Coming up with bad ideas isn’t a skill either.
Shooting down ideas is not a skill
51–60 of 187 posts
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#52“pessimists sound smart , but optimists make money”
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#53With all due respect, if the idea is good, then it will happen. The proposer of the idea needs to nurture it and part of that is defending it. When someone is super optimistic and comes forward with an idea where: - it's actually just a half baked solution for something I already tried to solve 4 years ago - I'm acutely aware of all the spots it will fall - they still think it can work, when it really really honestly…
Well, you can help nurture it. Prehaps instead of speaking how about how it couldn't work think about what you'd need to do to make it work or where it could work. Tend to the garden!
> think about what you'd need to do to make it work
"This idea will probably work once we can develop just a few new basic technologies that it depends on (time travel, antigravity, unlimited free energy, faster-than-light communication, ...)"
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#54The skill of shooting down ideas has never been more valuable, actually.
LLM's are an endless source of bad code ideas. Being able to sift through them and find the gems is the exhausting way to be productive.
I agree with the general premise that it is easy to shoot down ideas without thinking. But it's also easy to propose ideas without thinking.
Both are disrespectful if disproportionate to the effort of the other.
The core is not idea generation versus critique. It's the effort spent on each.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#55Honestly IMO this kind of thing just depends a lot on tone. “That won’t work because” tends to piss people off and they usually do the thing anyway. “Cool idea! What about …? We tried … years ago and failed because of that” works at least sometimes (and sometimes they have a good answer)
Edit: also, bluntly, sometimes objections have answers that can’t be said. “DevOps won't want to support another service.”…”that’s because our devops engineers all think you’re an overpaid jackass and are strongly inclined to reject your ideas out of the gate. My one other idea they liked, so they’ll probably take a chance on another one.” What’s hard but important to remember is that sometimes you’re the person that things can’t be said to.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#56> "I haven't heard any customers request this." "We can't use Python for that, it's too slow." "That introduces too much complexity." "We tried something like that before and it didn't work." "DevOps won't want to support another service." "People are used to the way it works now." > None of these people are wrong or stupid. And none of them have added any value. Bzzt. Since all of these people are correct and smart,…
Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk.
Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#57Ideas are cheap
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#58I agree with some parts but I mostly don't see the point of this article: shooting down ideas is a skill in academia, in industry, in fields where decisions have huge opportunity costs. One needs to shoot down ideas pretty often, because really good ideas are only a handful.
Things that are really worth someone's time are often something that should be well thought out, stress-tested, collectively agreed upon by at least a few. So shoot the unfeasible ones bang on so you don't waste time on it. Just don't make it personal; it's only ideas that need judgement, not the people.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#59“pessimists sound smart , but optimists make money”
Some optimists make money.
Others lose it all.
Most scenarios call for a bit of both.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#60With all due respect, if the idea is good, then it will happen. The proposer of the idea needs to nurture it and part of that is defending it. When someone is super optimistic and comes forward with an idea where: - it's actually just a half baked solution for something I already tried to solve 4 years ago - I'm acutely aware of all the spots it will fall - they still think it can work, when it really really honestly…
> With all due respect, if the idea is good, then it will happen. Not sure if that's survivorship bias or post-facto rationalization. I guess the 'it will happen' implies eventually and since we cannot wait for all time there is no good idea that could qualify as never going to happen. I know of many good ideas that haven't' happened yet and are unlikely to be brought to fruition in my lifetime. At least Meta-Languag…
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