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

Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

hyperbo.la

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 123 posts

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#81

Post by [deleted] »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #40
alexashka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get to a better future by demanding that it have existed in the past. That doesn't make any sense. Now I'd really like to hear these 'good reasons' and what makes them 'good'. Before you list them, please try and apply them to 'why should we abandon slavery'. If your arguments work for both instances, please explain why we ever abandoned slavery, since clearly there are 'good reasons' for owning slaves, so…

A word of advice, injecting such topics needlessly distracts from the actual point you’re trying to make.

[deleted]

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#82

Post by gkop »

whateveracct wrote: post #78
douglaswlance wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disagree and commit]( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Disagree_and_commit ) is a common management methodology and one that the most effective teams utilize successfully. What is the issue?

haha i have worked at amazon, where disagree and commit is one of their laminated leadership principles except it isn't the principle is "have backbone; disagree and commit" there's checks and balances in the principle's words themself. every leader i've had who has "disagree and commit" as their guiding light has just been an autocrat. they never mention on the "have backbone" part. i had a VPE from BigCos come into…

I was just looking at Amazon’s principles this week, and found the on-its-face ridiculous “Are Right, A Lot”, which more or less directly invites the behavior you describe,

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#83

Post by xyzelement »

grogenaut wrote: post #19
andrewem wrote: post #17

I used to work with an engineer who would have a loud negative emotional reaction the first time they were told about some new thing that would be happening at our company, and after a little bit would be totally fine with it. After one or two instances of this pattern, the manager learned to talk to the engineer ahead of time, so the upset reaction wouldn’t happen in a big meeting. I suspect that more of us are like…

I personally will react negatively for about 5 to 15 minutes to any new large change idea so I just work to make sure I don't make judgments during that window. It does however let me get into real issues with the idea pretty quickly. I will often just tell people okay that's a big change give me time to go through the five stages of grieving and I think we'll be good

That's awesome - sounds like you have an amazing degree of introspection: you understand what you are like and you know how to manage through that.

Btw one reason companies ask interviewees about their weaknesses is not because the answer matters but because it shows whether a person thinks about what they are like, or not. Eg if someone ever said what you said "one of my weaknesses is that I freak out in the first 5 mins but I learned to work around that" - a real green flag that you are an excellent person to work with.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#84

Post by zemo »

whateveracct wrote: post #10

"Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber. I've recently joined a BigCo (as a senior+ engineer), and the culture here isn't building consensus (out of authentic building blocks) - it's a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting." There's always a "champion" idea (but you can bring a "challenger" idea so people feel heard), there's always a need to "be in alignment" after every 45 min chunk of…

> "Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber.

^ the words of a person that builds things that nobody asked for and then gets mad when people don't use them.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#85

Post by xyzelement »

gkop wrote: post #82
whateveracct wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha i have worked at amazon, where disagree and commit is one of their laminated leadership principles except it isn't the principle is "have backbone; disagree and commit" there's checks and balances in the principle's words themself. every leader i've had who has "disagree and commit" as their guiding light has just been an autocrat. they never mention on the "have backbone" part. i had a VPE from BigCos come into…

I was just looking at Amazon’s principles this week, and found the on-its-face ridiculous “Are Right, A Lot”, which more or less directly invites the behavior you describe,

In my understanding - "are right a lot" is a retrospective thing - it's asking whether the leader's past instincts and decisions had lead to good things. It's not measuring how many meetings you walk out of having gotten your way.

For example, if a leader had an idea X,and Bob talked him into idea Y which worked out, then the leader was still 'right' because listening to Bob was the right thing.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#86

Post by zemo »

clicked through to this not expecting anything new, didn't find anything new, this stuff is all obvious and should be clear to everyone. Clicked through to see the comments and ... the amount of pushback in the comments is very weird. All this is saying is "you should make sure that people want something before you build it" and the replies seem to be "how DARE anyone else affect what I build", from a bunch of adult children that think they are solitary geniuses. Every single person mad at the idea that building consensus is an important process is annoying to work with, full stop.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#87

Post by bluesnowmonkey »

whateveracct wrote: post #78
douglaswlance wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disagree and commit]( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Disagree_and_commit ) is a common management methodology and one that the most effective teams utilize successfully. What is the issue?

haha i have worked at amazon, where disagree and commit is one of their laminated leadership principles except it isn't the principle is "have backbone; disagree and commit" there's checks and balances in the principle's words themself. every leader i've had who has "disagree and commit" as their guiding light has just been an autocrat. they never mention on the "have backbone" part. i had a VPE from BigCos come into…

> i thought one of his tech decisions was bad (and in reality it was politically motivated to force people out.)

Let’s say you were right: It was a bad technical decision and it was politically motivated. What outcome can you expect from arguing with him on technical grounds? He knows what you’re saying is right, but he already knew that before making the decision. What you need to do is convince him not to act in bad faith. Try to figure out how to do that, and acknowledge if it’s not feasible.

Not to call you out in particular, but I see this as a common mistake by people arriving in a big company. Things are not as you wish, everything is too complicated, motivations are subtle and usually hidden. The trick is to get past frustration that reality does not match your mental model. (People aren’t being honest! How can I even work with people who don’t tell the truth!?) Abandon your mental model, acknowledge reality for what it is, choose goals that are achievable, choose actions that make progress toward your goals.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#88

Post by xyzelement »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #67
antonvs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber. Not necessarily. You want to convince your team or other teams to adopt a new tool or practice? You need to build consensus. It's a good skill to have if you want to be able to shape your workplace to your liking. It doesn't necessarily have to involve org chart climbing at all.

The point being, most of the time people say "build consensus", what they mean is either "let's have an endless, design by committee approach where the backend dev with no knowledge on UI decides how the UI should look rather than letting the UI designer create a few samples and iterate and everyone else giving feedback like a user would" or "we already decided this is going to happen, but for the sake of formality w…

There's a third thing they could mean: we want this to succeed in the organization which means we need to both hear people out to reflect their real needs in the plan, and that we need to communicate to them in a way that they buy in. So that it can work.

In fact this is really the only way to get anything done regardless of what you call it.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#89

Post by sgtnoodle »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #43
sgtnoodle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like me at work last year when I had to take high dose steroids!

Presumably you’re referring to corticosteroids which are not anabolic steroids. Or just making a tired joke, I couldn’t tell which :P

Prednisone, and it definitely altered my personality significantly. I also ordered $400 worth of RC quadcopter parts, and spent 8 hours straight sanding off and re-polishing the top surface of my eyeglass lenses to get rid of the anti-reflective coating that was cracked and pitted.

In the month leading up to that, interactions at work were also giving me anxiety bordering on panic attacks, like a visceral fight-or-flight response. That turned out to be my atrioventricular nerves progressively failing, such that my heart ventricles were beating slower and asynchronously from my natural pulse rate. I got down to 21 beats per minute at one point, and everyone at the hospital was amazed I was walking around and smiling rather than on the ground unconsciouss.

I'm pretty much back to 100% now, and as an embedded software engineer, I am horrified to be able to say that I'm bluetooth enabled.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#90

Post by [deleted] »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #40
alexashka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get to a better future by demanding that it have existed in the past. That doesn't make any sense. Now I'd really like to hear these 'good reasons' and what makes them 'good'. Before you list them, please try and apply them to 'why should we abandon slavery'. If your arguments work for both instances, please explain why we ever abandoned slavery, since clearly there are 'good reasons' for owning slaves, so…

A word of advice, injecting such topics needlessly distracts from the actual point you’re trying to make.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN