Comment by cf141q5325 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cf141q5325 | Hacker News Reader

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Again, i see the cost and risk of doing this. However

> Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate.

> If you treat passive aggression or thinly veiled insult as something genuine or harmless fake compliment, you are in for a very bad time. Because you will be target of more and more of it.

is working as intended. We arent talking schoolyard but workplace. You are checking if cooperation is possible so you have to spend less effort on managing the people around you and your reaction to them. Getting a clear signal on that means you can go over to actual conflict if you enjoy that and use some levers. Or just get a better environment so you can focus on work.

The image that presents for third parties is another issue and brings us back to short vs long games. That you shouldnt be reacting is besides the point. You arent describing a professional, let alone cooperative environment if they reward pointless personal short term conflict dragging everyone down to that level. And even if you are stuck in a dog kernel, your approach isnt without its own dangers. Goating somebody into overreacting is a tried and true strategy to make them look bad / unstable.

In the end defaulting on personal workplace conflict means you opt into playing emotional games. Which i see no reason to do, especially as idiots doing this have home field advantage. If they really made a decision for conflict and you fancy joining in make sure you have the advantage and mop the floor with them. They arent all too smart after all. But cooperation will be off the table, you will have to constantly mince every word.

edit: This is really about job description. Do you really want to be a dog trainer?

I strongly disagree with this framing, mostly because it does not describe how interpersonal relationships in workplace work.

In my experience, both direct and observed, setting boundaries and stoponf these minimizes issues and games in the long term.

Ignoring these, being doormat, acting naive means that you will be target of them more and more.

I do appreciate the feedback, i hope this isnt a language barrier. I do agree that your advice is valuable if you are stuck in an environment where you have to manage malicious people. But i can not overstate how much effort that starts to suck up for every person. You are then working on them instead of the project at hand. Setting the default environment is really important here, because it determines the risk of creating conflict with people who would have normally defaulted on mutually beneficial cooperation if communication hadnt broken down over assumptions of intention.

Your approach results in an overall reduction in cooperation potential for the sake of managing the excess of toxic actors short term who will be a constant burden anyway. Even if you keep them from acting out, you still have to work around them. By being given the benefit of the doubt and getting engaged towards cooperation people are pushed on either higher or lower levels. Either the negative behavior piles up or you manage to open actual communication. It tells you who you need to be concerned about and what motivates them. Its a filter that looks at peoples intention and ability. Which makes it possible to differentiate malice from stupidity. Which reduces the overall burden immensely as problems from stupidity often stem from misunderstandings and reactions turning into cycles because people get emotionally involved in a conflict.

Some coworkers not wanting to make the journey towards a professional work environment doesnt mean its not a beneficial thing to do either way. Letting such people drag everyone down is the worst case, even if its done to prevent short term direct conflict.

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