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Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#11

Post by andrei_says_ »

Saying "Yes" to one thing equals saying "No" to other things. Make the cost of the Yes-Es explicit and have the requesting parties prioritize whenever possible (or request prioritization from the decision makers).

For the PM and boss: "to attend to this new task, I'll have to postpone these other tasks which you asked me to do. Which one is more important?" + paper trail + "this week we focused on Y and are pushing X one week" in status reports.

For the peers and subordinates: if the request is legitimate, discuss, brainstorm, "Here's how I'd approach finding a solution, try it and check in when you find a few possibilities. Google and SO are your friends."

And, for subordinates: teach them to think for themselves and to lead

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=psAXMqxwol8

Of course sometimes you'll have to put out a fire. But if it's a small fire then you should be training your firemen on it.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#12

Post by WalterBright »

I'd tell the manager that I was overbooked (which I normally was), would list the activities, and ask him what should be cut.

It's not hard, and if you cultivate a track record of delivering on your word, he'll appreciate it.

If you say yes to things you cannot deliver, when you don't, he won't respect your judgment.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#13

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #12

I'd tell the manager that I was overbooked (which I normally was), would list the activities, and ask him what should be cut. It's not hard, and if you cultivate a track record of delivering on your word, he'll appreciate it. If you say yes to things you cannot deliver, when you don't, he won't respect your judgment.

In general, the way to move ahead with your boss and your customers is to underpromise and overdeliver. Most people overpromise and underdeliver, so there's a large opportunity there.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#14

Post by erdevs »

"Mastery can only be achieved through practice."

Try saying no to smaller things first.

Also, to get over the natural (for many people) social anxiety involved in saying no, try saying it a different way. Example: "Okay, I'd love to do this. Help me prioritize here, though. I've presently got to do X,Y, and Z. I can't do a good job with all 4 and stay on time. Should I cut X? Wait to tackle this? What do you think is best?"

Eventually you'll work up to speaking up and creating preventative measures. Eg "if we're going to frequently face interrupt-driven task priorities, we need to move to some Kanban-like and also give up on concrete milestones."

But yeah.. just start trying. Practice makes perfect. As long as your not a jerk about it and take care to explain yourself and not make a requester feel dismissed, nobody will hold saying no against you. (Unless you're just not as productive as others, or unless it's a crappy environment/culture, in which case you should bail if you can.)

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#15

Post by actionscripted »

OT but I'd be more curious to know how you handle things when you've done it "right". Said yes to this, no to that. You're booked with an abundance of time.

Then you hit a snag in a project and what you thought was going to take a few days ends up taking weeks. Then more weeks because of more unforseen issues.

Sure you could've researched things to death from the start but there were hidden gremlins you couldn't have seen until you were knee-deep in either research or development.

What then? You're going to blow your deadline and that'll cascade to other work scheduled after your current workload.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#16

Post by orthecreedence »

A client who knew nothing about programming whatsoever, much less the intricacies of programming languages, wanted my brother and I to build the stupid app they wanted in Ruby on Rails. We explained to them we don't know Ruby on Rails and doing it in that language would take us 4x longer because we'd have to learn both a language and framework as we were building the app.

"Nope, it has to be Ruby on Rails. Oh, and some firm in San Jose will do it $10K cheaper than your quote."

Fired the client, told them to go to San Jose.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#17

Post by paupino_masano »

As a manager (of managers), I keep reminding my team that if I'm delegating more than they can deal with then to let me know. Personally I admire someone that speaks up and says they're at capacity - it shows self awareness as well as the ability to ask for help.

All in all: asking for help is a good thing!

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#18

Post by madeofpalk »

Interesting that is is a problem for people.

If anything, myself and the rest of our dev team have a problem with saying NO too often - an opportunity for us is to say either NO in a more productive way (as in, propose a compromise) or learn to be more ambitious and say YES.

Re: Ask HN: Developers – How did you learn to say NO?

#19

Post by alien3d »

Last time when i work, everybody yes to do extra work in my team in non working hour( sometimes 9 pm sometimes 3 am ?). And the boss blame me because not align with the team. Been fired because of it. And i dam happy because i can arrange my life back. Please said no , for non payment working hour.
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