Resistance Of Reviews

[i_am_fubar]

Most people on this forum are probably not perpetrators of this, what with you being signed up to a public forum to talk about engineering and what not. But I'm trying to work out why so many people, specifically many professional engineers, resist having their work reviewed.

I'm not talking about them not wanting to have people leaning over their shoulder and doing time and motion studies.... That would suck. But I've seen countless cases of engineers, surrounded by learned peers, that will try and force their projects through as fast as possible with as little oversight as possible, seemingly to keep others from offering any input; critical or otherwise.

I can understand an arrogance of youth causing it in some people when they begin their careers, a desire to prove that they don't need help. But when people who have worked in the industry for decades look upon the proposal of a review as a personal offence, I am left confused, baffled and angry (Angry because I'll usually end up having to fix preventable mistakes, but that's another story).

An example recently was someone putting a £1,000 assembled PCB out without any review of the schematic, board layout, BOM.... etc. When they have in the past had boards come in that needed days or re-work (missing vias) or total scrap (missing connector on layout).

I appreciate there is a scale to review from a 'here, look at this' to week long meetings where every decision has to be ratified. But I find, personally, the idea of going at is solo when there is no need to, insane, reckless and quite frankly selfish, insulting and rude.

I can't be the only one who has seen this?

Why does it happen so much?

Please, I need to know 

[i_am_fubar]

I should probably clarrify that I love reviews. They are a chance to get other peoples input. To learn new ideas and ways of thinking. To pick up on the all too human stupid fails that we all make.

It also means that if something slips though and a screw up is made.... It's not all on me 

[SiliconWizard]

As you said, some people do not like to be challenged - or would just feel like they are not trusted.

But anyway, the real problem would not lie with those people but with the company(ies) having no design review processes.
Things like this have to be enforced on a global level in a company, else it usually doesn't work - at least not for long.

[i_am_fubar]

Agree 100% that the company should be driving it. But even on a personal level, I will volunteer my designs up for review. It's a critical aspect of de-risking it.

I don't grasp the desire to not be challenged. It's essential to continual improvement.

[Tomorokoshi]

Corporate policies are both guidance and hindrance to procedures such as reviews. Enthusiastic young engineers tend to hit the walls of the policies. Compliant experienced engineers tend to follow the path to the letter. Cynical experienced engineers both hit the walls and follow the path, causing lots of corporate friction. Consider the typical requirements at play:

1. Get it done faster. We are behind schedule.
2. Get it done cheaper. We are over budget.
3. Get it done right. Quality is important.

The one who proclaims that requirement #1 is important is Sales. They have lots of sway and disposable budgets so they often get their way.

The one who proclaims that requirement #2 is important is Management. They have lots of authority and control budgets so they often get their way.

Who is left to proclaim that requirement #3 is important? Usually other engineers. Generally the cynical ones. They don't have much sway and don't control much of anything, so reviews, documentation, or delay for the purpose of testing are considered costs with no return and are easily skipped.

Those who actively avoid review processes are possibly trying to avoid the pain of iterative costs such as additional revisions or extension of schedules. These costs eventually need to be explained to a higher management level or require higher management approval. Either can be quite a problem depending on corporate culture.

[m98]

It can depend on what kind of company culture you create. When everyone is scared to eventually cause delays to an overly optimistic project plan, people will be hesitant to proper quality control.

[daqq]

I can understand an arrogance of youth causing it in some people when they begin their careers, a desire to prove that they don't need help. But when people who have worked in the industry for decades look upon the proposal of a review as a personal offence, I am left confused, baffled and angry

(edit: after rereading the text a bit more)
I have noticed a similar attitude. I am now 30-ish years old and I have noticed many issues some of the older 'more experienced' had:
- design mistakes due to being woefully out of date on some aspect of electronics design
- how they simply did not comprehend or were woefully unaware how things worked these days - against my explicit warnings, parts that were in short supply were bought from one of those fishy Chinese distributors and surprise, surprise, the lot of them were fake
- how they worked ineffectively with various software

Sometimes, when I pointed things out or even offered to do them myself (because I couldn't stand the bad design choices), I was not taken seriously, mainly due to my age and generally the results were poor and exactly as I had predicted.

I am all for reviews and detailed discussions with my colleagues. I have no problems getting or giving advice.

I do get the feeling that old curmudgeons don't like the idea of young whipper snappers thinking they know something that they don't.

And yes, sadly, regardless of age, many people view pointing out flaws or the objective criticism of a design as a personal attack. In all areas, not only engineering.

[ebastler]

I have noticed a similar attitude. I am now 30-ish years old and I have noticed many issues some of the older 'more experienced' had:
- design mistakes due to being woefully out of date on some aspect of electronics design
- how they simply did not comprehend or were woefully unaware how things worked these days - against my explicit warnings, parts that were in short supply were bought from one of those fishy Chinese distributors and surprise, surprise, the lot of them were fake
- how they worked ineffectively with various software

Sometimes, when I pointed things out or even offered to do them myself (because I couldn't stand the bad design choices), I was not taken seriously, mainly due to my age and generally the results were poor and exactly as I had predicted.

I am all for reviews and detailed discussions with my colleagues. I have no problems getting or giving advice.

I do get the feeling that old curmudgeons don't like the idea of young whipper snappers thinking they know something that they don't.

And yes, sadly, regardless of age, many people view pointing out flaws or the objective criticism of a design as a personal attack. In all areas, not only engineering.

If you offer your advice and design feedback in the same tone -- has it occurred to you that it might come across as arrogant? And that this may contribute to the fact that people don't actively seek your advice? 

[daqq]

If you offer your advice and design feedback in the same tone -- has it occurred to you that it might come across as arrogant? And that this may contribute to the fact that people don't actively seek your advice? 

I'm not sure what you mean. If I see something wrong, I point it out. Every time I pointed an issue out I was eventually proven right. I do offer it respectfully.

edit: As to people actively seeking my advice, some do, some don't.

[twospoons]

Design reviews really need to be enforced. They should be regarded as a critical part of the process.
Avoiding reviews can be the result of time pressure, or hubris, or simple lack of understanding the true cost of a mistake.
I guess nobody likes having their work questioned, but there's a certain maturity (nothing to do with age!) required to realise that no-one is perfect, especially one's self.

A company I currently contract to has been bitten in the past by a poor product design resulting in a high field failure rate - so they decided to do something about it. Not only has the review process been formalized, but the product goes through several stages of verification - by a team of engineers separate to the design team. The validation team is as big as the design team, and we test everything. Issues get reported back, to be fixed in the next iteration.  Nothing gets out the door until it passes validation.

Another company I worked for in the past had system involving chocolate fish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_fish).  In the review you could earn a chocolate fish for each design flaw spotted, and the designer had to supply the goodies. Incentive to make sure your work was perfect before review, and to really look hard at the other guys work.

[vk6zgo]

Design reviews really need to be enforced. They should be regarded as a critical part of the process.
Avoiding reviews can be the result of time pressure, or hubris, or simple lack of understanding the true cost of a mistake.
I guess nobody likes having their work questioned, but there's a certain maturity (nothing to do with age!) required to realise that no-one is perfect, especially one's self.

A company I currently contract to has been bitten in the past by a poor product design resulting in a high field failure rate - so they decided to do something about it. Not only has the review process been formalized, but the product goes through several stages of verification - by a team of engineers separate to the design team. The validation team is as big as the design team, and we test everything. Issues get reported back, to be fixed in the next iteration.  Nothing gets out the door until it passes validation.

Another company I worked for in the past had system involving chocolate fish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_fish).  In the review you could earn a chocolate fish for each design flaw spotted, and the designer had to supply the goodies. Incentive to make sure your work was perfect before review, and to really look hard at the other guys work.

With that regime, in the second to last  job I had before retirement, I would have been overwhelmed with chocolate fish.

As a person with many years spent working on equipment designed by competent EEs, the standard of design in tnis particular place was "sick-making".

Unfortunately, the "Senior" officers of the company had much of their self esteem invested in the way things were, liked a dumb, compliant workforce, & did not like being told by an "old fart" that they were doing things which were poorly thought out, & in many cases, unnecessary.

As a result, I became effectively, "an enemy of the State" as far as the bosses were concerned.
They even sacked me once, but were too useless to find a replacement, so asked me to stay on.

It was a lousy job, but OFs can't always pick and choose, so I "gritted my teeth" & stayed, until I couldn't stand it any more.

[Nominal Animal]

It was a lousy job, but OFs can't always pick and choose, so I "gritted my teeth" & stayed, until I couldn't stand it any more.

You described exactly the situation that made me break myself (burnout, depression) -- except I was the young whippersnapper (22-30 years old) with the actual knowledge (both real-world and theoretical -- I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for that), and the results to prove it; but not the real-world experience to deal with social games playing administrata and fake-it-till-they-make-it cow-orkers.  Not knowing any better, I thought I was doing stuff wrong, and what they did was perfectly normal and okay.

At one time the boss of my department told me straight to my face that they simply couldn't trust me at all, because they had a son my age, who was completely useless.  Apparently, I too must have been useless, because otherwise they would have had to question themselves as a parent and a teacher...

[exe]

I rarely enjoy code reviews (I'm a SWE) because it's most of the time a fight of opinions. Because of this, I prefer to write less code and not do more work than absolutely needed. The paradox is, less experienced engineers often play much better in the team (comparing seasoned and opinionated professionals).

So, I'm skeptical about reviews unless goals and structure of reviews are well defined. That is, the feedback should be constructive, and it shouldn't be about personal opinions.
There is a lot of information on "how to do review right", but it doesn't help. People read such articles, think they got it, then they call their opinion as a "constructive feedback" with huge confirmation bias. So, no communication there, and a lot of stress and wasted time.

So, I prefer to work with less experienced people who are eager to learn and haven't grown big ego yet . Of course it's not really about experience, it's about "soft skills".

Sometimes I see teams that somehow "click" to each other. Those people work well together. I wonder what's their secret.

PS Not sure how it works in electronics, I'm not a EE.

[vk6zgo]

It was a lousy job, but OFs can't always pick and choose, so I "gritted my teeth" & stayed, until I couldn't stand it any more.

You described exactly the situation that made me break myself (burnout, depression) -- except I was the young whippersnapper (22-30 years old) with the actual knowledge (both real-world and theoretical -- I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for that), and the results to prove it; but not the real-world experience to deal with social games playing administrata and fake-it-till-they-make-it cow-orkers.  Not knowing any better, I thought I was doing stuff wrong, and what they did was perfectly normal and okay.

At one time the boss of my department told me straight to my face that they simply couldn't trust me at all, because they had a son my age, who was completely useless.  Apparently, I too must have been useless, because otherwise they would have had to question themselves as a parent and a teacher...

I was going to say that ageism seems to be applied from the middle out to the extremes of age, but on second thoughts, assumng they are unconsciously discriminating is giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Let's face it. they were just morons!

After a while, just as in your case, I began to question my worth--- you need a lot of confidence not to be influenced by constant disregard of your knowledge.

I could rant all day, but here are a couple of the dumb things they did.

The systems we were making translated OEM control signals into something the computer could use.
The prototype used plain old pots to do this, but all except one of the real controls used PWM.
Instead of converting these signals direct, they used the legacy design from the prototype, & fed the PWM
to  RC integrating networks.

The resulting analog signal was then passed through an Op Amp, where its amplitude & dc component could be adjusted to place it into the middle of the transfer function of an ADC.

To do this, we looked at the ultimate readout on a monitor, whilst "tweaking" the appropriate pots.
It was nightmarish, chasing the thing all over the place, while peering at a PC monitor halfway across the room.

I suggested we set one up correctly that way, look at the level & centreing with an Oscilloscope, record that, then set the adjustments up that way.
It may not have been "spot on" but would have minimised adjustments done with the final display.
This was  greeted with disdain.

OK, they didn't like that, so I thought I'd "lower my sights", & suggested they provide a small monitor on a
"wander lead", so we at least could do the adjustments their way without craning our necks to see what was happening on a screen across the room.

No joy on that one, either!

Another delight was a switch on which we had to painstakingly assemble a network of diodes, which was very difficult & time consuming.

No other switches, even though they used the same interface, had these diodes.
It seems that in the prototype, the "gifted amateurs" who designed it had anticipated a problem that the diodes were meant to fix.

When the problem didn't eventuate, they left them off all the other switches, but on the production units, they were slavishly reproduced on that particular switch.

I had a "win" on that one----I "buttonholed" one of the "real" EEs as he went past, & pointed it out to him.
The diodes were scrapped, but that was a "black mark" against me!

I better stop now, before I get too worked up, but there were many other things.
It seems that if there was a way to stuff something up, they would find it!

[SiliconWizard]

I don't grasp the desire to not be challenged. It's essential to continual improvement.

Sure, but some people are either too confident or too insecure to handle that well.

That said, and as some have already pointed out, it's a two-way street. Some engineers are also notoriously annoying when they are participating in design reviews: overly lecturing, nitpicking, negative, dogmatic, etc. (that's something we can notice on forums too, including this one )

This can ruin a team's mood, and eventually a team's work, and if you have any of those in your own team, it could explain why some colleagues don't like design reviews.

Barring that, IME hardware design reviews usually last a lot less time, are more to the point, and a lot more productive than typical software code reviews.

[tszaboo]

PCB design reviews are a cheap and effective way of improving quality. That's easy. Everyone with half a brain understands this. When someone doesnt offer his design up for review, it is always for political reasons. The company recently hired an engineer, mediocre old fart with narcissistic personality disorder. Basically you cannot tell him that he is wrong about something. He will go as far as launch personal complaints against you with upper management. The answer for anything is: "It is this way, because I have 30 years of experience". Sure, all I hear is that he is old, and wrong at the same time. He also managed to offer review of my work, after with I had to spend days debunking why all points of the review was wrong. So there you go, neither of us should review each others work, because he will just write bullshit reviewing my work. And if I review his, then just dismiss everything because of his mental illness.

The industry -I'm working in now- requires review. It has to be reviewed by a second engineer at the company, and a Notified body, to make sure it is safe. No exceptions. And I mean it is a very deep review, with calculations, simulations, tests and so on, that could take months to do. Good luck getting around this.

[Siwastaja]

So, I prefer to work with less experienced people who are eager to learn and haven't grown big ego yet . Of course it's not really about experience, it's about "soft skills".

This isn't bad at all. When you have to "teach" them, you need to explain your choices carefully, going through your work. Their beginner questions make you think about the basis of your choices, and you need to actually demonstrate the viability.

It's the complete opposite when some "experienced" takes the role of a questioner based on their own opinions. You know they are wrong, and hence won't question your choices. Neither side learns.

The best would be to have some less experienced, willing-to-learn person who you work with explaining your choices, and then have some consultation from a really experienced guru (not a wannabe-professional) who has seen everything to know how not to fixate on small details of opinion. The availability of such gurus is low, however.

Reviews where you end up to heated argument about "if(condition)" vs. "if (condition)" every time are not only worthless, they destroy your ability to work, and finally, the company. I'm sure many of us have seen such processes; I'm not surprised if people develop a resistance of reviews due to this. Then they start fearing reviews. One really bad experience may be enough.

My issue has been the opposite: I'd like to have more actual reviews, but somehow no one has time to do it; there always is time to discuss non-technical and marketing, though. Then, out of the blue, there is some sudden premeditated attack about some completely made-up and stupid pseudo-technical point, by people who haven't even looked at the design. Something along the lines of "WHY DON'T YOU USE BLOCKCHAIN HERE?", in a context of analog amplifier, for example. (Made-up example because I still need to be very careful not to say anything actual, but this isn't too far from what I have really heard.)

[Rerouter]

As the only skilled PCB designer at my work I usually have to go knocking on doors trying to get help reviewing things,

the self review after completing a project tends to take about 30% of the layout time if things are complex, e.g. is this part the right one for the job, is there any weird (1). notes that mean things don't work as designed, are those drill holes actually positioned correctly, etc.

Where as every other person I deal with says "looks good, just order it"

I've gotten lucky so many times where what was wrong is usually 2 components are a bit to snug for easy assembly, or a screw hole was 0.5mm off, and could be fixed with a file, I am good at self review, but it would be really nice to have someone else to bounce these checks off.

[Nominal Animal]

(What exe and Siwastaja wrote above, is exactly the reason I volunteer to help Uni science students with their Linux laptop issues, and why I loved to answer some questions at StackOverflow and at StackExchange -- I didn't do the short-form copy-paste answers, but more like "here's how you solve this sort of problem" wall-of-texts there too.  I'd love to volunteer to that sort of stuff more in real life, but the blocker is that I don't use Windows, and there aren't many Linux users who need help, other than tutorials that already exist.)

(Also, I warmly thank anyone helping us beginners in the Beginner forum here, reviewing our first design schematics and boards.  You better believe we appreciate the reviews!)

Where as every other person I deal with says "looks good, just order it"

Yup.  When you know you are only human and make errors (and would appreciate help in catching them before they bite) but don't get any real feedback from others, it hurts more than name-calling in my opinion.

This is one of the cases where hard criticism works really, really well.  I mean, the precise kind: "this is absolute garbage and you should already know from X that this works much better".  Be hard, but specific; never vaguely nasty ("nah, you should learn board design first").

This works, because the hardness shows you are not pulling punches, and are spending the time and effort to poke at the design to check if it needs fixing.  Pointing out an occasional good solution or encouragement is a good "spice" on top, just to show you are not an antagonist; that the criticism is given in order to help the asker to produce better work output.

[TimNJ]

At the end of the day, if something goes wrong in the field and you didn't let anyone else touch it, well, then the fault lands squarely on you. At the absolute very least, allowing people to review your work spreads the responsibility and liability across a group. Maybe that's a bit selfish, but it's true. And, on the opposite end, reviews will almost always improve the quality of the end product.

[PeurUCam]

Some people are afraid their work or inventions get copied or stolen..

[james_s]

I always try to get another set of eyes on something before I go too far. Sometimes I get a "hey have you considered just doing xyz instead?" and I realize there's a far simpler approach that may work just as well or better and save me a ton of effort. Other times it catches bone headed errors I've made or potential problems I've overlooked. I've never had any reason not to seek review for my work, the only time I send out for boards without someone taking a look is when the project is trivially simple.

[coppercone2]

its like asking john wayne gracey to see his closet

he is looking at that guys work = listening to police scanner and hearing 'fbi raid in progress' . I always think about the scifi movie 'outland'.

[coppercone2]

Some people are afraid their work or inventions get copied or stolen..

or this

and there is often undocumented/non obvious things what I consider to be 'spirit of design' that will get effected. And reviews often are used as a tool to gut designs, arguments about hunches, cause philosophical clashes, etc.

A good review needs to offer options/analysis/explainations and its ALOT of work to document everything. So its expensive and time consuming. Not like look at something for 30 seconds and be like 'we use this it works better for reasons unexplained bye'.. if that type of analysis works then it needs to be reworked so a real analysis can be done because someone was unfamiliar in the first place, or its just really loose some how.

[vk6zgo]

At the end of the day, if something goes wrong in the field and you didn't let anyone else touch it, well, then the fault lands squarely on you. At the absolute very least, allowing people to review your work spreads the responsibility and liability across a group. Maybe that's a bit selfish, but it's true. And, on the opposite end, reviews will almost always improve the quality of the end product.

Nah!

It lands squarely on the poor harassed Tech who has to redesign your crap "on the fly", because it is needed yesterday.
Meantime, your office is nearly impossible to contact, because of time zones or, in some countries, week long universal "special holidays" in the middle of the year.

When they are finally reached, you have moved on, & your replacement hasn't a clue.

In the unlikely event we get any sense out of your company, any replacement bits will be stuck down at the bottom of a container, with 3-4 weeks delivery time.

We look at how other companies did things, use the more available components they used, or steal their design to fix yours.

This is just the reality of being at "the other side of the world".

"You" & "your" was not meant to personally attack you or your employer, it was in the same generic way you used it.

[mc172]

I don't think it's a fear of having their inventions stolen - I think it's a fear of their level of incompetence becoming exposed. Honestly, none of us design anything perfectly and external opinion always brings up the question "why did you do that?" - but people don't generally like these conversations. I do, because it ultimately improves the efficiency of the design, but as a result I'm considered to be a weirdo. This is a social norms problem - currently it's considered funny to say "I'm bad at maths" in the context of, say, figuring out mentally, 100 divided by 4.
Also, I find that a lot of people holding the positions they do in companies are largely incompetent. I have a fair amount of experience of working for so-called experts and/or high up people who really know how to cost the company money in re-tooling etc. through sheer incompetence. Yet when I spend a few hours to use modern simulation tools to validate designs, I receive criticism for "wasting time", yet I didn't need to re-tool my design at a cost of 50x(+) the simulation time.

I actually think it's in part down to the generation of people that I find myself working for. I really hate to say it but the "boomer" generation are currently running the top tier positions in companies, and the "millennials" are the workforce. I have worked in three different companies where the reviews have been either rushed, not conducted properly (i.e. yeah yeah that's minor detail, not my problem, i'm not interested) or missed entirely, where the decision makers could be considered to be "boomers".

[exe]

My experience is that it's enough to have two opinionated and conflicting people in a large team to significantly slow down decision-making process or even lead the project into the crisis. If it's only one person, then it's sort of works because others avoid conflict. But two persons may argue infinitely. My observation after talking to such people is that they always blame somebody else for delays and failures.

> "boomer" generation are currently running the top tier positions in companies, and the "millennials" are the workforce

My observation too, although it's starting to change. At least in IT. I think it's a good thing, and we, boomers, need to adjust.

[james_s]

I know it's popular to bash on millennials and some of the stereotypes are based on truth, but I think it's worth remembering that the first round of millennials are in their early 40s now, they're mid-career, many have families of their own, some of their offspring are young adults themselves at this point. They're not all a bunch of lazy kids who have no idea how to live.

[SiliconWizard]

I still don't know for sure what we call "millenials". Some people like you refer to them as people possibly in their 40s now, but many think of them as young adults. Point is, are they people who were teens/young adults in the early 2000's, or are they people BORN around that time? I tend to use the latter definition myself, but really I don't know. It's such a catch-all word.

[james_s]

From Wikipedia:
"Millennials, also known as Generation Y (or simply Gen Y), are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted defining range for the generation. "

Millennials *were* teens/young adults when the term (and stereotypes) became popular but that was ~20 years ago, people don't stay teenagers forever.

[engrguy42]

Just stumbled on this thread and thought I'd add my 2 cents... 

As someone who has been around people for many decades, there's one thing I've learned about people:

Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.

Why?

Ego. Few will admit it, but we are all, for the most part, driven primarily by egos and our feelings. It feels good to boost our egos, and it feels incredibly painful to hurt our egos. Some more than others, but for the vast majority of us protecting our egos is on the top of our list of important stuff.

And truth be told, the vast majority of tech (and other) discussions boil down to egos. I'm smarter than you. That's it.

And since, by definition, suggesting something like that will hurt peoples' egos, most people will absolutely freak out when they read that. Or say it's just the other guy who's that way. But that's just further proof that it's true.

Psychologists have known that it's true since the beginning of time, but it's one of those things that's too painful to discuss. Or admit.

Personally, I know I'm that way, but I've also learned enough to realize that, after more than 45 years as an electrical engineer, I don't know nothin'. Always learning, every day. So when someone disagrees with or challenges me, it initially hurts, but I also realize they may be right and it might be a chance to learn something. Of course, they may also just be trying to protect their egos and prove they're smarter by saying some irrelevant tech factiods, but anyway... 

So as my signature says, the smartest people are those who know enough to finally realize "hey, there's a TON out there that I have no clue about".

Coincidentally, I just saw an ad with Neil deGrasse Tyson where he said something like:

"One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you're right but not enough to know you're wrong".

Oh, and another well known but never discussed (and related) topic is:

"People believe what they want to believe. Facts are irrelevant". And as a psych professor buddy told me years ago, "and that especially applies to technical folks like scientists and engineers". 
 

[coppercone2]

Just stumbled on this thread and thought I'd add my 2 cents... 

As someone who has been around people for many decades, there's one thing I've learned about people:

Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.

Why?

Ego. Few will admit it, but we are all, for the most part, driven primarily by egos and our feelings. It feels good to boost our egos, and it feels incredibly painful to hurt our egos. Some more than others, but for the vast majority of us protecting our egos is on the top of our list of important stuff.

And truth be told, the vast majority of tech (and other) discussions boil down to egos. I'm smarter than you. That's it.

And since, by definition, suggesting something like that will hurt peoples' egos, most people will absolutely freak out when they read that. Or say it's just the other guy who's that way. But that's just further proof that it's true.

Psychologists have known that it's true since the beginning of time, but it's one of those things that's too painful to discuss. Or admit.

Personally, I know I'm that way, but I've also learned enough to realize that, after more than 45 years as an electrical engineer, I don't know nothin'. Always learning, every day. So when someone disagrees with or challenges me, it initially hurts, but I also realize they may be right and it might be a chance to learn something. Of course, they may also just be trying to protect their egos and prove they're smarter by saying some irrelevant tech factiods, but anyway... 

So as my signature says, the smartest people are those who know enough to finally realize "hey, there's a TON out there that I have no clue about".

Coincidentally, I just saw an ad with Neil deGrasse Tyson where he said something like:

"One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you're right but not enough to know you're wrong".

Oh, and another well known but never discussed (and related) topic is:

"People believe what they want to believe. Facts are irrelevant". And as a psych professor buddy told me years ago, "and that especially applies to technical folks like scientists and engineers". 
 

you can kill a company or product that way with a bad release. you are lucky to have vigilant managers

[basinstreetdesign]

Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.

There is no excuse for this attitude.  Mother nature is not very forgiving so we better be willing to let an error of ours be revealed.  It benefits everybody in the company that an error in the design of some gizmo be corrected sooner rather than later.

If I was in charge of some group and that attitude was displayed before me by some misguided soul then I would make sure that that person was promptly corrected.  Furthermore I would see to it that that person would not be responsible for any critical part of a project until it was clear that his attitude was different.

I have always feared and enjoyed peer reviews of my designs for two reasons.  First, I fear that several mistakes would be pointed out to my chagrin and, two, I hoped that my design may be met with approval to my pride.  There are few moments in your career than when your betters or equals applaud your work.

[ebastler]

As someone who has been around people for many decades, there's one thing I've learned about people:
Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.

That may tell something about the "people" you interact with, but I'm afraid it also tells a lot about you.

If you have not figured out how to give constructive feedback in a way that does not sour relationships, that's a pity, because a lot of your knowledge and experience goes unused. It must also be immensely frustrating to you to know of better solutions, but not be able to bring them into the discussion?

[engrguy42]

As someone who has been around people for many decades, there's one thing I've learned about people:
Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.

That may tell something about the "people" you interact with, but I'm afraid it also tells a lot about you.

If you have not figured out how to give constructive feedback in a way that does not sour relationships, that's a pity, because a lot of your knowledge and experience goes unused. It must also be immensely frustrating to you to know of better solutions, but not be able to bring them into the discussion?

I think you completely missed my point. I always challenge, correct, and criticize people. Like I did with the post you're referencing. I criticized the general population for having incredibly fragile egos.

When I say "never do it", what I mean is "never do it unless you're willing to suffer wrath and rage and personal attacks".

My point is that people HATE it. And they get FURIOUS when you do it. In fact, in my many years as an engineer and engineering manager I had to learn the "proper" way to challenge, correct, and criticize people without upsetting them. There's even training for managers showing how to do it.

And one of the responses people have to criticism (like the criticism in my previous post) is they lash out at the one who's doing the criticizing. 

Have you never read any tech discussions? 

[Rerouter]

To flip it the other way, if a lot of money is riding on something your designing, do you want your head on the pike?, or a few reviewers between you and the pike?,

That is my approach, I am constantly paranoid because where I work, I get no opportunity, I am forced to record decisions by other people in the projects to give myself some buffer from incidents. to prevent that wrong measurement or spec sent to me, ending with the boss saying I just wasted $50K on incorrect parts.

This is the other side of the coin, and what makes people set there ego aside as they can avoid a punishment of some kind. at least in my own opinion.

I have trained people who felt they could do no wrong and never asked for second opinions on things that cannot be easily un-done, they did not tend to stay employed past a year, as eventually they made a mistake too big to ignore, instead of asking for help, made it worse, and had spiraled out of control when we finally became aware of it. this was not what did them in, rather is was when they did not learn the lesson from the first time.

I suppose this is why in low or un-reviewed companies you end up with engineers demanding written specifications from customers, as it leaves that level of separation if things are not designed to fit the task. where as in a highly reviewed environment like software writing where you usually have usability testing and A/B trials, its much looser because things will be caught and corrected, and the cost to implement the change is lower than something physical with a 3-6 week lead time.

[nctnico]

To flip it the other way, if a lot of money is riding on something your designing, do you want your head on the pike?, or a few reviewers between you and the pike?,

That is my approach, I am constantly paranoid because where I work, I get no opportunity, I am forced to record decisions by other people in the projects to give myself some buffer from incidents. to prevent that wrong measurement or spec sent to me, ending with the boss saying I just wasted $50K on incorrect parts.

Where I'm involved in management I try to create a positive atmosphere where people work together, look at eachother's work and people are not afraid to own a mistake. In the end it helps to get good teamwork going. It is not easy because finger pointing is a quick way out. However nobody ever got better from finger pointing. The (end) customer certainly doesn't care how & why something failed. They just want a working product.

[ebastler]

I think you completely missed my point. I always challenge, correct, and criticize people.

Yes, I apparently did. Sorry about that, I didn't indend to presume anything. But to be honest, I still can't quite reconcile your statement above with the earlier one you made -- I must have missed the irony in the earlier post?

As someone who has been around people for many decades, there's one thing I've learned about people:
Never, ever, EVER challenge, correct, or criticize anyone. Ever.