---
title: Speaking Up
date: 2012-01-16
aliases:
- /posts/speaking-up.html
---



Deciding when to speak up is one of the things where I feel I haven’t yet
figured it out at all. I don’t know when or how to do it.


In high school, a friend of mine didn’t like her boyfriend anymore. I told her
that if she really feels that way then she should break up with him. The
boyfriend (who was a good friend of me as well) was, understandably, quite angry
at me. From that moment, I decided it wasn’t a good idea to speak up about other
people’s relationships, even if I have strong opinions on it. However, recently,
a friend told me he wished people would have told their true opinions about his
ex-girlfriend. Mine was mildly negative, but I never said so to him. I don’t
know if I should have done so.


Being a programmer, I always get a lot of business-people looking for a
programmer. They tell me their idea, and in my opinion, most of the ideas suck.
Whenever I think this, I’ll try to postpone judgement and get my thoughts
straight. I still feel it my professional responsibility to tell them why it is
a bad idea and do so eventually. But where to draw the line? Do you tell thim
“your idea sucks and here’s why”? Or “this is what I don’t like about your
idea”. Maybe even “I don’t think you should try to become an entrepreneur” (I’ve
never said that and not planning to do so either).


One of the reasons why I find it hard to say what I’m thinking is because I have
been wrong so many times. If Jack Dorsey would have pitched me Twitter, I
probably would have strongly advised him not to pursue it as a business, because
it doesn’t really add anything (we already had blogs, social networks, text
messaging and email). Also, you need a lot of people for it to be interesting. I
mean, seriously, a 140-character microblog is the best idea you can come up
with? What problem does it solve anyway?