It’s effortless to compare one’s self to others. I struggled with it in the past and continuously had to remind myself that my day/life cannot measure up to someone else’s day or life.
During one of the online courses I have taken, there was a discussion about the social comparison theory.
The theory states that we determine our own social and personal worth based on how we stack up against others we perceive as somehow faring better or worse. It can be useful if we compare ourselves to others as a way of fostering self-improvement and motivation if we have a positive image of the self. However, because we are continually evaluating ourselves and others, these evaluations can also promote judgmental, biased, competitive, or superior attitudes.
In fact, some researches have shown that people who often compare themselves to others report negative feelings of deep dissatisfaction, envy, guilt, and remorse, which means that by comparing yourself with others you can ruin your self-esteem!
And comparing yourself with other influencers, for example, on Twitter or Instagram might make you believe that they are leading perfect lives. In reality, people rarely share their hard days on social media.
I hope this mini-post can ignite a discussion in the comments, as I would love to hear your thoughts on self-comparison.
Have you compared yourself to the people you follow on social media? Do you think they have a better life than you? Why?
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Top comments (10)
Why would someone's ideas have authority over yours? Both your and their ideas should be treated equal. Your code is your creativity, your personality. The best approach to treating everyone equally is to accept people's personalities and code as they are. There are of course important things like code readability and maintainability, as well as important personal qualities like professionalism, but that's it, the rest is your personal quirks that should be accepted by others. Think of your friends, you accept them the way they are, and if you are your own friend, you will accept yourself as you are, with your own quirks and good weirdness. Everyone is different in their own weirdness and it makes them better or worse suited for every specific situation, but you are as important and valued as your manager, superior, coworker, etc. In other words, love and accept yourself as you do to your friends and your family, and embrace what makes you different from others.
Imagine that you were the CEO of some company. There is a problem and your best senior and an intern come to 2 different solutions. You hear them out both... Fine.
Now imagine you had to do it 50 times a day, this would take much of your time and it would be ineffective because the senior would probably have a better solution 99% of the time.
The senior has authority over the intern. It's nothing personal, it's just that those years and years of experience make a difference. And in the finite amount of time we have, we can't treat everyone the same.
If we did, when you go to the doctor, you would listen to janitor's advice as well.
I would listen to janitor's advice if it was his area of expertise. This is a different case because doctors and janitors have different area of expertise, whereas we're talking about the same area between the coworkers.
What you said about the CEO is correct. Every single company is structured hierarchically, where the authority of action usually belongs to someone above in the chain. And developers on the bottom are treated almost like code monkeys who just code but don't think or design. This is the worst kind of system and results in terrible and unmaintainable code that would eventually lead to the company's demise. That's why we have Agile, a system where management and programming are well separated from each other, where management is responsible for requirements, and developers are fully responsible for design and implementation. Any hierarchy among the developers should not exist in practice, and the ideas should be accepted as long as code is readable and maintainable. Discussions, disagreements and suggestions should be done in a friendly manner, without the use of hierarchy power. When you point out someone's flaw in the code, or give a suggestion, it should be a learning experience, where everyone (no matter how senior) is learning from everyone, as opposed to a strict hierarchy rule that often succumbs to personal preference over reason or maintainability.
Pointing out flaws should always be incouraged. Discussions, disagreements and suggestions aswell.
I don't agree about having code monkeys to do no-brain work. There are certainly companies that have that, but I'm against it.
I'd like mention that for more inexperienced people it would be a good practice to first speak with seniors and others, since they probably understand the context of the situation better, and basically anyone else that could shine new information.
I just wanted to point out that there is authority that is derived from expertize, since it wasn't that clear in your opening comment.
That's not controversial, but authority of "senior VS junior" often does not correspond to "expert VS non-expert". Seniors are often seniors because they just got stuck with the same company for a long time, or because, even worse, they wrote code that nobody except for them can maintain. That's why the development process should never be structured hierarchically, as it will kill fresh ideas and make bright developers suffer. There is, of course, a great learning opportunity if less experienced people choose to learn from more experienced, but don't forget, the best mentors are open-minded and are also willing to learn from fresh ideas. Learning should always be a 2-way process.
For me the senior/junior & expert/non-expert correspondence was clear, so thank you for pointing out that it may not be clear to other people.
With the rest I guess I can only agree
I struggle with relaxing on weekends due to this sort of comparison. I feel like I am wasting my time if I am not doing something productive.
But, if I focus solely on those around me, such as my colleagues, they don't tend to work on things over the weekend and yet they are still great.
That helps me relax a bit. If they don't need to, then I don't need to. That is a helpful comparison.
I try to focus on comparing my current self to where I want to get to. Normally that takes the form of admiring my colleagues' skills. Just makes think, "if I can be like this in 5 years, I'll be well happy".
I'll never be the best. I can accept that. But, I definitely have the room to grow and get somewhere towards the top.
Maybe, if we all had this sort of mindset of just doing what we can. We will generally be happier.
It's inevitable to do so, unfortunately. I compare myself to others (especially via viewing their lives on social media), which I find to be unhealthy. it's true what you wrote, that people rarely (or never) post about / show their hard days on social media. I think it's OK to compare yourself with others but don't overdo it...
Hi, yes! Being a mentor to others in a different industry I’ve discovered self comparison to be a downer. But if anything it can be used to motivate oneself in therapy too... if I look at the traits and qualities of certain individuals I admire and strive to adopt them, I too can be like them.
I definitely don’t think I’ll ever be like anyone with a CS degree and it’s pointless comparing... plus I don’t have the youth those nerds lol
The history has proven that the standard education process is not the best knowledge one can obtain.
See the bio of Bill Gates and Albert Einstein as examples.
I do not know anything about you, Graciano, but I am sure your way of thinking has some advantages over mine way of thinking (I give myself as an example of a person who passed through the standard education process).
Cheers and be happy about this!