Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

When I hear people talking up their policy of

> “encouraging harsh feedback” and subjecting workers to “intense and awkward” real-time 360s

... I can't help but think how much a review there sounds like a capitalist version of a Maoist "struggle session" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session).

The point of a struggle session wasn't to build people up; it was to tear them down. A culture where the way you move up is by tearing your colleagues down is generally a dysfunctional culture. Everybody involved ends up losing sight of things outside their four walls (such as, you know, what customers want), because they're spending all their time squaring off against each other internally.

I would suggest a healthier, more sustainable culture could be imagined by contemplating these words from the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation, chapter 27: http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=27&a=Stephen+Mitchell):

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

So far, all of the people I know that have been boasting about their "I gave brutally honest feedback" only mean "I will tear you down at every opportunity".

It is always "brutaly honest when it comes to put people down, but weirdly enough, these same person never have positive feedback to give.

Even if it was the case, it would not be worth it. Even as a foreigner weirded out by the "everything is awesome" way of speaking in California, tearing down your colleagues is not how you build a healthy team.

"People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty." - Richard Needham

When I did online dating, I had a few red flags that I used to exit out of a profile. One of them was boasting about being "brutally honest", "honest to a fault", and/or "I tell it like it is."

I would be ok with harsh feedback if that were acceptable also upwards and taken seriously. But most of the time it only goes down or sideways. Feedback up the chain is not being taken seriously.

I recommend this article "The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to The Office".

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Horizontal aggression.

I've heard this kindof system of feedback is brutal, and is certainly not for everyone.

I think the point is to aim for apolitical and tactless information transfer. The only chance it'd have of working is if there's a shared understanding that correcting mistakes is more valuable than political standing; and this applies to everyone, especially the bosses.

The saner way to try and get these benefits is to foster psychological safety.

Struggle sessions aren't analogous, as they were held against class enemies (out-group). More akin are the self-criticism sessions that Maoist cadre held. Communist cadre criticized themselves. Which, if you want another analogy stretching backward, would be confession in the Roman Catholic church.

Tangentially, struggle sessions only arose to prominence during the Cultural Revolution. The main criticism of class enemies were the Speak Bitterness sessions of the 1940s, where communist cadre would facilitate a village's peasants criticism of its landlords. Despite the notion that communist cadre were instigating violence, most of Mao's letters were to cadre who were taken aback by peasant's (sometimes fatal) violence toward long hated landlords, Japanese collaborators etc.

Oh.. you're not the only one to find similarities between some corporate cultures and oppression mechanisms from communist regimes.

For example, whenever I had to do my yearly review and write in my opinions about what I did good/bad/could have done differently which afterwards were discussed with my manager and then shared among leadership, I couldn't help but think of a milder version of https://translate.google.ro/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://...

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