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.
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.
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
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?
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).
Here's another. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37342414
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
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.
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.