Hacker News Reader

Comment by draw_down | Hacker News Reader

> “does everyone agree this is the right path? Does anyone disagree”

Hey, I’m just asking questions! We’re just discussing! You’re allowed to disagree!

It’s so funny, and hard to describe, the intentional slight malice in such moments. Like it’s absolutely there, and absolutely veiled and intentionally done in such a way to lend plausible deniability.

In a given situation, everyone knows the “correct” answer, it’s already been telegraphed in any number of ways. Sure, you can disagree. We have an open environment here after all. We value discussion.

Thing is, you’re probably not gonna have a fun time if you do. You’re probably gonna end up wishing you had kept your big yap shut. Strangely enough. “Disagree and commit”

View on HN

I had a project that would have gone so very much better if we had simply recorded the minority report, and reviewed them when too many surprises stacked up to see if anyone was more right than wrong when disagreeing.

There’s a very disturbing misunderstanding about the difference between consensus and unanimity, made doubly so on projects that actually embrace distributed computing concepts like consensus and unanimity.

Yeah this stuff seems so basic right? If you're trying to be as right as possible:

- decide what success and failure are

- record your successes and failures

- adjust your priors based on your failures

I have a "what have you changed your mind about" interview question I use on both sides of the table that's really illuminating. The specifics aren't important, but what I'm looking for are the above: what were you aiming for, what did you get instead, how did that experience change you. Hopefully the other party has had lots of these and they've built up an immune system against the various things that caused them to fail, stuff like "test hypotheses", "there is no silver bullet", "everything is a tradeoff" and so on.

Yeah, this only works when the culture is based on trust. And when individuals trust each other. Using the question, especially in the way described in the article, is just putting more social pressure on employees. Bad management, bad people skills and in the end bad for ops management.

How would you recommend to get opinions of those who disagree, from your management experience?

As a manager/leader/senior, if you want actual opinions or suggestions, you should let everyone form their own opinion and express it before expressing your own.

Of course, if you then just override everyone every time, they'll soon stop having opinions because they'll realize they don't matter.

Thanks, that’s reasonable.

What do you think about asking: "Tell me two or more things you think are the most likely to go wrong with this project"

instead of asking: "Is there, you think, anything we're doing wrong?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com