<story><title>Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015)</title><url>https://boz.com/articles/advice-not-permission</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chipdart</author><text>From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (...) but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.”&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen this play out in teams. The part that&amp;#x27;s omitted is how some unscrupulous team members set up their team members for failure.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve personally witnessed a case where a team member went out of his way to propose a rewrite of an important feature and reached out to a couple of senior members to do a system design review and provide feedback. They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component.&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of good reasons why some FANGs enshrine the need to be thorough and extremely critical of projects at the design stage but everyone is obligated to commit to the project once it starts to be implemented. Teams need to commit to projects after they are prompted to give their opinion during the design process, and once their opinions are heard there should be no room for weaseling out and go the backstabbing route to throw everyone around under the bus. There is a time and place to provide feedback, and if you&amp;#x27;re prompted to deliver your feedback then you should not pretend the project does not reflect your input.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sesm</author><text>&amp;gt; They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated&lt;p&gt;Because the design usually is presented in a way that looks the most plausible, default-looking and approvable, hiding the real problems and decision points. And when the project is close to being deployed, the problems become visible.&lt;p&gt;Very rarely I see design being presented like &amp;#x27;here is the problem we need solve, here are the constraints, here are the unknowns, by this logic we come to this solution&amp;#x27;. One of the reasons this rarely happens, is that in big organisations there is often a hidden agenda like &amp;#x27;I want as many people and departments as possible to start depending on me so I can get my promotion&amp;#x27;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015)</title><url>https://boz.com/articles/advice-not-permission</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chipdart</author><text>From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (...) but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.”&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen this play out in teams. The part that&amp;#x27;s omitted is how some unscrupulous team members set up their team members for failure.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve personally witnessed a case where a team member went out of his way to propose a rewrite of an important feature and reached out to a couple of senior members to do a system design review and provide feedback. They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component.&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of good reasons why some FANGs enshrine the need to be thorough and extremely critical of projects at the design stage but everyone is obligated to commit to the project once it starts to be implemented. Teams need to commit to projects after they are prompted to give their opinion during the design process, and once their opinions are heard there should be no room for weaseling out and go the backstabbing route to throw everyone around under the bus. There is a time and place to provide feedback, and if you&amp;#x27;re prompted to deliver your feedback then you should not pretend the project does not reflect your input.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>irjustin</author><text>&amp;gt; They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component&lt;p&gt;I think this situation would&amp;#x27;ve happened regardless of advice vs permission. So it&amp;#x27;s not really talking directly towards the article, but yeah, bad actors are terrible to deal with especially when they hold power on like a PR review.</text></comment>