Hacker News Reader

Comment by potamic | Hacker News Reader

Terrible article. Unfortunately, publishing in such a popular magazine normalizes the behaviour and makes people think this is how you have to behave in the business world. You have to treat all people with the same dignity. If you are having to treat powerful people differently, you need to look hard at the place you are in and the kind of class divide it promotes. It's fucking 2022. You want to disagree with someone, just disagree. It's a professional space and it's all adults in the room. If someone needs psychological safety before they are disagreed to, I say they need psychological help.

View on HN

I’m glad you only participate in companies and situations that appear to have evolved beyond egos and politics, but the reality is that most places still have these things and many people need the tools to navigate around them.

I found the article very helpful for communicating both up and down the power spectrum.

I had a direct report that desperately wanted to use Tailwind even though we already had a library of styled components already built without it. It took everything I had to keep the conversation positive while still disagreeing with him. Developers, in particular, can be divas and these tools are just as necessary in managing up as well as down.

> It's fucking 2022.

The year is only an argument on 90s daytime talk shows.

> If someone needs psychological safety before they are disagreed to, I say they need psychological help.

What if somebody needs safety safety, because the person they're disagreeing with is more powerful than they are? Any "psychological" safety you're seeing here is people trying to muster up enough bravery to take a real risk for the possibly dubious reward of being right.

I'm not even making any moral judgements here. There are plenty of contexts where if you're going to act out on your disagreements with me, I'd prefer to find somebody either more tactical or more pliable to take your place.

> If you are having to treat powerful people differently, you need to look hard at the place you are in and the kind of class divide it promotes. It's fucking 2022.

> The year is only an argument on 90s daytime talk shows.

I'm not sure why you think it's an argument. When someone makes a statement, it's not automatically an argument.

In this case, that statement is a call to action. Take note that decades have passed and the culture has changed, which was articulated in the previous sentence.

In theory I agree with you. Unfortunately this is a very, um, privileged way of viewing this aspect of the world. A lifetime of selection bias clouds, wherefrom this strategy works for you, but would not if tried by an other.

How do you know it’s not the opposite? That a lifetime of telling yourself it would be rejected ensures you never take risky chances that can drive success?

Your assumption presumes just as much with similar effects.

I have seen many cases in my career where people with less power in an engagement thoughtfully but thoroughly disagree and end up getting relocated off their team, demoted, or in effect nullified from having any further input. I’ve seen this enough to have noticed that it’s often women who seem to be put in this position.

I’ve never had the issues, as the prototypical HN poster demographic, and agree that the GP (?) post works for me, but fundamentally understand it’s also a strategy that can disproportionately lead to seriously bad outcomes for people in particular demographics.

At the same time, if you are really as timid and as unassertive as this article suggests, it will probably have a negative impact on your career.

> all adults in the room

Adults re overrated.

Adults are mostly small children in larger bodies. Adults will sulk, throw tantrums, be petty, feel slighted, want to always be right, want to dominate etc.

It is adults that kill, rape, maim, hurt kids, start wars, torture etc.

I read the opposite from this article. Instead of being put off by a set of principles that should "only" be necessary when talking to a superior, I read it as a list of helpful principles that can be applied when disagreeing with anyone.

Like you, I agree that no special treatment should be given to people in a position of power. However, I see many of these things as sets of tools I can use to be more persuasive and likely to be heard by anyone I'm trying to discuss a difficult topic with.

> If someone needs psychological safety before they are disagreed to, I say they need psychological help.

I think the point where this was mentioned feels like the author was looking for an excuse to use the current buzzwords. And I don't think it really fits.

It's a feature of the environment whether and to what degree "permission to speak freely" is a thing or not. Nothing to do with psychological safety at all.

(Not that psychological safety is a good concept; the discussion I see is all about perception of being safe to disagree, which is very much putting the cart before the horse of whether or not there are actual repercussions for disagreeing.)

One can be right, but communicate it badly, leading to your case being rejected simply because you failed to present it correctly.

In all organisations there is politics (literally the combination of people) and those people matter. One can disagree while maintaining respect.

For example I once lobbied a supplier on behalf of a group of customers. The supplier agreed to our terms, but then presented _what we asked for_ in such an appaling disrespectful way that the group almost rejected it. It took a lot of work for me to convince them to look past the presentation to the actual content.

Personally I've had subordinates suggest things in useful, and less useful ways. I've had new hires come in, be with us a short time, and then proclaim (to anyone who will listen) that we're morons for not doing x or using y etc.

I've had others come and have a private conversation and ask about the reasons for not doing x, ot using y. Suggesting perhaps that it would be a step forward if we did etc.

New people bring value into our company. But sometimes they don't always yet have the full picture. We encourage feedback, but feedback presented in a respectful and constructive voice leads to more consideration than the opposite, regardless of the merits of the feedback.

Yes, all people deserve respect and dignity. And certainly it's on bosses to set a model for that (and I agree, not all do) - but it's certainly valuable for juniors to understand that commincating well "upstream" is key to getting change done.

And yes, there are places which will penalise you for feedback, no matter how well communicated. And that sucks. Such is life.

I haven't bothered to read the article, the comme ts tend to be more informative...

However, reality teaches us that there is no one size fits all solution for dealing with people regardless of the lower structure.

In a professional setting the key is to remain, well, professional. Even in that vein though you have to know the person and how you're perceived before taking on aome subjects. I've had some senior leadership where a suggestion from me was all it took to change course. I've had others that refused to accept 6 degrees for proof unless it was vetted through the right mgt chain. By that time all credit can be properly dispersed.

I think this is not so good advice even in 2022.

A lot of disagreements are arbitrary, emotional, lacking context, moreover, in any organization of human beings, public disagreements can amount to populism, narratives which doesn't help team cohesion. Depending on the issue of course.

To the extent that people are there to do their jobs and manage others, there's legitimacy in that authority, which comes with generally a wider and at least different purview.

Being a good player means respecting that reality.

The advice in the article is decent in helping people untie a bit of common issues from gripes, lack of perspective etc. and I would add strongly that one should probably take the disagreement in 'private' and not make it a public ordeal.

Most managers, when approached reasonably, will be good with at least the point of contention, if not resolving to the best outcome.

I wish everyone had the opportunity to manage others, and do so at least 2 layers up - it's an alternative universe up there and it's really, really hard. I think 'Director' is probably the hardest job in the company in many ways.

The calculus for most things is just different. Optimization in every corner is usually not the objective, and strategic issues start to enter in the decision making in a material way.

With that experience, people would be able to put things in context a lot better, which is a big challenge actually for front line people who often over or under appreciate the magnitude of the issue they're dealing with.

Then, approaching the 'disagreement' comes from a different perspective.

For most of my career, I would have said I wouldn't want to have my manager's job, it's just way too much fuss. Not only that, my experience in management has fundamentally changed how I hire people - 'getting along' in grey situations, where nobody is ever really going to always get their way, people are smart and passionate etc. is hard (for most) and a valuable skill. And personalities are different as well, some people are 'disagreeable' but that doesn't even mean they are 'disagreeing' with you even when it seems like they are! Figuring out how to do it while getting along is 1/2 the job.

The first mistake the article made was conceptualizing the org chart as a power ladder. Your boss isn't more "powerful" than you, in a lot of cases he isn't and relies on you and sometimes he/she is more powerful than you. It doesn't matter.

Don't waste his/her time. If you can do this, you've already cut out pretty much every unnecessary fumble.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com