General > General Technical Chat
Millstoning in Electronics?
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Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on February 22, 2023, 01:11:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 12:15:00 pm ---Literally?  You were in prison?  Otherwise that would be quite legal in most places in the Western world.

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I think you missed the "il"  :-DD
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You know me fail English, you meanie!  :-[ >:D

(Joking aside: thanks, corrected now.)


--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on February 22, 2023, 01:18:48 pm ---Keep in mind that some rather silly and odd questions have been asked by the entity named Faringdon, so I would certainly take everything the entity writes with a huge grain of salt.

Think back of thievable scopes, spraying wooden floors wet to overcome ESD, etc.
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Surprisingly, that all matches a personality profile which avoids personal confrontation like the plague.  Even their habit of thanking everybody, even those who post things that would really irk for example myself, fits the picture.

There are all kinds of personality types among humans, and that is one of the key reasons why we are so adaptable compared to basically any other species.  There aren't that many vertebrates that can live all the way in the Arctic down to the hottests deserts and rainforests in the Equator.

Evolutionarily useful personality profile mixes can appear quite odd in todays Western societies, especially now that social conformity is being highlighted and emphasized so heavily by social media.  Highly agreeable and highly neurotic personality types (for whatever reason, much more often women than men) are especially vulnerable to social-related stressors, and suffer from related mental illnesses in increasing numbers (see e.g. University student mental health statistics).  Super-agreeable but less-neurotic personality types can be quite adamant peacemakers and conflict-avoiders, even looking at technological solutions to avoid social confrontation; but the lesser neuroticism also means they can feel free to describe their ideas and experiences online, something a more neurotic personality type would find very difficult.

I'm not a psychiatrist, and haven't studied psychology much (except what I've had to, due to my own issues), so this is just my opinion based on my observations on Faringdon's posts.  I could be utterly wrong here, but the various pieces seem to me to fit well enough to post this, just in case it helps anyone.

My own immediate emotional reactions differ very much depending on whether I know (or think I know) why someone reacts the way they do; apparent understanding makes it much easier for me to deal with odd/uncommon/strange behaviour, as long as it does not damage or hurt anyone.
For whatever reason, Faringdon doesn't bother me, really.
pcprogrammer:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 03:01:44 pm ---You know me fail English, you meanie!  :-[ >:D

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I know, just teasing a bit  >:D


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 03:01:44 pm ---For whatever reason, Faringdon doesn't bother me, really.

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His posts do not bother me either. At times they are fun. The ones about the SMPS's I mostly just avoid because I know next to nothing about them. Can't really tell if they make sense or not, but something like in this thread sounds very unlikely. But hey, who knows, we live in a very strange world  :-DD
tooki:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 12:15:00 pm ---While many think of your (Faringdon's) posts as trolling due to their repeated themes, I think it has more to do with your personality traits, specifically high agreeableness (and to a minor extent, neuroticism) –– these are personality traits, not flaws or faults! –– (and confrontation avoidance) which is somewhat rarer in technically oriented people (and more common in socially oriented people), making you easily manipulated by socially adept managers who find you easily exploitable and manipulable.
High agreeableness basically means that your first instinct in the abovementioned situations with a manager is never to oppose or escalate the conflict, but to go with the flow instead.

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As an interesting aside, having a manager with high agreeableness can be awful in ways that don’t become apparent until down the line. I worked at one place where my manager (one of the owners/founders) was highly agreeable. Of course it meant that in many ways he was easy going and nice to work with. The problem is that he simply could not bring himself to give any “negative” feedback. (I guess in his mind it’s the same as criticism.) So if you were happily doing what you thought he wanted, but was actually on a different course, he wouldn’t say anything until he eventually snapped. Even if you asked point-blank “please inform me right away if I’m not doing it the way you want. It won’t upset me, it will actually be a big help.” he still couldn’t do it.

The other problem with high agreeableness is that they will promise things that they have no chance of delivering on. That manager would do it to us, to customers, etc. (Me, I have no trouble saying “sorry, I can’t promise that”.)

In contrast, the best teacher I ever had was one whose expectations were always absolutely crystal-clear: things needed to be done how he said it, and he expected top quality and wouldn’t accept anything less. As adolescents, the first year with him we thought “who the fuck is this lunatic?” But by the second year, it was second nature and you never had to wonder “what did he mean in this assignment?” And in the third and final year, we knew him so well we could play off his predictability.

But it wasn’t until I’d worked for managers who couldn’t express their expectations that I realized how valuable clear, unambiguous communication is.
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 12:15:00 pm ---I am not agreeable (quite opposite ::)), but I am easily socially manipulable, because I want to fix things and make them better;

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Yes, that's how managers manipulate engineers when they know that a direct order won't work/will make them look nasty.

We want to fix things.

Note that this kind of manipulation goes beyond the realm of engineering and workplace.
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: tooki on February 22, 2023, 06:27:30 pm ---As an interesting aside, having a manager with high agreeableness can be awful in ways that don’t become apparent until down the line.
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Agreed; I've had a such project manager also.  When everyone was co-operating positively, they did fine; but when one person started manipulating everyone else, they crumbled and switched jobs.  Was a horrible experience for me also.  That was the project where that one person sent an email to students exhorting them to "be real humans, not just students".


--- Quote from: tooki on February 22, 2023, 06:27:30 pm ---But it wasn’t until I’d worked for managers who couldn’t express their expectations that I realized how valuable clear, unambiguous communication is.
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So true.  It can feel socially cold or abrupt at first, but it makes working so much easier and less stressful, I definitely prefer that.

As I've mentioned before, I've done my best work in a team where our domains of expertise overlapped only slightly: just enough so we could fully trust each other.  That is when I learned that when there is a technical reason why a specific feature cannot be implemented in exactly the way the UI/UX/artist wants, one can simply quickly sketch out the root limitations, and describe a couple of alternatives to sketch out how those limitations can be avoided or overcome, the UI/UX/artist will often find an even better option.  This, too, requires not only trust in each others' skills, but clear, unambiguous communication.
The hardest part is describing the technical details and reasons to a non-expert peer; that's where my use of analogs comes from.
The other members liked me too, and have mentioned they too had a "nothing is impossible" feel in that team.


--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 22, 2023, 08:49:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 22, 2023, 12:15:00 pm ---I am not agreeable (quite opposite ::)), but I am easily socially manipulable, because I want to fix things and make them better;

--- End quote ---

Yes, that's how managers manipulate engineers when they know that a direct order won't work/will make them look nasty.

We want to fix things.

Note that this kind of manipulation goes beyond the realm of engineering and workplace.
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Oh yes.  You have perhaps noticed my extreme attitude about "playing social games" even in discussions online?  >:D

I am still easily manipulated in real life, but I usually do realize it soon afterwards (because of experience!), and it makes me angry.
It is unfair, and the sense of fairness goes deep, below and pre-sentience, being found in many other social animal species.

If we look at eusocial species, it is the equivalent of parasitism: exploiting others without providing anything in return.
Funny thing is, mutually beneficial social interaction is not only usually less effort, but also yields better results; and this can even be mathematically proven (see e.g game theory).  Mutualism isn't even limited to mammals or vertebrates, consider burrowing tarantulas and their small "pet" frogs for example, not to mention ants and termites farming fungi already extinct everywhere else except their nests.

To circle back to the original topic, I don't think one has to be a troll or be playing games to post the kinds of threads Faringdon/Treez has; having a less common set of personality traits suffices.  Whether that is or is not the case, does not actually matter to me, because I also happen to know that responses centering on things with very little emotion are what titillates a troll the least: if they are true, then some of my posts might be useful; but if they are a troll, none of my posts will bring them much satisfaction at all.  Win-win.
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