Alright, let’s talk about this ‘harry diamond criticism’ thing. It really gets me thinking about a phase I went through a while back.
I remember working on this project, felt like ages ago now. We were trying to get this new system up and running. Everything seemed fine from my end, put in a lot of hours, weekends too. Then came the review meeting. Ugh.
There was this one senior guy, not gonna name names, but man, he had a way of critiquing things that just cut deep. Sharp, maybe precise like a diamond, but mostly just hard and cold. Didn’t feel constructive, just felt like getting hammered.
The Grind
So, he starts pointing out flaws. Okay, fair enough, nothing’s perfect first try. But it wasn’t like, “Hey, maybe tweak this,” or “Have you considered that?”. It was more like, “This whole approach is fundamentally wrong,” “Why did you even do it this way?”, “This isn’t going to work, obviously.” Just relentless.
Honestly, it knocked the wind out of me. And the rest of the team too, you could see it. We’d spent weeks building this thing, based on the specs we were given! Felt like we were set up to fail.
- We tried explaining our reasoning.
- We showed how it met the initial requirements.
- We asked for specific examples of how it was wrong, not just that it was wrong.
Didn’t matter much. The feedback stayed harsh, cutting. Like trying to argue with a rock, a very expensive, sharp rock maybe. A real ‘harry diamond’ situation, if you catch my drift. All flash, all hard edges.
Moving Past It
For a while, I tried to just take it. You know, maybe there’s truth in there somewhere, buried under the rough delivery. I spent extra time trying to preempt the criticism, second-guessing every decision. It was exhausting.
It really killed the motivation, the creativity. You stop wanting to try new things, because you’re just waiting for the hammer to fall. It wasn’t about making things better anymore, it was just about avoiding the sharp edges of the feedback.
Eventually, I realized this wasn’t sustainable. This kind of criticism, the ‘harry diamond’ style, it doesn’t build anything. It just chips away at people. So, I started focusing on my own part, doing good work as I saw it, documenting my decisions clearly.
Didn’t magically fix the situation, of course. But it helped me cope. I learned to separate the harshness from any potential nugget of truth. Most times, there wasn’t much truth, just harshness for its own sake.
Ended up moving to a different team later. Best decision I made. Sometimes you just gotta recognize a bad environment and get out. Dealing with that kind of constant, cutting criticism isn’t about being strong, it’s just… draining. Not worth it in the long run.
