It always astonished me how delicate coders in the UK are (I am from Germany, working in the UK currently). During a team meeting at a former company, my &quot;ruthlessness&quot; was brought up as a negativism. I countered that (or so I thought) with the following question to the rest of the coder team: &quot;Do you want me to point out problems I perceive with the code &#x2F; approach &#x2F; whatever, or do you want me to hold back in order to be considerate of someone&quot;. To my surprise, in the presence of management, the unanimous answer was to show consideration!<p>I think people who work together should be able to openly communicate with each other about technical issues. Sadly, most people are (either self-perceived or for real) not good enough to do that without bruised egos.