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Comment by denzil_correa | Hacker News Reader

Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful and the article does dive into this

> When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.

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Candid does not mean brutal. Not at all. When you confuse brutal with candid, it is likely that no one was on position to tell you off or cut your crap.

Which very much means that communication was not consistently open.

>Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful

It has done every time I've seen it.

It depends on how respect is defined as well. Ask any school child about being demanded respect(obedience) for respect(treated like a person).

Some may literally consider honesty more important than concern for feelings.

It is also a somewhat cultural thing - in some it is rude to ask politely to someone well known to "please pass" as opposed to "gimme". Etiquite is ironically very contextual.

Often when I have seen it escalate to that level it has been due to the individual being criticized being totally oblivious to anything more subtle.

Possibly, in my experience it was more about the person dishing out the advice and had little to do with the recipient.

I had a phsyics proffessor who graded my work with the following comments:

   "No."
   "I expected better from you."

This is brutal. But it is also fair and honest, and something I respected deeply.

I think the point here is that your prof was criticising you rather than your output. That’s why it’s brutal, because it’s personal. He’s being honest about his feelings but it’s not very helpful to you. So I don’t think it’s fair.

He knew I was bullshitting and he knew I knew that. There's no point in telling me what I got wrong when I'm well aware of it. If I had put more effort into studying, I wouldn't have gotten my analysis wrong. Or if I had come in for help before turning the assignment in.

Bringing this back to the article - the context for candid feedback is a competent workforce. By your own admission it appears you we’re still in the process of learning about competence so the prof was not providing candid feedback of your submission but questioning your competence. That’s a different and necessarily more personal discussion!

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