule to consult in a general corporate setting, and backtracked to qualify it later on).

> "You've taken more than enough of my time over this matter."

I don't necessarily agree, but I do agree that this meta-discussion about who meant what seems counter-productive. Extended discussion about why a rule of thumb that puts implicit pressure on people to not raise their complaints would actually be valuable, because it seems a lot of people don't think any further than the fact that they find complaints to be annoying, and support the idea of corporate mores rewarding "problem solvers" instead of "whiners."

> complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered

Even in that case, at least in the US, one must do the equivalent of bringing the solution. Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both [1]. They can't merely be a complaint that open-endedly asks the court to decide the solution.

The exception is for criminal cases, and those are brought by the government, not individuals.

> But you should never

"Never" is an extremely high standard, superlative, even, which makes it difficult to agree with.

> make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too.

This strikes me as a strawman, because the discussion isn't really about people's feelings, whether they deserve to be heard, nor if a particular solution is ready made (as opposed to merely a proposed, initial version).

Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends. In that context, the advice is to provide an alternative solution, in addition to criticisms of that trend.

Since that advice is based on the giver's personal experience with the relative receptivity to such challenges, at least in a particular company, that makes it valid advice.

You may well feel that it is somehow morally or ethically wrong for the people in that company to have been less receptive to a challenge in the absence of an alternate solution, but they still were. Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.

[1] Also declarative relief, but that's rarely in response to something that can easily be likened to a complaint, as we're discussing in this context.

> “Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both”

I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include.

I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.)

In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about.

Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something.

> “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.”

I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots.

> “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.”

I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice.

Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments.

But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.

OK.. I think I now understand what you're trying to get across, and it may have to be one of those "agree to disagree" situations. In the spirit of HN furthering of mutual understanding, I'll try to summarize your position:

You feel the original advice, in essence, serves to perpetuate the immoral, current standard of behavior and is, therefore, invalid.

(Whereas I, on the other hand, am saying that the advice narrowly serves the OP's immediate, pragmatic interests and is, therefore, valid.)

Is that a fair distillation?

Yes, definitely. If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case of persuading people to give up certain modern tech, then that's fine, maybe it's good advice, maybe not, but it's not a morality or "general rule" sort of topic.

The comment is not written that way at all and it's not implied from context, especially because the comment talks about it as advice heard in a corporate setting, which begs the interpretation of a generic corporate policy or something "team players" will do, etc.

It is specifically because the parent comment was written that way (a generic heuristic for corporate settings) that I felt it was useful to offer a disagreeing perspective and highlight that it could be quite harmful to encourage adopting such a thing as a generic "corporate setting" rule of thumb.

> Yes, definitely.

In that case, as I said, I see your point, and I think we merely disagree on fundamentals, which is fine.

> If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case

At the risk of breaking the HN taboo of bringing up voting as well as potentially sparking another meta-discussion, I'll say this:

The consistent downvoting combined with the lengthy sub-thread with the OC insisting, in essence, that the context was sufficient to convey intent (and subsequently confirming original intent), in the absence of disclaimers, suggests that your position here may be tending toward the unreasonable.

This isn't to say that you're categorically wrong and that nobody else could possibly intepret it differently, just that it might be beyond a "reasonable person" standard of interpretation. Personally, I prefer being required to exert extra effort to gain context, so as to have writing be more succinct and free of disclaimers.

Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis. It probably still does for some readers, and I find that unfortunate for HN, as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all.

> "The consistent downvoting combined with the lengthy sub-thread with the OC insisting, in essence, that the context was sufficient to convey intent"

I'll have to disagree strongly on that one. Hacker News is a place where the voting is extremely tribalistic. People downvote what they don't like, regardless of its merits or worthwhileness. Hacker News exhibits this just as much as any online community I've ever seen, and it's pure bias that so many of us believe we're exempt and use votes efficiently. Voting on HN is very often about popularity or trying to downvote what you don't like, rather than reserving downvotes for types of discourse that truly fall outside the guidelines or scope.

> "Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis."

I agree, and felt saddened that I was pushed into a corner where I felt it was clearly necessary to belabor it.

> "as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all."

Yes indeed, but there truly are many topics for which HN is just another echo chamber and downvotes are just expressions of loyalty to ideological sides of an issue.

> People downvote what they don't like, regardless of its merits or worthwhileness. [...] > Voting on HN is very often about popularity or trying to downvote what you don't like

Well, yes and no. I certainly agree with your point about tribalism and being like other online communities, but I don't agree with the "just as much" part, at least not within the bounds of certain topics or sub-threads. It takes an effort to see just that HN.

My own experience is that my comments receive few votes one way or the other (and very rarely fall negative), but I believe that's because I make a concerted effort to avoid topics where discussion appear to yield nothing but further controversy. I'll even just hit the "[-]" on the whole sub-thread after reading a few levels and detecting the pattern.

I also self-censor (and let go of things and not take bait). Frequently. How much of a loss this is, to others, is unknown, but I do know I ultimately feel worse when I am the character in the xkcd cartoon who won't leave the computer because "someone is wrong on the Internet".

> rather than reserving downvotes for types of discourse that truly fall outside the guidelines or scope.

I'd say that this reservation (certainly the more severe guidelines violations) is appropriate for flagging, not (just) downvoting.

> I was pushed into a corner where I felt it was clearly necessary to belabor it.

To hang on to one shred of on-topic material :) ...

Considering there was only one other participant in the long chain, that's a strange characterization. More importantly, though, in light of your subsequent remarks regarding guidelines, you may want to take a hard look at whether your initial response, that sparked it all, fully complied with their spirit.

In particular, the one that ends "Assume good faith" (suggesting disclaimers are unneeded), and the one regarding ideology (which I know does not specifically what happened here, but there may be echoes).

Just something to think about in the whole pragmatism vs. morality in advice tension.

> People downvote what they don't like, regardless of its merits or worthwhileness.

I'll personally tend to downvote comments that bring ideology into what had previously been a practical discussion, since, as you may have guessed from my original distillation of our positions, I'm a pragmatist. Of course, this is also idealogical (a position on worthwhileness).

All that said, I recognize your username (which means you comment on topics of interest to me) and generally find myself upvoting your comments.

> “but I don't agree with the "just as much" part, at least not within the bounds of certain topics or sub-threads. It takes an effort to see just that HN.”

Our experiences just seem to differ on this. When I’m reading other comments or threads on HN, I see it all the time, in many threads per day, spanning a huge range of topics.

> “but I do know I ultimately feel worse when I am the character in the xkcd cartoon who won't leave the computer because "someone is wrong on the Internet".”

For me, I think that the criticism of that XKCD comic is very shallow when people use it to denigrate someone who just happens to be interested in disagreement and the resolution of it. In an Aumann’s Agreement Theorem sense, as you become closer to the approximation of a rational agent, you might expect to stick it out even in minor disagreements more and more, realizing that “agree to disagree” should be saved for an escape valve when the conversation turns uncivil... but that prior to that, extended disagreement is actually a good thing.

It’s lazy and sloppy IMO to use the line “someone is wrong on the internet” as a glib criticism towards somebody that actually cares about sticking out a disagreement with civil conversation.

In that sense, because I take great pains to be civil even if I am attacked during a disagreement, I would never feel like I am a model of that XKCD cartoon, and in fact would find it thoughtless and lazy if someone else projected that onto me or anyone who is intellectually sincere about enjoying disagreement discussions online.

> “I'd say that this reservation (certainly the more severe guidelines violations) is appropriate for flagging, not (just) downvoting.”

I disagree but I doubt we can find a specific resolution in the guidelines. I view flagging as being reserved for comments that are uncivil, bullying or harmful, and never ever for anything else. Moderation does a good enough job that flagging for off-topic is generally unnecessary and usually is revealed quickly in comments anyway.

When a comment is expressing a disagreeable attitude, it would rarely be good to downvote it. Downvoting is more to downweight purely political comments, comments that are obviously just self-promotional or intended to influence readers towards a certain product, inappropriate jokes or non sequiturs that would distract, and sometimes uncivil comments (though flagging is better).

I don’t actually mind that much that people on HN use votes to push agendas about what to talk about. I just think HN users vote for popularity or downvote what they don’t like just as much as anywhere else. They don’t take any type of “more enlightened” stance on it than other communities. This isn’t a judgmental comment, just an observation.

> “Considering there was only one other participant in the long chain, that's a strange characterization.“

Why is it strange? What does the number of participants have to do with it?

> “In particular, the one that ends "Assume good faith" (suggesting disclaimers are unneeded)”

It says to assume the strongest plausible interpretation, which I believe that I did, even after going back and re-reading the parent comments. Sometimes somebody unambiguously says X, you respond disagreeing with X, and then they backtrack and claim they really meant Y. That’s not what the guidelines are talking about. They are talking about that first interpretation of X and being charitable. I absolutely think I met that criteria based on the original comment.

> “I'll personally tend to downvote comments that bring ideology into what had previously been a practical discussion”

This is a slippery slope though, because from my point of view my whole line of discussion is meant to be totally about pragmatism. The original advice of cultivating a general culture where complaints are discouraged if they don’t come with proposed solutions is not pragmatic advice, because of the danger that such a policy institutionalizes procedure for continuing to harm or marginalize certain groups. This could take the form of making a team member feel his or her voice is not heard in simple team meetings, or could take the form of discouraging harassment claims, and many things in between.

Just because a discussion might take into account some dimension of a desired moral outcome, that does not mean it “brings ideology into it” any more so than how practically any claim of any type ultimately relies on some type of ideology about economic assumptions, utilitarianism, rationality, reductionism, moral philosophy, population ethics, sovereignty, etc. etc.

Applying a “don’t bring ideology into this” criticism to my comments here seems totally unfair, as if to bend that part of the guideline to pick and choose disagreements you merely don’t happen to like, and use the guideline to argue it’s ok to downvote or flag them. You could practically argue that anything beyond the most ultraspecific comments can be said to bring some type of ideology into it, if you wanted. But clearly the guideline is about cases when comments try to steer the discussion into territory that’s only about the ideological debate.

> from my point of view my whole line of discussion is meant to be totally about pragmatism.

I do suspect you're conflating pragmatism with principle, whereas they're often considered to be at odds. Perhaps, consider, instead, "expediency" as a synonym for pragmatism in this context.

For better or for worse, the advice sought here not likely to have been the kind involving a substantial moral (or idealogical or principled or fairness what have you) component nor strenuous repetition thereof.

> Applying a “don’t bring ideology into this” criticism to my comments here seems totally unfair

It was merely a gentle suggestion for self-examination through a particular critical lens, given the, apparently strong, negative reaction from the community. Clearly, that backfired, and I apologize.

I was hoping I could help reveal maybe a slightly different angle of looking at the whole thing, but I realize that's difficult when one feels particularly strongly. (Nobody else is likely ever to see these writings given the age of the post and depth of the subthread anyway).

Why was the [flagged] status for this comment or any below it applied or acted upon?

It’s an unequivocally civil thread of discussion about a valid interpretation of the parent comment.

To flag and hide this subtree of comments seems like unquestionable misuse of the flagging system for HN. Particularly for this first comment above.

Although I agree that flagging (at least your top-level comment) seems a clear abuse of that system (which appears only to have been "acted upon" in a purely automated fashion), commenting on it in-thread (especially without a link to the original, for interested parties ;)) tends not to help.

I believe the encouraged best practice is to e-mail hn@ycombinator.com to call the situation to the attention of the moderators. Even if they don't completely agree with your position, I suspect they will at least have a user or two's suspicious flagging behavior to keep under observation and/or revoke.

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