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I don't know

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Re: I don't know

#71

Post by chris_wot »

jmnicolas wrote: post #68
saosebastiao wrote: post #6

I swear to god, every time I read a post by Jason, I wish he was my manager. I consider myself a highly productive person, but constantly hampered, directly and indirectly, by terrible managers. Jason always comes off as the kind of person that amplifies the abilities of his team. That is all...I'm gushing and its embarrassing.

Until office politics doesn't allow anybody to be promoted in a management position, we will suffer from incompetent managers. Ask me how I know.

You were recently promoted?

Re: I don't know

#72

Post by rahimnathwani »

Uehreka wrote: post #53
at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to point this out, but when he was running for Governor, Jesse Ventura used to say it all the time. I remember in several of the debates when asked tough economic questions. "I don't have the answer to your question, but I know if I'm elected, I'll appoint the brightest economic people I can find to solve the problem." As opposed to other candidates who either talked along party lines and said they would tax t…

If he got elected and that worked for him, then awesome, but I could understand why many people would take issue with that way of answering questions. When it comes to politics, a lot of people aren't looking to elect someone for their decision-making ability. They're looking to elect someone who is making the same decisions that they've made. For instance, people don't want a candidate who will "investigate whether…

This. Or at least someone who appears to share the same values and decision-making criteria.

Re: I don't know

#73

Post by Paul_S »

I'm slightly exasperated with this mythical cultural fit being used as the end all quality you seek in your potential employee. If someone can please spare some time to write a no-nonsense definition so that even an alien could understand I'll be grateful. All I ever get are hand-wavy explanations.

Re: I don't know

#74

Post by DanBC »

Paul_S wrote: post #73

I'm slightly exasperated with this mythical cultural fit being used as the end all quality you seek in your potential employee. If someone can please spare some time to write a no-nonsense definition so that even an alien could understand I'll be grateful. All I ever get are hand-wavy explanations.

It's an easy way to get sued for discrimination.

Re: I don't know

#75

Post by sitkack »

chris_mahan wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's horrible in a business environment. That may be so, but the military environment is different. Officers need to be able to make good-enough decisions on the spot, without the benefit of careful consideration, because there might be a literal dead line, after which people die. Sometimes being in motion is more important than the actual direction.

If you need to make good-enough decisions on the spot, you need to have people be willing to take responsibility for being wrong, and they need to have decent information available (the decision-maker needs the information, not some other person somewhere else--in companies, information is hoarded horribly).

There is an important distinction between making an estimate on the spot based on reasonable expectations of the problem ,I am 90% confident I can have switch panel wired in 6 hrs. Verses, I have no clue and need to spend 3 hrs just analyzing the problem before estimating the difficulty.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past months, most teams and projects fail because people get in over their head by

  * Not analyzing the problem deeply enough (hrs not weeks)
  * Estimating too early, they don't want to look weak
  * Not revising estimates once they are in it (heroic save)
  * Not asking for help or re-analysis from outside minds
On projects that went well, we put concerted effort into mitigating the above failure modes. Being wrong or not knowing is OK, being wrong or not knowing AND NOT fixing it is a huge problem. These issues don't come out of nowhere, there are precursors and warnings far in advance of emergency situations.

As a poster above mentioned, accepting a bullshit answer is being complicit in a lie. We need to push back in a polite way when we are being bullshitted. By accepting poor estimates (in all the dimensions of poor) we enable failure.

Re: I don't know

#76

Post by chris_mahan »

rwallace wrote: post #61
chris_mahan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one know how long it will take to get an answer? That's just a lie of bravado, a pressure-driven estimate. It's horrible in a business environment. What happens is the person will give the first answer that makes sense, which, while the answer may be correct, discourages deep analysis of the problem. I never give estimates, to the great fury of my boss, but I told him I don't want to lie. Lying is unethical,…

I try to avoid giving time estimates where possible as well. In practice sometimes you have to, though, and if you have said "I'll have the answer by tomorrow" and tomorrow comes and this turns out not to be the case, you say something along the lines of: This turns out to be a trickier problem than met the eye; here's what I've found out so far; do you want me to keep looking for a solution?

I work at a large bank (trillions in deposits). When I am asked to give an estimate, I say: "I haven't done the estimate yet."

When they say "How long will it take to do the estimate?" I reply: "I have no idea until I get into the details of the problem."

When management asks for an estimate, with rare exceptions, they actually mean: "We are putting pressure on you to get this done by a certain date, but we don't want to tell you what that date is, and we're betting that if you give us a low estimate now, you'll pressure yourself to meet your own deadline, and we won't have to manage the project."

The problem with that type of reasoning is that in the end, the workers are stressed, and the solution is suboptimal.

Re: I don't know

#77

Post by jacalata »

joeframbach wrote: post #26
eterm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "Hey you're from India, what's it like it Japan" is almost hilariously insensitive. (Actually just tragic). It's along the same lines as: [Hears X is from country Y] "Oh do you know bob?"

Where is it stated that nsomaru is from India? The insensitive/tragic note here is that you've assumed that because someone has knowledge of a region, then they are from that region.

S/is from x/knows about x culture.

whether he is indian or he only knows about Indian culture, it is a stretch to say "so you must know about Japan!"

Re: I don't know

#78

Post by icw »

megablast wrote: post #59
Jemaclus wrote: post #8

It's not just "I don't know" that is important, but also the next part of the thought: "but I can find out." Just admitting you don't know is great, but it's not good enough. You have to also be able to take the next step and find out . If I ask two people if they know how to do something, and one of them says "I don't know" and the other says "I don't know, but I can find out," then... well, I don't really need to c…

> It's not just "I don't know" that is important, but also the next part of the thought: "but I can find out." This isn't about asking someone else to find out how to do it, this is about solving a problem, which may no solution. So saying, "but I can find out" it is comically ridiculous. Consider this, how are you going to solve the traveling salesman problem, for 10,000 nodes on your iPhone in 5 seconds? I don't kn…

Try space-filling curves! http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/mow/mow.html

Re: I don't know

#80

Post by sitkack »

sitkack wrote: post #75
chris_mahan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to make good-enough decisions on the spot, you need to have people be willing to take responsibility for being wrong, and they need to have decent information available (the decision-maker needs the information, not some other person somewhere else--in companies, information is hoarded horribly).

There is an important distinction between making an estimate on the spot based on reasonable expectations of the problem ,I am 90% confident I can have switch panel wired in 6 hrs. Verses, I have no clue and need to spend 3 hrs just analyzing the problem before estimating the difficulty. I have been thinking about this a lot over the past months, most teams and projects fail because people get in over their head by *…

How to Spot A Liar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6vDLq64gE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

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