8 ms·

Don't be afraid to be wrong

171 points by shelika 3y ago

barrysteve 3y ago
Being wrong is often directionless and flat, with excessively repetitive work. Mining people for concepts is an incredibly slow way to progress. Being right often requires order of magnitude less time. Nobody notices.
- dylan604 3y ago
  "I just found 999 ways to not make a lightbulb." SpaceX blowing up rockets but still being considered a successful launch test. Many times in the world, you have to be wrong enough times to know that the suspected correct answer truly is correct. To call that directionless and flat is just naive on a very large scale. There are times that some people can get to the correct answer faster, and it can be extremely frustrating to have the feeling of being held back or slowed down for everyone else to catch up. That's an ego problem that person needs to contend with and not a fault of everyone else.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    The problem is the terms “wrong” or “right”. If I tell everyone confidently that https is all you need for a secure, privacy focused site then that is a different kind of wrong to companies that are set up to do experiments.
  - barrysteve 3y ago
    Being wrong didn't give you the knowledge that your solution was correct. Success/victory/accomplishment did. It's not naive, it's a low level point. Wrong is often directionless, and pivots and re-maps out a new solution when arbitrary failure arrives. Right has cropped out the useless pathways, and is stuck between security and looking into the future. The direction of work is non-negotiable. Wrong is often structured like a flat unlayered map where you fill it out with successes and failures. Right, often has subjective approval of a layered interpretation, eliminating the need for trial and error. The thing is, when things go right, it's rapid and easy and it's just business as usual. No one notices. People crave wrong.
robswc 3y ago
When you're in a meeting where everyone has gotten past the fear of being wrong, its a whole different dynamic and breath of fresh air. Suddenly the complexity melts away and people admit asking a professional is better than BSing a solution.
- vaylian 3y ago
  I wonder to which extent this fear can be attributed to the school system which literally penalizes students for being wrong.
  - stringtoint 3y ago
    I'm sure this is a part of why this fear exists. Middle Eastern countries are especially harsh in that sense imo: you're afraid of making mistakes or making your family "look bad"™.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Generally, the cultures that place high value on "preserving face", struggle with the fear of being proven wrong.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    As opposed to the workplace, where nobody is ever penalized for being wrong? The reality is that performance is rewarded basically everywhere in life. Id argue that schools actually have some of the least penalties for being wrong compared to what happens in the real world. Frankly, if an education system doesn’t teach people about the relationship between performance and grades/outcomes, they wouldn’t be prepared for the real world. I’ve seen this in a number of people fresh out of college who absolutely melt down the first time they encounter anything other than glowing feedback. Depending on the school systems you go through, it’s possible to get all the way through college without really experiencing anything other than passing grades and praise and infinite opportunities to try again with extra help. Once those people hit the real world and encounter consequences, it’s a painful learning experience.
cloogshicer 3y ago
I've been teaching programming to complete beginners for a few years now. One of the things holding them back the most is being too afraid to admit when they don't understand something. This is despite many efforts on our part to give them a safe environment where such an admission is not ridiculed, but congratulated instead. I really wish that culturally, we all were more kind when people openly display confusion, misunderstanding, and errors in thinking.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  There were some studies with firemen that showed the following technique was better than traditional teaching: 1. Explain/demonstrate right things to do. 2. Have the students criticize other people's work to find deviations. 3. Have the students do the work themselves. That is: by looking at other people fail it takes the ego out of it.
  - another_story 3y ago
    Interesting, because as a former CS teacher I regularly did this. We'd go through some material and then I'd demonstrate it being used in different contexts, sometimes writing code that wouldn't work and sometimes writing poor code (while loops that should be for loops, inconsistent variable names, etc...) and the kids dug pulling it apart. It's much easier to critique than to create when you're beginning coding. On that note I've been giving a lot of thought lately on how to develop curriculum which does a better job of teaching coding skills without necessarily needing code. Design thinking, but at a smaller scale, and later translatable to beginner level problem solving. Where kids get hung up is they often don't have a toolkit for this type of thinking, and building that up, while still making it interesting, is a challenge.
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      I did as well and believe my classes improved as a result. I was taught "flow charting" as an attempt to teach coding without having to code. Of course, the teachers missed the point and forced template-driven syntactically correct charts that were more painful to build than the programs. I have never taught software to complete novices, but I would think that it's difficult to teach something without teaching the thing. Have you tried the "wax on wax off" approach? That is, break things down into stunningly small pieces and build them together? You could spend days grounding on the fundamentals. (It works for training sports, rapid demonstrate/mimic/correct cycles on the basics)
Asraelite 3y ago
I agree on the parts about being more willing to share ideas and healthily accept criticism about them, but in general this article feels like it's presenting a false dichotomy: that you must either state things metter-of-fact or stay silent. It's possible to share a belief while expressing an appropriate level of uncertainty about it, and this is something I really wish more people did rather than blurting out falsehoods with confidence all the time. There's no harm in adding "I think ... is likely" or "AFAIK ... seems the most probable" etc. Reserve direct assertions for things you are actually sure about. And then if you're wrong about those things, reflect on what led you to be more certain than you should have been and try to prevent it from happening again. I think everyone should strive to never be 100% certain about things that end up being wrong.
- Jensson 3y ago
  When someone says "A is B" you should hear "I think A is B", that makes everything much simpler since there are very few things people are certain about. When making a stronger statement people say "I'm certain A is B". Edit: Take your post as an example, it is about twice as long as it has to be since you add so much padding to mark uncertainty. Humans are uncertain about most things, if you say something I'll assume that is what you think and it isn't the whole truth, that is what everyone does, just learn to not be afraid of being wrong and just do the simple thing that is easy to read.
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    I find that tends not to be true, although this may be a cultural thing. When people say "A is B", what I find they usually mean is "I think that A is B, but I have not questioned this opinion particularly strongly and do not have a confidence level attached to this belief". And very often the default confidence level people attach to their unquestioned opinions is relatively high, which means for them it typically lies relatively close to the "I am certain" mark. This is why I find it's really helpful to purposefully indicate when I'm saying things that are merely my opinions, when I'm saying things that I'm certain about, and when I'm somewhere in-between. Partly, it indicates to the to the other person the degree to which I hold a given opinion, but it mainly just helps me hold myself accountable about the assumptions I'm making: is this something I have sincerely thought about and formulated a belief about, or is this just an intuition that I've not tested yet?
Aurornis 3y ago
There is a kernel of truth to this argument: There must be some allowance for being wrong some of the time for a team to really thrive. If one wrong move results in outsize penalties to your reputation, your performance review, or your compensation then everyone is going to avoid taking any risks. It becomes safest to do nothing at all and adhere closely to the status quo, because you can’t be wrong if you avoid making any calls on your own. However, this article takes this concept a little far, in my opinion. There must be some room for being wrong after making a good faith effort and doing proper research, but we have to be honest that being wrong on important outcomes will never be perfectly free of consequences even in the most idealistic workplaces. If you’re wrong as often as you’re right, people will notice. People take account of how often others are rigit and wrong and will factor that into judgments. It’s only natural. In a healthy workplace, making the right call most of the time should open up room for being wrong occasionally. Nobody is perfect! If a company is handing out outsize penalties, explicit or otherwise, for single incidences of being wrong then that’s toxic and bad. However, I’ve worked with people who are so unafraid of being wrong that they can’t be trusted. They’ll take on projects they know they’re not qualified to do because they don’t mind failure. They’ll answer questions they aren’t qualified to answer because they’re not afraid of leading someone astray. They’ll pull the trigger on high stakes issues quickly because they’re more concerned about doing something than doing the right thing. Everyone around them learns this quickly and adapts around it. It becomes an obstacle to promotion, as it should in a company that chooses leaders who can be trusted. It’s a balance. This article makes a mistake I see from a lot of casual advice writers, which is to first construct a hypothetically ideal workplace and then explain how to operate within their ideal workplace: > In my posts, especially when providing advice, I will assume you work in a healthy workplace environment. If you work in a psychologically unsafe environment, none of this even matters - if possible, and safe, search for a different job. This advice tends to feel good because it always describes a perfectly safe, secure workplace that caters to the employee (the reader) with little or no regard to anything else like their coworkers, the company, or the bottom line. In the real world, it’s never that simple. It’s easy to say “quit your job” to anyone who doesn’t see this ideologically perfect scenario in their own workplace, but the reality is that people need to learn how to operate within the realities of an imperfect, real workplace. Definitely search for better jobs if you’re at a toxic company! However, don’t expect any company to live up to some of the lofty ideologically pure scenarios that get described in advice columns. In the real world, you’re going to have to weigh the risks and consequences of being wrong and adapt as you learn more about how the company and your peers react. Behave accordingly and operate with a feedback loop, but watch out for irrational paranoia about being wrong.
abnry 3y ago
I think there are two types of engineers: - Those who approach technical conversations where all facts stated must be always true (usually details-oriented people). - Those who approach technical conversations where facts stated should converge to the truth (usually highly intuitive people). These two types tend to frustrate each other. Although, I would contend that everyone needs to have the capacity to operate in either mode. For example, you _must_ be technically correct when programming. You cannot omit a closing parenthesis. However, if you are working on trying to solve the overall problem, usually something that could have multiple implementations, you need to brainstorm, which is best done when you are free to state things imprecisely.
- hnhg 3y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. I think these might actually be modes of thought, since I’ve experienced these attitudes from the same people just at different times. I’ll keep this comment in mind.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  I recognize that. My colleague would say, I'm fixing that in the docker. Then i ask (somewhat frustrated) 'the dockerfile, the docker image or the docker container?' Then he answers (somewhat frustrated) 'that's a detail I don't want to go into now.' And I understand it like, 'damn I didn't even think about that, i just fend him off'. My other colleague, who has great empathy, says: "you are very blue, he's very red".
  - fragmede 3y ago
    I'm not sure what blue vs red is, in this context, but I can't tell if the frustration is because your colleague thinks you're asking because you don't understand docker, or because you question their understanding of docker.
    - nuancebydefault 3y ago
      I know he knows docker well enough, but somehow he finds something a detail, where i find that difference important. That said, i do get what you're saying, indeed this might be the issue.
PicassoCTs 3y ago
Saying something wrong out loud is like asking for help if among societies dedicated to the enlightenment. To remain silent and wrong inside, is to truly loose ones face forever.
Barrin92 3y ago
>The main thing to remember is that being wrong isn't the end of the world well it depends on how wrong you are. Being wrong, especially being wrong and confident can be a pretty costly combination. There's a reason the principle 'be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you send' exists in programming. Being afraid of being wrong imposes a cost on you, not being afraid generally tends to impose a cost on others. The fear of being wrong isn't just some evil invention by a team leader with a clipboard, it's an instinct that genuinely exists for good reason, it makes people scrutinize their claims. In general I think we tend to live more in a culture where people speak without thinking and too often propose solutions based on questionable intuition than the opposite. Especially in business culture where it's pretty rare for people who are responsible for something going wrong to internalize the cost of those decisions, mostly someone else just ends up dealing with it.
- aatd86 3y ago
  At the same time, in boolean logic, something False can always lead to something True. It should be okay to share something and get feedback, as long as everyone is aligned to get to the bottom of the truth.
71a54xd 3y ago
This is flat out bad advice - being wrong is okay sometimes but if it becomes a pattern or you make yourself look like always needing aid from other devs or team members you'll quickly paint a target on your back as the next person to be cut or fired.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Yes it sort of depends are you wrong or do you just fear it but you are not really wrong.
- langsoul-com 3y ago
  The first note says that this only applies for a healthy workplace. If everyone is terrified of saying something that is wrong. It's a cover your ass engineering place, where eventually, some massive mistake will occur because nobody wants to appear wrong. Although, constantly sounding wrong does paint a picture of yourself being stupid. Guess that's a trade off.
- phito 3y ago
  I don't know where you all work, but it all sounds very toxic. Genuine question, I'm European, is this a US culture thing or have I just been very lucky with my jobs?
xwowsersx 3y ago
hmm...Atelophobia is more than just the fear of being wrong; it encompasses a broader fear of imperfection and making mistakes in various ways. Fear of being wrong is related to it, but Atelophobia extends to a general apprehension about not meeting one's own or others' expectations. So more like a fear of failure, reluctance to take risks, or a constant attempt to attain perfection
- shelika 3y ago
  Indeed. I was willing to leave it in and get this feedback. Well observed
  - xwowsersx 3y ago
    Still, a great post. Thanks for sharing.
arter 3y ago
I believe the author addresses the core issue of why we have a fear of being wrong in the first paragraph. Toxic work environment or the belief that the work environment is toxic. Work is only an edge case here too, we are afraid to be wrong in all environments. (I say "we", but of course some are more afraid than others.) And I believe that showing a scared person the merits of not being scared and experimenting might motivate them temporarily and most likely get them to agree... but it will not stick. Because fear is a very powerful impulse that has roots that can go very deep and wont't just stand up and move to a little more nutricous soil. People have very, very good reasons to feel fear that are rooted in their past and they are most often irrefutable. What is refutable is that these reasons no longer exist or that one might now have other skills to deal with them. Sadly this is an individual issue and the method for fixing it is case by case. Similarly - this works the same way for confidence. Knowing that the benefits of being confident outweight the cons will not make you confident. They can provide motivation though. Source - only my personal experiences. Fear leaves me only if I feel safe or if I expend a great deal of effort to supress it temporarily. The latter of which is courage and willpower and both are not infinite.
- t43562 3y ago
  You can create a less toxic bubble in work environment by effort and showing your own courage in the right settings. Some places are too bad for that to work but not all are.
beebeepka 3y ago
One interesting aspect of this is pair programming. I have noticed that sometimes even little ol' me can't focus enough while sharing a screen. Frankly, I am not completely sure why that happens. Sure, trying to keep a conversation going is not free in terms of attention, but I have caught myself more than once just wanting to end the session so that I can do totally stupid things for a couple of minutes. Now, why would I prefer that, unless I am somewhat shy of showing weakness or something
- langsoul-com 3y ago
  Same, I feel pressure to not make mistakes. All my thoughts are focused on not appearing dumb that I forget how to resolve the problem. Then appear dumb anyway. That's why I hate live coding interview bullshit, always a terrible experience.
mmmpetrichor 3y ago
Look both ways before crossing the street.
hnpxr 3y ago
[dead]
LAC-Tech 3y ago
I do sometimes wonder if I'd be better off being a bit more afraid to be wrong. I always want to know more stuff and I will always fess up to my ignorance in pursuit of that. I do suspect it makes me sound like I know less than I actually do, considering a lot of peoples reluctance to ask.
yobbo 3y ago
The problem is not that that work environments are cartoonishly toxic, but that 95% of people will implicitly down-rank people who ask stupid questions or turn out wrong. So, we can encourage people and act accommodating but it is just politeness. Everyone present is silently adjusting their expectations of others.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  I immediately down-rank anyone who provides simplistic or “obvious” but utterly wrong solutions to difficult problems instead of trying to understand why a person chose the solution they did. The problem isn’t being wrong, per se, it’s being wrong without entertaining that possibility.
wiseowise 3y ago
I’m glad author put the following disclaimer: > Q: Wait, hold on, what if my manager is awful, or my team mates are horrible? Always keep in mind that random advice on the internet might NOT apply to your situation.
tyleo 3y ago
I really like the message, “don’t be afraid to be wrong”. I like to tell people I’ve worked with I have a “First Idiot Principle”. Which is, “Don’t ever be afraid to be the first idiot in the room.” There are many situations in life where someone puts out a call for ideas. Maybe a person asks for opinions in a meeting for example. Applying the First Idiot Principle you should respond to these even if you have an idiot idea. Usually one of a three things happens: 1. No one has a better idea and it isn’t an idiot idea after all. 2. Folks silently agree with you but were afraid to share because they thought they might look like the idiot. Now that the idea is public they back you up. 3. It is an idiot idea! And someone else realizes they have a better idea and they feel compelled to share when previously they may have thought they were the one with the idiot idea. No matter what happens, you get an outcome that’s better than not sharing the idea at all.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  “First Idiot Principle” - great terminology and thought process. It's an expression of creative humility that opens a conversation rather than the "first principles" or "strong ideas weakly held" guys that basically shut down the conversation.
t43562 3y ago
So far most of the objections to the article are about how being wrong has consequences. That is of course the reason why you MUST not fear being wrong: When a group of people are setting out to achieve something and succeed they must be able to do it close enough to right that it serves its purpose. This means they all need to do work that comes together into a correct and harmonious result. They cannot make something harmonious if they have different understandings of what they're doing and it cannot be correct if they have failed to foresee some important aspect of the problem/solution. So you talk about the problem and your solution and explain your understandings and that allows the other people to correct you or possibly to see something they hadn't seen. This is where you risk being wrong and MUST do it so that before you start taking actions you can be corrected. If you hide your misunderstandings then there will be consequences. We peer review code and nobody likes being criticised but in the end it when it saves you from being the one to introduce a bad bug you tend to be grateful. Similarly with ideas - you put them out for review. A work environment where you cannot safely put your ideas or code out for review is a toxic one and likely is wasting a lot of its potential.
namaljayathunga 3y ago
Is there a word for the people who laugh or criticize at a person for being wrong?
lakomen 3y ago
The problem with being wrong in this nowadays internet culture or unculture, with up and downvotes is exactly this. You write something wrong you lose reputation, you write something right, you lose reputation, even if you're right, because booksmarts don't agree with it. You write something that AI thinks is "harassment", even if it's just, "that fat cheese goes directly into your fat cells". Totally harassment... fucking Chinese Tiktok censorship. You can't say "shit" or "fuck" because that's harassment. Because creators are sensitive little flowers... Fuck China and its censorship. Am I being fearless enough?
WhiteMasterRace 3y ago
[flagged]

171 points by shelika 3y ago

Being wrong is often directionless and flat, with excessively repetitive work. Mining people for concepts is an incredibly slow way to progress. Being right often requires order of magnitude less time. Nobody notices.

dylan604 3y ago
"I just found 999 ways to not make a lightbulb." SpaceX blowing up rockets but still being considered a successful launch test. Many times in the world, you have to be wrong enough times to know that the suspected correct answer truly is correct. To call that directionless and flat is just naive on a very large scale. There are times that some people can get to the correct answer faster, and it can be extremely frustrating to have the feeling of being held back or slowed down for everyone else to catch up. That's an ego problem that person needs to contend with and not a fault of everyone else.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  The problem is the terms “wrong” or “right”. If I tell everyone confidently that https is all you need for a secure, privacy focused site then that is a different kind of wrong to companies that are set up to do experiments.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Being wrong didn't give you the knowledge that your solution was correct. Success/victory/accomplishment did. It's not naive, it's a low level point. Wrong is often directionless, and pivots and re-maps out a new solution when arbitrary failure arrives. Right has cropped out the useless pathways, and is stuck between security and looking into the future. The direction of work is non-negotiable. Wrong is often structured like a flat unlayered map where you fill it out with successes and failures. Right, often has subjective approval of a layered interpretation, eliminating the need for trial and error. The thing is, when things go right, it's rapid and easy and it's just business as usual. No one notices. People crave wrong.

robswc 3y ago

When you're in a meeting where everyone has gotten past the fear of being wrong, its a whole different dynamic and breath of fresh air. Suddenly the complexity melts away and people admit asking a professional is better than BSing a solution.

vaylian 3y ago
I wonder to which extent this fear can be attributed to the school system which literally penalizes students for being wrong.
- stringtoint 3y ago
  I'm sure this is a part of why this fear exists. Middle Eastern countries are especially harsh in that sense imo: you're afraid of making mistakes or making your family "look bad"™.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    Generally, the cultures that place high value on "preserving face", struggle with the fear of being proven wrong.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  As opposed to the workplace, where nobody is ever penalized for being wrong? The reality is that performance is rewarded basically everywhere in life. Id argue that schools actually have some of the least penalties for being wrong compared to what happens in the real world. Frankly, if an education system doesn’t teach people about the relationship between performance and grades/outcomes, they wouldn’t be prepared for the real world. I’ve seen this in a number of people fresh out of college who absolutely melt down the first time they encounter anything other than glowing feedback. Depending on the school systems you go through, it’s possible to get all the way through college without really experiencing anything other than passing grades and praise and infinite opportunities to try again with extra help. Once those people hit the real world and encounter consequences, it’s a painful learning experience.

cloogshicer 3y ago

I've been teaching programming to complete beginners for a few years now. One of the things holding them back the most is being too afraid to admit when they don't understand something. This is despite many efforts on our part to give them a safe environment where such an admission is not ridiculed, but congratulated instead. I really wish that culturally, we all were more kind when people openly display confusion, misunderstanding, and errors in thinking.

readthenotes1 3y ago
There were some studies with firemen that showed the following technique was better than traditional teaching: 1. Explain/demonstrate right things to do. 2. Have the students criticize other people's work to find deviations. 3. Have the students do the work themselves. That is: by looking at other people fail it takes the ego out of it.
- another_story 3y ago
  Interesting, because as a former CS teacher I regularly did this. We'd go through some material and then I'd demonstrate it being used in different contexts, sometimes writing code that wouldn't work and sometimes writing poor code (while loops that should be for loops, inconsistent variable names, etc...) and the kids dug pulling it apart. It's much easier to critique than to create when you're beginning coding. On that note I've been giving a lot of thought lately on how to develop curriculum which does a better job of teaching coding skills without necessarily needing code. Design thinking, but at a smaller scale, and later translatable to beginner level problem solving. Where kids get hung up is they often don't have a toolkit for this type of thinking, and building that up, while still making it interesting, is a challenge.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    I did as well and believe my classes improved as a result. I was taught "flow charting" as an attempt to teach coding without having to code. Of course, the teachers missed the point and forced template-driven syntactically correct charts that were more painful to build than the programs. I have never taught software to complete novices, but I would think that it's difficult to teach something without teaching the thing. Have you tried the "wax on wax off" approach? That is, break things down into stunningly small pieces and build them together? You could spend days grounding on the fundamentals. (It works for training sports, rapid demonstrate/mimic/correct cycles on the basics)

Asraelite 3y ago

I agree on the parts about being more willing to share ideas and healthily accept criticism about them, but in general this article feels like it's presenting a false dichotomy: that you must either state things metter-of-fact or stay silent. It's possible to share a belief while expressing an appropriate level of uncertainty about it, and this is something I really wish more people did rather than blurting out falsehoods with confidence all the time. There's no harm in adding "I think ... is likely" or "AFAIK ... seems the most probable" etc. Reserve direct assertions for things you are actually sure about. And then if you're wrong about those things, reflect on what led you to be more certain than you should have been and try to prevent it from happening again. I think everyone should strive to never be 100% certain about things that end up being wrong.

Jensson 3y ago
When someone says "A is B" you should hear "I think A is B", that makes everything much simpler since there are very few things people are certain about. When making a stronger statement people say "I'm certain A is B". Edit: Take your post as an example, it is about twice as long as it has to be since you add so much padding to mark uncertainty. Humans are uncertain about most things, if you say something I'll assume that is what you think and it isn't the whole truth, that is what everyone does, just learn to not be afraid of being wrong and just do the simple thing that is easy to read.
- MrJohz 3y ago
  I find that tends not to be true, although this may be a cultural thing. When people say "A is B", what I find they usually mean is "I think that A is B, but I have not questioned this opinion particularly strongly and do not have a confidence level attached to this belief". And very often the default confidence level people attach to their unquestioned opinions is relatively high, which means for them it typically lies relatively close to the "I am certain" mark. This is why I find it's really helpful to purposefully indicate when I'm saying things that are merely my opinions, when I'm saying things that I'm certain about, and when I'm somewhere in-between. Partly, it indicates to the to the other person the degree to which I hold a given opinion, but it mainly just helps me hold myself accountable about the assumptions I'm making: is this something I have sincerely thought about and formulated a belief about, or is this just an intuition that I've not tested yet?

Aurornis 3y ago

There is a kernel of truth to this argument: There must be some allowance for being wrong some of the time for a team to really thrive. If one wrong move results in outsize penalties to your reputation, your performance review, or your compensation then everyone is going to avoid taking any risks. It becomes safest to do nothing at all and adhere closely to the status quo, because you can’t be wrong if you avoid making any calls on your own. However, this article takes this concept a little far, in my opinion. There must be some room for being wrong after making a good faith effort and doing proper research, but we have to be honest that being wrong on important outcomes will never be perfectly free of consequences even in the most idealistic workplaces. If you’re wrong as often as you’re right, people will notice. People take account of how often others are rigit and wrong and will factor that into judgments. It’s only natural. In a healthy workplace, making the right call most of the time should open up room for being wrong occasionally. Nobody is perfect! If a company is handing out outsize penalties, explicit or otherwise, for single incidences of being wrong then that’s toxic and bad. However, I’ve worked with people who are so unafraid of being wrong that they can’t be trusted. They’ll take on projects they know they’re not qualified to do because they don’t mind failure. They’ll answer questions they aren’t qualified to answer because they’re not afraid of leading someone astray. They’ll pull the trigger on high stakes issues quickly because they’re more concerned about doing something than doing the right thing. Everyone around them learns this quickly and adapts around it. It becomes an obstacle to promotion, as it should in a company that chooses leaders who can be trusted. It’s a balance. This article makes a mistake I see from a lot of casual advice writers, which is to first construct a hypothetically ideal workplace and then explain how to operate within their ideal workplace: > In my posts, especially when providing advice, I will assume you work in a healthy workplace environment. If you work in a psychologically unsafe environment, none of this even matters - if possible, and safe, search for a different job. This advice tends to feel good because it always describes a perfectly safe, secure workplace that caters to the employee (the reader) with little or no regard to anything else like their coworkers, the company, or the bottom line. In the real world, it’s never that simple. It’s easy to say “quit your job” to anyone who doesn’t see this ideologically perfect scenario in their own workplace, but the reality is that people need to learn how to operate within the realities of an imperfect, real workplace. Definitely search for better jobs if you’re at a toxic company! However, don’t expect any company to live up to some of the lofty ideologically pure scenarios that get described in advice columns. In the real world, you’re going to have to weigh the risks and consequences of being wrong and adapt as you learn more about how the company and your peers react. Behave accordingly and operate with a feedback loop, but watch out for irrational paranoia about being wrong.

abnry 3y ago

I think there are two types of engineers: - Those who approach technical conversations where all facts stated must be always true (usually details-oriented people). - Those who approach technical conversations where facts stated should converge to the truth (usually highly intuitive people). These two types tend to frustrate each other. Although, I would contend that everyone needs to have the capacity to operate in either mode. For example, you _must_ be technically correct when programming. You cannot omit a closing parenthesis. However, if you are working on trying to solve the overall problem, usually something that could have multiple implementations, you need to brainstorm, which is best done when you are free to state things imprecisely.

hnhg 3y ago
This is an interesting perspective. I think these might actually be modes of thought, since I’ve experienced these attitudes from the same people just at different times. I’ll keep this comment in mind.
nuancebydefault 3y ago
I recognize that. My colleague would say, I'm fixing that in the docker. Then i ask (somewhat frustrated) 'the dockerfile, the docker image or the docker container?' Then he answers (somewhat frustrated) 'that's a detail I don't want to go into now.' And I understand it like, 'damn I didn't even think about that, i just fend him off'. My other colleague, who has great empathy, says: "you are very blue, he's very red".
- fragmede 3y ago
  I'm not sure what blue vs red is, in this context, but I can't tell if the frustration is because your colleague thinks you're asking because you don't understand docker, or because you question their understanding of docker.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    I know he knows docker well enough, but somehow he finds something a detail, where i find that difference important. That said, i do get what you're saying, indeed this might be the issue.

PicassoCTs 3y ago

Saying something wrong out loud is like asking for help if among societies dedicated to the enlightenment. To remain silent and wrong inside, is to truly loose ones face forever.

Barrin92 3y ago

>The main thing to remember is that being wrong isn't the end of the world well it depends on how wrong you are. Being wrong, especially being wrong and confident can be a pretty costly combination. There's a reason the principle 'be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you send' exists in programming. Being afraid of being wrong imposes a cost on you, not being afraid generally tends to impose a cost on others. The fear of being wrong isn't just some evil invention by a team leader with a clipboard, it's an instinct that genuinely exists for good reason, it makes people scrutinize their claims. In general I think we tend to live more in a culture where people speak without thinking and too often propose solutions based on questionable intuition than the opposite. Especially in business culture where it's pretty rare for people who are responsible for something going wrong to internalize the cost of those decisions, mostly someone else just ends up dealing with it.

aatd86 3y ago
At the same time, in boolean logic, something False can always lead to something True. It should be okay to share something and get feedback, as long as everyone is aligned to get to the bottom of the truth.

71a54xd 3y ago

This is flat out bad advice - being wrong is okay sometimes but if it becomes a pattern or you make yourself look like always needing aid from other devs or team members you'll quickly paint a target on your back as the next person to be cut or fired.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Yes it sort of depends are you wrong or do you just fear it but you are not really wrong.
langsoul-com 3y ago
The first note says that this only applies for a healthy workplace. If everyone is terrified of saying something that is wrong. It's a cover your ass engineering place, where eventually, some massive mistake will occur because nobody wants to appear wrong. Although, constantly sounding wrong does paint a picture of yourself being stupid. Guess that's a trade off.
phito 3y ago
I don't know where you all work, but it all sounds very toxic. Genuine question, I'm European, is this a US culture thing or have I just been very lucky with my jobs?

xwowsersx 3y ago

hmm...Atelophobia is more than just the fear of being wrong; it encompasses a broader fear of imperfection and making mistakes in various ways. Fear of being wrong is related to it, but Atelophobia extends to a general apprehension about not meeting one's own or others' expectations. So more like a fear of failure, reluctance to take risks, or a constant attempt to attain perfection

shelika 3y ago
Indeed. I was willing to leave it in and get this feedback. Well observed
- xwowsersx 3y ago
  Still, a great post. Thanks for sharing.

arter 3y ago

I believe the author addresses the core issue of why we have a fear of being wrong in the first paragraph. Toxic work environment or the belief that the work environment is toxic. Work is only an edge case here too, we are afraid to be wrong in all environments. (I say "we", but of course some are more afraid than others.) And I believe that showing a scared person the merits of not being scared and experimenting might motivate them temporarily and most likely get them to agree... but it will not stick. Because fear is a very powerful impulse that has roots that can go very deep and wont't just stand up and move to a little more nutricous soil. People have very, very good reasons to feel fear that are rooted in their past and they are most often irrefutable. What is refutable is that these reasons no longer exist or that one might now have other skills to deal with them. Sadly this is an individual issue and the method for fixing it is case by case. Similarly - this works the same way for confidence. Knowing that the benefits of being confident outweight the cons will not make you confident. They can provide motivation though. Source - only my personal experiences. Fear leaves me only if I feel safe or if I expend a great deal of effort to supress it temporarily. The latter of which is courage and willpower and both are not infinite.

t43562 3y ago
You can create a less toxic bubble in work environment by effort and showing your own courage in the right settings. Some places are too bad for that to work but not all are.

beebeepka 3y ago

One interesting aspect of this is pair programming. I have noticed that sometimes even little ol' me can't focus enough while sharing a screen. Frankly, I am not completely sure why that happens. Sure, trying to keep a conversation going is not free in terms of attention, but I have caught myself more than once just wanting to end the session so that I can do totally stupid things for a couple of minutes. Now, why would I prefer that, unless I am somewhat shy of showing weakness or something

langsoul-com 3y ago
Same, I feel pressure to not make mistakes. All my thoughts are focused on not appearing dumb that I forget how to resolve the problem. Then appear dumb anyway. That's why I hate live coding interview bullshit, always a terrible experience.

mmmpetrichor 3y ago

Look both ways before crossing the street.

hnpxr 3y ago

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LAC-Tech 3y ago

I do sometimes wonder if I'd be better off being a bit more afraid to be wrong. I always want to know more stuff and I will always fess up to my ignorance in pursuit of that. I do suspect it makes me sound like I know less than I actually do, considering a lot of peoples reluctance to ask.

yobbo 3y ago

The problem is not that that work environments are cartoonishly toxic, but that 95% of people will implicitly down-rank people who ask stupid questions or turn out wrong. So, we can encourage people and act accommodating but it is just politeness. Everyone present is silently adjusting their expectations of others.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
I immediately down-rank anyone who provides simplistic or “obvious” but utterly wrong solutions to difficult problems instead of trying to understand why a person chose the solution they did. The problem isn’t being wrong, per se, it’s being wrong without entertaining that possibility.

wiseowise 3y ago

I’m glad author put the following disclaimer: > Q: Wait, hold on, what if my manager is awful, or my team mates are horrible? Always keep in mind that random advice on the internet might NOT apply to your situation.

tyleo 3y ago

I really like the message, “don’t be afraid to be wrong”. I like to tell people I’ve worked with I have a “First Idiot Principle”. Which is, “Don’t ever be afraid to be the first idiot in the room.” There are many situations in life where someone puts out a call for ideas. Maybe a person asks for opinions in a meeting for example. Applying the First Idiot Principle you should respond to these even if you have an idiot idea. Usually one of a three things happens: 1. No one has a better idea and it isn’t an idiot idea after all. 2. Folks silently agree with you but were afraid to share because they thought they might look like the idiot. Now that the idea is public they back you up. 3. It is an idiot idea! And someone else realizes they have a better idea and they feel compelled to share when previously they may have thought they were the one with the idiot idea. No matter what happens, you get an outcome that’s better than not sharing the idea at all.

steveBK123 3y ago
“First Idiot Principle” - great terminology and thought process. It's an expression of creative humility that opens a conversation rather than the "first principles" or "strong ideas weakly held" guys that basically shut down the conversation.

t43562 3y ago

So far most of the objections to the article are about how being wrong has consequences. That is of course the reason why you MUST not fear being wrong: When a group of people are setting out to achieve something and succeed they must be able to do it close enough to right that it serves its purpose. This means they all need to do work that comes together into a correct and harmonious result. They cannot make something harmonious if they have different understandings of what they're doing and it cannot be correct if they have failed to foresee some important aspect of the problem/solution. So you talk about the problem and your solution and explain your understandings and that allows the other people to correct you or possibly to see something they hadn't seen. This is where you risk being wrong and MUST do it so that before you start taking actions you can be corrected. If you hide your misunderstandings then there will be consequences. We peer review code and nobody likes being criticised but in the end it when it saves you from being the one to introduce a bad bug you tend to be grateful. Similarly with ideas - you put them out for review. A work environment where you cannot safely put your ideas or code out for review is a toxic one and likely is wasting a lot of its potential.

namaljayathunga 3y ago

Is there a word for the people who laugh or criticize at a person for being wrong?

lakomen 3y ago

The problem with being wrong in this nowadays internet culture or unculture, with up and downvotes is exactly this. You write something wrong you lose reputation, you write something right, you lose reputation, even if you're right, because booksmarts don't agree with it. You write something that AI thinks is "harassment", even if it's just, "that fat cheese goes directly into your fat cells". Totally harassment... fucking Chinese Tiktok censorship. You can't say "shit" or "fuck" because that's harassment. Because creators are sensitive little flowers... Fuck China and its censorship. Am I being fearless enough?

WhiteMasterRace 3y ago

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