10 ms·

Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015)

264 points by BerislavLopac 2y ago

andsoitis 2y ago
…and when someone asks for your permission (probably because you’re in the person’s management chain), one response could be: “you don’t need my permission, if you think it is a good idea after getting input, go for it. If it turns out to be a bad idea, share your learnings so we don’t repeat the same mistake.”
- rnmmrnm 2y ago
  "So I deployed that hasty fix on friday..."
- chipdart 2y ago
  > …and when someone asks for your permission (probably because you’re in the person’s management chain), one response could be: “you don’t need my permission, if you think it is a good idea after getting input, go for it. If it turns out to be a bad idea, share your learnings so we don’t repeat the same mistake.” That's all fine and dandy, but once you decide to weasel out of giving your input once asked then you lose your right to feign ignorance and surprise about hypothetical "mistakes" because you too failed to spot them, let alone address them. You had your chance to avoid a mistake when the mistake could be avoided. That was why your input was requested. If the mistake was still made it was because either you were not able or were not willing to spot them, so you have no right to point fingers at anyone but yourself. If there's anything ruining teams, it's the sociopaths that try to get ahead by setting up their team members for failure and backstabbing them while feigning ignorance.
  - diatone 2y ago
    Be careful not to burn bridges so quickly. This isn’t particularly helpful advice in domains where unknown unknowns really do appear. Not everything can be surfaced at design time. Having said that, design time is the perfect time to align on rules of engagement for surfacing and managing unknown unknowns. It’s also possible that it occurs in genuine miscommunications. It happened to me two weeks ago when my team lead had a different interpretation to a doc I wrote than what I intended. Shit happens. There are mechanisms a team can put in place to mitigate these eg: forcing user stories to be clearly enumerated and matched to parts of the design; third party review; definitions and glossaries; office hours for document review. But it does happen. If this hypothetical scenario comes up with genuinely avoidable issues, is not due to miscommunication, then this seems like a culture problem. If a person’s approval was explicitly requested, given, and rescinded for political or personal reasons, yes that’s when management needs to step in and navigate the team out of those fucked up dynamics.
    - chipdart 2y ago
      > Be careful not to burn bridges so quickly. I don't think your comment makes sense. You're talking about a scenario where, when you ask someone to review your design, their feedback is literally "all good, looks fine to me",but when you present your design to management or you roll out your design them that same person suddenly changes their tune and has all kinds of epiphanies on design mistakes that they wouldn't have made if it's up for them. Are you really doing the bridge-burning if you call them out for throwing you under the bus?
      - diatone 2y ago
        I’ve certainly had off days reviewing someone’s work and only realised certain feedback later. If I happened to surface that in a meeting with others, and got labeled a sociopath for it, I’d be concerned for sure. I can’t speak to your personal situation or experience, but it’s important to caution against labelling people sociopaths because there are many variations of this scenario where that’s simply not the case. It can and will damage relationships.
        chipdart 2y ago
        > I’ve certainly had off days reviewing someone’s work and only realised certain feedback later. It's one thing to get back to the review and say "hey I just noticed something I didn't noticed earlier, and I feel it's important to address." It's another thing entirely to afterwards accuse the designer of oversight and proceed to claim that the oversight is so glaringly obvious and that you would never have missed it if you were tasked with the design. As if you didn't missed it yourself when you were prompted to give your feedback.
        FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
        It depends a little what the larger culture is at the company and what the stakes are. If this is a collegial environment where people are unlikely to get fired, then a "late epiphany" is unlikely to be strategic behavior. It might be unselfaware ego, sure, but it probably isn't a person setting out to screw you. If this is an environment with internal competition and stack-ranking -- if this is Amazon, where "leaders are right", and you lose the ability to be seen as a "leader" if you ever acknowledge a mistake -- then absolutely you might see this as a nasty strategic behavior. Compared to many other industries, Silicon Valley has more-competitive people, higher stakes, and shorter tenures. You are more likely to see this there, I think. And people who have only ever seen that environment will probably be more on the lookout for it. Hence the attention it gets in this thread on HN.
- diatone 2y ago
  Yep delegation works. It works especially well when it’s matched to the scope the person is capable of exercising competently at, and when the boundaries and context of delegation is crystal clear. I’ve seen mismatches on both sides fail - too little context, employee drifts off into niche useless work (eg: green light to rabbit hole on impactless pet project) or lacks the tools available to succeed (eg: missing stakeholder or path to achieve traction). Too few boundaries, employee goes for grand ambitious changes and gets upset when their expectations don’t match reality (because they weren’t realistically set by the manager).
- informal007 2y ago
  Isn't it be essential to provide permission to him/her if he/she is in your your management chain? Is there a so ideal work environment, employee can do what they want when they think they have a good idea without the permission of superior? It will be so great if there is.
  - wccrawford 2y ago
    If they answer is "you don't need my permission", that is permission. Then, and in any circumstance like it in the future. When it fails, the underling can say "boss said I don't need to ask permission for that", and it appropriately falls upon the boss instead. I would never say that except in extremely simple circumstances. Anyone asking permission is unsure, and you should help them be sure.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > Is there a so ideal work environment, employee can do what they want when they think they have a good idea without the permission of superior? It will be so great if there is. Yes, I can attest those exist. In my experience it helps if you built a proven track record, and smaller teams probably work best. You should still inform them of what you’re working on, ideally after having thought through potential problems, especially if it’s something big. Basically, give them an easy option to say “no” but not a reason to. Learn to anticipate how they like things done and be sure to do it in a way they’d have no complaints. If their usual method wouldn’t be feasible in a given situation, mention that and your suggestion before they even have to ask. Essentially, if you get to a point where you deliver consistently in a way that they think “this is exactly how I would’ve done it or better”, they have a pretty good incentive to continue to let you be and do your thing. It helps if there’s mutual respect between you and you share similar values on what constitutes good work and where to spend effort in.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
That’s actually fairly good advice. I have always disliked the arrogance of “Ask forgiveness, not permission,” and was expecting something along those lines, but the OP was really talking about the psychology of the communication, and they have a good point. But it really is up to the management culture, and the mindset of the manager, themselves. One of my basic management postures, used to be easy permission. I wanted my staff to take chances, and my permission deliberately took the risk onto my own shoulders, giving them cover. But my staff was composed of sober, highly-experienced engineers. I don’t think it would work for a team of youngsters.
- ath3nd 2y ago
  > But my staff was composed of sober, highly-experienced engineers. I don’t think it would work for a team of youngsters. That's the key difference. The ideas of highly-experienced, sober engineers will be high-quality, and most of all, sober. The ideas of a team of youngsters are almost guaranteed to be...less sober.
- nntwozz 2y ago
  Are you referring to this quote by Admiral Grace Hopper? "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." I never thought of it as arrogant, but I guess it depends on context.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    Not from her, it wasn't, but it tends to be, in the contexts that I've heard it. It's usually used to justify people making really bad, uninformed, unexamined, and unwise decisions, in a rash manner. There's a lot of quotes that have been "repurposed," to afford unhealthy behavior. Another one that is abused like hell, is "The perfect is the enemy of the good." People usually use that as an excuse for creating ... less than perfect, shall we say ... product.
chipdart 2y ago
From the article: > (...) but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.” I've seen this play out in teams. The part that's omitted is how some unscrupulous team members set up their team members for failure. I've personally witnessed a case where a team member went out of his way to propose a rewrite of an important feature and reached out to a couple of senior members to do a system design review and provide feedback. They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component. There are plenty of good reasons why some FANGs enshrine the need to be thorough and extremely critical of projects at the design stage but everyone is obligated to commit to the project once it starts to be implemented. Teams need to commit to projects after they are prompted to give their opinion during the design process, and once their opinions are heard there should be no room for weaseling out and go the backstabbing route to throw everyone around under the bus. There is a time and place to provide feedback, and if you're prompted to deliver your feedback then you should not pretend the project does not reflect your input.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  This. I wish I could go back 5 years and teach my younger self this. Eventually burned out alright.
  - FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
    > Eventually burned out alright. I don't know if this is a typo or not but it's great. (B and T are pretty far apart in QWERTY, so...)
- evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
  I have seen these behaviors only when I work with toxic engineers.
  - chipdart 2y ago
elashri 2y ago
I always ask my academic supervisor for an advice if I want his permission for something. I present my plan that involve what I want to do and then ask if they think this plan is good and if there is alternative. Usually it is yes go for it. And sometimes it is stupid enough that I get better suggestion anyway. My last direct request of getting root access on our cluster did not go well. And this was for a good reason.
diatone 2y ago
Great book recommendation that covers this topic and many more like it: Turn the Ship Around, by David Marquet. Highly influential for me when I started managing (and remains highly influential!) https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/ https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/
- laserlight 2y ago
  This book was the first thing that came to my mind while reading the article. “I intend to” is a phrase that I find very apt.
thomas112 2y ago
[dead]
informal007 2y ago
Usually, when I have a good idea, I will ask advise from my manager several times unitll she can't not provide more advise to me and give me with permission that I can start do that, I won't start that without permission. I'm too junior to take all responsibility of whole project or bear the risk of failure
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  Get with your manager - ask them where your autonomy ends. Then you can get on with your job, without asking them for 'often advice'. Those that work for me...i gave them the same 'power' I have. We talk when there's a problem they can't fix.
satisfice 2y ago
My advice would have been not to write this blog post. If the author had asked for my permission I would have said "please, no." I don't see anything wrong with checking with people to see if they have an objection. It is in NO way disrespectful, and strikes me as bizarre to suggest otherwise. Posts like this seem to be written from a philosophy of anxiety about ever saying or doing the wrong thing, and then proceed to problematize ordinary behavior, which only creates MORE opportunity to say the wrong thing. How about this: don't worry about it! Ask advice, ask permission, whatever. It'll be okay.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Well, when I read the title, I would have thought the same, but I found the article to have a fairly good motivation behind it. It's fairly vague, though, as all these things are. My own experience, with almost everything in life, is "It depends." There's really no such thing as "One Pithy Aphorism to Rule Them All." In my experience, every philosophy works best as a heuristic, to be adapted to the context, and almost every context is different. That said, we can't be too flexible, or we won't get anything done. I feel that each context needs to have "hard" parameters established and enforced. It's just that, in my experience, we need to respect each individual context, and many folks are spectacularly bad at that. This chap is/was the CTO of Meta, though, so he has some fairly solid background in one particular context.
  - satisfice 2y ago
    I agree that the article is thoughtful.
- NotACracker 2y ago
  I totally agree with you. Real people in the real world (not imaginary people in a fictional blog story) don't overthink every word someone is saying. Asking for "advices" or asking for "permissions" or just - plain asking - is all the same. People don't see the difference, no one is imagining a scenario based on how the question has been asked, people are probably not even going to remember...
- 2y ago
iambateman 2y ago
One thing I’ve noticed is that people hate giving critical feedback to adults. Often people asking for advice just want affirmation. If asking for advice to truly help with a decision, it’s often useful to clarify that you want their full opinion, not just the PR-approved version of their thoughts. The average person hates giving critical feedback to another adult.
- drdrek 2y ago
  Very culture based. In my country giving people unsolicited advice is basically a national sport.
  - Panini_Jones 2y ago
    Which country?
    - hnben 2y ago
      I don't know about GP, but this is true for Germany at least.
  - kzrdude 2y ago
    Even if it's prevalent doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. There's always diversity in how people react to it - this is even a reason why some people move countries, to escape such things.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > The average person hates giving critical feedback to another adult. The average person isn't qualified or skilled enough to give good critical feedback that is actionable to another professional, unless it's a direct mentor role. E.g. I don't care about my manager's feedback, because he's not technical, and vice versa. This kind of feedback just isn't relevant in most cases, so people just give their "PR-approved" thoughts, because everyone understands it.
  - 2y ago
la64710 2y ago
Very opinionated but some times some things are owned for accountability and it’s good professional practice to ask for permission in those cases.
tmsh 2y ago
There is an important exception to this which is where Facebook/Meta sometimes gets into trouble: if what you are planning to do will negatively impact (temporarily or for whatever reason) another person, you definitely need to ask for permission. Only if you are not forcing a person to do something are you alright asking for advice. Coercion with good intentions is the root of all evil.
h4ny 2y ago
> The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a value adding behavior — but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.” I can see where that's coming from but that statement conflates many problems into one and sounds like the author has the opposite problem of just wanting mostly credit and not accountability? - Many people who ask for permissions are genuinely asking for permissions to be given the chance to _try_ something that they believe may be the correct solution. You'd only be in the position to say now if you have the authority to do so: if you say yes, then you'd better be comfortable with being accountable for saying yes because... they trust your opinion enough to ask you in the first place? If you say no, chances are they will respect your opinion and suddenly it's no longer about permission because chances are, in a professional setting, they just won't do it because they trust your experience. - If you work with people who only blame you for failures and don't acknowledge you for success, then it's a different problem? Anecdotal: the last job I had people rarely say "I asked [someone] and they said it was fine” — even if it's said exactly like that it's rarely about blaming someone else but more about adding context so that we can all come together to find a better solution (a lot of things get lost in translation especially when people with less experienced but well-meaning are involved). I do feel sorry for anyone who works in an environment where everyone is just trying to offload responsibilities onto someone else. - If you're in a position to give permissions, then shouldn't you do that _and_ take some responsibilities for it even when the person asking don't expect you to do so? I don't think it's right for people asking for permissions use that as a means to offload responsibilities, but I also don't think it's right for people who are in the position to authorise someone asking for permission to do something to not hold themselves accountable? - Following from the above, if someone is asking you for advice, then chances are you are not one to give them permission to do something but they respect your opinions, or they want to draw that boundary extra clear (again, just because someone is asking for permission doesn't mean they want to hold you accountable): shouldn't any reasonable person giving advice still hold themselves accountable for the advice they give? - There is nothing stopping people who ask for advice from you offloading just as much responsibilities onto you than if they were to ask for permission. People who want to offload responsibilities will always find a way to do that — and it doesn't matter whether they asked for permission or advice. - If it's not something that someone can just go ahead and do, even if they ask you for advice instead of permission, they still have to ask for permission elsewhere? It's great if you are in a position of power where people come to you for both advice and permissions. If you're someone's manager then you'd better be prepared to give permissions and hold yourself accountable; otherwise, you'd still better be prepared to hold yourself accountable to the advice you give.
zug_zug 2y ago
When I see big blanket statements of advice, I usually try to "unit test" them to see if they have any value. So I think of wildly different scenarios, and imagine whether this advice is useful, neutral/depends, or negative. This is one that I can see not going well in a number of those scenarios.
kazinator 2y ago
"Should I make this stapler mine and take it home?" "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Abismith 2y ago
[flagged]
tonetegeatinst 2y ago
See this works great until it goes anywhere a potential legal issue. For example, in the US if you can't afford a defense lawyer you get one provided to you. They are swamped and rushed but at least you get a defense in a criminal case. Now say I want to start a hobby or have a legal question, but can't afford a laywer. Example would be questions about how can I do X or Y as a hobby legally and how do I have fun without breaking the law. If you can't afford a laywer you don't really have any options. Chemistry, and hobby rocketry or similar hobbies you might want to get into but the law is so complex and if your broke you basically have to give up and hope in the future you can be rich enough to afford lawyer consulting fees. TLDR: if it isn't a criminal case and you can't afford a lawyer then your basically screwed and better off avoiding whatever it was you wanted to know or get into doing.
Havoc 2y ago
Is there a list of these sort of behavioural anti patterns so to speak?

264 points by BerislavLopac 2y ago

…and when someone asks for your permission (probably because you’re in the person’s management chain), one response could be: “you don’t need my permission, if you think it is a good idea after getting input, go for it. If it turns out to be a bad idea, share your learnings so we don’t repeat the same mistake.”

rnmmrnm 2y ago
"So I deployed that hasty fix on friday..."
chipdart 2y ago
> …and when someone asks for your permission (probably because you’re in the person’s management chain), one response could be: “you don’t need my permission, if you think it is a good idea after getting input, go for it. If it turns out to be a bad idea, share your learnings so we don’t repeat the same mistake.” That's all fine and dandy, but once you decide to weasel out of giving your input once asked then you lose your right to feign ignorance and surprise about hypothetical "mistakes" because you too failed to spot them, let alone address them. You had your chance to avoid a mistake when the mistake could be avoided. That was why your input was requested. If the mistake was still made it was because either you were not able or were not willing to spot them, so you have no right to point fingers at anyone but yourself. If there's anything ruining teams, it's the sociopaths that try to get ahead by setting up their team members for failure and backstabbing them while feigning ignorance.
- diatone 2y ago
  Be careful not to burn bridges so quickly. This isn’t particularly helpful advice in domains where unknown unknowns really do appear. Not everything can be surfaced at design time. Having said that, design time is the perfect time to align on rules of engagement for surfacing and managing unknown unknowns. It’s also possible that it occurs in genuine miscommunications. It happened to me two weeks ago when my team lead had a different interpretation to a doc I wrote than what I intended. Shit happens. There are mechanisms a team can put in place to mitigate these eg: forcing user stories to be clearly enumerated and matched to parts of the design; third party review; definitions and glossaries; office hours for document review. But it does happen. If this hypothetical scenario comes up with genuinely avoidable issues, is not due to miscommunication, then this seems like a culture problem. If a person’s approval was explicitly requested, given, and rescinded for political or personal reasons, yes that’s when management needs to step in and navigate the team out of those fucked up dynamics.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > Be careful not to burn bridges so quickly. I don't think your comment makes sense. You're talking about a scenario where, when you ask someone to review your design, their feedback is literally "all good, looks fine to me",but when you present your design to management or you roll out your design them that same person suddenly changes their tune and has all kinds of epiphanies on design mistakes that they wouldn't have made if it's up for them. Are you really doing the bridge-burning if you call them out for throwing you under the bus?
    - diatone 2y ago
      I’ve certainly had off days reviewing someone’s work and only realised certain feedback later. If I happened to surface that in a meeting with others, and got labeled a sociopath for it, I’d be concerned for sure. I can’t speak to your personal situation or experience, but it’s important to caution against labelling people sociopaths because there are many variations of this scenario where that’s simply not the case. It can and will damage relationships.
      - chipdart 2y ago
        > I’ve certainly had off days reviewing someone’s work and only realised certain feedback later. It's one thing to get back to the review and say "hey I just noticed something I didn't noticed earlier, and I feel it's important to address." It's another thing entirely to afterwards accuse the designer of oversight and proceed to claim that the oversight is so glaringly obvious and that you would never have missed it if you were tasked with the design. As if you didn't missed it yourself when you were prompted to give your feedback.
      - FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
        It depends a little what the larger culture is at the company and what the stakes are. If this is a collegial environment where people are unlikely to get fired, then a "late epiphany" is unlikely to be strategic behavior. It might be unselfaware ego, sure, but it probably isn't a person setting out to screw you. If this is an environment with internal competition and stack-ranking -- if this is Amazon, where "leaders are right", and you lose the ability to be seen as a "leader" if you ever acknowledge a mistake -- then absolutely you might see this as a nasty strategic behavior. Compared to many other industries, Silicon Valley has more-competitive people, higher stakes, and shorter tenures. You are more likely to see this there, I think. And people who have only ever seen that environment will probably be more on the lookout for it. Hence the attention it gets in this thread on HN.
diatone 2y ago
Yep delegation works. It works especially well when it’s matched to the scope the person is capable of exercising competently at, and when the boundaries and context of delegation is crystal clear. I’ve seen mismatches on both sides fail - too little context, employee drifts off into niche useless work (eg: green light to rabbit hole on impactless pet project) or lacks the tools available to succeed (eg: missing stakeholder or path to achieve traction). Too few boundaries, employee goes for grand ambitious changes and gets upset when their expectations don’t match reality (because they weren’t realistically set by the manager).
informal007 2y ago
Isn't it be essential to provide permission to him/her if he/she is in your your management chain? Is there a so ideal work environment, employee can do what they want when they think they have a good idea without the permission of superior? It will be so great if there is.
- wccrawford 2y ago
  If they answer is "you don't need my permission", that is permission. Then, and in any circumstance like it in the future. When it fails, the underling can say "boss said I don't need to ask permission for that", and it appropriately falls upon the boss instead. I would never say that except in extremely simple circumstances. Anyone asking permission is unsure, and you should help them be sure.
- latexr 2y ago
  > Is there a so ideal work environment, employee can do what they want when they think they have a good idea without the permission of superior? It will be so great if there is. Yes, I can attest those exist. In my experience it helps if you built a proven track record, and smaller teams probably work best. You should still inform them of what you’re working on, ideally after having thought through potential problems, especially if it’s something big. Basically, give them an easy option to say “no” but not a reason to. Learn to anticipate how they like things done and be sure to do it in a way they’d have no complaints. If their usual method wouldn’t be feasible in a given situation, mention that and your suggestion before they even have to ask. Essentially, if you get to a point where you deliver consistently in a way that they think “this is exactly how I would’ve done it or better”, they have a pretty good incentive to continue to let you be and do your thing. It helps if there’s mutual respect between you and you share similar values on what constitutes good work and where to spend effort in.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

That’s actually fairly good advice. I have always disliked the arrogance of “Ask forgiveness, not permission,” and was expecting something along those lines, but the OP was really talking about the psychology of the communication, and they have a good point. But it really is up to the management culture, and the mindset of the manager, themselves. One of my basic management postures, used to be easy permission. I wanted my staff to take chances, and my permission deliberately took the risk onto my own shoulders, giving them cover. But my staff was composed of sober, highly-experienced engineers. I don’t think it would work for a team of youngsters.

ath3nd 2y ago
> But my staff was composed of sober, highly-experienced engineers. I don’t think it would work for a team of youngsters. That's the key difference. The ideas of highly-experienced, sober engineers will be high-quality, and most of all, sober. The ideas of a team of youngsters are almost guaranteed to be...less sober.
nntwozz 2y ago
Are you referring to this quote by Admiral Grace Hopper? "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." I never thought of it as arrogant, but I guess it depends on context.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Not from her, it wasn't, but it tends to be, in the contexts that I've heard it. It's usually used to justify people making really bad, uninformed, unexamined, and unwise decisions, in a rash manner. There's a lot of quotes that have been "repurposed," to afford unhealthy behavior. Another one that is abused like hell, is "The perfect is the enemy of the good." People usually use that as an excuse for creating ... less than perfect, shall we say ... product.

chipdart 2y ago

From the article: > (...) but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.” I've seen this play out in teams. The part that's omitted is how some unscrupulous team members set up their team members for failure. I've personally witnessed a case where a team member went out of his way to propose a rewrite of an important feature and reached out to a couple of senior members to do a system design review and provide feedback. They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component. There are plenty of good reasons why some FANGs enshrine the need to be thorough and extremely critical of projects at the design stage but everyone is obligated to commit to the project once it starts to be implemented. Teams need to commit to projects after they are prompted to give their opinion during the design process, and once their opinions are heard there should be no room for weaseling out and go the backstabbing route to throw everyone around under the bus. There is a time and place to provide feedback, and if you're prompted to deliver your feedback then you should not pretend the project does not reflect your input.

neonsunset 2y ago
This. I wish I could go back 5 years and teach my younger self this. Eventually burned out alright.
- FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
  > Eventually burned out alright. I don't know if this is a typo or not but it's great. (B and T are pretty far apart in QWERTY, so...)
evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
I have seen these behaviors only when I work with toxic engineers.
- chipdart 2y ago

elashri 2y ago

I always ask my academic supervisor for an advice if I want his permission for something. I present my plan that involve what I want to do and then ask if they think this plan is good and if there is alternative. Usually it is yes go for it. And sometimes it is stupid enough that I get better suggestion anyway. My last direct request of getting root access on our cluster did not go well. And this was for a good reason.

diatone 2y ago

Great book recommendation that covers this topic and many more like it: Turn the Ship Around, by David Marquet. Highly influential for me when I started managing (and remains highly influential!) https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/ https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/

laserlight 2y ago
This book was the first thing that came to my mind while reading the article. “I intend to” is a phrase that I find very apt.

thomas112 2y ago

[dead]

informal007 2y ago

Usually, when I have a good idea, I will ask advise from my manager several times unitll she can't not provide more advise to me and give me with permission that I can start do that, I won't start that without permission. I'm too junior to take all responsibility of whole project or bear the risk of failure

Ylpertnodi 2y ago
Get with your manager - ask them where your autonomy ends. Then you can get on with your job, without asking them for 'often advice'. Those that work for me...i gave them the same 'power' I have. We talk when there's a problem they can't fix.

satisfice 2y ago

My advice would have been not to write this blog post. If the author had asked for my permission I would have said "please, no." I don't see anything wrong with checking with people to see if they have an objection. It is in NO way disrespectful, and strikes me as bizarre to suggest otherwise. Posts like this seem to be written from a philosophy of anxiety about ever saying or doing the wrong thing, and then proceed to problematize ordinary behavior, which only creates MORE opportunity to say the wrong thing. How about this: don't worry about it! Ask advice, ask permission, whatever. It'll be okay.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Well, when I read the title, I would have thought the same, but I found the article to have a fairly good motivation behind it. It's fairly vague, though, as all these things are. My own experience, with almost everything in life, is "It depends." There's really no such thing as "One Pithy Aphorism to Rule Them All." In my experience, every philosophy works best as a heuristic, to be adapted to the context, and almost every context is different. That said, we can't be too flexible, or we won't get anything done. I feel that each context needs to have "hard" parameters established and enforced. It's just that, in my experience, we need to respect each individual context, and many folks are spectacularly bad at that. This chap is/was the CTO of Meta, though, so he has some fairly solid background in one particular context.
- satisfice 2y ago
  I agree that the article is thoughtful.
NotACracker 2y ago
I totally agree with you. Real people in the real world (not imaginary people in a fictional blog story) don't overthink every word someone is saying. Asking for "advices" or asking for "permissions" or just - plain asking - is all the same. People don't see the difference, no one is imagining a scenario based on how the question has been asked, people are probably not even going to remember...
2y ago

iambateman 2y ago

One thing I’ve noticed is that people hate giving critical feedback to adults. Often people asking for advice just want affirmation. If asking for advice to truly help with a decision, it’s often useful to clarify that you want their full opinion, not just the PR-approved version of their thoughts. The average person hates giving critical feedback to another adult.

drdrek 2y ago
Very culture based. In my country giving people unsolicited advice is basically a national sport.
- Panini_Jones 2y ago
  Which country?
  - hnben 2y ago
    I don't know about GP, but this is true for Germany at least.
- kzrdude 2y ago
  Even if it's prevalent doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. There's always diversity in how people react to it - this is even a reason why some people move countries, to escape such things.
antisthenes 2y ago
> The average person hates giving critical feedback to another adult. The average person isn't qualified or skilled enough to give good critical feedback that is actionable to another professional, unless it's a direct mentor role. E.g. I don't care about my manager's feedback, because he's not technical, and vice versa. This kind of feedback just isn't relevant in most cases, so people just give their "PR-approved" thoughts, because everyone understands it.
- 2y ago

la64710 2y ago

Very opinionated but some times some things are owned for accountability and it’s good professional practice to ask for permission in those cases.

tmsh 2y ago

There is an important exception to this which is where Facebook/Meta sometimes gets into trouble: if what you are planning to do will negatively impact (temporarily or for whatever reason) another person, you definitely need to ask for permission. Only if you are not forcing a person to do something are you alright asking for advice. Coercion with good intentions is the root of all evil.

h4ny 2y ago

> The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a value adding behavior — but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.” I can see where that's coming from but that statement conflates many problems into one and sounds like the author has the opposite problem of just wanting mostly credit and not accountability? - Many people who ask for permissions are genuinely asking for permissions to be given the chance to _try_ something that they believe may be the correct solution. You'd only be in the position to say now if you have the authority to do so: if you say yes, then you'd better be comfortable with being accountable for saying yes because... they trust your opinion enough to ask you in the first place? If you say no, chances are they will respect your opinion and suddenly it's no longer about permission because chances are, in a professional setting, they just won't do it because they trust your experience. - If you work with people who only blame you for failures and don't acknowledge you for success, then it's a different problem? Anecdotal: the last job I had people rarely say "I asked [someone] and they said it was fine” — even if it's said exactly like that it's rarely about blaming someone else but more about adding context so that we can all come together to find a better solution (a lot of things get lost in translation especially when people with less experienced but well-meaning are involved). I do feel sorry for anyone who works in an environment where everyone is just trying to offload responsibilities onto someone else. - If you're in a position to give permissions, then shouldn't you do that _and_ take some responsibilities for it even when the person asking don't expect you to do so? I don't think it's right for people asking for permissions use that as a means to offload responsibilities, but I also don't think it's right for people who are in the position to authorise someone asking for permission to do something to not hold themselves accountable? - Following from the above, if someone is asking you for advice, then chances are you are not one to give them permission to do something but they respect your opinions, or they want to draw that boundary extra clear (again, just because someone is asking for permission doesn't mean they want to hold you accountable): shouldn't any reasonable person giving advice still hold themselves accountable for the advice they give? - There is nothing stopping people who ask for advice from you offloading just as much responsibilities onto you than if they were to ask for permission. People who want to offload responsibilities will always find a way to do that — and it doesn't matter whether they asked for permission or advice. - If it's not something that someone can just go ahead and do, even if they ask you for advice instead of permission, they still have to ask for permission elsewhere? It's great if you are in a position of power where people come to you for both advice and permissions. If you're someone's manager then you'd better be prepared to give permissions and hold yourself accountable; otherwise, you'd still better be prepared to hold yourself accountable to the advice you give.

zug_zug 2y ago

When I see big blanket statements of advice, I usually try to "unit test" them to see if they have any value. So I think of wildly different scenarios, and imagine whether this advice is useful, neutral/depends, or negative. This is one that I can see not going well in a number of those scenarios.

kazinator 2y ago

"Should I make this stapler mine and take it home?" "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Abismith 2y ago

[flagged]

tonetegeatinst 2y ago

See this works great until it goes anywhere a potential legal issue. For example, in the US if you can't afford a defense lawyer you get one provided to you. They are swamped and rushed but at least you get a defense in a criminal case. Now say I want to start a hobby or have a legal question, but can't afford a laywer. Example would be questions about how can I do X or Y as a hobby legally and how do I have fun without breaking the law. If you can't afford a laywer you don't really have any options. Chemistry, and hobby rocketry or similar hobbies you might want to get into but the law is so complex and if your broke you basically have to give up and hope in the future you can be rich enough to afford lawyer consulting fees. TLDR: if it isn't a criminal case and you can't afford a lawyer then your basically screwed and better off avoiding whatever it was you wanted to know or get into doing.

Havoc 2y ago

Is there a list of these sort of behavioural anti patterns so to speak?