Maybe "Don't add your 2 cents" is not the best way to frame this, but he is correct that being the boss means your opinion is dangerous. More accurately, casually tossing out half-baked ideas is dangerous for anyone with real power or even social influence. When your words carry enormous weight merely because you said them, you need to be more careful about the things you say because it will have consequences. If it really is just a casual opinion, and not something you have really thought about, it is better to err on the side of not expressing it in such a situation.
Don't add your 2 cents
231–240 of 248 posts
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#232Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#233I find the advice highly condescending. > Because of that small change, that person no longer feels full ownership of their project. What kind of person is that who 1) thinks the ownership is 100% theirs when working in a team? 2) can't handle a little nitpicking? 3) feels it's less their work just because of a little change? 4) can't defend their work and resist those 2c? This is advice for managing 2 year olds. As…
If you work for somebody else, it's 0% yours, and that's it. While you can take pride on some of that, it's simply not yours. If you want it to be your don't sell it.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#234I like to get feedback from as many people as possible, and take action on MOST of the [actionable] feedback. In my experience, this always leads to a better final product.
You have obviously worked with more competent people than me.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#235Huge Sivers fan! With that said, I'd take this advice way further. > The boss’s opinion is no better than anyone else’s. All opinions are no better. Does not matter who. Throw out opinions altogether. In America we are obsessed with "our right to our opinion" and somehow have confabulated this to equal our individuality, our exceptionalism, and our success. We're unique to begin with, exceptional is only a hard earne…
In terms of design, everything is an opinion. You can't prove one design is better than the other... unless you ask for multiple people's opinion. It boils down to opinion in the end.
Everyone having an opinion and there being opinions doesn't mean there isn't anything else. Design-wise any work can be broken down into all of its possible abstractions and inferences, just as a user interface can be measured by use cases. There is also technique, originality, coherence...These are factual and measurable, and any feedback regarding them would not be some opinion anyone could either take or reject based on their opinion. It would be stating a fact.
If you're an artist, the love for your work far outweighs anyone's opinion. You should be doing what would make you love your work even more. And it will resonate with those who love the work also. For this to work, you must have good taste. Love and taste are not opinions.
If something truly holds no empirical value or weight outside opinion, then you've just proved its worthlessness. If it only matters as much as opinions, it doesn't matter much. Do whatever you want.
Points of view, food for thought, and expert advice are not opinions. And none of this is my opinion either. I am stating what I know.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of design, everything is an opinion. You can't prove one design is better than the other... unless you ask for multiple people's opinion. It boils down to opinion in the end.
You can't prove a design is better than another but you can measure it. You can use beta releases or focus group and other methods. Abstract things like feelings and intuition tell you one design is better than another. Relying on intuition might be what works best if you are alone. But there are also concrete signs: user feedback, churn rate, etc. Although we can agree that the best design is not always the most suc…
Having good taste is the empirical skill for judging the aesthetics or experience of anything. If you have good taste, you know you can rely on your intuitions. If you don't, you need someone who has good taste.
> You can't prove a design is better than another but you can measure it.
If you can measure it, you can prove it. The missing key is priority. If you prioritize what your design needs to be better at, then you have a concrete reference for scientifically measuring one design against another.
A common conflict is having multiple priorities. If you want a page to look good, but also want to maximize your ad revenue, well, no matter what you do, you've lost freedom in both. But if someone accuses you for building an ugly page, you can show them the numbers, and their opinion will not matter. It will matter as little as yours. I mean, you probably agree with them.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#237Oh how I wish I had a downvote ability on this post. The first thing wrong with this is the fact that the post is nothing more than the author's 2 cents. The author doesn't know what they hey they're talking about and is just pontificating. As someone who does a lot of creative work, I hate it when people just give useless positive encouragement and withhold actual constructive feedback, small or large. Only hypersen…
But once again, this isn't about constructive feedback. This is about nitpicky, subjective things. The article does not say to hold back constructive feedback. It says to stop nitpicking your employees to death.
The post doesn't say "don't micromanage", it says that if you provide your 2 cents when shown something and ASKED SPECIFICALLY "What do you think?" (!) that if you answer what you think, it will damage your employee's sense of personal ownership over their work, which is utter bullshit.
You can give the author credit for all sorts of careful nuanced views while excusing all the lousiness in the actual words they wrote, but I'm not going to do that. If the author can't take the time to think more critically and carefully about how to express their advice, they shouldn't be publishing, even on their own little blog.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The maxim I was taught was "If it's a question of good v. better; let the employee's decision stand; if it's a question of right v. wrong, intercede and direct, nudge if possible." When you get input you appreciate, you intrinsically appreciate it. The challenge is that statistically, the more senior guy understands why changes are needed, while the more junior guy is less likely to understand the context, or probabi…
"The challenge is that statistically, the more senior guy understands why changes are needed, while the more junior guy is less likely to understand the context, or probabilistic benefit of the offered change." No, no, no, a thousand times no! The person most involved in the problem will almost always better understand the context of the problem, because they are spending far more time on it. This is another importan…
Highly dependant on the situation. There are a lot of extraneous details mostly related to budgets, client relationships and scheduling that the person doing the actual work may not have the most up to date info on.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#239This 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.
I would argue that sj only critiqued things that he genuinely felt needed to be changed. Though he was also demonstrably the worst manager one could have so I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from him.
> sj only critiqued things that he genuinely felt needed to be changed
Which included incredibly detailed nuances like pixel-level critiques of icons and UIs, which is literally what the author defines as "your 2 cents".
> demonstrably the worst manager one could have so I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from him
Except how to build one of the most valuable companies in the world? Seems like a fair criterion for good management.
Re: Don't add your 2 cents
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the key difference between my experience and this article, though, is that the article seems to be mostly focused in a non-technical boss commenting on benign/arbitrary opinions (like shades of color), rather than a technically skilled superior commenting on his area of expertise. The article is referring to things that are ostensibly subjective changes that don't make a tangible, measurable difference. The s…
Maybe the key is to effectively manage your team's morale such that they're not derailed by constructive feedback.
I think the point is that sometimes it's not constructive feedback. Sometimes you'd personally just prefer things to be slightly different. But that doesn't mean that the path your subordinate chose isn't just as good as your preference. In those cases, you should keep your feedback to yourself because it's not actually constructive, and in the worst case it actually undermines their confidence.