When immersed in a conversation or debate, heβd vigorously argue his point, in order to test its merit, but the moment he recognized its inferiority, heβd change his mind. He actually welcomed being wrong. (tinyurl.com/2p9cm9y8)
Not having an opinion is fine. If you have an opinion you should fight for it until you've been proven wrong, and then you should stop fighting and re-evaluate. I especially love the last part about "He actually welcomed being wrong".
So to me, an engineer that speaks up, but re-considers if proven wrong, displays a good quality.
Recovering interrupter with occasional relapses, lover of spreadsheets, blogger, programmer, adept debugger, conjurer of analogies, and probably other things.
That's a great point. A healthy company culture is an extremely important aspect in the well being of employees (and company) in my opinion. If you don't feel like you can speak on your opinion then of course that's an issue.
Interesting topic but I feel it's out of scope from this post.
Computer scientist with background in chemistry and physics, now working as a java developer. Often knowing about "that thing" and having forgotten the word.
I would say it is more about being on top or bottom of the hierarchy. White man are often overrepresented at the top, but you still have the phenome in all-white-men-groups and groups without without white men.
So being able to be a great software developer depends on being acceptable as a great software developer.
On the other hand, I think this is an important part of growing great and it needs others to live that principle as well. You can't grow when you are not allowed to have a strong opinion and you can't grow when none is allowed to challenge your strong opinions with their strong opinion.
Definitely an issue. As a white guy, I think one of the more valuable skills I learned is to shut up (On occasion, I'm still working on it). Some of my peers have it the other way, their most valuable skill was learning to speak up. Strongly voiced, loosely held opinions can be great for discussing technical approaches if there's trust on a team. But if the discussion is less technical, or the trust is broken, you can start getting issues where other people (often those who have firsthand experience to speaking up being met with hostility) feel attacked or ignored.
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Thanks for sharing!
How I interpret that point is something like
Not having an opinion is fine. If you have an opinion you should fight for it until you've been proven wrong, and then you should stop fighting and re-evaluate. I especially love the last part about "He actually welcomed being wrong".
So to me, an engineer that speaks up, but re-considers if proven wrong, displays a good quality.
One other bit of consideration is "what attributes are accessible/available to the people who are under-represented?"
In my observations, "strongly held opinions, loosely held" is usually only available to white guys.
That's a great point. A healthy company culture is an extremely important aspect in the well being of employees (and company) in my opinion. If you don't feel like you can speak on your opinion then of course that's an issue.
Interesting topic but I feel it's out of scope from this post.
I would say it is more about being on top or bottom of the hierarchy. White man are often overrepresented at the top, but you still have the phenome in all-white-men-groups and groups without without white men.
So being able to be a great software developer depends on being acceptable as a great software developer.
On the other hand, I think this is an important part of growing great and it needs others to live that principle as well. You can't grow when you are not allowed to have a strong opinion and you can't grow when none is allowed to challenge your strong opinions with their strong opinion.
Definitely an issue. As a white guy, I think one of the more valuable skills I learned is to shut up (On occasion, I'm still working on it). Some of my peers have it the other way, their most valuable skill was learning to speak up. Strongly voiced, loosely held opinions can be great for discussing technical approaches if there's trust on a team. But if the discussion is less technical, or the trust is broken, you can start getting issues where other people (often those who have firsthand experience to speaking up being met with hostility) feel attacked or ignored.