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Comment by juskrey | Hacker News Reader

I love such comments. The guy has a multimillion dollar private business which is at the same time his hobby and a dream, and does it in the way he likes. And someone comes and says his meetings can be more efficient..

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But commenters are taking evidence of how this guy runs his business as evidence that that method is effective. Shouldn't there be comments pointing out if this isn't effective?

It's easy to look at a something in isolation and assume you are qualified to cast judgement on where it can be improved but often a decision might have both a negative consequence and also a much further reaching positive consequences too. The sort of people who like to judge things in isolation miss those kinds of complexities.

This kind of arm-chair critic seems to be on the rise on HN as well. People making short, sharp judgements based off very little evidence yet they still feel justified as an expert by their self assessment.

If you think they are overconfident, then say so. If you think their analysis misses something, then say so. But being against assessment in general is not a good approach.

> If you think they are overconfident, then say so.

I thought I literally did just that?

> If you think their analysis misses something, then say so.

I've done that in the past and it usually just descends into stupid augments where the ill-informed only dig their heals in deeper rather than acknowledging their mistake. I mean if they weren't someone who was over confident about their own opinion then they wouldn't be the sort to make those kind of remarks to begin with.

> But being against assessment in general is not a good approach.

I'm not against assessments in general. I'm against specific types of non-constructive assessments from people who are just blatant armchair critics.

If someone has a the experience to offer a constructive assessment then odds are they wouldn't delivery it as a passive-aggressive one liner.

> I thought I literally did just that?

The point of my comment is that the discussion should take place on the merits of the criticism, not the arrogance of the person who would dare criticize. The fact that you mixed together the two is not a good rebuttal.

> I've done that in the past...

Bad arguments in the past are not a good reason to abandon the structure of good arguments in the future. Get better debating partners rather than trying to avoid the structure of healthy debate.

> blatant armchair critics

If some people praise "this is a good business practice" and others point out that, on the face of the evidence, it appears to be exact the opposite (i.e., that the conference calls are disorganized/confused), it is not unreasonable to point this out. It does not require special insight.

It's got nothing to do with the competency of the arguments presented and everything to do with the futility of arguing with someone who has already made their mind up. This very conversation is a demonstration to that fact.

Not really. It will always be easy to look at something from the outside and point out all the ways it should or can’t work or could work better. The systems and people involved are usually much more complicated.

The world also owes itself more compassion. “Thousand foot” criticism lacks compassion.

You're describing a policy of not making frank assessment of the efficacy of business practices.

That’s a bit far. From my perspective, the point is that looking at inefficiencies in isolation is as bad as looking at benefits in isolation.

Making a frank assessment about the efficiency of meetings is probably of limited value in and of itself in abstractly assessing the overall equation of trade-offs in running a distributed vs collocated business. Even more so when concretely assessing this particular company.

There's an asymmetry between the strong negative reaction to criticism but not to praise, even though criticism is more likely to offer substantive points. This suggests to me that people are mostly offended at the arrogance of the commenter rather than working about the risk that we could all become mistaken through reading overconfident criticism.

Every bully I remember tried to mask their bullying as “helpful” or positive in some way.

Every dictator promised to make the nation better. This is not a good reason to reject politicians trying to make the nation better.

More like a policy of avoiding drive-by commentary on businesses with which one has little knowledge or investment.

> It will always be easy to look at something from the outside and point out all the ways it should or can’t work or could work better.

People pay me to do exactly that. Come in with a fresh, unbiased view on things, look at how stuff works and what could be improved.

It's not about telling people that everything they've done before is BS but if there are things that are not working well, just tell them.

Yeah that is HN!

For me it does not look like a criticism. He simply is not convinced to the idea of remote work, which means that he does not see it fit for his way of working.

I can't add anything to that comment except: , I know that's right.

Well there's always a trade-off, isn't there?

wolfram admits in the article that his company can and should be bigger. fwiw.

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