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You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#51

Post by freehunter »

drewg123 wrote: post #32

A powerful "no man" can be a valuable asset sometimes. I was involved in the design of an ASIC. This was going to be used by people from all different areas of the company, and they all had various demands. Most had never worked on a chip before, and didn't realize the cost of what they were asking for. The easy thing to do would have been to ensure that every requested feature was added But that would have burned ar…

I have an unofficial board of advisors for my small company, and one of them is a "No Man". I knew that when I asked him to join. Every time the company has an idea, this guy will shut it down immediately. He forces us to defend every single decision.

Do we always listen to him? No. Does he always win? No. Is he always right? Absolutely not. But I keep him around because he forces everyone in the company to defend every idea. If you still feel good about the idea after defending it from him, then go ahead. If you've lost faith, then I'm glad we didn't waste any time on it.

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#52

Post by united893 »

ndarwincorn wrote: post #44
hrktb wrote: post #19

I don’t get it. 1 - there is a Mr.No guy but, the author only knows him by reputation 2 - there is a technical problem that seems to revolve around memory 3 - the author has an idea of a solution, she actually tries as people don’t believe her 4 - her solution works, but she is told the “No” guy said “no swap” once a long time ago Her reaction: “Did I care what he supposedly said? No.” Why doesn’t she go talk to him…

> It seems like nobody communicates correctly in that company, the author included, and it must hurt in so many places. Depending on what you think of Google (or maybe Rackspace, but I think Google's more likely the source of that post), you might be surprised at what company you're talking about. I think you're spot on but am curious if you'd write that if you knew where they worked.

Rachel's at Facebook

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

drewg123 wrote: post #32

A powerful "no man" can be a valuable asset sometimes. I was involved in the design of an ASIC. This was going to be used by people from all different areas of the company, and they all had various demands. Most had never worked on a chip before, and didn't realize the cost of what they were asking for. The easy thing to do would have been to ensure that every requested feature was added But that would have burned ar…

Having someone who will (or can) justify their nos can be quite useful. Having a cadre of people who simply emit a nonending stream of nos for, erm, no reason, and who cannot be reasoned with (see the parallel response by freehunter about the "no" board for a counterexample), is directly harmful.

There's also a time and place for experimentation, and a time when it's got to be made clear that there's only so much time (or other budget) for research, and that that's going to be tracked and burned down (though the discretion may be put on the R&D team itself to decide how to allocate that).

Much of Rachel's essay is more about management-by-mythology than about the saying-of-nos, specifically.

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#54

Post by mobjack »

blueyes wrote: post #15

I think of most in-house corporate lawyers as playing the role of "no men". There job is to highlight risks and stop things from happening. It's a rare lawyer who understands business goals and can balance them against risks.

Good lawyers figure out how to say yes while minimizing legal risks.

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#55

Post by yawaramin »

hrktb wrote: post #34
beiller wrote: post #20

Trust but verify. I'd bet if the author went to the original source, the "no man" himself, they may find that there is actually no such policy! Just a mishearing of a conversation parroted by "wrong people".

“Trust but verify” litteraly meant “Don’t trust” (as in “don’t trust the Russians” in context). Was it the nuance you intended ?

That's not what it meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#57

Post by dredmorbius »

This seems far less about "just say no" than it is about not understanding, or insisting on, long-obsoleted policies.

I've encountered something of a converse of this situation: a set of prod servers running a Java workload on which performance was frequently abysmal, which turned out to be due to a very poorly tuned set of JVM GC parameters. The feature(s) were poorly documented (lots of detail, little useful guidance), so it took some tuning and ongoing performance monitoring to see that 1) the problem had been solved and 2) that no new problems were introduced.

The latter being of particular concern as this was a long-lived project that had gone through generations of development and ops support (I was latter), few of whom were on current speaking terms with the shop in question.

The management feedback I got on my monitoring was (a rudimentary bit of instrumentation, and periodic checking) was that this seemed to reflect an excess of concern and/or attachment to the issue and/or solution.

Given the numerous other years-outstanding issues which I'd identified and (eventually) largely remedied, I found this response tremendously perplexing.

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#58

Post by mark-r »

hinkley wrote: post #48
deleted_account wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chesterton's fence".

Chesterton's fence is about taking away things we don't understand. There's a big gap between that and fighting cargo culting.

But you really don't know if it's cargo culting until you know why the fence is there.

Re: You've heard of “yes men”. Now learn about “no men” (2011)

#60

Post by dredmorbius »

hinkley wrote: post #48
deleted_account wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chesterton's fence".

Chesterton's fence is about taking away things we don't understand. There's a big gap between that and fighting cargo culting.

CF is about, generally, changing a thing without understanding why it was set a given way in the first place.

Where it is necessary to change (or to make changes) without full understanding, at the very least, instrument and observe for some time.

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence

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