Willingness to look stupid • Hacker News Board

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#441

Post by clairity » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #360

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

One of the best people I've ever worked with used this approach. "I'm going to ask stupid questions now." and "Just so I'm understanding the problem, ." were two phrases she used all the time . I am surprised at how difficult it has been to emulate her technique. Feeling comfortable asking the obvious questions is one half of the battle, but the other, more difficult half, is knowing what obvious questions to ask. Mo…

this is also part of a coterie of non-threatening communication most women implicitly learn while growing up, to realize desired outcomes without negative pushback.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#442

Post by serial_dev » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #360

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

One of the best people I've ever worked with used this approach. "I'm going to ask stupid questions now." and "Just so I'm understanding the problem, ." were two phrases she used all the time . I am surprised at how difficult it has been to emulate her technique. Feeling comfortable asking the obvious questions is one half of the battle, but the other, more difficult half, is knowing what obvious questions to ask. Mo…

I don't like to say "I'm going to ask a stupid question". First of all, it feels disingenuous to me, people who say that never actually think that their questions will be stupid. And the second reason is that I think I might even convince myself that my questions are stupid... I know it sounds silly to some but little things like how you talk about yourself (and your questions) is important.

I often ask these "stupid" questions, though. I usually start with: "it might have been said in other meetings, but just to be sure, what is...", "I might be a bit slow, could you explain X once again just to make sure I understand it", "So just to paraphrase what we've been discussing, X is Y, is that correct?", and sometimes I just ask "what does $acronym stand for and why is it important for us now".

I, too, often find that nobody knows the answers to very basic questions and we are in a meeting of 6-12 people...

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#443

Post by bityard » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

legohead wrote: post #387

This resonates pretty well with me, re: asking questions I noticed in classes that people were afraid to ask questions, and when they did, everyone else was happy they did so since we all had the same question in mind, usually. So at some point I decided I'm just going to ask any question that pops into my head and stop caring what others think. It worked out great, but now that I'm married, it annoys my wife to no e…

Hah! I can relate. My wife and I have conversations like this all the time. I've been trained to take an engineering mindset towards things because, frankly, it's how I earn a living and rarely lets me down.

Earlier in our marriage, she would make a vague request or statement as a prompt for me to do something. Instead of asking for clarification, I would do what I _guessed_ she wanted. And I would often get it wrong and be met with the response of, "You knew what I meant!" No, clearly I didn't, or I wouldn't have done the wrong thing.

These days she is getting better at being clearer about her needs and I am (maybe?) getting more diligent about asking for clarification.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#444

Post by raman162 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

After reading, I don't think the author is willing to look stupid, I think they don't care at all if they look stupid, an attribute that I still think is remarkable. I wish I had the self-confidence to not care so much about what others think. Something I'm still slowly working on.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#445

Post by jmchuster » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #129

jmchuster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moral of the story is that Lawrence was an idiot for not properly understanding what answer the test administrators wanted him to give?

From the wording, it sounds like he only answered the one question. Since he kept his work, all they know is that he answered at most[0] one question correctly. [0] It's possible he gave an answer that wasn't what they expected and it was "incorrect".

Then, at the risk of looking stupid, he could have first asked the administrator "Do you care at all about how many of the questions I answer?"

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#446

Post by nzealand » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #370

mywittyname wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best people I've ever worked with used this approach. "I'm going to ask stupid questions now." and "Just so I'm understanding the problem, ." were two phrases she used all the time . I am surprised at how difficult it has been to emulate her technique. Feeling comfortable asking the obvious questions is one half of the battle, but the other, more difficult half, is knowing what obvious questions to ask. Mo…

VP in my org does this, and it really disarms the room. She’s big on that exact phrase of “this could be a really stupid question, but…” She’s also really good about making sure other people are rewarded for doing the same by reassuring someone asking what might be a dumb question as, “that’s a a great question and I’m sure others were wondering the same…” before responding. Great leadership, IMO.

An EVP of Ops of a fortune 500 did this to an entire room of functional experts.

We were there to discuss a technical implementation.

She kicked it off by saying "Let me start by asking a simple question, why do we do this function?"

I am now considered a domain expert. I love this question. It surprises me at how few people start with the why, or even can articulate the why.

The room of experts, were assembled to roll out a new product in their area of functional expertise. None of us had an articulate answer as to the why. She kept on asking. She gently challenged bad answers with a follow up why. Then when everyone gave up, she gave her answer as to the why. It was brilliant.

Always start with the why. Then ask why again. Keep on asking until you understand why.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#447

Post by LegitShady » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #360

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

One of the best people I've ever worked with used this approach. "I'm going to ask stupid questions now." and "Just so I'm understanding the problem, ." were two phrases she used all the time . I am surprised at how difficult it has been to emulate her technique. Feeling comfortable asking the obvious questions is one half of the battle, but the other, more difficult half, is knowing what obvious questions to ask. Mo…

I do this all the time. I'm a non computer engineer who gets pulled into all sorts of computer related things as the contact point with the actual business. Having a good BA and someone who asks stupid questions make such meetings end in positive results much more often.

I also preface with saying I'm going to ask stupid questions and if anyone holds it against me I'm ok with it. If I'm asking a question it's usually because I don't understand a consequent of something someone said that everyone seems to just nod their heads and agree with, and that gives everyone an opportunity to reconsider the fundamentals.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#448

Post by d0gsg0w00f » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #338

This has happened to me frequently at my current company. I get pulled into a meeting about something that I have no context on because it touches my area of expertise, and the discussions have apparently been stalling out. I brace myself to be the idiot. I'm going to waste everyone's time asking questions that everyone knows the answer to, and I just got looped in, so everyone's going to feel like they need to walk…

I do this all the time too and have observed the same results! I ask a lot of dumb questions like "what does XYZ stand for?" and "what was the original problem you were trying to solve by taking this course of action?". Even though I always have that same sinking feeling, usually by the 4th or 5th question I have a very clear idea of what's going on.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#449

Post by tfehring » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

Minor point: I assume the author's rationale for carrying only liability insurance is that he has enough money to comfortably self-insure the risk of an at-fault accident. For businesses that approach makes sense - big companies self-insure most or all of their fleets, because buying third-party insurance costs more than the actuarially fair cost of risk. But those businesses also have teams of people to deal with the giant hassle that is the claims process, including dealing with the other party's (or parties') insurers, determining fault, and suing and/or negotiating a legal settlement as needed.

For individuals that service is largely inseparable from risk transfer, i.e., you can really only get it through insurance. Lawyers can handle a subset of the process, but not all of it, and besides, relying on lawyers for it is probably at least as expensive as the non-risk-transfer component of insurance in expectation.

In general, if someone's wealthy enough that they can effectively self-insure, even if they're completely risk-neutral, their time is probably valuable enough that they'd be better off buying insurance just to avoid having to go through the equivalent of the claims process themselves. So unless the author's rationale is wildly different than I'm thinking, in that example his insurance agent was right and he did make a stupid decision.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#450

Post by rcthompson » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

Apparently I have a talent for asking basic questions in a way that doesn't make me look stupid, because I ask a lot of questions, especially when learning new things, and I don't think I've ever been called stupid because of it.