The interesting thing for me reading this article was, when I got to the section where he discusses comments on his post, I couldn't help but think, "Damn, the internet would be so BORING if everyone was that nice all the time." What would be the fun of an internet where everyone is so positive and generous all the time?

Maybe I'm just addicted to intellectual sparring. Who knows.

I felt the same way.

I think I'd rather try to develop an intuitive feel for when to defect and when not to defect, so you can make these snap judgments on the fly and have them not work out too badly for you.

I also found his example pretty interesting. There have definitely been times that I have called out my boss, or my PM, or an executive in a meeting or e-mail thread. And in most places, that would be career suicide. But the thing is - the alternative, in most cases, is to let a wrong decision go through. Usually the meeting is where the decision gets made; if you wait until afterwards to bring up your concerns, then time has to be spent getting everyone back on the same page, which is more embarrassing and costs a lot more for the company. When your code affects a billion people and makes billions of dollars in revenue, every single person needs to be able to blow the whistle, regardless of hurt feelings, and say "This is dumb; let's not do it." I tell Nooglers I mentor that the most valuable thing they can do for the company is to challenge obviously-wrong product decisions and not let them go through.

I try to make it up by praising things I actually do like, honestly. But I've found it's a much better strategy to be prickly on some things and effusively praising on others than to be uniformly inoffensive.

Intellectual sparring doesn't necessitate being not nice.

True, but a sharp debate can be quite delicious.

This isn't a "but". A good debate is characterized by mutual respect. Otherwise, points go unadvanced beyond their initial assertion, because they aren't properly challenged. There is an important reason that the most commonly called-out fallacy is the argumentum ad hominem; its usage undermines the debate itself. It also happens to be the internet's favorite tactic, and it's a huge part of why the internet is not good at getting things done.

Honestly, the Internet and the world at large is missing out on many, many possibilities for "intellectual sparring" because they've made it extremely debate-hostile in the name of having fun and "can't you take a joke". People would rather cram things down by force or not at all, because if they open the floor to conversation, their ideas will be lost in the haze of personal accusation. I wasn't able to find a list, but there are a lot of women bloggers who have signed off for good because harassment created a cost in time and energy that outweighed the benefit of contributing to the public debate.

Be honest with yourself. Recognize that what you really enjoy is the gamesmanship of one-line zingers. Don't call it a debate until you can tell me what the Ps and Qs are.

It is possible to spar, disagree with, criticize, part ways etc amicably and all the while being nice. I've seen people like that, it is not an easy skill to learn though

Thanks for this link, I liked how it gave specific examples of behavior to correct, all of which I could recognize from personal experience. Particularly this one, when asking questions:

  Instead of your underlying point coming across as "your
  idea is unfeasible," it comes across as, "You've brought
  this good idea to us, and I hope we're smart enough to
  make it work."