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Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

earthly.dev

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Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#101

Post by lanstin »

Jemaclus wrote: post #33
Nition wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (1980): > My husband and I took Jason and his older sister, Leslie, to the Museum of Natural History. We really enjoyed it, and the kids were just great. Only on the way out we had to pass a gift shop. Jason, our four-year-old, went wild over the souvenirs. Most of the stuff was overpriced, but we finally bought him a little set of rocks. Then he started…

That's a great idea. I've unwittingly used similar techniques in the past. Now that I know it's a "real thing," I may have to start using it more. Thanks for sharing this!

That book is full of such incredibly pragmatic tools for dealing with children ina respectful way without giving up on your own values.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#102

Post by kfarr »

lostcolony wrote: post #40
Jemaclus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done this trick fairly often. Like many "tricks" in people management, it works until people figure it out, so you have to be a little careful with it. Nobody likes to feel manipulated. However, I've found that being really open and collaborative with people helps mitigate the manipulation factor by a significant margin. In other words, you get them to agree that the project is not the highest priority or the hi…

I take it one further. "Okay, let's sit down together and write out a story that fully defines what you're asking me to do". Half the time they won't bother. -Your- effort is free, but -their- effort has a cost. The other half of the time they will, because they care about it, and so it goes into the backlog, and they get to see what stuff takes precedence (and it's a legitimately good faith effort on my part to see…

Absolutely, I love this technique when the ask is clearly more complicated than they realize. I say let's schedule an hour to write out a spec, my calendar is open. Similar technique is to say yes I can do that but let's do it together on a screen share call and you can guide me through it. It's always a positive outcome -- either they withdraw the request or we collaborate positively together to make it happen and appropriately prioritize.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#104

Post by tomnipotent »

IlliOnato wrote: post #81
Nition wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (1980): > My husband and I took Jason and his older sister, Leslie, to the Museum of Natural History. We really enjoyed it, and the kids were just great. Only on the way out we had to pass a gift shop. Jason, our four-year-old, went wild over the souvenirs. Most of the stuff was overpriced, but we finally bought him a little set of rocks. Then he started…

This is just brilliant!

The book is a must-read. I keep multiple copies to give away to anyone receptive. It has aged very well.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#105

Post by systemvoltage »

spyckie2 wrote: post #35

Being a hedgehog is useful on the journey to domain mastery because sticking to frameworks saves you time and headache compared to not having any frameworks at all. The 3 stages of domain mastery: Stage 1 - No knowledge or structure to approach a domain (everything is hard, pitfalls are everywhere) Stage 2 - Frameworks that are useful to approach the domain (Map to avoid pitfall areas) Stage 3 - Detailed understandin…

> All of this makes it hard to move beyond stage 2 into stage 3.

Often, moving to the stage 3 is a waste of time and resources. There are a few cases if your business's main secret sauce is stage 3, but for most other things - commoditize and focus.

I've seen so many teams and engineers trying to master stage 3 but no real business need and ROI. Engineers love mastering things but good leaders guide them in the right things to master and avoid getting addicted to useless stage 3 expertise.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#106

Post by BeFlatXIII »

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…

I personally find that I want opinionated advice in two scenarios: either all the options look indistinguishably similar or they are very different sets of trade-offs that leave no clear winner. At that point, the advice is more a tool for breaking decision paralysis than a choice between options with noticeably different outcomes.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#107

Post by taberiand »

wnevets wrote: post #95
bombcar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken. Works for almost any X - writer, programmer, driving, etc.

> To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken. In my experience slavishly following the "rules" or "best practices" can actually be worse than never following them. Not understanding when it's good to deviate usually means of a lack of understanding of why the "rules" or "best practices" exist in the fi…

At the extremes, this is known as cargo-culting. People who have only the most shallow understanding of the rules in my experience also push back the hardest against anyone who "breaks the rules", and get locked into the 'one right way' even when it's actively harming the delivery of a project.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#109

Post by BeFlatXIII »

rfrey wrote: post #17
labrador wrote: post #12

1996: OOP all the code! 2000: XML all the data! 2004: AJAX all the websites! 2008: JQuery all the browser code! 2012: Nodejs all the website backends! 2016: TypeScript all the JavaScript! 2018: Rust all the system code!

OMG it's in four year cycles. We have six months to sell our startups and get out.

US presidential elections were about technology fads all along!

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#110

Post by sombremesa »

genmud wrote: post #77

I am going to disagree with the author here, while the end result might have been successful for the author, the though process to get there was flawed. Ironically, the concept he talks about is right on the money, but with incorrect conclusions. In the example he brings up, that people with subject matter expertise predict events with more accuracy (Foxes) than those who make confident forecasters (Hedgehogs). The t…

> one common thing, which will cause scope creep in projects with almost 100% certainty

Isn't this a very confident broad stroke forecast of the very type TFA rails against?

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