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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

I would feel offended if anyone would feel the need to go easy on me, just say what you think. And if you are right I will be eternally grateful for being taught a new efficient trick. Do I look like such a weak person to you that you feel like you have to handle my self esteem with silk gloves? Thanks for the insult.

And what is it with this 2 intentions? The third is the obvious correct one where I'm not familiar with sshd or I just didn't think about it. Please educate me. What kind of toxic culture propagates pieces like this text as something of value?? Just say "Why didn't you use sshd?" Anyone mentally pasting some kind of assumption behind that small sentence to bash themselves was just raised wrong. I'm sorry this whole thing just annoys me. Making things up in your head and getting offended by them. argh..

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> I would feel offended if anyone would feel the need to go easy on me

"go easy on me" means "condescend", so you're essentially doing the same as the people mentioned: feeling offended because they perceive condescension from the speaker.

> Do I look like such a weak person to you that you feel like you have to handle my self esteem with silk gloves?

> Making things up in your head

The phrase he came up with doesn't actually state that he is treating you with silk gloves; that's an implication you're deriving (in your head), just like those people are deriving another implication from the original phrase.

I thought his first paragraph was just being illustrative. Like look how crazy this gets.

I suppose now I'm deriving meaning in my head.

It's not illustrative, it's how I would feel. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Something to take into account if I would ever work in the US. It would be nice to have some kind of rule book then, I mean if people don't just assume I mean well but get mad when I use the wrong wording means I would have to be educated very well to function in such a group. I imagine such a culture is pretty unwelcoming to other cultures.

I agree with you, but I think this applies only in high trust environment. In my experience one toxic, condescending person can destroy the trust of an entire team and start making people take things the wrong way. Maybe in such situations, after getting rid of the toxic element, temporarily paying more attention to the language used would help regain the trust between all team members.

So when others treat you in ways that you don't like (or you misinterpret their meaning) it annoys you. Sounds like you are supporting the idea of the article, albeit from a contradictory starting point.

It would annoy me yes if my genuine interest would be mistake for condescension because I choose my words wrong. This makes for a very unwelcoming culture.

I agree. Especially face to face worrying about this kind of thing seems unhealthy.

However, I can see that in text conversations the chance for misunderstanding can be much higher.

It's such a fine line to walk between discussing an issue about work, and directly insulting a human being. And so very often, the receiver interprets the message entirely differently than the sender.

So I'd say regardless of how powerful you feel, personally, the same fortitude should not be assumed to exist in everybody, all the time. It's not about the strength of a person, but about avoiding harm wherever possible.

Harming people, whether intentionally or not, is just never worthwhile. If that means "silk gloves" and "weakness", so be it.

That fine line is entirely a cultural construct though. I feel like my culture is much more inclined to assume anyone talking to them at work has good intentions. Seems like a better strategy from a game-theory perspective as well (tit for tat).

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