How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right - <AUTHOR> https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-resolve-a-conflict-when-both-sides-are-right-1f375bc82f7f <comment><USER3> _Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole.

They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?_

If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me".

More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally _hostile_ communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield against all who would object to their claims.

My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased 30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers are incompetent, and should be replaced?

In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse.

<comment><USER4> _In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don 't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse._

In my experience, developers always warn management repeatedly and well in advance that engineering is implementing short term hacks. And if management believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor. Which seldom works out in the end as well as development thinks it will.

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

The moral of the story is that "...management has been warned repeatedly..." DOES NOT mean that the warnings are a correct diagnosis. Here are alternate diagnoses that may also cause the same symptom:

\- Confusing product stories.

\- Onboarding new developers without proper integration in the team.

\- Poor communication patterns between developers.

\- General company morale problems.

\- Improved QA. (This one is actually an improvement. Reported bugs are up because they are being caught, and developer throughput is down because they have to fix the newly reported bugs. In dysfunctional organizations, though, developers can wind up upset at QA.)

And so on.

<comment><USER5> These are all good points, though I think a deeper point may be missing regarding employing empathic, curious, positive communication tools (If you prefer a term besides NVC, please use it--the politics of taxonomy could only distract us from the potential benefit of ideas).

Here's a theorem: For common personal or professional conversation types, I maximize the expected outcome of "difficult conversations" (both to me and to the group) by (in the conversation) assuming the best and focusing on open- mindedness and collaboration.

Proof: Enumerate expected outcomes from using that mindset versus not doing so over all possible values of {am I in the wrong?, is other person in the wrong?, other person's disposition}. (For full rigor multiple through by your priors on each of these but I hope the idea is clear enough).

In the example you gave, if I'm management and I'm in the wrong, being curious when trying to debug the problem will make it way easier for me to be open to my mistakes, since I've introduced no specter of guilt, shame, or blame for the fact that there is a mistake.

<comment><USER4> The deeper point is true, but hits at an even deeper point. Which is what lay behind the attitude in the comment that I was responding to.

Are you familiar with [https://www.triballeadership.net/](https://www.triballeadership.net/)? Based on language patterns, people and organizations can be classified into 5 levels. The linguistic patterns are (1) Life Sucks, (2) My Life Sucks, (3) I'm Great (but you suck), (4) We're Great (but some other organization sucks), and (5) Life Is Great.

There are formal tools behind that classification, and formal ways to measure it, but in general the opinion of people you interact with will be fairly consistent. That notwithstanding, most people judge themselves as operating at a level or two better than they actually do.

Here is where that becomes a problem. Most successful executives operate at level 3, but think that they operate at level 4 or 5. They can adopt any linguistic pattern that they think will make them more successful, but the tools make them more effective at being level 3, with the attendant problems that result for others.

This is not a slight on the communication tools. Emotional people will tend to escalate until the emotion is noticed and acknowledged. Therefore doing that up front really does calm the other person down, and really does facilitate communication. Conversely, approaching challenges with openness, curiosity and openmindedness really does make problems easier to solve.

However if you give a person the tools without changing their underlying attitudes, what looks and sounds wonderful will, over time, create the exact same type of problems in the long run. It just creates them more effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive.

I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: _because I need [universal need]_. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always a "universal need".

One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person, who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.

<comment><USER7> > It's never because the speaker is selfish

Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish.

Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous _is_ getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.

<comment><USER6> This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while avoiding introspection into their character flaws.

Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)

<comment><USER7> Generally, people using the NVC template that you recognize are "beginners". So your edit is probably very relevant. As I said in another comment: Actually observe those who communicate very well in stressful situations (very well = both parties not upset after the fact, with some resolution on the issue at hand), and you'll find their approach is fairly similar to NVC - they're just not using the templates your recognize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with businesses/startup/bosses trying to use these is that they come across as disingenuous and manipulative if you try to use these as a tool.

The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you are asking others to be vulnerable.

<comment><USER9> This. So much this.

You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks.

I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of a book-quote:

> The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden > bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's > suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and > Relaxed and a People Person.

\-- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NVC (I prefer "Compassionate Communication") is not a complete conflict resolution framework. It is a communication strategy that is designed to help people turn on their innate compassion. It doesn't have a clear answer on what you do when people don't agree to requests. As a professional mediator, I find that it can work well for some types of conflict if I bolt on a problem solving step at the end.

I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving:

1\. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior

2\. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.)

3\. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior

In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes) ) approach:

1\. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive: Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests

2\. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic, physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation

I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.

<comment><USER12> Your comments are excellent throughout this thread. I would like to know how to hire you. PM me if you're open to talking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased > 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is > feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features > because of the risk to the system as a whole.

> They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system > architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed.

I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales > director more independence and support?

When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun.

Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem.

If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone.

Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.

<comment><USER14> Totally agree.

> If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the > bug count, you have not actually solved the problem.

Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.

<comment><USER15> You actually can piss them off with acting safe and engaged while not addressing the actual problem. I see that quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What Dave Bailey proposes with NVC is a cancer for engineering.

All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That is rarely the case in engineering.

Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not the request itself.

If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.

<comment><USER17> You do realize that proposing that NVC is a cancer is a negative and threatening statement, right? (Cancer is generally considered negative, being that it's a fatal disease...) People who don't already agree with you are going to have a negative emotional reaction to this and immediately disagree without trying to understand your point of view.

If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing. If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding.

<comment><USER18> > If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what > others think, you are succeeding.

You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC success story.

<comment><USER7> Here's the deal: I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but can provide something _better_. And in my experience, the status quo is rarely better.

NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on that bandwagon.

If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR: Most communications books, written independently, have the same elements as NVC. The other books are better at _explaining_ why these elements is important. But the NVC book is better at providing recipes, which is why it became more popular.

A few years ago I did a deep dive on the topic, and read 4 books on communications: Difficult Conversations, NVC, Crucial Conversations and Getting Past No. Most of these were written/invented independently of one another. When I had read all 4, I looked over all my notes, and noticed that they all point to the same things, with only minor differences:

1\. State your observation, without judgement, and be specific, not general.

2\. Personalize and state its impact on you. The "feelings" part of NVC - <USER2> the books explicitly call out that you should explicitly state your feelings. The Difficult Conversations authors pointed out that many people in professional settings have the notion that discussions should be absent of emotions ("objective). Yet if a discussion at work is getting heated, emotions are clearly playing a big role. Don't assume you can solve the problem without bringing those emotions to the table. And indeed, many solutions fail because they failed to address the emotions which resulted in a lack of commitment. As one book put it: Unvalidated emotions are a minefield.

Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core principle of all communications books I've read.

(The issue did not get resolved by the end of the day).

And personalize: Don't talk in vague principles, but talk about how _you_ are affected. This is where a lot of the tech world fails. I recall one heated discussion at work where a person was strongly pushing for something, and using all kinds of principles/analogies. He wanted someone else to change his workflow because it was causing problems for him. Yet, _he never explained how it was causing him problems!_ When queried, he kept invoking analogies and principles. The world rarely yields neatly to principles, and every analogy has a flaw. You'll often get competing principles. Invoking them alone will not solve the problem.

The other element of stating the impact on you is discussing the needs. What need of yours is not being met? Is this impacting your efficiency? Are you wondering whether the work is futile, and not giving your purpose? Do you think you are being ignored and want consideration?

I cannot stress this enough: If you have trouble putting a "need" to your problem, it is because you haven't thought this through, and it's a bad idea to go into a conversation about the issue. Even if you don't explicitly state your need, this is a valuable exercise to do internally. Feelings are easy: When you're mad you know you're upset. Most people stop there and go have an argument. NVC forces you to start introspecting: My teammate did X and now I'm mad. But why is his doing X bothering me? Yes, my teammate undid all my changes and replaced it with crappy code. But _why exactly_ is this bothering me? Your needs and his needs may conflict. But unless you can determine both, the conversation is likely going to go south.

All the communications books are part "therapy": Emphasizing introspection along with communication.

3\. Request (optional - depends on the situation).

Regarding the "canned robotic phrases": This is akin to any other book that becomes dogma (think TDD, unit tests, referential transparency, etc). And just like the others, the original author does _not_ insist you use these phrases. The NVC author explicitly says that the elements must be present, but the order doesn't matter, and sometimes it can even be communicated in one phrase. It nevertheless provides those templates to make it easy on beginners.

When I read the NVC book, I felt similar to you: These phrases are very artificial. And would annoy others. NVC is the only book that has these templates, and it is likely why it is very successful. The other books discuss the issues involved in conversations much better than NVC does - but they don't provide a template.

Now how artificial are these? Surprisingly not very. All my skepticism went away once I started observing people destressing a situation at work. The majority of these situations involved someone using very similar templates. And many (most?) of those folks had never heard of NVC! It sounds very artificial when reading it, but no one thought it was off. This is the exercise I recommend everyone does: Observe someone handling a stressful situation at work, and note how often they touch on all 3 aspects of NVC (specific observation, referring to the feelings, and the needs that are unmet).

Rosenberg didn't invent NVC. He just identified its existence.

No one's forcing you to use the template. Here's an example "So this is bothering you because it's affecting your efficiency?" This is perfectly valid NVC.

I think some of the problem arises in what is considered "good" communication. In the academic (and tech) world, we often describe good communication as concise and objective. This is great when communicating facts, science, etc. But in the workplace, we are not in the business of communicating facts and doing science. Most of us are in the business of making a product, that someone will buy, from which we will earn our living. _And_ there are many competing motivations (some people want to "make" something, others are more interested in promotions, etc). Generally, we are heavily reliant on others. You can make a great thing but if the marketing folks refuse to market it, it _will_ impact you (and vice versa). So "good communication" at the workplace involves dealing with a wider variety of people who have differing needs from you.

Becoming better at that type of communication is a lot of effort over a long period of time. It's easy to dismiss one type of style (e.g. NVC), but recognize that the "default" alternative is very poor and merely dismissing means accepting a poor level of communication. Had I simply read the NVC book and not dived deep into other books, I wouldn't have improved at all. It is because I decided that I will try to find a way to improve it that I recognized the merits of NVC and recognized its effective usage in the real world. It's also why I didn't stop at "crappy templates" and focused on making it less artificial.

Finally, NVC has a cult following. Ignore the cult. Just focus on the book.

<comment><USER20> In the context of work discussions, I think people should be strongly discouraged from describing their position in terms of how they 'feel' because what they feel is a result of their focus on work. Therefore the root cause of a person's feeling should be expressed instead and will be harder to dismiss in a discussion. It typically takes a lot of work to understand the root cause but it is also empowering for people when they can turn their intense feelings into rational arguments. My two cents.

<comment><USER7> I think providing an example will help me understand what you're trying to say. And I worry I will soon hit my comment limit so I may not be able to respond.

I do not think what people "feel" is necessary a result of a focus on work. I've often encountered upset people at work because they believed a coworker was implying they were stupid. And in any case, things like fairness in compensation/promotions, etc can play a big role.

I agree with root causing, but I often find it's hard to root cause someone _else 's_ problem without knowing their feelings. The sad truth about communications is that most people suck at it. Half of becoming a better communicator is learning to deal with poor communicators, and making it easier for them to express what's on their mind (something many/most are reluctant to do).

<comment><USER20> As an example, consider a product manager that decides to remove a previously planned feature that one or more people have spent considerable effort working towards. If they can discuss the benefit of keeping the feature (or the cost associated with dropping it) then they stand a better chance of a favorable outcome than if they discuss in terms of how the product manager made them feel.

While I think people are right to have feelings I think they are more likely to achieve the outcome they want if they can understand and express why they feel that way. This is assuming that they are conscientious workers which is the more common case. If they are bonkers then they probably won't be able to pin down a sensible root cause.

<comment><USER21> As long as it doesn't affect the health of the codebase or force the engineers to work overtime, why do the engineers care about what features get shipped or not? They're paid to code, so if they aren't sacrificing code quality or working overtime they should just focus on coding features that may or may not get shipped. I mean, if we're being strictly objective that is.

If the engineers have feelings they might feel dismissed and devalued if they spend time and effort making features nobody will ever see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _When you apply the format to the letter, it usually comes off as over- > prepared and clunky. It's not how people normally speak so it can sound > inauthentic._

This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in conflict situations.

Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence (from the article) like, "When you didn't bring me a cup of coffee, I felt DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a coffee next time?"

Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you probably brought this up because you care about getting along.

The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive you."

Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton easier.

\---

Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust. Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have, then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves as an important multiplier.

</comment><comment><USER23> Based on the title alone I would say "find the most important aspect of each side's view and come up with a compromise that satisfies both parties"

I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes they themselves don't know it without some probing.

<comment><USER11> This approach is called Interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non- feelings:"

Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

<comment><USER24> Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a mistake for a couple reasons.

First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid.

Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way.

Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it.

I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth- seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.

<comment><USER11> I think you are pointing out that reframing can be misused. Do you think that this cut from my conflict resolution doc is a "concise alternative?"

"The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way." \-- Bernard Mayer

How to reframe a statement:

Acknowledge the emotion

Restate the problem or issue removing the inflammatory language

Request or wait for clarification or validation from the speaker

Repeat as necessary

<comment><USER24> I really like that quote!

I think your steps are a decent approximation, but I don't think they are fully general. For example, sometimes clarifying the details and reality of a conflict causes the conflict to be more directly inflammatory. And if you're following a procedure that has "be less inflammatory" as a metric, then you'll fuck that up. (For the record, I don't think it's a bad heuristic to follow. Most of the time you do actually want "less inflammatory").

A few months ago I facilitated a conversation in which some old friends/coworkers were trying to have a conflict, and they were being SO careful, and SO polite, and SO open to each others' perspectives. Yet neither of them was willing to be fully honest about the pain and blame they were feeling. Things didn't really move forward until I started making clarifications that sounded like impassioned, inflammatory accusations, which really got to the heart of what was at stake emotionally.

I think the real guiding principle is truth tracking, at its core--ie. as a facilitator noticing when something is being confused or hidden, and bringing it more out. In practice, bringing more truth to light normally causes relief and feelings of safety, but sometimes what the reality of the situation calls for is more like "honorable combat," which is made honorable because it's direct, straightforward, and open hearted.

So maybe I'd change that step to "Restate the problem in a more truthful way."

<comment><USER11> Yes, you are spot on with that example and I have had similar experiences when mediating with parties that have higher EQ, but lack a rich set of soft skills. My process doc addresses the basics of facilitating conflict resolution as could be taught in a one day class. Your example is something I would consider to be more advanced and requiring an experienced mediator. I'll also say that most conflicts requiring "honorable combat" lend themselves better to an interests-based negotiation approach. I really appreciated your comments here and would love to get your feedback on my doc. Email me if you are interested.

<comment><USER24> Sure, I'm happy to take a look. Not sure what your email is, mine is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Having read all of the comments to this article, it's quite impressive how quickly people lost sight of the conflict, and took sides with whoever they empathised most with.

I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a projection of their reality.

This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or truly seen and valued.

Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as it is in the comments.

Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!

</comment><comment><USER17> When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas "level 1" should really involve developing trust and close connections.

Aside from that, this quote seems problematic:

 _" Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of connection."_

Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the _source_ of the connection, it was incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust _as well as verification_ , as a part of quality assurance.

By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not _" stupid Frank's fault that the build broke"_, it's _" our SDLC is not developed enough yet to ensure that the build doesn't break"_. This isn't exactly NVC, but it is another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is.

Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their passive-aggressive bullshit.

> When you didn't bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have > a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time?

No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the workplace: "No."

> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased > 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is > feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features > because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new > features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think > their unmet universal need is here?

From your list, they need _respect_ , _empathy_ , _space_ , and _understanding_. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them space to not work on features.

> The sales director explains that the prospect said, 'If you had a reporting > dashboard, I'd close the deal right now.' The director is concerned that > they'll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether > rather helpless.

The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales > director more independence and support?

Do _you_ know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and they need to knock it the fuck off.

The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit- wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be able to fucking knock this shit off already?

<comment><USER7> If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat.

Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment.

I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

<comment><USER25> I don't work for you. I am the consultant sitting to the side and watching you crash and burn. If you want to hear how I'll talk to you when you're my manager, then you'd better put a salary in my pocket first.

When you say that my concerns are valid but that I am expressing them in problematic ways, you are _tone policing_. This is a typical technique used by management: First, break up the original complaint into small pieces, then estrange the emotional content from each piece, minimizing and shifting as necessary. It is a useful way of dodging actual responsibility.

The attitude you are displaying, where you _would_ have given a substantiative reply, but _only for_ the way that the complaint was phrased, is a common empty rhetorical technique that comes with tone policing. Odds are strong that you don't actually have any substance to reply with, but you need to ensure that my tone isn't allowed to flourish or even gain sympathy or support.

Let's double-check my concerns, without profanity:

* People are not entitled to coffee or other errands being run by other employees. There are appropriate ways to join a coffee run, and this ain't it. Right? Now, does Dave give alternative wordings? Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that you'll learn. Yep, you'd better learn to ask politely about coffee runs and other communal activities.

* Feature factories are a management anti-pattern, right? The engineering director in Dave's story is negligent to not seriously consider the risks to the stability and quality of their services and products.

* Sales must never drive engineering decisions unilaterally, right? It sounds like this engineering director lacks the ethical spine necessary to support their engineers.

* None of the people here, neither Dave, the sales director, nor the engineering director, are coders, right? So y'all don't understand the engineering concerns, which is unfortunate, because without addressing engineering concerns, your products and services will not be marketable.

Edit: After reading the rest of the thread, you've indicated that you do in fact have coding experience. Okay; in that case, I apologize and retract my guess. But I am then forced to conclude that you have a tremendous lack of empathy for fellow engineers and have decided to side with management, not just in terms of their emotional duplicity but also their manner of speaking- without-saying. I am, as before and as ever, disappointed.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that > you'll learn

Dave here. The point of the article was in fact not at all that NVC is awkward and you'll have to learn, but to say there are valuable principles that you can apply without the format, that can help you address conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is actually MORE right.

</comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Leela: "Great. We're two days from earth with no food."

Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

</comment><comment><USER27> One problem is that when people are triggered by certain topics, they will still be triggered by the topic, no matter how careful or non-violently you approach.

If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house work, could please do more in the future?".

If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was "non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.

<comment><USER7> Well, here are some of the problems with such a statement:

The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It would help a lot more if the complainant _specified_ the problem.

Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger defensiveness.

The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is not a need.

Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people. One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work. What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?"

One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear, how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the house.

Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need to be _specific_ , not _general_.

Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I already did?

Defenses are up.

If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be more orderly?"

A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be:

"I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop, and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?"

To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales > director more independence and support?

Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.

<comment><USER29> The classic 'engineer wants to have fun' example also irks me. Most engineers want _challenges_ (i.e. complex problems to solve), and the space to apply their knowledge and skills for mutual benefit (i.e. doing things right), they just happen to have fun while doing it. I imagine this is true for almost every technical profession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> More I read about it, the more NVC seems essentially like a progressive NLP. It has the same hypnotic misdirection and playing on peoples emotions, while directing them to a zero sum end.

I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.

</comment><comment><USER31> NVC can be extremely powerful, but it only works if both parties are amenable to it. Source: therapy. While workers have an incentive to respond to NVC, some people simply do not internalize in a way that is necessary for it to work. This is the supreme challenge of mediators. Hat's off to them.

</comment><comment><USER32> The fundamental needs omit "power". Perhaps "security" is the analog, but "I will keep my job" is not quite the same as "my competitive standing relative to my peers and superiors will remain at least as strong and ideally improve". Let's recognize that the author strives to steer organizations in a direction of open productivity, but once anyone in the org is good at managing up it becomes an arms race. No org of >400 people can ignore this factor, and an org of any size can have it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the other?"

How might one cultivate wisdom?

<comment><USER34> Wisdom is hard.

It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things.

It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently.

And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed.

Practice, practice, practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Do you need some framework for this? How about a competent manager instead?

<comment><USER36> At some point, managers have to get from incompetent to competent. That's invariably going to involve trying out various techniques, and if those techniques have known expected results, it helps the individual evaluate whether they're getting it right.

Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SlackBots.js – Simple Way to Control Your Slack Bot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mishk0/slack-bot-api

<comment><USER2> This looks potentially very useful. I'm eyeing Node for setting up a basic Slackbot myself, so this might be what I use as a baseline. (At the least, it has more Github stars than other projects in similar areas which I've seen)

(Since at least on the Free tier, Realtime Bot only counts as one integration slot whereas /slash command + Incoming Webhook counts as two, I'm looking at the former when the latter would be much cleaner and not need the same level of overhead. Such is the cost of keeping within _free_ , so I don't mind too much)</comment>


Why VCs are obsessed with Unicorns (we do the math) - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/ko0n3nOL034 <comment><USER2> One of the astute comments on this by Terence Lam: Terence Lam Stage one: invest $25K in 100 startups ($2.5M) Stage two: pick 20 of them and invest $100K in them ($2M) Stage three: pick 4 of the 20 and invest $500K ($2M) Stage four: pick 1 of the 4 and invest $5M in that ($5M) the "expected" exit value of a startup is different in different stage, and most often this is non- linear: the expected exit value increases quadratically when a startup move from stage one to stage four. $11.5M invested ;) (ignoring the management fee :p)

Another hidden benefit: startups in stage three or four may "acqu-hire" startups in stage one or two, and the VCs who know and engage with them are the good middlemen here to facilitate the deals.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting in the video she says most funds don't achieve 1x - is that true?

</comment><comment><USER3> Because they are so heavily invested in them.</comment>


MySpace as a Media Distribution Platform - <AUTHOR> http://fernblog.com/home/2009/5/13/myspace-as-a-media-distribution-platform.html

<comment><USER2> >solidify its business model?

no, wait, MySpace has a business model? really?

<comment><AUTHOR> MySpace needs to solidify its revenue model. It's ad revenues are impressive, but a big chunk of this is the Google ad agreement. Once this expires, MySpace's ad revenues will decline (and quite dramatically) unless they increase their ad revenues from other sources.</comment></comment>


All Jobs Should Be Dream Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://bagggitdev.blogspot.com/2012/10/all-jobs-should-be-dream-jobs.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I originally submitted this as a guest column to TechCrunch. It was promptly rejected. HN is the best place for it anyway. Very intrigued to know what you think of it. Thanks!</comment>


TIFU by ordering food online and setting the restaurant on fire - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/bjttfe/tifu_by_ordering_food_online_amd_essentially/ <comment><USER2> This was a fake story, as far as I can tell. Multiple requests for a link to the newspaper article, yet no link was ever posted.</comment>


Medical Research: The Dangers to the Human Subjects - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/nov/19/medical-research-dangers-human-subjects <comment><USER2> This article compares medical experimentation with varying levels of egregiousness, but leaves unmentioned the variable interpretation of the standard of care used for control groups. Is the standard of care the regimen that was outlined in the most-cited international guidelines published 6 years ago, or is it the guideline supplemented by off-label drugs that have gained widespread usage for their published increase in treatment efficacy but have not made it into the guidelines yet, because the meeting to rewrite them is next year? Things change fast in cancer and infectious disease and other fields, so this becomes important when designing trials.

Anecdotally, it is also interesting to enroll patients in research/trials. The idea of a fully-informed patient is incomplete in that patients are not doctors specialising in their disease, so they will always be much less informed about risks. Even if a patient hears a risk of a treatment is , for example, aplastic anemia and is 'informed', it would take a few hours to explain the possible consequences of that one side effect, much less the others. Consequently, a lot of consenting to research or treatment protocols involve an immense amount of trust. One patient was skeptical of a research protocol until it was explained very carefully, after which I chatted with the family for 1-2 hours waiting for the next blood draw and let them know that I had put on my bow tie just to see them (which was true). Other patients just don't even give hearing about it a shot, which is disheartening sometimes.

<comment><USER3> Informing patients is a hugely variable thing. It's "fast moving" at the moment to make it more digitized at least, but that isn't always clearly the best solution for patients even if it may be an improvement over the rushed PI interview and boring training video.

I think what's exciting about clinical research—if only in principal!—is that a doctor has an excuse to spend more time involved in a patient's life and health. The idea of having an interview with the whole family discussing a patient's health is pretty interesting even if it comes attached with the additional burden of understanding an (often complex) trial protocol.

Unfortunately, I think that the idea of being able to schedule enough time for such an interview (and doing so while wearing your best bow tie) is a rare one.</comment></comment>


The financial crisis shattered investors' trust in markets - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/03/16/how-the-bear-stearns-meltdown-wrecked-something-more-valuable-than-money/ <comment><USER2> The trust issue is something I can confirm. Until 2008 I believed that the market was fair overall and you gain if you do something right and lose if you do something wrong. Then I had to learn that there is a whole group of people that can't lose. We have to admire them and listen to them while they make profits and when they screw up we have to bail them out and still listen to their "wisdom". This definitely made me very cynical.

<comment><USER3> What made me cynical was that the government didn't step in and handle it the same way that a private citizen having untenable obligations would be handled.

I expected the failed institutions to literally be seized, and an orderly re- distribution of assets processed. I also expected, as a result, a correction in the price of housing to actually realistic levels.

I was extremely naive about the housing issue; I had not realized how artificially constrained the markets were and how (at least in the US if not elsewhere) government regulations continue to distort the market towards artificial shortage.

It all needs to be repaired and re-worked, but regulatory capture and conflict of voter interest by those who've made it in to the 'I have mine' status is far too systemic.

<comment><USER4> You are correct, it is for the time being politically untenable to allow housing (really land) to reduce in value. The situation might change when the millenials and younger generations start becoming more politically active.

<comment><USER2> As soon as they start inheriting houses they will also be against lower housing prices.

<comment><USER4> I probably just about count as a millenial, my parents could live another 20 - 30 years and that house might have to be sold to pay their hospice care should they get dementia. So the house likely isn't going to be much use to me.

<comment><USER5> >that house might have to be sold to pay their hospice care

I suspect this is the great Faustian bargain of the boomer generation. All the wealth that they helped themselves to in lieu of fixing the big systemic problems in economy and government will be traded away in the end for the modicum of comfort in their twilight years that a better functioning system would have provided anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a good read about the "just world" fallacy: [https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world- falla...](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/)

And indeed "credit" comes from the latin word for trust.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry to hear that. Sorry not sorry.

Maybe people realized ratings agencies are basically financial horoscope. Or that the system is deeply rigged. Or that real growth opportunities seem to become rare in the last years.

<comment><USER8> ratings agencies were literally rigged

<comment><USER9> Fun fact: Warren Buffet owned a large stake in Moody's (largely responsible for fraudulent ratings). Additionally, much of Warren's wealth was built on an "insurance float". Had the stock market not recovered (only possible because of the Fed), Warren would have lost everything. Hilariously, Warren is also a large owner of Wells Fargo -- yet another corrupt institution. But shucks, Warren is just a nice guy who got lucky picking a few stocks! You can do it too! He sure wishes his secretary paid as little tax as he does!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/Q0tia](http://archive.is/Q0tia) works for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can learn a lot from old TV.

I saw a Miami Vice episode a while back, the Bad Guy noted that the Dow Jones was about to break 1400.

It's a constant upward trail, with peaks and valleys along the way. Don't bet against it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Bitcoin is the real occupy wallstreet movement. Anyone not happy with the outcome of the financial crisis should be looking to leave a monetary system which has enabled our corrupt institutions to thrive.

<comment><USER12> Bitcoin, or rather the bitcoin ecosystem, strikes me as the existing system on steroids. Let's cut out the few checks and balances we have and see the resulting clusterfuck.

<comment><USER9> > strikes me as the existing system on steroids.

I don't understand this at all. Can you explain?

The monetary system we have today enables politicians to tax us without our consent -- they have the ability to print money.

In the past, if a government wanted a war (such as Vietnam), they'd need to find a way to pay for it (usually taxes). Unpopular policy was frequently met with protests because the policy was explicit. Now they can just tax us via inflation. We all know inflation is there, but we don't realize what it's doing to our savings and wages (especially because no one can agree on how to measure inflation).

In 2008, the government was able to bail out financial institutions and prop up an unjust housing market by printing enormous sums of money. Had they not had the ability to print, politicians would have needed to seek the public's consent to accomplish their policy proposals.

<comment><USER13>
      I don't understand this at all. Can you explain?

Some people believe the 2008 financial crisis was caused because of de- regulation, rather than regulation; and that the bad guys were mostly untrustworthy/incompetent/greedy types in financial institutions.

Cryptocurrencies, famous for helping people evade regulations (e.g. ransomware) and untrustworthy/incompetent/greedy institutions (e.g. exchanges "accidentally" losing deposits), seem worse on these rather than better.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin is about money and it's properties. It has nothing to do with income verification, loan standards, or rating falsification.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xsb prolog as replacement for yacc (and haskell/ml) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~warren/xsbbook/node23.html

<comment> loup-vaillant This reminds me of Ometa <http://www.tinlizzie.org/ometa/>

<comment><USER2> Ometa is fantastic, if a little neglected. Really quite powerful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How odd. The author's name is David S. Warren. The Warren Abstract Machine is named after David H. D. Warren.

I've actually checked out this Stony Brook page before and assumed this was the WAM guy.

<comment><USER4> I was a Stony Brook student and David S. Warren was my professor - he is _not_ the David H. Warren of the Warren Abstract Machine. He (the Stony Brook Warren) liked to joke about how only his luck could require him to deal with the naming confusion in a field of only about a hundred people.</comment></comment>


Designing the Flexbox Inspector - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/01/designing-the-flexbox-inspector/ <comment><USER2> I created this site to help me better understand flexbox: flexbox.help. Also did grids.help for CSS grids.

<comment><USER3> Great tool. Very simple and straightforward. Well done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man. Flexbox is one of those things that makes me excited to do front end stuff again. And I love that Mozilla is making better and better tools.

<comment><USER5> Have a look at CSS grids and get prepared to drop your jaw.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Grid_La...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Grid_Layout/Basic_Concepts_of_Grid_Layout)

<comment><USER6> In practice, almost everything that you ever want to achieve with Grid can be achieved with Flexbox. Time and time again, I've encountered examples of "what Grid enables", and been able to replicate it precisely with Flexbox.

Not always—there are definitely practical things you can achieve with Grid that you can't with previous layout options, I've made a couple myself—but almost always.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, having used them both a lot I feel exactly the opposite way – I think grid's capabilities apply to more situations and suspect it will be the go-to layout/alignment tool once it catches on more. Grid is the more powerful tool, I think the only feature it can't do that flexbox does is making wrapped items not line up (since grid, of course, wants to make them line up into a grid). Wanting items not to line up seems less common, doesn't it?

<comment><USER6> Flex is about single-dimensional layout, grid is about two-dimensional layout.

Most layout scenarios that are in two dimensions can actually be solved with nested single-dimensional layout. Sometimes it'll be easier to solve them with a proper two-dimensional layout, and I tend to prefer the markup that Grid lets me have, but I find two-dimensional layout that can't be solved with nested single-dimensional layout to be uncommon.

Also, most interface problems are actually single-dimensional.

I think Grid will become more popular than it is, but never overtake Flexbox as most people's go-to for layout, because Flexbox is normally enough, and Grid is too complex. I use it from time to time, and I have taken the trouble to know exactly what it's _capable_ of, so that I know when I should reach for it rather than Flexbox or something else or giving up, but I normally need to look up various properties when I go to use it. Meanwhile, most of what people want to achieve with Flexbox is just `display: flex;` plus `flex-direction`, `flex`, `align-items` and `justify-content`, and there are few enough knobs that you can essentially brute-force it without trouble—and the Flexbox Inspector makes it even easier, in a way that the Grid Inspector can't _really_ because Grid is just _too_ powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Been smashin Flexbox lately, it's a significant win for frontend, and now widely supported.

I usually have this cheat sheet open: [http://yoksel.github.io/flex- cheatsheet/#display](http://yoksel.github.io/flex-cheatsheet/#display)

I like because it has the "applies to: container/items" clearly shown for each property, which I always forget...

The next thing I want to try is using css transitions to "animate" flexbox containers so that dynamic content inside smoothly expands the height of the container down the page, instead of the abrupt jump we're used to. I haven't managed to crack this yet, but heard a rumour that it's possible. So if anyone has tips.... (edit: found this which details the issue, and describes said flexbox trick: [https://css-tricks.com/using-css-transitions-auto- dimensions...](https://css-tricks.com/using-css-transitions-auto-dimensions/) )

</comment><comment><USER9> Installed Firefox Developer Edition after using only Chrome for awhile. Pleasantly surprised how well everything works, especially the dev tools pane -- feels more smooth than Chrome's dev tools.

<comment><USER10> This is weird. Some people claim that Firefox's dev tools are better, others claim that the Chrome dev tools are better and that Firefox doesn't even compare. I wonder who is right. Is this like comparing different car brands where you can never reach a good conclusion? I personally have always been using Firefox, so its dev tools are most familiar to me, but there have been times where I've run into unimplemented features that were implemented in Chrome.

<comment><USER6> In matters of layout, Firefox has tended to have a substantial lead. In matters of script debugging, Chrome has tended to have a substantial lead. In other places, it's not so consistent.

Take debugging as an area where I think it is fair to say that Chrome is _miles_ ahead at present:

Chrome's debugger is fast; pausing normally takes under a second to finish updating the UI, and stepping mostly takes a slight fraction of a second. It is also particularly helpful, showing the values of variables at the end of each line when stepping through.

Firefox's debugger is slow; pausing typically takes several seconds for the UI to catch up, and stepping tends to take a second or two, with some UI thrashing. It is unreliable in the presence of source maps (you put a breakpoint on line 1234 of the source? Well that translated to line 1 in what's actually being executed, and breakpoints are no more precise than linewise, so… yeah). Firefox Nightly's debugger is also currently completely broken for me at FastMail due to [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1516941](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1516941), so I'm having to spin up Chrome when I need to do any debugging, which I don't like having to do. In the normal run of things, I stick with Firefox even through its slow debugger, because I _do_ find that it does a better job in some areas of debugging (I think it was examining values and operating at varying layers of the stack).

For personal context: I've been a Firefox user since about 0.93, and have had Nightly as my daily driver most of the time for several years. I don't much like Chrome. That doesn't stop it from being better in certain areas, though.

<comment><USER11> This has been my experience too. Firefox is my primary browser but I never could get the debugger to work inside promises for some reason. The firefox layouting engine is amazing. I develop some crazy inefficient DOM layouts when prototyping and Firefox will happily chug through it while Chrome will choke. But when I have to debug I go back into Chrome..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Mobile-inspired navigation & structure

This is an interesting choice for a desktop developer tool. Was this purely a design choice, or did the new structure end up being more accessible?

<comment><USER13> Since the flexbox inspector is is a sidebar in the DevTools, they're working with similar size constraints as a mobile device. I think taking design inspiration from mobile makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I stumbled upon this today while using Firefox Developer Edition and I have to say it is very useful. Thanks for the write-up.</comment>


Watch the debate and vote on the Amash amendment in the House of Reps - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN

<comment><USER2> I'm watching, here is who is for or against in their remarks so far:

+1 = Amash

-1 = Rogers

+1 = Conyers

-1 = Bachmann

+1 = Sensenbrenner

-1 = Mulvaney

+1 = Lofgren

+1 = Barton

+1 = Duncan

+1 = Poe

+1 = Nadler

+1 = Gabbard

-1 = Cotton

And it did not pass on a voice vote. Amash is asking for a recorded vote. Not clear what happens now.

Edit: Amash recorded vote coming up in a couple minutes.

Edit2: Two minute vote, apparently. Begins now 6:50pm EST.

Edit3: Fails to pass. Yea - 205, Nay - 217.

<comment><USER3> From what I observed it seemed like the chair called for a voice vote, where it sounded like an approximately even number of people said "Aye" and "Nay", and the chair then just declared the nay's the winner and then ignored requests to actually count and record the votes.

<comment><USER4> No, there's a recorded vote, it's just happening after the one for Pompeo's amendment.

I heard a louder chorus of "No's", unfortunately. The "No" arguments on this were particularly dumb.

<comment><USER5> Why is this bill specifically on the phone metadata? There are other things that the Amash ammd. could go after, do we assume that this is the lowest hanging fruit?

<comment><USER2> Not sure. It was interesting that both Bachmann & Cotton were explicitly stating that no one had a Fourth Amendment Right to privacy about _any Metadata._ For instance, what you say in a letter or phone call is private, but not who you say it to. Never even heard this idea before.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't take Bachmann very seriously; she also doesn't seem to believe that NSA has phone books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Amash amendment failed by 16 votes (201 to 217).

Edit: Final tally is 205-217.

<comment><USER5> I see 205-217?

<comment><USER6> It was 201-217 when the chair called it as there weren't enough uncommitted votes to make up the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read it as "Amish" the first time. Now I'm sad that it's not that word.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just let CPAN know how easily your opinions and emotions are set on things you don't understand.</comment>


Trump appears to confirm U.S. nukes are in Turkey - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/16/trump-appears-confirm-us-nukes-are-turkey-which-would-break-with-longstanding-protocol/ <comment><USER2> What a complete moron.

<comment><USER3> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>


Git 1.7.0 release notes - <AUTHOR> http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/RelNotes-1.7.0.txt

<comment><USER2> Here's one I want to try:

 _"sparse checkout" feature allows only part of the work tree to be checked out._

And the new @upstream and --set-upstream look like nice shorthands for dealing with remotes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Biggest plus for me:

"git checkout A...B" is a way to detach HEAD at the merge base between A and B.

I always find myself trying to figure out where two branches meet in the history.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain this ?

<comment><USER2> "A..B" here just means the closest common ancestor of A and B, which could be branches or arbitrary commits.

You might use this if you have a branch from someone else and you just want to know how long ago it diverged from your own branch. Or you might rewind to the common ancestor of two temporary branches before doing something like squashing the commits from each branch onto the ancestor, one after the other.

<comment><USER4> Awesome. Thanks for explaining. That does sound very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Homebrew for OS X already has a new package for 1.7.0. Just run "homebrew update" and "homebrew install git"

<comment><USER6> Don't forget to _homebrew install hub_ for a really nice git wrapper for github.

<http://github.com/defunkt/hub>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anybody know the status of smart HTTP support? git-http-backend seems to have been added in 1.6.6 but the release notes haven't mentioned it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it had a pretty small mention in the 1.6.6 release notes, but you can learn about it here:

[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-http- bac...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-http-backend.html)

It works great - we'll get it supported server-side on github soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All I want is to be able to use home-directory notation (like ~bdr/.gitignore) in my .gitconfig, so I can use the same config across different machines. Does anyone know how to do this?

<comment><USER10> I do it by: 1) having a git repository in ~/config that contains, among other things, my global .gitconfig and .gitignore files. This repository is synced across machines. 2) having a .gitconfig in my home directory that's symlinked to config/.gitconfig and similarly for .gitignore.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's what I'm already doing. The question is what to put as your core.excludesfile setting in the .gitconfig file.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Too specific? Too arrogant? Too sparse? - <AUTHOR>

I was updating my resumé today (because, as a student hopping from internship to internship, the job hunt is an almost constant process) when I realized that it was a very poorly designed and visually unappealing document that did not convey especially well what I've done or what I want to do. I decided to start from scratch and create something new that sums up those two fairly succinctly.
This is only my first attempt after looking at some similar "un-resumés" created by colleagues and friends. I'd like to get HN's feedback on it. It's here (warning, PDF):
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/benglert/concept1.pdf
I have a couple of questions:
a) Do you feel like you got the same amount of information (if not more) out of this document that you would have gotten from reading a traditional resumé containing "EXPERIENCE" and "OBJECTIVES" and so on?
b) Does my dream job even exist?
c) Am I at a point where I get to ask for it?
d) Does my description of my abilities/interests/experience strike you as honest and sincere?
Don't be afraid to be brutal, HN. I have some time to iterate on this before I'd dream of trying to use it in a professional setting in place of or in addition to a traditional resumé. <comment><USER2> I don't like it. There's no information here. It's like one of those sales brochures that you open up, hoping it's a technical datasheet full of specifications, and close two seconds later, when you see there's no meat in it.

Where's the meat? What open source packages? Windows and Linux drivers for what? Using what toolset? What mobile apps, for which platforms?

I get that you're trying to have a resume that's different, but even a different resume needs to provide some actual information.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would help to know what kind of position you are looking for. I think the style of résumé depends on the type of position. I'm assuming a software engineering internship?

In general, you have to think about the audience for your résumé. More than likely it will be a recruiter. Once it's picked out of hundreds or other résumés it will be forwarded to a hiring manager. Recruiters are probably looking for very specific criteria provided by the hiring manager.

I'm not sure how effective an un-résumé is. It's a gamble, but you'll definitely stand out of the pile of other résumés. A recruiter might take a look at it and admire your creativity and give you a shot, or they will trash it because they don't want to spend time figuring it out. More than likely it will be the latter since yours leaves a lot of unanswered questions (see below).

I would be more specific on your résumé in the following ways:

1\. You mention over 4000 hours of development experience. What languages? When? For what companies? What did you build and what value did you bring to the table?

2\. What's your GPA? Many recruiters filter by looking at GPA. What is your expected graduation date and what degree will you receive upon graduation?

3\. Which independent albums? Be as specific as you can to show that you actually did work.

Also, I'm not sure about including the "is looking for section." You have some very specific criteria with little leeway. A recruiter might look at this and say "Well, this kid looks bright and motivated, but we can only provide 1 out of the 4 things he's looking for" then move on to the next one. Also, the phrase "a job" might ring a wrong bell. Companies don't want to hire you for "a job" but for "a career."

With that said, maybe a traditional résumé format will work better. Either that or you're going to have to redesign your résumé to quickly answer the above questions.

If you're going into a technical field, I think a traditional format is better. Managers won't really care about your design skills, but they will care about your experience and your ability to solve problems.

If you're going into a creative field, then this format may work. But it's still too broad. Try to be more specific.

</comment><comment><USER4> So I checked out your resume. And as a graphic designer, I found it a little jarring. But your not applying for design jobs, so thats not a huge deal. It's an interesting idea, a great idea probably. But if you're going to do something like this you need to establish a flow of information.

Here is my resume: [http://www.zevdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/czh- res...](http://www.zevdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/czh-resume.pdf)

It's not the avg business person's resume, cause I'm not a business person. Anyone can have a resume like this tho.

a) I feel like a sentence/phrase formatted layout for your resume is interesting and effective if they read it. If they read it, they'll get the info they need.

b)Yes

c)Why not?

d)I have no reason to assume otherwise, imho. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

I just worry about a TL;DR. sentiment when seeing this.

If you're gonna go with the phrase format, then you need to follow through the pattern throughout the piece. dont capitalize first letters. And add periods at the end.

here's my version of your resume: <http://www.zevdesigns.com/dev/images/benglert.pdf>

dont look if you dont wanna see it completely reworked.

<comment><USER5> Very nice resume. Swiss grid for the win :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the general look of it.

You shouldn't say you're a "competent traveler", whatever that means. In case you're applying for a job that involves travel, the company will be happy enough to know that you're _willing_ to travel.

The "does" and "is looking for" parts are too sparse.

On the "does": there are dozens of real-time and mobile OSes, tell us which you know and what did you do with them. Can you build a device driver from scratch? Are you a Debian maintainer, or you just maintained a customized local package during an internship? Maybe if you answer all of this your un- resume will turn into something more like a resume, but so be it.

It's not clear what you're looking for. Do you want to be a developer, a product manager, or would you be just as happy to do customer support if there's travel involved? There's nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do in that stage, but I think your description could be clearer.

You probably should not garble your email address; just write a "@" instead of "AT". No need to make the HR person think. If you're really worried about spam then either don't put that version online or make the address an image.

</comment><comment><USER7> a) Says more about your personality than the typical "objectives", but says less about your experience than the typical "experience". I don't care how many hours you've spent "working profesionally" (using MS Word?), I care what you've made or accomplished. This resume only lists some very broad areas.

b) I don't know. If you left off the last one I'd say "probably", but I really don't know.

c) Never hurts to ask for it. :) Whether you can get it is unclear.

d) Absolutely.

A couple minor things: "A competent traveler" is not really impressive. "Ben is... along with possessing" is ungrammatical. "Customer support, training, and debugging" sounds like you debug and train customers -- which I want to be true.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks all for the feedback. Looks like I was running away from dense, cluttered text so fast that I went too far in the other direction and sacrificed specificity.

Can someone remind me, what is the figure for the average amount of time someone spends looking at a single resumé while they are shuffling through a stack? Is it 30 seconds? That seems almost optimistically high.

Following some of the comments here I am looking at cleaning up my old resumé and adding a "Summary" or "Quick takes" section at the top for people who are just skimming/browsing. What do folks think of that?

</comment><comment><USER8> >I realized that it was a very poorly designed and visually unappealing document that did not convey especially well what I've done or what I want to do

I was expecting a high-graphic presentation when you said that. This is clean and crisp for sure, but I wouldn't call it visually appealing.

</comment><comment><USER9> a) "Experience" is really supposed to be "Accomplishments". Rather than saying you worked X hours (which anyone can do), say what value you brought in those hours. The objectives section should ideally be tailored to the company you're applying.

b) network like crazy and you'll find out

c) rather than asking, you should focus on offering to do something. Ask in the interview.

d) to be honest, no. You say you have ~2 years full-time experience being a developer on bunch of fairly different platforms, plus an audio engineer, and customer support, and you're still a student. That has Dunning-Kruger written all over it. Show what you worked on (e.g. by linking to them)

</comment><comment><USER10> Clickable: <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/benglert/concept1.pdf>

<comment><USER8> Online viewable <http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/mPWtg> (expires in 1 week).

<comment><USER8> People prefer to download random bods CVs rather than view them?</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs MIT Class (1992) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxJAD8HDlKaSgZospzlVDxGLKRtkpLFGT <comment><USER2> The full video is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI) The 2 minute excerpts are nice, but the 73 minute talk is better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever your judgment of Jobs, I think he was a rare dude: minimalist, hippie, articulate, charismatic, business-savvy, technical, and artistic. Many people have some of these traits, but I can't think of anyone else with all of them.

<comment><USER4> Does having all of them express some sort of ideal? What is the significance of having all of them?

<comment><USER5> I think by the context... uniqueness?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two things:

1) Jobs' ability to talk about strategic trends in the industry in such a clear way is truly rare.

2) Amusing how everyone thought OOP would enable a whole paradigm shift. Has that actually panned out?

<comment><USER7> Do you have a little NeXT device in your pocket called an iPhone?

<comment><USER8> I think the point is that today OOP is just an architectural choice. The success of the iPhone is no more evidence of OOP being a paradigm shift than other platforms that also implement it (Windows, Android, Rails, etc)

<comment><USER9> Yes, for one thing it was supposed to enable all sorts of clever composable behaviors; a big change in how computers presented themselves to end users. Apple had OpenDoc[1], Microsoft had OLE. You'd be able to just work on some piece of content, with the UI reflecting the capabilities of whatever "objects" you had installed. OLE actually worked (for certain values of 'worked'), not sure OpenDoc ever got off the ground.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc)

<comment><USER10> Cyberdog, a suite of internet utilities, is an example of an OpenDoc based product that did make it into the hands of end users.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog)

<comment><USER9> Ah, I do remember this. It was pretty short lived. Good find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This lecture got uploaded last week, and I had not seen it before. I think it gives a pretty nice insight into the mind of Jobs (who was doing NeXT at the time), about how he thinks about deep work/failure/learning/"scar tissue" and it goes to show that what he later set out to do with Apple was the result of a deliberate effort/process of approaching things.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I have a lot of old Apple footage when I used to run an Apple video site back in the day. I have never seen this either. Great to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steve Job's opinion on consulting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI&feature=youtu.be&t=921)

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty awesome talk. Many of his business insights are applicable to 2018.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good tech documentaries to watch - <AUTHOR> When I'm not at work and just want to chill, but want to see a good story, what are some good tech documentaries to watch? Whether it's on YouTube or elsewhere, free or paid, I'm open to any tech documentaries you know of. <comment><USER2> Back in the early 1980's, there was a weekly PBS series called The Computer Chronicles. It was a rundown of tech at the time. Being an older geek, I remember watching them first-run to learn about shiny new things like VisiCalc, sound cards and The Internet. Thankfully, folks have managed to digitize most of the original tapes and it's now on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT)

I've found that going back and watching them has stirred some great nostalgia and perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Zero Days is a good one to check out. I don't know where you can watch it for free but it is on Netflix.

[http://www.zerodaysfilm.com/](http://www.zerodaysfilm.com/)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that was a good one.

TLDR: the movie is about Stuxnet and the attack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are open to written tales, check out the book "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson

</comment><comment><USER6> Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's classic :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Somehow, the "Show HN" link keeps crashing Octal on my iPad.

But I can tap on the "posts" link and get it to open this page.

Weird.</comment>


How startup life is different when you're building stuff, not apps - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/02/24/building-stuff/ <comment><USER2> I used to work for a company that manufactured hardware (I wrote firmware for them) and manufacturing was a constant headache and bottleneck, from getting all the parts on time to picking, placing and waving the boards with a high yield to finally assembling the end product.

Building a successful hardware business is much more difficult than building a successful software business (and thus more risk and less glamour). You have all the same problems in terms of solving a problem, finding a market, and getting traction but you have the additional problems of manufacturing, shipping and retail logistics. Those are probably more challenging to solve profitably than the shared problems.

P.S. Mad props for the companies in Asia that so reliably manufacture the computers that we use every day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hardware companies really have a strong sense of pride in what we create. It's something tangible that goes out the door, and we have to get it right pretty much the first time.

I encourage every software person to work in a company that makes hardware. It broadens ones' experience wonderfully.

</comment><comment><USER4> Glad to see hardware startups getting press.

Hardware startups like these, being bound largely by physics, don't get to boast vanity metrics like traditional web-software startups. It's refreshing to see numbers that translate pretty closely to the health/viability of an early stage startup (ie Romotive reporting an increase of 6 to 26 sales per day).

</comment><comment><USER5> The startup I work for is filled with boxes of Arduino parts, Enterprise devices in different stages, and anything we find on the interwebs that makes a cool demo (e.g. shit that flys and has an Android SDK) -- I wouldn't have it any other way. We don't manufacture these devices, but being able to build software for something physically tangible is much more gratifying, I think.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think of Las Vegas as a place for much startup culture. But it's cheap to live here: buy a cheap house for the price of two months studio rental in SoCal, no income taxes, and if you can have a business reason like the local print shops then it's a nice business opportunity. And the low rent, I think, (and maybe the sales-to-tourists opportunities) leads to a thriving artist culture that could be convenient to tap into. Of course, that cheap house comes with a mandate for some good locks on doors and windows, keep the car in the garage, never leave the house during Summer months.

I guess a hustler might be able to get some Las Vegas Money to "gamble" on their startup to raise some capital, I don't know about that much though.</comment>