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> The idea that the person "needs to construct stronger arguments" seems to put the blame on the person with foresight when circumstances can vary a lot. It's

by flukus 6y ago

> The idea that the person "needs to construct stronger arguments" seems to put the blame on the person with foresight when circumstances can vary a lot. It's also extremely dismissive of experience. Sometimes you just know an idea won't work out because you've been down that road before. You can't just distill 20 years of experience into strong counter arguments for every proposal, it's just too time consuming, especially when you've got other stuff to do. But our industry severely under values experience. It's similar to other useless platitudes like "present solutions not problems". It sounds good on the face of it but ignores that solutions take much more of a time investment than seeing problems does, seeing a problem is merely the first stage of a solution. And trying to get rid of "I told you so" leads to "consensus" decision making, which is it's own workplace cancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67QsrpNH96Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67QsrpNH96Q

aeternum 6y ago
How do you handle input that does need to be dismissed? I've seen entire teams stall out and become stuck in perpetual design loops due to 1-2 members constructing endless 'what-if' scenarios. Engineering involves tradeoffs, there is rarely a single perfect solution. There are also times like when attempting to find product-market fit when pointing out all the possible problems is close to useless. There are so many unknowns that the most important thing is often to get your product out there and start validating your assumptions and collecting data.
- flukus 6y ago
  > How do you handle input that does need to be dismissed? Hierarchy. You need someone to make the calls and the team to follow them, even if it's going to be wrong. That should be enough to break any perpetual design loop and move forward. Ultimately this hierarchy will exist anyway, the person paying you gets to decide what you're going to do or delegate that decision to someone else. Soliciting feedback along they way is important, but ultimately you need some decision makers. > There are also times like when attempting to find product-market fit when pointing out all the possible problems is close to useless This is building solution and then finding the problem which can be entirely avoided.
threatofrain 6y ago
What matters here is credibility of which experience is only one contributor. Everything you say is mitigated or boosted by credibility. If a person has experience but finds that their credibility isn’t what they want it to be, maybe something else is up.

by flukus 6y ago

aeternum 6y ago

How do you handle input that does need to be dismissed? I've seen entire teams stall out and become stuck in perpetual design loops due to 1-2 members constructing endless 'what-if' scenarios. Engineering involves tradeoffs, there is rarely a single perfect solution. There are also times like when attempting to find product-market fit when pointing out all the possible problems is close to useless. There are so many unknowns that the most important thing is often to get your product out there and start validating your assumptions and collecting data.

flukus 6y ago
> How do you handle input that does need to be dismissed? Hierarchy. You need someone to make the calls and the team to follow them, even if it's going to be wrong. That should be enough to break any perpetual design loop and move forward. Ultimately this hierarchy will exist anyway, the person paying you gets to decide what you're going to do or delegate that decision to someone else. Soliciting feedback along they way is important, but ultimately you need some decision makers. > There are also times like when attempting to find product-market fit when pointing out all the possible problems is close to useless This is building solution and then finding the problem which can be entirely avoided.

threatofrain 6y ago

What matters here is credibility of which experience is only one contributor. Everything you say is mitigated or boosted by credibility. If a person has experience but finds that their credibility isn’t what they want it to be, maybe something else is up.