[swiftcoder]

> "be kind to others and assume best intent"

The first time I ran into this was working at Meta, where that was one of the core values (it's since been replaced by "Be direct and respect your colleagues"). It was one of those slogans that sounded fine on paper, but in practice, it was almost exclusively weaponised by powerful folks to excuse their transgressions.

Think someone is sexually harassing you? You are clearly not assuming good intentions on their part. Think they are being racist towards you? Same thing. Think someone is sandbagging your promo for personal reasons? Ditto...

[akerl_]

Your examples sort of underscore why “assume positive intent” matters a lot for how you engage but not a lot about what you engage on.

Working against the feigning surprise thing, if somebody says “oh I don’t know what DNS is”, the problem isn’t with offering to help them understand DNS, it’s leading in without projecting shock/alarm.

If somebody is blocking your promo, assuming positive intent doesn’t mean you just let them do it, it means you escalate by focusing on the root issue (“this person is affecting my promo and they’re not giving me any actionable signal as to why”), not speculating on their intent.