I always try to remember the quote "Those saying a thing is impossible need to stay out of the way of those doing it"
A important word doing a lot of lifting here is "doing". talk is cheap, the problem is never lack of ideas.
Shooting down ideas is not a skill
121–130 of 187 posts
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#122If you happen to work at a company of even a moderate size, but particularlly a large company, here's some free advice.
Never point out the problems. There is literally no upside to doing this and plenty of downside. You will be labelled "Mr/Ms Negative". When you are inevitably proven right, you won't be thanked or heeded on future predictions. Instead you will be get feedback and comments about "not being a team player".
This is doubly true if it's in the context of a meeting. What many don't realize is that meetings aren't for feedback or criticism or for changing course. All of those decisions have already happened. The meeting is just there to make official what's already been decided.
If you truly want to influence the outcome, you do it 1:1 and outside meetings. And you create a paper trial so you're not the one left standing then the music stops.
The people who say "shooting down ideas is not a skill" are wrong but it doesn't matter because they somehow rise to positions of leadership anyway and create these toxic environments where the only two outcomes are that they were right or you failed.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, the irony...
Knowing how to stop a bad idea is a skill. Knowing when it's a bad idea is a skill. Knowing when you don't know is a skill. There's more than one skill in life. More than one may be applicable to a situation. Everyone on this forum has probably run into one of the "idea guys" who just need a tech cofounder to do the coding for 2% equity.
He's pointing out that it's ironic to come into a thread about not shooting ideas and do nothing more than shoot down the idea. It's literally the exact behavior described in like the first paragraph of the article. It IS ironic.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you clarify? The alleged typo is… not there? Or their? Or they’re? What’s ironic here?
Ok, I just thought it was ironic that the article was about how being critical of something isn't skillful. And, it appeared to me (but all my downvotes prove I'm in the minority), that you just added a critical comment without doing anything else the author wrote about. For the record, I was curious about what else you have written, so I read some of your posts and comments. And, you seem to be a very thoughtful and…
It felt very low effort and did not contribute anything to the comment thread.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is value in critically evaluating ideas and possible endeavors. On the other hand, demanding an answer to every little pocket of uncertainty creates a huge burden that prevents exploration. It's one thing to be exhaustive in the criticism by examining individual scenarios, evaluating cost benefit in a measurable way, etc. That doesn't seem to be what the author is describing. He's describing critical & low effo…
> He's describing critical & low effort cheap shots. The examples he used included: the plan depends on a different team providing labour and that team is not on board, the business plan for the idea does not make sense. I suppose they are low effort in the sense that they are very basic 101 criticisms, but i wouldn't call them cheap shots. Literally no plan is ever going to work if it involves the labour of others w…
It's not a plan, it's an idea. You're shooting down an idea for not being a plan. The best person for coming up with the idea will probably also come up with some of the pieces of the plan, but they're unlikely to be the best person to figure out all of it. That's why you have a company not a sole proprietorship.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#126> "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,…
> Can't use Python because it's too slow? Show a proof of concept that is fast. Python is slow though, and for many use cases it won't work. For example, say somebody wanted to build a performant systems type software like version control. You're not really going to do that in Python. Something like that would even be slow in much "faster" Node.js. Some stuff you can't really use dynamic langauges for, if you want it…
> For example, say somebody wanted to build a performant systems type software like version control. You're not really going to do that in Python.
Actually, bazaar [0] (now breezy [1]) was a distributed version control system written in Python. It gained some non-Python bits over time, but iirc it was originally all Python.
As a (spiritual) successor to Tom Lord’s Arch [2] it was the second DVCS I used and, while slower than git, was performant enough for my needs at the time I used it.
Most distributed version control is IO bound, and Python isn’t terrible at that.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bazaar
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He's describing critical & low effort cheap shots. The examples he used included: the plan depends on a different team providing labour and that team is not on board, the business plan for the idea does not make sense. I suppose they are low effort in the sense that they are very basic 101 criticisms, but i wouldn't call them cheap shots. Literally no plan is ever going to work if it involves the labour of others w…
It's not a plan, it's an idea. You're shooting down an idea for not being a plan. The best person for coming up with the idea will probably also come up with some of the pieces of the plan, but they're unlikely to be the best person to figure out all of it. That's why you have a company not a sole proprietorship.
The problem with this is, that the article literally says:
> The person proposing has been thinking about this for weeks or months. They've tested pieces of it in their head or even built proofs of concept. They understand things about the idea that aren't obvious yet. And they're trying to explain all of this to a room full of people encountering it for the first time.
If they did that much upfront work, it's more than an idea. And if it's that easily shot down, they should have done even more upfront work and probably slowly gotten others involved.
Honestly, it sounds like someone so desperate for credit, so worried that someone will steal the idea, that they feel compelled to unveil it in a large gathering that was convened for some other purpose. And that never goes well.
Ideas truly are a dime a dozen. If one gets shot down, then you can reflect whether that was warranted, and try again with the same idea if not.
If you're really emotionally invested in it, as the guy writing the article seems to be, then you damn well better have more than just an idea, and you should understand enough about human nature to slowly try to bring individuals onboard to help before you put it out in front of a big crowd.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#128> "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.
If an idea is dead because it couldn't survive its first public outing, that's probably a good thing.
If you really believe in an idea, even if you first put it forward to the wrong hostile audience, you will have other opportunities to make your case.
Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is that a skill or communicating experience? uhhh, how is communicating experience not a skill?
> How is communicating experience not a skill? This statement is over-generalizing the case. I'm talking about a niche context when trying to "shoot holes in an idea", not some general communication skill (as you've implied) that is practiced. I don't believe what I referenced is a skill.
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Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill
#130The "what to do instead" section is basically DARPA's "Heilmeier Catechism," which is the framework they use to gauge high-risk high-reward ideas. It doesn't kill ideas, but it places the onus on the proposer to be clear-eyed and explicit about what they're putting forward: What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practi…
Heilmeier Catechism is really interesting, thanks for linking that. I like how the questions break down different major aspects. It treats risk as one of the dimensions of evaluation but not entire conversation. That's the shift I was trying to describe. Critique is valuable as part of a complete picture, not when it is the only lens.