[Dildo Shwaggins]

I was debating whether or not to post this because I don't want to cause any issues, but when I was staff, people told me they valued my honesty so here we go.



Impact and intent are equally important.  I'm going to provide a high level reason why I believe this, and then give a personal example that mirrors the situation that happened earlier this week.

You can say something with completely innocent/good intent, and it can be interpreted differently than intended because each of us are the sum of our experiences, and different past experiences can shape how we react. This tends to happen more often through text communication because humans, by nature, gain a lot of information from tone, body language, facial expressions, etc. that are not present over discord text. We tend to automatically assume someones intent based upon our past history, and this can lead to situations like what happened with discord recent, where clear miscommunication, assumptions, and escalation turned what should have been a "Oh, I didn't mean it like that, here's what I was trying to convey" into multiple threads, damaged relationships, etc.


In the last year, one of my female friends reached out to me because her performance review (which is directly tied to salary increases) didn't go as well as she had hoped despite being one of the better programmers on her team. She got a salary increase, but not as much as she wanted, and wanted to know what I thought.  After some additional information, I told her she needs to be more aggressive about highlighting her accomplishments, such as finishing work ahead of schedule, helping other members of the team, and that she is clearly a critical member of her team.

She misinterpreted this as me telling her that she needed to stand up for herself because she was meek because she was a woman. For context, at no point did I bring up the fact that she was female when I gave her advice. Later, when we discussed, she revealed that men in the past had treated her like a child when it came to giving advice about being more vocal, advocating for herself, etc, so because of her past experiences, she misinterpreted my meaning.

The intent for me was that I'm an aggressive type A personality, like arguing, and reading about the theory behind arguing, so I was providing advice for what I knew worked for me in the past with salary negotiations. Additionally, I would give the same advice for someone in her situation regardless of race, gender, age, creed, etc.  My intent had nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman, but since I didn't know her experiences, my meaning was misinterpreted.  Ultimately, after some discussion, we both recognized that we both had to concede something: I should have clarified what I said and stated I would have given the same advice to any other person in her situation. She conceded that while it was only natural, it was unfair for her to immediately try to force my response into a box containing her prior experiences and judge my character based upon that.



So two lessons should be taken away: people can interpret what you say differently than intended, and someone's intent is not always the same as what you've experienced in the past. Good communication and healthy discussion are the most important thing you can do.

This is the best way I’ve seen even what my own thoughts are trying to convey here, thank you for this