"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well

Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by jawnb on Friday April 12, 2013 @05:54PM (#5541307)

As a dude, I experience the latter two scenarios frequently.

To bring the topic to a more constructive angle, does anyone have any techniques that might help in these cases?

My default is either extreme ambivalence, or raging hard ass. It's hard to find the middle ground.

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Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by nailer on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:07PM (#5541372)

I've had very similar situations to the poster. It's incredibly frustrating. This week I tried:

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. We just saw a demo showing the Facebook JS SDK was taking X minutes to load, and then masonry took a second. My understanding is that you want to concentrate on optimising masonry. I certainly agree with you that we can and should make masonry as fast as possible. However it seems to me that resolving the thing that's taking minutes rather than seconds would benefit us more."

In other words:

- restate the situation as you see it

- highlight the areas in which you believe common values exist

- rather than saying 'you're not listening to me' - even when it seems like they're really not listening to you - ask what their opinion of the matter is in light of what you've just stated.

This at least got us further: my colleague thought that resolving FB JS SDK performance wasn't possible. I disagreed and thought that with the massive amount of Facebook apps FB either have to know about the performance degradation or we were specifically doing something to interfere with the JS SDK performance.

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Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by redcircle on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:08PM (#5541375)

(1) Part of it is about choosing whom you work with. Be careful about choosing a job that might have fun work, but is with repressed people. (2) If they are ignoring you in a meeting, there is a good chance that they have their self-image caught up in the conversation, and don't want to back down, and are getting emotional. The emotion behind rationality is humility.

Our interview process tries to filter out people that can't collaborate.

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Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by tod222 on Friday April 12, 2013 @08:57PM (#5542053)

> The emotion behind rationality is humility.

That's beautiful. May I quote you?

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Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by redcircle on Saturday April 13, 2013 @01:57AM (#5542711)

Don't attribute it to me --- it didn't originate with me. It is probably a rephrased concept from Erich Fromm.

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Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well by NewAccnt on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:21PM (#5541435)

This is exactly what it is. I don't understand why people working in technical environments can't put their ego aside. Oh yeah, it's the pay.

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