Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

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> Someone a week out of school can identify a problem that requires thousands of people coordinated by leadership across the organization to solve.

I am not suggesting that the person solve the problem. I am saying that they are capable of putting forth a solution.

The solution may not be complete, great, reasonable, or feasible. But nobody ever got better at solving problems by not thinking of solutions.

And shouldn’t we try just asking someone for a solution before we get to thousands of people working to solve a problem?

> many problems require significantly more experience or expertise to propose a solution to than to identify.

You skipped over the part where I challenged you to put your own money on the line to test this belief.

You really think that a single solution is impossible to identify for “many problems”?

Hypothetically, imagine a problem you think I can’t come up with a solution for. I will present a solution to it.

Hmm, I've been going back and forth on what I think in response to this...

On the one hand, I do agree with you that anyone can come up with an unworkable proposal for a solution to any problem.

But on the other hand, most of the good people I've worked with would find it very unsatisfying to put forward an unworkable proposal and may well just be discouraged from reporting the issue at all.

But I think on balance we are probably more in agreement than I thought. I do think it's a useful exercise to encourage people to say "this is a problem, I don't really know how to fix it, my best idea is ____ but I'm not sure that will work because ____".

But I also think it's pretty hard to foster an environment where people of every seniority level feel comfortable doing that.

>But I also think it's pretty hard to foster an environment where people of every seniority level feel comfortable doing that.

That's because pretending to be unsinkable is much easier than working to prevent the ship from sinking. Especially when there's a perception that the problem carries very low risk. That creates situations where there's little individual benefit and a lot of reputational risk for raising the alarm.

To fix this you have to intentionally create a culture that aligns individual and organizational incentives around the behavior you want to see encouraged.

100%

Even then, people who are new will inevitably be skeptical that this kind of culture is real. And they may be right that it isn't real for them, even if you think it's real.

I saw this a bunch joining a ginormous tech company decades after its rise; old-timers thought things were true about the culture that may have still been true for them, but which didn't seem true to me.

(Also, nobody feels more betrayed than those old-timers when the culture turns cut-throat during difficult times.)

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