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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> At the meeting, the two leads will present the one, correct decision that they have agreed upon.

Um... what happens if the two leads can't agree?

I've had this happen to me multiple times in my career: I was one of the "two leads". My counterpart was an idiot. Completely uninformed and unwilling to listen to reason, but willing to go to the mat for his own stupid ideas. That left me with only two options: acquiesce despite my firm belief that doing so would not be in the best interests of the organization, or break the algorithm and force the supervisor to make the decision.

Of course, I'm sure my counterpart felt exactly the same way about me.

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I have been many times in that situation, at different times and levels.

Traditional escalation is always a failure for me. It means the wrong pepole (including possibly myself) were working on the problem.

Friendly escalation is good : we go together to the boss with all data and they decide because our positions are incompatible.

the article goes on to explain that, with a shared authority present, you are required to work it out with the other tech lead amicable. if you do a poor job doing that in front of the authority, presumably the authority will decide, and also scrutinize both of the leads for not being able to cooperate / be successful at their job.

> with a shared authority present, you are required to work it out with the other tech lead amicable

No, that's not what the article says. Re-read the quoted passage:

> At the meeting, the two leads will present the one, correct decision that they have agreed upon.

The decision is made before the meeting, without the executive present.

Having the executive mediate the discussion would make a lot of sense, but it would also make the job a lot harder.

This is fiction. In most places highest rank invites for meeting and presents black box decision, but only if there are no remaining risks and queries.

> Of course, I'm sure my counterpart felt exactly the same way about me.

Something about the symmetry of this is amusing for me.

One tactic I've used successfully is to require each to swap roles and defend the other's position. This should build the empathy required to find common ground.

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