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Discussion on: How would you handle a conversation with someone who thinks "respecting an opinion" means "agreeing with it"?

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Michael "lampe" Lazarski • Edited

Just some random thoughts:

  • Discussing something like that in a PR is not good.

  • Even if you are right. Does this small fight win you the war? If functionB is already used in the code base and it works and the team decided to use it. Why fight over it in this one small fight? I would suggest you next time to lose this fight and create a PR that will change the complete code base to functionA if it is that better.

  • Don't underestimate familiarity and easy to use tools. Maybe they were using functionA in the past and it was not good. Instead of directly replying that you are right a better way would have been to ask why he/she thinks so.

  • Sentences like "I prefer to use FunctionB here because it fits the situation better and communicates the situation more clearly." are not the best way to communicate. Why? See the code base needs to be readable and understandable to the team not only to you. What if you write the most performant code in a way that nobody understands it?

  • please use my suggestion in this case anyways because it is a convention of this project. At this moment the team is more important. I'm not saying to not question conventions but a PR is the wrong place.

  • The point about what if the language changes from the other dev is kind of strange. 🤷‍♀️

  • A Manager in a retro? Like a team lead? Why is a manager in a team retro? 🤷‍♀️

  • I don't really know what to say to the discussion with the manger. Is this copy and pasted or what you remember?

In general changing someones mind by saying his wrong will not change his mind. The only thing that will happen is that he/she will close her mind and be in defense. I would suggest you to ask more "Why?" "Why do you think so?" "Why is this better?" "Why..." or "Can you explain me in your own words...".