It's Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission | Hacker News Reader

It's Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission

bothsidesofthetable.com

130 pointsrpledge39 comments

This reminds me of my first partner in our software/consulting service business. He was absolutely fearless.

We would always arrive at appointments very early so he had an excuse to "poke around". He'd ask anybody, the receptionist, someone in the breakroom, even the janitor. He'd see what was going on in the parking lot, the loading dock, even in the warehouse or factory. Seeing him in a business for the first time was like watching a kid in a candy store.

In our first meeting, he always knew something about the client's business that they didn't. He'd say things like, "Automating the inventory won't help if Fred and Jean are counting 2 different things." This always led to interesting discussion and often, follow-up business.

Once he even spent a week of his own time on third shift, going over procedures and reports with factory supervisors. They didn't know who he was; they just figured someone from the main office sent him. He did a complete analysis in Excel which we used in a proposal. That got us hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work.

I often challenged him, "You can't just do that," I would say. To which he would respond, "These people need help and don't even realize it. We have to find a way to show them." Then the inevitable, "It's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."

Looking back, it didn't always work. It pissed off some people and burnt those bridges. But when it did work, we often concluded that nothing else would have.

I learned a lot in those days. I'm still not as fearless as my partner was, but I'd like to think I'm getting there. Thanks for the memories.

Great story! And exactly the point. The other saying is "you can't make an omelet unless you're willing to break eggs." I don't mind getting messy from time-to-time. When you take risks like your partner did it backfires sometimes. But I'd rather occasionally get shut down for trying too hard.

Yes. But keep in mind: You can break an awful lot of eggs, without making an omelet.

This is especially good advice if you work in a large company. Banging your head against the wall is often more pleasant than getting permission to do something new or different. So my solution is to just mock up a prototype before I tell anyone about it. It's easy to say "I want to do this, and can prove it's not all that difficult". Even better if you can say "I had this idea that was so great I went ahead and wrote it!" People are a lot more likely to take your work seriously after it's already been written than before.

I fully agree with this. Getting past big company bureaucracy absolutely requires this attitude in my opinion.

The outcome of this story was favorable (which is why we're reading it). I wonder, however, if there are far more stories that begin the same way but end with "You're being fired for insubordination" or something similarly negative.

"You're Fired" can be the beginning of a beautiful career.

Exactly. Sometimes I fantasize about being laid off, so I can have excuse why I am leaving this cushy job...

For a small fee, I am happy to offer my services to get you fired.

Same here.

Severance would be a nice way to get started...

Your attitude reminds me of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

I have a story that backfired. I had a team of 5 developers that were working in a product. The company had been trying to build the product for several years. When I saw the architecture they were using I tried to convince the architect to make some changes. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't even let me touch the code. I was a manager I wasn't supposed to get involved. So I thought. "It is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission". So I started to build the product from scratch. I had plenty of time and no one cared what I did. After 5 or 6 months I already had a product that was way a head than the official product. When I tried to show it to my manager he got really mad. He literally screamed at me. That was 1.5 years ago. I went in a depression for a long time. They fired the architect. They fired my manager. The developers had to spin their wheels for a long time. Then they left. And the product is still not ready.

But you asked permission first. And you were told "no". That's the point of the article. Do not ask for permission first.

He did work 5 months on something without asking permission.

"Ask forgiveness rather than permission" is not equivalent to "forge ahead without thought for the consequences". Completely rewriting a codebase by yourself to show up a team that has been working on it for a long time might mean better code, but it's also a direct demonstration of the ineffectiveness of that team. Of course some kind of major shake-up is going to happen after something like that. Firing people might be a little extreme, but you certainly have to expect that it's a possibility.

If you don't have the stomach for directly causing people to get fired, or for conflict, then don't go out of your way to demonstrate how poorly they're doing their job. Find your way out to something else, and let them do themselves in.

No one was fired as a consequence of what I did. They were fired because time passed and there were no results. If I had been able to convince my boss I think we would have been successful. At one moment I thought about going one level up in the organization, I decided to be loyal to my boss so I kept my mouth shut.

Ouch. Don't chain yourself to a sinking ship.

From the data you provide, this doesn't sound like it backfired at all.

In a difficult situation, you're the only one who did the right thing and it led to nothing. This says more about others than it says about you.

You boss got mad, yelled at you, and got fired. That's his problem, not yours. Others suffered or got fired and work wasn't finished. Again, their problem, not yours.

I think you should hold your head high and be proud. You pushed the envelope and challenged others, knowing full well that they might resist. The resulting negativity had nothing to do with your efforts and everything to do things being fucked up long before you got there. Don't let the illogical actions of others upset you, don't be depressed, and most of all, don't hesitate to continue to be proactive. The rewards may seem elusive, but believe me, you will find them.

He wasted effort, they wasted effort, it backfired.

Just because you can say "it wasn't his fault" doesn't mean it wasn't still a failure.

Several years ago, I worked for a company that held a hackathon for developers. We were given one day to build whatever we wanted for a new API that was recently released. I worked on it for that day, and for many days afterwards during work hours. After three weeks of development, I was told that I would be fired unless I ceased work on the project and got back to work.

Figuring I would "beg for forgiveness" later, I kept working on it in secret. Two weeks later, it was finished and I launched it into the wild. They weren't happy, but let me stay.

Six months after launch my hackathon project had millions of users and had made the company over seven figures. I didn't end up getting fired, but I came close.

That's not backfiring, that's exactly how it's supposed to work. The only way it could possibly be more storybook is if you had been fired and those 7 figures ended up directly in your pocket.

Or perhaps he would have been fired and the money would still go into the company's pockets.

Of course that could have happened, too, but that wouldn't make for a very good storybook ending, would it?

I was all, "Hey, interesting story." Then I was all, "I wonder who wrote it?" Now I'm all "!!!".

The world that might have been. Do you ever think it would have been better if you had gotten fired?

I'm definitely better off now. If I had been fired, it's unlikely I would've been successful in the space. I managed to sit on lots of panels, meet some top-tier people in the valley, and make some great connections. I didn't hit a $$ homerun this way, but my long-term prospects are good.

Given some of the (independent) people I know who did hit a home run, I'd say you're selling yourself short, though perhaps that depends on your definition of "home run."

It's a bit unrelated, but I'm reminded of this:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/regrets.png

Different context, same attitude :)

"It’s Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission", Grace Hopper, one of our pioneers. She also coined the term "debugging" and was one of the creators of COBOL.

If I were to follow this philosophy more often I'd try to be damn sure I knew exactly what I was doing before I did. Going off on your own to do something because you know others would not agree is a bit arrogant. It has to come from a belief that you know more than they do. So if you are going to do something when you know your boss/colleague/co-founder would disagree then you had better make sure you do know more than they do.

If you enjoyed this article, you will probably love Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...

I had already watched the lecture on YouTube and thought I wouldn't get much from the book but I was wrong.

The story of Pausch muscling his way into Disney's Imagineer team is fantastic.

Also watch Randy Pausch's lecture on Time Management: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0

Why do people put distracting animations next to the content which they presumably _want people to read_? I don't care which Twitter users looked at your page, and if I did I could very well find that information without the animation drawing my eye to it.

EDIT: Thankfully there's Readability. But I'm sure the author would rather I read it as he presented it.

Sometimes it's better, sometimes not.

Life is complex and subtle. That applies to business, personal relationships, friendships, personal hobbies, society, culture, everything. If you bind yourself to the naive "official" level of policies, rules, and regulations then you will miss out on the rich vein of interactions based on tacit and implicit knowledge, culture, and norms.

Flirting is a perfect example of this sort of thing. Full of subtlety and complexity and none of it 100% direct and straightforward. All of life has similar elements. If you treat your job, for example, as a mechanistic process then you'll probably have about as much success as if you treated romance the same way.

Developing the skills, experience, and judgment to know how, when, where, and in what way to "break the rules" and when not to is a an ongoing, lifelong adventure for everyone.

Tangent story [Asking for Permission]

http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-yesterday...

That's not exactly a counterpoint, as the intonation behind "ask for forgiveness, not permission" is that you are doing something the other party would not want if asked directly.

Corrected it.

One of Colin Powell's leadership slide points. http://www.blaisdell.com/powell/

This usually works best in overly bureaucratic or draconian situations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com