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Great read. One thing I've found (as a person who advises engineering managers and startups) is that recipients of advice seem to value non-contingent advice m

Great read. One thing I've found (as a person who advises engineering managers and startups) is that recipients of advice seem to value non-contingent advice more. They just want simple answers that don't make them think. When someone asks me a question like "how should I interview candidates?", my default answer is "it depends". Tell me about the role. The company. The culture. The product. Remote or in-person? What's the team like. Then i can give a framework that gives you the answer. But people want answers like "use take-homes" or "do 2 behavioral interviews and 1 coding interview". Same for technical decisions. They don't want to hear "it depends". They want to hear "use Rails and MySQL hosted on Heroku". So I naturally find myself being pushed to give non-contingent advice.

nradov 5y ago
Do managers who accept contingent advice from you tend to produce better outcomes?
- webel0 5y ago
  This is a good question. As much as I find them hard to stand, there are cases where having an ideologue in the back of your mind (or one on each shoulder) makes it easier to play out a situation in one’s mind. In other words: I don’t need a rule per se, just an argument. I’ll work out the contingencies on my own.
agbell 5y ago
Yeah, I think that could be true in general. Tetlock found the hedgehogs were more famous and more wrong and I got the idea from him that that was because simple advice is more sticky and works better in sounds bites but it could also work the opposite way -- ie. the more people ask you for advice the more you learn to tell them what they want which might be oversimplified. So you get trained to be more of a hedgehog over time. Interesting idea.
lostcolony 5y ago
So consider the position the people asking the questions are in. They're facing a problem; they need it solved. All of us, when we're in that position, desire a solution. I'm not sure what differentiates those who want to fully understand the whole solution space, and all the context that dictates -why- a particular solution may be the 'best' (given a specific set of tradeoffs), but certainly, whether we are like that or not, we all desire the right solution ASAP. I'd be super interested in how you respond to those who ask such questions; do they seem interested in explaining their problem in detail? If you, rather than say "it depends", instead immediately launch into questions, are they engaged in answering them? Can you then finish with a "given what you describe, because X, Y, and Z, I think (solution) would be the best fit for you. It has the downsides of A, B, and C, but those don't apply to you", or whatever. I.e., basically change the tone to always be focusing on solving their problem, while also allowing you to inform them, rather than "it depends" which could imply "there isn't a clear-cut solution to your problem".
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
And in software engineering, the answer is almost always "it depends".
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
I personally find that I want opinionated advice in two scenarios: either all the options look indistinguishably similar or they are very different sets of trade-offs that leave no clear winner. At that point, the advice is more a tool for breaking decision paralysis than a choice between options with noticeably different outcomes.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Good point. I find outlining the two (or more) possible scenarios as explicit options and asking "I'm on the fence, which would you do?" is the best way to get that type of opinionated advice from "the foxes". Otherwise you quickly get the "it depends" answer.

nradov 5y ago

Do managers who accept contingent advice from you tend to produce better outcomes?

webel0 5y ago
This is a good question. As much as I find them hard to stand, there are cases where having an ideologue in the back of your mind (or one on each shoulder) makes it easier to play out a situation in one’s mind. In other words: I don’t need a rule per se, just an argument. I’ll work out the contingencies on my own.

agbell 5y ago

Yeah, I think that could be true in general. Tetlock found the hedgehogs were more famous and more wrong and I got the idea from him that that was because simple advice is more sticky and works better in sounds bites but it could also work the opposite way -- ie. the more people ask you for advice the more you learn to tell them what they want which might be oversimplified. So you get trained to be more of a hedgehog over time. Interesting idea.

lostcolony 5y ago

So consider the position the people asking the questions are in. They're facing a problem; they need it solved. All of us, when we're in that position, desire a solution. I'm not sure what differentiates those who want to fully understand the whole solution space, and all the context that dictates -why- a particular solution may be the 'best' (given a specific set of tradeoffs), but certainly, whether we are like that or not, we all desire the right solution ASAP. I'd be super interested in how you respond to those who ask such questions; do they seem interested in explaining their problem in detail? If you, rather than say "it depends", instead immediately launch into questions, are they engaged in answering them? Can you then finish with a "given what you describe, because X, Y, and Z, I think (solution) would be the best fit for you. It has the downsides of A, B, and C, but those don't apply to you", or whatever. I.e., basically change the tone to always be focusing on solving their problem, while also allowing you to inform them, rather than "it depends" which could imply "there isn't a clear-cut solution to your problem".

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

And in software engineering, the answer is almost always "it depends".

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

I personally find that I want opinionated advice in two scenarios: either all the options look indistinguishably similar or they are very different sets of trade-offs that leave no clear winner. At that point, the advice is more a tool for breaking decision paralysis than a choice between options with noticeably different outcomes.

Ensorceled 5y ago
Good point. I find outlining the two (or more) possible scenarios as explicit options and asking "I'm on the fence, which would you do?" is the best way to get that type of opinionated advice from "the foxes". Otherwise you quickly get the "it depends" answer.