Instead, it was an entire article that not once acknowledged that you could be wrong, nor what it looks like when you do acknowledge it. It detailed about how, actually, you're not usually wrong.
This article appears to underscore the accusation.
When I’m wrong I just say “oh you’re right, good point” and move on. It’s very easy to do.
Sadly I don't have much to share in the way of insight.
Have you considered that being comfortable admitting fault is a skill which some people never learned while growing up, regardless of gender? And can you imagine a world where men do the same thing, but you don't gripe about it because you're not in a relationship with them?
And, tbf, "the wife is never wrong" encodes some wisdom, same as does the saying "Happy wife means happy life" or, from White Men Can't Jump, "Always listen to the woman".
Let's take the React checkout example that you gave. Your self-illusion is that you were engaged in holistic thinking. And, in fact, you couldn't even see the whole for the first irrelevant detail that caught your attention. This is the opposite of holistic thinking!
First, it is not your job to make that kind of technology decision. You can offer advice, but it is your manager's job. Your job is to make sure that your manager is well-informed. You failed at that job.
If you believe otherwise, then you're wrong. You probably believe you are better equipped to make that decision than your manager. You may well be right about that. (Though, as a rule, we tend to think that we are smarter than we are, and our managers are stupider than they are. But that is a side point.) But you are still wrong about the important point. Which is that it is still your manager's responsibility to make that decision.
You wanted to frame the entire conversation around, "Does this checkout form have a concrete problem that needs fixing?" Your manager's thinking is going to be about very different looking questions. Such as:
- Will switching to React make hiring and training future developers easier?
- Do my existing programmers have the necessary skills to test this technology out?
- Will this technology choice make future projects faster to develop? (For example, do we get wins from a better toolchain, etc.)
- Will this be an interesting project that helps me keep existing employees motivated?
- Are the other claimed wins in the blog post actually going to work out that way?
Your manager needs to think about these things. You may dismiss them as bullshit, but they are not. Companies live and die on such considerations.
Your manager learned absolutely nothing about these things. Your manager may have come away with the impression that you have no idea if there is a problem with the checkout page. But by misunderstanding your role and responsibility, you failed to carry out your actual responsibility within the team. And wound up so upset about it that you wrote a blog post with a strong undertone of, "Here is the kind of stupid I have to deal with at work."
And that AGAIN puts you in the wrong. It literally takes under a minute to go from your blog to your name to where you work. Any coworker who recognizes the blog now knows you're unhappy. Which poisons your work atmosphere. And if this comes to your manager's attention, your manager has to now deal with the fallout from THAT.
Yes, yes. You consider it bullshit. But it is bullshit that can easily get you fired. For good cause. And the fact that you do this AGAIN puts you in the wrong. And your considering it bullshit DOESN'T STOP YOU FROM BEING WRONG. It just means you won't admit it was a mistake.
Err, no: "A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React [...]"
> You wanted to frame the entire conversation around, "Does this checkout form have a concrete problem that needs fixing?" Your manager's thinking is going to be about very different looking questions.
This is literally their first question: "Is our checkout page not performing well?". The manager should have simply said "the problem is not performance, but X" instead of assuming that the developer is rejecting their idea.
> You may dismiss them as bullshit, but they are not.
It is interesting that you, like the manager, assume that they dismissed the idea.
> And that AGAIN puts you in the wrong.
I disagree. If the manager is not able to clarify the specifics of their question (remember, it was a question of whether they should do X) they are in the wrong.
This in no way contradicts what I said. This is a normal way of asking for opinions on a decision that needs to be made. And organizationally the decision IS the manager's. In practice a wise manager will take (and usually follow) advice from their developers. But still it is the manager's call.
> This is literally their first question: "Is our checkout page not performing well?". The manager should have simply said "the problem is not performance, but X" instead of assuming that the developer is rejecting their idea.
Based on my personal experience of people on the spectrum, I doubt that things happened as described. My best guess is that it was exactly what dusted described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32410505.
Namely, early in the conversation, the person on the spectrum got caught up on some irrelevant point. That they couldn't let go of. Which they kept going back to explain how right they were. Eventually the conversation got derailed having gotten no further. And, rather than dropping it, the person went on the internet to explain to the whole world how right they were.
I've been part of such conversations. (Thankfully minus the whole world bit.) The first few times you can hope that a simple clarification will get the conversation back on track. After a while you learn otherwise.
As a parent, what I've found most useful is to set a rule that the person on the spectrum is not allowed to argue that they are right. Ever. Even attempting to make the argument gets shut down. If breaks are needed to finish the conversation, then OK. This resulted in a lot less arguments, and a lot more moments of, "Oh...."
> It is interesting that you, like the manager, assume that they dismissed the idea.
No. I was doing something rather different.
The thread to this point brought up the importance of learning how to play social games. With the poster saying that they had learned to do so, were good at it, and didn't bother any more.
My experience of people on the spectrum says that the poster didn't learn nearly as much about social rules as they think, and they discount the impact more than they should. Since the factors that I described did not occur to the poster, and several focused on social rules, there is a good chance that they seem like BS.
> I disagree. If the manager is not able to clarify the specifics of their question (remember, it was a question of whether they should do X) they are in the wrong.
It takes 2 to communicate. There clearly was a communication failure here. While that failure could be the manager's fault, the odds really are in favor of it being the fault of the person with a condition that makes communication hard (autism), rather than the person whose got promoted into a job that is all about communication skills (the manager).
And yes, it really sucks for autistic people that a failure to communicate by default gets blamed on them. What sucks even harder is that it is true. Which is why it is doubly important for them to work on their communication skills.
And guess what simple change most improves communication skills for most people on the spectrum?
Hopefully you figured it out. It is to stop arguing that they are right. Ever. Not because they are usually wrong. But because they tend to wind up arguing that they are right when they are missing something basic, and the fact that they are arguing makes it impossible to figure out what they are missing.
This is surprisingly hard advice to take. And it is harder for people on the spectrum than neurotypical people. But it makes a huge difference.
> The problem is that you come across as ...
> And the fact that you do this AGAIN ...
> My experience of people on the spectrum says that the poster ...
I do not know precisely when, but it seems that at some point you started ranting to your child.
However there is a long path from first getting the idea of a rewrite to actually undertaking it. And the conversation in question happened because the manager had just read an article about such a rewrite, so it was very early in that journey.
> - Will this technology choice make future projects faster to develop? (For example, do we get wins from a better toolchain, etc.)
> - Will this be an interesting project that helps me keep existing employees motivated?
> - Are the other claimed wins in the blog post actually going to work out that way?
But... These are (or can be framed as) concrete problems.
> - Do my existing programmers have the necessary skills to test this technology out?
If you can't produce a single concrete reason why to try a new framework, why should I discuss about testing it?
(this as someone who may be on the spectrum and for whom the original article hit a bit too close..)
As for not producing a single concrete reason to try the new framework, there is no reason to believe that the manager didn't. According to the article the manager had just read a blog post on it, that caught the manager's attention enough to spark a conversation. SURELY there was SOMETHING in that article about why it might be a good idea to try React?
We aren't told what points were made, likely because they seemed irrelevant. But I'd bet good money that some were made.
The second question is quite literally just a "Have you experience with React?" which doesn't require additional questions for clarification. The manager would be expecting a "yes/no, but ..." type of answer. Honestly your questions would be asked in a meeting with as many developers and even non developers as possible to save time, not in a one to one conversation.
Honestly this whole topic is way too similar to the Dilbert comic where Dilber asks his boss what colour he wants his database in, to test whether he understands what a database is.
If (for example) that one struggling colleague is shining in front of a superior and you are the guy who rains on his parade by nitpicking some detail he said, you might be technically right, but you end up being perceived as an asshole because you acted like one.
If if that example you strictly need to be right for some reason, you could also just talk to the guy afterwards etc.
And this is what all of it essentially boils down to: It is good to be right, as long as the way you communicate it is adequate for the situation.
If people have a low effort chit chat and don't want to go too deep into things, it might not be wise to get all excited and monologoue about how everything they know is wrong. If someone shows you something they have been working on for weeks, maybe it is wiser to aknowledge the good things first, before going into the bad things.
Generally it is better to have others discover facts themselves than spitting them out in front of them. Sure, if the boat is literally sinking and they claim punching more holes will help, this might be a good moment for a statement without nuance — but such statements have their time and place and should not be used everywhere.
I very much relate.. I've been so bitter as to keep a small list of "told you so's" that I'd update when my rejected ideas were finally proven to be the better path (though it may have been months or even years after the fact (most agonizing when someone else suggested exactly the same thing, but explained it in other terms,focusing on things I didn't find central to the point).
In the end I deleted the file. Some of the "told you so's" were petty things anyway, and.. Now I try and take it as part of my responsibility to work a bit harder at finding arguments against my point of view, as well as work a bit more politically to get it through when I'm ready to put my head on the line that I'm right and everyone else are wrong.
P.S. I'm closing in on the big 4-o and I'm still working on myself, still trying to learn politics, how to talk with nontechnical superiors and how to accept that sometimes, we go with the wrong solution because someone else tells so.
In a way, it's a way to do a team-wide "we told us so, so what now?"
I like to akin your choice as choosing to assume the role of seeker. its lonely, its challenging, and everyone else seems to not care to play THAT game (some may say is a metaphor for divinity). But the reward is YOU WIN THE GAME. significantly better payout.
I share the metaphor to say that A) I understand you, B) I share your feelings and choice on the matter of identifying and managing Real Politik and C) congratulate you for identifying your true north star and having the strength to pursue in in spite of it not being rhe standard for others.
One can have asperger's and still be nice to people. These things are not mutually exclusive. I see too many people who find it convenient to be a toxic, rude bully, and don't know that they are, and use their condition as an excuse to be a jerk.
From my experience, it's usually not a problem to be pretty forward with people on the spectrum, if you are meaning well. My wife told me there is absolutely no problem with telling me to stop going on about a topic bluntly, and it is something I quite often do with my friends too. Same for pointing out that a certain way of phrasing something didn't come across well, in fact I really appreciate receiving these pieces of advice. What hurts is the "NT" way of communicating these things, hoping that I'd catch up on them. I don't.
> In 2013, the DSM-5 replaced Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders with the umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
I did take a few autism tests here and there, but always thought "oh they're just meant to make you feel special when you score high, that doesn't mean anything. plus i make good friends everywhere I go". When I told my wife she was like "who thinks that scoring high on an autism test is something people want", and we both took some of these tests. On one of the more widespread one (https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/ ), I scored 43, while she scored something like 12. My mind was absolutely blown. I started reading a few books and joining a few autism communities, and it might sound trite, but it's the first time in my life that I felt like I joined "my" community. So many of the stories and anecdotes I would read were like "finally I read something I can relate to".
I am looking for an official diagnosis (not simple) without too much effort, because I find most of the value in now being able to articulate so many of the things that puzzle me, or the conflicts I might have with my wife, or behaviours of mine, and mostly not being ashamed anymore. It's been extremely liberating, and it provides me with better words and verbs to tackle difficult situations.
I have similar memories of my 20s trying to learn how to behave in a social setting. But I also remember things clicking at some point and that part of the world stopped requiring so much effort.
Thank you for sharing. I hope you're able to get your diagnosis.
That said, I have a coach that helps me with this, and I work on my writing a lot. I am currently at a job where I never run into this particular problem, yet I have thorny discussions with lots of "disagreements" all the time. This really helped me understand that it's not just me.
I didn’t give much information about my life, but I am pretty adept at playing all these games. So much so that I thought there was no way I could be autistic because of how many friends and business relationships I had. Until it hit me that I spent my 20ies doing what you suggest, which is studying the heck out of these things.
But it stops at engineering, where I try to be very open-minded and learn as much as I can. I have to readily accept I am wrong on most of my assumptions because I just couldn’t be a good engineer otherwise. I can be perfectly suave and agreeable discussing anything else. That means I probably know how to play the “acquiesce when you should” game quite well.
But I’m at work because I am blessed to have a job where I get to do what I care about: good engineering. I deliver great value when people understand my way of thinking, and thankfully I have plenty of colleagues that get it.