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Comment by stuartd | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps not common, but certainly still in use: The Queen’s Duck - https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/

This reminds me of some advice I received from a previous manager. He said that decisions are impossible to make in any meeting larger than 5 people, so I vowed to really pay attention to my invite list and pair it down where possible. His response was, "That's great, but more importantly, if you want to make sure no decision is reached, be sure to invite more than 5 people."

I think many people have independently discovered and use this technique. My wife once had a boss who would always find points to argue in any proposal she authored. She began adding at least one spelling or grammatical error to every document. He red-penned those, and his inner critic was satisfied. The points that really mattered went unopposed.

You are spot-on! Back when I was an anesthesiology research fellow (U.C.L.A. Department of Anesthesiology, 1979) I was first author on a number of papers resulting from my experimental work. As was expected and routine, I passed my manuscripts on to my research director for editing. Invariably he'd make changes each time I submitted a freshly typed revised draft. One day I noticed he'd changed some things back from the way he'd revised them to my original wording. From then on, I submitted papers for publication when I felt they were ready. And they were accepted for publication.

Definitely a thing that gets independently discovered over and over. I'd heard this described the "hairy arm technique[1]", with similar setup as the Queen's Duck anecdote, but a hairy arm instead of a duck. I remember reading about it and thinking "oh, so that's the name for that".

The Queen's Duck is a catchier name though! [1] https://lifehacker.com/use-the-hairy-arm-technique-to-deal-w...

I know an electrician who will reverse polarity on a couple of outlets when they do a large job. It gives the inspectors something to mark down and is an easy fix.

The other side of this is 'brown M&M' issues. Sometimes small mistakes will cause a reviewer to go over things much more thoroughly than they otherwise would.

Just so like as they remember to go back and fix them if the inspector doesn’t catch the mistake…

I’ve heard something similar as a “Helicopter”.

Can’t find a source, but it was relayed to me as a technique in negotiating a contract for videography. You would put together a contract that includes normal shots and one extraneous, really expensive aerial/helicopter shot. If the client doesn’t notice - cool, you get to do a fun helicopter shot. If they do notice, it can give them something to negotiate away - making them feel accomplished, while you still land a contract with the important shots.

That seems very, very similar, but slightly different in my mind (and is also a great one to add to my vocabulary)

In the Queen's Duck, the extra work gets done in a way that's easy to undo, so management can add their value by telling you to remove it. The artist gets more control of the queen animation instead of tweaking the color, shape, etc. because management wants something to do.

In Helicopter, the additional work is just a proof of concept, to ease negotiations. It's not about having control and making work easier down the line, it's about picking a moonshot, and maybe having fun with it, but at least getting the contract under the terms you want because they're probably going to cut the helicopter, which leaves you with the contract you would have agreed to in the first place.

> can give them something to negotiate away

That's sometimes referred to as a distractor, or as "Combat Barbie."

https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Draftin...

Which reminds me of another favourite, “Free As In Helicopter”: the software is free, but figuring out how to use it is so insanely complex, and has so many dependencies, that a successful completed deployment costs you thousands in $$$/£££/€€€.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/13/free-army-hel... is the ancestor of the phrase.

Oh nice, now I know the name and a story to go along with it.

OMG, that is pure genius forward thinking.

This is one of those things university ought to teach but they don't.

Well you could argue that if a PM focuses on the duck - or something that is fine if there wasn't a duck - said PM needs to reconsider what they do as well. Educate the PM, instead of the developer adding fluff to distract the PM.

And "no" is a complete sentence. I know, chain of command and authority and the like is hard to rebel against, costs energy and brain space, but I think in the example given, the artist should be the authority on what is in an animation, not the PM. They are entitled to an opinion of course and to voice it, but they would be one voice among many.

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