Focus Is Saying No • Hacker News Board

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#21

Post by Buttons840 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

lolive wrote: post #15

Aurornis wrote: post #10

> Now if my manager asks me to do tasks that I believe add no value to the team or business, I’ll politely say no. This is the wrong lesson to take from this situation. If you start saying no to tasks assigned by your manager, you are not going to get promoted. You’re going to end up on PIP track for insubordination. The appropriate response is to communicate. The OP arrived in this situation because they didn’t comm…

During a face2face with my n+2, he once told me « manage your manager ». I discovered later that he had been forced to hire my n+1 but did not like him at all. And that the message was basically: « he is a bozo whereas you a competent engineer. Don’t be fooled by the organization chart. » So sometimes saying no to your n+1 is totally in line with your n+2 :)

By the time a company is that dysfunctional, why bother? Just do the minimum to get paid.

I mean it. I want to work for a company where everyone is working towards the common goal of making the company profitable. But there comes a point where the company is overrun by politics and selfish and harmful decisions.

By the time dysfunctional company politics empower a "bozo", why should I stress or put any care into such a company? I'll just do the minimum.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#22

Post by Buttons840 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 8:49 PM UTC

doesnt_know wrote: post #20

Buttons840 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related tangent: Does anyone have any advice on how to politely say "I like the company, I want to stay, but I don't like my current work and if it doesn't change for the better I'm going to leave in 6-months". I once tried to say this as politely as possible, but I think I might have been too polite and tactful and they didn't understand. I had a date in mind, and had a conversation 6-months, 3-months, and 1-mo…

I personally don't think ultimatums are a tool that you should ever employ in an employment situation outside of collective action. You can just leave off the ultimatum and attempt to improve your situation by communicating it in a way that is directly actionable (I'd like to work on X instead of Y, can you arrange that?). You'll have your own internal deadlines of course, but you shouldn't communicate them.

The ultimate exists whether or not you communicate it. I would hope that with enough tact that truth could be communicated.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#23

Post by Buttons840 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

randunel wrote: post #2

> Looking back, I realized I had worked on a lot of low-impact projects — tasks that made no impact on users and no impact on the team, like updating outdated libraries. The old library worked fine without any updates. Updating it took weeks of my time but delivered zero value to the team or business. I did it simply because my manager told me to. > Early in my career, I said “yes” often. As I got more experience, I…

What company has ever been seriously harmed by a security breach?

I'm clearly a bit nihilistic, but I've never seen a case where it matters. If a company leaks the information of millions of people there is, at most, a small financial cost and stock prices keeps going up.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#24

Post by Esophagus4 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #22

doesnt_know wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't think ultimatums are a tool that you should ever employ in an employment situation outside of collective action. You can just leave off the ultimatum and attempt to improve your situation by communicating it in a way that is directly actionable (I'd like to work on X instead of Y, can you arrange that?). You'll have your own internal deadlines of course, but you shouldn't communicate them.

The ultimate exists whether or not you communicate it. I would hope that with enough tact that truth could be communicated.

Just be careful - some will see it as having their arm twisted. You may get what you want in the short run, but in the long run, when you negotiate with leverage, people dislike that.

It is the nuclear option, and you will lose the trust of your leadership chain.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#25

Post by hobs » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #22

doesnt_know wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't think ultimatums are a tool that you should ever employ in an employment situation outside of collective action. You can just leave off the ultimatum and attempt to improve your situation by communicating it in a way that is directly actionable (I'd like to work on X instead of Y, can you arrange that?). You'll have your own internal deadlines of course, but you shouldn't communicate them.

The ultimate exists whether or not you communicate it. I would hope that with enough tact that truth could be communicated.

The main thing is that if someone isn't going to do something in normal circumstances, an ultimatum is really for yourself to be done with waiting.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#26

Post by AdrianB1 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #10

> Now if my manager asks me to do tasks that I believe add no value to the team or business, I’ll politely say no. This is the wrong lesson to take from this situation. If you start saying no to tasks assigned by your manager, you are not going to get promoted. You’re going to end up on PIP track for insubordination. The appropriate response is to communicate. The OP arrived in this situation because they didn’t comm…

I think it is a wrong take of what he said. There are many cases when you can say no to small tasks or projects if you can prove they are low value and there are better items on the list. I do that all the time and none of my managers had a problem with it, in the past decade most of my managers let me pick what I want to work on because they know I can prioritize better than they can.

I never saw someone saying no without a reason and if there is a reason, then there is a discussion around it, one can be right or wrong about it but it is usually easy to clarify and move on. It is not the "no" or a spoiled 5 year kid, it is the "no" of an experienced professional that values their time and priorities.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#27

Post by AdrianB1 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #5

> Because… some lack business value Very dumb response to the code modernization work. Just because it's not a product feature, it absolutely doesn't mean it has no business value. I also completely disagree that the lesson from it is saying no to such efforts. Increasing tech debt in the name of "more business value" is the worst idea any team can have. If team leadership sees no value in such work, the team is set…

These days I am working on some 20 year old code used in a few dozen manufacturing plants around the globe; the reason I asked to be allowed to fix it and the reason my manager allowed me to do it is that we have performance issues in some of the biggest plants (by the number of production lines) and this code is part of the problem. If that would not be the case, that code would continue to run as is for another 10 years.

Code modernization in some circumstances does not bring business value. In the plants we have some hardware that is decades old and it works as well as the one built last year, more modern software would bring no difference as physical limits (ex: how many bottles you can fill on a line) makes a line capable to run on a smartphone with MS-DOS and Turbo Pascal on it (we don't use that, of course). If it runs and you cannot improve it more than the cost of the improvement, leave it as is.

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#28

Post by naet » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #16

Aurornis wrote: post #10

> Now if my manager asks me to do tasks that I believe add no value to the team or business, I’ll politely say no. This is the wrong lesson to take from this situation. If you start saying no to tasks assigned by your manager, you are not going to get promoted. You’re going to end up on PIP track for insubordination. The appropriate response is to communicate. The OP arrived in this situation because they didn’t comm…

On a related tangent: Does anyone have any advice on how to politely say "I like the company, I want to stay, but I don't like my current work and if it doesn't change for the better I'm going to leave in 6-months". I once tried to say this as politely as possible, but I think I might have been too polite and tactful and they didn't understand. I had a date in mind, and had a conversation 6-months, 3-months, and 1-mo…

Sounds like what you are really trying to say is "I want to change teams".

Or maybe "I want to work on ____ new project, and my working this would be beneficial to the business because ____". But you have to have a real case for it and for why you are the right person for it

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#29

Post by fcatalan » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #10

> Now if my manager asks me to do tasks that I believe add no value to the team or business, I’ll politely say no. This is the wrong lesson to take from this situation. If you start saying no to tasks assigned by your manager, you are not going to get promoted. You’re going to end up on PIP track for insubordination. The appropriate response is to communicate. The OP arrived in this situation because they didn’t comm…

In many occasions, if there's a proposal for something very stupid or pointless I've found it's better to just say "yes", knowing full well the thing will never get done. The manager didn't really want the thing. He wanted a good happy meeting and to hear "yes".

Re: Focus Is Saying No

#30

Post by AdrianB1 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

kaveh_h wrote: post #12

Nice post, really relatable. It also feels like a management miss. If someone spends years modernizing and only finds out later it “doesn’t count,” that should have been clarified early on. Tech debt work absolutely adds value, it just rarely gets measured or recognized. Maybe that is one reason so many companies struggle over time, they keep skipping payments on their tech debt interest.

As a manager you may have 10 people reporting to you. Some do more important work, some do less important work, but when you are considering them for promotions there are other factors too. I am not talking about promotions from junior dev to regular or regular to senior, I am talking about promotions to positions where they are responsible for other people. In my almost 30 years working in IT in multiple companies I found that most good technical people are not good managers; similarly most managers are technically bad. Best managers are the ones that Steve Jobs described in one of his famous interviews (I will leave the pleasure of having him tell it, it is worth spending the 3 minutes).

In any case, there may be others doing more important work and there may be others better suited for promotions. It is a zero sum game, the number of people, positions and promotions is always limited so if X is promoted, Y cannot be and if X is a better one for the promotion, Y will have to either wait, move on or keep doing what they do.