Don't Get Grinfucked By Your Users

Grinfucked is an unnecessary and combative neologism. Users are not trying to deceive anyone except to avoid looking stupid when navigating the latest UI tricks that often only make sense to tech insiders. Also, this has been happening for decades.

Is it common in the US to be dishonestly nice to other people? Eg being positive and friendly toward them while waiting to stab them in the back.<p>This theme is something I've picked up on earlier. Another example: some Americans mentioned the lack of smiles from waiters in Europe as problematic, thinking it was rude.<p>Personally, I prefer living in a culture where people are honest assholes and only smile at you if they actually like you.

random idea: tell the testers that they are testing a <i>competitors</i> product, so they don't have the feeling that their criticism is insulting to you

Hacker News comment threads are notorious for this. A number of times I have been the brutally honest one when I shouldn't have to be. People are very unwilling to criticize the development efforts of others. That's OK to an extent, but it's frustratingly unhelpful when you are trying to solicit genuine feedback on something you plan to devote your life (or part of your life) to.<p>Sometimes the worst people to get feedback from on an app is other developers. They focus on the wrong things and overlook important stuff. They provide a type of useful feedback, but their suggestions and your instinct can easily run contrary to what a user expects and needs.

He could have learned this years ago if he'd looked at existing knowledge arond user testing. Who knew, users tend not to give direct negative feedback?

When a user needs to pay or is paying for your product, in general, there is no grinfucking.

I've found that many people that tell you what you want to hear change their tune once their own money/work/happiness is involved.<p>Make compensation dependent on a products success and your employees will start speaking a bit more clearer.<p>Instead of relying on a review process to rate employees, a company might let people choose who they work with and on what projects.<p>If a significant portion of one's income can actually be influenced by an employee's choices, they will tend to act on what they know rather than tell you what you what to hear.<p>In other words, people should have a stake or actual stock in their projects, not stock in the whole company.<p>And if its actual stock that can be traded within the company, the stock price will tell you whether the project is going to succeed.

Yeah yeah but how do you avoid getting grinfucked by yourself? That's what I want to know.

+1 for alerting me to the term "grinfucking" with references. Excellent post!