This is not wrong but it's not always useful. Being more kind in your language when giving help will carry your point across more clearly. Consider a junior engineer stressed out by deadlines -- sure, they should listen to you calmly and fix the problem, but it can be hard when you're not used to the right mindstate. A bit of finesse when choosing your words will go a long way.
This goes the other way too -- ignoring when people use unnecessary language when giving help is for the best, even though in a perfect world they wouldn't. Communication is about being understood, not being fair. Giving a bit from your side to speak on terms the other side is more comfortable on is a great skill to have.
>The word “just” is a signal that you’re not taking their problem seriously.
It wants to use this (flawed imo) reason to make people feel guilty any time they use 'just'.
You don't need to. Just don't use it, and you'll be fine.
(^This is an attempt to provide an illustrative example.)
This is why in some cases it's better to say "Just" instead of trying to hide what you're trying to say in order to maybe be more sensitive without even knowing if that's necessary.
For this situation, I tend to phrase it as "Can we just <x>"? which might be received better than "Just <x>", but "just" is an important word here - I want the other person to understand that I think this ought to be easy. If it's not, I probably want to know why, because that will give me more information about the problem and possible solutions.
If "Can we just <x>" is coming from a trusted colleague who understands the problem space that is exciting because they may have found a shortcut or clever solution.
If "Can we just <x>" is coming from a non-technical client or project manager then I feel nervous because in practice it often indicates that they have underestimated the scope of the problem or we have overestimated the scope of the problem. In some cases it is possible to have enough meetings to level-set expectations but in some cases the "just" seems to be a leading indicator of persistent project tension due to mismatched expectations.
Yes, unfortunately. Along with many other things. Our society has become socially hyper-conscious and that means that anything practical and in some cases observation of reality itself must be sacrificed on the alter of social consciousness.
... yes it is. You can be forced by circumstance to ask for help from an unempathetic jerk and then still feel like they are an unempathetic jerk.
Incidentally, it is nerdy 'hacker' types who are especially guilty of putting down people when asked for help. But not all uses of the word 'just' have that effect. You can usually tell the people who are using it out of consideration versus those who are using it to demean and belittle.
That's not an excuse. If your habit of speaking causes problems, sometimes the problem is you. Language evolves. Societal norms evolve.
I think this advice about the use of "just" applies. You should be liberal in accepting "just" statements from others but conservative in sending "just" statements to others.
> Perhaps his most famous legacy is from RFC760, which includes a robustness principle often called Postel's law: "an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior" (reworded in RFC 1122 as "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send").
The "just" isn't diminishing the problem, it's diminishing the debugging step. And that debugging step is legitimately simple.
There's definite room for improvement. The sentence is better if we either remove "just" or change it to "let's start by just scanning". But it's not the same problem as the overall article is describing.
Usually when it's not a person you're often working with you'll start by a little speech like "I've been asked to come help. I'm not up to speed so I'll ask stupid questions. Please don't mind it, I just want to cover the bases before we can start the hard work".
>You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.”
>This. Will. Not. Help.
It's not fair to ask people for help and then complain about their word usage when trying to help. This is a situation where solicited advice was asked for.
Some people diagnose and troubleshoot by starting simple -- this is especially true if they've been roped into an incident in progress and no one has caught them up. Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Have you power cycled it? Have you done other simple things that humans tend to forget when dealing with a crisis because we aren't perfect?
>Do not, to quote the OED, “represent as a small thing” the difficulty of something you’re asking someone else to do, when you’re not inside their head and don’t understand what they see and feel.
Why don't you turn this around and consider that there may not be any bad intentions from someone when you hear the word 'just'. It's possible it's just a habit of speaking they've developed. You are not in their heads just like they are not in yours.
If you want to work it out like adults, then talk about the phrasing and see if you can come to an agreement. That will help you see if they are being condescending rather than reacting to hearing the word 'just' used.