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Shooting down ideas is not a skill

scottlawsonbc.com

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Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#161

Post by dsr_ »

scottlawson wrote: post #144
citizenpaul wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>DevOps won't want to support it? Burn down the company Still true but you seem to blame the ops. I've been in a job where every dept was allowed free for all tech budgets. They would hire incompetent consultants to dump 3000hrs of work on devops then do it again next week and complain about how devops never gets anything done. Then 5 other departments would do the same thing. You know how 99% of the work is in that…

what I meant with "DevOps won't want to support it" was someone saying this before DevOps had even been asked, and by someone who wasn't even on DevOps, who just assumed that they probably wouldn't like this sort of thing.

If this meeting doesn't include devs, I don't know what the context of anything in the article is supposed to be about. There are no major new ideas in business that don't involve software.

If it is not the case that "devs" is not functionally equivalent to saying "DevOps", then "DevOps" doesn't exist. You have an operations group, and you need their buy-in, so they should be invited to the meeting.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#162

Post by reval »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #80

Funny story. I get called an “idea killer,” because I say things like “The hinge is probably going to wear out. We should figure out how to deal with it.” That makes me a “negative naysayer.” I’ve learned to just shrug, and walk away from a lost cause. Sometimes, if I care enough, I can have some remedy ready for when the wheels come off. I can do that, because I’m retired. It’s not so easy, if it’s your job; especia…

Your example about this hinge is nurturing behaviour. This is exactly what people should be doing- identifying issues and also at least suggesting they be fixed before proceeding if not offering a fix themselves.

There is more to your reputation than what sounds like a genuine growth mindset.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#163

Post by ceejayoz »

kulahan wrote: post #123
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s only ironic if the headline is correct.

Or are you ironically shooting down my idea that it is a skill?

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#164

Post by Jensson »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #146
bawolff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're shooting down an idea for not being a plan. If you are pitching an idea out of nowhere, than i think it better have a semblence of a plan, otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time. Like maybe its a bit different if you are brainstorming for an acknowledged problem, but that is not what the article made it sound like. The article made it sound like the idea was being pitched unsolicited, with no clear p…

> If you are pitching an idea out of nowhere, than i think it better have a semblence of a plan, otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time Depends on context. Shooting the shit is valuable.

And shooting down shit is also valuable. It is fine to have ideas without thinking them through, and it is also fine to criticize those ideas without thinking through the criticism. That is how we figure out how the ideas could work.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#165

Post by Jensson »

majormajor wrote: post #98
torben-friis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the other hand, demanding an answer to every little pocket of uncertainty creates a huge burden that prevents exploration. How do you explore an idea, other than trying to shoot it down and seeing if it survives the shot?

By proceeding with things that will gather more data—such as prototyping, or further independent research—vs spinning indefinitely on "hypothetical" discussion-only shots. How do you know if it survives the shot without that, if it's just person A saying "I don't think Python perf will be an issue" and person B saying "I think it will"?

> How do you know if it survives the shot without that, if it's just person A saying "I don't think Python perf will be an issue" and person B saying "I think it will"?

That is the point, knowing that it is a point we want to test is valuable. If person B there didn't say he thought it would be an issue you probably wouldn't have tested it, it was valuable for him to say that.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#166

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

reval wrote: post #162
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #80

Funny story. I get called an “idea killer,” because I say things like “The hinge is probably going to wear out. We should figure out how to deal with it.” That makes me a “negative naysayer.” I’ve learned to just shrug, and walk away from a lost cause. Sometimes, if I care enough, I can have some remedy ready for when the wheels come off. I can do that, because I’m retired. It’s not so easy, if it’s your job; especia…

Your example about this hinge is nurturing behaviour. This is exactly what people should be doing- identifying issues and also at least suggesting they be fixed before proceeding if not offering a fix themselves. There is more to your reputation than what sounds like a genuine growth mindset.

Maybe. I tend to focus on "blockers," and things that can go wrong, first. I suspect a lot of people want to be buttered up, before the problems are discussed (i.e. "That's a really great idea! Have you thought about how often the hinge is stressed?")

I'm a bit "spectrumish," so I sometimes miss the niceties.

The Japanese were not reticent about discussing problems. It was fairly brutal, but we made great stuff.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#168

Post by card_zero »

gdubs wrote: post #56
dsr_ wrote: post #49

> "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.

In improvisational theatre, negativity is known as "blocking". It frustrates the imagination. It's very harmful to clowns.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#169

Post by II2II »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #74
II2II wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at the technology sitting in front of you. How many ideas does it incorporate that were tried and failed, or were tried but languished in niche markets for decades before they became an everyday thing? A lot of ideas fail because they're not ready: they are expensive, they are not reliable (yet), the world is not ready for them. None of those reasons mean an idea is bad. They simply mean it will take more…

“a lot of ideas fail because they’re not ready” =/= “all good ideas win out”

True, but you don't know which ideas are going to win out until they have won out (or an objectively better idea replaces them).

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#170

Post by oa335 »

“ 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.”

This is just not true in my experience, and doubly so after the advent of LLMs. I've seen more half-baked ideas presented than thorough plans.

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