[ryanackley]

It feels like you're blaming the author for the lazy thinking of someone who might read his opinion and take it as objective fact.

The 7 times 9 analogy doesn't track it all. 7x9 = 63 is an objective fact by definition. His thoughts on remote work are an opinion by definition. If other people decide that what he says is dogmatic, blame it on their own lack of critical thinking skills.

The meta-point of the article is that we should express are thoughts without qualifiers and embellishments to manipulate other people's perceptions of us.

[cgriswald]

His opinion on remote work is an opinion. The reasons he gives for having that opinion are not presented as opinion, but as fact.

[rib3ye]

Is your reasoning for your opinion that he didn’t preface his opinion as “in my opinion”?

His words read the same as any editorial I’ve seen.

[mekoka]

> Remote work eliminates a lot of problems with office work: commutes, inefficient use of real estate, and land value distortion. But software development is better when you breathe the same air as the folks you work with.

It's pretty hard to know where the opinion is.

The whole paragraph presents as though author is relating known symptoms of a disease. We're never really sure which they themself actually experienced. They look more like arguments in support of a cause.

Author is totally entitled to open that door, but then it also becomes fair game to attack the perspective.

[cgriswald]

I am pointing out the fact that he is using factual statements in support of his opinion. "Remote work sucks" is an opinion. "Pair programming is less fruitful" is a statement of fact (regardless of the veracity of the claim).

"It is my opinion 7 x 9 = 63," wouldn't be an opinion in the sense that opinion was being used in the thread. Yes, we can question the veracity of a statement of fact, but that isn't the same sort of opinion as whether something is subjectively good or bad.

[j-bos]

> The meta-point of the article is that we should express are thoughts without qualifiers and embellishments to manipulate other people's perceptions of us.

In my experience this is a common failure point among tech/analytical folks (myself included) which leads to their words and actions being genrally misconstrued and effectively misunderstood by the larger segement of the population which is rarely able or disposed to handling communications without embellishments.

[Ar-Curunir]

“Technical” people are also people, and that doesn’t exclude them from communicating like reasonable adults.

Blaming the rest of the world for an inability to communicate effectively is not orienting the blame correctly.

[ryanackley]

You're wrong (IMO) The onus should not be on the communicator to qualify every statement of opinion. This is tedious and unreasonable.

Not prefacing what clearly is an opinion with "IMO" is not a jedi mind trick that makes others believe it as fact.

You're also demonstrating some hypocrisy by presenting your own point of view in the same manner. No qualifiers. You're simply stating something as truth

[saghm]

> The onus should not be on the communicator to qualify every statement of opinion. This is tedious and unreasonable.

I fundamentally disagree with this. In my experience, it's in pretty much in possible for people to perfectly understand intent without a certain amount of effort from both the communicator to express it clearly and the listener to understand it. In practice, I don't think there's a good chance of successful communication for any nuanced topic without good-faith effort from both sides, and I can't differentiate between the language the author used and what I'd expect to hear from someone who reflexively dismisses any disagreement as in bad faith.

[ryanackley]

This argument over the semantics of how to express an opinion feels like a proxy for people who strongly disagree with him on remote work seeking an outlet.

I say that because you (and everyone else who seems upset) clearly understand it's just his opinion. Therefore, why are you offended by his intent? Whatever his intent might be, I think it's irrelevant. It's simply a strongly held opinion.

[saghm]

> I say that because you (and everyone else who seems upset) clearly understand it's just his opinion.

I genuinely don't understand whether it's the case or not, and I've tried to be clear about that. I am not able to tell whether it's their opinion or if they actually feel like they're objective facts; both are plausible to me, and I'm arguing that if they want people to understand which they mean, they need to be more specific. Otherwise, people will draw conclusions that may not align with their intent, and that's something they could avoid if they put more care into how they expressed it.

[didibus]

I think the issue is that the OP wasn’t giving an opinion. They stated things as facts. When you say “x is y” you’re making a truth claim, and people are going to challenge it if it sounds wrong or depends on context.

A lot of folks flip to “it’s just my opinion” only after they get pushback, but if you present something as a fact, it’s fair game to question it.

Like if someone says “apples taste bitter and have no flavor” that reads like a universal claim, so yeah people will argue. If you say “I find apples bitter and lacking flavor” that’s obviously personal taste and nobody is going to demand proof.

Nobody is asking for IMO everywhere. Just don’t frame opinions as facts or the other way around.

[saghm]

My point was that they don't at all phrase it as a personal opinion:

> Remote work eliminates a lot of problems with office work: commutes, inefficient use of real estate, and land value distortion. But software development is better when you breathe the same air as the folks you work with. Even with a camera-on policy, video calls are a low-bandwidth medium. You lose ambient awareness of coworkers’ problems, and asking for help is a bigger burden. Pair programming is less fruitful. Attempts to represent ideas spatially get mutilated by online whiteboard and sticky note software. Even conflict gets worse: it’s easy to form an enemy image of somebody at the end of video call, but difficult to keep that image when you share a room with them and sense their pain.

It's hard for me to read that as anything other than literally describing to me what my the experience of working with me remotely is. OP has never worked with me as far as I'm aware, so they have no idea whether it's accurate or not. Charitably, they might not mean what they're saying literally, but I'm making the argument that for topics that are controversial because of how people have been burned by overly prescriptive policies in the past, the burden is on the speaker to avoid voicing opinions in a careless way that relies on the listener to glean that their intent isn't the same as what people have experienced in the past.

My meta-point is that while people are free to express their opinions without spending effort trying to make their intent understood, but by the same token, people are free to react to those opinions with the exact same level of effort spend trying to understand their intent. In my experience, there are a lot of people who complain that they're treated unfairly for expressing their opinions without realizing that what people are actually reacting to is how they express their opinions, not their opinions themselves. I've personally struggled quite a lot over the years in having trouble understanding how other people will interpret my communications, so I have a lot of sympathy for people who also struggle with this, but if someone doesn't seem to even accept the premise that part of the responsibility for being understood lies with the person in expressing their intent clearly, I lose patience quickly. This is especially true when the "opinions" are expressed in a medium where the person communicating has an unbounded amount of time to work on clarifying their intent before the message actually is received by someone else; I don't expect everyone to be able to perfectly articulate things in real-time when talking in person, but when the opinion is expressed via a blog post, they don't have the same constraints in working on how they convey what they're saying. The fact that the blog post seems to be overall taking the stance that it's better not to try to worry about how someone will interpret their intent makes it feel even more likely they might just not understand what people's actual issue with their communications have been in the past.

It genuinely seems like they might not have been able to distinguish between good-faith misunderstandings and bad-faith intentional misinterpretations of what they've said, and that's unfortunate if it's led them to the conclusion that they just don't need to care about what anyone thinks about their opinions rather than that they need to learn how to better communicate to those who are attempting to respond in good faith and ignore the ones who aren't. A lot of people understand that people can disagree with them in good faith in the abstract but fail to actually recognize when that's happening in the present, and quite a lot of what's expressed in this blog post resembles what I've seen from other people who struggle with that.

[mekoka]

Giving a blank check to anything someone says because they disclaimed that they'll be uttering opinions? That sounds kinda naive. Have you never heard someone include facts to support their opinions? Would you disagree that it's fair game to attack opinions presented as facts? The "problematic" paragraph jumps out because the assertive generalizations moot the earlier agreement that the author is sharing their experience. The proclamations are not subjective they're factual. Perhaps re-read that passage yourself while donning your own critical thinking hat.

[ryanackley]

What are we arguing about? Is it the way he expressed his opinion?

Would you agree that whether something is an opinion or fact is itself objective, for most cases at least?

I ask because nobody is questioning whether or not what he states was actually an opinion. They seem to simply be upset with the manner in which he phrased it. He was simply too sure of himself and people found that offensive. Which seems a little ridiculous don't you think?

[saghm]

I'm arguing that I don't actually know whether the author considers their paragraph about remote work to be opinion or fact. If it's their opinion, I think there's legitimate concern based on it that they've in the past misunderstood reactions to what they perceive as expressing their opinion because they've done a poor job communicating their actual intent based. If they do in fact thing it's objective fact, I think they're just incredibly wrong and unaware of it.