In my experience, haters are some of the most passionate users, if you can do even the smallest thing to demonstrate a desire to improve, they'll often be huge advocates over the medium term.
I was working at a startup and we got some frustrating and hostile feedback from a user, I responded by acknowledging the issue and sending them a beta build that attempted to fix their issue. (it did not, but...)
Just reaching out and trying to engage made an enormous difference. They ended up contributing significantly to isolating and fixing that specific bug and others in the future, and referring us a few customers to boot, if I remember correctly.
You've not met a real hater if you think this, and should consider yourself very lucky. That was just a frustrated user.
A real hater will obsessively use your product, yet simultaneously attempt to find any reason whatsoever to hate your product (or you), no matter how small, and be extremely vocal about it, to the point of founding new communities centered on complaining about you. Should you address the issue, they will silently drop that one from their regularly posted complaints and find or invent a new one. Any communication you send to them will be purposefully misinterpreted and combined with half truths and turned against you.
Some of these people probably have genuine mental illnesses that makes them act like this.
Just to be clear, this particular user didn't ever become a fountain of sweetness and light - they were pretty touchy and cranky at the best of times, if I remember right (it's been over a decade), but accepting them as they were let them become a contributor instead of toxic.
Honestly I have thick enough skin that I'm happy to let them be themselves as long as we can reach a basis of professionalism and get a positive result.
You're right that there are many people you can't reach, and trying is a waste of effort, but I think an appreciation for human dignity requires me to at least make the attempt, and sometimes you're rewarded.
Yeah, which is why I think it's important to draw a line between a frustrated user (has genuine issues with his use of the product, can be turned by fixing them), a casual troll (reposts some bad feedback because he thinks it's funny) and a hater (malicious, bad faith, communication not recommended)
Agreed, I’ve experienced that myself. But I’ve also experienced the opposite: the user who always complains, doesn’t think things through, refuses to consider how their ideas would impact other users, doesn’t follow instructions…
In some cases, had I had the power to do so, there are a few users who I’d gladly have “fired”: offer a full refund in exchange for no more support.
People hate because they care. There's some exceptions (like bandwagon hating), but the people who hate on something the most tend to be people who want to like the product.
Exactly, they bought into the promise but the product didn't deliver. If a user expects your product to suck, you won't surprise (anger) them by being sucky.
Haters can be like bombs. You want to defuse them. Don't shake 'em. Don't drop 'em. Just render them safe. It's possible there's some gold in the ore; there might be, and if there is, accept it gratefully; but it's often hard to tell the constructive true-believer from the vindictive maniac. Your #1 job is to make it all inert, and to be able to walk away without an explosion destroying the business, social-media explosion or otherwise.
Even the CEO's "apology" is pretty bad. He still finds a way to take shots at the original poster saying his original message was inflammatory (could also be read as how I'm justified in my response), that "he started it" and that the team was "spoken down to or treated dismissively" which they weren't. All the original feedback was about the project and was not directed at specific individuals.
I really don't think it's inappropriate for the user to be a dick. I have no obligation to respect what you built unless it's genuinely fantastic, especially when you're asking for money.
I feel like millenials are kind of programmed to think that the customer is always right (or at least that this is the only stance you should take).
Will some younger generations think that the world is better off without the people who think that screaming at people is OK as long as you are a customer?
It's very hard to accept criticism; very hard. But OP's view is the mature, thoughtful way to go about it. Some people are going to be mad-as-hell, and they just will be. The analysis and advice is good. The initial response from the founder wasn't great and because we all like rooting for the underdog, there was a pile-on. Bad on us.
But, just to see how accepting criticism works, it wasn't Dostoevsky who had that quote about happy families, it was Tolstoy. :-)
Colors and color names are culture dependent, and you are not guaranteed that people in different cultures agree on what color something is.
The most famous of these discrepancies is Japan and green vs blue, or why does Jenkins by default use red, yellow and blue instead of red, yellow and green.
So I would urge using something other than colors as an example of shared human experience.
You should steel-man the argument. GP is talking about qualia, obviously for the sake of the argument you assume the comparison is between two people with similar eyes.
The steel men (armored enemy knights) are exactly the inverse of the straw man (training dummy) metaphor. I think it's a fantastic term since it directly addresses the point (tackle the best opposing arguments head on instead of a poor subset/facsimile of them), it fits within the existing straw man metaphor, it's terse, and it's very clear.
> The colors of traffic lights can be difficult for red–green color-blind people. This difficulty includes distinguishing red/amber lights from sodium street lamps, distinguishing green lights (closer to cyan) from white lights, and distinguishing red from amber lights, especially when there are no positional clues (see image).
> All but one admitted to difficulties with traffic signals, one admitted to a previously undeclared accident due to his colour blindness, and all but one offered suggestions for improving signal recognition. Nearly all reported confusion with street and signal lights, and confusion between the red and amber signals was common.
The wild success of traffic lights comes from having 3 colors at fixed positions. You put those 3 colors in a single color changing light and I would assume the accident rate would measurably increase.
I work in a big company where everyone knows how to "accept criticism". What they don't know is how to fix the problems. The company here had a tweetfest, then a blogfest, then an apology fest. Did they even consider sitting down with a glass and looking at the product?
The fake apology at the end makes this quite funny.
"I was just protecting the team". "I learned many lessons". Etc.
Good at marking this as a company to avoid.
We have more users than everyone you just mentioned (combined).
That's my favorite part. When an organization dominates a market, it's possible that they're so much better than the competition that the market has full-force chosen them, but that's almost never the case. Usually, it's because they've managed to avoid an open market all-together, (e.g. through exploiting intelectual property protection, byzantine compliance requirements, exclusive contracts made without concern for end users, etc…) and there's no need to make the product good, making it far worse than all of the competition (combined).
In fact, acknowledgement of any kind is failure - report the truth as anything counter to the feedback, and tell everyone how much support your counter argument has by quoting numbers no one can verify (important)
They say sixty-five percent of all statistics /
Are made up right there on the spot /
Eighty-two-point-four percent of people believe 'em /
Whether they're accurate statistics or not
Complaints are amazing! I've said for years that you know you're succeeding when people start complaining. Complaints are a sign that users see something potentially valuable, and are frustrated that they can't get there. Even if you can't prioritize the fixes that would be required, you should still embrace them.
I often read reviews of places and things I'm even tangentially interested in. As a user, there's little more unprofessional to me than a company replying to negative reviews with anything but an apology, or offer to help or do better.
So many places, especially local ones, take every sub five star review as an insult and invitation to argue. I'm actually shocked by the percentage of places that do this. It drives away my business, and I can't be the only one.
Even not replying at all is a better strategy, IMO.
Sure, you will inevitably run into people who are impossible to please. However, for the most part, the vast majority of the people who have a complaint are taking the time to attempt to communicate with you or your company about a need you failed to meet. This can be something that's broken, not implemented or done badly. In all cases, they are motivated by wanting to fix the problem for themselves...which is likely to fix it for lots of others who might not be as vocal.
The underrated trick here is separating “signal” from “status game.” Even hostile reviews often contain one actionable invariant (“this workflow is brittle”, “pricing feels dishonest”), and the rest is just the reviewer performing for an audience. If you respond only to the invariant (and maybe ask one concrete follow-up), you de-escalate without rewarding the theatrics — and you also create a public artifact future users can trust.
Yeah. Even with good faith feedback, separating the signal from... whatever else is going on in the feedback-giver's mind can be a bit emotionally fraught. But you've gotta do it.
Meh, CEOs response was bad, but I hate people with a burning passion when they express feelings like that about a product. Just stop using it and walk away and stop making it harder for other people to live. If you want to offer feedback then lead with that.
We tried it CodeRabbit. They enable beta features without asking, so one day your GitHub issues get AI responses without anyone ever asking it to respond to it. I think the criticism was warranted. I think it is OK to let people be passionate about the tools they have to use. Ultimately, we decided to disable CodeRabbit. But there were definitely some people on our team that felt like they were forced into using it.
Not every consumer of a service like CodeRabbit will be in a position to make decisions about the tools their org adopts, or even be involved in the relationship with the vendor. Are they not entitled to express exasperation in a public forum?
The guy offered some pretty valuable feedback to help improve the product. Business idiots with ego problems can bury their head in the sand at their own peril.
Interesting thought! In moments like these, capturing the innovation can be ignited by asking whether the comment was frustration or feedback, or said slightly differently “was that trying to be helpful or hurtful?”. Tends to get the other party to rethink their words and produce a more productive dialogue. It’s a tool we can all use both at and outside of work :)
I often use it as a self-reflection for myself ; i'm working solo so my exploration is really different - (thankfully I work on tools I use myself). Anger / Frustration can definitely be measured from text only - I don't necessarily need to "drive" a discussion to try to get an explicit confirmation of what is going wrong - that signal is a strong enough information to indicate for something important (or that the user is just mad). Being able to switch from mad -> chill is definitely the point where we can digest why something is happening - and depending on the context it can definitely underline important focus points to improve.
I find the things I hate the most are the things that I want to like. What I hate specifically is the disappointment of seeing ‘bad’ when I expect ‘better’
In my experience, haters are some of the most passionate users, if you can do even the smallest thing to demonstrate a desire to improve, they'll often be huge advocates over the medium term.
I was working at a startup and we got some frustrating and hostile feedback from a user, I responded by acknowledging the issue and sending them a beta build that attempted to fix their issue. (it did not, but...)
Just reaching out and trying to engage made an enormous difference. They ended up contributing significantly to isolating and fixing that specific bug and others in the future, and referring us a few customers to boot, if I remember correctly.
You've not met a real hater if you think this, and should consider yourself very lucky. That was just a frustrated user.
A real hater will obsessively use your product, yet simultaneously attempt to find any reason whatsoever to hate your product (or you), no matter how small, and be extremely vocal about it, to the point of founding new communities centered on complaining about you. Should you address the issue, they will silently drop that one from their regularly posted complaints and find or invent a new one. Any communication you send to them will be purposefully misinterpreted and combined with half truths and turned against you.
Some of these people probably have genuine mental illnesses that makes them act like this.
Just to be clear, this particular user didn't ever become a fountain of sweetness and light - they were pretty touchy and cranky at the best of times, if I remember right (it's been over a decade), but accepting them as they were let them become a contributor instead of toxic.
Honestly I have thick enough skin that I'm happy to let them be themselves as long as we can reach a basis of professionalism and get a positive result.
You're right that there are many people you can't reach, and trying is a waste of effort, but I think an appreciation for human dignity requires me to at least make the attempt, and sometimes you're rewarded.
Yeah, which is why I think it's important to draw a line between a frustrated user (has genuine issues with his use of the product, can be turned by fixing them), a casual troll (reposts some bad feedback because he thinks it's funny) and a hater (malicious, bad faith, communication not recommended)
Indeed. If someone hates your product, at least they care. Indifference is much harder to work with. My experience of dealing with haters:
https://successfulsoftware.net/2024/02/25/it-might-be-a-good...
Agreed, I’ve experienced that myself. But I’ve also experienced the opposite: the user who always complains, doesn’t think things through, refuses to consider how their ideas would impact other users, doesn’t follow instructions…
In some cases, had I had the power to do so, there are a few users who I’d gladly have “fired”: offer a full refund in exchange for no more support.
People hate because they care. There's some exceptions (like bandwagon hating), but the people who hate on something the most tend to be people who want to like the product.
Exactly, they bought into the promise but the product didn't deliver. If a user expects your product to suck, you won't surprise (anger) them by being sucky.
Thats because most complainers really need their egos soothed more than anything.
Haters can be like bombs. You want to defuse them. Don't shake 'em. Don't drop 'em. Just render them safe. It's possible there's some gold in the ore; there might be, and if there is, accept it gratefully; but it's often hard to tell the constructive true-believer from the vindictive maniac. Your #1 job is to make it all inert, and to be able to walk away without an explosion destroying the business, social-media explosion or otherwise.
You’ll also great some of the greatest feedback from them too.
Don't fix what's making you bundles of cash :-D
Even the CEO's "apology" is pretty bad. He still finds a way to take shots at the original poster saying his original message was inflammatory (could also be read as how I'm justified in my response), that "he started it" and that the team was "spoken down to or treated dismissively" which they weren't. All the original feedback was about the project and was not directed at specific individuals.
His 'apologish' is basically the same as his original flamepost, but dressed in PR.
He places all blame on the user, basically calling him a dick again, and re-brags about their thousands of users, while attempting to sound noble.
tbf that user was indeed being a dick
I really don't think it's inappropriate for the user to be a dick. I have no obligation to respect what you built unless it's genuinely fantastic, especially when you're asking for money.
Harjot's initial feedback reminds me of one of my pet peeves:
If I reach out and say "I love that your product does X & Y, but it would be helpful if it also did Z", please don't reply with "Nobody needs Z."
Tell me you will look into it, or it's out of scope, or hard to implement, or literally anything other than calling me a nobody.
Is this going to become a generational thing?
I feel like millenials are kind of programmed to think that the customer is always right (or at least that this is the only stance you should take).
Will some younger generations think that the world is better off without the people who think that screaming at people is OK as long as you are a customer?
It's very hard to accept criticism; very hard. But OP's view is the mature, thoughtful way to go about it. Some people are going to be mad-as-hell, and they just will be. The analysis and advice is good. The initial response from the founder wasn't great and because we all like rooting for the underdog, there was a pile-on. Bad on us.
But, just to see how accepting criticism works, it wasn't Dostoevsky who had that quote about happy families, it was Tolstoy. :-)
“Claude gets it”
No. It does not. It does not understand anything. Stop anthropomorphizing bots!
Stop anthropomorphizing bots!
They hate that.
"Claude has been trained to handle this the right way"
How do you know whether a human brain understands something?
thank you for providing evidence that some do not.
That's weird. You aren't actually being sarcastic but literally believe the opposite of your post!
Denial of an objective reality is a symptom shared by various strands of bad thinking our current era.
LLMs do not think. That's reality.
Probably the same way that I can be assured your interpretation of red is mine.
Colors and color names are culture dependent, and you are not guaranteed that people in different cultures agree on what color something is.
The most famous of these discrepancies is Japan and green vs blue, or why does Jenkins by default use red, yellow and blue instead of red, yellow and green.
So I would urge using something other than colors as an example of shared human experience.
Some people are colorblind. Some people have more or less cones and rods. Our interpretation of colors is certainly not the same
You should steel-man the argument. GP is talking about qualia, obviously for the sake of the argument you assume the comparison is between two people with similar eyes.
Steel-man is such a weird expression. There are no steel men. How about saying "The opponent's best argument".
The steel men (armored enemy knights) are exactly the inverse of the straw man (training dummy) metaphor. I think it's a fantastic term since it directly addresses the point (tackle the best opposing arguments head on instead of a poor subset/facsimile of them), it fits within the existing straw man metaphor, it's terse, and it's very clear.
Thanks for replying.
The wild success of traffic lights disagrees with your statement.
The wild success of traffic lights is only wildly successful to those who aren't color blind. Do some reading.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness
> The colors of traffic lights can be difficult for red–green color-blind people. This difficulty includes distinguishing red/amber lights from sodium street lamps, distinguishing green lights (closer to cyan) from white lights, and distinguishing red from amber lights, especially when there are no positional clues (see image).
Publication from 1983: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1875309/
> All but one admitted to difficulties with traffic signals, one admitted to a previously undeclared accident due to his colour blindness, and all but one offered suggestions for improving signal recognition. Nearly all reported confusion with street and signal lights, and confusion between the red and amber signals was common.
What a horrendous counter-argument. "People with notable perception issues don't perceive the same" is insanely obvious.
People not perceiving in the same way (the original point) is exactly the same as "notable perception issues".
The wild success of traffic lights comes from having 3 colors at fixed positions. You put those 3 colors in a single color changing light and I would assume the accident rate would measurably increase.
The fact that a single emitter traffic light that simply varies its color doesn't exist also disagrees with your statement.
I work in a big company where everyone knows how to "accept criticism". What they don't know is how to fix the problems. The company here had a tweetfest, then a blogfest, then an apology fest. Did they even consider sitting down with a glass and looking at the product?
If someone sends you a nasty email, write a smartarse reply. Then delete it. No good ever comes from sending smartarse replies.
The fake apology at the end makes this quite funny. "I was just protecting the team". "I learned many lessons". Etc. Good at marking this as a company to avoid.
Read your article.
It’s interesting how quickly criticism cools when ownership is taken instead of resisted
Thanks for sharing.
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” ― Bjarne Stroustrup
OP is wrong, ad hominem is the best way to both defend your intellectual integrity and also drive engagement
You are totally the kind of person who would believe something like that.
In fact, acknowledgement of any kind is failure - report the truth as anything counter to the feedback, and tell everyone how much support your counter argument has by quoting numbers no one can verify (important)
73.24% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
They say sixty-five percent of all statistics / Are made up right there on the spot / Eighty-two-point-four percent of people believe 'em / Whether they're accurate statistics or not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00
RIP Todd Snider. He was real.
Taken from the Donald Trump School of Leadership I'm sure :)
What a stupid opinion.
It is sarcasm
edit: wait i get it now
Pretty sure the one you're replying to is as well. :)
Complaints are amazing! I've said for years that you know you're succeeding when people start complaining. Complaints are a sign that users see something potentially valuable, and are frustrated that they can't get there. Even if you can't prioritize the fixes that would be required, you should still embrace them.
“Feedback is a gift” is a widely-shared aphorism at Amazon.
I often read reviews of places and things I'm even tangentially interested in. As a user, there's little more unprofessional to me than a company replying to negative reviews with anything but an apology, or offer to help or do better.
So many places, especially local ones, take every sub five star review as an insult and invitation to argue. I'm actually shocked by the percentage of places that do this. It drives away my business, and I can't be the only one.
Even not replying at all is a better strategy, IMO.
> When someone says they hate your product
Listen.
Period.
Sure, you will inevitably run into people who are impossible to please. However, for the most part, the vast majority of the people who have a complaint are taking the time to attempt to communicate with you or your company about a need you failed to meet. This can be something that's broken, not implemented or done badly. In all cases, they are motivated by wanting to fix the problem for themselves...which is likely to fix it for lots of others who might not be as vocal.
Microsoft Teams developers, please come @ me.
every product will have haters. to attack the poster personally and then double down with a non-apology kinda shows how clueless their leadership is
The underrated trick here is separating “signal” from “status game.” Even hostile reviews often contain one actionable invariant (“this workflow is brittle”, “pricing feels dishonest”), and the rest is just the reviewer performing for an audience. If you respond only to the invariant (and maybe ask one concrete follow-up), you de-escalate without rewarding the theatrics — and you also create a public artifact future users can trust.
Yeah. Even with good faith feedback, separating the signal from... whatever else is going on in the feedback-giver's mind can be a bit emotionally fraught. But you've gotta do it.
Shorter: "Don't take it personally". Also, people tend to dial down their flamethrowers once they see that you're listening.
Meh, CEOs response was bad, but I hate people with a burning passion when they express feelings like that about a product. Just stop using it and walk away and stop making it harder for other people to live. If you want to offer feedback then lead with that.
We tried it CodeRabbit. They enable beta features without asking, so one day your GitHub issues get AI responses without anyone ever asking it to respond to it. I think the criticism was warranted. I think it is OK to let people be passionate about the tools they have to use. Ultimately, we decided to disable CodeRabbit. But there were definitely some people on our team that felt like they were forced into using it.
> Just stop using it
Unfortunately, not always an option without making major lifestyle decisions (for example, software required by a job)
Can't stop, they force us to use it https://ifuckinghatejira.com/
Not every consumer of a service like CodeRabbit will be in a position to make decisions about the tools their org adopts, or even be involved in the relationship with the vendor. Are they not entitled to express exasperation in a public forum?
The guy offered some pretty valuable feedback to help improve the product. Business idiots with ego problems can bury their head in the sand at their own peril.
> but I hate people with a burning passion when they express feelings like that about a product.
Interesting choice of words.
Frustration is the fuel for innovation.
Interesting thought! In moments like these, capturing the innovation can be ignited by asking whether the comment was frustration or feedback, or said slightly differently “was that trying to be helpful or hurtful?”. Tends to get the other party to rethink their words and produce a more productive dialogue. It’s a tool we can all use both at and outside of work :)
I often use it as a self-reflection for myself ; i'm working solo so my exploration is really different - (thankfully I work on tools I use myself). Anger / Frustration can definitely be measured from text only - I don't necessarily need to "drive" a discussion to try to get an explicit confirmation of what is going wrong - that signal is a strong enough information to indicate for something important (or that the user is just mad). Being able to switch from mad -> chill is definitely the point where we can digest why something is happening - and depending on the context it can definitely underline important focus points to improve.
I find the things I hate the most are the things that I want to like. What I hate specifically is the disappointment of seeing ‘bad’ when I expect ‘better’