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Willingness to look stupid

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#801

Post by rStar »

rStar wrote: post #780
sharkweek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP in my org does this, and it really disarms the room. She’s big on that exact phrase of “this could be a really stupid question, but…” She’s also really good about making sure other people are rewarded for doing the same by reassuring someone asking what might be a dumb question as, “that’s a a great question and I’m sure others were wondering the same…” before responding. Great leadership, IMO.

fuck that it’s salesmanship, and salesmen make poor leaders.

which as a salesman i’m definitely in position to comment

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#802

Post by dangerface »

blitzar wrote: post #788
dangerface wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> explain oneself I hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me. I buy a lot of sweets on Friday for the weekend and regularly the clerk behind the till will make a comment, "Thats a lot of chocolate! Who is going to eat all that! You must be having a party whats the occasion?". In front of a line of customers who are eager…

> no one wants to explain themselves to a stranger we will never meet again So you walk into the Apple store, walk up to an employee and when confronted with the question "How can I help you today?" what do you do? Telling them "I would like X", seems like an unneccesary level of "explaining yourself". They should just know and understand exactly what you want from non verbal signals?

Thats not the scenario the scenario in the example was walking up to the staff and asking "I would like X" and then instead of selling you X they ask why you want X and would you not prefer Y?

Very annoying, I want X thats why I asked for it, I dunno if I want Y because I didn't spent time researching it like I did X. I want X not an argument there are lots of other place I can buy X if you are going to be difficult about it.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#803

Post by dangerface »

Ensorceled wrote: post #525
dangerface wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you are on about, I assume you haven't worked in sales, but I have and I have done this pleanty and the conversation goes like this: Boss: did you make a sale? Me: Yes Boss: good job Im sorry but if you work in sales and your boss gets upset at returns your boss is new to sales.

I'm having a hard time believing that you have a history in retail computer sales AND thought the Apple sales rep was the trouble maker in this scenario.

Can you give a reason?

Seems pretty obvious to me that the job of the sales person is to make sales not talk people out of sales because the company is worried about returns.

We never worried about returns, if some one buys something they don't want we checked the recipt and checked for rocks in the box then just sold them something else, because you know sales?

The only reason I can think of a sales person being worried about returns is if a customer walks in asking for X and the sales person talks them into Y. Customer will be back fuming if it doesn't do X and you won't sell them anything else.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#804

Post by def_true_false »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #433

This is great to see on the front page and I hope it positively influences the culture here. HN is larger than it used to be and it's harder to ask "stupid sounding" questions and get meaningful, civil engagement than it used to be. You are more likely to get guff for it than used to be the case. I fell in love with HN because of the quality of the discussion which was rooted in a sincere attitude of "There are no st…

Hey, thanks for this comment. Do you know of other places besides HN that also have this combination of "no stupid questions" and quality discussion?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#805

Post by Ensorceled »

dangerface wrote: post #803
Ensorceled wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time believing that you have a history in retail computer sales AND thought the Apple sales rep was the trouble maker in this scenario.

Can you give a reason? Seems pretty obvious to me that the job of the sales person is to make sales not talk people out of sales because the company is worried about returns. We never worried about returns, if some one buys something they don't want we checked the recipt and checked for rocks in the box then just sold them something else, because you know sales? The only reason I can think of a sales person being wor…

Four things:

1) Apple is pretty well known for NOT up-selling and for right sizing customers, so you could actually get reprimanded at an Apple store if the sale was something as egregious as "gave customer laptop in smallest box".

2) The example we are talking about is a perfect setup for a "fuming customer"; smallest box laptop was "wrong laptop".

3) Apple depends on repeat sales and eco-system lock-in. The customer who returns the laptop may not upgrade their iPhone.

4) The request was ludicrous ... the Apple sales associate is not in the wrong for not simply going with it.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#806

Post by lowercased »

indymike wrote: post #794
lowercased wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here. Was pumped in an RCA with "why?" multiple times. The 'root cause' was I fucked up and missed something. But that was because "prod was broken right then, fix ASAP!" and no one else understands the problem, and we're understaffed, and people 'reviewed' the code without understanding what it was doing (or why) and one 'fix' led to another problem, and that 'fix' led to a third, and trying to explain this…

> The 'root cause' was I fucked up and missed something. It's really hard to do RCA when people are blaming themselves. It had to suck to be in that meeting. A really good RCA isn't about finding a single actionable thing, it's about finding our what the root cause of the problem is... which in this case, might have been whatever originally broke production and caused an emergency fix that failed three times.

"It's really hard to do RCA when people are blaming themselves"

Often, the root cause is someone made a mistake. You can say there should have been other systems to prevent/review/etc, but the root cause is a mistake a person made. You can '5 whys' it to death, but I made a mistake (or... someone did).

"whatever originally broke production" - in this case, I made a mistake. That mistake wasn't caught until production. Then the fixes were all broken too.

I don't always blame myself for everything, but if I've made a mistake, I'll own up to it. For me, it helps me be aware of what I can do to avoid those in the future. This may or may not be some rca-checklist other people can refer to, because... it's not 'actionable' to anyone but me.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#807

Post by DoreenMichele »

def_true_false wrote: post #804
DoreenMichele wrote: post #433

This is great to see on the front page and I hope it positively influences the culture here. HN is larger than it used to be and it's harder to ask "stupid sounding" questions and get meaningful, civil engagement than it used to be. You are more likely to get guff for it than used to be the case. I fell in love with HN because of the quality of the discussion which was rooted in a sincere attitude of "There are no st…

Hey, thanks for this comment. Do you know of other places besides HN that also have this combination of "no stupid questions" and quality discussion?

I don't know. HN seems like the gold standard in that regard though you might be able to find some reddits that suit you that do a fair job for the topic in question.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#808

Post by etherealG »

theli0nheart wrote: post #310
jacobolus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me, it had been too long. I have a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and hang out with lots of small children. Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start: I have watched kids be afraid of incompetence (to the point of not wanting to try) at riding a bike, running, swinging across monkey bars, drawing, singing, reading, learning a new language, ...

> Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start I'm a parent of a 5yo and surprised this is your experience. If anything, I'd say child behavior is the perfect anti-example of fear of trying new things. Take one of the examples you provide: language. Young children ages don't care about using incorrect grammar or using the wrong words. This is why they're so good at prog…

Actually data shows that adults are way better at learning languages than children. Children just have 100s of hours of doing nothing besides learning languages so they succeed faster in calendar time. If you spent all day every day learning a language you’d be way faster at it than your kids.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#809

Post by balsam »

alexandrerond wrote: post #166
pydry wrote: post #55

One way to prove that he truly doesn't mind looking stupid would be to list times when he risked looking stupid... and it turns out he actually was. It's happened to all of us though we dont like to admit it. I'm sure it's happened to him too and I looked but I didn't see any of those examples listed. Giving only examples of when people thought he was dumb and it turned out he wasn't... that's kind of just a roundabo…

Totally. There's distance between: "people think I'm stupid because I'm not scared to show that I don't know about something" and some of the examples which are more along the lines of "people think I'm stupid because I act as a self-entitled genius who provides little context or reasoning behind choices and expect everyone to line up behind with no question" What is the Apple store employee supposed to do to not mak…

Agreed—- it somehow ties into the opposite of the ability to fake sincerity: the inability to show sincerity. I am still traumatized by the times the second case happened. The times when people dismissed me because they thought (perhaps rightly?) that I was acting like a self entitled genius.. (and I am inferring, because why would normal intelligent adults say such things??)

Another perhaps relevant thought, which is perhaps crass: If PG or Alan Kay ever claim that they are willing to look stupid, I feel like people would not believe them. On the other hand if Feynman does it, people would feel the sincerity. (At least the version of Feynman Feynman marketed, not the Feynman who couldnt suffer Gellman)

Another thought: maybe its better to be willing to look immature.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#810

Post by dangerface »

Ensorceled wrote: post #805
dangerface wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a reason? Seems pretty obvious to me that the job of the sales person is to make sales not talk people out of sales because the company is worried about returns. We never worried about returns, if some one buys something they don't want we checked the recipt and checked for rocks in the box then just sold them something else, because you know sales? The only reason I can think of a sales person being wor…

Four things: 1) Apple is pretty well known for NOT up-selling and for right sizing customers, so you could actually get reprimanded at an Apple store if the sale was something as egregious as "gave customer laptop in smallest box". 2) The example we are talking about is a perfect setup for a "fuming customer"; smallest box laptop was "wrong laptop". 3) Apple depends on repeat sales and eco-system lock-in. The custome…

1) Have you compared their price of ram to competitors? You clearly have never bought anything apple.

2) They got what they asked for I know customers get upset easily but there is no easier customer to handle than one that got exactly what they asked for.

3) They won't upgrade their iPhone? I thought apple didn't push that sort of thing? Anyway they are coming back in store to exchange you can easily make another sale there.

4) The request was simple, the apple sales associate is in the wrong for not helping the customer.

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