Comment by rleigh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rleigh | Hacker News Reader

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CS not being a profession doesn't preclude acting professionally.

As for why you shouldn't be a yes-man. I am an individual, I'm educated, skilled, and have two decades of experience and what I consider to be generally good judgement. I always attempt to give of my best and to do what is right for the best interest of the project and company/organisation. If that means pointing out facts which are wrong, ill-considered or counter to any prevailing group-think, I would do so every time. It might not always make me popular, and it might ruffle a few feathers, but to ignore problems and evade responsibility by silently going with the dictates of those above me or in the group would be a disservice to the project, the wider organisation and to myself. I refuse to be a spineless jellyfish merely to make life slightly easier for myself in the short term. I'd rather go home each day satisfied that I did the best I could despite the circumstances, than leave knowing I did mediocre or downright awful work when I could have done better.

Maybe I wouldn't be a good cultural fit in some places. But everyone in an organisation bears some level of individual responsibility, and I personally would prefer to work with people who can shoulder it, and show they care about their work by arguing their case well, rather than abrogating it and showing that they don't really care at all about what they do so long as they get paid. In my experience the output of the latter is typically mediocre at best, because they don't give a damn.

dear young people who are reading the above comment.

IMHO dont be afraid to take it with a grain of salt. don't expect to be rewarded for saying no. don't expect a light feather ruffling. don't expect light consequences. be prepared to get fired. be prepared to get demoted. be prepared to lose your health insurance. be prepared to change your industry. be prepared for the realities that most people face.

if you say no to something that really is important, then there will, the vast majority of the time, be major consequences. dont expect it to be easy. dont expect a reward. dont expect anyone to even understand or care why you are doing it. dont expect to be respected. dont expect anything. be prepared.

when you are living in poverty or are homeless, that no wont really mean much. only say no when you have the ground to stand on that can catch you when the inevitable smack in the face comes.

and dont feel ashamed if you have to say yes to survive once in a while. its actually what most people do. every day. even people you respect as heroes. sometimes especially the people you respect as heroes. when a really big no comes, there will be many people chanting it together, and many others behind them silently backing them up, all of whom had to say yes, in ways large and small, at some time or another, in the past, just to survive long enough to be together in that space, building that critical mass, and supporting each other.

Maybe if you work in the Land of the Free™ and live in constant fear of getting fired for some inconsequential reason, you have to have to abase yourself daily to your manager and act like a wage slave supplicant. Is that a life anyone can really be satisfied with, deliberately allowing oneself to be downtrodden for the sake of a few shekels?

Do you have a job where you simply do as you are told, like a private being shouted at by a drill sergeant, or do you have a career where your expertise and contributions have some significant value?

Work is full of compromises. No matter how hard you try, at some point you're going to end up giving advice or information to people which runs counter to what they would have preferred to hear. "No" is rather absolute. What would be more typical is suggesting that a course of action might be unwise, and suggesting possible alternatives along with the tradeoffs for each approach, i.e. criticise but in a constructive way. And let others decide which pros and cons are most important. You bring specific expertise and insight, and provide that to the group and decision makers, along with qualified recommendations, maybe very strong recommendations if the situation warranted it. Your recommendations and advice might well be ignored, but it's still important to make them in the first place so that they are at least known and considered.

You don't just live your life to satisfy your boss. You also have to live with yourself. Sometimes, for example, companies make very short-term decisions at the expense of their own longer-term viability and at the expense of their existing customers. Who internally acts as the voice of those customers and the future company if not you? If you didn't at least raise questionable design tradeoffs so that the consequences were well understood and informed decisions could be made, you are doing your employer a disservice (in my opinion). It doesn't matter what the ultimate decision is, but that you act professionally and provide all the necessary information for others to work with. If you get fired for trying to do your best for the company, you're well out of a bad company.

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