Basic Social Skills Guide
improveyoursocialskills.com
improveyoursocialskills.com
I've failed to do this twice. Nobody else said or did anything, but I regretted it.
Sometimes in life you just have to do stuff, even if you hate it.
These things also have a tendency to become easier the more you do it, so advising people to just not do it seems horrible advice.
Not showing up to a funeral of someone you were close to just because of your own discomfort is plain weird.
Your presence at the funeral, while symbolic (some might even say empty symbolism) is a way of showing the mourners that the deceased was cared for by many. It is comforting to some extent.
But of course, if funerals are too difficult, there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.
1 - Actively dislike the family
Sure, skip the funeral. If you & the family didn't get along in life there's no reason to put yourself through something you don't want to go to.
2 - Anything else
I'd go as a show of support for the family because the family was important to my friend. "It's what my friend would want" is the guiding principle here.
That said - I'm writing this as someone who was very uncomfortable going to funerals and now, years later, I regret choosing to stay home rather than go.
Your mileage may vary, as they say.
In the end... whatever. There are a lot of things that go into being a decent human being.
At the very least, I'm sure we'd agree on the big picture: the sum of how we care for our friends when they're alive is more important than what we do on the day of their funeral. So if you're being a good friend in other ways... hey, good on you.
Your friend almost certainly loved their family, and their family loved your friend. Although they may be gone, you can still keep that connective love alive by doing the same things for others that you’d do for your friend - sometimes, it’s as simple as showing up, even just once, for someone else.
Do you really have to fake that?
Sometimes.
Not for funerals of people you knew well.
Before, it was just "being selfish and anti-social." Now, the same thing is called "setting healthy boundaries for myself."
A good test of the boundary-setter's true nature is whether or not they find alternative means of doing the thing or if they are just claiming "but muh boundaries!" to excuse their lack of being a decent human being.
If their "boundaries" prevent them from showing up at a funeral to provide a moment of comfort to the survivors of the deceased... well okay. There could be valid reasons. Suppose funerals tend to induce suicidal ideation in an individual. Certainly nobody would suggest that individual should risk a suicidal episode.
But, is the person finding an alternative way to show that care? Flowers, letters, a visit at some other time? Or are they just narcissisticly using it as an excuse to avoid spending time for the benefit of anybody other than themselves?
Or, why would I put food on the table for the slowest gazelle?
I'd disagree with this - capitalism tends to reward defection from this norm, and it's been a stable equilibrium for centuries at this point. You have more of a point when it comes to community, but even many intentional communities are massively hypocritical when it comes to this, with higher-status people having the ability to deviate from norms at will.
helpful reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinschaft_and_Gesellschaft
This isn't how death works
A funeral is not 'some event' that you can just skip for your own benefit. That's not what it's about.
“It's just tons of sad people.” - this makes you sound like you have the emotional acuity of a 4 year old. You can fix that, but you can’t do it sitting in front of your computer.
The guest of honor won’t notice, I promise.
If the other (living) attendees have a problem with it, it’s at least 51% a them problem, IMO.
My wife and I make our kids do uncomfortable things because that’s what separates children from adults. An example, and not even the hardest one: Yesterday we were vacationing at the beach and we got a call from the dog boarding facility keeping our 8 year old dog, she was having seizures and had to be taken to an animal hospital. We drove 3 hours to see her. There was lots of crying, in front of everyone - who gives a shit. We had to have her euthanized. The 4 of us stayed with her for the entire process. We could have just told them to put her down over the phone and continued our vacation, or we could have left the room as they ended her life. She wasn’t conscious and we have no way of knowing if she was aware of our presence, but if something/someone makes an impact on your life, learn to be a little unselfish and be present. It hurts, but just because something hurts doesn’t mean we should shy away from doing it.
Learning to steel yourself is an important life skill. Obviously a dog is not a human, but the parallels are there - as humans we have honored the end of a impactful life throughout our history.
Not attending rightfully costs you a lot, even if you're lacking the social skills to perceive it
These people, the real guests of honour, will remember your absence for the rest of their lives.
Life can be painful, and comfort, solace, and community are really nice when you're on the downswing instead of the upswing, which happens to all of us if you're strong enough to live that long.
I understand it can be emotionally challenging, but arguably that expression of grief is what provides meaning to attending a funeral. Furthermore, if you don't attend a close friend's funeral, don't expect him or her to attend yours.
Well, regardless if you attend your friend's funeral or not, you can be sure he or she will not attend yours.
I’d instead recommend asking your friend (though again, this advice may be culturally dependent). Be sure they know it’s about you supporting them.
I remember when a family member died and only one classmate asked me if I wanted them to come to the funeral. I refused but remember the gesture to this day. It’s about the only thing I remember about the person. I also remember a couple of other friends to whom I was closer not asking me, and that stuck with me because they both disliked and badmouthed (I don’t really know why, I avoided dumb drama) the original person. That made me rethink a lot of things.
Anyway, I guess the point is to think of what your friend would like and make sure they understand you’re there for them.
It is a bit unfortunate, as I'm not at all interested in talking about those things - but they are such staple topics, that you can come off as a sort of outcast if you can't keep a short convo on those things.
Another observation has been that some topics are very polarized. In some countries you can talk pretty freely about politics, while in other places it is a faux pas.
But then again, part of finding out what the other party likes talking about is a skill in itself.
I have never discussed those things with my friends or acquaintances anywhere in the world, across many countries... I don't know anything (or care about) any of them, so I suppose I self-select out of those groups.
The people I end up bonding with (all over the world) are usually because of hiking and outdoor stuff, board games, Dungeons and Dragons, martial arts, history, travel, food, whiskey, couch surfing or hosting, national parks, musical theater, etc.
If someone tried to talk to me about cars, sports, or dead fish, I'd probably just excuse myself. It'd be a huge bore for me and them alike.
I don't doubt what you said, that these are popular topics with men in some parts of the world (especially parts of North America). But it's also totally possible to go through life meeting many people without ever discussing any of those, thankfully...
I believe that anyone who eats meat cannot take a moral stance against hunting in general. An animal that lived in the wild then was killed and eaten lived a more fulfilling life than an animal in a factory farm that was killed and eaten.
Like you said, it's at least better than factory farming, and in some cases, hunters are an important part of conservation efforts.
I happen to be vegan, but have also had a few friends who hunt & fish. I don't fault them for it, or hunters in general. It's just not something I would want to discuss with them or join them for. Not out of any ethical quandary, it's just not something I want to spend my time doing or thinking about (heh, they're just far less exciting when you can't eat what you catch).
Whether done in captivity or in the wild, there is no such thing as humane slaughter.
Sports and cars is more common with the older generation, but anyone below 35 will probably be uninterested, unless your circle is finance or blue collar work.
I guess in that last category sports are commonplace, but it’s more “I’m training for a marathon next month” or “you should come bouldering sometime” rather than following professional sports on tv.
Yes and no. If you HAVE to choose a specific hobby, football will have more chances than others; but it will still work in a minority of cases and assuming carries an implication.
A comparison I could make is starting a conversation in the US with 'did you watch fox news yesterday?'. Out of all channels, it's the most watched one; but you still have high chances of asking a non-viewer, and then get hit by negative connotations.
Personal hobbies are much better topic for various reasons (you don't assume, people will naturally be exited about discussing their own, etc).
"Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"
Have no idea if it's still true, but it certainly was in Wenger's time.
Huh, an AI that reads the latest news and suggest conversation topics would be funny, if conversing with someone interested in celebrity gossip, then it could delve into that topic, e.g. "What about astronaut Katy Perry, am I right?! Did you read that she was spotted having a meal with Justin Trudeau?".
"You catch the game?"
"They got some bad calls."
"Aren't you concerned that so many people tie their civic identity to watching some rich guy's overproduced commercial sports theatre, but are disinterested in actual civics?"
Weirdly, as somebody non interested in these common topics it also feels like it’s up to you to figure out a topic of common interest and it really isn’t.
About sports also, most people super “into” sports don’t do any. Which is ironic because a conversation about technique is something I’ll gladly have.
"What team do you support? Has it always been the case? How do you think they compare to <well-known other good team>?" "What car do you drive? Any particular reason for that car model? What's the brand's best and worst things? Oh, that piece tends to break easily; pardon my ignorance, but what's the purpose of it?" "Any key difference in the way you hunt/fish this or that animal, or the time of the year during which you hunt/fish? I don't know that word, what does it mean? Do you have any anecdotes about some hunting/fishing you did?"
Those have to be adapted to the person and situation, but they are pretty good to keep a conversation going. People love to speak about their interests, and a lot love to even teach about them. Putting yourself as the listener makes them perceive you as nice, and you might even gather interesting information to yourself, or at least gather enough knowledge to have an easier time speaking about it next time..
I found that simply asking questions to learn about
them ( as well as the person I'm speaking to) is enough.
This is something that 99% of "nerds" don't understand about sports. You don't have to fake your way through "knowing about sports" to have a conversation around it.
Suppose you're in Buffalo, NY and you don't know a thing about sports. However, unless visiting with your eyes and ears closed, it would be difficult not to see that the city is really into its football team.
If you are "stuck" in a conversation with a Bills fan and don't know a thing about football, you could just ask - are the Bills good this year? what's it like being a Bills fan? are Bills fans as crazy as they say? how did you come to be a Bills fan - were your parents Bills fans?
There's like 100 possible conversation angles there that don't require any knowledge of sports
I don't care about superhero movies, so I haven't seen any of the Marvel or DC movies, yet I still know they exist and sometimes I know which one is being promoted right now. If I got stuck at a table somewhere with someone who is a big fan of them, we could have a conversation. It'd mostly consist of me asking questions, but that'd work fine, because as a fan he'd have opinions to share. Same thing with sports or anything, really.
And if you have ever met football ultras most of them are very fit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultras
In Europe however, Italy in particular, organised crime is embedded in the structure - e.g. Gennaro Di Tommaso aka "The C0rpse", the leader of Napoli's ultras whose approval is needed before a match can take place
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/curva-nostra-mob-infilt...
I have a question, though. What's up with the "sportsball" thing?
I mean, I'm very familiar with it. It just seems like it's always been used as a mildly derogatory term by people who really dislike sports and sports fans. What does it mean to you? No wrong answers.
Yeah, actually saying 'sportsball' in conversation in a non-ironic way is an excellent way to signal that you have poor social skills. No need to yuck someone's yum.
That said, the sports fans I know really are quite the wide spectrum when it comes to their actual sports/exercise participation. Lot of very active people.
California Driver Handbook
https://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/roundabouts.html
I think the main difference is the expectation that you start signalling, if appropriate, before joining the roundabout. My main complaint (OK one of my main complaints) is that drivers turning right start signalling right and then forget to signal left as they leave...
Now I'm interested: what are your top three topics for talking to women? :)
Have you generally been to the Americas and Western Europe? Sports is the one universal, that makes sense in my experience too. But most people outside the rich upper class don't give a hoot about cars anywhere in the parts of Asia I've been to. And if you talked about fishing/hunting, you'd probably get weird looks trying to decide if you came from some modern hunter-gatherer cult.
Hunting is extremely rare (and generally an indicator of old money or living in an extremely rural environment).
Fishing is a lot more popular but even that tends to date you a bit. At least for Eastern Europe, fishing is a lot more popular among the 45+ year olds.
OP is primarily speaking about a North American perspective, I think.
But you really can kick off a decent conversation by just commenting and asking about what they drive, usually by starting with "I see a lot of people prefer X here". And you end up learning a decent amount about them.
If you don't mind a bit of griping, politics is not a bad shout either. People aren't hardline attached to one side or the other as much here, and even when they are, they're much more willing to admit corruption at a local city level even if their favourite party is in charge. Complaining about corruption is a common pastime.
Movies and music are also pretty good generic options, as are motorbikes or electric scooters with younger guys in their early-mid twenties.
However unless you're planning to visit very rural places I genuinely don't think I've ever met anyone in East Asia talk about cars or hunting. Even in Europe among Millenials or Gen Z I don't know anyone who is into cars at all, a lot of younger people in the larger cities don't even have drivers licenses.
Beyond that, it just depends on the person...
"Hi, I have no interest in you or these topics but let's converse to extend my lifespan." Beer can help with this.
[1] https://store.theonion.com/collections/best-selling-products...
This is why I prefer talking to women.
Mainstream pickup artists yea. Some niche ones, not really. Wayne Elise feels like a good example, from back in the day.
On a throwaway because the judgmental people will judge me for the rest of my life due to me nuancing that not all people associated to pickup artists looked at social interactions in a zero sum way.
But, no way to change that in public perception without taking risks and being open about it.
So, if you're an HN reader, not wanting to be branded as a PUA but still want to find help socially (especially romantically), my two cents is look into the Ars Amorata community.
Yea, I can't take it. I've fixed my dating life but I'm not a charismatic leader by any stretch of the imagination. I've taken multiple stabs in Reddit threads but there is just no good faith discussion to be had. I've also tried it a bit on HN. On HN it's also very dicey.
> So, if you're an HN reader, not wanting to be branded as a PUA but still want to find help socially (especially romantically), my two cents is look into the Ars Amorata community.
Interesting, will check it out. I don't need help by the way. I'm married. And for social skills that I'm still lacking, I know where to go. Unfortunately, not all social skills in dating transfer well to work social skills.
Edit: just checked it out. Good to see Zan is still doing his thing. I remember him "I love women". He definitely influenced me with that quote back in the day.
But, a lot of the actual material I did see actually seemed like it was universally applicable in non-toxic and non-exploitative ways.
I think a lot of the basic skills and concepts are the same, whether using them for positive goals or for selfishly manipulative goals.
It’s so unbelievably straightforward and useful. It’s unfortunate that I discovered it after learning everything the hard way.
I read the page https://www.succeedsocially.com/morefun. Here's my initial impressions. Pros: it identified several important painpoints and give several decent examples. Cons: Being a truly fun person is all about reaction reaction reaction. Fun people react authentically (while censoring their ahole side because you don't want to be fun but unlikable), ridiculously (while reading the room), and intelligently (playing to the top of the crowd's intelligence).
But here you explain exactly what is difficult. It's like walking a tightrope and someone tells you not to fall to the left and by the way, also not to the right.
"Be yourself" is not wrong, but it's not specific enough.
You can be perfectly authentic, but that doesn't mean being socially uncalibrated.
Get good at being sociable, then blend that with your personal tastes and preferences.
I thought "be yourself" was fine until I grew up and learned I was just being rude to most people and called myself introverted when I didn't make friends.
So it's not useful advice for most that need to build yourself up to something that performs decently, nicely or awesomely (the most you can).
And Fake it till you make it is an awful expression (encourages posing and faking is legitimate when is not by definition) to communicate that you just need practice to obtain a level of performance.
What are you trying to make though? You're pretending to want the same things the people you think you need to fit in with want, but if you don't actually want those things, what point is there to be in a competition to get them?
>Your inner self is faulty and not appropriate at any situation
Mostly true actually. If this was not so, the world would look like a daycare without supervision. Just a bunch of primal feelings and violence.
The actual meta-skill that is being developed by maturing emotionally and using soft skills appropriately (for the benefit of the situation and the participants, not for manipulation) is tact. Same as how people learn to apply just a little pressure when handling glassware, and a lot of pressure when lifting a heavy weight.
This is addressed by the author here:
https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com/foundations/social-m...
The inner self isn't just an id, it's your goals, interests, values and ways of thinking too. And the social fitness script is that you should only have acceptable goals and interests and acceptable ways of talking about them. Talking about wanting to buy a nice house and a sports car, good. Talking about wanting to beat the speedrun record for Mario 64 and how you've figured out a CPU glitch to use for it, keep it to yourself. "Let's agree to disagree", good, "let's sketch a causal model graph of this and plug in our guesses for priors to see where we get different intuitions", no.
I too have wildly different area of interest, level of interest, and approach to things than most people around me do. Soft skills helped me to connect anyways, for at least two reasons:
1. With them I can approach, and connect to the interest of others.
2. I can explain to people my interest, and make it more interesting to them as well.
Also, these are not for all time, all the time. The healthy thing is to vary the guardedness in different contexts. The flexibility in this is a skill in itself, and again, something that connects to, and can raise, emotional intelligence.
Social skills instruction is often about how to get along with averaged random groups like this. The first sort of person might find it as useful know-how for a thing they already find agreeable. The second sort of person might not find the initial situation agreeable at all, so the instruction gets the implicit added bit of "first of all, you need to not be yourself".
Yes, that seems part of it, as long as all you know is "yourself without social skills". With social skills, and leaving some of that "yourself" behind, you will discover that don't just change, or reduce yourself, in a social setting, but become more yourself as a whole. The very definition of "yourself" changes, broadens because of this added experience.
Thinking about the things you say isn't faking it - it's just using your brain and being considerate.
If you just blurt out anything with no filter, that doesn't make you authentic, it usually makes you an asshole.
Not all thoughts are productive, many are bad and many are stupid. You should delete those or revise them. Not only when talking to other people, but even to yourself.
I can tell myself that I'm dumb or I'm fat or whatever, but that isn't true and just because I thought it doesn't mean I have to internalize it. No, I filter those thoughts, I tell myself "that's not true". Over time, I think them less.
Your own brain is not reliable. It does not operate on truth, or what is or is not productive. So tune it. Not for the sake of others, but for yourself too.
Being an asshole to others is bad, but being an asshole to yourself is arguably worse. The goal is to, overtime, build better thought procedses and mental models. Not to fake it.
I guess what gets me with this stuff is that there are multiple things going on that are getting conflated. Considering your words is pretty straightforwardly good, it's learning to not say things you yourself wouldn't have wanted to say.
But then this stuff tends to show up in the context of work, or business, and it starts turning into selling. You are the seller, the other people are buyers. Buyers have no expectations on them, they react as they react and they want what they want. The seller must contort themselves to please the buyer and then close a sale to get one over the buyer. And this is where it gets corrosive for me. It feels like there's no common ground being built, the relationship is adversarial in both directions, and both sides are a bad model for a person to be. People are being split into feckless buyers who express immediate wants and judgments with no thought or development, and conniving sellers whose main order of business is to get themselves in front of the buyer and get noticed, no matter what the real value of what they are offering is. People might make money if they internalize this system and get good at it, but are they going to make lasting friends?
Instead of blaming the methods / soft skills / whatever, which can be used for good and bad, blame the people who misuse these tools for personal gain: politicians, salespeople, conmen, pua, what have you.
Which is fun and great if you came out as a happy cool human.
If you made it through the weird unadjusted side without any gimmick you just loose.
No one has to force you to stay what your surroundings made you. It's not your personality it's just a reflection and you can change it and make it better for you by adjusting and reflecting.
And I'm also not shaming anyone not wanting or unable to chain themselves.
It was a statement about the uniqueness of ones character and the agency of controlling it/changing or adjusting it by yourself
This has very little to do with masking.
After COVID, I stopped caring and trying to fake being a normal person, and choose just to be me, alone.
I wasn't good at trying to be normal, and it's so much nicer to be free to not bother to make the effort and not be me. But I have no friends or good relationships with family (who don't understand or tolerate who I am).
But there’s no context as to where this body language section fits in.
Am I supposed to read the body language section now and then remember to go back to the how to section? Or is body language discussed later? Then why link to it now? This format stresses me out.
I agree with you though. It's sad that content is being reformulated for those reasons.
It's a style I've seen elsewhere as well so not particular to this site, but I find it grating and off-putting. Feels like it treats me like a 4 year old.
Note: I only 'mirror' 2-3 times in a conversation. I've found over using it makes it have less impact. But that's just me.
And the book gives you a few useful tools to do that.
Funny experience with that:
A big part of How to Win Friends and Influence People that I took to heart was "be interested in other people". Flash forward a few years and I'm in a bar with a group of people I had recently met when one of them says to me "Hey, we've been talking a lot about ourselves but not really that much about you." One of the other people interrupted "That's because they are polite! They are showing interest in what we're interested in instead of insisting on talking about themselves."
So at least some people do notice when you put in an effort to use good social skills!
From my personal feeling:
US culture is more on the extraverted side (i.e. a lot of people want/need shallow conversation instead of shutting their mouth, except if they have something important to say) than what is common in many European countries.
Thus, people who are more on the introvert side have a harder time in the USA than in many European countries, I guess.
Also, for various reason the whole "self-improvement industrial complex" is much less prevalent in European countries than in the USA.
Relatedly, I would say that in the USA, there is the mentality "Our society is the greatest ever made since God created Earth, so if you don't feel happy, the fault is on you: you need to self-improve."
On the other hand, in many European countries, the mentality is rather like "The society [note that I didn't write "our" - there is barely any sense of belonging] is a corrupt, messed-up shithole. Yes, there exist those smooth talkers who tell you that you need to self-improve (e.g. social skills), but do you know what: those just want to make money from the mess you are in, and/or are telling you the things that those in power want you to brainwash with. So, instead of wasting time and money to get yourself a brainwashing to make yourself 'socially adapted', better invest this energy into exposing all these assholes in power who are responsible for the whole mess. Since there are so many people who also have this kind of hate, you will easily find friends this way, and thus become more socially skilled." :-)
Unjustified self deprecation can lead to dereliction. IMO Americans feel this way because it's appropriate to.
Bad advice. Actors don't mimic reality. Actors mimic what viewers expect to see in actors. This means that the body language you see in actors and the language you see in real life are different.
In my last few relationships, I've been having to do relationship coaching with partners because their parents failed to teach them responding with physical or emotional violence is not how you maintain friendships or relationships.
The really difficult things are maintaining good first impression and talking to (perceived) strangers. You know nothing about a person until you talk with that person, so what exactly are you supposed to do? There is a bootstrapping problem.
Classified ads are a good example. It's not like ebay, where you click a button and the delivered product is guaranteed to arrive a few days later. Instead you get a blank form of nothing, where you can write whatever you want and there is always the possibility of rejection. It's very much unlike any store you've ever visited, where money is king and the customer('s money) is always right.
Don't try to qualify people.
Do not let others feel contempt.
Don't speak any words outside what someone would commonly be able to accept.
Suppression of ego so others are not uncomfortable. Knowing when to not suppress it if others think you are fake.
Empathy implies you can feel with others. Example: You are a man and you talk to a woman. Being empathic means you have a clear mental image of what it might feel like to be a woman and can thus avoid saying things that aren't funny, like sexist bullshit. Or you talk to a student/junior and remember what it felt like when you had no fucking clue and how shitty it was when the old greybeards would scoff at you, with empathy you can talk to people where they are instead of highlighting the difference between you and them.
Most communicative problems I have ever seen (aside from language barriers) could have been resolved by a little bit of empathy.
Empathy is usually an internal process. On it's own, it wont't resolve a communication problem.
What ends up affecting a communication problem are the external actions that we take based on our internal empathy calculus (assuming we haven't totally miscalculated). Those actions will vary significantly by person and context, assuming any action follows at all.
Empathy is the relatively easy part. Acting on that empathy in a way that doesn't come across as condescending, disengaged, presumptious, judgemental, awkward, or scripted, while also remaining true to yourself and upholding your personal values are the hard parts.
Then out a few sentences in the level you feel most comfortable with, plus 1 or 2 steps above. Try whole paragraphs.
PS: drink water and do not push harder if you feel pain.
1. figure out if your mumbling is just a habit or a logopedic issue
2. get a speakers training of the type actors or radio hosts would
If you wonder whether it is worth it, just consider how important it is in both your private and professional life to be clearly understood. There has been a study during the pandemic that showed that people who had the better sound quality in conferences would get their ideas through more often. This is truly the case for spoken words as well.
I think that the answer might depend on whether the difficulty is something with your speaking itself (e.g. you have a speech impediment, accent, stutter, etc.) versus if the difficulty is with the social side of things (e.g. mumbling due to nervousness, etc.).
For the former, maybe a speech therapist could help? For the later, I've heard people say that improv classes/clubs can do a lot for helping people be more confortable in unpredictable social situations.
If you have a medical type of problem that's of course not applicable.
One guy particularly stands out, he joined the team and started off on a solo run with a couple of projects a few others were involved in. A few weeks later I asked him if he'd setup any meetings with the team to get context and, you know, say hello and his response was "why should I do that, can't they read my PRs?". Classic.
Another one was the very loudly self-diagnosed neurodiverse girl, who seemed to just use it as cover for being a total jerk. Eventually she had to be managed out, as she tipped the scale between doing good work and tolerance of odd behaviors too far - screaming in meetings, histrionics and stuff you'd expect more of someone living on a street corner.
That would have been my reply, too.
I know, I know. The horror of an individual for us all.
I assume the proposition is this: one has no chance to produce value without firm guidance from the onset. Or the time learning is a tragedy. I doubt both of these very much. PRs are another conversation.
The others are free to take their turns. In this hypothetical, apparently, the other side has been unresponsive. Where's their ire; left behind at the bar?
Sorry we didn't apply the correct social pressure or wait until everyone was available at the same time for a call, I guess. I understand how that might hurt optics... I, the baby with superpowers in this scenario, just don't/can't care.
Handholding isn't a requirement. Guess what is: communicating the changes. Look at the PRs. Now that management is involved, we can have a meeting about them going unattended.
I think your assumption that this is about "firm guidance" and "optics" and is an insult to your "superpowers" is unlikely to be the motivation.
Let's worry about extra trust once they start earning trust (and, arguably, their pay) by reviewing the PRs. Leaving those floating deserves none, from nobody.
To reiterate the original post, behaving as if they're a member of the team would be quite welcome, actually. Fun, no: work.
> " ... can't they read my PRs?"
I know one really good way to answer that. The requirement for the question suggests the same for review.
the other point to this being frustrating is you're asserting she wasn't neurodivergent and then go on to describe some hallmark characteristics of neurodivergence. emotional regulation is one of the biggest challenges for people with ADHD and autism, and emotional outbursts and control of mood/emotions are exactly why neurodivergence is so incredibly difficult for so many people.
If you can't manage whatever you're suffering from sufficiently to do your job then pity for you.
so much for my social skills :(
also autism
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21585235 - 2019 (419 comments)
Some TEDx talks to degrees from unnamed programs.