Tread carefully between being fake and being sincere. People will stop asking you if you give a fake answer like the article.
People who can't sincerely ignore trivial matters probably should stay out of management.
Can't upvote this enough.
Don't add your 2 cents
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Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who can't sincerely ignore trivial matters probably should stay out of management.
I assume GP was refering to the "great work" part, but even then it's just matter of style; the point was only to show approval without nitpicking, not emphatic congratulations.
Ah yes, it's too easy to think that a comment is addressing one point when it is addressing another.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there are ways of eliciting critical thought about the choices made and even about alternatives that the person in power has. It is "bad communication" in that the person in power is communicating their desire in a way that is perceived, even if just a little bit, as being a command. And I do believe there are effective ways to mitigate this.
This conversation is a great example of bad communication, if you want a reference. Communication is not just about how you communicate, but when. Good communicators know how and when to listen, and they keep their mouth shut when it's appropriate. That's the lesson of this article. If that's not a problem for you—if you know when to speak and when to listen—then maybe this article won't help you, personally. And if…
I think the issue I have is that the author is taking an all or nothing approach. Either something is all wrong and a larger discussion must be had or nothing is worth noting. There is a huge range of things in between there, many of which may be small opinions.
After reading the article a few more times and the comments here, I'm getting the impression the author meant "don't add pointless opinions or suggestions to things." The use of the phrase "my two cents" beguiles the author's intent, as in many cases that phrase is not used when one has a pointless opinion.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#44Man! I wish my boss had read it 5 years ago. I could never understand why I was not motivated in my job at all even though my boss was really brilliant. It basically reduced to this. No matter what I did the boss always had 2 cents that had little impact on anything but made be less interesting in doing the work. But for my next job the boss was much better, instead of saying change this and change that he would often ask me why I made certain choices and what inspired me. He would then say "ship it" but the questions he raised made me wonder how I could make things better.
But the advice is something everyone must learn.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#45If your manager asks you to change a color or font or whatever that has 0 relevance to the actual task, you know then that your manager is an idiot and you should probably start searching for another job or a way to move up over him.
I had number of such situations. You are almost always better off without that in your life.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#46I like the way Joel Spolsky describes managers taking this even further at Microsoft back in the day. They wanted to make sure the engineers knew that they were the ones designing the software, to the point where they would refuse to even step in and resolve a conflict between two engineers about the design. Even when those two engineers came up and asked for help resolving said conflict. Now you've got three people…
Right, but you have the engineer saying that is not important, and the designer saying this is the most important part of the software and we might as well not do it at all.
This is where you need a decision from someone else.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#47Dale Carnegie Rule #1: Never condemn, criticize or complain. In general, we're all not actually looking for input so much as support.
Human nature is such that even when we readily acknowledge someone better at something, we quietly indulge and seek out advantages we have in other areas.
We engineers like to think we're more rational and accepting of input. Working as a coder and manager for the last 20 years has shown me there's nothing further from the truth.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#48This doesn't necessarily invalidate the advice, but Steve Jobs clearly did not abide but it (would critique icons at the pixel level, etc.), so it is demonstrably not universal advice for building successful companies.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This conversation is a great example of bad communication, if you want a reference. Communication is not just about how you communicate, but when. Good communicators know how and when to listen, and they keep their mouth shut when it's appropriate. That's the lesson of this article. If that's not a problem for you—if you know when to speak and when to listen—then maybe this article won't help you, personally. And if…
I think the issue I have is that the author is taking an all or nothing approach. Either something is all wrong and a larger discussion must be had or nothing is worth noting. There is a huge range of things in between there, many of which may be small opinions. After reading the article a few more times and the comments here, I'm getting the impression the author meant "don't add pointless opinions or suggestions to…
Yes, I've heard the "my two cents" phrase used with important or strongly-held convictions, but that's just an ironic use of the phrase to mean the opposite of what it usually means, no?
It may also be a dialect issue, like the old "let's table this" problem.
I was definitely not reading "all or nothing" from the article, more of "if you only have something trivial to say, don't bother." Hence, don't give your two cents, but put a dollar in when it matters.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#50As an independent contributor I don't want my manager weighing in on my choices. I see them as out of the loop on the more technical aspects of my job and they should leave those decisions to me. If I come to a more technically senior member of the team who is more knowledgeable, it is to _precisely_ ask for their opinion. So in my mind: if you're a manager, don't bother; if you're a more senior IC, do, with the expl…
> Oh, and if your approach isn't really better, just different, keep it to yourself.
This really is the heart of the problem, not giving feedback when it is solicited (unless it is really soliciting for approval rather than feedback).
There usually are many ways to do something, all of them roughly equal and it doesn't matter who gets to chart the road to take, as long as a road gets taken and you can move on to the next issue. Way too often the discussion will center around who gets to claim that their road was taken, which is more often than not utterly irrelevant.
Office politics is the silent killer of teams, projects, products and whole companies and this is one of the more immediately destructive manifestations.