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I understand your perspective. Unfortunately, however idealistic, I don't see that being a great benefit in the long term for anyone. I prefer environments tha

I understand your perspective. Unfortunately, however idealistic, I don't see that being a great benefit in the long term for anyone. I prefer environments that teach you how to advocate for your ideas. Build you up as a good self-advocate. Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset. Better to have someone by your side saying, "Timmy, speak up! You have a great idea. Tell everyone"

throwaway0xb 7y ago
Pretty incredible exchange you are having with people right now where you are just straight up ignoring valid points or sweeping them aside as idealism...
- kempbellt 7y ago
  Think of it as a free lesson in self-advocation if you'd like. I'm engaging in the conversation by bringing my points to the table. I see it as an idealistic proposal that doesn't match my understanding of reality. It is very plausible that I am wrong - please explain to me how you disagree, I'm happy to listen. Seriously. Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. It's your right after all.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    >Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. Exactly. I am very happy to be proven wrong, given the arguments against my position are good. A lot of people shy away from criticizing ideas, thinking that a person will take it as a personal attack (gotta admit, I am guilty of this too, if I don't know the person well enough to assume they take criticism well). When it is the fight for the best idea or solution, I don't care how wrong I am, I care about finding the "truth" aka the best solution given the situation. As long as the criticism is directed towards the idea and not the person, I am just as happy, regardless of whether my idea won or not (as long as the idea that won had better arguments for it).
  - watwut 7y ago
    They did explained what you ask for in very simple terms, you just ignored it and reiterated that you are effectively superior. It is not that you gave contra arguments, you just ignored. Which is exactly issue with most confident win system.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    In my experience, "high-friction environments where people are encouraged to compete and fight to support their ideas, where they feel valued for fighting for themselves, rather than patronized..." are dominated by people who enjoy competing and fighting for their own sake. The value of any ideas presented frequently takes a backseat to who can win the political fight. (This is actually one of the most common, and most frustrating, failure modes of academia and one of the major reasons I'm no longer interested in being in that environment.) Or, the value of the ideas takes a backseat to who benefits most from the one chosen. Or, any of a dozen other reasons irrelevant to the ideas. You may regard an alternative as "idealistic", and it may be, but the alternative is how many existing environments are supposed to work, if you press those involved hard enough, and is frequently pretty bad at sorting ideas.
pavas 7y ago
I think you're actually missing his point, which is not so much a matter of perspective but rather a direct application of Goodheart's Law. When you are trying to incentivize by proxy (e.g. promote good ideas by rewarding vocal and assertive people), you better hope that there is a very tight correlation between the two. His point is that there isn't much correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, so if you incentivize the latter you won't necessarily get the former. I'm inclined to agree with that.
- kempbellt 7y ago
  > I think you're actually missing his point You are probably right. I don't have a good argument for getting your good idea recognized by others, if you are not an assertive type, other than learning to fight harder for it be heard, or finding someone to fight hard for you. There may not be a correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, but if you aren't at least somewhat assertive, I just won't hear your idea. It's like playing a song in your basement and wondering why no one is praising your musical talent. Get yourself out in the real world and play in front of people, loudly enough for them to hear you!
  - sujNansnam 7y ago
    Communication and technical implementation are skills that exist on two separate axes. You might find that many of the best implementers are not also the best communicators, and vice versa. It seems to me that the whole software industry is designed around solving this problem. Make the good implementers your engineers. Get the good communicators who can figure out what these engineers are talking about to be your project managers. The unicorns who can communicate and implement should be able to get a gig managing all these people/projects and keeping everyone honest. This is an idealized version of the system and a million things can go wrong, but it seems like the only way that makes any sense.
- wisty 7y ago
  > Goodheart's Law A man of culture! I think we can call in the Pareto Principle here. After a certain point, assertiveness / aggressiveness becomes zero-sum (or worse). But getting to the point where everyone worth listening to has had a chance to speak gives you a lot of bang for your buck. You can either have an environment which enables this (everyone gets the talking stick) or train everyone to have a baseline of assertiveness skills. The baseline shouldn't just be "excuse me, I have a question" scenarios though. The baseline has to be sufficient to handle stuff like "I think my boss is screwing up big time".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset." I actually personally think its useful to say that in order to shut up overly opinionated people without publicly pointing them out and putting them immediately on the defensive. Opinionated people are also incredibly opinionated on their opinions, of course, and it's more efficient to sidestep that altogether.

throwaway0xb 7y ago

Pretty incredible exchange you are having with people right now where you are just straight up ignoring valid points or sweeping them aside as idealism...

kempbellt 7y ago
Think of it as a free lesson in self-advocation if you'd like. I'm engaging in the conversation by bringing my points to the table. I see it as an idealistic proposal that doesn't match my understanding of reality. It is very plausible that I am wrong - please explain to me how you disagree, I'm happy to listen. Seriously. Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. It's your right after all.
- filoleg 7y ago
  >Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. Exactly. I am very happy to be proven wrong, given the arguments against my position are good. A lot of people shy away from criticizing ideas, thinking that a person will take it as a personal attack (gotta admit, I am guilty of this too, if I don't know the person well enough to assume they take criticism well). When it is the fight for the best idea or solution, I don't care how wrong I am, I care about finding the "truth" aka the best solution given the situation. As long as the criticism is directed towards the idea and not the person, I am just as happy, regardless of whether my idea won or not (as long as the idea that won had better arguments for it).
- watwut 7y ago
  They did explained what you ask for in very simple terms, you just ignored it and reiterated that you are effectively superior. It is not that you gave contra arguments, you just ignored. Which is exactly issue with most confident win system.
- mcguire 7y ago
  In my experience, "high-friction environments where people are encouraged to compete and fight to support their ideas, where they feel valued for fighting for themselves, rather than patronized..." are dominated by people who enjoy competing and fighting for their own sake. The value of any ideas presented frequently takes a backseat to who can win the political fight. (This is actually one of the most common, and most frustrating, failure modes of academia and one of the major reasons I'm no longer interested in being in that environment.) Or, the value of the ideas takes a backseat to who benefits most from the one chosen. Or, any of a dozen other reasons irrelevant to the ideas. You may regard an alternative as "idealistic", and it may be, but the alternative is how many existing environments are supposed to work, if you press those involved hard enough, and is frequently pretty bad at sorting ideas.

pavas 7y ago

I think you're actually missing his point, which is not so much a matter of perspective but rather a direct application of Goodheart's Law. When you are trying to incentivize by proxy (e.g. promote good ideas by rewarding vocal and assertive people), you better hope that there is a very tight correlation between the two. His point is that there isn't much correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, so if you incentivize the latter you won't necessarily get the former. I'm inclined to agree with that.

kempbellt 7y ago
> I think you're actually missing his point You are probably right. I don't have a good argument for getting your good idea recognized by others, if you are not an assertive type, other than learning to fight harder for it be heard, or finding someone to fight hard for you. There may not be a correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, but if you aren't at least somewhat assertive, I just won't hear your idea. It's like playing a song in your basement and wondering why no one is praising your musical talent. Get yourself out in the real world and play in front of people, loudly enough for them to hear you!
- sujNansnam 7y ago
  Communication and technical implementation are skills that exist on two separate axes. You might find that many of the best implementers are not also the best communicators, and vice versa. It seems to me that the whole software industry is designed around solving this problem. Make the good implementers your engineers. Get the good communicators who can figure out what these engineers are talking about to be your project managers. The unicorns who can communicate and implement should be able to get a gig managing all these people/projects and keeping everyone honest. This is an idealized version of the system and a million things can go wrong, but it seems like the only way that makes any sense.
wisty 7y ago
> Goodheart's Law A man of culture! I think we can call in the Pareto Principle here. After a certain point, assertiveness / aggressiveness becomes zero-sum (or worse). But getting to the point where everyone worth listening to has had a chance to speak gives you a lot of bang for your buck. You can either have an environment which enables this (everyone gets the talking stick) or train everyone to have a baseline of assertiveness skills. The baseline shouldn't just be "excuse me, I have a question" scenarios though. The baseline has to be sufficient to handle stuff like "I think my boss is screwing up big time".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

"Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset." I actually personally think its useful to say that in order to shut up overly opinionated people without publicly pointing them out and putting them immediately on the defensive. Opinionated people are also incredibly opinionated on their opinions, of course, and it's more efficient to sidestep that altogether.