Nice vs. kind

There's a difference between being nice and being kind, and I think about it constantly when I'm building.

Nice is telling someone their resume looks great. Kind is telling them their resume is burying the best part of their career on page two.

Nice is comfortable. Kind is useful. They're not the same thing and sometimes they're opposites.

I had a conversation recently where someone showed me their materials and asked what I thought. Everything in me wanted to say "this is solid, just a few tweaks." Because that's the nice thing to say. It keeps the conversation easy. Nobody feels bad.

But the kind thing was to say "I think you're leading with the wrong story entirely." Which is harder to hear. And harder to say, honestly, because you can see someone's face change when they realize the thing they spent three weeks on needs to start over.

That's the tension I sit with as a builder. Every AI product has this fork: you can build something that's nice to people, or you can build something that's kind to them. Nice gets better engagement. People come back when you tell them they're doing great. Kind is harder to measure because sometimes the most useful thing your product does is make someone uncomfortable for ten minutes.

I don't think I've gotten the balance right yet. Some days the product is too blunt. Some days it's too soft. The line moves depending on the person and the moment and honestly I'm still figuring out where it is.

But I'd rather build something kind than something nice. Even when nice would be easier to sell.