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I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but the truth is that you can make factual arguments without being so aggressive. Whether the aggression is targeted at a person doesn't really matter. It's unnecessary, disrespectful, and just feeds into the general toxicity that plagues our culture.

> Thus if I'm nice about it, I'm ignored, if I'm vocal and aggressive about it, I'm heard but it will also hurt my reputation.

I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

> I'm not actually aggressive as there are no personal attacks

Aggression without a target is still aggression. If I aggressively take the recycling out, that aggression is still experienced by people around me. Probably my partner, who will inevitable have a little talk to me about it, lol.

> Tell me, in your opinion, how would you get such a point across in a culture where the opposite is pretty ingrained?

Engage in an intellectual conversion based off mutual respect. You will never change someones mind on the spot, intellectual people will often mull things over for a while. In the process you may learn a few things yourself. I've worked in places that excelled at this, where respectful discourse was promoted. Conversations revolved around facts, but respect was maintained.

Sidebar: Shopify doesn't really have microservices. They have a few services, but they are entire services which serve an entire business unit. They are the exception. When I worked there I worked on one such service. What I'd tell people is if you couldn't start a whole new company with the service you were building, don't build it as a service.




I think you missed my point. I'm saying when you aren't aggressive people tend not to want to intellectually engage with you. People are emotional creatures and what doesn't excite them emotionally they don't engage. I'm saying I used the aggression on purpose for my own ends, but I caveated by saying that no actual attack occurred.

I think you need to think deeper than the traditional "mutual respect" attitude and generally being nice. Not all great leaders acted this way either. It's very nuanced and complicated how to get people to change or listen. The internet is an opportunity to try things out rather then take the safe uncomplicated "nice" way that we usually try in the workplace.

>Engage in an intellectual conversion based off mutual respect. You will never change someones mind on the spot, intellectual people will often mull things over for a while. In the process you may learn a few things yourself. I've worked in places that excelled at this, where respectful discourse was promoted. Conversations revolved around facts, but respect was maintained.

Right except this is exceedingly rare. Most people do not act this way. Respect was maintained but the point is instantly forgotten and dismissed. Likely the respect covers up actual misunderstanding or disagreement. I find actual intense arguments open people up to say what they mean rather than cover up everything in gift wrapping.

Think about this way. The reason why Trump won the election is not because he was nice. The complexities of human relationships goes deeper then just "mutual respect" There are other ways to make things move. The internet is often an opportunity for you to try the alternative methods without much risk.

>I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

The world moves through feelings. Not for all cases but oftentimes to get heard you need to get "felt" first.


> >I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

> The world moves through feelings. Not for all cases but oftentimes to get heard you need to get "felt" first.

This is true, but you have options in terms of what feeling you're aiming for.

There is a world of difference in the response you're likely to get from "When Z you should do X because Y" vs. "We had a Z problem, it turns out that Y was the issue, so we did X."

The former will probably get you an "uh-oh" and the latter an "a-ha" or "hmm". Big difference.




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