<story><title>“Yes, if”: Iterating on our RFC Process</title><url>https://engineering.squarespace.com/blog/2019/the-power-of-yes-if</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnBooty</author><text>I wonder if anybody&amp;#x27;s had similar experiences...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked at two companies with RFC processes. At both companies, the processes were -- and I hate to use such a strong word -- a total &lt;i&gt;sham.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the processes were crafted to look like some egalitarian meritocracy. In reality, it was just a test of who had the most political pull. If you had management on your side, your &amp;quot;RFC&amp;quot; was effectively law and dissenting voices were effectively career suicide.&lt;p&gt;Which, you know... fine. I understand that choices are made based on cliques and political capital rather than anything else. Cool. That&amp;#x27;s okay! Sucks sometimes, but that&amp;#x27;s how the world works. Hopefully your org structure itself is at least &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; of a meritocracy, so that edicts from on high are of a generally high-enough quality. If they get it right-ish often enough, your org will be okay... probably.&lt;p&gt;But what really rankled me was the fact that the RFC processes amounted to some kind of elaborate cosplay so that, I guess, folks could pretend that there was some sort of healthy collaborative process. If you&amp;#x27;re going to let a few &amp;quot;popular and management-blessed&amp;quot; engineers make all the decisions, &lt;i&gt;fine&lt;/i&gt;, but don&amp;#x27;t add insult to injury by pretending otherwise.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard similar things from others, elsewhere. I hope there are at least a few companies dedicated to being something better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>miketery</author><text>I think the most important part of these processes is to document what’s being proposed and have a period for comments &amp;#x2F; inputs. I also think it’s ok for a monarchy as opposed to democracy ruling what gets approved, assuming merit based is not an option.&lt;p&gt;In general merits (rationality?) can bubble up if it’s framed in correct way for upper levels (eg. risk, profit, time horizon), and can then sway the position.&lt;p&gt;But yes on average what’s decide at upper levels is gospel. But that’s how corporations function, and that’s ok.</text></comment>
<story><title>“Yes, if”: Iterating on our RFC Process</title><url>https://engineering.squarespace.com/blog/2019/the-power-of-yes-if</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnBooty</author><text>I wonder if anybody&amp;#x27;s had similar experiences...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked at two companies with RFC processes. At both companies, the processes were -- and I hate to use such a strong word -- a total &lt;i&gt;sham.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the processes were crafted to look like some egalitarian meritocracy. In reality, it was just a test of who had the most political pull. If you had management on your side, your &amp;quot;RFC&amp;quot; was effectively law and dissenting voices were effectively career suicide.&lt;p&gt;Which, you know... fine. I understand that choices are made based on cliques and political capital rather than anything else. Cool. That&amp;#x27;s okay! Sucks sometimes, but that&amp;#x27;s how the world works. Hopefully your org structure itself is at least &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; of a meritocracy, so that edicts from on high are of a generally high-enough quality. If they get it right-ish often enough, your org will be okay... probably.&lt;p&gt;But what really rankled me was the fact that the RFC processes amounted to some kind of elaborate cosplay so that, I guess, folks could pretend that there was some sort of healthy collaborative process. If you&amp;#x27;re going to let a few &amp;quot;popular and management-blessed&amp;quot; engineers make all the decisions, &lt;i&gt;fine&lt;/i&gt;, but don&amp;#x27;t add insult to injury by pretending otherwise.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard similar things from others, elsewhere. I hope there are at least a few companies dedicated to being something better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oscillonoscope</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s the intended purpose and origination of these systems. In a traditional hardware firm, marketing is constantly coming up with ideas but you can&amp;#x27;t constantly change hardware without delaying the project. So you come up with an engineering change request system. This forces marketing to go through a bit of bureaucratic pain every time they want to add something to the project. The committee acts as a gatekeeper but mostly, that little bit of extra work makes marketing self-select the more important ideas to go through the process.</text></comment>