That crosses the line by lying, I think it would be better to say "I think it would be better if you did it this way." It's bad to call them stupid or make a superfluous claim of objectivity, but you don't need to pretend to smile and praise.
I hate this because it’s usually just a shit sandwich. “Great work. Actually it sucked. Keep going.”
I assume it's a sports analogy for american football or similar. If you try to tackle an opposing player and you miss or do a bad job, "I really liked how you tackled <player>" is clearly talking about the work, not the effort. If you were talking about the effort, it should be something like, "that was a good attempt!" It's kind of like, "Nice shot!" when the person actually missed the goal. It just doesn't make sense.
I’d say it’s not derived from American football.
Dictionary.com provides "Make determined efforts to deal with (a problem or difficult task)." As the first verb form, before the football/rugby definition.
Further, the hn guidelines suggest that even if there was more ambiguity, we should presume the strongest interpretation.
I’d have cited the OED instead, if I had access. I bet it’s got examples of this usage dating back to 1500 or something. It’s simply a sense of the word, now, hardly even figurative at all (as “grapple” barely is, in some similar senses, now)
It's also the trick to being liked in general. Not everyone cares about that, but I've found it more of an asset than a distraction.
I think this is an incredibly important lesson. Don't lie, _actually_ find something good to say. It's a goddamned super power, and it's also very good for your own mental health.
That's true, but nobody (that I saw) suggested saying things that don't fit the context.
> Not all adults need or want other adults to ‘build them up’.
Everyone wants respect and for people to be "on their side," and that's what we're talking about here. If someone doesn't care about your opinion, they won't mind you treating them respectfully, but if someone does care, then they'll mind when you don't. So why not just treat everyone respectfully?
I interpret this as, not that you should lie, you should just NOT focus 100% on the negative aspect. At the very least you can thank them for taking the time & effort to implement this solution & test it or w/e (I assume they did "some" work & put in some amount of well meaning effort).
If I can't genuinely find anything to praise about something I want to criticism, it's a sign that it's pretty bad (or I have a bad working relationship with this person) and that is a bigger, separate problem
Here's another. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37342414
However. that's not what they said. They said "find something you genuinely like about an approach." It means you're smart enough to find the aspects that are worth reinforcing in the face of something that you find problematic. You can't just do it as a checkbox. You have to genuinely and authentically recognize the positive.
Have you ever brought in a new engineer; and their first pull request gets a dozen or more 'Change this' 'this won't handle X'?
Watch an NCGs face as the avalanche of (mostly minor, but still 'you did X wrong') PR comments come in.
But if you're the reviewer - be sure to comment on nifty things in the code also. Call out that neat usage of struct as a switch or the context manager, or even praise base understanding of the problem flow.
Mixing praise in with the (hopefully constructive) criticism can go a loooong way toward building a healthy team environment. And - Suprise! - you'll find you actually get invited to that beer lunch instead of always being bitched about at it.
"I've reviewed your work and I have feedback. To begin, I genuinely find X and Y facets of your work to be good and well done. I am here to praise you for that work. I also found P and Q to be deficient in ways A and B; unless there are additional factors I do not understand, I recommend making changes G and K to areas P and Q."
But that's a lot of words framed very stiffly, and despite being framed extremely flatly, may still be received poorly. Hence why folks go for the much shorter and less formal "I really liked X and Y, have you thought about approaching P and Q with technique G and K?"
Yes, there are clear times when some work doesn't meet standard and it's important to be very straight forward. But, most of the time we're dealing in shades of grey with different tradeoffs.
Some of y'all are really overthinking the example. If you ever said:
>very fast solution, but you missed this edge case
It's the exact same format. I can praise the performance while also acknowledging that there may be some correctness issues (hopefully not such a nasty edge case performance falls off the cliff, but it happens).
As others have said, the person will know if you are being genuine or not. Which is the real core point; not the particular phrasing you use.
This includes people who directly said that they want to hear things in a straightforward fashion. This includes me, who also likes to hear things in a straightforward fashion. We’re wired in a way that we don’t even notice.
Avoid telling lies by not lying.
It seems that you would appreciate it if other people treated you this way. Maybe most people would agree. I, however, find the behavior you endorse almost inhumanly manipulative. The notion that my coworkers would hold me in such low regard that they think I need this kind of coddling is disturbing.
I'd take shouted insults over this condescension any day. At least then I'd know where I stand.
by appreciating the work I do? It's not perfect and I of course hate a good amount of code I write, but I'm so confused how people can treat a compliment as "coddling". What's wrong with taking pride in your craft every once in a while?
Are we confused about frequency? No, I am fine with 9/10 of my commits having a "LGTM" and leaving it at that. Not ever task needs praise.
But you surely understand that there's a difference in praises and insults. I'm fine 10% of the time being complimented. I'm not fine 10% of the time being insulted. If you can't get your point across without calling my (or your) person into question, we have much bigger issues at play.
A lie is not always a falsehood; it is rather any use of communication with the deliberate intention of worsening somebody’s idea of the state of the world, and cherry-picking evidence (your “trick”) very much counts. I’d say it’s a very popular approach, even. You’re welcome to use a different word than “lie” here if you want, but my point is that either way the result is the same: the target is now worse off in their knowledge than they previously were.
In the spirit of Harry Frankfurt’s definition, bullshit is the same as a lie but instead the perpetrator wants to change somebody’s perception of the world with disregard to the actual state of it, not in contradiction to that state.
So from your description I’m not sure if your “trick” counts as lying or bullshitting: generally speaking, adjusting your logic or evidence to arrive at a predetermined conclusion is bullshit, but that you talk about a “trick” suggests an acknowledgment that you’re deliberately not communicating your best idea of reality, which would make it a lie.
But it’s definitely one of the two, and regardless of which it is I still think it’s quite bad, both in the immediate sense of not letting the other person (if you’re right) or you (if you’re wrong) learn, and in the sense of eroding the conventions of honest communication in ways that make it harder for others to learn in the future.
If you just take a superficial facsimile of what is suggested, without the actual respect and empathy, it will sound like bullshit as you say: it is.
But stopping to condition yourself to be empathetic first is a way of, I guess, bootstrapping that respect and empathy.
It's a low bar that people frequently don't clear.
You aren’t lying when you give praise about someone’s effort (unless they gave none, in which case why are you praising to begin with?), you would be lying if you said “You did a great job” when the solution is potentially tech debt for later. It’s a matter of communication and human behavior.
You wouldn’t praise someone by saying “I think it could be better”.
But GP was right. There's a huge difference between your first example:
> “I really liked how you tackled this, have you thought about this approach?”
and the second:
> “Thank you for the effort…”
The first is most likely a lie, otherwise you wouldn't be offering an alternative suggestion! If somebody said that to me I'd feel extremely patronized and would consider that person very disingenuous.
It leaves open the possibility that you as the reviewer are actually mistaken, and they possibly have a good reason for doing it that way.
I may be the senior reviewing the junior’s code, but they probably spent longer looking at the problem than me and there is a chance that I’m missing something. By suggesting “have you considered this, it may be able to handle x situation better”, you respect their work more.
It depends on context though, if somebody clearly just didn’t understand something obvious, then I’ll just tell them directly.
Either way, probably a difference in our opinions of feedback, you might prefer more directness than me
In this context, is it weird to ask if you've "thought about X"? Is it disingenuine or condescending to you? Servant leadership is about supporting the team that I'm responsible for, to block and shield them from the wrath of VPs who want blood because their napkin-idea-over-cocktails wasn't selected for funding.
I'm trying to prepare you, the presenter of the solution, for the onslaught of questions that will come your way. If you feel these kinds of questions are a praise sandwich, I'm more than happy to present your solution for you.
> It leaves open the possibility that you as the reviewer are actually mistaken, and they possibly have a good reason for doing it that way.
That's a great point. There must be room in this to cover that the person actually had good reasons that the asker doesn't know about. It's a hard needle to thread.
But I think a lot of the issue here is because were talking about a made up example. If we just add a little more detail to the made up response it clears up a lot of the ambiguity and makes it sound less contradictory.
"I really liked how you tackled [X Requirement], have you thought about [Y Requirement + approach]?"
The "Yes, but" approach works well in a context where people understand it as feedback that they should change. Softening the criticism with praise works for many people. It can also backfire in a context where people distrust praise, where the criticism is not understood as such, or when people have trouble with American business idioms.
The more direct approach works better in other contexts. I have had coworkers who responded much better to blunt criticism about why they should do things differently than to a praise sandwich.
This gets very tricky if you are interacting with multiple very different people at once. What is a strong enough criticism for one person might be well below detectable for another. There isn't one ideal answer or approach.
If your coworkers respond negatively to a simple, direct question like "Why didn't you do it this way?", they can be trained to handle professional communication more dispassionately (more professionally).
Or, taking your cue, I could just say, "I think it would be better if you didn't immediately presume that you knew better than the person who actually spent hours working on the problem".
And, for those who say they like the direct approach in the second paragraph better, I don't disagree that it's a better response to a flip HN comment. When you're reacting to something someone has put serious personal effort into, a bit of tact goes a long way.
Because then you're being totally truthful (assuming they actually are putting in effort) while still not coming across too directly.
Praise should never be a time to display your intellectual superiority.
1. That there is one correct way to do something
2. That you know that way, and they don't
3. That they didn't consider and disregard that way in early planning due to something you're unaware of
What you see as lying is intended to avoid an arrogant disregard for their time and thought, and also to avoid having ego dictate the conversation rather than ideas.
There is nothing wrong with "this doesn't feel right but I don't have the capacity to tell". If you aren't qualified for that sort of code review, find the proper peer who can.
This is irrelevant. Calling out specific parts as good is a great idea, if nothing else as clarification of what in particular it was that you didn't like. This is not what people are arguing against.
In the example under discussion, the judgement of the work as a whole was "bad", while the communication on the work as a whole was "I really liked your approach". This is not pointing out redeeming qualities, it's just dishonesty.
no, it's the entire point. Don't focus all on the bad, we're biased towards that and it's something we should always keep in mind.
>In the example under discussion, the judgement of the work as a whole was "bad",
exhibit A. Where in that top post was the objective judgement "bad"? As a reminder:
> If you are calling out your colleagues for doing bad work, or not the way you would do it work, you should try to rephrase into praise w/ direction. “I really liked how you tackled this, have you thought about this approach?” Instead of “Why didn’t you do it this way?”
We're assuming the "caller" in this case is right. When there may not be a metric of "correct approach". This is especially highlighted with "not the way you would do it". Okay, who says your way is the best way?
If you cant self-introspect and understand different approaches, as well as shortcomings in your own, then yes. I would say you are that hostile worker no one wants to work with.
That is entirely unwarranted, and beside the point.
> Where in that top post was the objective judgement "bad"?
No objective judgement is being made or communicated.
> We're assuming the "caller" in this case is right.
We don't need to assume that, or even take technical merit into consideration. This is not a question of who is right or wrong in a technical sense.
What is communicated by the caller's first sentence is whether the caller liked the approach. By their own admission they did not like it ("bad work"), but they communicated that they did like it ("I really liked").
just keep this thread in mind the next time you say in your mind "I don't know why coworker X isn't getting it". Sometimes you need to check under your shoe.
EDIT: the last response shows I was wasting my time here. I wish we had an ignore feature on HN.
Indeed.
ever play any competitive games? theres nothing you can say directly to a person when they screw up. you have to just have to ignore and focus on the gameplay. saying anything to them raises the likelihood of a negative outcome.
"Good eye" "good hustle" "you got this" "we got em on the next one"-- good teammates find lots of ways to support their teammates and keep morale up.
Praise sandwitches for some, straight requests for other, no direct communication in some cases etc. it needs to be tailored and not a recipe.
"There's going to be better days. Head, high, fighting all the time." You can see Kenny Picket visibly lift his head up as they walked back to the locker room.
(I have the vague impression that people who talk along these lines usually think that being wrong is somehow a bad thing, or at least that even if they personally don’t others do and those others need to be accomodated.
Of course, while being wrong might not be pleasant, it’s absolutely necessary, and the harder the problem is the more times you’ll need to be wrong before you solve it. Thus shaming people for being wrong, especially in an educational setting, is one of the very small number of things that make me genuinely furious. Not telling people they’re wrong when [you think] they are because you think they might feel shame because of it is... not as bad, but still feels seriously counterproductive. I can’t say I have a grip on how to train or at least help others out of that shame, though.
Is your motivation different here? Because, I don’t know, you seem to say that telling others they’re wrong [about an engineering problem] always [or often] constitutes arrogance, and that is such an extrodinarily extreme position from where I’m standing that I can’t convincingly model it.)
Most of the time there are lots of ways to do things and there are lots of trade-offs, some humility when addressing others is a useful skill and you will very rarely know for sure that you are right and the other person is entirely wrong.
You don't have to like the result to like the co-workers initiative.
You're still starting from a positive point of view for the recipient, which makes them more open to actually engaging with you. Without having to "pretend to smile and praise".
It's an interesting choice alright. If it weren't, you wouldn't be talking about it.
There's always effort-based praise if you want to praise.
The other is, it wasn't done how I would do it, but isn't necessarily bad. That's when I would use the approach you have an issue with.
In a lot of engineering there is no right answer, only different tradeoffs. It could certain be that the reviewer isn't seeing a tradeoff that the writer saw, etc...
I don't have to say I liked the solution to appreciate the effort and dedication.
When you're giving feedback to someone, it is often a knee jerk thing to ONLY evaluate the outcome of their work. The other thing you should evaluate, though, is your estimation of their effort, e.g. how hard they worked at it, and your estimation of their process, e.g. how well they used their time.
If you only evaluate the outcome of their work, and the work is not adequate, you have given them a purely negative evaluation. If you acknowledge respect for their toil and their process, then you have given them 2 positive evaluations and 1 negative evaluation. You're also acknowledging that because you respect their toil and process, they are doing the right thing in spite of needing the course correction you are providing.
Of course, maybe you have a negative opinion on all 3 aspects of the evaluation. If you think they didn't apply themselves, e.g. their effort was not good enough, AND you think they were't efficient in their process, AND you think the outcome was bad, then certainly it would be a lie to praise any of those aspects, though at that point there's almost certainly something more fundamental that's going on and the person is not a good fit for the job.
Finally, it's important to evaluate your own sense of certainty about the feedback.
I think the important thing about the above advice is that if you are giving feedback and you only focus on the course correction part, it's safe to assume that most people will take that as negative feedback on all the aspects of their work. Now, there are situations and teams where there is so much trust built up around everyone's mutual respect that you can skip to the outcome feedback. There are also feedback-recipients who are confident enough in themselves that they feel that they don't need anything but correctional feedback. In other words, "This was shit!" can totally fly when there's a lot of mutual trust and confidence. But too often I've seen people misread the room in that aspect: THEY, the feedback-givers, have plenty of psychological safety, and they think that is extended to other people who absolutely don't feel that way.