(2018-11-24) Wilson Afraid Of Change

Greg Wilson: Afraid of Change. A few months ago, I had the misfortune to take part in an awful one-day workshop based on an equally awful book called Radical Candor.

it is a blog post padded to book length telling readers that the secret to success is to always tell people whatever you think is true. Conveniently (if you’re in a position of power), it pretends that everyone is able to do this without fear of consequences.

What crystallized my dislike was the way the workshop’s trainer danced around when asked if James Damore’s infamous memo counted as “radical candor”. Damore’s memo passed all of the tests of “radical candor” the trainer had just outlined, but since it would have been awkward for him to say “yes”, he talked around the question for a couple of minutes without actually answering it.

What ties this all together, I think, is a deep-seated fear of change: not the superficial kind, like virtual reality or speech recognition, but meaningful changes in who we are, how we work, and the kind of society we construct.

Footnote: the workshop was held at a DataCamp all-hands meeting, several months after the company’s CEO sexually assaulted one of the staff but before that had become public knowledge.