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Comment by dskhatri | Hacker News Reader

"I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye"

Are you sure you want to do that to engineers? There's a joke that goes something like:

How do you tell an introverted engineer from an extroverted one? The introverted engineer stares at his/her shoes when talking to you. The extroverted one stares at your shoes.

I don't think it's a good idea to "keep digging until you look me in the eye".

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I, personally, find it very difficult to sustain eye contact while I talk to people. The "I know your lying because you won't look me in the eye" myth was 90% of the reason I was always in trouble at school. It's a myth.

Different cultures vary hugely as to how they use eye contact when talking, whether it's expected or whether it's intrusive. It's interesting to get the reminder that it also varies by individual.

This is interesting. Is it possible it's a truth and actually you're lying to yourself?

I also, often, externally display a different emotion to what I am experiencing. For example, I often seem angry when I am actually happy as a pig in mud. I've done a polygraph before in university and the results were mixed (lots of false-positives and false-negatives). I'm an outlying variable but it is important to remember there are plenty of other outlying variables who will throw a wrench into every system or maxim.

Thank you for the feedback. I forget about this.

I am not sure that applies. Introverts and extroverts tend to stand out in groups of people and with people they don't know. We are talking about a team that you should be very close to.

My point is that a lot of engineers I know (irrespective of being introverted or extroverted) would not be comfortable with such a harassing approach. Unless the author used 'look me in the eye' metaphorically as 'be frank with me'.

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