Adam Savage’s Tested
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2024
9:46 · 524K views · Jun 2, 2024
Adam Savage answers viewer questions on dealing with condescending colleagues, focusing on dismissive phrases such as 'why don't you just' and 'I would have'. He explains why such language undermines the person receiving it.
HN recommends it whenever 'why don't you just...' comes up as an example of arrogant, dismissive advice.
3 comments from Hacker News
Adam Savage has a most excellent rant about the outrageous arrogance of the phrase, "Why don't you just..." I highly recommend it: this video My best example of this is my father-in-law. He's an absolutely wonderful man, generous to a fault and all of that. Fancies himself a handyman. But I had to stop asking for his help with around-the-house projects out of sheer anger and frustration because every SINGLE time I made a decision about how to proceed with the job or pick which tool to use to cut something, he would stop and and ask, "Well, why don't you just do X instead?" It didn't seem to matter if I explained my reasoning, or if doing X meant redoing a hour of work just to get back to where we currently were. I even attempted to humor him by trying things his way whether or not they were going to work out. (They often didn't). Eventually it ended in me saying "no" way more often than "yes" and he would infer that I was refusing his help and he'd throw his hands up and walk away.
I really believe that you are approaching this in good faith, so I will do the same. I don't have time to really dig into this deeply with you so these brief justifications of my stance will have to suffice. I don't understand some of your tangents, and you will have to forgive me for not addressing the reddit or sports stuff. > Re: tech bro The tech bro thing comes across most apparently in the pro-VC slant of this site (inextricable, I know). There is a high proportion of believers in a fantasy meritocracy where current wealth concentration is justifiable due to the sheer genius of "founders". This is very much a tech-bro way of thinking. The way HN regularly reduces socio-political problems into a technological gap is another tech-bro "thing". When someone suggests that a country switch its currency to crypto to eliminate state corruption, or suggests that biometrics scanners be installed at ports of entry to eliminate slavery and humans rights abuses, that is a tech-bro opinion. It is different from a blue collar environment because the people on this website are extremely insulated from the social issues that come up on here. Nonetheless, they feel like they have an obvious solution to a version of the problem that they've concocted in their head based on a 2 second glance at a headline. It reminds me of this Adam Savage video that I think is great: this video > Re: obnoxiously male This is exemplified by the high confidence and combativeness in this and other similar comme
Possibly the article talked about in this relevant video from Adam Savage: this video I had noticed this too subconsciously, but could never put into words why it felt bad to receive (otherwise totally valid) suggestions in this form. It seems a common phrase in technical circles.