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by luckylion 2211 days ago
This. I've never had a negative response when I joined a project and discovered obvious problems when I explained why I think that they are or are going to be a problem and offered to help fix them. Nobody likes the guy that shows up, says "that's all shit, you need to fix it", and vanishes again. But I've never seen anyone hate the guy that shows up, says "I've noticed there's a lot of friction around X. I think we could make it easier to work with and more stable by doing Y".

And I've always liked it personally when somebody does that to me. When somebody with a lot more experience and/or skill helps you, it's like some super high level player carrying you through boss fights: you level up much quicker than if you did it on your own.
1 comments
loopbit 2211 days ago
I'm of the same opinion. I love getting feedback, better if it's constructive, but all kind of honest feedback is useful and welcome. And it doesn't always come from people with more experience, sometimes a greenhorn will see things that a greybeard like me doesn't.

But I've seen people giving negative responses to the best feedback. Hell, I've had people complaining for hours because someone else replaced their manual process that took an hour to do with a script (and copy&paste of the result) that took literally seconds to run.

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luckylion 2211 days ago
Yeah, I've seen that as well. I believe it's mostly fear-driven, in a way of "if this gets automated, why would they need to keep me around". It's a terrible mindset for everybody involved. It really slows the team down, and it's a major issue for the person themselves. It's like impostor syndrome on steroids. Not only do they worry that they might be found out, they worry they might be replaced by a script.

I've never personally seen somebody getting fired because a script can do their job. I've seen them being freed from doing the same repetitive bullshit day after day though, and finally being able to actually tackle new challenges.

But unfortunately, that kind of mindset is not something you can change through rational arguments, at least in my experience.

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toshk 2211 days ago
Yes I think the not feeling attacked part is a responsibility of both parties. And therefore sometimes unavoidable.
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