<story><title>Optimism</title><url>https://github.com/raganwald/presentations/blob/master/optimism.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tedmiston</author><text>&amp;gt; When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest&lt;p&gt;As someone who prefers giving and receiving terse feedback... I would suggest that there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with brutal honesty &lt;i&gt;for type of people who appreciate receiving it&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If I write code and forget to test some specific cases, I would much rather get a code review of &amp;quot;Missing tests for negative numbers, empty string, null&amp;quot; than a longwinded and &amp;quot;nice&amp;quot; version.  I don&amp;#x27;t need to hear compliments on what&amp;#x27;s right... just what can be improved.  Some people really value bluntness and see directness as &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; friendly because it&amp;#x27;s honest.</text></item><item><author>donw</author><text>The best advice I received on this topic was that feedback should be actionable, specific, and kind.&lt;p&gt;Actionable and specific mean that the person on the receiving end has a set of concrete actions to take to implement.&lt;p&gt;For example, &amp;quot;get better at programming&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t specific, and &amp;quot;get a PhD in Computer Science&amp;quot; probably isn&amp;#x27;t actionable, but &amp;quot;work on improving your ability to write readable code by working through the exercises in this book&amp;quot; is something that can be worked with (especially if you can spend some time to mentor that person!)&lt;p&gt;Kindness matters a lot, though, and it is different from niceness.&lt;p&gt;When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest, but often the emphasis is on the first word, rather than the second. Things like &amp;quot;The module you wrote is crap because your code sucks and is hard to maintain.&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t help in any way, shape or form.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, others that focus on being nice often heap on the praise, while excluding or downplaying the criticism. &amp;quot;You worked really hard on that module, and maybe should should spend a more little time refactoring and cleaning things up&amp;quot; is too nice.&lt;p&gt;Kindness means sharing the good and the bad, but without being aggressive or accusatory: &amp;quot;Thanks for the hard work on that module. It does exactly what it needs to, but I&amp;#x27;m really struggling to understand what&amp;#x27;s going on in there, as there are some really big methods and classes. Breaking those apart into smaller separate objects and functions would help a lot.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>holman</author><text>I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray.&lt;p&gt;I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I&amp;#x27;ve seen (and I&amp;#x27;ve seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don&amp;#x27;t really think back and think much about &amp;quot;optimism&amp;quot; when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; about optimists.&lt;p&gt;My takeaway was the type of tooling and thought processes that are advantageous when approaching problems and conflict. In many talks — mine included — people will say something along the lines of &amp;quot;be nice to your teammates and leave good feedback&amp;quot;, for example, but that&amp;#x27;s really vague. Reg&amp;#x27;s talk helped me understand &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; that type of feedback might be, how it can be explicitly phrased, and how I can give concrete feedback without being antagonistic. I think it makes for a more effective argument, especially when building product, but also it just makes for friendlier humans.&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this does lead to &amp;quot;optimistic people&amp;quot;, hence the title, but I just thought it was weird to see discussion here about the merits of positive people versus negative people. I think the talk&amp;#x27;s a much bigger dialogue about interacting with humans and, possibly more importantly, yourself.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I really liked the talk, and as much as this Markdown is great at getting the point across, this is one of the talks I&amp;#x27;d suggest actually watching. \m&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;for type of people who appreciate receiving it&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is key. I wonder though, what&amp;#x27;s a good way to signal that to friends and coworkers? I personally declare Crocker&amp;#x27;s rules[0], but I rarely have the opportunity to communicate that to people I&amp;#x27;m talking to.&lt;p&gt;[0] - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Crocker&amp;#x27;s_rules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Crocker&amp;#x27;s_rules&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;By declaring commitment to Crocker&amp;#x27;s rules, one authorizes other debaters to optimize their messages for information, even when this entails that emotional feelings will be disregarded. This means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind, so that if you&amp;#x27;re offended, it&amp;#x27;s your own fault. The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information, if only to signal a lack of patience or tolerance: after all, knowing whether the speaker is becoming angry or despondent is useful rational evidence. Two people using Crocker&amp;#x27;s Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting.&lt;p&gt;Thus, one who has committed to these rules largely gives up the right to complain about emotional provocation, &amp;quot;flaming&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;trolling&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;abuse&amp;quot; (hopelessly subjective terms) and other alleged violations of etiquette. They give these rights up in the interest of effective debate.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Optimism</title><url>https://github.com/raganwald/presentations/blob/master/optimism.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tedmiston</author><text>&amp;gt; When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest&lt;p&gt;As someone who prefers giving and receiving terse feedback... I would suggest that there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with brutal honesty &lt;i&gt;for type of people who appreciate receiving it&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If I write code and forget to test some specific cases, I would much rather get a code review of &amp;quot;Missing tests for negative numbers, empty string, null&amp;quot; than a longwinded and &amp;quot;nice&amp;quot; version.  I don&amp;#x27;t need to hear compliments on what&amp;#x27;s right... just what can be improved.  Some people really value bluntness and see directness as &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; friendly because it&amp;#x27;s honest.</text></item><item><author>donw</author><text>The best advice I received on this topic was that feedback should be actionable, specific, and kind.&lt;p&gt;Actionable and specific mean that the person on the receiving end has a set of concrete actions to take to implement.&lt;p&gt;For example, &amp;quot;get better at programming&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t specific, and &amp;quot;get a PhD in Computer Science&amp;quot; probably isn&amp;#x27;t actionable, but &amp;quot;work on improving your ability to write readable code by working through the exercises in this book&amp;quot; is something that can be worked with (especially if you can spend some time to mentor that person!)&lt;p&gt;Kindness matters a lot, though, and it is different from niceness.&lt;p&gt;When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest, but often the emphasis is on the first word, rather than the second. Things like &amp;quot;The module you wrote is crap because your code sucks and is hard to maintain.&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t help in any way, shape or form.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, others that focus on being nice often heap on the praise, while excluding or downplaying the criticism. &amp;quot;You worked really hard on that module, and maybe should should spend a more little time refactoring and cleaning things up&amp;quot; is too nice.&lt;p&gt;Kindness means sharing the good and the bad, but without being aggressive or accusatory: &amp;quot;Thanks for the hard work on that module. It does exactly what it needs to, but I&amp;#x27;m really struggling to understand what&amp;#x27;s going on in there, as there are some really big methods and classes. Breaking those apart into smaller separate objects and functions would help a lot.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>holman</author><text>I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray.&lt;p&gt;I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I&amp;#x27;ve seen (and I&amp;#x27;ve seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don&amp;#x27;t really think back and think much about &amp;quot;optimism&amp;quot; when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; about optimists.&lt;p&gt;My takeaway was the type of tooling and thought processes that are advantageous when approaching problems and conflict. In many talks — mine included — people will say something along the lines of &amp;quot;be nice to your teammates and leave good feedback&amp;quot;, for example, but that&amp;#x27;s really vague. Reg&amp;#x27;s talk helped me understand &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; that type of feedback might be, how it can be explicitly phrased, and how I can give concrete feedback without being antagonistic. I think it makes for a more effective argument, especially when building product, but also it just makes for friendlier humans.&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this does lead to &amp;quot;optimistic people&amp;quot;, hence the title, but I just thought it was weird to see discussion here about the merits of positive people versus negative people. I think the talk&amp;#x27;s a much bigger dialogue about interacting with humans and, possibly more importantly, yourself.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I really liked the talk, and as much as this Markdown is great at getting the point across, this is one of the talks I&amp;#x27;d suggest actually watching. \m&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morgante</author><text>I think one of the important takeaways from the talk is that even if people &lt;i&gt;say&lt;/i&gt; they want brutal feedback they probably don&amp;#x27;t. More importantly, feedback can be totally honest without compromising it&amp;#x27;s optimism.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I would much rather get a code review of &amp;quot;Missing tests for negative numbers, empty string, null&amp;quot; than a longwinded and &amp;quot;nice&amp;quot; version&lt;p&gt;I agree that niceness isn&amp;#x27;t always necessary. Fortunately, that&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; what the talk is about. For me, the examples you gave actually fulfills all the criteria for optimistic criticism:&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s impersonal: the focus is on what the code is missing, not your ability as a coder.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s specific: there are hyper-specific criticism.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s temporary: the tests are merely &amp;quot;missing&amp;quot; and that&amp;#x27;s a condition that can be quickly changed.</text></comment>