[neandrake]

As part of practicing giving the hard feedback you can also practice framing the feedback to have the best impact. I've found focusing the feedback around behaviors and observed outcomes is the best.

E.g. instead of "please stop posting excessive memes on code reviews", "when you post memes on code reviews it pollutes the timeline and makes it difficult for reviewers".

[b3morales]

Absolutely, and this has a flip side: when you try to articulate the actual harm, sometimes you realize there isn't one. And then you can learn to calibrate your own perspective about what's truly a problem as opposed to just a personal annoyance. Which lets you focus your energy and communicate more effectively.

[Fr0styMatt88]

For criticisms of things like code (or art), I think of that as "criticize the thing and not the person".

Bad: "You don't know what you're doing. This is poorly-written code that will perform badly on bigger datasets. "

Good: "The runtime of this code is prone to grow exponentially. A different algorithm will get around this. "

As much as possible I try and criticize from the viewpoint of wanting to make the work better instead of from wanting to bring down the person that did it.

Edit: To add - I will very possibly be _wrong_ about the definition of better, which is something else I try and keep in mind.

[Chris2048]

If the person is to blame, focusing on the mistake rather than the person may just be misdirection.

I think the big difference in the US is not (just) that people may have fragile egos, but that (pos related) the consequences are more serious - don't match up and you'll be fired.

[watwut]

In here, I would opted for: "could we remove meme plugin from code review software?" And then pushed for that.