Speedo-Shaped Skillset | Hacker News Reader

Speedo-Shaped Skillset

scottantipa.com

8 pointsescot11 comments

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All abstractions are leaky. Some are useful.

You can always overthink a metaphor if you choose to.

You have a leaky speedo?

If you like this model you may also enjoy “paint drip people”

https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/paint-drip-people

I like this better.

You probably don't want to adopt this metaphor.

Imagine someone saying it in a meeting that includes people other than some homogeneous group that thinks it's funny and clever and appropriate.

If you saw someone else making that mistake, you might have to interrupt them diplomatically.

If I'm in a meeting, and two of the other people are one who used this metaphore, and one who complained that it's inappropriate, I know which one I would rather not work with.

This even though I myself would not reach for that imagery in that context.

It's better to raise issues than to silently ignore them. Person 1 and Person 2 shouldn't face ongoing problems for expressing themselves once.

> If I'm in a meeting, and two of the other people are one who used this metaphore, and one who complained that it's inappropriate, I know which one I would rather not work with.

Most people wouldn't complain.

But a lot of people would think this was inappropriate, think a little less of the person doing it, and most of all be bothered if this seemed to be condoned.

I said "diplomatically", because you need to stop the cringe, you need to signal to those bothered that it's one person's brief oops rather than a tone-deaf culture, and you need to help the someone who did an oops be left where they can easily repair any damage.

I'm not an expert, and I'd play it by ear, but in the scenarios I imagine, if the speaker kept going on about it, someone should halt it as delicately as possible. "Sorry, could we change the slide, and summarize the points without the metaphor? Thanks; just an aversion to Speedos, heh."

(Alternatively, you could let the person dig themselves in further, which could easily turn into an acute culture/morale problem, and it could also easily turn into an HR-liability-type problem.)

This is just a T-shaped skillset described by one of those people who are oddly-allergic to using already existing terminology and have to invent their own.

That's so uncool. As in: some people are cool, others simply don't understand cool.

Surfers are cool. Surfers for the very most part don't wear speedos.

Why speedo? Why not bikini?

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