Does criticism always need to be constructive?

From “It Depends,” an advice column about design and tech

Tom writes:

Ken Kocienda (the writer of Creative Selection) and Linda Dong (previously a designer at Apple, now at Lyft) had a public discussion on Twitter last week about criticism. He said it doesn’t always need to be constructive:

“Steve Jobs one told me straight to my face that my work was “dog shit.” He wasn’t attacking me. He was saying my work wasn’t good enough yet. And it wasn’t. Criticism doesn’t need to be constructive to be useful in the long run.”

Linda did not agree:

“I’m sorry NO. One of the worst parts of my time at Apple was the toxic culture this line of thinking bred. Swearing at and insulting people’s work is not okay and is never helpful. Criticism for criticism’s sake is a power move.”

… and this sparked a bit of a rant and discussion.

I was wondering, what can you say about constructive/deconstructive feedback?

Great question. Let’s start with an extreme and work our way back from there. Does a marathon runner need to run forwards? Technically, no. If you chose to, you could run all 26.2 miles of a marathon backwards. You probably wouldn’t run as quickly. You probably wouldn’t win any records. But I guess there’s nothing preventing you from doing it, technically speaking.

In Steve Jobs, we happen to have a guy who successfully ran marathons backwards. But just as surely as you can run better if you’re pointing forwards, you will ship better products if you learn how to give better feedback. And now we have creative directors around the planet running their own marathons backwards, since Steve did. I wish they’d stop.

The myth of brutal honesty

The argument for cruel feedback goes like this: “Give it to me straight. I’d rather you say something directly than make me have to guess.” But no one’s talking about shying away from feedback or being vague. The question before us is if brutal feedback helps the design process. It does not.

Case study

I was leading the Windows Phone Apps team in 2012, and we got a request from China. They requested that incoming calls have a “respond with text” feature. By now the feature is widespread (China sent the same multi-hundred feature requests to all phone makers) but at the time we were thinking about how to design it from scratch. Here’s where we landed:

I don’t remember all the twists and turns of the design. I forget what the designer came up with first, I forget what my exact feedback was, I forget if I agreed with the tradeoffs that led to this screen or not. But imagine you were TD, the fantastic designer that was assigned to this screen. Which would you rather hear me say if I had some concerns with your design?

1. Steve Jobs approach: “This is dog shit.”
2. Constructive approach: “Awesome, thanks. I have some questions about how you arrived here. a) “Text reply” is the biggest and most easy-to-reach button, can you tell me more about that decision? b) I see we’re not bottom-aligning the buttons, meaning there’s a big gap there. Is there something we can do about that, or is it a technical limitation? c) Can you show me some explorations around showing the common text replies on this screen? Curious to know if there’s any way to make that work, or if it definitely needs to launch a second screen or modal dialog.

I know that second option looks like I’m showing off and trying to prove a point. Sadly, this is literally the difference in quality that I see working in tech. Some people genuinely believe that #1 is an appropriate start to a critique. And #2 is a faithful reconstruction of how I try to give feedback. It should be specific, understanding, and leave space for the designer to explain.

“This is dog shit” fails on all fronts. Even if it’s followed up with very specific feedback, it’s already changed the entire dynamic of the discussion from “how can we best juggle these tradeoffs” to one of fear and failure.

Moving beyond “don’t be a dick”

I asked my questions to TD and he had answers for each. Let’s say they were:

a) “I needed a single design that would work even if ‘text reply’ wasn’t an option. Meaning always putting ‘answer’ on the left and ‘ignore’ on the right, which left the next row for ‘text reply.’ If I didn’t do it this way, I’d need two completely different designs whether or not the feature was supported, meaning it would affect muscle memory.”

b) “Yeah, that’s a technical limitation. I’ve been working with them to bottom-align it, but it’s like a webpage. We can position things really easily to the top edge, but predicting exactly where the bottom edge is, with hundreds of different screen sizes and an outdated tech underpinning makes this really hard. It will be bottom aligned on the Nokia phones, though.”

c) “We did explore having the replies on the screen itself but it was really cluttered. What we’re doing instead is a half-sheet control to emulate sort of how Apple does their popovers. And we’re only going to show 3 options there, but it’ll be customisable to more in Settings.”

We talked it through for a few minutes, me poking at different assumptions and considerations, him readily providing answers. He had done his homework. But here’s the thing. I still didn’t like the screen, aesthetically-speaking. But TD had a much better understanding of the issue and had worked through each of the ideas doggedly. So here’s what I heard myself saying, to much giggling in the office.

“It’s my job to advocate for your designs even if I disagree with them.”

I have an earnest and blunt way of talking, and it often leads to awkward moments like this. My team was giggling because my comment sounds a lot like “This is crap, but fine.” (They posted it on Twitter as an “overheard in the office” tweet) It wasn’t my intention to say it that way, so I could have picked my words much better. I apologised to TD but he just chuckled.

But clumsy and unhelpful delivery aside, I did mean what I said. As a lead to a skilled designer, it’s not my job to micromanage design tradeoffs and use people as a vessel for my creative output. It is my job to be a sounding board, make sure the design has been given appropriate care and consideration, and then get out of the damn way. It is my job to advocate and support my designers. Not make them ship the exact thing I would have shipped.

You can’t stop at “don’t be mean.” You have to fully lean into the idea that you’re not being asked to design features anymore. As a lead, you’re designing the culture and processes that let other people design the features. You’re there to use your experience as guardrails. You’re not driving the car. Sorry.

The sad irony of that Twitter firestorm

So the original post talked about Steve Jobs calling work “dog shit.” And Linda wrote back saying that she disagreed. It turns out there’s a lot more going on in the thread, and it’s a good example of how feedback can be shared well.

The thread continues like so:

Kim Scott: “Here’s my perspective FWIW. If Ken didn’t mind being told that & Steve knew that, then it was Radical Candor. Radical Candor gets measured at the listener’s ear not the speaker’s mouth. If Steve spoke to me like that it would be obnoxious aggression. I’d hate it, too. @kocienda”

Ken Ocienda: “My reaction to Steve’s words was that I needed to make my work better. I didn’t consider it an insult. In my article, I wrote about the mutual feeling of trust I felt in that demo room. Take that trust away, and friendlier-sounding words could be much more hurtful.”

Linda Dong: “Here’s a data point. I was also in a room with Steve when he told everyone a product I had worked on was one of our biggest fuck ups. I felt attacked, disheartened, insulted. You can never assume mutual trust.”

Ken Ocienda: “I’m genuinely sorry. I remember being in meetings with you and your group, and I always considered it a privilege to see what you and your colleagues thought future products could be like.”

Linda Dong: “Thanks Ken, I appreciate it.”

Ken Ocienda: “Thank you Linda. When someone like you challenges me about something I’ve done or said, I worry that I might be completely wrong. Twitter can be a difficult place to figure that out.”

Wait, what happened? We can learn from this. Ken asserted something. Linda disagreed. Ken provided context. Linda provided context as well. Ken hears Linda’s perspective and does not minimise it. Linda appreciates being heard. Ken says he appreciates the challenge and says maybe he can learn something. This is all really good stuff! This is why these folks have done great things in their careers. They’re running the marathon forwards.

Meanwhile, the other 90%+ of the feedback I saw was — irony alert — just as poor quality as calling someone’s work dog shit. So there were people so mad at Steve Jobs’ harshness that they were super harsh with Ken. This is not a small detail or an odd little coincidence. This is the problem. People are really good at being awful with one another when they think it’s justified.

Parting thoughts: context matters

One thing that gets lost in the mix is how important context is. You speak differently to your drinking buddy than to your boss. Different to your mom than a sibling. And something that’s lost in this story is how Steve Jobs and Ken Kocienda had a close and trusting working relationship. Here’s a quote from his op-ed article:

“But let’s be honest: Most of us swear. The key to making harsh words count is to have a trusting environment where everyone knows that comments are about your work and not about you.”

I still disagree with cruel feedback. I still think Jobs’ “dog shit” comment was unhelpful. But what’s more cruel? Steve Jobs being blunt with someone he knows very well as a shortcut to making their work better, or hundreds of anonymous people on the internet attacking Ken’s character based on an article they didn’t bother to read and a comment they disagreed with?

Steve Jobs could reasonably argue that he was harsh with the goal of improving his team’s work. You can think that’s bullshit, or an excuse, or justifying sociopathic behaviour. But people on the internet angrily tearing down other people’s designs, opinions, and products have no such excuse. They’re not running a marathon. They’re not improving a product. They’re just yelling at each other. Many of us are. There’s no justification for this behaviour, and nothing good comes of it.

I wish we’d stop.