I often give similar advice to colleagues that ask me for pointers on getting their recommendations approved.
"Make it as easy as possible for them to say yes"
Don't dump 14 paragraphs in front of someone expecting them to get onto the same level that you've been after many hours of studying a problem. If you're confident in your approach (and you should be, if you want an easy yes!), then be succinct, briefly describe the problem and why your solution is correct. Optionally link to a document that has more information if a reader wants to go deeper. Make sure you've already gained "approval" from your other team mates or product owners.
"We're going to solve X by doing Y. Team are all onboard. Proposal document is at [link] if you want the detail. Going to begin on Tuesday unless there's any more feedback we need to address."
Managers etc don't have time to get into the detail of every little thing, and appreciate when you've done the work, including gaining support from the wider team, so if they need to approve, they can just approve.
This is a critical skill in big companies where everyone is swamped and busy and things get lost. I do this all the time when I’m dealing with people who don’t answer their email, or who tend to stall and delay approvals, or people who are just very busy. I’ll Email and describe the problem and then say the magic phrase “If I don’t hear back from you in [N] days, I am going to do XYZ on [DAY N].” This way I’m not asking for approval and then helplessly waiting and pinging. I’m putting them on notice. XYZ is going to happen unless you get off your butt and stop me.
Occasionally someone will come back weeks later, angry that I did XYZ without telling them, and I always have a paper trail showing that they were the ones who dropped the ball.
> “If I don’t hear back from you in [N] days, I am going to do XYZ on [DAY N].” This way I’m not asking for approval and then helplessly waiting and pinging.
I feel this tone is needlessly confrontational.
You can very well state "II'm going to do XYZ because of [REASONS]. I'm going to do XYZ on [DAY N]. If anyone objects or has any reservations, please reach out to me."
This approach also forces you to present a sound justification beforehand. You might not be aware, but there is always some likelihood what you're hoping to do is a mistake or you're missing out on some key constraints. When you reach out to anyone for feedback, you're hoping to get input to avoid mistakes.
Also, this cargo cult behavior of citing Amazon's leadership principles as if they were a solution to problems is mind-boggling. For example, the reason why "bias for action" works at Amazon is survivorship bias: those who unilaterally take action which results in a failure will ultimately be scapegoated and fired. You won't see those guys posting blog entries on the virtues of bias for action.
"We plan to defragment the thingamajig on March 1st. We're reaching out to those who might have an interest in case this might cause problems. Please let us know if you have concerns about the defragment. If we don't hear from you by March 1st, the thingamajig will be defragged."
"We're planning on defragging the thingamajig on March 1st unless objections are raised. Please send objections to manager@my.division.com"
Honestly, I've been doing this for decades with legal stuff: "Please confirm that my next pickup date for $CHILD is March 1st." often resulted in the other party just remaining silent and, when complaints against her not allowing the child out were made, she responded with "I never objected to that specific visit".
Using "Unless objections are received, I will fetch $CHILD on March 1st" stopped her from using that excuse.
It's a great way to deal with a difficult party who just wants to have as much creative misunderstandings as possible.
Also used in Bash, ruby, R when referencing elements of a list…
I’m going to guess the GP didn’t want to give their kid’s name here and decided not to insert a generic Billy in its place. So this being a forum with lots of people experienced in $programming_language it’s common to reference a generic placeholder in variable syntax.
Personally, I think comments on HN should use properly type safe syntax, in which case $CHILD is replaced by:
with Ada.Strings.Unbounded;
use Ada.Strings.Unbounded;
Name : Unbounded_String;
Sure it’s more verbose but, while there are tradeoffs, the comment is likely to avoid certain types of bugs when executed on readers’ brains, a notoriously bug-prone hardware platform.
I would have expected the downvotes for not being funny. But i would have never thought to be taken serious on this. But thank you for taking the time to explain. (Un-?)fortunately, i have been writing php for years. And my bash/zsh setup is slightly insane. But truly appreciate your sincere response (except the last sentence, which makes me think, the sincerity of your comment is equal to the on of my first comment...).
Our team currently relies on thingamajig's responsiveness and cannot tolerate a change in performance. We will setup a temporary replica of thingamajig. Can you please hold off until our thingamajig replica is stable. My team expects this to be done by March 8th.
If I don't hear back from you by lunchtime, I WILL eat your leftovers.
That’s still ambiguous. There’s no default action listed if no response is given. Listing the default action is your CYA that a non response is approval of the default
Well, the CYA in less healthy workplaces could be to leave things vague, if the person doesn’t respond then do what you want when the time comes, and if anything goes wrong you can pin it on the person who ghosted you on a response. Bonus points if you send that first email and immediately seek an in person response. The other person will then figure an email response is unnecessary, thus guaranteeing your ability to play things however you want.
After you’ve been on the wrong side of this dynamic you learn to always confirm things in writing. And to wait for the other person to go to the bathroom and unplug their desk phone so it looks like they’re ignoring phone calls. At the same time, you use your personal vpn to try a few dozen failed logins to their email from 2 or 3 other continents, then drop a hint to their boss alluding to a vague but urgent problem in their domain so the boss will want to get in touch with them immediately.
That seems like a much more diplomatic (and work-appropriate) way of framing it rather than just saying "hey, if I don't hear from you by x date i'm gonna do something"
I think the context is different if you’ve shown you care twice a day for a year before screwing up. Most people interpret messages in light of their experience of you.
If you don’t have that track record, the words probably have a different flavor.
And decision fatigue is a real thing. Even if the ice cream flavour/engineering decision is maybe not perfectly optimal, there's some value in not having to make the decision myself
> “I’m going to do X in 5 days if you don’t respond” gives you absolutely no recourse if you do something that can result in reprimand.
Surely you wouldn't use this for any action that could result in a reprimand?
"Unless we receive objections, we're dropping the domain $X on March 1st and switching to the domain $Y instead" is not something you'd do.
OTOH, "Unless we receive objections from you, we're proceeding with (the current mocked-up UI|the last discussed tech-stack|deployment date|refactor|)" is not going to result in a reprimand.
> About the only place where this works is violating some internal design decisions that are irrelevant to the business.
I don’t know why you feel the need to put “design” in there, but what you are describing seems like all rules governing how teams work together in any organization.
this is a silver bullet for something that needs to be done on a specific timeframe, otherwise it'll be bad. Since the "Boss x do not give approval for it" won't cut in as a reason, and boss x needs to know this before you're doing it.
Of course criticality matters. The more critical it is, the more required for you to do a more personal message with said boss, like slack, dms, up to meeting face to face for approval.
This is an important insight. While the "bias towards action" approach works for smaller things, larger efforts may require change management protocols that capture explicit approvals. In regulated industries, you may have no choice but to capture approvals in some official manner (with ink sometimes).
Well, definitely don't phrase it exactly like that.
Most decisions that would be made in the context where this is a useful technique are irrelevant and/or obvious. They should be made by someone lower down the chain, but organizational dysfunction requires tricks like this to get anything done.
> "Occasionally someone will come back weeks later, angry that I did XYZ without telling them..."
Something fishy about this comment. Apparently you "do this all the time", spelling out the magic phrase you use like a template. Are you sure this is your anecdote and not a projection of how you'd like to be operating at work, as per the main article?
I'm trying to imagine the scene where you "show the paper trail" to achieve victory over your angry colleagues! That's when my bullshit detector is all up in the red zone.
These days I almost take it for granted that somebody isn't going to read my email, or won't read it thoroughly, or will read it but will fail to acknowledge it. One can use this to their advantage if they want to skirt a hard "no" but as you said, it may backfire.
And the "boss" may have a point: relying on them to read, understand, and acknowledge your email, especially when it's important, is somewhat disingenuous. At the very least one has an obligation to confirm that the recipient actually read and understood what was sent, before taking the default action.
One thing I've eventually managed to learn after failing at it many, many times is that in the vast majority of cases an email can only say one thing; if you try to ask multiple questions, or give multiple pieces of information, best case people will actually read one of them. Worst case it'll overwhelm and they'll ignore the whole thing.
It's obviously different if you know the recipient and that they're able to handle more, but my default assumption is that people will read the first 1-3 sentences of an email, so I do my best to keep it to that, and if I have more to say I'll make a note to myself for once they reply.
I think it's more a matter of people being overworked, so they just skim and answer the first thing that pops out. Or in some cases it may even be strategic, like in a negotiation, ignoring the parts that aren't beneficial to answer, while still responding.
I call this “Don’t Ask, Tell” and it has so many uses inside but also outside work. It really is just a basic communication skill to hone. It leads to concise and decisive outcomes.
I actually have this conversation a lot with my wife. She’s more of an asker. A recent example from earlier this evening. We had arrangements set to meet a group for dinner. Her style is to send a text to the group, 8 people, saying “what time is everyone arriving?” Which is so open ended it would initiate a flurry of comms. But, we knew we would be there an hour early because of where/when we were dropping our kid off for the evening. So I just said TELL them when will be there and TELL them we’ll be at the bar if anyone wants to have a drink beforehand. So much more straight forward, everyone showed up early and it was perfect with minimal comms required. Sure it was a lucky accident that everyone had care for their kids lined up to and was able to make it but the point is It took no time and actually didn’t even require any response at all in the case someone was not monitoring their messages.
It’s somewhat related to the idea of “ask for forgiveness, not permission” which I’m a huge fan of in all kinds of ways. Sure it can be riskier but I’m a rebel at my core so it comes with the territory. But this has its place too, group collaborations like GitHub repos is probably not a good place to yolo big changes that effect other people.
Another take on this I like is "radiating intent". Broadcast what you want to do, when you plan to do it, and give stakeholders space to explicitly object, rather than explicitly chasing consensus / alignment / approval. Works in some scenarios, and generally requires baseline trust to have been earned.
Thanks, this is an interesting take. The 4 reasons for "radiating intent" make sense. It works in moderately high-trust organisations.
I also appreciate the author (Eliz Ayer) adding the below nuance:
"In all fairness, you might get less done by radiating intent. It does give obstructive or meddling folks a way into your thing. Also, advice like this is very situation- and organization-dependent and won’t be appropriate all the time."
In my current job ... I write design documents that must be approved (in writing) by Key Users in two different companies.
Followed by test cases signature and then by user acceptance test documents.
This style could never work for me: "I'll push it to production on Day X, exactly as described here - unless you object" is not really applicable for me.
Yes I really like such approach. But it feels a little confrontational.
Maybe I haven't read all the comments but I would love to if somebody could give me certain examples where it doesn't sound confrontational and maybe as confrontational as asking for a yes.
I really like the approach but I think I would be looked as if rude , like look at that guy , he thinks he can do whatever he wants if I say nothing , Let me use politics to put him down unnecessarily.
Again , I really like this approach and am just asking for better / more examples. Something which I can apply practically.
Part of this "I'm going to do this unless you let me know otherwise" trick is not phrasing it like a question to reduce communication overhead. That way the receiver doesn't have to write a reply and you don't get another email to read (and for anyone CCed).
Saying that, I like emoji reaction features like on GitHub and Google Docs where you can just give a thumbs up to acknowledge you read and agreed to something. Seems really unpopular with some on HN for some reason, but emoji reactions are a useful lightweight way to communicate that you're on the same page, rather than making someone go through the motions of sending a "Okay, makes sense!" comment for every little thing. A bit like an upvote.
I think this is a sort of art in communication which I have just discovered. Though in emails I am not sure if there is an option just for thumbs up , but I do wish so.
I am going to start to learn this art , like this is such a good way of working but it also has to be a little subtle , not rude and may or may not work , IDK just my two cents.
It really depends on the culture of your organisation and how effective management is. If there is nobody that can act like this at your org it shows that your leadership team suffers from failure to delegate.
> It really depends on the culture of your organisation and how effective management is. If there is nobody that can act like this at your org it shows that your leadership team suffers from failure to delegate.
I think it's more than just that - upthread I posted that I used this technique for over a decade against a difficult party.
This approach is, briefly, for CYA: It's for when you are in the following situation:
You have to do something and will be punished if you don't, but a stakeholder is being difficult and/or hostile. They can delay you or outright sabotage you just by silence and/or bike-shedding.
Thanks. Made things a lot more clearer. It seemed that my natural response reading the article was to use such approach everytime no matter what & some people in the comments also said that they use this approach everytime.
I think this isn't for your superior, it's for lateral people who need to be involved some the work. Like person X in team Y is arguing against something.
If your boss 1. tells you that something needs to be done, 2. refuses to approve any plans, then you just don't do it - in that case it's on them to direct the work in a way that it gets done.
The key insight is that the concept of “allowed” is flawed. Most of us are responsible for outcomes, not actions.
If you communicate well that an action is necessary for the outcome you are responsible for, that’s enough. Obviously with notice, and with a genuine effort to get acknowledgement, but ultimately it’s not about what you’re allowed to do, it’s about what you’re expected to achieve.
Now, if you’re wrong, or capricious, or disingenuous… well all bets are off. But done responsibly this is a completely appropriate and defensible approach.
I think this kind of approach, and I've used it in the past, only works in American companies or bosses who are familiar with the American way of business. It can backfire badly if the boss doesn't like it. During a performance review, the boss inevitably labels you as insubordinate and all of the evidence needed was handed to them on a platter. Sometimes asking for permission really is the best way, even in the US. Doubly so where resources are concerned.
I don't think I've ever worked for a boss who would have disliked this approach, and I had many (good and bad). Assuming of course what you're doing isn't idiotic. All of them were steeped in American culture, though.
Honestly it's not my boss I worry about, more like a sibling team or service client that would have a stake in the decision but is known to drag their feet.
This would have worked fine in a Scandinavian company where managers are expected to delegate (some/most) technical responsibility. If boss was off, and couldn’t react in time, their eventual reaction would depend entirely on the outcome. If you were successful, they’ll appreciate that you didn’t hold up the decision by asking them.
With great power comes great responsibility. People will think you went behind their backs, even though on paper you did everything correctly. If you abuse this trick, you’ll quickly lose people’s trust.
Use it carefully, always give a reason, and set reasonable deadlines.
I like this approach to communication, except the the "deadline" part. I'd prefer my reports just let me know if they are working on something which I may want to veto (because I may have more context as to why it's a waste of time or not a priority). Giving a "deadline" to your manager is strange, and almost like a weird, annoying threat. I also would like to think I would give people on my team enough autonomy to make their own decisions about something as trivial as a github action.
I think the article does a disservice calling it a deadline. I had the same concerns at that point until I read the example and it clicked. It's really just the date you will do the thing, not really a deadline.
I really like the idea of seeking a no (e.g. let me know if I shouldn't go ahead) but as soon as I add something like, "I will do this on this date, unless I hear otherwise", is a little aggressive feeling. It might be easy enough to simply mention the time the work will take place, but leave it unspoken that they could decide it's best to not proceed, "I should get it done around this time". Then again, it's been a goal of mine forever to be assertive. Cowing only takes you so far.
It's just a matter of phrasing. "Hi, I wanted to give you a heads up that XYZ needs doing, and I'll be doing it on Wednesday. Let me know if that doesn't work."
Agreed, stating a deadline on something that is still just an idea, is weird and aggressive. Usually, a deadline is used to communicate "I have already decided I'm doing this, and received approval/consensus to do it, so now I'm informing you of the fact that I'm doing it."
If I don’t tell you when I’m doing the work, how will I know if you’ve said no or not? If I think one day is enough time, so proceed, but you take two days to respond, now I’ve done something against your instructions.
Adding a date avoids that:
“I’ll be migrating the build system on Wednesday (26th); please let me know if you have any concerns.”
I feel like a deadline on your own actions can also be a courtesy, in the sense that you are communicating the notice window as well as letting someone catching up on old emails gauge how relevant it now is
This is an excellent tool for the toolbox. My company has work from home days but the managers technically have to approve schedule changes/exceptions. Since they almost always approve it, we usually just say "I'll be working from home Tuesday if that's okay" and unless they object, you're good.
I call this “creating sane defaults.” That is, rather than going to people and asking that they make decisions about every detail, pick a set of sane defaults that demonstrate your knowledge of the situation and just tell them you’re going to run with it. This will build trust with people, and they’ll be more likely to give you attention when you really need it — because they’ll know you’re not wasting their time.
I like the perspective, but then the concrete example given (adding a new GitHub action) is such a trivial 2-way door that I am worried for the author. There are better companies out there!
You can even do this kind of thing without going as far as stating that you'll take action unless overridden. It can be as simple as rephrasing a question from a "yes" to a "no", like "Does this work for you?" -> "Do you have any objections?" Even when the request is logically equivalent, people often find it easier to say "no" than "yes".
I like the general idea. I read the book “Start with no” a long time ago and the lessons stuck.
The first principle here is that people have an innate need for autonomy and giving them the option to say no gives them peace of mind. Highly recommended.
But offering a negative option to object could be more likely to induce mistake and undue reliance. (Remember: negative options are illegal per FTC.)
But the real question is not the form of the ask but what information to include.
You have to tell deciders what they need to know to decide. Don't queue them up for a research project or to go survey stakeholders on your behalf.
Deciders need at least to know the range of consequences and likelihoods, and when and how there will be new information or opportunities for monitoring/managing. Usually that means you also propose their management plan.
e.g., "I'm updating dependencies on Sunday. If it fails we'll roll-back, which is ~2 minutes of downtime (within this quarter's SLA). If it works, offshore will need to refresh their devenv, but we can reduce the security notice Monday. I'll preflight Saturday if you want to confirm with me Sunday beforehand, and I'll cc you on offshore/security go-ahead's."
This is a great way to frame it with the caveat that you've done a fair bit of homework to support your assertion. And the other thing I would add is context-aware time padding. The "deadline" should be adjusted to respect the bosses schedule AND the potential impact. i.e. if it could hit production, give them more time. If it can't easily be rolled back, give them more time, etc.
But in general, if you are an adult, competent at your job, taking initiative, and have spent a bit of time thinking through the second and possibly third order effects, this is great.
I personally try to nudge even my junior team members towards this. I would never admonish them for taking this type of initiative working with me. I WOULD however have some difficult conversations if they thought this meant they could cut corners on communicating with stakeholders or execute on something without appropriate planning or review. There's a big difference between showing initiative and ignoring process that exists for good reason.
I've used this technique ever since I read DHH's article about the book "Turn The Ship Around" [1]. The book's author, a Naval officer, had a policy of "Don't come to me for permission, come to me with intent." Hearing that phrase changed my professional life for the better in so many ways.
Admittedly I haven't included a deadline nearly as often, but I've found a huge difference between saying "Can I do XYZ?" to my team lead (or even worse, "What should I do?"), vs. "Unless you object, I plan to do XYZ." The latter is frankly much more empowering as an employee, and it doesn't hurt that it sounds so much more senior. If I come with intent, I have to be prepared to defend that intent, which gives me more ownership in my role on a team.
If you extrapolate this to larger / more bureaucratic organisations this is a change advisory board. You advise that change X will happen to system Y at time Z along with details of prep work, risks, and conditions for back-out. This gives a window for questions or concerns to be raised. In lieu of a nope, it then proceeds.
For internal meetings here is the trick. Let your team edit your calendar! It is a high trust thing but it means you tell them you booked a meeting. They can decline or move it without the ping pong. Google Calendar works well here. (Google Calendar is so good now you may not need one of the many calendar SaaS offerings)
That's a high-pressure sales tactic, and the obvious answer to such a question is "Let me get back to you." If I am forced to schedule, I will schedule and then cancel.
I don’t do sales, but I use this all the time with friends - not to force a particular schedule, but to remove ambiguity about my availability. Folks are generally happy to suggest another time if they aren’t available.
If I put “let’s catch up” out there with no information about when I am available, I’m giving the other person the mental labour of initiating the scheduling process.
I often say something along the lines of “I suggest X day, but I picked it completely at random just to get the ball rolling, so feel free to overrule.”
I do find that people tend to just sort of be overwhelmed by the options when scheduling stuff, so it is easier to just suggest something. But, I hope/think putting all my cards on the table and explicitly pointing out how arbitrary it is makes it seem less presumptuous.
Ah yes, do what all these slimy companies do to get you to accept their new terms: "These terms take effect on this date unless you send us certified mail to opt out". Works every time
In my experience, they completely ignore what I’m doing (“yeah…whatevs”), then pitch a fit, when they see the result. I get a lot of whining about how come I don’t have clairvoyance, and didn’t interpret their ignoring me, as a “no.”
Annoying AF, but I still do it, as I can point to my statement of intent, and tell them that they had their chance. Often, I don’t just ask for a “no.” I also ask for specific input and feedback (which I also don’t get). That gives me more ammo, when they get butthurt.
The trick is to not do something that will really upset them. That takes experience and empathy.
Why bother. If the company doesn't want to respond in the affirmative to a valuable idea that has been communicated clearly, let it torpedo itself and dig its grave. Whatever the answer, the outcome will be righteous. In the bigger scheme of things, it is better to evolve companies that answer optimally. There is no need to ever bend over backwards to save a company that is not your own.
I hardly think wanting to be more productive/efficient on your own behalf is "bending over backwards" to save a company.
It could be a project with a deadline, and you want to knock some things out earlier so that there is less crunch time needed in a few weeks.
Maybe you want to get some of your work done early so you can take it easier in near future where you anticipate yourself being preoccupied with other responsibilities.
Or, hear me out. You feel secure in your job position, and simply take pride in your work. You will be there working anyways. I would rather get stuff done and feel productive at work than to have meaningless down time twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a response.
It’s quite a luxury to work in a company where every interaction is perfectly empowered.
Many of us have jobs that are on the whole very good, but where inter-departmentmental or inter-personal challenges come up from time to time. I’m definitely not one who’s willing to quit in search of the elusive perfect company in that case.
Sometimes the ask is something that you want to improve your own experience at the company. Let's say the ask involves improving the quality of the code that you work on every day. You know your boss will not say "yes" because refactoring does not have an apparent value. But you are confident that if you can some time to work exclusively on some refactor, it will be a benefit not only to the company, but to your future self. I think the advice in the article is a solid way to go about asking for that.
Your career isn't going to go very far if you have no strategies to overcome roadblocks and deadweight employees in a large org. "Let it torpedo itself" and then what? Find a new job any time you encounter stupid obstacles? That's a new job every 4 months.
You just may, at some point, find yourself in a situation where your goal is not to "evolve a company", but instead to work with the people at hand to get something done.
In that case, remembering that "it's easier to get forgiveness than ask for permission" is a valuable tool to have in your repertoire.
> .”Hey, boss, I am going to install action X, which should solve the XYZ problems we’ve been having. Will take care of this on Monday unless I hear differently from you.”
>Hey, boss, I am going to install action X, which should solve the XYZ problems we’ve been having. Will take care of this on Monday unless I hear differently from you.
Great Pete, that means you've finished all the work from the current sprint and from the next and you've searched the backlog and didn't find anything to work on. Otherwise you wouldn't have wasted time on this.
Since you have this free time, I have a task for you.
"Make it as easy as possible for them to say yes"
Don't dump 14 paragraphs in front of someone expecting them to get onto the same level that you've been after many hours of studying a problem. If you're confident in your approach (and you should be, if you want an easy yes!), then be succinct, briefly describe the problem and why your solution is correct. Optionally link to a document that has more information if a reader wants to go deeper. Make sure you've already gained "approval" from your other team mates or product owners.
"We're going to solve X by doing Y. Team are all onboard. Proposal document is at [link] if you want the detail. Going to begin on Tuesday unless there's any more feedback we need to address."
Managers etc don't have time to get into the detail of every little thing, and appreciate when you've done the work, including gaining support from the wider team, so if they need to approve, they can just approve.
Occasionally someone will come back weeks later, angry that I did XYZ without telling them, and I always have a paper trail showing that they were the ones who dropped the ball.
I feel this tone is needlessly confrontational.
You can very well state "II'm going to do XYZ because of [REASONS]. I'm going to do XYZ on [DAY N]. If anyone objects or has any reservations, please reach out to me."
This approach also forces you to present a sound justification beforehand. You might not be aware, but there is always some likelihood what you're hoping to do is a mistake or you're missing out on some key constraints. When you reach out to anyone for feedback, you're hoping to get input to avoid mistakes.
Also, this cargo cult behavior of citing Amazon's leadership principles as if they were a solution to problems is mind-boggling. For example, the reason why "bias for action" works at Amazon is survivorship bias: those who unilaterally take action which results in a failure will ultimately be scapegoated and fired. You won't see those guys posting blog entries on the virtues of bias for action.
"We plan to defragment the thingamajig on March 1st. We're reaching out to those who might have an interest in case this might cause problems. Please let us know if you have concerns about the defragment. If we don't hear from you by March 1st, the thingamajig will be defragged."
Something like this?
"We're planning on defragging the thingamajig on March 1st unless objections are raised. Please send objections to manager@my.division.com"
Honestly, I've been doing this for decades with legal stuff: "Please confirm that my next pickup date for $CHILD is March 1st." often resulted in the other party just remaining silent and, when complaints against her not allowing the child out were made, she responded with "I never objected to that specific visit".
Using "Unless objections are received, I will fetch $CHILD on March 1st" stopped her from using that excuse.
It's a great way to deal with a difficult party who just wants to have as much creative misunderstandings as possible.
Also used in Bash, ruby, R when referencing elements of a list…
I’m going to guess the GP didn’t want to give their kid’s name here and decided not to insert a generic Billy in its place. So this being a forum with lots of people experienced in $programming_language it’s common to reference a generic placeholder in variable syntax.
Personally, I think comments on HN should use properly type safe syntax, in which case $CHILD is replaced by:
Sure it’s more verbose but, while there are tradeoffs, the comment is likely to avoid certain types of bugs when executed on readers’ brains, a notoriously bug-prone hardware platform.I just love HN, no downvote can stop me! Ever!
If I don't hear back from you by lunchtime, I WILL eat your leftovers.
After you’ve been on the wrong side of this dynamic you learn to always confirm things in writing. And to wait for the other person to go to the bathroom and unplug their desk phone so it looks like they’re ignoring phone calls. At the same time, you use your personal vpn to try a few dozen failed logins to their email from 2 or 3 other continents, then drop a hint to their boss alluding to a vague but urgent problem in their domain so the boss will want to get in touch with them immediately.
“I’m going to do X in 5 days if you don’t respond” gives you absolutely no recourse if you do something that can result in reprimand.
About the only place where this works is violating some internal design decisions that are irrelevant to the business.
It’s not about breaking rules. It’s that I already know what you want.
If I buy you ice cream without asking you for the flavor, it’s because I already know what you want because I pay attention to you.
And it doesn’t matter when I get it wrong because you appreciated the 500 other times I cared about you.
I think the context is different if you’ve shown you care twice a day for a year before screwing up. Most people interpret messages in light of their experience of you.
If you don’t have that track record, the words probably have a different flavor.
Surely you wouldn't use this for any action that could result in a reprimand?
"Unless we receive objections, we're dropping the domain $X on March 1st and switching to the domain $Y instead" is not something you'd do.
OTOH, "Unless we receive objections from you, we're proceeding with (the current mocked-up UI|the last discussed tech-stack|deployment date|refactor|)" is not going to result in a reprimand.
I don’t know why you feel the need to put “design” in there, but what you are describing seems like all rules governing how teams work together in any organization.
Of course criticality matters. The more critical it is, the more required for you to do a more personal message with said boss, like slack, dms, up to meeting face to face for approval.
This isn't for breaking rules. And definitely not for breaking ones that say "explicit approval needed".
Teamwork is complex and most of it is not covered by rules. If you are too biased towards asking vs just doing you get stuck.
Most decisions that would be made in the context where this is a useful technique are irrelevant and/or obvious. They should be made by someone lower down the chain, but organizational dysfunction requires tricks like this to get anything done.
I am planning to leave the company in 20 business days unless I get a substantial raise.
Something fishy about this comment. Apparently you "do this all the time", spelling out the magic phrase you use like a template. Are you sure this is your anecdote and not a projection of how you'd like to be operating at work, as per the main article?
I'm trying to imagine the scene where you "show the paper trail" to achieve victory over your angry colleagues! That's when my bullshit detector is all up in the red zone.
And the "boss" may have a point: relying on them to read, understand, and acknowledge your email, especially when it's important, is somewhat disingenuous. At the very least one has an obligation to confirm that the recipient actually read and understood what was sent, before taking the default action.
It's obviously different if you know the recipient and that they're able to handle more, but my default assumption is that people will read the first 1-3 sentences of an email, so I do my best to keep it to that, and if I have more to say I'll make a note to myself for once they reply.
I actually have this conversation a lot with my wife. She’s more of an asker. A recent example from earlier this evening. We had arrangements set to meet a group for dinner. Her style is to send a text to the group, 8 people, saying “what time is everyone arriving?” Which is so open ended it would initiate a flurry of comms. But, we knew we would be there an hour early because of where/when we were dropping our kid off for the evening. So I just said TELL them when will be there and TELL them we’ll be at the bar if anyone wants to have a drink beforehand. So much more straight forward, everyone showed up early and it was perfect with minimal comms required. Sure it was a lucky accident that everyone had care for their kids lined up to and was able to make it but the point is It took no time and actually didn’t even require any response at all in the case someone was not monitoring their messages.
It’s somewhat related to the idea of “ask for forgiveness, not permission” which I’m a huge fan of in all kinds of ways. Sure it can be riskier but I’m a rebel at my core so it comes with the territory. But this has its place too, group collaborations like GitHub repos is probably not a good place to yolo big changes that effect other people.
https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/dont-ask-forgiveness-radiate-in...
I also appreciate the author (Eliz Ayer) adding the below nuance:
"In all fairness, you might get less done by radiating intent. It does give obstructive or meddling folks a way into your thing. Also, advice like this is very situation- and organization-dependent and won’t be appropriate all the time."
Followed by test cases signature and then by user acceptance test documents.
This style could never work for me: "I'll push it to production on Day X, exactly as described here - unless you object" is not really applicable for me.
Maybe I haven't read all the comments but I would love to if somebody could give me certain examples where it doesn't sound confrontational and maybe as confrontational as asking for a yes.
I really like the approach but I think I would be looked as if rude , like look at that guy , he thinks he can do whatever he wants if I say nothing , Let me use politics to put him down unnecessarily.
Again , I really like this approach and am just asking for better / more examples. Something which I can apply practically.
Saying that, I like emoji reaction features like on GitHub and Google Docs where you can just give a thumbs up to acknowledge you read and agreed to something. Seems really unpopular with some on HN for some reason, but emoji reactions are a useful lightweight way to communicate that you're on the same page, rather than making someone go through the motions of sending a "Okay, makes sense!" comment for every little thing. A bit like an upvote.
I think this is a sort of art in communication which I have just discovered. Though in emails I am not sure if there is an option just for thumbs up , but I do wish so.
I am going to start to learn this art , like this is such a good way of working but it also has to be a little subtle , not rude and may or may not work , IDK just my two cents.
When you’re in the hot seat, and someone asks “Who approved this?”, the truthful answer is that no one approved it.
I think it's more than just that - upthread I posted that I used this technique for over a decade against a difficult party.
This approach is, briefly, for CYA: It's for when you are in the following situation:
You have to do something and will be punished if you don't, but a stakeholder is being difficult and/or hostile. They can delay you or outright sabotage you just by silence and/or bike-shedding.
If your boss 1. tells you that something needs to be done, 2. refuses to approve any plans, then you just don't do it - in that case it's on them to direct the work in a way that it gets done.
If you communicate well that an action is necessary for the outcome you are responsible for, that’s enough. Obviously with notice, and with a genuine effort to get acknowledgement, but ultimately it’s not about what you’re allowed to do, it’s about what you’re expected to achieve.
Now, if you’re wrong, or capricious, or disingenuous… well all bets are off. But done responsibly this is a completely appropriate and defensible approach.
Use it carefully, always give a reason, and set reasonable deadlines.
Adding a date avoids that:
“I’ll be migrating the build system on Wednesday (26th); please let me know if you have any concerns.”
https://youtube.com/shorts/DjuC8xauWWk?si=VkGFbgbqyzKqPjLD
"I plan to start on this on X date, let me know if you have any concerns."
And send a reminder so that you're giving them multiple chances to respond.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/689417
Try to make most of your operations 2 way doors with safety fallbacks.
If you have good tests, you'll be able to get away with more.
But offering a negative option to object could be more likely to induce mistake and undue reliance. (Remember: negative options are illegal per FTC.)
But the real question is not the form of the ask but what information to include.
You have to tell deciders what they need to know to decide. Don't queue them up for a research project or to go survey stakeholders on your behalf.
Deciders need at least to know the range of consequences and likelihoods, and when and how there will be new information or opportunities for monitoring/managing. Usually that means you also propose their management plan.
e.g., "I'm updating dependencies on Sunday. If it fails we'll roll-back, which is ~2 minutes of downtime (within this quarter's SLA). If it works, offshore will need to refresh their devenv, but we can reduce the security notice Monday. I'll preflight Saturday if you want to confirm with me Sunday beforehand, and I'll cc you on offshore/security go-ahead's."
But in general, if you are an adult, competent at your job, taking initiative, and have spent a bit of time thinking through the second and possibly third order effects, this is great.
Admittedly I haven't included a deadline nearly as often, but I've found a huge difference between saying "Can I do XYZ?" to my team lead (or even worse, "What should I do?"), vs. "Unless you object, I plan to do XYZ." The latter is frankly much more empowering as an employee, and it doesn't hurt that it sounds so much more senior. If I come with intent, I have to be prepared to defend that intent, which gives me more ownership in my role on a team.
1. https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/you-dont-have-my-permission/
E.g., Not "When can we talk about this deeper?" But "Would Tuesday at 1 or Wednesday at 3 be better for a follow-up?"
If I put “let’s catch up” out there with no information about when I am available, I’m giving the other person the mental labour of initiating the scheduling process.
I do find that people tend to just sort of be overwhelmed by the options when scheduling stuff, so it is easier to just suggest something. But, I hope/think putting all my cards on the table and explicitly pointing out how arbitrary it is makes it seem less presumptuous.
To many people, me included, it does come off a bit abrasive, but it does reduce the number of decision to make into a yes or no.
In my experience, they completely ignore what I’m doing (“yeah…whatevs”), then pitch a fit, when they see the result. I get a lot of whining about how come I don’t have clairvoyance, and didn’t interpret their ignoring me, as a “no.”
Annoying AF, but I still do it, as I can point to my statement of intent, and tell them that they had their chance. Often, I don’t just ask for a “no.” I also ask for specific input and feedback (which I also don’t get). That gives me more ammo, when they get butthurt.
The trick is to not do something that will really upset them. That takes experience and empathy.
It could be a project with a deadline, and you want to knock some things out earlier so that there is less crunch time needed in a few weeks.
Maybe you want to get some of your work done early so you can take it easier in near future where you anticipate yourself being preoccupied with other responsibilities.
Or, hear me out. You feel secure in your job position, and simply take pride in your work. You will be there working anyways. I would rather get stuff done and feel productive at work than to have meaningless down time twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a response.
Many of us have jobs that are on the whole very good, but where inter-departmentmental or inter-personal challenges come up from time to time. I’m definitely not one who’s willing to quit in search of the elusive perfect company in that case.
(Also, not every decision that you need to communicate up to your manager is going to have a significant impact on your company. Sorry?)
In that case, remembering that "it's easier to get forgiveness than ask for permission" is a valuable tool to have in your repertoire.
> .”Hey, boss, I am going to install action X, which should solve the XYZ problems we’ve been having. Will take care of this on Monday unless I hear differently from you.”
No thank you. I'm the boss. Don't push me around
Great Pete, that means you've finished all the work from the current sprint and from the next and you've searched the backlog and didn't find anything to work on. Otherwise you wouldn't have wasted time on this.
Since you have this free time, I have a task for you.