Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask forgiveness, not permission

venturehacks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#11

Post by ChuckMcM »

This is one of those things which sounds great, implies 'get it done' kind of people, and can have profoundly bad outcomes. Engineer testing auto-image-upload from a friends phone. Bad idea. Creating a release system where everything you copy into a magic directory, goes to the web, bad idea. Both sought forgiveness, both got fired. California being a 'right to work' state and all.

Asking permission might not be the right answer but checking your ideas out definitely beats just going for it.

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#12

Post by OGinparadise »

Ask forgiveness, not permission

Dear Board of Directors, During the past few weeks I have been engaging in unauthorized trading. I bet that the Euro would weaken drastically, hoping to make the company at least $4.6 Billion. Instead, we're 5 billion down, as the situation changed.

I was going to ask for permission to use all that cash to trade, but I read on a blog that I should ask for forgiveness, after the fact. So, forgive me.

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#13

Post by guylhem »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #11

This is one of those things which sounds great, implies 'get it done' kind of people, and can have profoundly bad outcomes. Engineer testing auto-image-upload from a friends phone. Bad idea. Creating a release system where everything you copy into a magic directory, goes to the web, bad idea. Both sought forgiveness, both got fired. California being a 'right to work' state and all. Asking permission might not be the…

There is not enough context to judge each action (ie such moves could be bad in specific markets with lot of red tape)

However, by default I'd say there are great ideas, and if they got the boot for asking forgiveness, maybe it's a good thing for your friends - as it it's better to be working where one's value is recognized, than at a company digging its own grave in the midst of a lack of feature, lack of ambition and lack of insight.

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#14

Post by blhack »

Sheesh, guys. If you take every single piece of advice you read on a blog as a black-and-white gospel that you should never, ever disobey, then I fear for your ability to create.

Ask for forgiveness is to prevent you getting stuck into analysis-paralysis (as much as it grosses me out using business-speak like that, the term fits).

The top comment here as of now, about exposing a firm to $5b worth of risk?

C'mon... Do really think anybody is actually advocating that?

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#15

Post by skore »

pfortuny wrote: post #7

Right, the problem is most people who claim to do so NEVER ask for forgiveness... OTOH I don't accept he sentence but that is a different question.

Indeed. Most of the time, it seems to me like it appeals to the people who read it as "Ask grudging resignation, not permission".

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#16

Post by rza »

This policy only works if you hire insanely smart and capable people, and let go of the ones who are not.

Yet another pretentious startup blogger. I am insanely smart and capable, yet for anything beyond a cute web app, I don't think you should use users as a debugging tool

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#17

Post by onlyup »

blhack wrote: post #14

Sheesh, guys. If you take every single piece of advice you read on a blog as a black-and-white gospel that you should never, ever disobey, then I fear for your ability to create. Ask for forgiveness is to prevent you getting stuck into analysis-paralysis (as much as it grosses me out using business-speak like that, the term fits). The top comment here as of now, about exposing a firm to $5b worth of risk? C'mon... Do…

A lot of the time, using absolutes is pointless and irritating.

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#19

Post by obviouslygreen »

zgohr wrote: post #8
obviouslygreen wrote: post #6

Developers shouldn't have this kind of control unless your product is for developers. I say this as a developer. The article mentions it only works if you hire insanely smart people, but that's also not a sufficient condition. You can have really amazing programmers, but if they don't have a strong understanding of your demographic and your goals, they're not "smart" in the way that's most relevant to this particular…

If you have the freedom to make decisions, you also have the responsibility of being correct. I'm not sure of the full intentions of the article nor your comment, but I think you may have missed a major point here. The article does not seem to argue that insanely smart people know all the right answers; instead it argues that insanely smart people have a pretty good idea when something is a bad idea, and will be the…

One problem I have with your second quote is that "speed of iteration," like intelligence of employees, is not in and of itself enough to make the result good for the product. The latter requires that the employees understand the target audience and their needs. The former requires that your iterations are moving in a direction that satisfies your target demographic, and if it doesn't, this isn't just not beneficial: Your speed of iteration becomes directly detrimental to the product.

Re: Ask forgiveness, not permission

#20

Post by trop »

OGinparadise wrote: post #12

Ask forgiveness, not permission Dear Board of Directors, During the past few weeks I have been engaging in unauthorized trading. I bet that the Euro would weaken drastically, hoping to make the company at least $4.6 Billion. Instead, we're 5 billion down, as the situation changed. I was going to ask for permission to use all that cash to trade, but I read on a blog that I should ask for forgiveness, after the fact. S…

This is also very tricky interpersonal advice. I used to tell college students not to ask for permission, but only for forgiveness. Then realized that this could be construed as advocating date rape.
Post reply on HN