[luke_s]

Well, I was going to downvote, but figured it's better to comment.

> Ugh. This reeks of "safe space" nonsense.

What? I have very little idea what you are talking about, so I looked it up on wikipedia: "In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space originally were terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating a safe place for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students."

Which frankly sounds like a good idea, but doesn't seem like it has much to do with this blog post about managing members of your team.

> Part of working in a team is receiving comments and criticism from others. If you take these negatively and as attacks to you, rather than collective construction towards the final goal, then you have a problem and need to consider changing job.

Yes, except the point of the blog post is that managers should be aware that comments and criticism they would have been happy to offer as co-workers suddenly start to look a lot more like commands when they are coming from a boss. It's a good idea for new managers to be aware of this changed dynamic.

[torrent-of-ions]

> > Ugh. This reeks of "safe space" nonsense.

> What? I have very little idea what you are talking about, so I looked it up on wikipedia: "In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space originally were terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating a safe place for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students."

It was originally something like that but "safe spaces" just turned into echo chambers where everyone is only allowed to agree and encourage people and dissenting opinions are considered "unsafe".

[cyphar]

> Which frankly sounds like a good idea, but doesn't seem like it has much to do with this blog post about managing members of your team.

The "safe space nonsense" grandparent was referring to is that when you attempt to stop people from being offended or thinking they don't own their work (or otherwise treating adults like children) by saying "just don't say this" results in a chilling effect that just makes everyone's lives worse. Nobody will come up with legitimate criticisms in fear of "being too mean" or "stealing your thunder", and people who need feedback will never get it as a result. I believe that's the effect that the grandparent was referring to. You get the exact same problem with univeristy campuses, where people wanted to be shielded from alternate views by claiming that you're offending them and that you're violating their safe space.

[wccrawford]

That's how it started, but now anything negative is met with "This is supposed to be a safe space!" whining. Unsurprisingly, some people either can't or won't make the distinction between things that matter (harassment) and things that don't (words like 'moist' or references to a phobia they have such as 'spiders').

You can imagine that it gets rather annoying to be told that you can't say "moist" in some place because it's supposed to be a 'safe place'.

These are extreme examples, but you get the idea.