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Willingness to look stupid

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#521

Post by coralreef »

Buttons840 wrote: post #496
coralreef wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That there are fundamental misunderstandings and misconceptions about existing systems. This is debugging 101. You have assumptions about how a system works, but the output isn't matching those assumptions. You walk backwards over your assumptions and test them to see if they are true. Eventually you get to the precise place where your assumption is wildly different than the output, and there is your bug. The more…

Yep, eventually you're asking things like, "does the variable called 'username' contain the username?" Not too long ago I found that 'username', in fact, did not contain the username.

I once had a co-worker at a small company (2 developers, me and him).

In the spirit of doing less work, he proposed to me changing the meaning of "someProperty" to mean something different, without changing the name of that property.

Also, it was a boolean; so he wanted true values to actually represent false, and vice versa.

I politely pushed back on that one.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#522

Post by ZephyrBlu »

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #399
blfr wrote: post #130

As a man, every condescending comment you get in person only tells you one thing: your deadlift PR is still too low. Get jacked and all these problems disappear. No matter how silly your questions and objections, no matter how dumb they may think you are, all your concerns will be treated very seriously, criticism couched in most polite terms, and weird stuff written off as eccentric. (It helps to be taller, well-dre…

Sounds like great advice! Why should I listen to guys like Dan Abramov when I can listen to you? In all seriousness though, this comment almost sounds like its from another language when read here on HN. Its crazy how completely wierd some parts of the internet has become.

Dan Abramov has something greater than muscle: status. What a random guy says about being heard is probably going to be more useful than what Dan says because it's not confounded by having high status.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#523

Post by blitz_skull »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #325
jjdin14 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blm is the status quo, that’s why speaking against blm gets people deplatformed.

If blm were the status quo the police would have been defunded.

I think a couple cities did that, and quickly back-tracked because crime shot up.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#524

Post by alexashka »

zamfi wrote: post #503
alexashka wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine your comment being made in a meeting I got pulled into. I brace myself. I'm going to waste your time. This is super obvious. Here it goes: so uh, why do you continue to work with incompetent idiots instead of finding a workplace where people know what they are talking about instead?

Poor communication does not imply everyone involved is incompetent idiots. It's unfortunate, and important to address, but if you quit any project every time there is inadequate communication, you'll never get anything done. Assumptions are inevitable. They get harder to question the longer they go unquestioned. Newcomers to a group can see them better. Perhaps cutting people some slack and helping them work better b…

If you want to cut people slack, go cut them slack. Here's a question: look around you, you think cutting slack is what's needed?

If you think so, alright then. I don't.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#525

Post by Ensorceled »

dangerface wrote: post #467
Ensorceled wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because every low level Apple retail employee wants to have the following conversation with their boss: "The customer asked for the smallest box so I assumed they knew what they were doing and sold them that." "No, I didn't ask any further questions, I wouldn't want to assume they were stupid. That would be wrong in this narrative." "No, I don't know how exactly how much $$ Apple is going to lose on this return.…

I don't know what you are on about, I assume you haven't worked in sales, but I have and I have done this pleanty and the conversation goes like this: Boss: did you make a sale? Me: Yes Boss: good job Im sorry but if you work in sales and your boss gets upset at returns your boss is new to sales.

I'm having a hard time believing that you have a history in retail computer sales AND thought the Apple sales rep was the trouble maker in this scenario.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#526

Post by [deleted] »

nzealand wrote: post #446
sharkweek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ro…

[deleted]

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#527

Post by Zababa »

dinkleberg wrote: post #379
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…

One thing you learn in sales is the value of open-ended questions. Until you consciously look at it, it's hard to realize how bad the questions we tend to ask are. Yes/no questions are the worst. But even questions like "What did you do?" aren't great because the answers can often be rather short. A better question is often posed like "Tell me about X" or "Describe how you did Y". Of course this isn't universally tru…

That depends. Yes/no questions are great when you want to quickly validate something. Open-ended questions are great when you want to get a lot of information. Yes/no are for confirmation, open-ended for exploration. Different goals.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#528

Post by dharmab »

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…

On my last team I coined the hashtag #StupidQuestionsEncouraged and used my role as a lead to both ask stupid questions and encourage others to do the same.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#530

Post by twobuy »

dotancohen wrote: post #147
HeckFeck wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the simple brilliance of Socrates. He began from the premise that he knew nothing, and would ask all manner of simple questions building on top of the previous answers. It wasn't long before he uncovered how little everyone else actually knew, but what separated Socrates was his honesty: he knew nothing and admitted it. Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn't find this to their…

> Naturally, the established powers and polite society didn't find this to their liking. We all know how his story ended. Socrates was sentenced to death not for exposing how little everyone else knew. The esteemed philosopher was sentenced to death because he was deliberately annoying people - like a fly - with badgering questions that would force the questionee into a corner. Today we call this method of exposing c…

He was put to death for being a thinly veiled Spartan sympathizer. Not quite just for being annoying.
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