When Did it Became Impossible to Say, ‘I Don’t Know’? | Hacker News Reader

When Did it Became Impossible to Say, ‘I Don’t Know’?

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32 pointspaulpauper27 comments

I say I don’t know all the time. It’s the best answer when you don’t know.

The people who say "I don't know" are some of the brightest and smartest I know. It shows you're willing to learn, humble, and not pompous and elite.

I agree but but I think it should be followed by some indication of the strategy or initiative that you'll use to get in the know:

"I don't know - I need some time to research the effect of XYZ on our prooposed solution. Let's get together tomorrow."

"I don't know. Let me ask Bill from the platform team if he has any suggestions and then get back to you."

etc.

Weak performers use "I don't know (how to/where to/ etc)" as an excuse to give up; strong performers use it as an opportunity to learn without bucking responsibility.

Humans are tragically limited in some literal and obvious ways. For example, most information comes in through 2 very local light senors and a pair of ears, and is then processed by a gooey grey lump that is very, very biased towards the present.

Compare that to the problems that require leadership, which often span large areas of both time and space. Obviously, no human is up to the challenge of comprehending the actual challenge.

A leader who actually believes they understand what is happening is delusional. Not necessarily in a bad way, they just aren't engaging with the reality of the situation. They will hopefully still get buoyed up by their other skills and the work of the people around them, and with a little luck and skill might have a grasp on a couple of the key drivers of a given situation. The true state of things isn't going to stop leaders pretending they have an answer to everything, because leaders are chosen by the people and people prefer to be told that the situation is easy and under control than the messy reality that requires caution, risk management and contingency planning.

I've yet to see the public admit en-mass that they are bad at picking leaders, but they clearly have no idea how to. If we had a better system for choosing political leaders we'd certainly see it used.

Looks like it's common thing in interviews too. Even recruiters will tell you: "never say you don't know the answer, try...". Not sure about the others, but if I don't know something I go and do my reading/digging in, instead of trying to guess it or bluff it, not sure why it has to be different in any other situations.

I generally see that sort of questioning as a red flag, but I understand why they want candidates to guess; they want you to speculate because it may reveal more about your knowledge base and experience. It's still lousy for them to not take "I don't know" for an answer, and I probably wouldn't return their calls.

instead of trying to guess it or bluff it, not sure why it has to be different

Because when you're being interviewed, you're not always dealing with another engineer. If you're being interviewed by a non-technical person with a business degree, then you are dealing with a person who is used to guessing/bluffing their way through things, rather than sitting down to the hard task of problem solving.

This may not be true of all business people, but it's quite common to those who might say they hated math in school. Math, and the sciences that heavily lean on it, are the only subjects where you can't get very far by bluffing or guessing.

I hate the “business people are idiots” trope but in this case the comment is right on.

Maths is no panacea but it is a tool of rigorous thinking. A certain kind of bluffing and even self-deception (people think this business idea is crazy but it’s not) is can be quite useful when it’s part of a rigorous framework.

When I interview other people, I usually ask one question that is really hard for the candidate. I don't expect an answer, I just expect the candidate would give an honest answer.

Then I'm always surprised there are so many people willing to take some random guess and stretch it hard, until some Socratic questioning let them falls into paradox.

Roughly speaking, what do you think your honest-answer/bluff ratio is?

Also, and I understand completely if you don't want to share your magic toolbox of secret interview questions, would you mind sharing an example of the sort of question you'd use here?

I can think of at least two reasons why. The first is that the candidate doesn't realise they are hitting their intellectual limits. The second is that the candidate does realise the question is difficult, but doesn't know if you know the question is difficult.

As a result, the second type of candidate has to decide whether to enter into a debate with the interviewer (and risk losing the job opportunity if the interviewer turns out to be ignorant), or try to appease them with a best-guess answer. If the candidate is desperate for a job, they might choose the appeasement option.

You have no way of knowing if your candidate falls into the first or second bucket because interviews involve power asymmetry. In my opinion, this type of questioning is counterproductive -- you're looking for honest people by being dishonest.

Another reason: People might not necessarily know what they don't know right off the top of their head. So if you ask them something and they don't know the answer, they won't even necessarily know whether they don't know the answer because it is an embarrassing gap in their knowledge or if the question is hard. The only thing they might know for sure is that they don't know the answer.

Honestly, trying to bullshit your way towards an answer isn't a bad strategy in this circumstance.

In an interview I like to hear "I don't know but let me try" if the person doesn't know an algorithm for example. Some people stop if they don't know the text book answer outright whereas others try to work through an unknown issue and come up with a solution after some time or at least get closer to one. I much prefer the latter.

However, I agree in corporate meetings it's common to give a five minute weasel word discourse devoid of any real content instead of saying "I have no clue".

I mentor a lot of people looking to find new jobs, and one of the things I encourage them to do is related to this phrasing.

When someone asks you, "Have you ever programmed in X language", or "Have you ever used Y technology", I encourage them to not just stop at "No, I haven't", but rather go-

"No, I haven't worked with that language, but it's a fairly similar language to Q, so I'm familiar with a lot of the design patterns you use when programming in that type of language. I'll need to pick up the syntax and learn from the team how you use the language, but I'm confident I can pick it up."

So, that's how to respond to it as an interviewee. If you're a company and you're interviewing candidates, you're likely bouncing good prospects who aren't good at interviewing because you're asking the question too close-ended. A better question is:

"At Acme Corp, we tend to use Scala whenever possible. What has been your experience so far in your career with programming in functional languages such as Scheme, Lisp, Scala, etc.?"

Instead of getting a binary answer, Yes / No, you're now asking an open-ended question that gives the interviewee an opportunity to share their experience, rather than feel gutted because they lack direct experience in X. Some people don't need to be asked questions in this format, but some people take questions very literally and won't elaborate despite having a totally reasonable response.

Either those recruiters are fools, or I interview candidates in a very unusual way. For me, failing to admit when you’ve run out of knowledge is a huge red flag.

There's a parallel that every consultant or salesperson should use when a client asks for "super-specialized feature X" in their gp-product: reframe what they're asking for in a way your product can address the underlying need without committing to adding the specific workflow they ask for!

So obviously bluffing is still the fault of the guy doing it, but I feel like the non leaders play some role in it. In sort of competitive environments where the people aren’t very informed and don’t seem to have high moral standards, sometimes I’ll see random employees who want to increase their status barrage specialists with minute and usually largely irrelevant questions and then try to paint the specialist as stupid or dishonest if he doesn’t answer all of them. So it becomes important to BS people to get them to shut up. Many seem to substitute this for competence, leading to a downward hellspiral

It's funny, when I was a manager at a big tech company I did fear saying "I don't know." I always assumed saying that enough would have people doubt my competence.

When I was at the same company as an engineer, I would see my managers make up shit on the spot and I knew they were full of it. And, I doubted their competence.

I really wish someone could assess the long term implications of saying I don't know and not saying it. I don't know which way it would pan out.

I suspect there might be a short term gain in pretending you know something but a long term problem when you pretend. And if you are truthful, the short term benefits might be worse but the long term benefits might go exponential.

It's not impossible, it's just impossible for politicians. It's because they're essentially tricking their way in, especially during primary seasons. "I don't know" is a very honest statement, and doesn't go well for trickery.

You're right; there are a number of quality character traits (like this one) that disqualify a person from ever achieving elected office. I fear the list grows longer each day.

because in the workplace lack of trust means we all have to pretend we know when we don't for fear of looking weak

It's exactly the same for politicians, we all know what the headlines would be the next day if the guy in the video had responded honestly.

I didn’t think butegig’s first answer was bloviation, it was correct, and challenges the default assumption.

The anecdote in the article was about Beto O'Rourke, not Pete Buttigieg.

You can say you’re not sure but will follow up when you have the requisite info.

When did it [become] impossible to say 'I don't know'?

Fixed now. Thanks.

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