The cost of being "nice"

The other day, a link popped up on Hacker News reviving this old Reddit post¹ in which u/flipstables shares a pretty long and honest list of things they learned as a senior engineer. I highly suggest going through it as most of the things there are pure gold. But one, seemingly mundane, item inspired me to write this chunk:

Be kind to everyone. Not because it’ll help your career (it will), but because being kind is rewarding by itself.

Now, I would genuinely consider myself a kind person (yeah yeah, I know) and, as such, have been naturally drawn towards people and companies that value this. And usually they all create safe environments where everybody really feels welcome.

But over-indexing kindness without any deeper approach can lead to some weird situations when trouble hits the paradise. First, people tend to idealize communities where kindness is part of their identity, so any situation that threaten to ruin this utopia throws them off-balance and mostly acting in denial. So nice people you used to know quickly turn into unreasonable kids. Second, these groups attract the kind of people that usually avoid conflicts pretty much at any cost. And having a room full of pacifists and Yes men is not moving things forward when hard stuff needs to be discussed. Both of these things, in my experience, can leave you with a bunch of very smart people that just don’t know how to communicate when things are even tangentially confronting.

I used to be in both of these groups (and partly still am) but one thing really helped me stop being Mr. Toxic Nice Guy and start being a genuinely nicer friend and teammate. At least I think so, that’s for others to judge but one thing is certain: it sure feels better to act this way. Read on.

Beating around the bush never helps anyone

We’ve all been there: You’ve got an uncomfortable thing to discuss with a teammate and don’t really know how to start. Being the kind coworker you are, you try to start the discussion by just lightly touching on the topic (often trying to fit it into a joke) hoping that other person will catch the intent but praying they don’t. What’s worse is that usually the other person picks up the vibe and joins this dance of tiptoeing around the real issue. So you both end up equivocating, endlessly repeating meaningless phrases, catching up only what you want to hear from the other side. After a few rounds, you all continue with your days, job done - issue has been discussed in the nicest way possible (because that how we do things around here). But deep inside both of you know that this only looked like a conversation and the box you were trying to check is still laying there empty.

Professionally, this game of beating around the bush is a national sport in companies that advocate hard on kindness but don’t really put a lot of effort into educating people how be kind outside of the comfort zone. I guess as adults, it’s everybody’s job to grow into a fully functioning person as much as they can and it took me almost 40 years to learn how to properly express myself.

What I think kindness boils down to is respect. And there is no better way to show respect than to clearly and honestly express yourself to the other person. So every time I catch myself trying to come up with a sleazy way to brush off an uncomfortable topic I take a step back and try to figure out what I am actually trying say to the other person? Is it that I am sorry about something? Then I’ll say “I’m sorry”. Is it “Hey, I hope the thing I said yesterday didn’t offend you cause that wasn’t my intent”" - Then I’ll sure as hell look them in the eye and say so. In the long run nobody is going to remember you well prepared segway into the topic so you might as well just shoot it.

Now I know this may sound like a basic human behavior. But the fact that I still end up in such situations with my peers got me to write this. And just to wrap up: I do agree with the quote from the beginning 100% and I really believe that being a good engineer starts with being a good human but looks like being kind is easier said than done and there is a difference between “kindness"and kindness.