Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?

If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person.

You bemoan that you find almost everyone a "paper shell". And yet you are the one who has restricted your opinion of interesting people and topics with a PhD attached to it. You dismiss pursuits that have spanned all of human history like sports, family, food, religion as "pedestrian". That is indicative of an incredibly shallow and one-dimensional person. If you "peel back" the layers of people and frequently find nothing, that doesn't mean their is nothing there, it means you don't have the perception or ability to find it.

You say "all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge", and those with "reflection" or "relevant context", and yet you seem to have done little to no reflection, have limited relevant context outside your very limited definition of what is interesting, and have little to no self-awareness. You have constructed a fantasy where everyone else is inferior and uninteresting rather than accept the reality that you are likely a dull, uninteresting person who isn't nearly as intelligent as you believe.

I strongly recommend you take a step back, and seriously challenge your current beliefs about your relative intelligence and depth, and ask if the problem is not that others are dull, but rather you are a shallow, uninteresting person without the breadth of interests or life experience to relate to others. Doing so may open up avenues you have closed to yourself previously and help you relate to others more easily.

You know, some people that you would consider simpletons are intensely happy due to their attitude in life and I for one am always interested in those people. People with a drive to explore the world or to make their loved ones happy. To me you sound pretty ignorant if you claim that you can peel back a layer on something as complex as a human mind and then claim to find it empty.

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you will learn the things you never knew you never knew. Though you seem to feel like you know what you don't know. And I'd consider that a somewhat boring attitude, although I'd be interested in how you came to feel that way.

One can find interest, happiness and satisfaction by pursuing passions where scientific knowledge may only be of slight advantage instead of the absolute focus.

Being a Musicians, touching the emotions of a whole crowd in a live performance is such a passion. Deeply complex, hugely important, some would say powerful, but science will only be a minor help if at all.

If you find other people boring ask yourself why you are too boring to see the ways they aren't.

Sure there are people that are ignorant, one-dimensional etc. but speaking from anecdote, i've yet to meet someone that didn't atleast had one experience that was interesting to listen too.

Life is too complex to disregard people that easily.

If you try and peel back a layer of what you think is most important, but they don't care about it at all, you won't find anything worth hearing. There's nothing there, because they've probably never bothered to think about it. So find something that they have bothered to think about, and learn what you can about that.

You do have to avoid judging others, though. If you decide someone's interest has no worth, then it's going to be a boring conversation. It takes either empathy, so you can see the world through other's eyes and understand why they're interested in it, or just having a view that any learning is worthwhile.

Is there an objective ranking of those topics? Are some of them universally better or worse?

Some people think so. This causes them to feel disdain for the others who don't share their topics of interest.

Some people are truly awful conversationalists and it is difficult having a flowing conversation with them. I've found that the topic is not the issue. The person's conversation skills are. At times I feel that I am the bad conversationalist, not knowing anything about the finer details of this year's soccer lineup. If I did not try to be interested and engaged in such a conversation, the other person could plausibly find me dull. I get to decide how to proceed and what experience they get to base their judgement on. When I do so, I do sometimes find myself learning a lot about things I knew nothing about, and sometimes pleasantly engaged in a conversation about a topic I would generally consider to be not interesting to me.

"No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing." These are things important to you, and it is perfectly fine to make this choice on who to associate with. Realise it is a choice, and this does not mean other values are less "important"

2. Realise, that it is impossible for each person to have complete knowledge. We are limited in what we can know and do. Therefore knowledge is distributed. If knowledge is distributed, every single person could have some gift to provide the world (and you) based on their own unique circumstance and history.

The question then becomes: are you paying attention? and is it relevant?

"The use of knowledge in society" written in 1945, makes a compelling case for the distribution of knowledge in society:

https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html

It helps with making friends, negotiating, having sex, taking care of your health and overall improves the feeling of well-being. After all, if you perceive the world through mostly logic, it's easy to become cynical or be overwhelmed.

Meditation and psychedelics can help learning that if it's something you wish to invest in. Psychoanalysis as well. They all have different time frames, costs and shapes, so it's worth testing all of them. From several sources, given the huge difference in nature and quality of the providers.

It's a long process anyway, but 10 years in, I found it worth it for myself.

Real life is intensely boring. It is constant grind for everyone, getting food, cleaning, takes most of their time.

I just had to accept it, as it is. Because most people are struggling with getting their life running, not with "boundaries of human knowledge". Then I started accepting my own shortcomings, there is much more daily easy problems to be solved here and now.

Then when you reflect on it, calling it all distasteful is just wrong on so many levels, because when you try to chase "boundaries of human knowledge" you fail at basic understanding of fellow humans.

I feel that way too a lot of the time. When I was younger I was incredibly misanthropic in many aspects of my thinking, and hell ... even though I am less so as I age, there’s a certain realistic cynicism about human motivation that I’ve gained access to that means I actually have a worse picture of people than I did 20 years ago.

All I can say is, first have some empathy for yourself. Stuff is boring. People kinda suck. That realization is not profound and can’t be just willed away.

Second, there may be some aspects of yourself you haven’t developed yet, and if you really engage in developing your own wider potential, you will find commonality with far more people.

No one, no matter how smart, is pure intellect. Wishing all your interactions with people would happen on that level is a bad framework for enjoying people and for a rich human life.

I can think of any number of people who when I first met them I felt I had nothing in common with them, and really just didn’t like them, who became important figures in my life. Seriously.

I think high IQ low IQ or whatever ... any kind of nuerodivergence makes it more of a challenge to relate and empathize with people.

It’s possible to find richness in interaction. People are much less boring than you might think, when you learn how to conduct yourself in such a way that they feel safe talking to you frankly about their experience, their dreams, their passions. People can be ridiculously insightful when you least expect it.

Your challenge is to make people want to talk to you in a real way.

Start by removing the assumption that you are anywhere near as correct or as profound as you quite reasonably think you are. This self picture is an illusion. I don’t care who you are, it is an illusion.

I used to think humility and gratitude were just dumb concepts. You need humility. Not to “bring you down to other people’s level” but to enable psychological health and functioning, and ultimately happiness and connection and to become a more complete person.

I'd also recommend trying to respect that people may disagree with you on what is important. It is quite possible for someone to have examined their life as much as you expect, and have decided that they like religion and consumerism and other things that you dislike. People are different. That doesn't make them less valid as human beings.

You also may want to think about whether people are hiding their true selves from you. It is clear that you judge people for what they tell you. Did it ever occur to you that you may have a reputation for doing that? People may actively avoid opening up to you because of your own attitudes and behaviors. It may be known that conversations with you become mini-trials of their personal values. There is far more depth to most people than they are willing to show to their co-workers, and if you are known for disrespecting that, people will hide their true selves from you.

There is overlap between PhD-level conversations and all of these topics. Off the cuff, if someone talks about kids, you can ask about genetics vs. nurture, what sorts of behaviours the parents have seen at what ages/genders, etc. There's a lot of detailed chemistry in wine making and wine pairing. Sports involve complex game theory. Religion has complex social dynamics and interplay with morality and neurology, etc.

The point being, if you can't find overlap with your interests in any conversation topic, you either need to work on your imagination, or you need to let go of the preconception that there are boring topics with no common ground, which inherently limits your engagement in a conversation.

>Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.

Unfortunately in my experience that's mostly true. I'm no bastion of social virtue but I try to give most people a chance.

Usually I'm disappointed but every now and then I get a nice surprise. I've met some people with unique outlooks on life and sometimes that's really refreshing.

I work with a lot of very intelligent people. Most of those are in a different field of expertise than myself, but I find intelligence and a sense of humour really go together.

Try empathy. These are humans too. They have their reasons for living their 'distasteful' lives.

I think it's you who's only got one note on their tune, not everyone around you.

If, in traffic, everybody is honking at you, do you think all of them are bad drivers, or could it be you?

On passive consumerism, unexamined life... I'd suggest trying to understand who it is you're talking to. Sometimes that will be a fair judgement, othertimes you'll find that people are trying their best to earn for their families, look after others and simply want some luxury to unwind before getting back to whatever takes most of their waking hours. However without knowing who you're talking to thats all speculation.

On a practical level, I would suggest you should surround yourself with like minded people. Either work in academia or aim for companies with a higher bar to enter, that should help.

I was a bit like that. Things have happened in my life that made me unable to continue being happy only looking life in one way.

Luckily, I developed hobbies and extra activities that allowed me see how many skills are out there that I can develop and learn from people by just watching and having those simple interactions.

I still like philosophical debates but I find also amazing that some people can influence other people just with smiles and genuine happiness.

Life can be broad too.

Most people have something interesting to say, if they don't share it with you it's either because they're not comfortable with you or not comfortable sharing it in that place. Bob from Accounting isn't going to talk to you about his intricate love of Georgian architecture at the work BBQ.

I used to have a similar attitude to yourself. I have a lot of niche interests that most people I come into contact with have little interest in. I learned that having an interest in building relationships with people not built on interests has a vast amount of value that is not immediately obvious if you are emotionally distant, on the autistic spectrum, ADD or something similar. It wasn't until I purposely and thoughtfully corrected for it in day to day life did I appreciate these other kinds of values that I did not find intuitive to value before.

If you only feign interest, then you are not getting to know someone as they can tell you are not genuinely interested and they will not peel back any layers for you. The fact that the average person doesn't ponder subjects you consider deep does not make them shallow.

Have you ever really tasted wine, with others? tried to figure out the different components? I had a friend tell me a few days ago that grape tannins and oak tannins are felt in different parts of the mouth (tongue vs cheeks); I'll have to check into this. I know for a fact that I taste wine differently than my husband -- we taste sweetness differently and bitterness differently. Why is that? Can it be quantified? What are the dimensions along which you'd want to get subjective ratings if you wanted to map peoples' tastes? We could have a party and taste a bunch of wines and rate them and then do a singular value decomposition to find similarity between different tasters and between different wines; maybe then we could form a hypothesis, especially if we had some chemical data...

Listen, if you want to get nerdy, you can make anything nerdy. Kids = child development, Chomsky's hypotheses about syntax, the fact that babies' noses are designed to get squashed in when they fall on their faces and then designed to pop out (if your kid's nose doesn't pop out you can gently pull it into shape). Evolution, the microbiome, whatever. Gardening -> mycorrhizae, the game theory or economics of mycorrhizae, pollinators, seed banking, GMOs, edible plants, what is a weed. And there is so much in recent science that is bearing out what "uneducated" but knowledgeable practitioners have been saying for years. Maybe it would help to consider your "boring people" as practitioners of arts that you have not been educated in. Or you can work backward from their actions and thoughts to uncover the assumptions by which they construct their worldview, and then put it into a larger geopolitical context.

Or maybe you're just burned out and tired, and need to recover. Your curiosity antennae are turned off.

Good luck.

I see every interaction with someone else as an opportunity to peer into another life. A life I didn't live. A path I didn't take. Even if that path feels to you completely pedestrian, there is still a whole life there that you didn't live.

Even if they haven't examined or reflected on their life, you can (with respect, and perhaps best silently to yourself :-) ).

You can dive pretty deep into kids: educational, behavioral, development etc...

You can dive pretty deep into wine: flavors, style, type, region, economics, science.

You can dive pretty deep into religion, especially if you are interested in the "examined" life. A bunch of philosophers did this, one famous example is Nietzsche.

Make it a challenge to find out one interesting thing about every new person you meet.

I find it interesting that you seem to contrast religiosity with your definition of intelligence. In my experience, the two are not inversely correlated.

Disclaimer: I have a PhD in computer science and I am a practicing Christian, so I'm clearly biased here :)

You really can't find anything in common with someone that you find interesting to talk about?

When I talk to people like this, I hold back. They get the first layer; everyone does. I can sense the attitude and I give them nothing after that.

It is quite possible that is why you see nothing. Nobody wants to show you more.

If not, do that first.

You’re no different from everybody else.

Humor, Modesty and Compassion!

I am a member of Mensa and read ca. 2000 books in the last 30 years. Sometimes I think just like you, although I know it is wrong (and I would never talk about it).

I often meet people who say things like "I find that anyone who isn't a PhD ... might as well be a paper shell." are too shallow and stupid for my taste, and I am one of them. Overconfident, not nearly as clever as they think they are, boring idiots, arrogant. They just think they know, but actually don't know shit about quantum mechanics, general relativity, cohomology, lisp or russian novels and Debussy.

Conclusion: Thinking that other people are stupid, shallow and boring is only allowed if you are a genius - and you aren't. Nobody is. A good life has kids, sports, wine, sex and vodka in it :-)

I prescribe 25 short stories by Chekov and falling in love immediately.

Yikes.

But since we're already here, what I think worked for me (40y old and it's gotten better with age): be yourself. Yep, that old shit. But the why and how is more important. Being 100% sincere with yourself and others will free you of tedious interactions with people who enjoy things you don't. And when you exaggerate in the PhD direction (because trust me, you do) the sincerity will cause feedback loops that will get the interaction to an equilibrium much faster than if any or both parties are pretending.

Discovering what's interesting about someone is an art. The totality of people you will meet have a much wider variety of experience than you could ever accumulate on your own. When I meet someone new, the first thing I try to find out is what it is they have done that I have not, and then I ask them about that. Often, I learn something new and interesting.

In general, people will never realize on their own what you'll find interesting about them, so you have to seek it out actively.

You need to learn how to entertain yourself and start seeing more complexity.

I feel more and more like Larry David in Curb every day.

Alan Kay describes and analyses why the majority of humanity act like you describe in many of his lectures. He answers and explains most of your points. Its hard to recommend these talks, the good bits are spread around 50 lectures. I'll be happy to discuss with you which bits you'll like. A first suggestion is [1][2].

>I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.

I love to talk to such people also, so I search for them in the (scientific) crowd and befriend them so we can have those interesting conversations. Please contact me (morphle @ ziggo dot nl) and lets find out if we can have such a meaningful and satisfying exchange.

[1] http://esug.org/data/Videos/Alan%20Kay/StateFarm-Kay-2009-10... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI

I'd like you to consider that something in your manner of "peeling back" is causing people to block you out

If I get the impression someone has pre-judged me or is generally disagreeable, I don't feed the bear. I just don't care what they think and if looking dumb gets me out of that conversation quickly that is fine by me.

Or alternately, perhaps there is some sense in which that "not interesting" reflects a useful metric, and perhaps some folks might then find it useful to apply to one's self? ;) And such application might be mutual, or transient, or topical, or situational, or ... any of the many things that throttle the attention and empathy of people and groups, unavoidably or otherwise.

I think I know what you mean since I prefer to talk to friends who are genuinely interested in programming and not just a job. Colleagues who are just here for the job I still talk to them but with other topics which I usually learn from as well - as long as you are willing to listen despite what you may think of them.

"why did you find yourself interested in wine?" "what was it like having kids?"

etc. learning to ask very open-ended questions is really helpful here. you don't need to have knowledge of their interests to share in their interests.

I think you may get more out of life with a more open mindset. Things may surprise you. That being said, you value what you value, we don’t have to like it or agree with it.

https://www.holstee.com/blogs/reflections/being-interested-i...

Try to explore a person like you’d explore another world. Consider that this person had just as much time as you in the day, and they filled it up with other stuff. Why did they choose to focus on X, what do they find so appealing about X, what nuances or locations do you not know but they have intimately experienced?

Adult people, after all, did a lot in their life. Why not get new perspectives?

It also seems you don’t do a lot of physical activity, sports, or developing yourself in that way. You may motivate yourself by looking up to people in an area you truly would like to improve in.

“We are all idiots, just on different subjects” - who was that?

In addition, if you haven't found what makes someone interesting or can't conceive of it, you haven't looked past the outermost level. Once I started sitting down with people, setting my ego aside, and listening to what they're interested in, I was way happier and realized that the small world I placed myself in—this artificial bubble of grandeur—was kind of depressing, and pure intellectual pursuits alone aren't enough to live a fullfilling life. You have to find balance.

I trade long diatribes about urban development with meandering tales from the theater industry or discover the background I didn't know existed in the colleage that I've been working with. I'll concede that in a vast, vast minority of cases I can't find a thread to go deeper on. It's usually because they've put up a wall for some reason or another, or their current set of pursuits or passions or romances is just pretty vanilla, and that's okay. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but you gotta explore the human connection. If I didn't take this approach, I would have written off everyone in my life, including one specific developer I know who had a very similar attitude. Through time, I found the value in those people and it's super rewarding to me that they remember my name after a year being gone from a relatively new city. We're just people passing through this world, and everyone has something different and interesting about them... if you let your gaurd down.

Of course all others are "below you" but you know what?

THIS is your blind spot (let this be told to you by people who understand humans much better than you ever will). In science I've seen a lot guys who think like this and the most of them struggle hard to organize their own life.

If you'd be less arrogant you'd see how interesting and fun live can be and how people you now consider "waste of oxygen" might surprise you again and again with their skills and points of view.

I deeply wish that you can overcome this and be happy in your life some day.

If I'm not trying to live up to that standard, at least in how I treat others, or if I'm unable to learn a lesson about peoples potential from that, then I am probably not seeing the bigger picture.

Edit: I find people generally interesting so it's easier for me to find specific people interesting. If you dig a layer deeper and try to figure out why people have that religiosity or consumerism it can be fascinating.

Next time you find someone boring, try to understand what made them this way. And I swear the answers is more complex than "it's capitalism/neoliberalism/consumerism/religion/whateverisyourfavoriteevil, stupid!"

There has to be something even if it is a primal behavior motivated by survival and reproduction.

Anyway, the vast majority of people care about something. Maybe you can sympathize with that if not with their lack of reflection, imagination, and eloquence.

For example : In my team of 6, I am the only one who isn’t married and who doesn’t have kids. The other people almost always talk about their kids, show photos, brag about their achievements - after a while, fatigue sets in. Maybe because I can’t relate? I don’t know.

Wow, so wasting years and years of your life studying texts and churning out reworded content about those texts, instead of having life experiences makes someone more interesting to you?

I always view meeting new people as opportunities to think outside of my own worldview.

One doesn't have to accept or agree to other viewpoints.

Simple. You don't. People like frauds. Even though they fall victims over and over again, they just can't help but like them. You are doing nothing wrong in being what they like you to be.

getting along with people at work generally entails (for everyone) to laugh at jokes you don't find funny, and be ok with behaviours you wouldn't accept from 'friends'. That's life, learning to live with people daily. it's one of the most valuable things you can learn, to get along with people even if you don't like them or have no interest in them.

Just remember being nice and helpful doesn't mean you need to be someone's friend. you can be nice and helpful to everyone you meet and still dislike them or find them uninteresting. it's just making life easier / causing less friction daily.

Look into a mirror, and imagine that the person in the mirror is a different person. Try to discern how that other person feels about looking at and talking to you.

Now imagine that you are the reflection, and that you actually do not exist when the real person is not looking into the mirror. What could you do for your person to keep them looking into your mirror longer, and therefore allow you to exist longer?

Once you have mastered that perspective shift, remove the mirror, and instead stand in front of another person. Imagine that you are their reflection, and they are yours. What would it take for the person and person-reflection that you both are together to be happier in that moment?

There are no NPCs in real life. Everyone wants to believe that their existence has value, even when all they ever do is useless, dull, pedestrian things all day and all night. Maybe they are that way from lack of intelligence or ability. Maybe they once had hopes and dreams of usefulness that were ground down and rounded off by the endless tides of banality and mediocrity, until everything they once wanted to be, or to do, is now beyond their reach. Maybe they discovered that intellectualism was a false promise, and that those who pursued it became lost in self-delusion, believing themselves to be better and more important than others, when in reality they were all just walking slabs of meat that hadn't died yet, just like everyone else.

When someone gazes into the void, they feel that fear--the fear that nothing really matters, that everyone you have ever known or loved or heard about will die, and everything everyone has ever done will be forgotten and lost to entropy. The one thing that salves it for the moment just may be that knowledge that someone out there knows your story, today. If you can submerge your ego, for just a moment, to stand and listen to someone's boring-ass story about some trivial part of their stupid life, without showing on your face or with body language that it is excruciatingly dull, then that person will no longer be empty. You will have put a small reflection of them inside of you, and that might make them happy for a bit. You won't advance the boundaries of human knowledge, but you will make humanity a tiny bit more connected and eusocial.

Is that important? No. Not at all. Everyone you have ever known or loved or heard about will die, and everything everyone has ever done will be forgotten and lost to entropy. Billions of people have lived, died, rotted, and disintegrated, with little more left of them now than a damaged strand of DNA in a fragment of a tooth. And so will you. Any illusion you may have that you, or the things you do, are greater or more important than other people is just preventing you from connecting with those you see as lesser. All that crap you cannot stand in other people--their irrational beliefs and practices--may be their attempt to avoid even glancing at the screaming black maw of nihilism, so it doesn't eat away all their sanity and motivation. They might only be doing it because no one cares to know their story, today. And if you wish to be seen as important, isn't that just your desire to put a tiny reflection of yourself in as many other people as possible?

I put up with people talking about kids and gods and sportsball and food, not because it is important to me, but because it is apparently important to them. I can stand between them and the void, because I'm not scared of it any more. I can help people pretend that their life has meaning, and I don't need to pretend that mine has more meaning than theirs--because zero equals zero. If you only have to peel back one layer to find the empty, is that better than peeling back two, or five, or ten? Is the value of a person in the number of hollow shells they have around their nothing at all? I personally don't need to be considered important or remembered any more. And that makes me boring, because I generally don't talk about myself, or my niche interests, unless someone asks. Nobody ever asks. So instead, I put on a distracting performance, with the existential black hole of the inevitability of utter annihilation by time and entropy as my backdrop.

Get over yourself. You are as individually important as a raindrop in a hurricane. Take the opportunity to dance in the wind before falling back into the ocean.

When life itself has no inherent meaning, what you choose to do anyway becomes performance art.

Your self-examination hasn't yet led you to realize this ain't 'all you really want'?

You're probably projecting. All your hyper-specific interests are intensely boring to ordinary people, so you retaliate by declaring them boring. It maintains your self-image.

People aren't boring, they're extremely interesting creatures that can be studied endlessly. Unlike the other great apes, you can even interact with them with human speech! So many possibilities, yet you're sitting here wasting it all.

You'd probably counter this by saying that looking at people this way is somehow immoral. I'm not going to argue with that, it's a useless argument to have.

> Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.

You don't have to feign interest, just let them talk about themselves and stay polite until you get what you want, which is either that the moment of conversation has passed, or something about them (or people in general) that is interesting. Either way, you're not going to be stuck in the conversation forever.

Childhood behavior in particular is an interesting topic, as is the decision to have (or not have) children. I know, you're not going to have children, but you have a rationale for that. What's that rationale? It's probably something highly misanthropic, outside the overton window of the ordinary person. Isn't it fun to see people's reaction to that? Well, perhaps not the best thing to do at work, but fun nonetheless.

> I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.

Really? That's what you want to talk about over a coffee break? Come on...

> Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.

Yeah, maybe don't be such a judgemental person. You clearly haven't examined yourself enough to recognize that this is a ridiculous attitude. You need to realize that this is a defense mechanism of your brain to save your fragile little ego from getting hurt. The flip side is that if you're overly judgemental, you'll be overly judgemental regarding yourself, as you clearly are.

> How do people put up with it?

Routine.

Everyone is complex. There are aspects we're comfortable with and others we are not. So you want to improve the latter and stick with the former as long as they work for you, in a sense they help you achieve what you aim for.

Some aspects of yourself aren't really working in some environments so you would just be an idiot to display them while failing to get the results in life you really want to.

I hate it when people hold something against someone forever, even though they've already admitted fault. If they get punished even if they repent, there's no incentive to ever repent again. They might as well just keep doing bad things because there's no difference for them.

pushing to production at 5pm on a friday is not a reasonable screwup, and I absolutely will let you know if get called in to fix something that should have waited until Monday.

1. Avoiding acknowledging doubts or weaknesses in the position you're arguing for.

2. Allowing a decision to be finalised when you remain unconvinced.

These two behaviours have different outcomes if you take 'outcome' to mean 'who won the debate'. But they're both flawed and they both come from underconfidence.

Confident engineers care about finding the best consensus. They openly entertain doubts in their own position (and happily change their position in front of others), and they also persist with the discussion until they're genuinely satisfied with whatever consensus is reached.

These days I temper my "I'm not certain so we should investigate this" with "but you're not certain either so you're not getting out of investigating it and admitting you're wrong if it comes to that."

You think this or that project is not solving the right problem? Speak up. You think some key result should be achievable with fewer people and sooner than what was planned? Speak up.

I learned this recently, sharing feedback that I was concerned would sound harsh, only to fall on receptive and understanding ears. If anything I should have spoken up sooner/more often!

Your team/startup/etc. will thank you.

What is your goal? Is your goal to be right, or is your goal to feel right? Because those are not the same things at all. When we get attached to our ideas and emotional, it's because we believed we were right, and we don't want to give up that feeling.

But if our goal is to actually be right, then it's super easy to recognize when you got it wrong and move forward.

It also helps to stop thinking of things as 'correct' or not, and look at them as a spectrum of 'less wrong' to 'more wrong'. If you're constantly working your way towards being less wrong, then it becomes really easy to abandon ideas that have outgrown their usefulness.

Get it? This is the whole trick.