I was lucky to be in Dropbox’s headquarters when Kim Scott came to speak about her (then) new book “Radical Candor”. Dropbox was nice enough to hand out free copies (yay! free books!) so I actually ended up reading most of the book on the flight home.

Even though the book was written with managers in mind, I found myself referring back to it pretty often. Its insights proved quite useful in my daily work as a software engineer, especially in processes which require written or in person interaction with our co-workers. A little bit of Radical Candor can totally change how we do and react to code or design reviews, driving better results and higher satisfaction.

Radical Candor: Some Background

Before I share how you should use Radical Candor while creating software, it might be helpful to explain what Radical Candor is. I will try to keep this section as short as possible, since it’s just setting up the background for how to use Radical Candor in the context of software processes. If you’re already familiar with the framework you can just skip to the next section (titled Radical Code Review).

Radical Candor is about giving guidance that’s kind and clear, specific and sincere

(source here).

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