Hi ,

Sharing things can be scary. We are scared that we might make a mistake or be criticized and judged for sharing our thoughts publicly.

We should not let this fear of judgment prevent us from sharing what we know. The benefits of sharing far outweigh the possibility of getting criticized.

Sooner or later, someone will give us negative feedback on something we shared, and we need to be ready to handle it.

It's important to remember that getting negative feedback on something we published won't end our careers or make our friends leave us. Sure, it might hurt a bit, but it's not the end of the world.

There are several kinds of feedback and different ways to handle them. 

Factual corrections.

We all make mistakes, and that's okay. We can misunderstand things, and that's also okay. We have to learn something new if we make a mistake and someone points it out to us.

Difference of opinion.

We are all entitled to our opinions and can't force them on each other. I enjoy hearing about your view on things that I post. The tone has always been friendly and in the spirit of sharing and learning. I have learned many new things from you.

Please continue to reply to these emails and give your views on things.

Unfortunately, some people don't respect that we can have different opinions about something.

I wrote a guest article on a blog about the importance of having empathy as a developer. I got the following comment from a reader from another site, where the article also was published:

"lol wut? i couldn’t disagree more…

if your company starts doing empathy-driven development, it’s time to leave - your software is about to deteriorate and your inbox is about to get super woke… good luck"

These comments help no one, so we should try and ignore them. It's impossible to know the motivation behind this comment. Is it meant for me as the author? Is this person scared that others might find this a good thing and want to "set them straight"? It does feel like I struck a nerve with this subject. 

Enjoy,

Markus Westergren