I've always valued making over "commenting," but that's in the way that it was written in that piece.
I worked for a Japanese company, and one of the classic Japanese aphorisms was "Don't complain, unless you have a solution."
Sounds good, huh?
Until you start to see some of the "solutions" proposed by folks bereft of Clue. As the representative "maker," I was expected to become a wizard, and magick a whole bunch of miracles on the spot. Since there were often "Make it so, Numbah One" types in the audience, I was sometimes directed to "make it so," even if the laws of physics said otherwise.
Luckily, the Japanese managers were generally engineers, and knew the issues, but not so, the Americans.
Sometimes, a complaint is quite valid; especially if you are a stakeholder. It can also be extremely valuable to makers. I often say that kudos feel great, but negative feedback is required to improve. A steady diet of negativity stinks, but nothing changes, if no one is aware of the problem. Challenging people to "shut up until you come up with a solution," when they want to tell you that the system is returning wrong data, is a very, very bad idea. I wonder if any Citibank employees had complained about that transfer screen, and were told to "shut up, unless you have a better idea"?
Speaking of commenting, I've found that a great way to get correct information, is to confidently state some incorrect information in technical forums.
I worked for a Japanese company, and one of the classic Japanese aphorisms was "Don't complain, unless you have a solution."
Sounds good, huh?
Until you start to see some of the "solutions" proposed by folks bereft of Clue. As the representative "maker," I was expected to become a wizard, and magick a whole bunch of miracles on the spot. Since there were often "Make it so, Numbah One" types in the audience, I was sometimes directed to "make it so," even if the laws of physics said otherwise.
Luckily, the Japanese managers were generally engineers, and knew the issues, but not so, the Americans.
Sometimes, a complaint is quite valid; especially if you are a stakeholder. It can also be extremely valuable to makers. I often say that kudos feel great, but negative feedback is required to improve. A steady diet of negativity stinks, but nothing changes, if no one is aware of the problem. Challenging people to "shut up until you come up with a solution," when they want to tell you that the system is returning wrong data, is a very, very bad idea. I wonder if any Citibank employees had complained about that transfer screen, and were told to "shut up, unless you have a better idea"?
Speaking of commenting, I've found that a great way to get correct information, is to confidently state some incorrect information in technical forums.
I get set right, PDQ. ;)