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People on HN have this weird distinction where if your an engineer you stay an engineer. In the real world, most career structures involve coming in a engineer and then progressing into management. A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway.

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A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway.

Well you get older and fear change a bit more, and you tend to say "no" to more things, but that's not really a management skill.

I respectfully disagree. I believe that knowing when and how to say "no" is one of the most important management skills, and I suspect that understanding the need to say "no" a lot more than "yes" in the early days of a project (or a whole business) is quite strongly correlated with success.

I think he meant to type "negotiation" rather than "negation", which makes little sense even if he was trying to convey the point you just made. So I was making a little fun of that. I agree with you.

Sorry, I missed the original (presumed) typo. My sense of humour has now been rebooted. :-)

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