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I know what it's like to be motivated. I know what it's like to be driven by a desire to achieve. I have created what I, and others, think is a great product through nothing more than motivation, devotion, sweat and a lot of pain. I also know what it's like to feel my motivation and excitement drain away like so much dirty bath water. I know how easy it is for a single word or phrase to take a good swing at my motivation and knock it out for a while. Mostly I can take it negative comments and mentally convert them into constructive criticism, and mostly the harsh comments are nothing but a whisper at a football game. But sometimes it takes only one "this product is crap" or "I hate it, you suck as software developers" for me to leave my motivation behind. I spend a great deal of my time working on my software products, much more than any 'normal' person would or should, and I'm sure it's not healthy. I do it because I actually enjoy it. I really do love writing high quality software to the best of my abilities. So when someone says my products are "rubbish", "crap", or worse what do I do? If I'm feeling a little too sensitive then I walk away. I go watch TV, read some fiction or do something, anything, not related to using a computer. At that point I've lost all motivation and trying to do any work is pointless. If I don't feel overly sensitive then I try to understand why this person feels so strongly that they see the need to insult my team. Normally it's a trivial thing. Often it's something they could solve themselves with very little effort. The most important thing I try to keep in mind is that people only react this way when they are frustrated themselves, and what they want is solutions to their problem - they do not want an argument, well mostly they don't. Technical support takes the brunt of this. I know this because I've done technical support many times, I've seen others do it, and between us we own the T-shirt factory. It's a shame because the technical support teams fight two battles. They fight one with the customers because a customer rarely communicates to say all is well, and they fight another with the software developers because when things go wrong they have to communicate the bad news. My advice to people that use my products is simple: Please also tell me if it's rubbish, but try to be kind in the way that you tell me. Imagine that you are telling me face to face and imagine that I may listen to what you say, also imagine that I'm prepared to improve the tool to better meet your needs. Is it difficult to imagine that I may actually want to improve the product? All I want to do is create great products and all you want are great products to use. It seems to me that we should have a great partnership if we can work together. If one of us starts insulting the other then it's unlikely we'll be able to get along. |