
How to Work with Stupid People - dan_sim
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/
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mixmax
Original article: [http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-
peo...](http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/)

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rs
And the HN submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299764>

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mootothemax
I don't know about other people, but throughout my career I've routinely
assumed that I'm the stupid one, and it hasn't done me any harm so far... I
hope ;)

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mullr
I usually assume the same thing and it usually works. But it hurt me once,
pretty badly. I spent about a month (!) trying to wrangle good color
performance out of a particular scanner for an imaging system. The unit was
pre-chosen, I was to make it work. I was assuming the whole time that I was
doing something wrong, or that I didn't know something. The real answer was
that the scanner manufacturer had fired all of its color scientists and the
scanner it question had hardware flaws that were effectively non-correctable.

In this case, it would have been far better to be more aggressive. I could
have started screaming as soon as things started to look strange and thus
saved myself several weeks. But usually the heuristic is a good one.

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astine
I find that if I complain and bring up my issues with something right away(or,
right after checking all the low-hanging troubleshooting fruit,) I usually get
the source of the problem quicker. If I'm at fault, I'll find the real problem
quicker, and if others are at fault, I won't spend a month wondering what I
did wrong.

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joelhaus
A solid framework for understanding and addressing disagreements, but there
isn't enough emphasis on the time constraints imposed by reality. I often find
that you must be willing to let a disagreement stand, even though, with enough
time, it could be worked out.

Advice on two derivatives of this problem would be even more helpful:

1) How can you tell when you have sufficiently refined your communication with
the other party?

2) How to reasonably judge the point at which the costs of continuing the
discussion out-weight the benefits.

This is usually situation specific, but please share if you have any rules
that can be applied.

