[localghost3000]

Eh. There's a right way and a wrong way to do what you’re talking about IMO. Being direct and honest is important and good. Attacking peoples character is not. Emotional safety is essential because if you don't have it, then folks are afraid to speak up because they might get their heads chopped off.

[swatcoder]

This is all way more of a cultural idiosyncrasy than you may realize.

If you take a dozen people of different backgrounds and ask them to rate a statement like this by how much it "attacks someone's character" or is "emotionally unsafe", you're going to get a whole spectrum of responses.

Likewise, you'll find similarly varied responses to how and whether character judgment makes someone afraid to speak up, and how and whether a organizational demand for "emotional safety" makes for a more or less comfortable workplace.

This is the sort of stuff that people really mean by "culture fit" in organizations and especially on intimate teams. You and the person you're responding to probably wouldn't thrive in the same work environments. That's okay, though, because there are a lot of work environments and (among skilled craftspeople with job mobility) those of us who recognize these cultural differences have the insight to seek the right orgs/teams for ourselves.

[JohnMakin]

I had a formative experience fairly early in my career where I had the privilege of working closely with a team geographically located in mainland China - there was a culture shock, but it opened my eyes to this kind of thing and how different engineering cultures can be, even within the same company. I appreciate these differences, but I guess my original comment was mostly expressing what disdain I have for the work environment it sounds like the person who wrote the blog post exists in. It makes me so miserable.

[paulddraper]

There is a right and a wrong way.

First, you have to be right. Saying "we suck at that" if we are good or even just so-so is counterproductive.

Second, you need a foundation of trust. People listen to negative feedback most when delivered with shared interests.

Third, it has to be delivered to the right audience in the right forum. People who are unable to act on it should not be included.

Fourth, it needs to be oriented in a positive direction. It can be negative. But the goal is improvement, not degredation.

Fifth, it has to be clear. Clarity and specificity are effective.

---

These things are nuanced, and without being in the situation, it's effectively impossible to judge what is done the right or the wrong way.

[JohnMakin]

is "we suck at this right now" attacking anyone's character?

[woooooo]

If you're in a toxic environment where people will hear that and start looking for culprits.. then yes, accidentally.

[ryandrake]

I used to work with a founder who would deliver product ideas and our roadmap by saying things like "If we were smart, we would [do X, Y, and Z]." Implying that we (the company in general, or engineering in particular) were not smart now, but need to change our ways to smartness and do X, Y, and Z. I'm not sure how else to interpret these kinds of passive-aggressive jabs.

[atmavatar]

My immediate reaction is to wonder whether he/she is privy to some information I'm not which would make X, Y, and Z a priority, whether he/she is overlooking or ignorant of some other factor which would make them not worth doing, or some combination of the two. As such, I'd likely try to strike up a conversation to see if we could reach a mutual understanding. I'd certainly hate to be working on the wrong thing because I was the one missing something.

I suppose if it happened regularly enough, and it was clear the founder usually spoke from a position of ignorance, I'd eventually disengage and start to dismiss them out of hand, but I can't say I'd ever take it personally.

While the founder could just as easily have said "I think we should do X, Y, and Z" instead, I'm more than a little concerned at how easily someone would shut down over the original statement, which strikes me as mostly harmless.

[swatcoder]

I don't know your old founder and can't speak for them, but generally, that kind of phrasing is just idiomatic, and not meant to be parsed literally.

It's just a colloquial way of saying "I've earnestly thought about X, Y, and Z and think it's the most effective way path forward" or "my intuition is telling me X, Y, Z is the best way to go"

It's a way of expressing that they have a strong sense of how to proceed and the "passive-aggressive jab" that you hear is just an artifact of the idiom not being familiar or natural to you.

[lovich]

Or it’s a shitty boss who’s averse to direct conflict and leaves little hints for their employees to interpret like tea leaves.

Can’t really tell which situation it is without more information but both are common

[ryandrake]

Yea, it's hard to convey the non-verbal cues that came along with the phrase. The way he would say it was just dripping with superiority and sarcasm: "If we were -smaaaarrt- [pause to look at the rest of us peasants]... then we would make this so much better..." The unspoken message was really not hard to interpret: "If I was blessed with SMART engineers rather than a bunch of dummies (and I'm looking at you)..."