I wonder if the middle ground is when one needs to be "unkind" in words, they should be "kind" in action. I worked on a team that had been moved to a project, in part because that project was behind schedule, haphazard and under-staffed. In our first months we were often (and to my dismay) unkind in words without kind actions to follow through. All of our critiques were correct. All of them were important and needed to be addressed. All of them were real problems. And often the critiques were blunt for the sake of being clear to management. But being right didn't stop that unkindness from stinging the other teams that were there before us. We were resisted and drew quite a bit of (understandable) animosity from those other teams. When we changed tack (partially in response to realizing we were being unkind, partially because we'd finally built up the knowledge we needed to do so) and started accompanying critique with solutions or at a minimum viable demonstrations of the solution, things were received much better. We still said hard things, we still brought in half bakes thoughts. But because we were being kind in bringing more than criticism to the table, it was much more effective.

Ever since that back and forth about "East Coast being kind vs West Coast being nice" thing a while back[1], I think it's important to distinguish the two. Because they are noticeably different (at least to me) and shouldn't be used interchangeably. I want someone to be kind to me in a meeting. I think niceness could seriously inhibit progress. A kind person will tell me that an idea I have won't work, but they'll offer to help me work through it. A nice person will tell me that a bad idea is good, just to avoid conflict.

[1] https://www.upworthy.com/nice-vs-kind-are-east-coast-people-...

    Nice sucks, be kind.

Work is hard and stressful. If we're sweet and kind to one-another, we get through it more easily, no matter how smart each of us is individually. Being kind is an investment, and its dividends pay out enormously as your organization grows. Like the article says, it's infectious. I believe that. I believe that if I show kindness, especially to people who are new to the organization, they'll mirror it right back, and try to show it to everyone else, too.

If we tallied up all technical projects in the Western world that failed, how many would be failing due to lack of kindness versus, say, straight-forwards incompetence? Because 100% fall in the latter category in my experience.

One of the problems with engineers counter-signalling engineering values (like actual technical competence) is that we live in a world where those values are extremely underrated while every manager, HR-bot etc. are already pushing values like kindness.

E.g. if you ever wonder why government doesn't work it's because they're absurdly skewed towards HR-values and opposed to engineering-values.

Nice article. Definitely need more kindness in this achievement society. One small crib, though:

> In Spanish, we have a saying, "Maestro Liendre: De tó sabe, pero de ná entiende." I don't really know (and don't want) to translate it because it loses its punch, but it fits perfectly here.

Wait, why mention it if I, the reader, cannot understand the saying or how it is even relevant to the article, but leave me with the tease that "but it fits perfectly here". Very puzzling, to say the least. Google Translate tells me "Master Niendre: He knows everything, but he understands nothing". Now I'm even more confused. That is so pithy and unambiguous that I really have to ask: what is it about the Spanish version that "loses its punch" when translated to English?!

I am generally considered to be a kind and helpful person.

There are many situations where a kindness turns to an expectation, which leads to entitlement: suddenly you are the bad guy if you don't go above and beyond.

Being helpful around people who view work as a zero sum game is a recipe for disaster.

This article also reframes "things you should do because it's an advantage to you" as kindness.

Agree with this wholeheartedly. I think where kindness really plays a key role is not passing snap judgements on people and their motivations. It's easy to interpret people's actions or intentions in a negative light, thinking they don't care or are incompetent. I would also like to add that kindness is not just being kind to other people, but to yourself as well. It's easy to beat ourselves up about the mistakes we make, or blaming ourselves for outcomes that sometimes are beyond our control. We can't be perfect.

For the most part, I like to live in a world where the default position is that we're mostly well-intentioned, rising apes rather than fallen angels (RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett). This is clearly not always the case, and it's important to accept that, but it shouldn't stop me from still aspiring to be as kind as possible in my own life.

These kind of over-generalist advice are pretty meaningless (especially the title, content being more specific).

You do not always want to be perceived (because that's what you're going for) as kind, it is situation specific.

You do not want to be kind during negotiation, because that means you're usually missing out on a better deal.

You do not want to be kind when dealing with bad behaviour. I've too often seen missing stairs running loose for far too long due to "kindness" from HR, whether it was sincere or rather an expression of cowardliness .

What do you want to aim at all time is respectful behaviour, because that is what could undermine your current position in the conversation. People do not listen to jerks.

Wouldn't say You have to choose one over another. Smartness without kindness makes you a dick. Kindness without some smartness makes you 'fake', or at least 'valueless'.

I definitely agree with this article. I’m at the stage of my career where my primary limiting factor is my inability to tolerate situations where it’s clear co-workers aren’t pulling their weight, don’t have the same philosophy I have about a project, or when they disagree about how to implement a solution. And nothing makes me angrier than when the tech lead or director in charge is clueless, which happens more often than not.

Accepting that this is just the way things are is difficult the more emotionally invested you are in your technical work, if you happen to be on a non-technical or semi-technical team. I think this article is helpful for situations where either the pay compensates for bad work culture, or where you’re simply stuck on a team where maybe you are the “smartest” person in the room and it makes you hate your job. At least that’s how I’m interpreting it for my situation.

That is the ideal but the results depend on the work place or the OSS project. I have started out like that twice and was walked over by other people.

Kindness with true reciprocity is very hard to find (I do not mean CoC compliant fake kindness that just keeps the actual power structures in place while everyone is backstabbing.)

Another way of putting it might be that there’s very little you can do to will yourself to be smarter, but you don’t have to go far out of your way to be kind.

(Personally I’m not sure “kindness” is necessarily the right word that encompasses the four qualities listed. Resolutive? Seems like that’s something independent.)

The problem with content like this is it’s not realistically actionable for most people: it really amounts to saying (if you’re not already a temperamentally kind person), “fundamentally change your personality”, without offering actionable steps to accomplish that.

It also doesn’t wrestle at all with the complexities and tradeoffs of how we deal with people in different scenarios. Be kind to bullies and assholes? There’s a way to do it, sure, but there’s a lot of technique and nuance involved, and this post doesn’t scratch the surface.

4 day work work, 6 hour days, better pay, the freedom to spend as much time with the people you want, doing the things you want, without fear of financial ruin or bodily injury. Thats what workers want... not for the work place to replace their family. We do not need to be friends, I do not need to be nice to you. This whining comes from people who place work over all else and need work to be something other than it is. A means to an end.

Now, I do not mean passion projects... I mean wage slavery work hell holes... My passion projects and companies are made up of people I trust, have verified their experience. We are nice to each 60% of the time- we understand the other 40% is necessary. We don't take it personally, we brush it off. We are mature professionals, not whiney day care adults.

Rarely does one accomplish great things in life alone, or on the first try.

Life is often a game of making sure you have enough at bats to eventually succeed.

From a self interested utilitarian view, people will remember you warmly for being kind and be happy to work with you again / give you another shot, far more than they will if you are smart & difficult.

Being incompetent and kind isn't my suggestion here. It is simply that if you are as smart and hard working as you think you are, it's not that hard to also be a little kind. If it is so hard for you, you may want to try working on it.

While I think the points the author makes are sage advice, I think the blog post would have been a lot stronger against criticism if they had added a paragraph similar to the following:

"That is not to say you shouldn't come prepared and knowledgeable to meetings you attend. You should provide clear value to each and every meeting you attend from a knowledge perspective. However, the human value of kindness is far more important in the eyes of attendees."

Some people here are confused. Kindness towards people doesn't preclude you from being assertive. It doesn't preclude you from being a shrewd negotiator. It doesn't preclude you from provide feedback to an employee who needs to improve performance. It doesn't preclude you from laying off an employee.

Being too kind can also be negative, I prefer honesty and reality above the rest.

Seems like good common sense. Listen, be respectful, keep an open mind.

To be fair does it not depend on the audience. There's a balance between the audience and an idea you want to push.

Here in YC you can probably go full on with your tech/science knowledge/ideas/theories/whatever and people will judge you purely on your points made, and the people listening are in the same boat.

In another context you may be the smartest person in the room by a long way on a topic and have something constructive to say, but no one else in the room is as competent so you cannot go full on with your YC-like comment and have to balance the knowledge/empathy available of the audience.

I guess in the end it's about ignorance busting and offering some new insights into a thing that other people can appreciate.

I agree that if you want to persuade people and be successful in the business world, being the smartest person in the room isn't the most important quality. Being the loudest and most confident is. Just say your opinions as though they are obvious facts, and if someone disagrees, ignore them and say your thing again with even more confidence. I do not do this—heaven forbid, I'm too kind to do that—but it's the characteristic I see most successful people sharing... if success is defined as organizational prominence and compensation, rather than more trivial heuristics like a history of your claims coinciding with reality.

"Being nice is the new punk"

yes, this is a huge adjustment for me as old Gen X trying to work with Gen Z / Millenials. I feel like Michael Scott sometimes to be honest... raised in an environment where bigoted jokes, brutal insults, shouting, were the norm and expected, adjusting to being around the new generation which was raised on anti-bullying and therapy. I am glad things are changing, the old ways were very dysfunctional and counterproductive.

Maybe its just the lead poisoning.

To be kind is one of my specialties. I firmly believe that it's a requirement of any human group so people collaborate at heart. Yes people can be productive anyway without any kindness, but if people really collaborate then they actually multiply their forces and the result is incredibly powerful. If people fight each other that energy is terribly wasted.

I really disagree with the quote at the end `just a few people are going to miss the smartest in the room, but everyone is going to miss someone kind.` This is true if the smartest person in the room is a jerk, but I don't find that to often be the case. In every group I've worked in, the smartest, most talented people are often _also_ confident in their abilities to the point where they don't have to _prove_ it to anyone. They help the team succeed. The people I am never sorry to see go are the insecure people with a chip on their shoulder who constantly try to prove that they are the smartest, most talented person in the room. They often are not.

The kind or nice person, sure if they are some kind of glue to the team that helps the entire group work together, they don't need to be the highest performers. But incompetent nice people also are a problem.

To be honest I’ve come to see these posts as part of the “war”. If you’re not very smart, what’s your best move? Change the rules. Now you can be the most noteworthy person in the room, by being the kindest.

With that said, of course you should be kind. But don’t be afraid to be smart too. The world needs smart.

"Being nice is the new punk"

I would say helping others is incredibly punk. Such as responding to chat messages requesting help in some particular coding problem. So many people will direct them to a support queue, but I love taking time to understand their issue and help them out.

Sweetness and kindness are not necessarily the same thing. Just like how “nice” can be a toxic trait.

His list of points is fine. It’s mostly the servant leadership mentality, which I’m all for. But sometimes to be an effective leader you have to make hard decisions. You’ve got to know your personal boundaries and know when to yield and when to hold them, or other less sweet people are going to steamrolling you, or you’re going to get overloaded by taking on too much, etc. And sometimes you have to be direct and blunt and not so sweet to show true kindness. Confrontation is hard and it’s not something most people really want, but I believe it’s sometimes necessary to embody kindness. For yourself, your teammates, the customer, the organization. Because at the end of the day if you are not effective, that’s going to hurt everyone.

Kindness fosters a sense of trust and camaraderie among team members

Exactly! When I look forward to working with people, we get more done and I don't come home burned out and discouraged. Even if the work is hard, at least you are in it together.

Will you be kind as well to the people who repeatedly fuck up and don't care about delivering good processes or products?

You have to be careful, though: there is no shortage of people who will happily take advantage of someone who shows them kindness.

While I believe you should show a baseline level of kindness to people when you first meet them much like you should give people a baseline level of respect, there are actions which can and should lose both.

Sad to say that my experience is exactly opposite

When I’m kind to people, especially in other departments, they don’t mirror it: they’re stressed, they’re pressured by their boss or it’s just not the culture of that department… even after months of cooperation

I love reading discussions of people to whom following the social norms comes naturally and they can't fathom the idea that behaving in a way that makes other people feel good is something I need to consciously put effort into.

So you want to be kind only for utilitarian motives, not because it’s a good thing in principle ?

Huh! If I reflect back on my involvement in projects that had difficulties, there was rarely a dearth of competent people, and in fact it was often political and communication concerns that led to suffering.

Look at Conway’s Law: “any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.”

The “kind” people are the people who optimize an organization’s communication structure by helping competent people to have a voice and not be impeded by political wrangling.

In short, I think it’s the ‘kind’ people who can help an organization realize an architecture that is less warped by political considerations and more true to the customer’s needs.

Of course an organization needs both kindness and competence. In my decades in tech, competence was over-valued in my early years (the worship of the trope of the rockstar-but-asshole programmer), so if there is an overindication towards kindness right now, it is probably a counterbalance.

I would also question your conclusion about the government. While I have not worked in the government myself, I come from a sort of “federal government family”, in that I have multiple close family who have spent decades in federal government roles, and they are full of stories of incompetent managers undermining their employees, politically fighting one another, etc. To your point, they also have plenty of stories of crass incompetence, Nepotism, etc. But I think it’s an easy and incorrect answer to say it’s simply due to “HR-values” as opposed to “engineering-values”: it’s multi-faceted in both directions.

I actually agree with you but at the same time, being unkind in those situations is only going to hurt yourself. The reality of many workplaces is that the technical aspect as not the main focus. Appearances and politics run the show at most companies. You can either accept that and work with the system or engage counterproductively with your colleagues in a misguided attempt to force them into technical competence (never gonna happen). Eventually I want to find a place to work full of technically competent people. I thought I would find that in my current company because it was so competitive to get a job here. Let’s just say that was not the case. It think it can be very hard for employees to filter on this without knowing someone on the inside.

Opposing view - most large scale projects fail because of political and financial reasons rather than technology. Even the bad tech decisions are usually downstream of politics.

If you’re wanting to build a high speed rail line, space rocket or nuclear power plant; a propaganda specialist is probably going to be more useful than an engineer.

And how many would be from incompetence in terms of execution vs poor planning and a lack of knowledge about what's actually needed to complete the project?

Feels like the majority of those well-known failures (the 'we spent $5 billion+ and spent 10 years on something that should have taken a few years and maybe a tenth of that budget ones) come from either management who has no idea what they want, planning that hasn't taken into account even half the obstacles the project will need to overcome, or dozens of leaders all trying to make their mark.

Actual technical/work incompetence probably plays some part, but it's probably less of a matter of "people weren't honest enough about the quality of other people's work" and more of a matter of "we hired the cheapest possible team to do the work, and they weren't qualified in the slightest".

Bonus points for the leader of that team being the nephew/niece/relative of some guy in charge of the project.

> how many would be failing due to lack of kindness versus, say, straight-forwards incompetence?

Kindness and incompetence are orthogonal. You can be kind and still give honest, direct feedback. And your feedback will probably be received better because of your kindness.

I think you could argue that long term lack of kindness at all levels of an organization leads to organizational technical incompetence. It creates hostile work environment where employees don't feel valued which leads to talent attrition.

Yes, only valuing kindness with valuing technical competence is not ideal but so is the inverse. You want both.

It's possible to be technically competent and kind. They're not mutually exclusive traits. One doesn't even need to be kind. Just don't be an asshole.

Incompetence isn’t a root cause though. You have to go deeper… why were the people involved in the project incompetent?

If you find a project was held back by infighting, siloed groups, major shifts in direction or key people leaving, kindness will help with all of these things.

The reality is, people working as individuals, no matter how competent those individuals are, can only accomplish things within the scope of a single person. There are some things like that, but there are many things that are not. To accomplish any of those things, people need to work together, in a complementary way, toward a common goal. That just won’t happen if they don’t get along. Social competence can become just as important as technical competence. Kindness is part of that.

Actually the most dysfunctional engineering orgs I've worked in had unkind hardos in charge who would yell & scream at people. More of it was because they were poorly emotionally regulated than because they were right in whatever they were yelling or screaming about.

Government projects stand apart because things like cost are balanced against the inherent jobs-creation objectives of funding them.

Kindness doesn't mean to let incompetent people sit in roles they are incapable of indefinitely. That's more "niceness", using all sorts of HR speak about family/win together/blah blah blah while waiting until the budget cuts come to surprise fire people who were never performing in their role.

Kindness is to give people feedback that helps them improve. It is sometimes a poorly socialized engineers impression that people simply do their jobs poorly on purpose. In reality it's a mix of skills and awareness. Eventually everyone gets put into a role they aren't truly capable of and either grows into it or moves on. Feedback helps that happen sooner rather than later.

The biggest problem with government organizations is that they're monopolies.

The lack of competition means that (1) if the organization is dysfunctional, it won't be beaten by a better one, and (2) it has little incentive to improve.

I don't know if kindness is the right word you have used here. HR is not kind. At the end of the day they don't care about you. But they speak to you nicely. Same for the government too I guess

Ive also seen cases where business people truly don’t believe there is an underlying reality to a problem. They evaluate approaches and people purely from a sociability stand point.

You make a good point about government, there are so many big problems including bad incentives about working hard, taking risks, etc, it’s hard for to see that as the main one.

I don't think anyone has yet worked out a way to convince people to live in reality and follow science and engineering and also be kind to people who are opposed to those ways of thinking. Being fake kind to people who are genuinely obstructing things getting done is unproductive but so is being unkind and it seems most people value being cordial even if it means things fail.

Almost all problems on projects boil down to a people problem in the end many of which are made intractable by company and wider culture.

Government works just fine when you let them do things in house instead of going with "we just need to pay one more private contractor". Also pay more.

The article reads like kindness is only a correlated trait to what the author is actually trying to convey. To me this article is the same as any other basic "collaboration" explainer. I guess in cultures where a lot of external and internal pressure is put on exhibiting certain virtues, maybe framing it as kindness can override whatever other goals have made someone forget how to collaborate.

> If we tallied up all technical projects in the Western world that failed, how many would be failing due to lack of kindness versus, say, straight-forwards incompetence?

That's like saying a company didn't fail because it ran out of money. It failed because no one was around to operate it.

A lack of kindness can lead to mistakes not being rectified, as well as the wrong type of folks doing the work.

(Classic case of false dichotomy).

i would say yes, a lot of things fail from a lack of kindness.

Tesla self driving Tesla robotaxi Tesla park summon Tesla cybertruck Tesla solar roof tiles Boring company etc etc

One of the main things that Toyota Production System brings to manufacturing is the concept of respect, everything is supposed to be based on respect for each other. Maybe people fall short of that alot of the time, but that is the goal and intrinsic to all their other techinques like genchi genbutsu, kanban, just in time, waste elimination, etc.

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.

Google Translate is being too literal. It just means “jack of all trades, master of none”.

A more literal translation (with some liberties for the rhyme) would be “handyman nit: knows a bit of everything, but understands jack shit”.

Side note: I find ChatGPT to be a much better translator. It doesn’t just do literal translations. Here’s how it explained this phrase:

The saying "Maestro Liendre: De tó sabe, pero de ná entiende" generally means that someone appears to know a little bit about many things but doesn't have a deep understanding of any of them. It's used to describe someone who pretends to be knowledgeable but lacks true expertise.

TIL: Spanish has a sort of written contractions. I speak conversational Spanish so I’ve heard people talk this way, like Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic speakers shortening things, just hadn’t seen it written before. tó = todo ná = nada

https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/shortening-of-words > There are a few apocopes of very common words that are pronounced and written in informal Spanish as monosyllabic words. These popular apocopes include na, pa, and to, that stand for nada (nothing), para (for), and todo (all). You may find these words written with an apostrophe at the end, but spelling experts advise against it.

It hits better with the rhyme

"A know-it-all who doesn't understand anything" sounds fine in English to my ear.

from the context in the article, this seems to be the Spanish equivalent of “jack of all trades, master of none”

“Knows about everything yet understands nothing.”

>Here in YC you can probably go full on with your tech/science knowledge/ideas/theories/whatever and people will judge you purely on your points made, and the people listening are in the same boat.

I would disagree with this, even here it is important to be kind. Too often I find the comments on a given thread are full of self importance or worse disdain for the "shortcomings" of the topic in question. Whether or not that disdain might be due to a wealth of knowledge and experience, it brings the general experience of being here down, and in my opinion lowers the quality of the site and the person doing the disdaining.

I'm not asking for fawning over every submission like it is a new revelation, but the adage that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" springs to mind. HN is going to be full of people from differing experiences and walks of life. Tech is too big now for us to all be on the same page, or even within the same general age range. When someone drops a "Show HN" link to some hobby or passion project of theirs, and the comments are full of "experienced" people critiquing the project as if it were supposed to be a google scale web service or even as if it needed to be a viable commercial product – no matter how correct those assessments may be – that's damaging to our shared sense of community.

My own philosophy over time has been to only offer critique if it is also accompanied by my own efforts at providing what solutions I can directly (code, documentation whatever). If it bothers me enough to think I should say something, then it should bother me enough to also put in the effort to be/submit the change I want to see. Anything less is at best a piling on of cheap criticism ("cheap" in this case in the sense of "a dime a dozen"), and at worst unkindness for the sake of showing off knowledge. Absent something to contribute beyond criticism / critique, the goal I set for myself is either to engage with the subject and the creator on the assumption of earnest passion for the project, or if I'm disinterested for whatever reason, to not engage at all.

I definitely don't always succeed in this endeavor, but over the decades I've grown increasingly tired of the airs of cynicism that permeates the "smart" spaces I've been in. Be kind in all audiences, whether peers, betters or lay people and you will usually avoid being pretentious, confidently incorrect or condescending respectively. And those are 3 things I think we could do with less of in most communities.