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> somebody said that a thing is simply not possible and a manager asked "but what if it was possible?" I've been an Individual Contributor, and a Manager, and

> somebody said that a thing is simply not possible and a manager asked "but what if it was possible?" I've been an Individual Contributor, and a Manager, and am back to being an IC. I've been on both sides of this conversation. One of the benefits of being a manager is being able to see the forest from the trees while your team members may be so focused on their tasks they do not see the big picture. Sure, sometimes the answer to "but what if it was possible?" if just "it's not." But a lot of times, the good managers I've had would propose an approach to MAKING it possible that I just simply didn't see. And I've been able to do the same in their shoes. Sometimes it requires a paradigm shift - Q: "How do we get to the other town faster?" A: "The horses are running as fast as they can" Q: "What if we found a faster horse?" (e.g. a car) But honestly in day to day office culture it rarely needs to be so revolutionary - Q: "Could we finish the project faster if Bill's team helped us?" A: "No, it's not possible. Bill's team said they are completely swamped" <Goes off to do some managerial work> Q: "Okay, I've chatted to Bill, and his team is fully available to help us finish the project." I'll leave you with this "Expert" saying that something is simply not possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg And an actual expert showing how it can be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM

wiz21c 7y ago
interestingly, your examples revolve around making things faster. Which basically is understood as : "well, we've already too much pressure and our PM wants to put even more pressure on us". Going faster (or being more efficient) always mean being able to take more work.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  No, it doesn't. For instance, at a place I worked at, we wanted to build a particular ad tech product to reinforce strength in a different area. The correct answer to "how do we make this faster" was "buy the guys who do it and then integrate via a bunch of CSVs on GCS and some RPC". We canned our forays into the space and bought them. Less work for all the engineers and data scientists. More work for M&A but they like doing that so it's not upsetting. At a more granular level, in a different project, the answer to "how do we develop this faster" was "lose these requirements, and just use AWS services for those". Less work in total.
- deanCommie 7y ago
  The horse/car example isn't really about going faster. It's an example of hitting the limit of a certain technology, saying any further improvements are "impossible", while not recognizing that a "better horse" might just not be a horse at all. It's not a metaphor for faster project delivery, but a meaningful technological difference that someone may not be able to see.
Aeolun 7y ago
This ignores the fact that Bill’s team hasn’t been working on the project and is most likely just going to slow things down.

wiz21c 7y ago

interestingly, your examples revolve around making things faster. Which basically is understood as : "well, we've already too much pressure and our PM wants to put even more pressure on us". Going faster (or being more efficient) always mean being able to take more work.

scarejunba 7y ago
No, it doesn't. For instance, at a place I worked at, we wanted to build a particular ad tech product to reinforce strength in a different area. The correct answer to "how do we make this faster" was "buy the guys who do it and then integrate via a bunch of CSVs on GCS and some RPC". We canned our forays into the space and bought them. Less work for all the engineers and data scientists. More work for M&A but they like doing that so it's not upsetting. At a more granular level, in a different project, the answer to "how do we develop this faster" was "lose these requirements, and just use AWS services for those". Less work in total.
deanCommie 7y ago
The horse/car example isn't really about going faster. It's an example of hitting the limit of a certain technology, saying any further improvements are "impossible", while not recognizing that a "better horse" might just not be a horse at all. It's not a metaphor for faster project delivery, but a meaningful technological difference that someone may not be able to see.

Aeolun 7y ago

This ignores the fact that Bill’s team hasn’t been working on the project and is most likely just going to slow things down.