[jaywalk]

Yeah, the example about rewriting a page in React really stood out to me for this. He says "I entertained the question in good faith" but he was clearly just asking "gotcha" questions to try and show the manager what a stupid question it was. And it may very well have been a stupid question, but as you said, he didn't even attempt to understand his manager's perspective.

I can totally understand why his manager got frustrated by this.

[denton-scratch]

> just asking "gotcha" questions

I didn't read them as "gotcha" questions. They looked like straightforward and sensible questions. I wonder if the manager was expecting some kind of kickback, and was braced to be adversarial. Perhaps there's some history here, between author and his manager.

[jaywalk]

From a purely technical standpoint, of course they are valid questions. But from a political standpoint, when you know that your manager just read a blog post about React, I think the discussion needs to be framed differently. Starting out with something like "Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with React. What were some of the positive aspects of it that stood out to you?" will help to understand their perspective.

Again, I fully acknowledge that a React rewrite could very well be a complete waste of time and effort in this scenario. But his manager obviously thought it could be worthwhile, or he wouldn't have asked about it.

[denton-scratch]

> But from a political standpoint, when you know that your manager just read a blog post about React, I think the discussion needs to be framed differently.

The author only got to ask one question before he was shut-down: why do you want to do this?

That's not a criticism, it's a completely reasonable question, given that rewriting something using React is going to be expensive, and might introduce major new risks. Maybe author asked the wrong way, or in the wrong tone of voice.

If it were my manager, and he was proposing that I rewrite something that works fine in a new language, and I had real work to do, then I think my question "Why do you want to do that?" might come across as angry - because I'd be angry.

[morelisp]

The manager is such a blank slate in this story it's almost useless to discuss, but what stood out for me was:

"A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React... in order to make an informed decision, I needed to understand a few things: ... Why do they think a technology change is a solution? Do they understand the implications of such a switch?"

What problems such a switch might solve and what the implications are is what the manager is asking you. Why would you direct exactly those questions back to them?

[larve]

Author here.

I am curious how these are gotcha questions? To me they are the proper questions to ask, as a manager, they probably don’t care about react or vue or any other framework, they care about conversions and revenue and other metrics. That’s exactly what I want to understand, so that I can contextualize and see if React might or might not make sense.

Reasons why React might actually make sense, to show I didn’t just cherry-pick this as a “well duh obviously it’s stupid”:

- we use shopify as a backend, and they published a nifty new react checkout widget that we could replace our convoluted checkout with - all our web developers are actually coming from react, and hate the current jquery mess, and really want to change. It would be time-intensive, but team morale would skyrocket, - another department is planning to move to react as well

After a long time in tech, I really have learnt to not really care about technology that much (as you might see in my article about PHP and JS :).

[jaywalk]

Everything you said here makes the response you put in the blog post even more strange. If you already knew about all of the positive aspects of switching to React in this instance, why on Earth did you start off with "Is our checkout page not performing well?"

Obviously there are also drawbacks, but you immediately started off from an adversarial position as if it was just a completely off the wall idea. Clearly that's not the case.

[yomkippur]

Which is why I think this article is misleading. It has nothing to do with self diagnosed autism spectrum but unwilling to acknowledge arrogance due to willful lack of self-awareness or selfishness. It can't be autism spectrum because he or she is aware of insight and intent.

The more I read through OP's comments the more I see this as a compensation for the inherent inferiority complex he/she struggles with. Trying to pin this on autism spectrum is just another method of deflecting blame or removing any real or perceived risk.

I suspect some type of trauma where OP felt inferior to others in some way, usually intelligence, especially if they've been brought up in a highly academia focused family environment and were often held in comparison to others.

Ever since that popular Korean drama took off "Weird Attorney Woo Yong Woo" everyone is self diagnosing or trying to use superficial tidbits they picked up to deflect social mishaps.

"It cant be my fault because im on the spectrum" is a trend I am seeing more and more online and this article did a good job of demonstrating but far too many words and irrelevant points.

[larve]

I phrased this badly, none of these situations applied, they were just situations where I would recommend using React, to show I'm not opposed to React as such.

The problem I think is that you think me asking a question is adversarial, while I'm just... asking a question in good faith. I'm not considering it a completely off the wall idea at all, I want to know why they think it's a good idea, because I don't understand. This is where the autism comes in, I think. You think I'm being adversarial and dismissive, I think I am open and engaged.

I put a tremendous amount of effort into being socially pleasant, but there still are situations where I think I am doing my best to fully engage with the other person, yet there is a whole game of subtext I am not getting. This is very different from me not accepting I am wrong.

I would love to get the subtext, trust me, and I work hard at it. But it's playing a game that I don't have the rules to. Hopefully what I'm writing will help someone just maybe pause, and think, "did they actually ask this question to be dismissive? or do they just ask because they want to help you solve your problem?." Social grace and empathy goes both ways.

[shlant]

you seem to be very uncharitable to the author. Why would you assume some sort of maliciousness? Why is it that "he was clearly just asking "gotcha" questions to try and show the manager what a stupid question it was"? What are you basing this on?