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Comment by pacala | Hacker News Reader

To play devil's advocate: The primary function of a manager is to say "No". As one goes higher and higher up the hierarchy, one has to say "No" to pushier and pushier subordinates, and the cost of every misplaced "Yes" is higher and higher. While leaders just under the CEO may understand the firm situation just fine, they may also be unable to say "No" to enough bad ideas for a myriad reasons, including lack of political clout with other leaders, with investors or with peer CEOs.

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> The primary function of a manager is to say "No".

I'm a manager, and I can't really see this being the key job description.

But if it was, why would that have gotten harder in the last few decades?

Lots of people come to my team asking for work on X. If I said yes to everything my team would collapse from being spread too thinly. Being able to say that X is lower priority than what I am currently working on and leave the door open for re-evaluating priorities if needed is a key part of my job.

My team also frequently comes to me with ideas for interesting work that also isn't contributing to our vision. If we just did everything that came to mind we'd also fall apart.

My experience after 35 years is nothing scares me more than when a team of out of control developers are adding more and more features to the spec. Most baffling is it's obvious they think they are accomplishing something and you're a meanie for trying to rein them in. It always ends the same way. A lot of things can go wrong in a project. But that's that one 100% guaranteed to sink it.

On the flip side, a team of developers who aren't even interested in adding anything of their own volition is also a bad sign.

There has to be a balance.

Can’t say no to everything, or soon you won’t have anything to say no to any more.

You can't say "no" to everything, otherwise you'd be taking security's job.

In a good profession relationship 95% of the time proposals/issues are discussed until some agreement is reached or a decision to punt is made. The basis of that is a mature understanding that resources are limited.

Agreed. Being a decision maker means saying "yes" and "no", with the awareness that saying "yes" to some things, means saying "no" to others.

In my experience, those who say "the primacy function of manager is to say no" have either failed at management, or are working in organizations so conservative that they are immobile.

I think the primary function of a manager is to close the loop. Taking information from in and outside the group and turning that into a set of clear manageable requirements.

I think it varies with the group being managed. I've managed groups where many other groups hoped to benefit from our time, resources, and work products. In such groups a manager really does need to say "no" dozens of times for every "yes".

The job description is prioritization which is essentially saying "yes" or "no" to certain tasks. Especially in tech companies, the front line reports can always find something to do. Software developers want to automate everything or build cool things or use the latest tech. Managers are there to guide that, and that means saying "focus on A, B and C" because there's a gigantic list of tasks but saying no to 99% of that list makes the company perform better.

Next study "is ability to say no significantly different between COOs/CFOs and CEOs?"

My money is on no.

Saying “no” is easy. But it’s hard to say “yes” if it involves some risk.

See the movie industry

That's...a very apt example.

That is not primary function of manager. Misplaced no can be as disastrous as misplaced yes. Or just as irrelevant.

Also, the higher you go the more vague those people get, frequently saying neither nor yes.

Not to say “no” but to understand the company’s direction and only say “yes” to things that align. Important in this mix is communicating direction to the team and explaining the yes & no decisions.

The disastrous pivot that the Provident Financial did in the UK is one example.

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