There's a lot of advice floating around on the internet from people who have had journeys and want to share their learnings. It's one of the main reasons I love the internet... tech communities and (sometimes) social media make a great platform for sharing such learnings. But, whenever I come across some "advice" - there always seems to be someone who has either been offended or swears that this advice is wrong.

Advice is Not Black and White

This goes hand in hand with number 2, but I wanted to call it out specifically. Usually when I come across something in my developer journey that makes me cringe, I'll throw it out in the Twitter-verse as advice or a hey, don't do this. Does that mean you should NEVER do this? Nope! Everything has a place and time where it shines, but consider why this advice has come up, and consider it during your implementation and see if you can improve the pain points.

Situational Advice

I once cringed whenever I came across an iOS team that didn't use storyboards. After all, they DO make things much easier, development time much faster, I just couldn't fathom why anyone wouldn't want that! Truth be told, it worked very well for every small team I've been on. Once I joined a large team - it clicked. With all the merge conflicts storyboards would cause, it would eat up a LOT of time to sort it all out. Even with multiple storyboards, it's just not feasible and would end in a very messy solution. Was I rude whenever I came across someone with a differing opinion? No - but I listened to why they had differing opinions. Which leads me to...

Have Empathy

This goes for both sides, the advice giver and the advice receiver. In my above example, you should be generally interested in why someone has a differing opinion. Maybe it's a catching point that you haven't reached yet, or maybe their situation is a bit different. But, it's still good insight for both present and future decisions.

As for empathy for the advice giver - it's generally very scary putting yourself out there. I do it because I enjoy helping others steer clear of mistakes that I've made, and help people succeed in their jobs. But every now and then someone will quote my tweet and shame me for being too "black and white". Sure, it can come off that way in 140 characters, but anyone who follows my blogs here or my tweets should know that's never my intention. A conversation would have been a more constructive use of everyone's time.

Empathy goes a long way.