Unprofessionalism is an opinion. I'm a contractor and so its common for me to work in 3-6 different offices a year, depending on the amount of engagements i take. I've been doing this for around 10 years now. So as you can work out i've worked in a lot of different offices, in ALL of them, i've never once worn a suit, i've never worn a suit to an interview and i have the luxuary of never having to wear a suit because its just not the norm in this industry. Then i went to an interview at a bank, the first financial sector client i've interviewed at. The feedback was that while they thought i'd was absolutely qualified for the role, they viewed me as unprofessional because i didnt wear a suit.
At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in.
I'm a contractor too. If you wear the suit they might think you're a consultant, that seems to go down quite well and can open up more money. It also might mean they take you for a more rounded professional that's able to (for instance) engage with management and with customers, rather than just a code monkey that shouldn't be let out of a cupboard
I'm not going to even insinuate it would help you, but it's never hurt me to wear one to initial client meetings and other appropriate venues.
My friend interviewed at government contractor/think tank and wore a suit. After the interview he called a person he knew at the company to hear how things went. The insider reported that most of the interview post-mortem was discussing how unprofessional it was for my friend to remove his suit jacket when doing a bunch of higher math on the whiteboard.
I just dropped out of business school because I realized that if I went through with it, I'd be paying an additional 6 figures to get into a job where I'd have to put on my corporate persona again. I've done this in the past, and it was just unnecessarily draining and stressful.
After weeks of internal debate, I decided that I'd rather have a significantly lower pay but be able to the same self both in and out of the office.
(Helps to have almost died earlier this year. Makes decision making a bit more straightforward than otherwise)
Funny; the article has me thinking about being more open with our humanity on the web, then you reference an apparent brush with death as a sort of backstory—something many, myself included, would be uncomfortable sharing. Thanks for being candid!
At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in.
This, 1 million times. I had the same experience when asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" and my not replying with a pre-canned response of dreaming about middle management in a company I know almost nothing about.
This was a fun read but I think the author is overthinking. How about: there are people in the world, quite a few of them, who like Nickelback. A "Refuse to play Nickelback" feature mocks and insults them. It's a little weird to feign surprise over that.
For me, it's not that the joke is offensive, it's that it's offensively lazy. Nickelback is a band that gets regularly shit on and putting that option in your app just says you wanted to make a joke but weren't creative enough to think of one. I'm surprised they didn't throw a mother-in-law joke in there for good measure.
>just says you wanted to make a joke but weren't creative enough to think of one.
Well, the same can be said for 90% of what passes for situation comedy. Hardly appropriate to pinpoint this to an app company.
P.S Also, the originality of the joke is not in using Nickelback, but in having a "ban this one artist" button in the first place.
The artist being Nickelback is secondary, it could be Bieber or Cyrus etc.
That said, it was important, for the mechanics of the joke, that the artist was someone important and almost universaly despised, else it would be lost in the majority of users (where's the fun in "don't play King Crimson"?).
I don't believe that there is such a thing as "offensively lazy". The sets "lazy jokes" and "lazy jokes that have the power to cause offense" are not equivalent.
Have you ever seen somebody appear offended by "Why did the chicken cross the road?""So how about that airline food?""'Knock knock.', 'Who's there?', 'Banana.'""Can I has cheeseburger?"
Those are all lazy jokes. As lazy is as is possible. Yet their laziness lacks the power to offend. No sane person is going to become offended by somebody dredging up some lame 10 year old joke about cats that like to eat cheeseburgers. Wherever you find an example of a "joke that is so lazy, it is offensively lazy", there is without fail a more plausible explanation for the offense the joke elicits.
For example, "Australians are upside-down". Lazy, and makes many people upset. Are they upset because it is lazy? No, they are upset because it is picking on other people (themselves or others).
As an Australian, I don't mind it. Reddit bots which make jokes about it on every comment with the word "Australia" in it ... that's annoying (because bots wear out their welcome pretty fast). But most people like to be joked about.
The only lazy jokes which actually hurt are those which are rubbing salt in a wound.
Right, I think that's what I'm getting at. A lazy joke that is nothing but lazy is nothing more than a standard failure to rise above mediocrity. Repetition can push it into "annoying" very quickly.
If there is some element of rubbing salt in the wound, then the joke can cross into the territory of "offensive", but that can happen with novel jokes as well. Repeating an offensive joke can make it more offensive, since it contributes to an overall atmosphere, but the repetition itself is not what is offensive.
Australia being upside-down might not be the best example of a joke that crosses into offensive territory.
>For example, "Australians are upside-down". Lazy, and makes many people upset. Are they upset because it is lazy?
Are you saying there is no joke so bland, overused, and by the books that it would make people groan and say "that joke is so bad I feel offended you would think I would find that funny"
People don't dislike fart jokes because they're offended by farts. They dislike fart jokes because they're usually bad.
> Are you saying there is no joke so bland, overused, and by the books that it would make people groan and say "that joke is so bad I feel offended you would think I would find that funny"
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. A joke cannot become so lazy that it actually offends people with how lazy it is. In the most extreme case realistically imaginable, a series of sufficiently lazy jokes may anger people if they shelled out a lot of money on tickets to hear jokes, but even then they would not be offended unless there is something besides just lazy jokes at play.
Disliking fart jokes and being offended by fart jokes are two different things. If you are actually offended by fart jokes, chances are it has something to do with the scatological nature of fart jokes and your puritanical mentality towards such things. If you merely dislike fart jokes, chances are it is because you are not twelve.
Are you saying there is no joke so bland, overused, and by the books that it would make people groan and say "that joke is so bad I feel offended you would think I would find that funny"
Yes. I would think the joke is dumb. I can't see how you would be offended by it.
People don't dislike fart jokes because they're offended by farts. They dislike fart jokes because they're usually bad.
Interesting, because I would say the exact opposite. I don't like fart jokes because I don't like to think about farts.
The phrase "offensively lazy" is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Obviously no one is "offended" by lazy humor the way they are by racist humor, etc. It would more accurately be phrased "annoyingly lazy".
And I agree that this Nickelback joke is annoyingly lazy. Not funny enough for the inconvenience it apparently causes some users.
I think "annoyingly lazy" is a very fair description.
"Offensively lazy" annoys me because I don't think it is tongue-and-cheek much of the time. I think it is a phrase that gets brought into the fray when a joke really was offensive to some people. I never hear it in response to "rated PG" jokes; people who say it probably are offended, but it seems they have misidentified the source of their feeling of offense.
I think the app refusing to play a hated band is creative and have never heard of anyone doing that. Sure hating Nickelback isn't new, but since when does the subject of the joke make the joke itself uncreative?
You've put this really well -- we can still laugh at Irish jokes and blonde jokes, why should Nickelback be any different? The joke isn't that Nickelback are terrible, that's just shared context like "genies grant three wishes," or "drunk people do stupid things."
I very much agree. It's totally okay to be unprofessional by being yourself: if you truly feel strongly about a subject, then by all means showcase that opinion.
However, what made me a bit upset was the last line in the second-to-last paragraph: "... while still being ourselves." Is hating Nickelback really you/your team? So much that you exclude that particular music artist, and not anybody else?
Of course, the 'feature' is a silly easter egg, and no one needs to call each other names over it. Still, stuff like this makes your app seem incredibly childish (not just unprofessional). If it was a clever insertion of your team's opinions, then including something unprofessional is fine. A teenage-old joke however is not remotely clever or funny.
Disclaimer: I actually enjoy a few of Nickelback's songs.
I think the point can be a little larger. When you have a large audience it's inevitable that a portion will be, offended and annoyed and/or disagreeable when you are even slightly politically incorrect or strike the wrong tone or voice an opinion on something. The bigger you are, the closer the scrutiny. The end result is that most products and companies are completely devoid of personality.
To me, the big warning sign is that the creators of a social music app seem to be ignorant of or in denial of the fact that music is one of the most deeply personal and subjective media in human culture. Even if they disabled a much less popular band, that attitude of objectivity doesn't sit well with me.
Naw, I disagree... if you can accede that they know that tastes vary, and thus that their own tastes aren't objective, then when they make a statement about their tastes, they probably understand the subjectivity of the statement they are making.
I don't take what they are doing as an objective statement about taste, but rather as their own subjective statement, which you can't really avoid doing once you're designing stuff for folks.
A few other words do it too (rot13("znfgheongvba") does it as well, but only some of the time). I don't think this is caused by a hard-coded blacklist of words, but I'm not really sure exactly what conditions have to be met for it to happen.
@scarecrowbob: Your comment (the one that is a sibling to this comment) is also [dead]. I have no idea why, this is getting kind of absurd...
I wasn't surprised that there was some blowback, just by the level of vitriol in one particular comment. The Nickelback feature was intended to give an example of how doing something unprofessional will generate criticism, even if doing it is net worthwhile.
>How about: there are people in the world, quite a few of them, who like Nickelback. A "Refuse to play Nickelback" feature mocks and insults them. It's a little weird to feign surprise over that.
Even if you're a Nickelback fan, it's a little weird to not get the point of a joke setting (which you can also turn off).
It's not like it was any Nickelback's fan first experience with mockery for what he listens to (or as if he doesn't deserve it).
A world where you cannot mock anybody because everyone is gonna be a cry-baby about it, would be a sad world indeed.
Well, Justin Bieber is always on radar, yet, they won't say don't play JB songs by default :)
When you make this a public app, people who are fans of Nickbleback will be upset. It is unprofessional to me in the sense that you don't honor your customers' preference. Imagine Apple releases iTune with that feature, and decided that a bunch of artists are not played by default because it was fun to do that by being themselves, how would the public react? If this were just an app made with a friend, fine, maybe it was never unprofessional to the company behind it, but definitely not professional to the consumers, from the consumer's point of view. It wasn't a video app that restricts 18+ videos off by default.
And also a bit harsh to pick a particular band. I can be happier if this were just an April Fool joke and the team had made a prior agreement with the band that this was only for April Fool.
If you actually think Nickelback fans' complains are somewhat important for you to write a blog post, then you are definitely thinking about why it shouldn't be done in the first place.
It is very easy to put yourself in a bubble and forget that there are people with different opinions. He probably was actually surprised that someone passionately defended Nickelback.
There are subcultures you can join, and, being a member of them, you can think of yourself as "better" than everyone else for seeing something they don't. (Religions work like this, for example.)
But there are other subcultures you can join, where being a member of them doesn't make you better. It makes you worse. And "accept that you're doing something bad and you should feel bad" is basically a checkbox on the EULA for joining the subculture. (Most sexual kinks/fetishes are like this, for example.)
The authors were surprised to find people who thought of Nickelback as more like a religion than a kink. Probably because anyone they knew who liked Nickelback, did it in the kink-like way.
Lots of people have hang-ups and insecurities when it comes to sex. The easiest way to reconcile those hang-ups is to turn them into moral referendums.
I'm basically talking about a generalization of the phrase "guilty pleasure." It's not about being right or wrong in any objective, moral sense; it's just about the experience of "rightness" or "wrongness."
It's meant to be an inside joke with their reddit/4chan brethren. Viewed from outside their tribe, it does come across as condescending, but that isn't the intention (the intention is just to get more social props from giving other reddit/4chan brethren amusement.)
That said, "pick a niche" is common advice for would-be entrepreneurs looking to break into a crowded market. Plenty of people hate Nickelback enough that I'm sure this carves out a nice space of mindshare for those who share the opinion that, as a marketing tactic for entering into a very crowded space, this seems about as effective as any other tribe-building exercise.
Every time you go out in public or post something online, you're going to offend someone, somewhere. You'll wear the wrong clothes, have the wrong haircut, have a beard or not have a beard, have different beliefs, eat the wrong food or have the wrong opinions.
So don't sweat it when people get offended. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you and you'll have no regrets, but you'll still offend people. Just accept it and move on.
Also, I did not think your stunt unprofessional, I thought it was cute and funny. That band offends me ;)
Y'know, I don't like the word "offend" or "offence". It puts the blame on the victim for "getting offended", it means the perpatrator didn't do anything wrong, it means the victim should just "grow a thicker skin".
I prefer "being an arsehole". Rather person A saying something that "caused offence", person A acted like an arsehole.
You could use offensive, as is commonly done. Some ban offensive speech etc.
I incidentally disagree with you completely. The blame is rightly on the victim. What offends is usually personal, vague and often illogical. It's not reasonable to hold anyone responsible for doing perceived offensive things (provided they don't actually do anything otherwise illegal; I shouldn't have to point this out but I'll hedge).
In a crazy way, this reminds me of a policy at a grade school I went to: Fight-free schools, where "It takes two to fight" was the mantra. Anyone caught fighting was in trouble; it didn't matter why, even if it was self-defense.
"It takes two to fight" means that if anyone tried to fight you, you had to go to a teacher and report them. That was the only sanctioned remedy.
It worked about as well as you'd imagine. I wonder what would happen if we applied the same logic to adult arguments and crimes.
I doubt they were thinking about Nickelback fans when they made that option. They were almost certainly thinking about fans of the played out Nickelback joke.
That may seem like nitpicking, but the distinction is very important.
Why isn't it pet hamsters like cheeseburgers? Why isn't it puppies that like cheeseburgers? Why isn't it parrots that like cheeseburger? The meme is that cats like cheeseburgers. Does it make sense? Is it something even worth bothering to analyze?
Sorry, there are memes for other artists too. Why Nickleback meme?
If it isn't worth analye, why are we posting on HN and why are we discussing it? Because it is worth analyzing. Because people, we, all do put in subjective thoughts when we make stuff. And it is worth asking whether that's a good practice or not, whether it is following code of ethics of not. It is part of ethics.
If they'd picked on Justin Bieber, then we would probably be asking why they didn't pick on Nickelback instead.
Why did they pick anybody to pick on in the first place? That's easy: publicity. It got people talking about their product.
Why do people in general pick on Justin Bieber or Nickelback? I don't really know. If I had to guess, I'd say that people dislike successful celebrities or musicians who they think have undeserved praise or success. That "undeserved" is of course highly subjective. Most people who dislike Justin Bieber are likely not in his target audience. Since his target audience is fairly narrow, you have a reasonably large pool of people to get onto your "Justin Bieber memes train".
It probably works the other way around too. Mention "Rush" and "rock and roll hall of fame" in the same comment on Reddit and see what happens.
On the other hand, many of the complaints leveled at Rush and Nickelback by critics are the same. Both have been called formulaic and repetitive (I don't agree with that, but I have heard it). So what is the difference between Nickelback, who get internet hate, and Rush, who get internet praise? I don't know. The obvious answer might be that Geddy Lee and Neil Peart in particular are both widely recognized as being extremely technically talented musicians, giving Rush something that other formulaic bands cannot fall back on... but I don't think that is a satisfactory explanation.
This article isn't really on HN because people want to discuss the merits of an internet meme about Nickelback. The origin/merit of the meme is rather incidental.
Put yourselves in the user's shoes. I don't think this is about offence at all, or even about how funny or not the joke is.
Not everybody goes through the settings on their apps before use. They will notice the "feature" when it manifests itself. That's annoying in a generic setting. If it happens at that special moment crafted to cue for a song in a wedding, it's much more than annoying.
Even after the first manifestation, how clear and persistent is the in-app explanation? Because I wouldn't guess it's a feature at all.
I think professionalism bores down to basic communication skills, be punctual, responsive and considerate.
I've recently hired 2 "developers" from the freelancer HN thread to find them utterly unprofessional, requiring constant chasing and inconsiderate of the projects needs.
Thankfully I didn't spend a significant financial amount on them, but, for anyone looking at using that thread I would seriously consider oDesk or something similar with professional validations as a valid alternative. It really is a crapshoot with little or no comeback, and the quality certainly isn't top end from my experience.
This is not unprofessionalism; it is poor UX. The sensible backlash to the Nickelback feature is that is was set "by default," not that ripping on Nickelback is a humorous, widely accepted activity. This app could have retained that "cleverness" and "easter egg" vibe by keeping the setting but not having it be active by default. With proper UX considered, the backlash in this case could have been avoided.
Having it not set by default may have decreased the amount of hate they received but it would also have likely decreased its effectiveness at getting people to talk positively about the app.
Thinking your tastes and opinions are shared is one of the easiest ways to take your logical, thoughtful argument or product and turn it into a visceral hateful experience by your users or the person(s) you are trying to convince.
If being true to yourself involves "attacking" someone's loves and interests then you might want to evaluate your own character and definition of self. Going to effort to show a lack of respect will result in people rewarding that in kind.
Nickleback sells a lot of music and, by accounts, does a pretty good concert. The option in the preferences[1] was stupid, and having it on by default was asking for trouble.
1) most folks don't look at the preferences on iOS apps unless there is a problem
"Resistance: Developing a thick skin. A better way of describing it is learning how to filter feedback in a way that helps you grow, but discards trolling and lashing out. Usually this involves only paying attention to criticism when it comes from somebody you know and trust. If a celebrity comes off like a jerk, this is often what’s happening."
I've always been taught that the first option of developing a thick skin and filtering out trolls would be the best way to deal with trolls and such but never heard of the 2nd and 3rd way described in the article.
The 2nd option of split personalities sounds interesting to me as this allows a channel to release vent. Will have to try it out.
Or perhaps their experience with the dishonest suits (redundant, I know) who whine about professionalism matches my own. "Professional" and "pathological liar" have been synonyms for me since my first job.
In my experience, "unprofessional" is synonimous with "honest", but "professional" has several different meanings, "pathological liar" is just one of them.
Isn't "unprofessional", perhaps put under other names, an old mainstay in west-coast tech?
The standard HN attitude towards, say, wearing suits (or even just 'business casual') would be considered "unprofessional" in many circles. This mostly came to a head during that "Zuckerburg/bankers/hoodie" circus from last year. If somebody honestly told me that they believe in casually dressing for work, I wouldn't consider them to be tactless or lack a filter.
Actively hating a band/musician is faintly embarrassing in anyone old enough to vote. I mean, when you're 15 everything is either the shining heart of the universe or the worst thing ever, sure, but there comes a time when you have to realize that Justin Bieber is completely harmless and anyway nobody is forcing you to listen.
I grew up in the Abba years. I loath Abba's brand of (imho, of course) bubblicious pseudo-music. "Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen. Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah."
Nauseating.
But there's no denying they were very popular. Particularly, it seems, the adults around me who wanted to appear hip and happening. Abba were clean, and nice. White. Blonde. No swearing, no harsh guitar riffs, no screaming feedback, no weird waily Moog solos.
And you can tell me I didn't have to listen to them, but you'd be wrong. Everywhere I went, every party, every shopping mall,... anywhere a radio played, there was Abba. There was no escape.
Do remember that the bliss and privacy of a Sony Walkman was a thing yet to be invented. It was, I admit, the 1970's, and there's no known cure. So no way to remove yourself by virtual means when your space got invaded by "You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life; See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen," except by actually running far, far away. Even then chances were pretty good that all you'd achieve would be "Hasta mañana 'til we meet again, Don't know where, don't know when". No, there really was no escape.
The worst was getting stuck in a car with some people I was staying with (as an exchange student) for several months, getting taken to on some rare treat expedition. Need I say they were huge Abba fans. The sheer torture of sitting in a metal box, hour after hour, locked in with, "Do you hear the drums, Fernando?" They'd even sing along! Now, I've been stuck on long car journeys with other people whose musical taste I fail to share. I've endured Slim Whitman, Diana Ross and the Supremes and even Tom Jones (second incarnation), and though I never did get persuaded round to their view, I nevertheless came away from each of those trips a richer person. I'd learn to appreciate something, no matter how small, in the music I didn't really like much. Once I was taken, at, I assume, considerable expense, to a live concert of Harry Belafonte. I'd never heard of him. The ticket was wasted on me, but my generous and gracious host clearly thought that Harry's brand of music and entertainment was the best thing since Astroturf. And though, aged 16, I lacked the context, the cultural background to truly love the music, I came away forced to confess that I had actually quite enjoyed it. Not something I'd run out to do again, necessarily, but as a one-time thing, I had a good time. "Day-O. Day-ay-ay-O. Daylight come and me wanna go home."
But Abba, I fear, no matter how harmless, no matter how sweet and innocuous just made me want to bite the heads off kittens.
Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - knowing my fate is to be with you
Time is the great healer. All things pass, and so did the 70's. Abba, along with covers of their songs too numerous to mention by artists too talentless to remember, endured astonishingly longer than deserved. It must have been well into the era of Ian Drury and Sid Vicious before Abba finally - blessedly - began to fade from the public mind.
Just when I though it was safe to once again listen to music in random public places, some idiot decided to cash in on the nostalgia of an older generation. Yes, they made an Abba musical. Dear gods. How do I escape this madness. This sickness. My life has been subjected to an on-going cruel and unusual punishment from which, it seems, I am unable to flee. What devil's work is this, this Abba Life?
Finally I can return to the present. We'd survived the all too enduring Madness, some of us by chewing limbs off to escape. Thankfully by the time of the Return of the Madness we had some better options. We stuck earbuds in our ears and cranked the volume on our iPods to deafness inducing levels, drowning out "Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars they're leaving" with the symphonic grandeur of Iron Maiden. Oh yes, at least we had an Abba block plugin.
At last Abba fades. Some of us who passed through the Uncanny Valley live on in fear and terror that the Vikings may yet raid again. After all, how many time did Tom Jones managed to get himself resuscitated?
Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I've missed you
No. Sometimes they really are forcing you to listen.
Upvoted for sympathy. You just defined a new meaning of Stockholm Syndrome:
Post-traumatic stress disorder caused by being forced to listen to Swedish pop music for a prolonged period of time. Symptoms include being able to recite silly, meaningless lyrics even decades after exposure.
Just to reassure you, I really have nothing against the Swedes or Swedish music. I listen to lots and lots of Swedish musicians. Just so long as it's Metal.
I have done things like this, like adding "get your war on" to the svn repo navigator page, http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/ I thought it was hilarious, they paid some dude to "work the weekend" to figure out how to remove it. In retrospect, I should have DONE EXACTLY WHAT I DID, but also add a button to hide the artwork. We need to be human and express ourselves. Nothing of interest happens by consensus.
The nickelback feature should have popped up a dialog, the problem would have solved itself. I see you are playing nickelback 0_o ...
I think there's a difference between being whimsical, and being a d-bag, or disingenuous. I don't find the ban feature bad it's obviously meant as an in joke. However, I don't think the realization that someone will always be offended by something you do lets you off the hook from being an honest, authentic, reasonable person.
There are many pundits who read an article like this and think "yeah, I resonate with this. All of my snark filled, douche-baggy, disingenuous blog posts are equivalent to a Nickelback setting, and so I don't need to worry or adjust my behavior. I'm OK, it's my detractors and haters that are the issue."
I think being professional boils down to being honest and fair.
At first i was kinda pissed off, because to me, wearing a suit has no bearing on whether i can do a coders job or not. But afterwards i came to the realisation that if a company judges my suitability on whether or not i'm wearing a suit, its not a place i want to work in.
Dont be professional, be authentic. - 37Signals