oh :( do you play via standalone server? looks like it’s more stable

Thoughtworks is often “we do the whole project from you”-consulting, because that sounds nicer then “team-selling”. We consult for specific technologies and are just 10 people, spread over 5 projects, most of the time.

Sure, it makes sense, and they can do that, but I enjoy solving hard database problems where people have direct issues, I’m not gonna enter their building and start by introducing new development methodologies first. (unless they may be a source of the problem)

People will still forget, and recovering from a single, momentary, monday-morning brain-fart is unintuitive when you’ve got submodules complaining about conflicting hashes and dirty states. It’s an ongoing productivity suck that provides very, very little benefit.

Maybe it’d help to hear one of my personal experiences with this. I’m a pretty mentally unstable person, for various reasons, and I treat it with extensive therapy and psychiatry. One of the ways this manifests is I have trouble handling the “Happy Birthday” song. It’s hard to describe exactly; the shape of people’s voices funnels into a punch to the gut that makes me feel trapped and in danger and need to escape.

At my company everybody sings happy birthday on your birthday. And for everybody else, that’s fine! They shouldn’t have to ruin the day just because I don’t like the song. I’m a big boy, I can quietly excuse myself for the singing or hang around the corner and look uncomfortable. But if it’s my birthday, and they’re singing to me… the world bends and everybody has razor sharp teeth and the panic kicks in run run they want to kill and eat you too close TOO CLOSE

So I ask them not to sing on my birthday and they think it’s weird but respect that. That’s what I mean by ‘respect my triggers’. I’m not asking anybody to bend over backwards for me, I just recognize that there’s a part of me that’s distorted and unstable and that sometimes, I may not have a rational motive behind a sincere request I make.

I have always felt like bedng treated with respect by someone is a privilege, not a right.

I don’t know about in general, but I’d expect it in a workplace setting at least. Coworkers don’t have to like each other or be friends (I don’t even necessarily like workplaces that try too hard on the “we’re all friends” thing with lots of social outings), but I’d expect some degree of professionalism and collegiality while actually at work.

I guess it comes down to one thing for me: I have always felt like bedng treated with respect by someone is a privilege, not a right.

Surely the irony of what you just said, and what you espouse on your profile is apparent to you?

Musician, writer, poet, annoyingly optimistic, respecting all life, pizza, and other stay at home parents relinquishing careerly life.

Like what? Name some of your sensitivities […]

Not sure what that’ll achieve in this thread, considering we’re talking about the principle in abstract and not literal line items. I’m more than happy to let you know my triggers in advance of any professional interactions–if we actually worked together.

Arbitrary restrictions of free speech will create the biggest chilling effect otherwise

Let’s for the moment forget the fact that we already have arbitrary restrictions of free speech in “Western democracies” (no need to bring up authoritarian governments as strawmen arguments), why does it even matter?

This argument about “chilling effect” follows from an inane logic that one ought to be able to voice whatever opinion they want. Why? What good does that do? Sure, you can say that the grass is purple and the sky is zebra. What’s the point? What does that even mean? There’s infinite many speech that can be voiced, but add absolute zero value. Likewise, there are infinite many speech that can be censored while reducing absolutely zero value.

There’s a happy medium somewhere between “censoring everything” and “not censoring at all”. Extremist positions are rarely tenable in the real world, thankfully.

So no, I think what you ask is a privilege, not a right

If it’s a privilege, as you say, then that means some authority can grant that privilege. So, why not the employer in this context?

If I can use your own word, what “irks” me about your post is that you made a bunch of pontification and gesticulation while not making any logical sense (in short, your conclusion does not follow from your premises). Do you realize that what you said in one sentence is in direct contradiction with another sentence?

Take, for example, what I just quoted above. You say that it’s a privilege, not a right. That implies the privilege can be granted. And that’s precisely what we’re talking about here. The granting of such privileges in a professional setting. No one is expecting this to be enshrined in some UN Declaration of Human Rights.

(This is a deeply personal comment, and in no way, shape or form do I expect my experience to generalize. Nevertheless, my experience—for good or bad—forms my outlook on life and how I choose to interact with others.)

I was raised in an environment where “man up” was said frequently, both to me and by me. Perhaps it’s a rationalization, but I think I’m better off for it. Complaining or crying was completely unacceptable. “Are you hurt? Do you need me to call 911?” I’d reply, “No” of course, and I’d get, “Then stop your complaining/crying/whatever.” And for the most part, I did, and it worked. On top of all this, when I was real young, I was bullied. A lot.

When you put that all together, I (very fortunately) learned real fast that the only way I was going to live a fulfilling life was if I took responsibility for my own emotions. I wasn’t going to let someone else’s words ruin my day. And thankfully, I mostly did just that, although I’m not perfect at it. Words still hurt sometimes, it sucks, and then life goes on. I hold this philosophy to this day. I can’t really advocate for it, though, because it’s a deeply personal choice (perhaps not even a choice at all!) and I don’t really know how effective it is for others. Certainly, I know others have a similar practice, so I at least know the sample size is not 1, but still, you can’t just tell someone to “suck it up” if they aren’t already predisposed to that way of thinking.

With all that said, I found your comment to be strangely off point. “Safe spaces” gets a lot of press on Twitter and perhaps on some college campuses, but the reality is a lot simpler than that. If someone is going to hurl an insult or make a comment that is too personal, all you need to do is ask, “Could you phrase that more productively?” Or perhaps, “What were you hoping to achieve with this?” Now, some people really are just trolls and want to watch the world burn, and whether they’re playing that as an act or not, I find them absolutely contemptible. But thankfully, most in my experience aren’t like that and they probably just didn’t mean to say something that you thought was unproductive. Most folks just apologize and move on.

I have similar emotional reactions as you to words like “trigger” and “safe place.” They aren’t words I like using, precisely because they do play up the victim mindset (from my perspective, at least), and that’s just not my cup of tea. However, I do strongly believe in some of the ideas that those words tend to encapsulate, like respecting your fellow human. Someone doesn’t need to “earn” my respect. They get it by default because I want others to be their best selves. If I start playing some “earn my respect” bullshit with them, then all I’ve succeeded in doing is 1) started mind games with them and 2) put up barriers to collaborating with their best selves. At a minimum, I am going to be nice to people as best as I can. I don’t always succeed, and I apologize when I’ve failed. But I try. And you know what? I’m not afraid to say that it’d be nice if other people did the same. It’s the minimum we can do to ensure an open exchange of ideas. You can talk about free speech all you want, but if you encourage insults or jerky behavior (or perhaps more realistically, don’t discourage that behavior), then you wind up with a situation where people are afraid to stand up and speak their mind. That’s a bad thing. Whether it’s because they’re not able to “suck it up” or not does not matter.