How to develop thick skin while reading harsh user feedback?

I'm pretty thick skinned in general, I get compliments on my brass neck but one thing i'd say is you need to either reframe it or don't attach yourself to it.

Reframe - They're giving you golden nuggets of advice here on how you can improve your product, all of it is useful and trying to tell you something, it may not be obvious what it means but it all means something

but ultimately your product isn't you, you made it but it isn't you so therefore anything said bad about the product is not a reflection of you

I don't believe in "thick skin", I believe that's an overused term to mean "I'm arrogant". I personally need to understand things to be self-confident, not just yell louder than the opposing party.

(Not saying most are arrogant, that's just how I feel about it. Because I feel that those who have actual thick skin, have no need to tell anyone that they do.)

Instead, I look at it this way:

• Unnecessarily harsh feedback is irrational. Irrational = not good, it's never productive.
• Irrational feedback = feedback from a point of view that doesn't understand the bigger picture. Often driven by a base hunger that just wants instant gratification and they're childishly angry because they didn't get the cookie they expected.
• As @Grantlyk said: reframe. Understand the difference in perspective and use it to your advantage.
• If your user wants a green cookie, don't just give them a green cookie. Perhaps they'd be happy with a normal cookie and they're just being irrational about the color green. Leveraging feedback to work to your advantage is good, but never take it at face value because your users really don't understand themselves well enough to give good feedback.

Finally, the only thing I can tell you that really matters: Don't take our comments on IH at face value either. Focus on the ones that work for you and resonate w/ you.

Stop loving your product so much, start to love the problem you're solving, if people have such harsh, negative feedback, maybe something is lacking, listen to them and fix it.

Its probably not a good idea to develop "thick skin " and arrogant to people who are giving genuine feedback. Its a good idea to listen to them and ask for details about the flaws they are finding , it will also help to filter out trolls. Use criticisms to help your product and stop taking everything personally.

No matter what you do, some people will complain. No matter how smart you are, some people will call you stupid. No matter how much money you invest, people will find flaws.

Consider that people constantly complain about products and services from these companies:

Microsoft

Apple

Google

BMW

Toyota

SAP

Salesforce

Adobe

NorthFace

Braun

Maytag

Merck

Are you better than all of these companies? Are you going to reach a level of perfect that puts you well beyond all of these firms? If not, you need to accept that some people will always complain.

Listening to user feedback is like standing in a cold river in the mountains and panning for gold. Most of what you get is mud, but occasionally you get a nugget that is worth something.

Lots of good answers already and I'd like to offer my perspective as well. :) I'd like to think that I have relatively thick skin, though I still get defensive at times when receiving feedback.

• Is the feedback they've given you true? If not, no need to worry about it. If so, that's incredibly useful and they're helping you out!
• Truthful, critical feedback is best feedback if you are committed to improving your product
• Receiving feedback and developing thick skin, is a skill like any other. The more you do it, the better you get. Seek critical feedback at every opportunity you get and the pain will lessen over time
• Some of the work I've done with Eastern philosophies/Buddhism has helped me stunt the crystallization of my ego. Ask yourself: "where is my ego?", "Is it a real thing or just a figment of my mind?". Ego is the enemy.

Learn from it.

Change, adapt, and try new things.

Sometimes, you just to narrow it down or market it to different people

Personally I feel like you've answered your own question in the title; You develop thick skin through listening to that harsh feedback in my opinion.

Without knowing more about the context (is it app store reviews?website survey?) I will volunteer that in general, negative opinions are dramatically over-represented in feedback. While the happy users just go about their merry way using the product, the unhappy people do not and are therefore motivated to say something. When you account for that fundamental response bias it really takes the edge off. So keep in mind that the segment of people who leave a comment/feedback on a product at all are already negatively-skewed audience for reasons that have nothing to do with your product and are more about human behavior.

(This is based on my experience doing satisfaction surveys every time we re-arranged the furniture on a high traffic e-commerce website. It's possible I'd feel differently if it were my own app in the app store, I think the stakes are different there. )

"I know that the product is not perfect and it needs to be much better."

Behind these comments that feel personal there may be actionable patterns that stick out, once you go over dozens and dozens of remarks and code and categorize them. Thomas makes this point already, look for themes and insights you can use to your advantage to make your product better. Not perfect, just better.

It seems the best answer may come out of how you've framed your question.

If you've spent hundreds of hours on development and users are criticizing your work, you have a few options.

For one, start getting feedback earlier in the process so you don't feel pained by how much work you've already invested.

Two, if users are giving suggestions on what features to add etc, just remember that their comments are signals that they didn't perceive the value your product was trying to deliver.

This relates much more to the tightness of product design or how it integrates with their existing set of user behavior than it does indicate that they are geniuses and you aren't.

If users provide advice without understanding your goal, their advice is unlikely to be helpful.

On the other hand, if you offer a product without understanding your audience, your product may not be helpful.

For the latter case, If you'd like to improve the quality of customer conversations you have, I'd recommend checking out The Mom Test.

I run a controversial forum in my spare time. I get death threats on a daily basis.

It really bummed me out for the first year. Eventually it gets funny. You're watching people lash out at the most minor of frustrations like petulant children. Anyway: Moral of the story is the way to develop a thick skin is to just keep doing it.

Some users don't want to pay and blame me for being such greedy.

I'm curious if you are developing a mobile app or something along those lines? Because this to me sounds like people who have been spoiled by the way the app economy is and have developed unreasonable expectations.

Consider that this has nothing to do with you or your app specifically, it's just the way some people unfortunately choose to behave because of factors out of your control as an individual app developer.

Try to approach it differently so that you not developing a thicker skin but developing more empathy for these people.

For example, there is a little technique I've read about recently. Imagine that somebody criticized Dalai Lama and told him that he is an old ugly narcissist. How would Dalai Lama react? And what you can learn from that little thought experiment?

I'm surprised with other people equating think-skinned with arrogance. Maybe there's a geographical difference in how the term is used. With the people I normally interact, being thick-skinned is considered good and different from the bad trait of being arrogant.

What also surprises me is people that say that all feedback is valuable and that you should be happy for it. When someone tells you "Your product sucks", there's not a lot of value to extract from it. When someone whines about your price when they are not a buyer, there's no value in it (actually, I'd say there's negative value in it).

There's one thing that I can tell you. After being bombarded with futile criticism, being challenged just for fun, being made fun of just for someone else's benefit, I'm getting thick-skinned. I thought it wasn't happening, but it is; just at a rate that was too slow to notice at first.

Disclaimer: I think me and the people for whom feedback-is-always-good are having very different experiences in our careers. For example, I've seen examples of people asking for feedback or help and getting tons of support from the community, while I normally have to beg for any scrap of support. I'm still trying to figure that out. I've been told that I come across as pitchy and that's the source of the problem.

What is it about the negative feedback that bothers you?

You mentioned:
-"it's just hard for me to read it because of hundreds of hours that consumed my time"

Can you dig a little deeper on that?

It feels to me like the so called 'labour theory of value' that we value things because we put our time into it. It's a fallacy we have to be careful to watch out for, as the market doesn't actually value things that way! We know this to be true because someone else who's time is worth less money (or rather who is willing to perform the same work for less money) can perform the same task or produce the same good and sell it on the open market for a cheaper price. We might feel like the market SHOULD value our version more but the market doesn't give a shit how much time went into making something.

If you're worried you built the wrong product and/or wasted your time I would say don't worry. We are all young. The majority of people on here are in their late 20s / early 30s and a few are either side of that. Imagine you listen to the feedback and course correct, use it to go in a direction that is more aligned with your goals. Apply that logic for 10 to 20 years. In the long term if you just listen to the market and execute against what its telling you it wants can't you eventually win? If you get down about 300 ~ 500 hours spent on something thousands of people sign up for but only 10s of people pay for, short term that's painful. Think extremely long term.

You should never stop working on improving your product. Most of these people are usually giving you valuable information, people actually pay for surveys and such and you're getting this for free.

But still, keep in mind that today's customers are a little spoiled. They expect everything to be either free or perfect, or both. You are human as much as them, you have financial needs you need to take care of, and you can't create perfect products for everybody.

You see, the whole "the customer is always right" advice floating around has made creators and builders doubt their products and skills more than they have to. Personally I think that not everyone should be my user or customer. Some people are just assholes, and they will continue to be assholes to me, my team, my support staff, even after purchasing a subscription, even buying the cheapest one will make them feel entitled like they can act in whatever they way want. Are they worth the effort? Not always. I feel that if someone is incredibly unfair in their criticism, or even rude, you should actually react in a way you feel is suitable to defend yourself with any measures you see fit. Let them build a better product if they think they can do that.

Be patient and always think of your business, but if someone is constantly draining you and making you feel crappy, consider just ignoring them. Although I would advice against it, I've seen successful people firing back and defending their business with harsh tone, sarcasm or even plain rudeness. They may lose something, but it's not always about the money, sometimes you need to feel good too, and standing up for yourself has that effect. Isn't that a good investement? Still, you have to make very careful evaluations of each specific situation. Be careful, but also don't be afraid.

Good luck.

First, I have an iron-clad policy. I do not respond for 24 hours. I might write a draft. But never hit send until you've processed your emotions (please do feel them and process them - do not suppress your emotions).

Second, I walk away and cool off. Then I re-read it, knowing what kind of space the message is in so I can separate as much signal as possible.

Third, I treat it like a puzzle. Sometimes the foul language and pejorative words heaped up disguise the learning point. So I sleuth and roleplay them in my mind to see if the person has a good point.

Fourth, I send them a thank you email with follow-up questions or a status report such as filing a bug or help ticket on their behalf.

The caveat to #4 is if they added a dire threat. In those cases I do not respond. Instead I blacklist their IP and email and give a refund if a product is involved.

Sometimes, when I start reading and it looks like it's going to be hard to handle, I give the message to a friend to summarize to me.

I also have pretty thin skin and take feedback very personally, which I think is natural for a founder who really cares about their product and their customers, and about building the right product for your customers. That said, if it puts you in a bad place then you need to make some changes.

I think others have nailed it with their take on some feedback is unnecessarily harsh. Many times online people forget that there is another person on the other end of that email.

I ignore those.

For the ones giving genuinely good feedback, even if it's harsh because your tool doesn't work like they need it, take it as a chance to engage with them deeper and learn more about their needs. When you this, you get to build a better relationship with them and build what users actually need.

Good luck, it's not easy.

I've read somewhere that it is OK if you have around 20% of paying users complaining prices and if you have less than 20% then it means you have low prices actually.

From my experience, it also depends on the nature of the business, your userbase and if they are already paying for similar services or not. Users may not want to pay at all directly for example, but OK to see ads. Can you imagine paying per message on Facebook (they actually tried it in 2012 - https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-tests-1-fee-for-inbox-access/ )? Majority of worldwide users will not pay for Facebook but still Facebook is earning $20 on ads on every user ( http://time.com/money/5207924/how-much-facebook-makes-off-you/ ) and users seems to be OK with it.

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