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Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

bikeshed.com

31–40 of 86 posts

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#31

Here is the thing. If you have a Convention Manual which calls for a certain color for bike sheds, then you use that. Failing that, if you have several other bike sheds of a certain color, then that's what you use, for consistency with existing bike sheds. The color of the bike shed only doesn't matter if it's the only bike shed, and there is no documentation which has already settled the matter.

We are a continuous learning organization, and selecting this bike shed’s color is an opportunity to leverage everything we’ve learned since the last bike shed project. It’s a fast moving space, and we’re a different team at a different point in time. The color we selected in the past may not be the right color today. In fact, this is an ideal time to consider a bike shed color transformation program to update all legacy bike shed coloring for consistency.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#32
post #16

Reminds me of a story a friend related a long time ago about how to manage bosses. That probably applies to bike sheds. The general idea is to introduce a glaring mistake into any proposal you make. Then the boss (or whoever feels like bikeshedding) can "catch" that mistake upon which you congratulate them on their infinite wisdom, fix the mistake, and the project can move along. So to avoid the bikeshed color discus…

Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish. Although I’ve never had a boss that needed to find an error.

I was taught to always speak up in every meeting by my boss at that time. Always, no matrer what, I had to come up with something.

If you do that, you'd do me a favour.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#33
post #16

Reminds me of a story a friend related a long time ago about how to manage bosses. That probably applies to bike sheds. The general idea is to introduce a glaring mistake into any proposal you make. Then the boss (or whoever feels like bikeshedding) can "catch" that mistake upon which you congratulate them on their infinite wisdom, fix the mistake, and the project can move along. So to avoid the bikeshed color discus…

Reminiscent of the Philip K. Dick short story "War Game":

https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/war-game/

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#34
post #16

Reminds me of a story a friend related a long time ago about how to manage bosses. That probably applies to bike sheds. The general idea is to introduce a glaring mistake into any proposal you make. Then the boss (or whoever feels like bikeshedding) can "catch" that mistake upon which you congratulate them on their infinite wisdom, fix the mistake, and the project can move along. So to avoid the bikeshed color discus…

Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish. Although I’ve never had a boss that needed to find an error.

It's extremely common in graphic design because it's so easy for everyone to have an opinion.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#36
post #29

This article has been shared at least 10 times before on HN over the last decade. Amazing to see people organically find it over the years.

These appear to be the interesting threads. Others? Ask HN: How do you avoid bikeshedding? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30959723 - April 2022 (14 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772108 - Jan 2022 (1 comment) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533079 - Sept 2016 (52 comments) Bikesheddi…

Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25888 - June 2007 (4 comments)

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#37
post #7

See also a rebuttal of sorts [1] from Brett Glass, the sole programmer singled out by name in phk's essay: > Poul-Henning's assertion that all such ideas should be dismissed as "bikeshedding" reflects this dismissive attitude, which can be just as damaging to a software project as taking too many suggestions (or accepting bad ones). At the time of the discussion I mention above, internal squabbles drove several talen…

Grabbing that domain, they must have quite an axe to grind. Not that the attack on them was any less childish.

Why? Isn't that a trivial thing to do so that even the tiniest of axes could justify?

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish. Although I’ve never had a boss that needed to find an error.

I was taught to always speak up in every meeting by my boss at that time. Always, no matrer what, I had to come up with something. If you do that, you'd do me a favour.

Do you mean the babble hypothesis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#40
post #16

Reminds me of a story a friend related a long time ago about how to manage bosses. That probably applies to bike sheds. The general idea is to introduce a glaring mistake into any proposal you make. Then the boss (or whoever feels like bikeshedding) can "catch" that mistake upon which you congratulate them on their infinite wisdom, fix the mistake, and the project can move along. So to avoid the bikeshed color discus…

Reminds me a bit of the story about "bird mode" at google

[0] https://mashable.com/article/google-maps-origin-story-satell...

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