<i>It seems more productive to give people ways they can improve their skills rather than tearing them to shreds just for entertainment.</i><p>That&#x27;s a valid elaboration focused on a <i>single specific instance</i>.<p>It doesn&#x27;t mean that &quot;you suck at SQL&quot; isn&#x27;t also a valid critique. For example, while GIN&#x2F;GIST indexes will help them solve <i>this problem</i>, what that person may need is to actually just learn a lot more about SQL overall (rather than just one specific trick). &quot;You suck at SQL&quot; isn&#x27;t a thing that&#x27;s valid (read: <i>correct</i>) to say to someone just because they don&#x27;t know about a window function. It&#x27;s a thing that is valid to say when a person repeatedly demonstrates fundamental misunderstandings of SQL on many occasions.<p>It&#x27;s also useful information. I&#x27;ve been told that I suck at UI, repeatedly. I accept and internalize this fact. As a result, while I do sometimes think about customer experience, I very rarely push hard for a specific UI or worry too much about details. I&#x27;ll suggest that maybe a UI is confusing and they should hallway test it and then afterwards do nothing but insist that we abide by the test results (whatever they were).<p>Based on the mood affiliation of your comment, it sounds like you dislike this sort of interaction. You prefer something with more &quot;empathy&quot; and less &quot;tearing them to shreds&quot;. That&#x27;s exactly what I&#x27;m talking about when I say culture matters. You&#x27;d probably hate being on my team and I&#x27;d probably hate being on yours, even if we are both highly competent devs.