Comment by nodoodles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nodoodles | Hacker News Reader

Great question - I've struggled with the opposite, not being opinionated 'enough'.

I've noticed I tend to have more faith in other people's convictions than my own, assuming, essentially, if they believe in something, there must be a great reason behind it

My own opinions tend to be weakly expressed & weakly held. It's usually been good, allowing me to listen and understand others. However, growing in career, I feel my opinions not taken as seriously because the perception of their weakness.

What I've tried, maybe the reverse of it might be helpful:

1. Consciously reflecting that other people have roughly similar amount of self-doubt, even if they don't express it. Even if they present opinions strongly, it doesn't necessarily mean these are right.

2. Lowering the bar for going from 'this might possibly be..' to 'i think this is..' to 'this is..' --- that has been very uncomfortable, and still is depending on the audience.

I love working with peers who don't over-sell their opinions, but have adjusted to have a more equal playing field with those who are more opinionated (both kinds are great people).

+1 to the mention of curiousity elsewhere in the thread - realizing there are many ways to look at anything, all 'right' to some definition of the word based on the person's background and context, can be quite liberating, a fight for being right becomes a journey to understand better how people work.

My 2c, not strong opinions :)

i think some people have a "strong will to dominate", it has nothing to do with how much thought they put into their opinions (although putting down thought does help a lot), i think it just a psychological/physical phenomenon (a function of ego, pride, hubris, wanting to be the center of attention etc...) . Throughout my life, i saw myself as an individual on a journey to fulfill my curiosity, whenever circumstances dictated that i push my opinion onto others, i would rather retreat than to convince people that i was right.

It's true that some people want to dominate others regardless what course of action would give the best outcome. I don't think the modern knowledge economy—especially Tech—is particularly rewarding for these folks though. Modern civilization is so complex that real expertise is required to drive meaningful impact. Of course there are still domains like politics where charisma and force-of-will are the primary factors, but I think there's more opportunity for those without those qualities than ever before.

On the other hand, being thoughtful and competent, but conflict-avoidant, is also potentially career limiting. I say potentially because you can still go quite far if the right people recognize your talent and you develop a reputation for being someone to listen to.

The sweet spot though, is recognizing the power and need for influence, but in pursuit of outcomes, not personal glory. In such a framework your idea is no more valuable to you than any other idea. You also don't need to directly convince everyone of what you know, you can simply make timely observations and ask questions to nudge folks towards the right conclusion independently. Finally, you want to cultivate the humility and self-awareness to realize your own biases and limitations. All paths are tradeoffs, all narratives are reductive and all outcomes are probabilistic.

To make matters worse, it's not just inner versus expressed confidence that varies. The confidence may or may not be warranted at all. Not everyone is aware of their own competency.

Similarly, many real world problems lack direct visibility. A person or group may not know enough facts to know what problem they are facing. Ideally, this is a multi-stage problem (i.e. troubleshooting) where you first diagnose the problem and then think about how to address it. (Edit to add: and diagnostics can be iterative, where you have to form a hypothesis and test with a low-risk or low-cost solution to help gather more evidence.)

But, a common group dynamics challenge is that members of the group may not communicate well enough and therefore lack a shared understanding. Once they diverge in terms of their belief about the problem at hand, subsequent debates can become mutually incomprehensible due to unstated assumptions. And, if one member realizes the divergence and tries to steer the group back together, they may face agitated resistance from the members who have already jumped to conclusions as "fact". They may not even realize that there was an earlier starting point and some of their "facts" are supposition...

> However, growing in career, I feel my opinions not taken as seriously because the perception of their weakness.

Hot tip, if you do have a problem it isn't the strength of your opinions and probably isn't your ability to express them either. Assess the situation to see if one of these 3 things hold:

1) You don't have a lot of experience in the domains in question.

2) The conversation is drifting away from how to reliably make/keep the situation good.

3) Multiple people don't see the things you think are obvious and would benefit from someone stating them - but you're focusing the conversation on things you are uncertain about rather than things you understand well.

Picking a workplace classic, someone really confidently starts advocating that we need to migrate the database from Postgres to NoSQLDb. And who knows? Maybe they're right. If you want the play for an unopinionated person it is to loudly say "wow, this is risky but might have a big payoff!", and get a feel for the boss' appetite for risk. If low, talk up all the problems with NoSQL databases and give him cover to say no, or alternative low-risk strategies to try and fix the problem. If high, start talking about ways to embrace the change while keeping risks low (+ make a friend of the NoSQL guy because you're supporting him).

Bam, everyone is a winner, particularly the dude with no opinion. The trap that was set is trying to take a strong position on something you don't understand. Workplace success comes from making the room better just by being there.

I think being a sycophant is rarely a good long term strategy. More importantly, I don’t think it’s an ethical one.

I'm intrigued. Why do you think that is being a sycophant? Which bit do you not like?

Advocating a particular position based on how you think your boss will react is the behavior of a sycophant and unprofessional. If you have a technical role, it’s your responsibility to advocate based on technical reasons. If you are highly uncertain, either do more research and experimentation or refrain from adding your opinion.

The premise is not having a strong technical position either way. It is advocating a consistent position - we should be effective at whatever we do next.

You'll notice that both scenarios involve a careful treatment of the risks involved, there is no point in looking for opportunities if the person responsible for choosing the level of risk tolerance doesn't want to tolerate the risk of looking. The only thing being modulated is enthusiasm for leaping into an uncertain situation.

I don't have much to contribute to your post but I feel a lot of these struggles in my life. With opinions relating to technology I think most of it comes to me not having an industry experience (still in university). With topics such as politics or history sometimes I feel I can't have an opinion unless I've read a book or done very extensive research on a topic or field. I've recently tried to use your second point of lowering the bar of what constitutes a good strong opinion, but like you said it depends a lot on the situation and audience.

Same here, I'm aligned with what you describe.

There are some exceptions, though (tabs are evil, etc…) where I have a strong opinion, and sometimes I fantasize about strongly holding it. I am conscious about letting any of those pet peeves become anything bigger.

As of late, I make an effort to evaluate the person in front of me and decide, case by case, if they have enough self-doubt about themselves. Many times it reflects back on my own self-doubt and helps me gauge it.

This is a American culture thing as well. It regularly surprises me how people that sounded like experts actually turned out to know less than me. I've come to learn to discount anything American-raised people say and double the assumed knowledge of a quiet person from other places.

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