[2020] The update with response to all the previous negative HN reaction -- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/
In this follow up she is answering a lot of negative comments about her first post. Trashing HN while doing it. But then you take a look at that thread today:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610
I did a quick review of the top root comments (i.e. the most upvoted ones, the ones the HN, as a community, mostly thinks represents their opinion). The first 6 or 7 are fully supportive of her take, empathizing with horrible onboarding processes, saying they would do the same as her. Then comes a couple of comments mentioning how she is getting flak and referring to a lot of top-level negative comments. This shows that (obviously) she wasn’t delusional addressing negative comments, they were there at the top a few hours after the post was published. But, again, these comments were supportive of her, saying the negative comments were unfair. Then it comes more 5 or 6 posts still supportive or neutral or orthogonal to the point.
Then, only the 14th root level comment is a truly negative one (one that she addressed in her follow up). And, for me, 14th is too far down to matter. Or to represent what HN is as a community.
This shows to me that HN, as a community, was fully supportive of her text, her tone, her take, and her actions. This is the reaction that was overwhelmingly more upvoted by all. Only temporarily felt like the opposite.
That’s why I always wait a day to really grasp what’s the overall reaction of HN as a community to any particular post (if I happen to care about such opinion).
"In retrospect, there were many red flags. *Well, pink flags.* Whatever."
(I've never used Lyft or Uber in my life though, so maybe that's why)
EDIT: Okay, I see you added an edit where you say you've never used it - so to remove any semblance of snark I'll clarify that you will in fact find pink if you do that.
I rarely see the "what to do to avoid them" in Rachel's posts, and I think that's why I find them so frustrating.
Which I also get – a lot of stuff in the world is stupid. But I also understand that if that is the attitude you go in with, you will almost certainly find what you are looking for (things to be annoyed at).
Probably more useful as catharsis than an actual guide.
> I managed to stumble onto the Google spreadsheet (yep) they were using to track feedback for the process. There were dozens of entries, and they were all gushing about it, like oh it was so good, and so fun! Please do more!
Getting accurate feedback from employees is hard, and I can only imagine new employees feel even more pressure to say positive things.
There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.
I'm certainly not claiming we had a great culture, but I don't think it was that bad.
> There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.
If I'm not hearing gossip on who the "out" person is, it's me? If this is good culture I'll take bad any day.
The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier.
I have never ever got any perceptible improvement or even follow-up from leaving detailed feedback so I no longer bother - instead I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere.
Yes, in enterprise situations you’d hope the feedback actually gets looked at by a competent person and doesn’t just go into a black hole, but as a user I have no way to tell, so either I just write off the issue or I will do the thing that will guarantee the issue is resolved which is to email their manager instead of gambling my time on whether the feedback system works or even gets looked at.
How about you just don't respond instead of lying? That saves even more time!
I understand why you pick 5 stars instead of giving bad ratings but why bother faking a response at all. What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?
I’m not saying I lie in the ratings on purpose, but I’m not going to do extra work to find the ignore option - I’ll use whatever option is more prominent.
> What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?
Email-based systems will often send multiple follow-up ones and the only way to stop it is to essentially submit. If it’s a system I use often I’ll make an email rule to trash them (or passive-aggressively send them back to someone at their company) but if it’s an unexpected one I’ll just respond to prevent the next one.
Some mobile apps make the dismiss option hard to find/reach (literally - it’s at the top corner of the screen on a big phone) while the 5-star option is more prominent.
IRL I would also answer since declining is essentially implicitly admitting that something isn’t right and could get someone in trouble.
Ideally there should be a “don’t ask me ever again” option to disable that behaviour somewhere but I have yet to see it since every company seems to have a “feedback monster” that they need to continuously feed with ratings, even if they are meaningless.
Walmart added a "rate your experience" screen to their self checkouts, thus slowing down the self checkout lane and creating a worse experience by asking for feedback. I seriously want to meet the person who did it just to get some attempt at justification. I long for the days when Palm had a person counting clicks.
https://blog.prototypr.io/what-you-remove-is-more-important-...