13 ms·

‘Positive deviants’: Why rebellious workers spark great ideas

293 points by sonabinu 5y ago

whatshisface 5y ago
The fact that offering an idea that's better than what's already being done is seen as rebellious at all, as opposed to being the entire job of an engineer, or the definition of what engineers do, is not a good sign for any organization. Next they'll be talking about rebellious accountants who have recorded more numbers by the end of the day than were in the spreadsheet at the beginning, or subversive lawyers who review contracts that had not already been reviewed. Before long it will take a fifth-column delivery driver to move a pizza to a location it's never been before.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  I absolutely agree, and at the same time it’s how large and (!) mid-sized companies often work. And it’s not only management that behaves like that but many employees as well. When I was a manager in a mid-sized companies I was a strong proponent of what I called “The dictatorship of ideas”. Let’s not care where the idea is coming from but try to create better and better ideas all the time. Not everyone liked it.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    >>> Let’s not care where the idea is coming from but try to create better and better ideas all the time. Not everyone liked it. Not everyone liked it because it was improving the company without changing the political status quo. It's a bit like Washington and Franklin saying 'Hey we want Representation and Taxation" and King George saying "Ok, but you stay as subjects" Lots of small ideas can improve an organisation, but sometime big ideas imply 'regime change'
    - shoto_io 5y ago
      Yeah, thanks for the reminder. I realized that a bit too late. But: In a company it's also way more difficult to identify who is American and who is British ;)
      - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
        Its easy: We Brits swear waaay more!
- rantwasp 5y ago
  it’s one thing to offer an idea or point out something could be done in a different, better way. completely different when you’re told it’s not gonna be done that way but you go ahead and do it anyway. the “rebellious” attitude also comes with you sinking in more time (you need to do your “dayjob” on top of this, right?) and with the real consequences if what you’re doing rubs people the wrong way/is seen as wasting time.
- gopalv 5y ago
  > The fact that offering an idea that's better than what's already being done is seen as rebellious at all, as opposed to being the entire job of an engineer, or the definition of what engineers do, is not a good sign for any organization. That is exactly what happens, but not because your management isn't listening. The sacrifice of good ideas is done in the name of predictability or viability. I've been witness to and driven a few of these sorts of moves and what has struck me is that successful "by-pass of management" rebellion costs time, effort and most importantly is a test of active leadership skills. There was a system which I was working on which absolutely sucked (for me personally, because I worked on performance and it couldn't be improved without changing the architecture). There was a way to rewrite about 25% of the system under different assumptions which would fix the performance issues, but the system that was in production already had several other issues which needed to be prioritized over performance. For a manager in front of a customer, of course, we're absolutely committed to fixing whatever is broken. That goes back into engineering, where the rewrite wouldn't have half the bugs we have, but it looks like Dunkirk when it fails. The manager has no way to actually approve the rewrite, when they're trying to hire immediately to just do the work that's already on the plan. Anyway, long story short, there was an intern for the summer who did the rewrite and get it working to the point where the next generation system was almost entirely built out by a single uninterrupted intern over two months (& his code is still in prod today). The methods needed to break rules and succeed are often just the same qualities needed to "just succeed", except the breaking of rules is necessary to prevent the regression to mean. And if you don't succeed, being disavowed like this means worse results than following orders. There's something to be said about the motivation of a team after burning their boats. I'm gearing up to do one of those off-the-books project right now. And the tolerance for risk is clearly something I'm having less of each year. That said, surviving failure does more for your confidence than clutch, but definitely would like less red in the ledger.
  - endymi0n 5y ago
    Pretty much spot on. The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. Take out any of those and you get either nothing or a disaster. But if all come together, you will have someone on your team who doesn't just recognize that missed opportunity the other excellent other engineers already realized, but actively go against the plans of at least one level of management in order to do what's right for the company. They tend to create a lot of friction, but can often save a project. I personally love working with these kinds of people as I was formerly one of them — and they can and often do make the best managers later on (funnily enough, I've heard similar stories in the bio of almost any technology leader I respect). Having made the mistake more than one time of accidentally enabling people who didn't have the loyalty / optimism or technical excellence parts though, I get why these kinds of people are usually held in place in large organizations. The resulting friction, bickering and havoc can as well break teams and companies.
- wisty 5y ago
  I think this part of the answer to the Theory of the firm (this weird thing where companies seem to do better than work from home gig economies). On the one hands, if people just do what they want, it's total chaos. Everyone thinks they know best. Everyone wants to be a creative genius (ok, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people). Management needs to make things actually productive (exploit rather than explore). On the other hand, sometimes someone really is onto a good thing. Ideally, they'd instantly be recognised for this, and given a team and support staff, but managers aren't gods, they're just human beings. Here's an adaptive solution internal "risk taking" innovation is discouraged, but not usually a firing offense (depending on the time / resources spent, and whether you're keeping up with the rest of your work), because occasionally there is a big win that comes out of this.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Risk taking is only a problem if it demands resources that would starve other known-good projects. Sometimes even that doesn't make it a problem, because the company may decided top-to-bottom that New Project X is a good idea, even when it's extremely risky. This can create spectacular success when it works and catastrophic failure when it doesn't. Either way, this kind of strategic risk should go through the C-suite. Smaller tactical projects are what Fridays are for. Throw some nominal resources at engineers, give them some free time, and see what happens. If they can produce a working proof of concept - not just a cloud of PowerPoint and meetings - you may have something to run with.
- rukuu001 5y ago
  The status-quo is 'the work'. It's what's measured to determine how effective employees are. New ideas are a threat to that.
- 4gotunameagain 5y ago
  We are also talking about space, a notoriously risk averse sector, where innovation is allowed to exist only where absolutely necessary, or in technology demonstration missions. Unfortunately when failure is not an option, taking risks is even more risky..
  - Fordec 5y ago
    Interesting fact, 80% of satellites are now built outside the US. A surprising number of cubesats are built in the UK for example. The US regulatory framework, which has decades of legacy and history working with the likes of Lockheed has frozen the industry in the risk aversion. Only in the last five years have satellites been removed from the munitions list. Have fun with all the legal paperwork to hire an immigrant to work on a space project. Most of the work is now done elsewhere in places that don't have a space legacy, because of this exact risk aversion.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  There are two types of ideas, one is the practical improvement that can and should be heard and considered seriously, and then there are the “great ideas” which a lot of engineers are happy to spew out, but are often unable to follow through because they think more highly of themselves than they ought to. The reality is that software fields are brimming with people who’ve been paid exorbitant sums for mediocre work from people who wouldn’t otherwise even qualify as above average in general intelligence. If the teams don’t listen to engineers often it’s at least partly because of such past experiences. A good company will be a place where the engineers who are capable of following through with great ideas are being listened to while the remainder are kept at their place so to speak.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    Or they are unable to follow through because engineering is a team activity and so they cannot follow through if people don’t listen enough to consider the idea.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    One of the drawbacks of managers who are not good engineers themselves is that they lack the ability and knowledge to distinguish between truly excellent talent and pretenders. That's an organisational deficiency.
    - alex-mohr 5y ago
      For a decent take on that organizational deficiency, Rickover wrote a 1.5 page memo in 1953 addressing similar issues for the nuclear US Navy. At some point, it's a failing of process and structure rather than people. [1] 1: http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf
      - 5y ago
- peterkelly 5y ago
  My thoughts exactly. This sentence really struck me as a strange thing to write: > Often these ‘rebels with a cause’ – also known as positive or constructive “deviants” – may be motivated because they care for the organisation and its mission, and feel psychological discomfort when they see that important capabilities clearly need improvement. If you don't feel that way about your work, then what the hell are you even doing there?
  - throwaway87163 5y ago
    Not every job can be a passion. Sometimes people just need the money and are only there because of it.
  - Dudeman112 5y ago
    Working in a pleasant job for enough money to live comfortably, of course. Drink the Silicon Valley kool aid with moderation.
  - mtberatwork 5y ago
    I can guarantee you the company does not feel the same way about the `rebel with a cause` as the rebel feels about the company, especially when times get critical. Unless you are the founder, it's best not to get too caught up in mission statements.
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      And even founders are not completely immune. See Steve Jobs, ca 1985
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > If you don't feel that way about your work, then what the hell are you even doing there? I think it’s possible to care about doing a good job without caring about the company.
  - astura 5y ago
    Um... Working? Presumably.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Depends what you call a better idea. You know surely as much as me that we engineer will propose maybe better concept but would lack possibly in sales acument, value production vs cost, market timing, optimal quality (sometimes a client really doesnt care about a quality increment at all, while you could have spent your time on something else more rewarding), etc. It's fine, company work as symbiotic systems, we create a certain tension, others focused on other dimensions will counter balance, and a good company will find ways to reach optimums rather than maximums.
  - jakupovic 5y ago
    >Depends what you call a better idea. Proven idea is a better idea. That's what the article touches on but doesn't explore as their examples are all proven ideas. We don't hear much about non-proven or bad ideas by their own circumstances.
- goto11 5y ago
  Ideas are cheap. Investing in following a particular idea is costly and risky, especially since this also have to opportunity cost of not following a range of other ideas, given any business have limited resources. Such stories of course have a selection bias since everyone like a rebel pirate hero story but businesses and organization don't brag about failed projects. After all, the space shuttle blew up due to high risk engineering. In those case we blame the management. “we are always chasing after things other companies won’t touch”. - sounds great, unless you realize this also what CueCat did.
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    The other inertia is that companies are usually already doing something that is quite profitable. And all the people they’ve hired are good at doing the things that make the company profitable. It takes long-term thinking to see that it won’t last forever.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >is not a good sign for any organization On the other hand reality doesn't operate optimally.
- NoOneNew 5y ago
  This isnt about proper management methodology. This is about better ways at redirecting blame away from leadership. "No, the project didnt fail because I micromanage, overwork my crew, create artificial roadblocks, drown in arbitrary meetings and in general am a cunt. No, no, no, my team just wasn't properly in the rebellion spectrum to accomplish the task. I need a pay raise and a bigger budget." Seriously, 80% of good leadership is someone doing honest self reflection after a decision, "if I was them, would I think I was a piece of shit?" Yes, in that language, because being crass is being honest. If so, alter the decision. If not, its probably an acceptable decision by the crew. A one page primer in terms of how not be an asshole as a leader is far more honest and effective than all these over intellectualize mental masturbation studies combined. Mutual respect and trust between leadership and the crew is what makes effective teams. But hey, that takes work, knowledge, compassion and fraternization. You know what doesn't take work and all that other hard stuff? Bullshit checklists. Then you can show how it's the plebs' fault, not yours.
- heywherelogingo 5y ago
  This just sounds like the UK to me - anal retentive and compliant, so no surprise coming from the BBC. Short back and sides, suit, pointy shoes, don't stick your neck out.
  - samjewell 5y ago
    I’ve worked my whole career in the UK (7 years software eng, plus a bit in other jobs). Sounds from your comment like you’ve had better experiences in other countries. Is that right? Which ones, and how?
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
  it's this very fact, that bucking the normative or bucking the convention within an organization is why I've always argued for "assholes" or disruptive types who can back up their attitude with what they can bring to the office. People value cohesiveness, those who play ball. People will talk about the "constructive ways" to contribute but the reality is there becomes a lot of social and professional peer pressure to stay in line and often doing things hte "nice way" but continues the status quo and gets you ignored, overlooked, or worse - walked all over and ostracized. It takes someone not giving two shits, to change paradigms within a corporate culture. That means people hard to get a long with. It means someone who more rigid and conservative management types don't want to tolerate. It means the "everyone holds hands and get along" leftist hipsters don't want to tolerate them. Corporate culture enforces extreme compliancy to the group, in almost evey company. People who play nice and are competent are necessary for smooth operations, but disruptive types who may even be accused of being "toxic" (as long as they have skillsets, judgement and insight) are also necessary. A company can't be filled wikth these types. But filled with the polite hivemind? They're prone to stagnation.
- usgroup 5y ago
  Well, I like the extremity of your point, its instructive. However, I think challenging the majority usually comes with more baggage than just volunteering better ideas. I think being the my-ideas-are-better-than-yours guy, is having a better perspective that leads to conceptualising the whole problem differently. It can make everyone else feel inferior in a deep way. Being that guy is also hella frustrating, because doing things worse than they need to be done is frustrating. So you end up pissed at your colleagues or just thinking less of them. They pick up on it. Distance starts to grow. You end up in some little cliche in the office. Distance grows more. You end up being even more challenging. Distance grows more. And so on. It just has a whole human process around it. Its rarely about a trick or two here or there.
- xf1cf 5y ago
  You have a very gracious view of engineers. At least by C-Suite standards. To the C-suite engineers are a cost center to be minimized. You are a robot, or better yet, a "resource" (to use the industry term) that consumes money and does some set of tasks. These tasks are tracked in JIRA. The KPI dashboard for the C-suite is like SCADA control but instead of big machines its a bunch of cogs. Like all good, functioning, and regimented engines wobbly cogs (the creative kind!) are removed expeditiously and replaced with more compliant and in-spec cogs. To everyone BUT engineers, engineers are just the minions that glue existing frameworks together. To challenge this idea is tantamount to heresy. Deviating from the norm costs even more money and considering they still have to figure out how to pay the CTO (most likely a "thought leader" and not an engineer) their extensive benefits this creative detour just ate into that budget. This is not some sign of a "bad org". It's every org of any significant size. Once you start having actual management creative freedom is just a fever dream. Creative freedom is reserved for an even more exclusive cost center called "Research and Development" which is often cut just before the rest of herd is culled to keep bonuses. Don't worry, none of us will ever see this. It's exclusive to engineers pulled from Top-5 FAANG-likes and the CEOs kids. The best strategy you can have as a engineer in all but the prime cut positions is to keep your head down, do your 8 hours, and leave. When you get tired of doing that at one place, go to another. Repeat this for 30 years. No MBA-style management strategy will ever optimize for your happiness, or your desire to actually make an impact. Why would you want to make waves anyway? When they hand you your termination papers all of that effort is wasted. There are better uses of your time, outside work, where you have actual control.
- Andy_G11 5y ago
  What is the point of articles like this? They are so disingenuous, pretending a faux-surprise that innovation has to work against immense resistance in the workplace (and life in general). You have to be hopelessly naive and indoctrinated by ivory tower institutionalism to be surprised at the way real life works. The next time you are on a management course which asks 'How do you foster innovation in the workplace?' or 'Do you see yourself as a rebel?' just write the obligatory guff and think of how you, the boss and your mates can have a few beers and work out how to shut down Bob, Sue or Jo because 'He / she's bright, sure, but his / her people skills could use a bit of work.'
geocrasher 5y ago
I thought we called those "hackers".
mylons 5y ago
Siri, play Vindicated by Dashboard Confessional
drewcoo 5y ago
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw
lnsru 5y ago
It’s very romantic about these pirates. But what if the flight director was not leader from ancient times? I really like HP way and other antique management theories. But now I meet very often people that are really really comfortable in their management positions and only care about their compensation. Every rebellious idea is a risk project for them and must be killed ASAP. From I own experience I can say one thing: don’t rock the boat. In different organizations the risk level varies. Wanna risk and rebellion - start your own company!
- watwut 5y ago
  I think that they knew there is reasonable chance the director might support them and trusts them. They worked on this system for months, it is unlikely that "legendary leader" found about whole thing when they walked into mission control. They did not knew whether whole thing will succeed overall, but at minimum they did had pre-existing trust. People are not dumb. They know politics of situation they work in. These people were not random renegades ignoring any authority on principle or some such.
throw737858 5y ago
Coworkers get together, and in their spare time reimplement entire system, but 10x better. They love their work and are "true" hackers... all very romantic. That is not how it works. Today it is about politics and preventing other people from ruining your work. In ideal world incompetent managers would get fired, and workers would get their salaries. But that is not how it works. Just the fact they are called "deviants" or "rebels" tells it. So if you are 10x at something, start your own consulting business. Do not work for morons.
whereistimbo 5y ago
That reminded me of my own thought/opinion why China would be forever copycats compared to the US. At least the difference can be seen in China vs Taiwan. One is a suppressive government, and another one is a democratic country.
jollybean 5y ago
Ideas are not that hard really. What people have a hard time understanding is that ideas themselves are not worth that much, they're at the top of a wide funnel which is narrow at the bottom. Ideas are cheap, they evolve into more fleshed out concepts, which evolve into products which evolve into 'good' products. It's a very narrowing process. For every successful rebel, there are many for whom it didn't work. Operational competence, scale, market power ... those things are what really facilitate good ideas and make them worthwhile.
- username90 5y ago
  Good ideas are ridiculously hard to find really and also extremely important. However most people with ideas don't have good ideas, and they can't recognize that their ideas suck so we tell them that ideas doesn't matter rather than the truth that their ideas suck. Example of a good idea without good execution: Minecraft. Billion dollar product that could have been made by any half competent game engine programmer with some game designer friend. If anyone have an idea like that I'd love to build it, but they almost surely don't.
  - js8 5y ago
    Um, Minecraft was executed very well. Maybe not as technically advanced as it could be, but Notch had a very good grasp on the player loop (you explore, you get resources, you build something..) and his artistic choices had a certain "poetry" (take now iconic creeper as a canonical example), which I think greatly contributed to the success of the game.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    This is upside down. Ideas down stay consistent through the funnel - they are mixed with other ideas and formed into something else unrecognizable by the time they hit the bottom. You just described Minecraft as being a brilliant idea, not a bad one.
  - scollet 5y ago
    That idea was made by an extremely competent programmer. It was called InfiniMiner and it exactly fits the mold you've provided. Minecraft was then executed on it to an astounding creative success. https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/
dorkmind 5y ago
I would argue that outright heresy is the way to go; rebellion only gets you so far.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  Ironically, if you succeed in your argument that heresy is the way to to go, you'll find yourself in a logical absurdity. If you are successful in your argument and convert sufficient numbers to aim at heresy, then "be a heretic" becomes the new orthodoxy. When that happens, "be orthodox" will be the new heresy, and it will be impossible not to be a heretic: the orthodox will aim at heresy, and those aiming at orthodoxy will be heretical.
  - thanatos519 5y ago
    That reminds me of this: The price of success in philosophy is triviality. -- Clark Glymour
    - dorkmind 5y ago
      This is also said of mathematics, but rather when the student is successful in learning a theorem.
renewiltord 5y ago
The revelation that sparked Silicon Valley is that you can either permit your rebellious workers to power you to great heights or you can let them leave to eat your lunch. They will compete with you if you cannot let them serve you.
georgeburdell 5y ago
I'm by no means a prominent employee within the company, but I am unusually well-remunerated for my role. I attribute this to hiding about 1/3 of what I do from my manager until it's ready to demonstrate. I usually have 1-2 projects my manager knows about and is regularly tracking, then 2-3 "skunkworks" projects in various stages of development that get prioritized based on the word around the org. For example, I might hear from our data center team at a regular meeting that they need to buy 5% more racks based on current usage projections. I might have been working on optimizing a key data saving routine that reduces usage by 10% (fictitious numbers), so this gets bumped up in priority. So when my manager asks the team the following week if they have any ideas on how to improve our code, I've already got something halfway working. My manager (and I) get to look good, and I got to amortize the work across a few months instead of suffering through crunch time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  The way you describe your role sounds like the way a Technical Fellow is supposed to operate within an organisation.
- fleischhauf 5y ago
  So you work in some scrum framework with tasks and sprints? I wonder how feasible that is in frameworks like that
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Easy enough in my experience. You just build in time for these projects into your estimates.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      Isn't that cheating the system though? Giving an inflated time estimate is lying to your team. While this gets the job done, I don't think it should be encouraged. (Just a disclaimer, I do it too)
jesus147 5y ago
Thanks for sharing such great information, the post you published have some great information which is quite beneficial for me. https://www.myloweslife.biz/ https://www.myloweslife.biz/
jarl-ragnar 5y ago
As an engineering manager I’ve found that the most innovative and impactful work is usually done when the pressure of being on the critical path for delivery is absent. One way to achieve this is to do the work under the radar and only expose it more widely once it’s at a point where the benefit is easier for general management to see. Work on the critical path is visible and that, with the fear of the personal impact of failure can drive risk aversion behaviours in those engineers involved.
- wsgeorge 5y ago
  It's pretty cool that a comment in this same thread said they do this exact same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27499731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27499731
whereistimbo 5y ago
But that thing could also backfire. That reminded me of organizational chart that show divisions in Microsoft pointing gun at each other[0]. [0]: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
bernardlunn 5y ago
Machines ie robots are always obedient. Humans are not - phew!
nobrains 5y ago
There is a fine line between those rebellious workers who give good ideas and then take ownership of their idea till the end, and those who throw ideas out, but don't want to have to do anything with implementing those ideas. No one likes the latter.
_trampeltier 5y ago
It's not just about rebellious. It's also about just about "just do something about it" without asking the boss/teamleader. The problem is often just how much free time you have on work to do such things. Another problem is, if you fix small things allways by yourself in the background, the real problem might stay forever.
- lbriner 5y ago
  This is true but also where wisdom comes in. It should be OK to spend 5 seconds saying, "I saw X, is it OK for me to fix it?", which allows people to know of a problem they might not know and also for management to say, "Don't bother, we are going to replace that next month". As a more experienced engineer, I am more accustomed to what is reasonable to "just go and fix" and what needs dicussion. I have devs who sometimes spend 2 or 3 days+ doing something that could have been done much quicker if they had discussed what they planned first instead of trying to be helpful!
  - varjag 5y ago
    > It should be OK to spend 5 seconds saying, "I saw X, is it OK for me to fix it?" "Let's have a meeting about this in 10 days."
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    > I have devs who sometimes spend 2 or 3 days+ doing something that could have been done much quicker if they had discussed what they planned first instead of trying to be helpful! My experience is that you might get suggestions that are nowhere near how you planned to do it and it wrecks your mental picture of how it should be done. Discussions ofent lead to backseat development.
eric4smith 5y ago
In my experience "rebellious" workers provide many, many, many ideas. BUT, most of them are absolute crap. However the needle in the haystack? Is absolutely great. So the challenge is to not let yourself be led down the path of the crap ideas -- which happens more than what we would like to admit.
- mathgenius 5y ago
  I consider myself one of the rebellious workers, and fully admit most of my ideas should be thrown out the window. I spend a lot of my time ruthlessly invalidating those ideas. The most difficult are the ones that cannot be immediately disposed of, they can sometimes linger on for years. The fearful leader types, on the other hand, will leap at the first idea they have and then "pile on", in a grim white-fisted way, until death do they part from their idea. This leads to fucking chaos, and is generally why these types do not like new ideas but prefer incremental approaches. IMO. A big revelation happened for me in 2006, when I was privileged to participate in a Pypy sprint. The Pypy codebase is by far the most creative and awe-inspiring codebase I've ever seen. At the time, Armin Rigo and his close collaborator (Samuel?) were spit-balling ideas for implementing a particular idea. These guys stood at the whiteboard and went through one spectacular genius idea, one after another, until they found something they really liked. I would have stopped at the first genius idea, but not these guys. That was a big lesson for me in programming and definitely lifted my game.
- scollet 5y ago
  Yep. There's probably a function that describes this. Since I started experimenting in games development and design, I've learned that ideas are like a daily crossword puzzle (or a similar analogy). Start small. You can write it down. You don't have to finish it (now). You should probably throw it away after a week. Over time, you're more likely to find a different permutation of ideas that you had not considered before. Other analagous platitudes.
dukodk 5y ago
Seems like a low risk test, it’s kinda a no-brainer. They used their free time and they had it running alongside the main program. Have to remember if they didn’t have the comparison, I don’t think it would be as good a story. “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened”
- wccrawford 5y ago
  “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened” While I agree... The first few years at my current company, they kept telling me I did really good work, but I was too slow. Then we had a security breach, and then an audit. My code was the only code that they found no vulnerabilities in, and most of the rest of the code was riddled with them. (TBF, there have been security vulnerabilities in my code, they just didn't find them in that audit. I'm not perfect.) Since then, they have never complained about me being slow. While that's not credit for fixing problems that didn't happen, I think it's the closest thing out there.
  - jon-wood 5y ago
    I have a slightly different interpretation of this, and it comes down to the horrible manager-ese phrase "risk appetite". As a small scrappy startup shipping is the absolute priority - get something out in front of customers, because the existential risk to the company is that you run out of money before you've got either a sustainable income or investment. Security might get some lip service paid, but ultimately who cares if your code is insecure when there's no customers who's data is at risk yet. Over time the company will (hopefully) grow its customer base. Maybe you get some big B2B contract to fulfil. That's the point at which things like security audits land, and people start having to really care about security, because now there's half a million people in your databases, and if they get compromised you're going to be front page news. You need different kinds of people as a company grows. The scrappy "get it shipped" engineers of the early days are going to find it increasingly difficult to function in a larger process focused organisation because its no longer just a case of sitting down over lunch to hash out a new feature before hacking something together in the afternoon. Process means that's now a multi-week process involving three different departments, followed by a month of waiting until the necessary people are available to actually build it. I don't really have any good answers to that. I suspect small skunkworks like teams are probably a good first step to being able to retain those early engineers into the later stages of a company, but I've never had the chance to try it.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I love to hear about successful rebels, but for every success, there are many failures. Some, quite spectacular (google “Nick Leeson”). Usually, in order to succeed, the “rebel” needs to have a lot of experience and good judgment. This generally comes from being older, and from surviving for a long time in the company; traits that do not necessarily suggest the rebellious attitude and courage needed.
arcanon 5y ago
Who exactly is characterizing the workers with great ideas as rebellious, here? The real story is always parasitic toxic management. An idea’s existence is enough to threaten power structures.
bonoboTP 5y ago
The main point is missing from the article: such rebels threaten the authority and career of seniors or other power dynamics at the organization. You propose some new solution that may be somewhat better, but the existing system was designed by someone who seeks a promotion and is owed a favor by a superior for some reason. They may have insecurities around their existing system and feel the need to justify their high position and salary, even if they are now not as productive as the youngsters, because they may now have a family etc and don't have as much time and energy or whatever. In other cases the problem can be that the career risk-benefit balance is negative for the manager. Or they are planning on dragging out the improvements in smaller jumps, to demonstrate constant improvement over many years to optimize career advancement. If the improvement happens all at once and suddenly, it will look too simple and less credit that can be squeezed out of it. TLDR improving things can make some people look bad and they will fight you.
hermannj314 5y ago
In my career, I have seen individuals all over the map if the x-axis is rebelliousness and the y-axis is value delivered. There are high performing rebels and low performing do-rights and vice versa. As someone with past experience in a highly regulated field (biopharma, food safety, etc.), the rule-followers are running the show and a rebel (as the article defines it) will be burned out if they aren't careful. However, that industry is ripe for disruption. The rules and best practices that have emerged over the decades have weak link to regulatory or legal sources. I would frequently ask for justification how a particular policy connected to an audit finding or a law and these connections are usually weak or non-existent. Even moreover, if the link could be established, it wasn't clear or documented why this decision taken was considered optimal for the organization, many times it was the fastest solution that made QA/QC happy. As you can guess, the emergent systems are horribly inefficient yet difficult to change. Highly-regulated industries are ripe with 'thats how we do it' inefficiencies that insiders have accepted as necessary for legal compliance but that could be disrupted by rebels that return to source material (legal statute, auditor interpretations) and reinvision the whole business model from the ground up.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
Sometimes the one with the idea cannot know other, interwinded procedures which would break if his idea was implemented. If this happens all the time and/or a product manager tells you to submit a ticket and the review does not happen within 6 months, if it is forcing you to do repetitive tasks and you can find better compensation elsewhere......run as fast as you can.
trabant00 5y ago
The devil is always in the details and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Only in retrospect can you verify the "great" part in great idea. Until then you only really have an deviant idea which could be: - taking a fence down without knowing why it was put up - CV driven development - is/ought problem - the French revolution :) Opposition to change is not a bad thing, if isn't extreme (we're not changing anything for any reason no matter what). It forces change to justify itself and its costs, because there are always costs. Personally I hate these kind of articles. They take a few survivor examples and extrapolate that X is good, -X is bad. In reality you can only move the cursor a little on the (-X, X) axis and observe the outcomes after a relatively long term.
elevenoh 5y ago
Getting through engineering education alone can be enough to kill the rebel in many.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Three books come to mind: - "Rebel Talent : Why It Pays to Break the Rules" by Francesca Gino https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/rebel-talent-why-it-pays-to-break-the-rules-at-work-and-in-life_francesca-gino/17987469/?resultid=ebcb1b81-7be3-42ff-ae62-df97c217dde5#edition=18970366&idiq=27932496 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/rebel-talent-why-it-pays-to-br... - "Originals : How Non-Conformists Move the..." by Adam M. Grant https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/originals-how-non-conformists-move-the-world_adam-m-grant/9652057/?resultid=a91bb039-84cd-414c-927a-5d474740df73#edition=13244474&idiq=23737242 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/originals-how-non-conformists-... - "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/outliers-the-story-of-success-by-malcolm-gladwell/245740/?resultid=8c47a715-33a7-428a-a19e-e33eca029408#edition=6000254&idiq=4013405 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/outliers-the-story-of-success-...
dotancohen 5y ago
The TED Talk on "internal rebels" within a company was extraordinarily insightful. https://www.ted.com/talks/shoel_perelman_how_a_company_can_nurture_its_internal_rebels/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/shoel_perelman_how_a_company_can_n...
okareaman 5y ago
You might have a great idea if an unusually high number reject your idea for no good reason. On the other hand, you know you had a great idea if your boss takes credit for it.
bitwize 5y ago
For most companies, "rebellious workers" are a problem easily solved with issuance of pink slips. It is in your career's best interest not to be too rebellious.
bumby 5y ago
>Often these ‘rebels with a cause’ – also known as positive or constructive “deviants” – may be motivated because they care for the organisation and its mission, and feel psychological discomfort when they see that important capabilities clearly need improvement. I think this is a crucial distinction - the “rebels” are biased towards improvement. However, I’ve also seen rule breaking tolerated in organizations as a means of maintaining the status quo which leads to complacency rather than progress.
fooker 5y ago
There is just deviance, no positive deviance or negative deviance. You can't put a filter for this.

293 points by sonabinu 5y ago

The fact that offering an idea that's better than what's already being done is seen as rebellious at all, as opposed to being the entire job of an engineer, or the definition of what engineers do, is not a good sign for any organization. Next they'll be talking about rebellious accountants who have recorded more numbers by the end of the day than were in the spreadsheet at the beginning, or subversive lawyers who review contracts that had not already been reviewed. Before long it will take a fifth-column delivery driver to move a pizza to a location it's never been before.

shoto_io 5y ago
I absolutely agree, and at the same time it’s how large and (!) mid-sized companies often work. And it’s not only management that behaves like that but many employees as well. When I was a manager in a mid-sized companies I was a strong proponent of what I called “The dictatorship of ideas”. Let’s not care where the idea is coming from but try to create better and better ideas all the time. Not everyone liked it.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  >>> Let’s not care where the idea is coming from but try to create better and better ideas all the time. Not everyone liked it. Not everyone liked it because it was improving the company without changing the political status quo. It's a bit like Washington and Franklin saying 'Hey we want Representation and Taxation" and King George saying "Ok, but you stay as subjects" Lots of small ideas can improve an organisation, but sometime big ideas imply 'regime change'
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    Yeah, thanks for the reminder. I realized that a bit too late. But: In a company it's also way more difficult to identify who is American and who is British ;)
    - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
      Its easy: We Brits swear waaay more!
rantwasp 5y ago
it’s one thing to offer an idea or point out something could be done in a different, better way. completely different when you’re told it’s not gonna be done that way but you go ahead and do it anyway. the “rebellious” attitude also comes with you sinking in more time (you need to do your “dayjob” on top of this, right?) and with the real consequences if what you’re doing rubs people the wrong way/is seen as wasting time.
gopalv 5y ago
> The fact that offering an idea that's better than what's already being done is seen as rebellious at all, as opposed to being the entire job of an engineer, or the definition of what engineers do, is not a good sign for any organization. That is exactly what happens, but not because your management isn't listening. The sacrifice of good ideas is done in the name of predictability or viability. I've been witness to and driven a few of these sorts of moves and what has struck me is that successful "by-pass of management" rebellion costs time, effort and most importantly is a test of active leadership skills. There was a system which I was working on which absolutely sucked (for me personally, because I worked on performance and it couldn't be improved without changing the architecture). There was a way to rewrite about 25% of the system under different assumptions which would fix the performance issues, but the system that was in production already had several other issues which needed to be prioritized over performance. For a manager in front of a customer, of course, we're absolutely committed to fixing whatever is broken. That goes back into engineering, where the rewrite wouldn't have half the bugs we have, but it looks like Dunkirk when it fails. The manager has no way to actually approve the rewrite, when they're trying to hire immediately to just do the work that's already on the plan. Anyway, long story short, there was an intern for the summer who did the rewrite and get it working to the point where the next generation system was almost entirely built out by a single uninterrupted intern over two months (& his code is still in prod today). The methods needed to break rules and succeed are often just the same qualities needed to "just succeed", except the breaking of rules is necessary to prevent the regression to mean. And if you don't succeed, being disavowed like this means worse results than following orders. There's something to be said about the motivation of a team after burning their boats. I'm gearing up to do one of those off-the-books project right now. And the tolerance for risk is clearly something I'm having less of each year. That said, surviving failure does more for your confidence than clutch, but definitely would like less red in the ledger.
- endymi0n 5y ago
  Pretty much spot on. The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. Take out any of those and you get either nothing or a disaster. But if all come together, you will have someone on your team who doesn't just recognize that missed opportunity the other excellent other engineers already realized, but actively go against the plans of at least one level of management in order to do what's right for the company. They tend to create a lot of friction, but can often save a project. I personally love working with these kinds of people as I was formerly one of them — and they can and often do make the best managers later on (funnily enough, I've heard similar stories in the bio of almost any technology leader I respect). Having made the mistake more than one time of accidentally enabling people who didn't have the loyalty / optimism or technical excellence parts though, I get why these kinds of people are usually held in place in large organizations. The resulting friction, bickering and havoc can as well break teams and companies.
wisty 5y ago
I think this part of the answer to the Theory of the firm (this weird thing where companies seem to do better than work from home gig economies). On the one hands, if people just do what they want, it's total chaos. Everyone thinks they know best. Everyone wants to be a creative genius (ok, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people). Management needs to make things actually productive (exploit rather than explore). On the other hand, sometimes someone really is onto a good thing. Ideally, they'd instantly be recognised for this, and given a team and support staff, but managers aren't gods, they're just human beings. Here's an adaptive solution internal "risk taking" innovation is discouraged, but not usually a firing offense (depending on the time / resources spent, and whether you're keeping up with the rest of your work), because occasionally there is a big win that comes out of this.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Risk taking is only a problem if it demands resources that would starve other known-good projects. Sometimes even that doesn't make it a problem, because the company may decided top-to-bottom that New Project X is a good idea, even when it's extremely risky. This can create spectacular success when it works and catastrophic failure when it doesn't. Either way, this kind of strategic risk should go through the C-suite. Smaller tactical projects are what Fridays are for. Throw some nominal resources at engineers, give them some free time, and see what happens. If they can produce a working proof of concept - not just a cloud of PowerPoint and meetings - you may have something to run with.
rukuu001 5y ago
The status-quo is 'the work'. It's what's measured to determine how effective employees are. New ideas are a threat to that.
4gotunameagain 5y ago
We are also talking about space, a notoriously risk averse sector, where innovation is allowed to exist only where absolutely necessary, or in technology demonstration missions. Unfortunately when failure is not an option, taking risks is even more risky..
- Fordec 5y ago
  Interesting fact, 80% of satellites are now built outside the US. A surprising number of cubesats are built in the UK for example. The US regulatory framework, which has decades of legacy and history working with the likes of Lockheed has frozen the industry in the risk aversion. Only in the last five years have satellites been removed from the munitions list. Have fun with all the legal paperwork to hire an immigrant to work on a space project. Most of the work is now done elsewhere in places that don't have a space legacy, because of this exact risk aversion.
ramraj07 5y ago
There are two types of ideas, one is the practical improvement that can and should be heard and considered seriously, and then there are the “great ideas” which a lot of engineers are happy to spew out, but are often unable to follow through because they think more highly of themselves than they ought to. The reality is that software fields are brimming with people who’ve been paid exorbitant sums for mediocre work from people who wouldn’t otherwise even qualify as above average in general intelligence. If the teams don’t listen to engineers often it’s at least partly because of such past experiences. A good company will be a place where the engineers who are capable of following through with great ideas are being listened to while the remainder are kept at their place so to speak.
- afarrell 5y ago
  Or they are unable to follow through because engineering is a team activity and so they cannot follow through if people don’t listen enough to consider the idea.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- _0ffh 5y ago
  One of the drawbacks of managers who are not good engineers themselves is that they lack the ability and knowledge to distinguish between truly excellent talent and pretenders. That's an organisational deficiency.
  - alex-mohr 5y ago
    For a decent take on that organizational deficiency, Rickover wrote a 1.5 page memo in 1953 addressing similar issues for the nuclear US Navy. At some point, it's a failing of process and structure rather than people. [1] 1: http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdf
    - 5y ago
peterkelly 5y ago
My thoughts exactly. This sentence really struck me as a strange thing to write: > Often these ‘rebels with a cause’ – also known as positive or constructive “deviants” – may be motivated because they care for the organisation and its mission, and feel psychological discomfort when they see that important capabilities clearly need improvement. If you don't feel that way about your work, then what the hell are you even doing there?
- throwaway87163 5y ago
  Not every job can be a passion. Sometimes people just need the money and are only there because of it.
- Dudeman112 5y ago
  Working in a pleasant job for enough money to live comfortably, of course. Drink the Silicon Valley kool aid with moderation.
- mtberatwork 5y ago
  I can guarantee you the company does not feel the same way about the `rebel with a cause` as the rebel feels about the company, especially when times get critical. Unless you are the founder, it's best not to get too caught up in mission statements.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    And even founders are not completely immune. See Steve Jobs, ca 1985
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > If you don't feel that way about your work, then what the hell are you even doing there? I think it’s possible to care about doing a good job without caring about the company.
- astura 5y ago
  Um... Working? Presumably.
xwolfi 5y ago
Depends what you call a better idea. You know surely as much as me that we engineer will propose maybe better concept but would lack possibly in sales acument, value production vs cost, market timing, optimal quality (sometimes a client really doesnt care about a quality increment at all, while you could have spent your time on something else more rewarding), etc. It's fine, company work as symbiotic systems, we create a certain tension, others focused on other dimensions will counter balance, and a good company will find ways to reach optimums rather than maximums.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  >Depends what you call a better idea. Proven idea is a better idea. That's what the article touches on but doesn't explore as their examples are all proven ideas. We don't hear much about non-proven or bad ideas by their own circumstances.
goto11 5y ago
Ideas are cheap. Investing in following a particular idea is costly and risky, especially since this also have to opportunity cost of not following a range of other ideas, given any business have limited resources. Such stories of course have a selection bias since everyone like a rebel pirate hero story but businesses and organization don't brag about failed projects. After all, the space shuttle blew up due to high risk engineering. In those case we blame the management. “we are always chasing after things other companies won’t touch”. - sounds great, unless you realize this also what CueCat did.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  The other inertia is that companies are usually already doing something that is quite profitable. And all the people they’ve hired are good at doing the things that make the company profitable. It takes long-term thinking to see that it won’t last forever.
coldtea 5y ago
>is not a good sign for any organization On the other hand reality doesn't operate optimally.
NoOneNew 5y ago
This isnt about proper management methodology. This is about better ways at redirecting blame away from leadership. "No, the project didnt fail because I micromanage, overwork my crew, create artificial roadblocks, drown in arbitrary meetings and in general am a cunt. No, no, no, my team just wasn't properly in the rebellion spectrum to accomplish the task. I need a pay raise and a bigger budget." Seriously, 80% of good leadership is someone doing honest self reflection after a decision, "if I was them, would I think I was a piece of shit?" Yes, in that language, because being crass is being honest. If so, alter the decision. If not, its probably an acceptable decision by the crew. A one page primer in terms of how not be an asshole as a leader is far more honest and effective than all these over intellectualize mental masturbation studies combined. Mutual respect and trust between leadership and the crew is what makes effective teams. But hey, that takes work, knowledge, compassion and fraternization. You know what doesn't take work and all that other hard stuff? Bullshit checklists. Then you can show how it's the plebs' fault, not yours.
heywherelogingo 5y ago
This just sounds like the UK to me - anal retentive and compliant, so no surprise coming from the BBC. Short back and sides, suit, pointy shoes, don't stick your neck out.
- samjewell 5y ago
  I’ve worked my whole career in the UK (7 years software eng, plus a bit in other jobs). Sounds from your comment like you’ve had better experiences in other countries. Is that right? Which ones, and how?
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
it's this very fact, that bucking the normative or bucking the convention within an organization is why I've always argued for "assholes" or disruptive types who can back up their attitude with what they can bring to the office. People value cohesiveness, those who play ball. People will talk about the "constructive ways" to contribute but the reality is there becomes a lot of social and professional peer pressure to stay in line and often doing things hte "nice way" but continues the status quo and gets you ignored, overlooked, or worse - walked all over and ostracized. It takes someone not giving two shits, to change paradigms within a corporate culture. That means people hard to get a long with. It means someone who more rigid and conservative management types don't want to tolerate. It means the "everyone holds hands and get along" leftist hipsters don't want to tolerate them. Corporate culture enforces extreme compliancy to the group, in almost evey company. People who play nice and are competent are necessary for smooth operations, but disruptive types who may even be accused of being "toxic" (as long as they have skillsets, judgement and insight) are also necessary. A company can't be filled wikth these types. But filled with the polite hivemind? They're prone to stagnation.
usgroup 5y ago
Well, I like the extremity of your point, its instructive. However, I think challenging the majority usually comes with more baggage than just volunteering better ideas. I think being the my-ideas-are-better-than-yours guy, is having a better perspective that leads to conceptualising the whole problem differently. It can make everyone else feel inferior in a deep way. Being that guy is also hella frustrating, because doing things worse than they need to be done is frustrating. So you end up pissed at your colleagues or just thinking less of them. They pick up on it. Distance starts to grow. You end up in some little cliche in the office. Distance grows more. You end up being even more challenging. Distance grows more. And so on. It just has a whole human process around it. Its rarely about a trick or two here or there.
xf1cf 5y ago
You have a very gracious view of engineers. At least by C-Suite standards. To the C-suite engineers are a cost center to be minimized. You are a robot, or better yet, a "resource" (to use the industry term) that consumes money and does some set of tasks. These tasks are tracked in JIRA. The KPI dashboard for the C-suite is like SCADA control but instead of big machines its a bunch of cogs. Like all good, functioning, and regimented engines wobbly cogs (the creative kind!) are removed expeditiously and replaced with more compliant and in-spec cogs. To everyone BUT engineers, engineers are just the minions that glue existing frameworks together. To challenge this idea is tantamount to heresy. Deviating from the norm costs even more money and considering they still have to figure out how to pay the CTO (most likely a "thought leader" and not an engineer) their extensive benefits this creative detour just ate into that budget. This is not some sign of a "bad org". It's every org of any significant size. Once you start having actual management creative freedom is just a fever dream. Creative freedom is reserved for an even more exclusive cost center called "Research and Development" which is often cut just before the rest of herd is culled to keep bonuses. Don't worry, none of us will ever see this. It's exclusive to engineers pulled from Top-5 FAANG-likes and the CEOs kids. The best strategy you can have as a engineer in all but the prime cut positions is to keep your head down, do your 8 hours, and leave. When you get tired of doing that at one place, go to another. Repeat this for 30 years. No MBA-style management strategy will ever optimize for your happiness, or your desire to actually make an impact. Why would you want to make waves anyway? When they hand you your termination papers all of that effort is wasted. There are better uses of your time, outside work, where you have actual control.
Andy_G11 5y ago
What is the point of articles like this? They are so disingenuous, pretending a faux-surprise that innovation has to work against immense resistance in the workplace (and life in general). You have to be hopelessly naive and indoctrinated by ivory tower institutionalism to be surprised at the way real life works. The next time you are on a management course which asks 'How do you foster innovation in the workplace?' or 'Do you see yourself as a rebel?' just write the obligatory guff and think of how you, the boss and your mates can have a few beers and work out how to shut down Bob, Sue or Jo because 'He / she's bright, sure, but his / her people skills could use a bit of work.'

geocrasher 5y ago

I thought we called those "hackers".

mylons 5y ago

Siri, play Vindicated by Dashboard Confessional

drewcoo 5y ago

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

lnsru 5y ago

It’s very romantic about these pirates. But what if the flight director was not leader from ancient times? I really like HP way and other antique management theories. But now I meet very often people that are really really comfortable in their management positions and only care about their compensation. Every rebellious idea is a risk project for them and must be killed ASAP. From I own experience I can say one thing: don’t rock the boat. In different organizations the risk level varies. Wanna risk and rebellion - start your own company!

watwut 5y ago
I think that they knew there is reasonable chance the director might support them and trusts them. They worked on this system for months, it is unlikely that "legendary leader" found about whole thing when they walked into mission control. They did not knew whether whole thing will succeed overall, but at minimum they did had pre-existing trust. People are not dumb. They know politics of situation they work in. These people were not random renegades ignoring any authority on principle or some such.

throw737858 5y ago

Coworkers get together, and in their spare time reimplement entire system, but 10x better. They love their work and are "true" hackers... all very romantic. That is not how it works. Today it is about politics and preventing other people from ruining your work. In ideal world incompetent managers would get fired, and workers would get their salaries. But that is not how it works. Just the fact they are called "deviants" or "rebels" tells it. So if you are 10x at something, start your own consulting business. Do not work for morons.

whereistimbo 5y ago

That reminded me of my own thought/opinion why China would be forever copycats compared to the US. At least the difference can be seen in China vs Taiwan. One is a suppressive government, and another one is a democratic country.

jollybean 5y ago

Ideas are not that hard really. What people have a hard time understanding is that ideas themselves are not worth that much, they're at the top of a wide funnel which is narrow at the bottom. Ideas are cheap, they evolve into more fleshed out concepts, which evolve into products which evolve into 'good' products. It's a very narrowing process. For every successful rebel, there are many for whom it didn't work. Operational competence, scale, market power ... those things are what really facilitate good ideas and make them worthwhile.

username90 5y ago
Good ideas are ridiculously hard to find really and also extremely important. However most people with ideas don't have good ideas, and they can't recognize that their ideas suck so we tell them that ideas doesn't matter rather than the truth that their ideas suck. Example of a good idea without good execution: Minecraft. Billion dollar product that could have been made by any half competent game engine programmer with some game designer friend. If anyone have an idea like that I'd love to build it, but they almost surely don't.
- js8 5y ago
  Um, Minecraft was executed very well. Maybe not as technically advanced as it could be, but Notch had a very good grasp on the player loop (you explore, you get resources, you build something..) and his artistic choices had a certain "poetry" (take now iconic creeper as a canonical example), which I think greatly contributed to the success of the game.
- jollybean 5y ago
  This is upside down. Ideas down stay consistent through the funnel - they are mixed with other ideas and formed into something else unrecognizable by the time they hit the bottom. You just described Minecraft as being a brilliant idea, not a bad one.
- scollet 5y ago
  That idea was made by an extremely competent programmer. It was called InfiniMiner and it exactly fits the mold you've provided. Minecraft was then executed on it to an astounding creative success. https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/

dorkmind 5y ago

I would argue that outright heresy is the way to go; rebellion only gets you so far.

ARandomerDude 5y ago
Ironically, if you succeed in your argument that heresy is the way to to go, you'll find yourself in a logical absurdity. If you are successful in your argument and convert sufficient numbers to aim at heresy, then "be a heretic" becomes the new orthodoxy. When that happens, "be orthodox" will be the new heresy, and it will be impossible not to be a heretic: the orthodox will aim at heresy, and those aiming at orthodoxy will be heretical.
- thanatos519 5y ago
  That reminds me of this: The price of success in philosophy is triviality. -- Clark Glymour
  - dorkmind 5y ago
    This is also said of mathematics, but rather when the student is successful in learning a theorem.

renewiltord 5y ago

The revelation that sparked Silicon Valley is that you can either permit your rebellious workers to power you to great heights or you can let them leave to eat your lunch. They will compete with you if you cannot let them serve you.

georgeburdell 5y ago

I'm by no means a prominent employee within the company, but I am unusually well-remunerated for my role. I attribute this to hiding about 1/3 of what I do from my manager until it's ready to demonstrate. I usually have 1-2 projects my manager knows about and is regularly tracking, then 2-3 "skunkworks" projects in various stages of development that get prioritized based on the word around the org. For example, I might hear from our data center team at a regular meeting that they need to buy 5% more racks based on current usage projections. I might have been working on optimizing a key data saving routine that reduces usage by 10% (fictitious numbers), so this gets bumped up in priority. So when my manager asks the team the following week if they have any ideas on how to improve our code, I've already got something halfway working. My manager (and I) get to look good, and I got to amortize the work across a few months instead of suffering through crunch time.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
andyjohnson0 5y ago
The way you describe your role sounds like the way a Technical Fellow is supposed to operate within an organisation.
fleischhauf 5y ago
So you work in some scrum framework with tasks and sprints? I wonder how feasible that is in frameworks like that
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Easy enough in my experience. You just build in time for these projects into your estimates.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    Isn't that cheating the system though? Giving an inflated time estimate is lying to your team. While this gets the job done, I don't think it should be encouraged. (Just a disclaimer, I do it too)

jesus147 5y ago

Thanks for sharing such great information, the post you published have some great information which is quite beneficial for me. https://www.myloweslife.biz/ https://www.myloweslife.biz/

jarl-ragnar 5y ago

As an engineering manager I’ve found that the most innovative and impactful work is usually done when the pressure of being on the critical path for delivery is absent. One way to achieve this is to do the work under the radar and only expose it more widely once it’s at a point where the benefit is easier for general management to see. Work on the critical path is visible and that, with the fear of the personal impact of failure can drive risk aversion behaviours in those engineers involved.

wsgeorge 5y ago
It's pretty cool that a comment in this same thread said they do this exact same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27499731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27499731

whereistimbo 5y ago

But that thing could also backfire. That reminded me of organizational chart that show divisions in Microsoft pointing gun at each other[0]. [0]: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

bernardlunn 5y ago

Machines ie robots are always obedient. Humans are not - phew!

nobrains 5y ago

There is a fine line between those rebellious workers who give good ideas and then take ownership of their idea till the end, and those who throw ideas out, but don't want to have to do anything with implementing those ideas. No one likes the latter.

_trampeltier 5y ago

It's not just about rebellious. It's also about just about "just do something about it" without asking the boss/teamleader. The problem is often just how much free time you have on work to do such things. Another problem is, if you fix small things allways by yourself in the background, the real problem might stay forever.

lbriner 5y ago
This is true but also where wisdom comes in. It should be OK to spend 5 seconds saying, "I saw X, is it OK for me to fix it?", which allows people to know of a problem they might not know and also for management to say, "Don't bother, we are going to replace that next month". As a more experienced engineer, I am more accustomed to what is reasonable to "just go and fix" and what needs dicussion. I have devs who sometimes spend 2 or 3 days+ doing something that could have been done much quicker if they had discussed what they planned first instead of trying to be helpful!
- varjag 5y ago
  > It should be OK to spend 5 seconds saying, "I saw X, is it OK for me to fix it?" "Let's have a meeting about this in 10 days."
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > I have devs who sometimes spend 2 or 3 days+ doing something that could have been done much quicker if they had discussed what they planned first instead of trying to be helpful! My experience is that you might get suggestions that are nowhere near how you planned to do it and it wrecks your mental picture of how it should be done. Discussions ofent lead to backseat development.

eric4smith 5y ago

In my experience "rebellious" workers provide many, many, many ideas. BUT, most of them are absolute crap. However the needle in the haystack? Is absolutely great. So the challenge is to not let yourself be led down the path of the crap ideas -- which happens more than what we would like to admit.

mathgenius 5y ago
I consider myself one of the rebellious workers, and fully admit most of my ideas should be thrown out the window. I spend a lot of my time ruthlessly invalidating those ideas. The most difficult are the ones that cannot be immediately disposed of, they can sometimes linger on for years. The fearful leader types, on the other hand, will leap at the first idea they have and then "pile on", in a grim white-fisted way, until death do they part from their idea. This leads to fucking chaos, and is generally why these types do not like new ideas but prefer incremental approaches. IMO. A big revelation happened for me in 2006, when I was privileged to participate in a Pypy sprint. The Pypy codebase is by far the most creative and awe-inspiring codebase I've ever seen. At the time, Armin Rigo and his close collaborator (Samuel?) were spit-balling ideas for implementing a particular idea. These guys stood at the whiteboard and went through one spectacular genius idea, one after another, until they found something they really liked. I would have stopped at the first genius idea, but not these guys. That was a big lesson for me in programming and definitely lifted my game.
scollet 5y ago
Yep. There's probably a function that describes this. Since I started experimenting in games development and design, I've learned that ideas are like a daily crossword puzzle (or a similar analogy). Start small. You can write it down. You don't have to finish it (now). You should probably throw it away after a week. Over time, you're more likely to find a different permutation of ideas that you had not considered before. Other analagous platitudes.

dukodk 5y ago

Seems like a low risk test, it’s kinda a no-brainer. They used their free time and they had it running alongside the main program. Have to remember if they didn’t have the comparison, I don’t think it would be as good a story. “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened”

wccrawford 5y ago
“Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened” While I agree... The first few years at my current company, they kept telling me I did really good work, but I was too slow. Then we had a security breach, and then an audit. My code was the only code that they found no vulnerabilities in, and most of the rest of the code was riddled with them. (TBF, there have been security vulnerabilities in my code, they just didn't find them in that audit. I'm not perfect.) Since then, they have never complained about me being slow. While that's not credit for fixing problems that didn't happen, I think it's the closest thing out there.
- jon-wood 5y ago
  I have a slightly different interpretation of this, and it comes down to the horrible manager-ese phrase "risk appetite". As a small scrappy startup shipping is the absolute priority - get something out in front of customers, because the existential risk to the company is that you run out of money before you've got either a sustainable income or investment. Security might get some lip service paid, but ultimately who cares if your code is insecure when there's no customers who's data is at risk yet. Over time the company will (hopefully) grow its customer base. Maybe you get some big B2B contract to fulfil. That's the point at which things like security audits land, and people start having to really care about security, because now there's half a million people in your databases, and if they get compromised you're going to be front page news. You need different kinds of people as a company grows. The scrappy "get it shipped" engineers of the early days are going to find it increasingly difficult to function in a larger process focused organisation because its no longer just a case of sitting down over lunch to hash out a new feature before hacking something together in the afternoon. Process means that's now a multi-week process involving three different departments, followed by a month of waiting until the necessary people are available to actually build it. I don't really have any good answers to that. I suspect small skunkworks like teams are probably a good first step to being able to retain those early engineers into the later stages of a company, but I've never had the chance to try it.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I love to hear about successful rebels, but for every success, there are many failures. Some, quite spectacular (google “Nick Leeson”). Usually, in order to succeed, the “rebel” needs to have a lot of experience and good judgment. This generally comes from being older, and from surviving for a long time in the company; traits that do not necessarily suggest the rebellious attitude and courage needed.

arcanon 5y ago

Who exactly is characterizing the workers with great ideas as rebellious, here? The real story is always parasitic toxic management. An idea’s existence is enough to threaten power structures.

bonoboTP 5y ago

The main point is missing from the article: such rebels threaten the authority and career of seniors or other power dynamics at the organization. You propose some new solution that may be somewhat better, but the existing system was designed by someone who seeks a promotion and is owed a favor by a superior for some reason. They may have insecurities around their existing system and feel the need to justify their high position and salary, even if they are now not as productive as the youngsters, because they may now have a family etc and don't have as much time and energy or whatever. In other cases the problem can be that the career risk-benefit balance is negative for the manager. Or they are planning on dragging out the improvements in smaller jumps, to demonstrate constant improvement over many years to optimize career advancement. If the improvement happens all at once and suddenly, it will look too simple and less credit that can be squeezed out of it. TLDR improving things can make some people look bad and they will fight you.

hermannj314 5y ago

In my career, I have seen individuals all over the map if the x-axis is rebelliousness and the y-axis is value delivered. There are high performing rebels and low performing do-rights and vice versa. As someone with past experience in a highly regulated field (biopharma, food safety, etc.), the rule-followers are running the show and a rebel (as the article defines it) will be burned out if they aren't careful. However, that industry is ripe for disruption. The rules and best practices that have emerged over the decades have weak link to regulatory or legal sources. I would frequently ask for justification how a particular policy connected to an audit finding or a law and these connections are usually weak or non-existent. Even moreover, if the link could be established, it wasn't clear or documented why this decision taken was considered optimal for the organization, many times it was the fastest solution that made QA/QC happy. As you can guess, the emergent systems are horribly inefficient yet difficult to change. Highly-regulated industries are ripe with 'thats how we do it' inefficiencies that insiders have accepted as necessary for legal compliance but that could be disrupted by rebels that return to source material (legal statute, auditor interpretations) and reinvision the whole business model from the ground up.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Sometimes the one with the idea cannot know other, interwinded procedures which would break if his idea was implemented. If this happens all the time and/or a product manager tells you to submit a ticket and the review does not happen within 6 months, if it is forcing you to do repetitive tasks and you can find better compensation elsewhere......run as fast as you can.

trabant00 5y ago

The devil is always in the details and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Only in retrospect can you verify the "great" part in great idea. Until then you only really have an deviant idea which could be: - taking a fence down without knowing why it was put up - CV driven development - is/ought problem - the French revolution :) Opposition to change is not a bad thing, if isn't extreme (we're not changing anything for any reason no matter what). It forces change to justify itself and its costs, because there are always costs. Personally I hate these kind of articles. They take a few survivor examples and extrapolate that X is good, -X is bad. In reality you can only move the cursor a little on the (-X, X) axis and observe the outcomes after a relatively long term.

elevenoh 5y ago

Getting through engineering education alone can be enough to kill the rebel in many.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Three books come to mind: - "Rebel Talent : Why It Pays to Break the Rules" by Francesca Gino https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/rebel-talent-why-it-pays-to-break-the-rules-at-work-and-in-life_francesca-gino/17987469/?resultid=ebcb1b81-7be3-42ff-ae62-df97c217dde5#edition=18970366&idiq=27932496 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/rebel-talent-why-it-pays-to-br... - "Originals : How Non-Conformists Move the..." by Adam M. Grant https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/originals-how-non-conformists-move-the-world_adam-m-grant/9652057/?resultid=a91bb039-84cd-414c-927a-5d474740df73#edition=13244474&idiq=23737242 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/originals-how-non-conformists-... - "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/outliers-the-story-of-success-by-malcolm-gladwell/245740/?resultid=8c47a715-33a7-428a-a19e-e33eca029408#edition=6000254&idiq=4013405 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/outliers-the-story-of-success-...

dotancohen 5y ago

The TED Talk on "internal rebels" within a company was extraordinarily insightful. https://www.ted.com/talks/shoel_perelman_how_a_company_can_nurture_its_internal_rebels/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/shoel_perelman_how_a_company_can_n...

okareaman 5y ago

You might have a great idea if an unusually high number reject your idea for no good reason. On the other hand, you know you had a great idea if your boss takes credit for it.

bitwize 5y ago

For most companies, "rebellious workers" are a problem easily solved with issuance of pink slips. It is in your career's best interest not to be too rebellious.

bumby 5y ago

>Often these ‘rebels with a cause’ – also known as positive or constructive “deviants” – may be motivated because they care for the organisation and its mission, and feel psychological discomfort when they see that important capabilities clearly need improvement. I think this is a crucial distinction - the “rebels” are biased towards improvement. However, I’ve also seen rule breaking tolerated in organizations as a means of maintaining the status quo which leads to complacency rather than progress.

fooker 5y ago

There is just deviance, no positive deviance or negative deviance. You can't put a filter for this.