No is a complete sentence
networkingnerd.net
networkingnerd.net
> Let me tell you clearly. “No” is a complete sentence. It requires no explanation or defense.
The "It requires no explanation or defense" part is just plain wrong. If someone asks you to do something in an organization, it's fine to say "No", but an explanation is nearly always expected. And this explanation is critical, because often time the answer is something like "I don't have time", when a positive, helpful rejoinder would be "What else would you like me to stop doing if you want me to do this other thing."
This advice really just seems to my like something the "arrogant tech support guy" from SNL would say.
Anyone else, well, no. If their issue is important enough, they can escalate it to your manager.
If you're getting upset over issues like this, perhaps management is not for you. Of course it may also depend on how tenuous the relationship with your own manager is.
For my part:
Radije ne bih. (Serbian)
I suspect "I'd prefer not to" is somewhat difficult to translate in French. This is probably because in English, "not to" without repeating the verb / action feels natural but in French it would feel like something is missing. You could try "Je préfèrerais ne pas faire ça" but that does not sound great either.
I would probably go for "Ça ne m'arrange pas" ("It isn't convenient for me").
And slightly different from "Je ne préfererais pas".
"je n'aime autant pas" is "I might as well not"
I don’t know if the overlap between those 2 groups (people who get mad at “No” with no explanation, and people who get mad at No with an explanation) is great enough that this advice makes sense (I doubt that it is), but it’s more nuanced that just saying No.
If I actually knew the person, a "no" with no explanation would virtually always have negative consequences. To a boss, it would likely be insubordinate. From an in subordinate, the same and would likely elicit a "I beg your pardon?" From a friend or colleague, it would cause me to question our friendship.
In the modern world, politeness is largely built on a willingness to explain and give verbal consideration. Not doing so will often (if not usually) feel disrespectful or like some sort of power-play.
I also think the article is likely a bit hyperbolic/clickbaity, and what the author would actually say is something like, “No. Sorry” or “No. Sorry. Don’t have time.” As opposed to “No. <detailed reason why>.
I learned to say no with no explanation and look a bit sad while doing it. Pressure stopped, people accept my no as valid and seem to treat me with more respect.
So, plain no is not attack on you. It is experience that explanation makes one vulnerable to uncomfortable pressure.
In professional contexts... you're being paid to be to serve the business. If someone who's part of that business asks you something, you don't get to just say no unless you're the CEO. You can say no and explain that you're not the right person, or you can direct them elsewhere or any number of other things, but when you agree to take money to do a job, you obligate yourself to do things like answer questions reasonably.
Maybe you need to rethink that. Do your friends really warrant less respect than colleagues?
- do you want me to get you a drink?
- may I kiss you?
- I hear they're doing shrooms next door, shall we join them?
- do you want to take my shift?
- Do you know how this api works?
- Do you want to attend the meeting this afternoon?
I don't see how personal vs professional changes anything.
- (Can you) Do this report by tomorrow? - I had a report due yesterday, but I don't understand how to login to XYZ to get the data. Can you show me right now?
The first one is (depending on who asks) potentially difficult to answer with a short 'No'.
The second one may be answerable with 'No' but people like these will spread the word that you are difficult to work with and unfriendly. They will more often than not taint your reputation and create problems in your compensation talks (as being likeable and easy to work with is often a factor in these things).
As to the second two, sying "No" with no explanation would probably mark you out as a bit of a dick/ difficult to work with.
Are your friends paying you to complete whatever tasks they ask of you?
Really what it means is this: A friend may ask something of you and you decline with a stated reason. Then they start finding ways to tell you your reason is invalid and then therefore you shouldn't refuse. This is the part that's disrespectful. Sometimes you are willing to have a discussion and change your mind, but there is too much of a culture where people think they can always out argue your "no".
With people who don't respect this boundary, giving a reason is never good enough and just gives them fodder to exhaust you with pointless arguments. Sometimes you really are not willing to change your mind. This is where the title of this article applies -- don't give them any material to go on and end with a "no" alone.
The moment I cut them out of my life. Whoever feels entitled to denigrating the reasons I state for not doing something (in the context of friendship) and so blatantly disrespects me by showing that they feel their needs trump mine is nothing I need in my life.
I cut clients loose that disrespect me in a professional manner, why should I deal with such people privately.
> With people who don't respect this boundary, giving a reason is never good enough
Agreed. But to me it is a great filter as described above. It works to my advantage in triggering people I don't want to have in my life to reveal themselves.
A positive example: My SO and me are providing a foster home to stray cats rescued in neutering campaigns (cats that were to ill/young/hurt to be returned to the spot they were captured at for neutering). It happenes that we regularly receive request if we could take in a cat or more. As we are doing this for different groups they never know if we have capacity left. So we sometimes have to say no. One group tried to argue that one more cat would not burden us much more. They really did not respect our no. Since then we don't work with this group anymore and concentrate one the two animal welfare groups that actually respect the people in the back (the foster homes and others).
A solid article on the personal context no's for anyone reading by is by Captain Awkward: https://captainawkward.com/2011/03/23/the-art-of-no/
Of course you get to say no. You are not paid to "serve the business" as if business owned you. You are paid for specific role, specific amount of time, specific achievements. And that pretty often includes saying no to other people in same organization.
Obviously don't burn yourself out trying to improve something that the organization resists to improve (unless that is your role).
Edit: Parent is talking more about requests of others, I'm more talking about own initiative. That is an important difference. Getting "sidetracked" is much less frustrating if that is what you want to do.
The "you dont get to say no, because you are hired to serve the company" implies horrible workplace no matter what size of the company.
"What's your favourite kind of theatre?"
"No."
"which one is your favourite unix command?"
"no, yes".I don't get what you mean
It doesn't work if you are asked "which one is your favorite command".
I am sympathic to author’s argument that you stay there with a valid explanation upon request and start work it out with the other party from there as needed.
Clearly stating that something won’t happen is a first important step. It often gets muddied if you start diving into menial details right away.
In particular, if as the author states, it’s a conclusion you’ve already reached and the situation will need to change to get to any different outcome.
> It is the only thing you need to say when you know you won’t be able to do something no matter how much the other party tries to get you to agree.
"When is this needed" is a great alternative to a hard "no". It opens up a conversation about priorities. And lets you transparent about what needs to get delayed so that this new priority can be worked. It's a perfectly reasonable conversation to have, and helps you keep healthy boundaries.
Followed by a blog post about why the deadline of yesterday doesn't need an explanation
The "yesterday" need-by date maybe works the first time. Beyond that, if that's really the company culture or management style, I'd be quietly looking for a new job. Same category as Friday afternoon requests for things due Monday morning.
Saying that as someone who was taught to explain everything as kid and found out in real life that I have to unlearn that. Say no, maybe bonus "cant" but don't say reasons unless you really have to.
The above is a more of lifelong lesson that seems to serve mi well (still).
Business, and life is general, depend on relationships. Relationships depend on understanding.
Just saying 'no', is primarily going to piss people off.
Saying "no" to other people's requests will put you in a position where you will be told "no" to any of your own.
Unless you're indispensable and never had to ask others for anything this is just career suicide.
Brevity is occasionally good. A quick and confident response can signal honesty. Or be efficient. At officer school they teach you "not to umm and err", or to "soften" speech.
But most of the time, a response that isn't commensurate seems haughty.
I notice some HN commentators doing it when they just write one word:
"citatation?"
Sure, it's mocking Wikipedia, I get that, but it's still jolly uncivil.
(cue a dozen replies of "citation?" :)
A Volumocracy, where the more verbose or apparently civil sounding party (not your stereotypical programmer) wins every argument might be a viable strategy when it is rhetoric, opinions, semi-solid-science (quagmire?) but there is absolutely a place for; "No."
And though I agree more should be stated, I do strive to remain civil.
Nice.
edit: Sorry to come back in edit but you just made me think of something. Britain still has an insidious class system. A top engineer I know, absolutely formidable in mind and manner, said that during a C-level meeting he'd been "outposhed" by some Rupert (apologies to any actual Ruperts).
The tactic is: talk very loudly in a plumby offensively over-confident RP accent, with a slight snorting sneer. Boris Johnson is the paradigmatic example - all the more because he's actually a not-posh kid who got beasted at boarding school into some serious over-compensation.
This has become an overwhelming problem on the internet, and fundamentally it's why we have downvotes: it takes hundreds of keypresses and careful thought to counter nonsense or weaponized civility, and only one to downvote.
Many years ago, in a social rather than work setting, a friend of mine (A) who presented in the normal geek manner of appearance was trying to explain someone when another friend tried to talk on top of him. However, A had had a previous life where he'd joined the navy at 16, so he simply raised his voice to be heard while maintaining a conversational tone. The interrupter backed off, but tried again later, and was met with a full volume "JAMES I AM TALKING".
A was allowed to finish his anecdote with no further interruptions.
(This was at Cambridge, so all of us were several points ahead in "posh" to start with. It took me some years to fully appreciate how badly people who'd made it there on pure merit from a working class background could simply get conversationally "run over" all the time)
Interpersonal power politics is real, even among a group of friends who have chosen each others company, and it can be quite sharp at the office, while at the same time it's usually constrained to not "breaking the surface". Hence the development of non-blunt no-equivalents such as "that's against policy" or "you'll have to clear that with X". But occasionally you do have to risk being seen as the bad guy in order to assert your position in the power hierarchy.
(obligatory disclaimer too that many of these things have very different outcomes if the same words or manner of speech are used by a woman or non-white or second-language person)
If I had a coworker who simply said "no" at times when they were assigned work, they wouldn't stay employed for very long.
I feel like in a work context, ‘no’s really need more of an explanation than that in most cases (with obvious exceptions if a request is wildly inappropriate or unethical). For work-related questions from folks higher up than you, a ‘no’ is a chance to give them more of a view of what’s going on in the trenches, and for those lower than you it’s a chance to mentor them and give them a wider view of the work, helping lift them up a little closer to your own level. And either way, that explanation for the ‘no’ is where all the value of the communication is coming from.
If you don’t give the longer explanation immediately, it leaves the asker questioning whether you meant the “and I don’t owe you an explanation” or the “and you should already know why not” version of “no”. Neither of which is great for maintaining cordial work relationships.
Why would it matter if it's a complete sentence? If the response was "The fish is yellow at midnight", it would be a complete sentence but an absolutely useless answer, and the response was just nodding their head, that would be reasonable even without any words, let alone a sentence. To put it n programming terms, arguing that a response needs no explanation because it happens to be a grammatically compete sentence (which honestly is a bit questionable in this case) is like saying that the `reverse` method on a list is a valid sorting algorithm because it compiles. It's totally reasonable to express a sorting algorithm in pseudocode that doesn't compile in any real language, and there are obviously a vast number of methods that compile that don't do anything resembling sorting.
However, it’s not good advice from a management perspective. ‘No’ is an absolute statement that implies inflexibility and does not invite discourse to justify a position. If it is applied more frequently for some people than others, it can raise issues around the perception of fairness, and even arrogance.
It certainly had its place in certain political situations, but there are more tactful ways of saying no, like ‘we will be fulfilling the organisation’s need for performance by continuing down this path’, which is a positive statement.
But working with others at your employer’s direction requires discussion, explanation, negotiation. “No” alone is a good way to let the employer know you don’t want to work there anymore.
Setting aside the exact content of the message, part of the idea at least is really critical. It is really hard to say no to a request. But oftentimes the success (or quality) of one or more projects can depend on it.
These types of interactions where scope is negotiated are probably the hardest part about software engineering and also possibly the most critical.
If I am truly honest with myself, probably almost all projects I have done have been stretched past their real budgets because I felt I had to fulfill some request that was not a real requirement.
Edit: article this strongly reminds me of that is also terrible advice. https://erikvancraddock.com/2022/01/dont-explain/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhCKYaD9p-0
I occasionally do this IRL and it has the same humor to it, then of course I don't leave them hanging, but it's for a moment :)
lol . if only it were so easy.
Actions of consequences, some of which can be unpleasant.
There are already plenty of great resources to answer negatively to the demand without damaging the relationship or the image that will be forged out of the way you behave, so just go and search for "how to say no"[1]
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=how+to+say+no&ia=web for the lazy, and here are the first result as I searched it: - https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-... - https://www.wikihow.com/Say-No - https://www.scienceofpeople.com/how-to-say-no/ - https://www.grammarly.com/blog/saying-no/
From my readings on this topic, the main take away things I liked were formulations that - use positive assertive sentences: focus on what this refusal allow you to do, propose alternatives - make it clear why you will focus on something else: it can also gives clues on whether it’s likely a permanent case or a local agenda/load conflict - use the right level of kind firmness
Here is an example to illustrate what I mean: "Thanks for your invitation at this restaurant, saying 'yes' would have delighted me, unfortunately I already have an other dinner planned at this date. Also I adopted a vegan regime, so what about going to Vegood the next Friday?"
First, be kind, the person asking you is making some kind of recognition of your existence and possibly bet on your skill set. Secondly, making a word like "yes" appears in the sentence make the refusal psychologically easier to perceive as some positive response. Then there is first an exposition of a some incidental impossibility: a typical conflict of agenda. But there is also this more perennial constraints about what you can it (whether you chose the regime for ethical reasons or health imperative necessities). Finally you propose an alternative.
Of course the alternative could also be some delegation on someone else than your future self: "My skill level on this technology would prevent me from achieving the task in due time. I think Ada would be way more qualified than me for this mission, or if she’s too busy, maybe ask Zeno: if he can’t help you directly, he is well connected with all experts in this domain."