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Not long ago at $JOB I sat through what I call "mandatory psychobabble day". The particular psychobabble being peddled to, or rather, imposed on, us was the DISC system -- a variant of which was recently outed on Hackernews as pernicious hucksterism which somehow held much of Sweden in its sway. It was supposed to make us better collaborators, under the rubric that understanding the traits of both your own star sign under this 20th century horoscope and those of your coworkers will enable you to formulate better communication strategies. Oddly, the most fruitful discussions that day, or at any time at $JOB, were held without reference to DISC at all.

My single moment of satisfaction was in trolling the interlocutor at the end. He still recognizes and smiles to me in the halls, which tells me my trolling was sufficiently subtle.



You must have more tact than me. I caught the ire of the iridologist when I asked 'What if we disagree with the chart?' Could not find a more uncomfortable way to spend a morning.


For anyone else wondering:

Iridology: the inspection of the iris of the eye as an aid in determining a person's state of health or in diagnosing a health problem.


What did the instructor do to you for the remainder of the morning?


I was used as the example for the rest of the session. Either I could take it in stride or dig in. That was not the hill I wanted to die on so I sucked it up. Still find it hard to let go of it though.


Or he also realizes that it’s bullshit. I led a “diversity workshop” in my company at the request of management because I’m known to be an excellent public speaker. The content was 100% crap but I was commended for my work and was rewarded for it so I’d gladly do another.


I also got invited to one of these diversity workshops at $JOB once, by our VP of diversity. Cost was >$5000 but I would have to get my manager to pay for it. They sent this email to me, not my manager. No thanks.

Edit: why the downvote? You could tell me what I did wrong


Link for the recent HN DISC post? Not finding it via search and would be interested to read...



For anyone else wondering if Bitwize just came up with the word of the week or Psychobabble is really a thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychobabble


Do you have a link to the HN article about DISC?


I think it was about Thomas Ericson.

Edit: found it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064530




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