Debating On Social Media VS Engineering Conflict Resolution

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all right folks I'm uh leaving the office and I got to get home pretty quick because I have to live stream in less than an hour uh oops no there was a there was a team meeting at the end of the day so it's just on um so I had to stay for that so I'm hoping there's no traffic the rain stop that's good news but who knows what's it say it's going to take me says only 40 minutes so that could be a good sign but we'll see okay let me get out of here first before I start blabbing away here but um still in this still in this rental vehicle this thing sucks um so two videos I put over before this our I explain a little bit but I our our SUV is currently in at uh the shop to get the

air conditioner changed was on Bank order uh and it only took about 3 months instead of up to 12 like they were saying so it's good news but sucks cuz I got to drive this thing it's just like uh there's the mirrors I can't like they're there's so many blind spots in this thing and uh there's no backup camera I don't know just it's crappy to drive there's nothing I don't have GPS or anything so my phone is down here anyway um the video that I made before this one the Vlog entry uh I'll I'll briefly just kind of summarize what I talked about there as a bit of a rant but um it's a it kind of is a segue to what I want to talk about here but a little bit less uh hopefully less ranty uh there's a little bit of a

rant but we'll see so the previous video I was talking about how I was sharing trying to share some perspective about how uh engineer is a professional designation and there's uh some complexity involved in that because a lot of companies uh like just as an example if you didn't even realize that it's a professional designation that requires uh four years of uh sorry uh yeah four years of work experience under professional engineer and ethics tests and required that you go to an accredited University if you're like Nick I've never heard that like that's my point that's the whole point of what I was trying to get across is like uh it is a professional designation now different places treated differently blah blah blah uh and clearly like organizations across the world just don't care that you actually are a professional engineer and in software they

just want software developers so and I will say one more time because I said it a bunch in the previous video but like I'm personally okay with that I am I am not a professional engineer and I know plenty of people that aren't most people I know are not Professional Engineers and of those people I know tons of people that have built awesome software it's not a requirement to build good software so don't misunderstand that now what I wanted to talk about in this video is um basically how you debate or dispute things and I want to talk about it in the context of social media because it's absolutely ridiculous and we're really bad at it for the most part but we need to actually do this kind of thing when we're building software in teams like you need to be able to have discussions

where people are disagreeing and that's okay you need to be able to move forward from it like learn from the different perspective IES all of this is an expectation as a software engineer just it's going to happen you're going to be partnering with other teams that have different priorities they're going to disagree with you that's okay like you need to understand they have different priorities cool how are you going to work together so the framing for this is going to be from two different discussions on social media uh and then I want to kind of explain why these are I haven't really figured this out in my head so it's going to be a bit of a rambling uh you shouldn't be uh surprised by that at this point but um I wanted to talk about how there's these two discussions from social media that

are sort of like a bad example of how to approach um like trying to have a debate that's going to move things forward and like maybe how to reframe it so that when you're having these discussions with engineering teams like they can be effective so uh the first one is of course the the the discussion from this morning around uh uh like the software engineer title right so what a lot of the reason why a lot of comments just kind of like sucked is because like and it's I want to talk about this too it's like it's it's two-way ownership so a lot of the comments I felt like were crappy not because people were like they had a different opinion but because uh it wasn't it wasn't even the point of the discussion or um despite me trying to state that like this is

not my personal opinion this is literally a lived experience and here screenshots of these things being defined um people are not focusing on that right they they kind of read it and then they have an emotional response to it and the emotional response is that they don't like it man this car is so crappy I can't see anything when I'm trying to switch lanes on this highway H at least it's not raining now but man God awful I hope the new x1's are uh are nicer I thought X1 was like a like my foot's on the ground right now um so yeah people have these emotional responses to things that they don't like of course right like you're reading something you're like I disagree with that but when we have these emotional responses what ends up happening is like we just don't think about things

clearly so you'll say like that makes me feel a certain way I don't like it and then you focus on what you don't like and then you start talking about that so for example I was saying things like what is this car man uh oh it's it's a lucid um I'm saying like hey um you know my my story that I was explaining was like I I just I personally on my own Journey decided to go to university because that's one of the things required to be a professional engineer I needed to go to an accredited school and then people people are going well no like you don't need um like people that don't go to university that are selftaught and go to boot camp like they can build software and like you're not better than other people like okay man like no one said

that no one said it you made it up and like it misses the point completely this person behind me doesn't have lights on like I don't the stupidity is is like I'm going every time when I'm making these videos I'm going to call it out because it's it's pitch black outside this person doesn't have lights on like I don't know how stupid you must be to be able to drive like that it's insane okay so when people are doing this kind of thing like I said they're having this emotional response where they're they're obvious unhappy about something and they're trying to make a point but the point is it's valid but it's not valid for the context and in fact they're starting a debate about something that's not even relevant so for example if they're saying hey I disagree I'm going to change the language

a little bit right like I disagree that you need a university education to develop good software I've seen plenty of people that have been very successful in in uh in taking going to boot camps or being selftaught or whatever it happens to be and like yeah like I agree with you I agree with you 100% I've seen that too so so what like that's not what I'm talk it's just not what I'm talking about um so like when you have the emotional response you can't actually focus on on the discussion at hand right like and this I'm bringing it back to like software engineering is like if you're having a you know a discussion with another team and you're coming up with a proposal your team is swamped right you guys got tons of stuff going on and that other team's like look like we're

we think that things have to go this way and immediately you're like man that's so much more work for us like this is so stupid we're never going to do that like you know stop having the emotional response like we have to think about this logically and objectively I'm never going to be able to switch lades here so I don't have mirrors that work in this stupid car um so the whole point of this first part is like we want to remove emotions from having conversations when we're trying to resolve conflicts like this because the goal goal is to move forward now next part um speaking of moving forward like what is when we're having these discussions like in engineering what is this person doing you have your signal on I left you room we're having these discussions in engineering teams we are trying to

solve a problem or problems right there's something we got to get done in the social media example people very often this is like one of the most common things you'll see when people are like have banter on social media it's purely about trying to prove someone wrong while you're proving yourself right and the reason why this is so crappy is because like no one wins no one wins if someone has a a different Paradigm a completely different World viiew from you and you try to debate them you're just absolutely wasting your time and their time especially like on social media right like it's aund it's just a complete waste what you're you're expecting that this person's going to crash they slammed on their brakes like a big idiot at least they got their lights on um on social media you're wasting so much time because

what in a couple of comments you're going to change this person's look at this person passing me can you see that out the window I don't know um it's my foot down this thing is so slow and crappy um you're not going to change someone's philosophy their entire worldview in a comment thread or you're blasting each other like it's just never going to happen so am I allowed to drive this thing in the fast lane whatever I'll do it I don't care um I'll tell them it's a rental right or a what do they call it a courtesy vehicle so in social media when we do this you're basically setting yourself up to waste time but it's no different if you're doing this in your engineering discussions it just seems like much more obvious on social media right cuz you're like this person's trolling me

they're saying mean stuff and obviously they're a dummy so I'm going to troll them back and like you know I'm right they're wrong the example I gave this morning was when someone was trying to tell me that like uh like regulated you having regulations for something they're like that's just people trying to extort you I I told them like I can no and I I literally said in the comment I said hey I'm not trying to be rude about this but like I can no longer have a convers like a can't debate you on this anymore because like we fundamentally have a different perspective on this and just like very respectfully and I'm if we can't agree on this part or move past it like nothing else is going to be valuable it's just not it's going to be a waste of time right uh

I fun mentally don't think that there's just like malicious organizations that are putting um you know regulations on engineering to extort people and if I have to try having a debate about topics and that's all that someone else is going to focus on like that's every every argument comes back to that like it's not going to go anywhere so that's okay like they're absolutely allowed to believe that that's their belief that's cool I can't I can't have a a positive conversation with them that's going to move anything forward because any fact I try to put in front of them I could have pictures I could have documentation they will try to bring it back to this Paradigm that they don't believe in so when we're having discussions about designs and software engineering it's not about just trying to prove other people wrong like that's not

the goal your goal is to try making sure that you can get a solution to a problem that's the goal how you do that can start to look very different but the goal is not to um the goal is not to prove other people wrong I just realized how dark it is in here and I don't even know if you can see me as I'm talking it's amazing um we'll find out I guess so instead of just trying to prove people wrong like and you can it's very interesting I'm going to go back to the social media part after this but instead of trying to prove people wrong so you're trying to come up with the design trying to solve a problem involving other teams and you don't agree with what they're saying like they're like we want this technology and you're like that's obviously

super dumb why would we do that you guys don't know anything instead of going that route seek to understand like try try to assume that people I know I've been I'm a hypocrite for calling all these people with their lights off dumb while they're driving at night um so sorry for being a hypocrit when I go to say this but try to understand why they have their belief system if you're working with an engineering team and they're like no like we think this technology is the way to go you completely disagree with it but like but why why do they think it's the best way to go right I I can't remember if I I can't remember where I said this must have been on one of these rambling rants but I was talking it must have been from earlier today I was talking about

uh database technology okay so some other teams like no we want this database Tech it's the best it's the fastest and you're like obviously not like we use this other database Tech it is so much faster it's so much better but then you realize like they're talking about how they've built awesome systems optimized for writing and you've built optimized systems for reading data just as a dumb example right so if you don't take the opportunity to understand the perspective of the other side you're just missing out on information so in that silly example right I know it's contrived you might be able to say hey look wait okay like we need this part of the system is very right heavy like what if to optimize this what if we pick database that could optimize for the rights there we don't like that database CU we

never use it but maybe that makes a lot of sense in that context but this other part of the system like we're basically just dealing with cold data it's not changed and we actually have this opportunity in between to process the data so maybe we literally have hot like a hot path we're writing to and then we can move the data to this other spot once it's been processed and we have this like super optimized read path now I'm just making stuff up obviously but the point of this is to say like I just gave you an example of trying to pick Technologies from two different teams based on what they were trying to optimize for so it's hard to do because again going back to the first point we often get emotional we're like I don't like that I'm not comfortable with it um

and then we focus on the wrong things but if you can really try when you're like instead of if you're noticing that you're getting frustrated with someone you're like how could they possibly think that you can ask them like why do you think that and genuinely be curious because if you say why do you think that and making them feel like an idiot like driving with your lights off then they're not going to be very responsive so if you try to do that I think that ultimately you end up learning more they do the same to you you'll learn more and you'll ultimately come up with a better solution now bring it back to social media not every interaction has been a stupid crappy one and I think that there are plenty of opportunities to have really cool disagreements or questioning where you're learning from

it and this is this is one of my favorite Parts about social media because uh unfortunately it's rare but it's super cool cool because there are people that you don't interact with every day could be from any part of the world and now you get to learn from each other so on this uh this engineering thread that I was talking about there was a a woman that was talking about something and she's a doctor I mentioned earlier that people were doing a lot of comparisons with doctors and she was offering some perspective in saying uh she's using like doctor examples and different fields and then she said that I'm going to get this wrong so I apologize but something along the lines of like engineering is not a uh not a specific profession and when I read it I'm like everything else she said seemed

like it was in agreement with the things I was saying but what does she mean it's like not a specific profession CU I'm like you can literally be a professional engineer what's up with that right like what does she mean um so I you know like what I did was I said hey thanks for like sharing let like helpful information and then I said I was curious about what you meant by this part specifically and uh you know I even made the statement I I think it's probably just a terminology thing that uh I might be misunderstanding so like could you could you just elaborate on this part further and then I thanked her again for actually participating so I took I tried to take two opportunities to say like I am not here to crap on you for commenting uh what I might potentially

disagree with what you're about to say but instead I was just trying to be curious about it and then she came back and responded and she she gave me some really good examples she was explaining how like uh we talk about professional engineer but like an engineer of what because like a chemical engineer versus a mechanical engineer versus a civil engineer versus software engineer like that's where the specificity comes in that's what she was trying to get across in her point so like again you can you can have these interactions where they they are enlightening and I love that about social media so I've seen a couple of and I can't remember off the top of my head cuz I'm driving this stupid X1 and I can't scroll through my phone but uh I've definitely had some some good examples where uh when people are

trolling because it happens all the time as a content creator everyone loves to just like say whatever stupid thing they want to say but there have been times where I take a deep breath and instead of just like instead of just being like well this is a dumb troll here we go um there was something on like blue sky or threads in the past few weeks where someone said something and I think they were saying something like hey like no like what did they say like are that's not how employers treat us or whatever like that's such a dumb perspective like managers no like no managers looking out for their employees something along the lines of this and I was just like hey like you know the the beginning of the conversation was like no I disagree with that and once they were feeding into

it I was like I don't I'm done with this like I'm not going to try and convince them but instead I changed it around and I just said like hey like it actually I think it was something along the lines like to me it sounds like you've had a lived experience where like this uh this was like has really negatively impacted you and that's like affected your perspective like on this and I just said like did something like that happen that you like can you like offer more detail on that and literally they completely changed around the conversation so they were no longer defensive about it shared some extra perspective and then by the end of the the thread like in our comment exchange I was like yeah I think we probably like I I see their perspective and why that would be frustrating and

I think they got mine and I was like yeah it feels good so like there's absolutely ways to have disagreements with people and like you don't have to agree with man these people driving today just nuts this guy tailgating someone in this one lane fast lane it's not going to work Buddy you can have disagreements with people and you don't have to agree with everything that people say and this is important again in your software engineering because there's going to be stuff where you're like I that's not the database Tech that I want to use uh or that's not going to like you know that doesn't align with um the work stream that I'm focused on but sometimes we have to take a step back and say like is this like do I understand that this is actually a better fit for the business objectives

and that's a hard thing to do sometimes because it's like you're having this internal struggle where you're like you know that's going to slow us down or that's going to do this or that and sometimes you have to look at it and say like is this actually a better thing like overall and it's hard but I think there's a lot that can be learned from just like trying to I shouldn't say trying to be in Conflict when you find yourself in conflicts and debates and stuff we get very offensive the that's the wrong way to put it um we get defensive about our position but we go on the off offense that's what I mean to say we go on the offense to like to cut people down on this stuff and there's a really interesting opportunity that you can practice even on social media

so if you're like man like Nick talks about soft skills and stuff a lot but like screw that like I don't got time for that like you can just do this on social media like the next time that you're disagreeing with someone and like you know it's going to turn into like a like a a flame War where you're just like blasting each other with how much you hate the other person's perspective just take the opportunity to try and learn what their perspective is like and you can repeat this a million times right cuz it's the internet like who cares so you can take this opportunity to try and say like okay here's someone I don't agree with okay and instead of me being like hey I think you're stupid for thinking that instead you could ask them like hey why is it that you

think that like what are the things about this thing that you love that that I can learn from you like in your perspective so for example I'm just going to make something up because this happens a lot with programming language where someone's like oh like I don't know like PHP is the best programming language and my gut reaction is like absolutely no it's not and I'm so sorry that your brain is broken if you think that but like that's not right obvious obviously um I don't like PHP I think it's gross but instead of just like typing that to someone and being like oh you must be stupid for liking PHP instead like well hey what is it you like about PHP like honestly like what is it and then instead of like making fun of them for giving answers you actually listen to what

they have to say I know it sounds kind of like kind of crazy but they might say like and I don't know anything about PHP so it's not even fair for me to say but they might say like hey like I like the tooling for it or I like the community or I like that it's been around for a long time and it's tried and tested and I like the environments I can use it in like cool interesting perspective right you don't have to agree with it amazing concept you might be like yeah like I don't I don't see it that way that's cool like great someone just shared their perspective with you gave you information New Perspective on it awesome like you can you can actually successfully leave it there and everyone will be maybe not I don't know happy is a bit of

a stretch but but at least not mad at each other so you can do this with Tex Stacks you can do this with anything you want to debate where people are going to have a different opinion but you can take the opportunity to learn from people and that's a really cool thing about social media so um at the end of the day just to kind of close off on the on the software engineering part it's without a doubt going to be something where you have to practice being able to to have healthy conflict whether it's within your team right you're working with other people on it's a poll request or something and people have different opinions about design patterns and whatever to use um that might be something that comes up uh I think the the more common one like longterm is going to be

where it's really challenging is working with other teams oh this guy on a bike man this X1 doesn't even go faster than that bike um when you're working across other teams I think the bigger situation is going to be when you have these disagreements and it's because you have different priorities you value different things on your teams you have different experiences all totally legitimate and it doesn't matter who's right or wrong what matters is that you work towards a solution because guess what that's what you're getting paid for so that's going to wrap that up how am I doing for time hey man I've been flying here 6:30 I'm going to make it for my live stream not even going to be late which is cool which is cool well maybe I'll even have time to eat maybe that would be cool too but yeah

I think uh workload for me lightens up a little bit uh as of like tomorrow night or Wednesday I get through a lot of performance review stuff that's finally wrapping up I don't say finally as in like I didn't like it I've been trying to be transparent about this like I I think performance review conversations and stuff are like and career conversations are the most important part of my job um but it's a lot of peopling and I'm introverted so uh I feel the energy dip when I have to do a lot of this so that's what I mean when I say like finally done so that'll wrap up very soon and then I have a course with Ryan Murphy we are so close to doing our second course together it's uh almost done so I'm going to try to wrap that up tonight I'm

hoping uh get that over to the editor and then it's just uh double checking everything making sure it's all good to go that's cool um I am going to have I talked to my editor about this so I'm going to wrap up the last couple minutes of this drive with a a note on this but um cuz I don't know if I talked about it I do um I have yet another Vlog Channel and I've been doing it for like 80 weeks or something now probably more um and I I every week I just make a vlog entry for like when I started content creation um and if you want to see that it's actually Linked In the description and stuff of these videos it's just called Dev leader behind the screen so I think it's Dev leader BTS on YouTube um so YouTube has

been challenging for me recently because over the past last few weeks like when I went to Hawaii um that's the first time in my Channel's history that the Channel's growing but it's no longer accelerating in fact it's decelerating in terms of growth which is not a good sign because as you would hope as a channel is growing it starts to gain momentum and kind of have a Snowball Effect and that has been happening um except in hindsight I don't know if the snowball's actually been growing I think it's just been a snowball kind of the same size for a while so now the snowball is actually shrinking so it's still kind of going along but it's no longer uh growing in size as it's going so the number of uh subscribers I'm getting in my channel is is going up but uh Sor sorry how

do I phrase this number of total subscribers is going up but the number of subscribers I get uh per mon what happened here I dropped my mic no it's so dark in here you probably can't hear anything I'm saying anyway I'll talk really loud because I don't know if you can hear anything I'm saying but um he's going to do my thumbnails for me where did this thing go I don't know anyway bye