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Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

Having been at different levels in engineering (from junior up through C) there are a few things I've learned along the way.

(1) Everyone needs to operate in good faith. I've observed leaders ask their direct reports for something off-hand, without giving it more than 5 seconds of thought. I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.

(2) If you're a manager/leader, there are no "one-off" requests. Any ask carries an implicit priority over everything else. You have to work within the overall system and environment, otherwise you are forcing your team to make choices about those things. Don't be this kind of manager/leader.

(3) If you're the one receiving an ask, help your requestor understand what's involved. Eliminate implicit assumptions; that's where the dragons lie. Communicate, inform, educate. Nail down what the requestor wants and be sure you both agree.

We do these things in the name of efficiency, of not wanting to waste time if it's not necessary. I've found if we all try to help each other in these requestor-requestee situations, it generally makes life much more tolerable.

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> (1) Everyone needs to operate in good faith. I've observed leaders ask their direct reports for something off-hand, without giving it more than 5 seconds of thought. I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.

Operating in good faith is so important.

Leaders who operate by pushing the limits of what they can get away with are a stark contrast from leaders who operate to form good faith relationships with their team. Managers who make thoughtless demands all the time will steadily lose their best employees. In my experience, after a long enough time these leaders are reduced to having only juniors reporting to them because everyone with experience avoids the team.

Your description of “human command line” team members is a great example of bad faith operation, too. I’ve worked with people who thought they were so clever by demanding that even the smallest request be delivered through a form they created or a document they need people to fill out before they can get started, which they might try to debate, critique, or circulate for a couple days before they’ll even think about working on your small task. They think they’ve insulated themselves from small asks because nobody wants to go through all the trouble of asking the question just right to get them to acknowledge it, but over time they build a reputation as difficult to work with.

Another variant is the person who tries to exploit ambiguities in every request; These people have a good idea of what’s being asked of them, but they think they’re “teaching a lesson” by exploiting ambiguities in the request to deliver something that technically matches the letter of the request, but that everyone knows isn’t really what was needed or wanted.

Not coincidentally, most of the people I knew who tried these game found themselves laid off in the past year. I think people can tolerate a bad faith coworker who at least does some work for a while, but when it’s time to downsize they’re at the top of everyone’s list to remove.

>They think they’ve insulated themselves from small asks because nobody wants to go through all the trouble of asking the question just right to get them to acknowledge it, but over time they build a reputation as difficult to work with.

Sounds like they're completely right, then. "Don't bother Steve unless you really need something from him", which is exactly what he wants.

> Sounds like they're completely right, then. "Don't bother Steve unless you really need something from him", which is exactly what he wants.

Then why is Steve in a job in the first place? Such an attitude would find more traction in the contingent consulting world. At a job, where you're paid to deliver for your co-workers, it's asking to be laid off or fired.

Perhaps, but if you know how far to push it, it's not a bad strategy. If you're on a salary it's in your interest to do the minimum possible that won't get you fired, just like how it is in your employer's interest to pay you the minimum possible that will get you to do your job.

Trying to do that calculus is just asking to make yourself unhappy.

Ask a fair salary, do what you can, act in good faith.

Success often follows being the person remembered as being helpful or useful.

You'd have to ask Steve. But he's still there, so the organization may just feel his idiosyncrasies are worth it. Maybe he does really impressive, reliable work when you just let him do his thing.

It's less important (and implausible) that everybody act as the same game theoretic agent than that the team understands everybody's idiosyncratic shape and can compose those shapes into productive patterns.

You usually have to do very good work to be a Steve and hang onto your job, but very good work is rare and valuable, so if you do deliver on it, you can often be more assertive and draw some of the boundaries that more marginal team members can't get away with. It works because real-world teams are more like an organic ecosystem than a mechanical gear system.

It turns out that Steve, in this scenario, is functioning just like a manager. He has outsized influence, and you have to be careful what you ask of him. With Steve, there are no free looks, and he has the power to stop whatever line of effort you're pursuing. On the other hand, he can activate your efforts, give them the needed bit of polish, and get them in front of the right people.

But Steve is an informal manager, so he better be sure that he has the tacit approval of the actual manager for the team, or his actual manager's manager. Otherwise he's not doing his job, and this will eventually put him in conflict with exactly the people who have control over him.

And if Steve is your direct report, you better keep the situation under control, or Steve will eventually have to be let go and you will be made to look stupid for letting a talented contributor fall out of step with the team.

As someone who did his fair share of project work across departments, first as resource and later as a manager type, people like Steve arw everywhere. And they are a pain to work with, have no real influence whatsoever. All they are is not enough of a nusiance to be delt with, which ultimately they will if their attics block the wrong people's project.

That being said, if I have to deal with the "command line" people by tellong them each and every step of the work they are supposed to do, more often than not I'm faster doing it myself. There are places for those people, places they actually provide a ton of value because strictly following procedure is paramount, things progress faster when people can get an assignment and everyone else can count a) the assigment being completed on time or b) everyone getting a heads if not.

Those other roles are tge easiest to automate, and by no means do they justify the salaries some people are expecting to be paid.

well said

> But he's still there, so the organization may just feel his idiosyncrasies are worth it.

Alternately, he’s solely there because the HR requirements are onerous and take time, and he has dramatically misunderstood his importance and value. Or he used to do good work and thinks he is now irreplaceable because of domain knowledge.

In any case, as a manager, Steve is a needless disruption/drag and there is nearly no situation in which his work outshines his stated personality. The org would be better off without him.

Steve's job is emphatically NOT to prioritize delivery of solutions for arbitrary or ill-formed requests from co-workers! Saying "yes" to one such request requires saying "no" to everything else, including strategic priorities and commitments. And it invites more of the same. An organization that ignores the need to respect each others' time is dysfunctional. An employee who insists on clarity, instead of allowing half-baked interrupts to derail the work they're already engaged in, may simply be defending their ability to do their job.

I’ll add that poor managers inadvertently create a third variant of these employees by expecting them to “take the initiative“ but then “raking them over the coals” when it doesn’t go smoothly. It can devolve into a very unproductive environment where nothing gets done because the CYA requirements are extremely expensive, but nobody dares to move unless they’ve got their incredibly exact instructions in-hand.

Big +1 to "there are no off-hand requests"; this was a failure that I realized I was making as a leader a month ago. I was (ostensibly) trying to give my team ownership, blasting them with the multiple things that needed doing, but in practice I was pushing the stress of "what should they be working on in any given moment" to them.

It's a sneaky trap, because you think "I'm making them so empowered!" but you're actually stressing them out and reducing their focus.

> It's a sneaky trap, because you think "I'm making them so empowered!" but you're actually stressing them out and reducing their focus.

As a head's up, the even sneakier trap is that different team members thrive best with different approaches. Some people flail and fret without explicit, procedural direction and others are completely discouraged by it and do feel disempowered.

Rather than taking your lesson as the New Universal Rule, make sure to just add it to your toolbox while trying to learn how to discern who needs what. It's good that you're learning to work better with the people who need more explicit direction, but you're going to burn out managing a team where all of them need that all the time (and if you only practice one approach, you'll eventually get there: filtering down to only have those team members who do thrive by it)

> Some people flail and fret without explicit, procedural direction…

Is this different from the “human command line” mode of operation that the grandparent mentioned?

Two different points. He's saying not to be one of those but as a leader, you will have to lead those. Some people are just not great at interpreting context and your job will be to spoon feed it.

Yup. As a team lead, I fretted that I wasn't giving me one of my new team members enough hands-on time / direction. I'd sort of give him stuff with as much context as I had, meaning to follow up in a few days to see how things were going, but never got around to it.

I later got feedback from my manager that my teammate really appreciated that I was giving him space to figure things out on his own rather than micro-managing him!

I think I do my best work when it's something no one asked for in the first place. I also do great work when I have a good back-and-forth to clarify requirements until I know exactly what we're going for. Where I get discouraged is when I get half-baked requirements, carefully consider the problem and provide a best effort solution, then get clarification that would have been great to know up front, now requiring a re-think.

When you give someone the power to decide what to do, they also have to be empowered to know the deadlines and costs of not doing each. They have to be trusted to make the right decisions - which often includes deciding not to do something - if you are not willing to back their decision when things are not done then you shouldn't have given them the authority in the first place.

Good that you realized it. Far too many managers have the impulse control of a puppy that just had a double espresso. Every hour a new task that "has priority".

> brief ask ... imprecise ask ... any ask ... receiving an ask ... clarify that ask

It's curious how "ask" has transformed from an ancient verb into a modern, trendy and awkward noun.

According to the OED, nounification began with colloquial usage in Australia.

https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=ask

We all know that language is a constantly changing biosocial cognitive artifact, so there really are no rules.

But this usage grates like chewing sand, especially when we have perfectly good synonyms just sitting there, unused.

Just remember that the noun "ask" begins with a T.

And that ancient and perfectly good noun has transmogrified into a modern, trendy and awkward corpspeak verb with nauseating echos of milspeak.

At one point, I was fastidiously replacing the word "ask" with "request" in every Google Doc I had edit access too.

I've since given up, it's just too overwhelming. For every "ask" I squash, there's 5 more being thrown at me in Slack and emails and Google Docs and Slides.

You can join me on my crusade changing 'utilize' to 'use'.

From an exhausted and humiliated veteran of the failed struggle against the verbification of "impact", you have my respect and sympathy.

I think that one is a direct result of people being pedants about the difference between effect and affect which made a lot of people try to avoid them completely.

My favorite is that affect and effect are also sometimes a noun and verb, respectively.

Knowing how to use all 4 (affect noun, affect verb, effect noun, effect verb) correctly feels like a superpower.

You're fighting the good fight.

That is nothing compared to the cringe I experience whenever I see people type "lead" when it really called for "led"; "He lead them into battle" instead of "He led them into battle." - I see that a lot these days.

Oh and speaking of "a lot", it makes me sad every time I see people using "alot". And that non-word gets used increasingly often. It's not like it's a typo or autocorrection. A lot of people unironically type "alot". Ugh!

EDIT: Lol, I received a downvote. I found the "alot" user. Or the "lead instead of led" user! Or perhaps I scored a double strike ;)

An old but good resource on coping with "alots": https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-bette...

If you ever go led climbing at night while listening to Led Zeppelin, you will probably want to bring a lead light, but not one powered by led assed sells, as that would way alot, probably to much.

A lot is annoying to swipe type on a phone. I know alot is not in the dictionary, but it will always be one of the first words I purposefully add to my user dictionary, right after all the cuss words.

I also find the usage annoying (probably because it’s corpspeak), but I made an executive decision to overrule my emotions on the matter because simplifying the common usage of the world’s lingua franca by having verbs do double duty is, in the long run, fine and good and useful. We already do it for “drive” and “run”. More gerunds is a good thing.

“request” is a word that can be a noun or a verb. Why can “request” be a noun, but “ask” should not?

Agree, it's a little grating on the ears, but, language change is part of life! There are examples out there of modern nouns that used to be something else, but because the change happened so long ago, we're no longer pained to hear it changing.

For example, "Flirt" used to be a verb that meant to make a brisk, jerky motion. Now it is either a verb, to playfully act attracted to someone one, or a noun, a person who flirts.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/flirt

And "action" has made the reverse transition...

"Could you action this ask from Bob in Finance?"

Or the ever annoying "learning" instead of "lesson".

"Key learnings this quarter"...

Same with "invite" used as a noun in place of "invitation".

In Australia I've only ever heard it used in the specific phrase "That's a big ask".

I feel it's used mostly as corporate jargon. "the ask is moving forward we will need to increase impact by taking initiative, driving solutions, and delivering value to our customers."

One time I laid down two options of what we could do. I did not mention that one would take much longer than the other, because I didn't want that to influence their decision. I thought we should do what was best for the business and end users, not what was easiest for me. Well, they chose the longer and harder one. Later on I learned that they really wanted to go with the other one, but thought it would be harder for me to do. Doh!

Of course, this also happens in real life. I was building new kitchen cabinets and when we got to the doors I gave my wife two options of top rails. Again, one was harder than the other, but I didn't mention that because I wanted her to pick the one she liked better. Of course, she chose the harder one because she thought it would be the easier one even though it turned out that she preferred the other one.

So... always give the other person all the information.

Point #2 is correct, but there’s no good reason it _has_ to be correct. Why can’t we tell management that a question they asked is non-sensical? The answer of course is that you don’t buck the hierarchy. But this adherence to hierarchy doesn’t actually help the business. It seems like this is a value which needs to be more easily discarded.

I think it’s important to make those requests as minimal as possible. If we have a well oiled system of Jira tickets, estimates, and expectations for each sprint, these one off requests fly under the radar and impede engineer performance and expectations

You could have a percent of each sprint dedicated to one-offs, but then are they really one-offs in the colloquial sense?

The smaller the team and org, the easier it is to handle the one-offs (imo), because we can more directly connect the request to tangible impact more often. At the very least, in a small co your manager (or C suite executive) would easily back you up as the engineer if other executives were questioning output or something etc etc

In larger orgs the extra communication burden makes the one off requests more expensive

> Why can’t we tell management that a question they asked is non-sensical?

You should absolutely do that (I tell my team to inform me if what I'm asking doesn't make sense.) If I'm coming to someone with a request, it's because I think they're the right person to address it. Just tell me if I'm off-base.

FWIW, I encourage everyone to not care about the hierarchy, so that may not work in every place.

This is a great point -- and I do, when I can. I guess it's the culture shock that I find most difficult. I'm only asking for clarification so I can fulfill the request more effectively -- but even this is seen as risky and pushy in many businesses.

I do this all the time and have done with every boss I've had over the past 25 years. None have ever objected. The phrase I use with my current CEO is "I'm not sure what you're asking for, can you clarify?" With my line manager this is shortened to "huh?" But then again I don't work for Americans who seem to be much more into hierarchy in the workplace and not asking questions.

> I don't work for Americans who seem to be much more into hierarchy in the workplace and not asking questions.

In my experience, this is not true at all. But, as you say you don't have direct experience to come to this conclusion, may I ask what makes you think this?

Not OP but I have that experience. Europeans have been much more open.

My personal theory is that it's connected to job security and how big personal problem it is to lose your job in a layoff. If you get laid off in Europe, your health insurance is paid from public budget now and you get several months salary from your employer. If you worked for a big name, it may be six months or more. If it was a small startup, you get at least two months.

Our US colleagues always made more money but also were more afraid of losing their jobs. All of that said from the IT perspective. I'm sure being a coal miner and getting laid off is much worse.

Americans being into hierarchy is a bizarre opinion. Are you confusing it with asian countries?

Same experience here. See my reply to the sibling comment.

A lot of Americans, particularly the more traditional minded, really are into hierarchy.

The only time I have ever been “ordered” to do something was for an American middle manager (not in my line) in an American company. “Haha get fucked” wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but my non American manager told him the same thing when he went to demand I’d get fired.

I mean, that'd probably get you fired even in a country that really does allow for a lot of informality with your bosses (e.g. Australia).

I think Anglo-Saxon countries are all pretty much the same in that respect.

No fan of Suella Braverman, but she got fired not because of what she said, but because she publicly went against hierarchy, which seems to be a terrible offense. Which in the UK it probably is.

Where i’m from, if your manager literally states “you are ordered to do xyz” that manager will be fired. It’s not the fucking military.

Were your quotation marks meant to indicate that was the literal language used? I interpreted it in the opposite way (as scare quotes), but would agree extremely authoritarian orders will produce interesting and counterproductive reactions.

JFYI, scare quotes are also indicating the it is "the literal language used". The quotes are added to say that you are quoting literally what other people/the culture uses, but that you disagree with how that term/phrase is used.

I'm aware, but what I meant is the ironic usage - you can use scare quotes in an ironic way (i.e. you may be quoting someone or an expression or idiom but we do not know it is the boss being quoted verbatim).

They’re probably confusing hierarchy with our obsession with middle managers who fear it being discovered that they don’t actually do anything.

It's not as bizarre as you might think. The United States is not a monoculture, different parts of the country are more hierarchical than others.

Being American and having worked in American companies we absolutely are. Not as much as Asian countries, but much more than European countries.

The OP responded so seems to understand the link between what you've written and their point #2, but I don't see how it addresses point #2. Point #2 to me seems to be about prioritization of work tasks, and the need for a manager to appropriately prioritize anything they ask for within the context of everything else the worker is doing.

The whole point of a hierarchy is division of labor - managers are supposed to be looking at the big picture and monitoring resources so that they can direct their subordinates more efficiently than the subordinates could self organize. Of course there needs to be two way communication, the people down in the trenches are inevitably going to have a much better grasp on the details than the general 100 miles away. But assuming you have told management all the information they need from you, setting priorities correctly is managements entire reason for existence. It is not and should not be the responsibility of every employee to monitor all information and identify whether an ask should or should not be given its current level of priority. You should be confident that when your boss tells you to do something that it is for good reason even if you don't quite see what that reason is. If, on the other hand, you have to do your boss' job for them, then it's better for both the company and you to just cut out the middle man.

> I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.

I've had managers give stupid orders, and seen them immediately backpedal when asked "would you write that down for me, please?"

So yeah, I'll definitely act in good faith but unfortunately I can't assume good faith on the other side, I occasionally need to be a human command line.

> I've had managers give stupid orders

I'd suggest that "good faith" means turning those stupid orders into sane orders. In a case like this, help your manager -- educate them.

If your relationship is tenuous, I get this can be hard. Show your good faith and explain to your manager in clear detail why something is stupid. Manage up, as they say.

Sometimes a manager will just throw something out there. "Can we get a dashboard for this (thing that has come up 0-1 times)".

Feeding into those whims is rarely good for anyone, except the manager's ego.

A lot of the time they don’t need education, they need reminding to think. The request to write it down achieves that.

The only time I've ever had a report ask me to confirm something in writing it was clear they were operating in CYA mode, but weren't willing to talk to me about why.

It's the sort of thing that immediately escalates a situation, and in reality when the card is played it either breaks the trust, or the trust has already been broken.

I often ask people to write up requests and often write up my own verbal requests to provide documentation of the ask and allow for clarification. Over time I’ve learned that my verbal requests often leave out important details and then people make assumptions that aren’t always right.

When somebody asks for an order in writing, it's patently clear that the trust has already been broken, and irreversibly so. Nobody asks for that from a position of trust.

Unless it's multipart or otherwise complex, then the person asking just wants to make sure they didn't forget everything important. I've asked this on more than one occasion and I think it's clear that I'm asking so I don't forget anything (and have sometimes made this explicit).

Asking someone to file a ticket does not seem to point to a lack of trust, in my opinion.

No it's not. I made it clear to my last team that I'm just super forgetful and if you don't write down your request, I'll have to stop and write it down myself, implicitly making me an over-paid secretary.

There was resentment yes, but I did trust them!

That lack of trust is reasonable though - what’s in your head and what’s in my head may be completely different, why ‘trust’ that we’re on the same page when we can literally ensure it by writing it down and looking at it.

You wouldn’t verbally describe a structure to a builder, and then accuse them of not trusting you when they ask to see a blueprint.

Depends on the level of effort required for the task in my opinion.

If it's a trivial thing like send an email or some small ask then I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be in writing.

For any non-trivial task I'd expect it to be in writing, even from my manager. Reason for me is that where I work I don't only report to my manager when it comes to how my time is used, but other workstreams and projects, etc.

If I'm busy working on a task for you that is undocumented, then all these other workstreams will wonder what the fuck I'm doing with my time, or may question whether its more important than other tasks. Obviously this is industry specific, since I don't actually work directly with my manager on any projects and probably never will.

From my perspective, my manager has failed or is lazy if they fail to put their non-trivial tasks in writing.

I read it as a mysterious CYA move as well, mostly based on the phrasing.

A possibility is that asking for a written version of the task got the manager to start thinking about the fact that they were asking for something that would be hard to articulate exactly, which revealed some hidden complexity in the request. But I guess that would be asked in a fashion more along the lines of “let’s work out the details asynchronously.”

> Nail down what the requestor wants and be sure you both agree.

I don't want to nitpick but the change of a single word is going to make significant difference in the outcome, time spent, satisfaction, next steps, etc.

Nail down what the requestor *needs* and be sure you both agree...

I wish I had $20 for everytime the initial "I want..." followed by a couple of questions - or even the famous The 5 Whys - evolved into the true (business) need.

That's right. It's all part of the back-and-forth of good faith.

It's also why senior's are so important and why the dichotomy between product people and technical people is so inane and stupid.

There are developers that just want to keep their head down and write code, you'll never get those people to ask the questions that are being suggested here.

True. The problem is, eventually those devs will want to be promoted and yet haven't exhibited any business acumen or any skills outside their technology focus.

When new / jr devs ask me what they should learn, I say: business, marketing, etc, and improve your comms skills ( speaking, writing, and listening). That's not the answer they get typically.

Yeah honestly I know I’m capable of asking those kinds of questions, but I’ve been realizing lately that I just don’t want to. I want other people to figure their shit out first, then come to me when it’s ready to be built.

Few users / clients actually know tho'. They think in wants. They think in - because of past disappointments - what they can get. They think in what they think the boss wants. They rarely think in actual biz needs.

You can give them *exactly* what they ask for and still be wrong. The user / client isn't going to admit that. Nah. They'll just play the "Damn IT" card and it'll be back to the drawing board but now with a shit load of tension.

It's best to ask - sooner rather than later.

But expecting anybody to know all the details about a request, as well as the consequences to other bits of functionality in a system (especially if it's still being built) is unrealistic.

Most people have a vague idea of the outcome they want, and the reason for it. They also quickly know what they don't want _once they see it_

And that's why agile and iterative development is actually great for GUI based user interactive app development.

well shit, you should just roll over on your back and cry until someone puts a bottle in your mouth then.

One of the advantages of being helpless is not taking responsibility.

"Can you tell me more about why you want X?"

They actually need Y.

Time saved.

The real fun begins when an executive skips down the chain to directly order you to provide X, accompanied with another order forbidding any further efforts on Y.

Then, six months later, said executive shows back up demanding to know why you haven't provisioned this great Y thingamajig that his golf buddy was raving about.

> Everyone needs to operate in good faith. I've observed leaders ask their direct reports for something off-hand, without giving it more than 5 seconds of thought. I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.

Do you think people in either of those situation would agree they acted in bad faith? The leader could say they were trying to avoid bikeshedding on what was clearly a quick and simple task. The direct reports may bring up multiple past interactions where imprecise requests led to a waste of their time and negative feedback. Telling everyone to just "don't be these type of people" is not very likely to be helpful.

"Good faith" doesn't mean being dishonest. Instead, it's about showing a little empathy between two people.

This situation sounds more like people trying to cover their ass so they aren't blamed for something later. Work to get things accomplished, not to avoid some kind of criticism.

So, rather than being these types of people -- be a person who helps get something accomplished and maybe improves this situation along the way.

> "Good faith" doesn't mean being dishonest. Instead, it's about showing a little empathy

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/good+faith

Being pedantic when talking about empathy is about the least empathetic thing you can do.

Being empathetic doesn't mean you have to accept wrong definitions.

> NOTE: The meaning of good faith, though always based on honesty, may vary depending on the specific context in which it is used.

Notes don't pass the command line it seems.

Empathy is the word of the times so it gets used where it's wholly inappropriate.

good faith just means you assume the person is earnest in trying to make the project you're on successful. Part of that is understanding that people say stupid shit, but the other part is trust.

One of the reasons my current employer is so sticky is that it's a billion dollar company and I've only met 2 people whom I won't accept in good faith, everyone else is earnest even when they disagree with you.

People don't cover their ass out of fun, they do it because getting blamed for something later is a real problem that can actually hurt you.

Playing social games is non-optional.

Quite a few comments imply that asking for something in writing is mark of distrust. I ask for things in writing because I often forget. Run into manager in kitchen and he or she asks a question. It's not like I had nothing to do, I was probably taking a break from another task I needed to finish. By the time I am done with task I was working on the corridor conversation is now blurred. So I need it in writing as a reminder. I could also meet two managers on my walk to get coffee and get to vague requests. I am that employee, if you want something from me put it in writing.

>> I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act. Don't be either of these type of people.

That's giving me PTSD. Run if you ever find yourself in such a team. Operating in good faith should be the base line of working together in and with a team but for some it's not. Then it just turns into politics and ego games.

Yeah... until the 4th round of guessing what they mean, resulting in months of tossed out work for lack of the exec elaborating on what they want. think "i need a sales report". You'd think there would be a better brief after the first time.

(2) is what agile sprints are supposed to protect workers from. The worker would simply respond "We'll triage it for our next sprint. If it can't wait please talk to our manager to decide which existing tickets need to be swapped out."

I see point (2) very often combined with a higer-up also bypassing hierachy. I even get the feeling that the higher-ups feel like they are helping because they are so hands-on.

What happens in every case is that the priority of that task for the assignee is the highest. Sometimes this is a help, because often people have to multitask a lot of tasks with the same priority.

But in even more cases it might be a huge distraction.

> I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line"

I've recently started teaching my daughters how to play chess. When they hang the queen, I ask them "do you really want to do that move?". If they ask why not, I tell them. If they insist on doing it anyway, I capture the queen.

They've learned to listen when I ask "do you really want to do that?"

I treat my managers the same. :)

This could be interpreted like you've switched to giving them an implicit command

an intake of breath is risky because it could be poisonous and kill you. Yet you wouldn't suggest someone stop breathing.

There's lots of ways this could be interpreted, that shouldn't stop anyone from attempting to execute a teachable moment.

To reinforce (1), even interest in a topic from a leader, if clear operational structure isn't present, will result in additional work. Be careful what you care about!

Poor planning on their part doesn’t constitute an emergency on your part

> I've watched direct reports operate as a "human command line", requiring precise syntax before they'll act.

Nope, I absolutely want to be this type of person. I don’t want any level of responsibility whatsoever.

You get to hang yourself if you can’t give good orders.

I am an employee. I don’t win if the company wins so I refuse to incur any risk.

How about a $25 gift card to Chili's if you do well this quarter? Would that change the equation?

And believe, me this is a hypothetical, but what if you were offered some kind of stock option equity program. Would that do anything for you?

That comma placement is hurting me.

insubordinate clause

Whenever I've been offered stock, it has either been stock options for a private company, or RSUs for a FAANG.

In the first case, I value them at 0. The stock can't be sold unless there's an IPO or the company is sold, and me working harder is vanishingly unlikely to be the difference between there being or not being an IPO.

In the second case, the impact of my actions on the stock price is nil. I'l be happy to take the RSUs and sell them ASAP, becasue they are actually worth money, but I don't see their value linked to my performance.

I don't agree with the GP's position of zero responsibility, but stock is not a better incentive than cash in my experience. That's just internal marketing in my opinion.

Sounds like you're incurring lots of risk - risk that the company won't really want to keep you around.

Agree. I would fire such an employee on the first opportunity.

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