Comment by jmartrican
6 years ago
Either they tried sshd or they didnt. If they did try it, then they have a good response ready to go no matter how you ask. The issue here is if they did not try it. The longer they have worked on it, the more gently I would make the suggestion towards sshd. If they have worked on it for their whole life, I wouldn't provide any help unless asked to and only limited to what they have asked me to do. If they have worked on it for 10 seconds, it would seem to be ok to quickly suggest sshd. For everything in between just be gentle. Maybe consider pondering and prodding as to what they have tried and maybe do not suggest sshd but some sort of encrypted TCP based protocol maybe one that is readily available.... maybe they'll discover it on their own.
I've gone to this strategy of just not saying anything to avoid the problem, but I know I have benefitted immensely when others have dropped a pearl of wisdom straight from their fresh perspective so it saddens me.
I think the key thing is to establish a supportive and collaborative environment where people feel safe enough to take a suggestion, knowing that their good faith effort over the last several months is valued as a part of the process that led to the mature and stable strategy of using sshd. If it was worth it to spend 3 months plus 10 seconds across two developers to find the best solution, and the best solution was found, declare victory and celebrate that good outcome. A lot of times, you won't get the good outcome no matter how you try.
If you don't have that, you're going to be spending more and more time creating elaborate ways to suggest things by inception, and that's not good for anyone.
PS like the author, I also use the word just to connote "solely or simply" rather than "merely or trivially". I have learned others feel it has some negative connotations, so I have restrained my usage of it.
> I know I have benefitted immensely when others have dropped a pearl of wisdom straight from their fresh perspective
Others who had worked with you extensively enough to have useful suggestions? Or random strangers off the street? I'm guessing it's the former, since you say:
> I think the key thing is to establish a supportive and collaborative environment where people feel safe enough to take a suggestion
But if all this is the case, the author of this article agonizing over what to say and how to say it makes no sense. If he has already worked with these people long enough to have established a "supportive and collaborative environment", then he already knows how to make a suggestion to them that (a) might actually be of value, and (b) will be taken in the spirit it's given. But then why is he writing an article asking for suggestions on how to do this?
In other words, while I agree with you that in the specific situation you describe, making suggestions from a fresh perspective can be helpful, the situation you describe can't be the situation the article is describing.
The author appears, to me, to be looking for a solution to a symptom of a problem rather than at the problem itself.
The original question posed is basically innocuous, and is only made a problem by the environment.
If one gets to the point of wondering how to offer help without setting off a spiral of despair and insecurity, there are deeper issues that need to be rooted out. I also claim, anecdotally, to have seen this sort of improvement happen and think it is generally a thing that is possible to do, and isn't some core part of the human condition (at least to the degree described in the article).
This is a really important aspect. It's not necessarily the critique by itself.
It's about one being confronted with the possibility that some other unforseen solution could have saved days, weeks, or months of work (or even perhaps longer!) and the foolishness or incompetence that one might feel at not having realized this.
If there is a meaningful chance the alternative solution would have been better, and a significant amount of effort invested into the harder approach, it can be a very tough pill to swallow. The ego might reflexively jump in to defend the path that was taken. It may be difficult to have a productive conversation.
But you're missing half of the value of the interaction.
Generally when I'm asking this question, it's not because I have any expectation that they should have used sshd, it's because I want to understand the design tradeoffs that led to building X alternative. It's a learning exercise for me.
If I'm chatting to the Nobel Prize winner in not using sshd, I want to learn something from them, but if I'm not careful I come across as sounding like I disagree with them (I personally tend towards the 'three sentences of pre-amble' approach).