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Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

earthly.dev

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Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#2

Post by agbell »

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'.

The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions.

Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#3

Post by anguslmm »

agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

This is pure gold for fresher developers, and something of which more experienced devs could use a reminder.

Every fad and every champion of every technique or framework has something to teach you, and they are often very happy to teach it to you at the wrong time. Trying to please everyone at the start of the project is tantamount to design by committee, and is a sure way to kill a project.

To a hammer, everything looks like nails.

Well written.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#4

Post by peter_l_downs »

Found this to be a straightforward and interesting article. Not sure I've ever seen someone connect Tetlock's research to engineering planning before; I certainly hadn't made the connection myself. I also appreciated the tip that instead of saying no to something, you can just add it to a "future work" section of lower-priority but definitely-still-very-important-i-promise-really-i-mean-it tasks and everyone will end up happy.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#5

Post by Ozzie_osman »

agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

Great read.

One thing I've found (as a person who advises engineering managers and startups) is that recipients of advice seem to value non-contingent advice more. They just want simple answers that don't make them think.

When someone asks me a question like "how should I interview candidates?", my default answer is "it depends". Tell me about the role. The company. The culture. The product. Remote or in-person? What's the team like. Then i can give a framework that gives you the answer. But people want answers like "use take-homes" or "do 2 behavioral interviews and 1 coding interview".

Same for technical decisions. They don't want to hear "it depends". They want to hear "use Rails and MySQL hosted on Heroku".

So I naturally find myself being pushed to give non-contingent advice.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#6

Post by agbell »

anguslmm wrote: post #3
agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

This is pure gold for fresher developers, and something of which more experienced devs could use a reminder. Every fad and every champion of every technique or framework has something to teach you, and they are often very happy to teach it to you at the wrong time. Trying to please everyone at the start of the project is tantamount to design by committee, and is a sure way to kill a project. To a hammer, everything l…

Thanks for reading it. It was one of the those ideas bouncing around in the back of my head for a while but hard to put into words then I read something about Tetlock and the dots sort of connected for me.

Software advice isn't totally a prediction, but it sort of is.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#8

Post by nradov »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #5
agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

Great read. One thing I've found (as a person who advises engineering managers and startups) is that recipients of advice seem to value non-contingent advice more. They just want simple answers that don't make them think. When someone asks me a question like "how should I interview candidates?", my default answer is "it depends". Tell me about the role. The company. The culture. The product. Remote or in-person? What…

Do managers who accept contingent advice from you tend to produce better outcomes?

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#9

Post by Muley »

agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

Great article Adam, fyi the LinkedIn link on your website is broken. Was trying to look up your history.

Also Ctrl F: "beleive" -> "believe"

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#10

Post by agbell »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #5
agbell wrote: post #2

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to connect the dots on research on expert advice and our fields 'thought-leaders'. The connection is a bit tenuous but I think contingent advice can be shown to be better than non-contingent advice. I also think people are too confident in their opinions. Also another submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462255

Great read. One thing I've found (as a person who advises engineering managers and startups) is that recipients of advice seem to value non-contingent advice more. They just want simple answers that don't make them think. When someone asks me a question like "how should I interview candidates?", my default answer is "it depends". Tell me about the role. The company. The culture. The product. Remote or in-person? What…

Yeah, I think that could be true in general. Tetlock found the hedgehogs were more famous and more wrong and I got the idea from him that that was because simple advice is more sticky and works better in sounds bites but it could also work the opposite way -- ie. the more people ask you for advice the more you learn to tell them what they want which might be oversimplified. So you get trained to be more of a hedgehog over time. Interesting idea.
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