22 ms·

Is there any situation under which leadership shouldn't buy in to exactly what tech wants to do?

pletsch 6y ago
Does a captain of a ship do exactly what his crew wants all the time? No, because they're steering a ship and sometimes they have to make moves that not everyone will agree with.
- mondoshawan 6y ago
  Erm... That's not how sailing works. Yes, the Captain needs buy-in all the time, since they are ultimately responsible for the ship and crew both in the eyes of the law and survival wise. Also, most of the time the crew is at the helm. Source: I'm a trained sailor.
chasd00 6y ago
Scotty wasn't on the bridge, he didn't know what was out the window.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  Point of order: Scotty was frequently on the bridge commanding the ship, and there's a strong argument to be made that he was the second-best at the job, after Kirk. Certainly 3rd best.
  - chasd00 6y ago
    i voted you up, it was a risky analogy given my limited knowledge of Star Trek compared to the majority here :)
adrianN 6y ago
Hopefully there are situations where the leadership has more information available than the engineers.
darkerside 6y ago
This is a little embarrassing. I asked what I thought was a well-designed question to frame the problem in a way that made my own conclusion obvious. Clearly, I missed the mark, so I'll be more straightforward now. Engineers below the upper senior levels typically operate with an "infinite" mindset in making these choices. We all laugh at the relevant XKCD[0] because there's a grain of truth in there. This isn't a knock on engineering, it's just the nature of operating at the lowest levels. You become involved in the problem and you solve for local maxima. Leadership done well is going to offering transparency to the people on the ground level, communicating timelines and strategy in a way that is relevant to the problem at hand, so people know, for example, how long they can spend solving a particular problem. Where this sometimes goes wrong is, the higher you go in leadership, the lesser certainty there is. There are no "right" answers, there isn't perfect information, and yet, decisions must be made. If engineering is operating on different base assumptions, those decisions will look wrong (and they might be). And yet, someone needs to get people aligned and moving forward, because moving fast in the wrong direction is typically better than moving too slow, even in the right direction. [0] https://xkcd.com/974/ https://xkcd.com/974/
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Or this one, which provides good info on whether to take the time to automate something: https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/

Does a captain of a ship do exactly what his crew wants all the time? No, because they're steering a ship and sometimes they have to make moves that not everyone will agree with.

mondoshawan 6y ago
Erm... That's not how sailing works. Yes, the Captain needs buy-in all the time, since they are ultimately responsible for the ship and crew both in the eyes of the law and survival wise. Also, most of the time the crew is at the helm. Source: I'm a trained sailor.

chasd00 6y ago

Scotty wasn't on the bridge, he didn't know what was out the window.

karatestomp 6y ago
Point of order: Scotty was frequently on the bridge commanding the ship, and there's a strong argument to be made that he was the second-best at the job, after Kirk. Certainly 3rd best.
- chasd00 6y ago
  i voted you up, it was a risky analogy given my limited knowledge of Star Trek compared to the majority here :)

adrianN 6y ago

Hopefully there are situations where the leadership has more information available than the engineers.

darkerside 6y ago

This is a little embarrassing. I asked what I thought was a well-designed question to frame the problem in a way that made my own conclusion obvious. Clearly, I missed the mark, so I'll be more straightforward now. Engineers below the upper senior levels typically operate with an "infinite" mindset in making these choices. We all laugh at the relevant XKCD[0] because there's a grain of truth in there. This isn't a knock on engineering, it's just the nature of operating at the lowest levels. You become involved in the problem and you solve for local maxima. Leadership done well is going to offering transparency to the people on the ground level, communicating timelines and strategy in a way that is relevant to the problem at hand, so people know, for example, how long they can spend solving a particular problem. Where this sometimes goes wrong is, the higher you go in leadership, the lesser certainty there is. There are no "right" answers, there isn't perfect information, and yet, decisions must be made. If engineering is operating on different base assumptions, those decisions will look wrong (and they might be). And yet, someone needs to get people aligned and moving forward, because moving fast in the wrong direction is typically better than moving too slow, even in the right direction. [0] https://xkcd.com/974/ https://xkcd.com/974/

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
Or this one, which provides good info on whether to take the time to automate something: https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/