If you can learn to take criticism, it will make you a better person. If you can learn to improve yourself from criticism, there is no end to how amazing you will become.
If you can't learn, you will be a miserable husk of a person who is doomed to despair at how the world treats you.
Because it's natural for humans to point out flaws in things, and nothing you say or do will stop it.
Dishing out criticism in a constructive way is also something that has to be learned. Too often, criticism is just an attack on the person or a conveniently misrepresented form of their opinion. And then even well-meant criticism can often be perceived as coming from an ulterior motive.
I think people's motivations are often so diverse it becomes unclear what the purpose of a given discussion actually is, even here on HN. Is it to improve an idea or to validate it? To arrive at a consensus or to sway popular opinion? To receive affirmation? Is it to engage in intellectual stimulation? To enjoy the presence of like-minded souls? To make yourself look good at the expense of others? A typical discussion has all these, and then some more.
It's a good skill to have, but realize that your skills should help you, and Joe's skills should help Joe. Asking other people to develop skills that help you is foolhardy at best.
Back to criticism, though... All criticism is constructive, so long as it's based on reality. Simply knowing that your software makes someone irate is useful knowledge. Knowing how it makes them irate is better, and knowing a solution to that will make them less irate is better yet.
> All criticism is constructive, so long as it's based on reality.
To a point, because the manner in which it is delivered also matters a great deal. It's the difference between tearing a person down and motivating them to improve (or to justify their point further as the case may be). Consider the following extreme scenarios:
In case A an argument is based on decidedly wrong reasoning or false data, but it's delivered in an accessible and friendly way that encourages further discussion.
Case B is a statement that is factually 100% correct and verifiable but it's brought across in a manner designed to be as abrasive as possible and to show off the superiority of the participant.
Considering those two extremes, I believe argument A is more constructive to the overall process because it enabled a productive discussion to continue (if only to show why the argument is mistaken). In contrast, B, not so much. Of course, in reality it gets way more complex than this. Not only is there a spectrum between factual correctness and incorrectness, between being approachable and being obnoxious. The crux is often the "based on reality" part, because we also tend to disagree about the pertinence of certain facts to a given discussion. But stating a factually true observation in a context where this observation is not relevant to the issue is often extremely disruptive.
To employ an extreme example: person 1 says "X + Y equals 5" to which person 2 counters "but X is a negative number". Statement 2, while it may well be based on reality, is not constructive criticism - it's misleading and distracting, and it makes person 1 look bad for no reason. In fact, I just had such an interaction on HN a few hours ago. So I believe intentions (and the perceptions thereof) make all the difference when it comes to an exchange being constructive.
I'm not arguing 'more constructive'. I'm arguing that it has value, no matter the delivery method.
You cannot change people. Trying to do so is wasting your time. Instead, learn to accept what information you can glean from them and move on. When you get a good report, be appreciative. When you get a bad one, use what you can and ignore the invective.
For your extreme example, the constructive information you can get from that is that something about the problem is confusing people. They wouldn't be saying things that don't matter... They think it DOES matter!
I would like to add the point that even if the person is coming across as direct and undiplomatic, you should never take it personally. All it means the person has lost his/her calm but the channel of communication remains open and more importantly, the other person still cares enough to get emotional over it.
If after a few of these episodes where you keep dropping crunch-time or shit on your team and they just take it - be warned, the side effects will most likely start showing up in the quality of their work or you might be facing a situation where your people are just planning to get their bonuses and leave.
So don't ask for more constructive criticism. The fact that there is feedback coming through bodes well. In the real world where you sell stuff, your customers will just walk away instead of giving you feed back. The people who work for you or are your business partners, yeah, they can do that as well.
Learn to take criticism.
If you can learn to take criticism, it will make you a better person. If you can learn to improve yourself from criticism, there is no end to how amazing you will become.
If you can't learn, you will be a miserable husk of a person who is doomed to despair at how the world treats you.
Because it's natural for humans to point out flaws in things, and nothing you say or do will stop it.