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This is funny to me as it reminds of my early days on help desk where we would get fed up with people coming in telling is what solution they needed for their t

by aklemm 6y ago

This is funny to me as it reminds of my early days on help desk where we would get fed up with people coming in telling is what solution they needed for their tech problems instead of telling us the problem and letting us find a solution that made some sense. So we’d say the opposite, “Don’t bring me solutions, bring me problems.”

rs23296008n1 6y ago
Even worse were the people who already tried spectacularly bad solutions and then demand indignantly that you to pick up the pieces. The cherry on top is when they then blame you for not being able to fix that clusterf*ck.
taurath 6y ago
In software roles, we're often asked by customers to "Build me this.", which is a solution. The first thing we need to actually solve their problem is "what problem are you trying to solve?". Sometimes its easy to get an answer to that question immediately, and sometimes you never ever will. If you work in a place where the latter is frequent, find a new job whenever you can. You or your division will be blamed for the bad outcome caused by lack of trust and communication.
sicromoft 6y ago
Indeed. A variant of the classic XY problem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
watwut 6y ago
People have hard time to distinguish between solution and problem. Second, I think a lot of it is insecurity. They feel bad for asking for help. They fear they will look dumb, so they are talking about solution so that they make sure you know they are not completely stupid and know at least something.
gpsx 6y ago
I had a similar experience at a startup. The business manager would only bring a technical problem if he had a solution. And of course, he wasn't really in a good position to present solutions to these problems. It is a great trait for him to have in general but in a business setting, as mentioned in many other comments here, it's nice to get problems early and to include the most skilled people in solving them.

by aklemm 6y ago

rs23296008n1 6y ago

Even worse were the people who already tried spectacularly bad solutions and then demand indignantly that you to pick up the pieces. The cherry on top is when they then blame you for not being able to fix that clusterf*ck.

taurath 6y ago

In software roles, we're often asked by customers to "Build me this.", which is a solution. The first thing we need to actually solve their problem is "what problem are you trying to solve?". Sometimes its easy to get an answer to that question immediately, and sometimes you never ever will. If you work in a place where the latter is frequent, find a new job whenever you can. You or your division will be blamed for the bad outcome caused by lack of trust and communication.

sicromoft 6y ago

Indeed. A variant of the classic XY problem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

watwut 6y ago

People have hard time to distinguish between solution and problem. Second, I think a lot of it is insecurity. They feel bad for asking for help. They fear they will look dumb, so they are talking about solution so that they make sure you know they are not completely stupid and know at least something.

gpsx 6y ago

I had a similar experience at a startup. The business manager would only bring a technical problem if he had a solution. And of course, he wasn't really in a good position to present solutions to these problems. It is a great trait for him to have in general but in a business setting, as mentioned in many other comments here, it's nice to get problems early and to include the most skilled people in solving them.