[auggierose]

It always astonished me how delicate coders in the UK are (I am from Germany, working in the UK currently). During a team meeting at a former company, my "ruthlessness" was brought up as a negativism. I countered that (or so I thought) with the following question to the rest of the coder team: "Do you want me to point out problems I perceive with the code / approach / whatever, or do you want me to hold back in order to be considerate of someone". To my surprise, in the presence of management, the unanimous answer was to show consideration!

I think people who work together should be able to openly communicate with each other about technical issues. Sadly, most people are (either self-perceived or for real) not good enough to do that without bruised egos.

[brandmeyer]

There is another side to this. I've seen a ton of technical criticism get delivered with emotionally laden commentary. X is "totally broken", "crap", "not even wrong", "just wrong", "terrible", etc. There is a way to deliver criticism while maintaining an environment of common professional respect. Many people don't even try. With the caveat that I'm painting with a culturally biased brush, I've found Germans (and Finns!) to be particularly abrasive in this regards.

[cpks]

And conversely, I've seen people from cultures with different communications styles substantially and unfairly discriminated in the industry for not matching 2016 American business culture. I've found Germans (and Finns!) to be particularly discriminated in this regard, primarily because those are highly technical cultures, but with different communication styles. However, anyone who grew up in the inner city, in African American culture, in Irish Catholic culture, etc. is likewise stigmatized and labeled as rude due to what is a cultural communications difference.

[raverbashing]

I'm glad you wrote this because I would definitely never consider a person with such an obtuse attitude for any position

It's not about sensitivity it's about not being a inconsiderate pedant

I'm also sure that a lot of your critique has no basis in technical quality rather than personal preferences. This is what I see time and time again with the people that "worry most" about the code (but when it's their code that's critiqued it's full of problems). Uncle Bob fans, "code craftsmen" all those people make my BS detector beep

There are also people that pick a lot of "problems" in the code that ignore glaring issues in other areas/code they wrote/other aspects of the issue, including further code maintainability, readability (no, being readable to you does not mean it's readable by somebody else), etc

It's not so much about bruised egos rather than wasting company time with pedantic nitpicking, not trusting colleagues (which is fundamental and you seem to be utterly incapable of), overstating your own importance in the team (unless you really picked a company full of bozos, which in the end is your mistake again)

[auggierose]

I am all against pedantic nitpicking. One of my most common complaints was to concentrate on the actual problem, not on the style. I am not a "code craftsman", I am somebody who knows a lot about how to solve a problem with code. And I don't work for anyone except myself anymore.

[estefan]

It's not what you say it's the way that you say it.

If you don't have the social acumen to know how to raise issues and to discuss them reasonably (i.e. without rubbing people up the wrong way), then yes, erring on the side of being considerate is likely to win you more friends and help you keep your job longer.

There's a fine line between constructive feedback and being toxic to a team.

[whisky_jb]

It is very difficult to do code reviews when beside the technical topics politics come into place. After 8h of reviews on 2000 lines of code finding 100 issues, it is almost not possible to be nice anymore. But hell starts when manager decide to give a GO because deadline approached without even fixing the 3 major bugs.

[skellington]

It's interesting that even your comment is getting down voted. I wonder if it's a millennial thing? It would be interesting to know the ages of the people here commenting on how "harsh" the post seems vs. "yeah that's great."

I read the post as going out of it's way to give praise while pointing out what the company requires (perhaps that is interpreted as patronizing). But many people here are commenting on how rude it is. Bizarre. If you think this is rude, you've never worked in a "tough" environment.

How would people here suggest communicating the same information? Is it just that it might be interpreted as patronizing that's the problem?

[burkaman]

Yes, it's extremely patronizing. A better email might be:

"Hey, sorry if that code review seemed a little nitpicky. You did a great job, but we try to be as strict and consistent as possible in our reviews, for everyone's benefit. Here's a link to our style guide, and please let me know if you have any questions. I'll stop by your desk in a little bit to introduce myself and see how you're doing."

You don't need any exclamation points, and you don't need to talk about how unique and amazing your company is. Treat your colleagues like colleagues, not insecure undergrads.

[borvo]

So they didn't ask you to point out the problems in a more considerate way?

Instead, they just asked you to stop pointing out the problems?

Were these problems nitpicks, personal preference (as some here are apparently assuming) or were they objectively technical issues?

[gdulli]

Programming tends to attract a lot of people who are smart but too young to have wisdom. The kind of wisdom that tells one when it's worthwhile to be ruthless and when it's just pedantry, self-defeating, etc.

The kind of wisdom that keeps one from positing that the people who don't see things their way are delicate.

[auggierose]

Wisdom is overrated. Also, I am probably older than you are :-) I am using "I" and "You" because I like direct communication instead of passive/aggressive snobishness.

[yongjik]

> ... because I like direct communication instead of passive/aggressive snobishness.

See, wisdom is not saying stuff like this.