Is there a so ideal work environment, employee can do what they want when they think they have a good idea without the permission of superior? It will be so great if there is.
When it fails, the underling can say "boss said I don't need to ask permission for that", and it appropriately falls upon the boss instead.
I would never say that except in extremely simple circumstances. Anyone asking permission is unsure, and you should help them be sure.
Yes, I can attest those exist. In my experience it helps if you built a proven track record, and smaller teams probably work best. You should still inform them of what you’re working on, ideally after having thought through potential problems, especially if it’s something big. Basically, give them an easy option to say “no” but not a reason to.
Learn to anticipate how they like things done and be sure to do it in a way they’d have no complaints. If their usual method wouldn’t be feasible in a given situation, mention that and your suggestion before they even have to ask.
Essentially, if you get to a point where you deliver consistently in a way that they think “this is exactly how I would’ve done it or better”, they have a pretty good incentive to continue to let you be and do your thing.
It helps if there’s mutual respect between you and you share similar values on what constitutes good work and where to spend effort in.
That's all fine and dandy, but once you decide to weasel out of giving your input once asked then you lose your right to feign ignorance and surprise about hypothetical "mistakes" because you too failed to spot them, let alone address them. You had your chance to avoid a mistake when the mistake could be avoided. That was why your input was requested. If the mistake was still made it was because either you were not able or were not willing to spot them, so you have no right to point fingers at anyone but yourself.
If there's anything ruining teams, it's the sociopaths that try to get ahead by setting up their team members for failure and backstabbing them while feigning ignorance.
This isn’t particularly helpful advice in domains where unknown unknowns really do appear. Not everything can be surfaced at design time. Having said that, design time is the perfect time to align on rules of engagement for surfacing and managing unknown unknowns.
It’s also possible that it occurs in genuine miscommunications. It happened to me two weeks ago when my team lead had a different interpretation to a doc I wrote than what I intended. Shit happens. There are mechanisms a team can put in place to mitigate these eg: forcing user stories to be clearly enumerated and matched to parts of the design; third party review; definitions and glossaries; office hours for document review. But it does happen.
If this hypothetical scenario comes up with genuinely avoidable issues, is not due to miscommunication, then this seems like a culture problem. If a person’s approval was explicitly requested, given, and rescinded for political or personal reasons, yes that’s when management needs to step in and navigate the team out of those fucked up dynamics.
I don't think your comment makes sense. You're talking about a scenario where, when you ask someone to review your design, their feedback is literally "all good, looks fine to me",but when you present your design to management or you roll out your design them that same person suddenly changes their tune and has all kinds of epiphanies on design mistakes that they wouldn't have made if it's up for them.
Are you really doing the bridge-burning if you call them out for throwing you under the bus?
I can’t speak to your personal situation or experience, but it’s important to caution against labelling people sociopaths because there are many variations of this scenario where that’s simply not the case. It can and will damage relationships.
It's one thing to get back to the review and say "hey I just noticed something I didn't noticed earlier, and I feel it's important to address."
It's another thing entirely to afterwards accuse the designer of oversight and proceed to claim that the oversight is so glaringly obvious and that you would never have missed it if you were tasked with the design. As if you didn't missed it yourself when you were prompted to give your feedback.
If this is a collegial environment where people are unlikely to get fired, then a "late epiphany" is unlikely to be strategic behavior. It might be unselfaware ego, sure, but it probably isn't a person setting out to screw you.
If this is an environment with internal competition and stack-ranking -- if this is Amazon, where "leaders are right", and you lose the ability to be seen as a "leader" if you ever acknowledge a mistake -- then absolutely you might see this as a nasty strategic behavior.
Compared to many other industries, Silicon Valley has more-competitive people, higher stakes, and shorter tenures. You are more likely to see this there, I think. And people who have only ever seen that environment will probably be more on the lookout for it. Hence the attention it gets in this thread on HN.
That's perfectly fine. That's also not the case, though. The case in question is that when asked to review a design your assessment is that it's perfect, but only when the project comes to fruition you suddenly somehow have a series of epiphanies on how there's all sorts of problems with the design and how if you were tasked or even asked to design something you would never ever made those mistakes. That's a little different than stumbling upon emergent requirements. That's backstabbing plain and simple.
I think if this happens often then I would acknowledge there is a major disconnect amongst team members that this requires elevating to management. If it’s a one off, then it’s a lesson to be learned.
But if it’s happening often I would want to know if it’s me or them. What can I do to make this process smoother?