5 ms·

The post actually convinced me against what you're saying. Something might not work, and if you know it won't and know a way that will, sure interfere (hopeful

The post actually convinced me against what you're saying. Something might not work, and if you know it won't and know a way that will, sure interfere (hopefully with tact), and steer the conversation towards a more likely solution. But, if you only know why it won't work, but not of anything else that could work, than it seems useful to discuss further, but can't it be made to work?

lazide 5y ago
The issue I’ve run across is the passive aggressive approach (aka what some people often mean re:tact) can delay having the direct conversation and then people spend the next 6 months noodling around hypotheticals until the original objector is worn down and says fine - and then the project fails because sure enough, it didn’t actually work. Seen it at least twice. Also seen the ‘actually it was fine, the objector was just in a bad mood and couldn’t see past their own prior experience and was being a pain in the ass’ more times than I can count. Which is why hopefully you have senior leadership that can see through the BS and get things moving in a workable direction.
saurik 5y ago
"""No matter how many times it comes up, I can't build you a perpetual motion machine. I know it can't be done--and, more to the point, have explained why multiple times--and I would rather not the entire team continually have giant meetings attending to discuss how to build it anyway. It doesn't motivate me that you have found a customer for it, or that you have come up with a million ways it will make the world a better place: we have an actual engine that we are trying to ship here, and your insistence upon wasting my time and energy requiring me to explain over and over again why your perpetual motion machine is, at least, something that our team isn't going to come up with, is so far past distracting as to potentially be active sabotage when you convince our users that they should wait for it to be implemented, or get our marketing department hyped about the possible new markets it will open up for us. Yes: I "only" know why it doesn't work... something I would hope would have extreme value, as I am not simply telling you "you are dumb" and refusing to discuss it, even if you don't understand the math or physics involved and thereby can't tell the difference; and I don't have something else for you that does anything similar: if I had any hope this was possible, I assure you I would be dedicating quite a lot of our resources towards figuring out how to pull it off. I will even admit that maybe, just maybe, you are correct, and what you want somehow can be done because everyone who has ever studied this before is wrong... but it isn't going to anyone on our team--not me, and especially not you, who figures this out--so let's spend our time talking about things that aren't a waste of our time and money. Am I a "negative Nancy"? Sure... if that's what you want to call someone who uses their time effectively.""" -- someone who has often been in the situation of having to have this conversation about the same scant handful of "obvious" ideas over and over again, often times for years (essentially, until the project is scrapped)
- andi999 5y ago
  "OK, understood, these perpetual motion machines don't work. So once and for all let's do away with the motion. Luckily we have a new project which doesn't involve motion: we just have to ship a device which produces more electrical energy than one has to put in. Is 4 weeks enough? "
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "we just have to ship a device which produces more electrical energy than one has to put in. Is 4 weeks enough? " 4 weeks for a brand new fuel cell is a bit short, but you can just buy them on the open market.
    - andi999 5y ago
      "didn't you attend the project meeting? We said we dismiss the motion part but of course not the perpetual part."
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        "Oh in that case we probably need some new hire with special knowledge. Like that new age engineer showing his free energy device on youtube. Or well, maybe not this one, he did not even to manage to hide the electric cables going into his magical maschine, but this one over there, publishing at infowar looks trustworthy"
        andi999 5y ago
        "looks like somebody doesn't want to do his work"
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        I am sorry, my university did not offer the esoteric courses necessary, to build a machine that transformate believe energy.
strken 5y ago
Some ideas really, really need to be killed fast. The example that comes to mind for me is a non-engineer suggesting we relax important security constraints in a meeting with non-engineering decision makers present. In this case, the entire line of thinking is that it's acceptable to e.g. store unhashed passwords in the DB and not implement CSRF protection if it gives the team time to do other tasks, and it needs to be made clear that it's totally unacceptable to trade speed for safety. It's almost always possible to explain why you shouldn't make a bad tradeoff like that, though.
- didibus 5y ago
  Hum, arguably that's not the scenario that I imagined the article talking about. I feel stakeholder and business partner meeting don't really qualify as "team problem solving" in my mind. So I was limiting the advice to engineering teams brainstorming solutions together.

lazide 5y ago

The issue I’ve run across is the passive aggressive approach (aka what some people often mean re:tact) can delay having the direct conversation and then people spend the next 6 months noodling around hypotheticals until the original objector is worn down and says fine - and then the project fails because sure enough, it didn’t actually work. Seen it at least twice. Also seen the ‘actually it was fine, the objector was just in a bad mood and couldn’t see past their own prior experience and was being a pain in the ass’ more times than I can count. Which is why hopefully you have senior leadership that can see through the BS and get things moving in a workable direction.

saurik 5y ago

"""No matter how many times it comes up, I can't build you a perpetual motion machine. I know it can't be done--and, more to the point, have explained why multiple times--and I would rather not the entire team continually have giant meetings attending to discuss how to build it anyway. It doesn't motivate me that you have found a customer for it, or that you have come up with a million ways it will make the world a better place: we have an actual engine that we are trying to ship here, and your insistence upon wasting my time and energy requiring me to explain over and over again why your perpetual motion machine is, at least, something that our team isn't going to come up with, is so far past distracting as to potentially be active sabotage when you convince our users that they should wait for it to be implemented, or get our marketing department hyped about the possible new markets it will open up for us. Yes: I "only" know why it doesn't work... something I would hope would have extreme value, as I am not simply telling you "you are dumb" and refusing to discuss it, even if you don't understand the math or physics involved and thereby can't tell the difference; and I don't have something else for you that does anything similar: if I had any hope this was possible, I assure you I would be dedicating quite a lot of our resources towards figuring out how to pull it off. I will even admit that maybe, just maybe, you are correct, and what you want somehow can be done because everyone who has ever studied this before is wrong... but it isn't going to anyone on our team--not me, and especially not you, who figures this out--so let's spend our time talking about things that aren't a waste of our time and money. Am I a "negative Nancy"? Sure... if that's what you want to call someone who uses their time effectively.""" -- someone who has often been in the situation of having to have this conversation about the same scant handful of "obvious" ideas over and over again, often times for years (essentially, until the project is scrapped)

andi999 5y ago
"OK, understood, these perpetual motion machines don't work. So once and for all let's do away with the motion. Luckily we have a new project which doesn't involve motion: we just have to ship a device which produces more electrical energy than one has to put in. Is 4 weeks enough? "
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "we just have to ship a device which produces more electrical energy than one has to put in. Is 4 weeks enough? " 4 weeks for a brand new fuel cell is a bit short, but you can just buy them on the open market.
  - andi999 5y ago
    "didn't you attend the project meeting? We said we dismiss the motion part but of course not the perpetual part."
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      "Oh in that case we probably need some new hire with special knowledge. Like that new age engineer showing his free energy device on youtube. Or well, maybe not this one, he did not even to manage to hide the electric cables going into his magical maschine, but this one over there, publishing at infowar looks trustworthy"
      - andi999 5y ago
        "looks like somebody doesn't want to do his work"
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        I am sorry, my university did not offer the esoteric courses necessary, to build a machine that transformate believe energy.

strken 5y ago

Some ideas really, really need to be killed fast. The example that comes to mind for me is a non-engineer suggesting we relax important security constraints in a meeting with non-engineering decision makers present. In this case, the entire line of thinking is that it's acceptable to e.g. store unhashed passwords in the DB and not implement CSRF protection if it gives the team time to do other tasks, and it needs to be made clear that it's totally unacceptable to trade speed for safety. It's almost always possible to explain why you shouldn't make a bad tradeoff like that, though.

didibus 5y ago
Hum, arguably that's not the scenario that I imagined the article talking about. I feel stakeholder and business partner meeting don't really qualify as "team problem solving" in my mind. So I was limiting the advice to engineering teams brainstorming solutions together.