Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

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One counter to this over 20 years in this game is there are plenty of people who confuse "having heated discussions" with being high functioning.

That is - I've been on lots of low functioning teams riven with conflict. Prima donna developers who publicly call managers/teammates stupid in meetings. Managers giving negative feedback in public instead of in private. Stubborn veteran team members telling newer team members to get a new job if they don't like how things are done.

One pattern I've seen in lower functioning teams with lots of conflict is some members being very well spoken, typically more classically trained like a philosophy background, probably a past debate club type kid. "Strong opinions, loosely held" type behavior where bad ideas were passionately argued by the more eloquent & aggressive team member until everyone else was exhausted and just let it run.

The kind of guys that would steamroll the rest of the team as a bunch of idiots for not agreeing with him, but flip to a charismatic "ah good point" when incontrovertible proof of their idea not being correct was presented. The problem is you can't provide incontrovertible proof in real time in most cases, and lots of managers confuse their passion/certitude for correctness.

So high functioning teams can have heated arguments & difficult people, but heated arguments do not in themselves lead to high functioning teams.

> One pattern I've seen in lower functioning teams with lots of conflict is some members being very well spoken, typically more classically trained like a philosophy background, probably a past debate club type kid. "Strong opinions, loosely held" type behavior where bad ideas were passionately argued by the more eloquent & aggressive team member until everyone else was exhausted and just let it run.

> The kind of guys that would steamroll the rest of the team as a bunch of idiots for not agreeing with him, but flip to a charismatic "ah good point" when incontrovertible proof of their idea not being correct was presented. The problem is you can't provide incontrovertible proof in real time in most cases, and lots of managers confuse their passion/certitude for correctness.

The problem is not that incontrovertible proof cannot be provided real time. Yielding evidence from complex, esoteric systems is always difficult and time-consuming.

The problem is the well-spoken people in the above example are not well-listening. Hearing a poorly-worded argument whose conceptual outlines might be worth considering is an important skill. Ignoring an argument because it is not eloquently delivered is hubris.

Because such people do not listen well, they cannot claim to have “Strong opinions, loosely held”. Requiring hard-to-yield evidence before changing one’s mind is “Strong opinions, tightly held”.

In the end, heated arguments are usually an indicator of dysfunction, even in high functioning teams. Teams are usually better off having honest, dispassionate debate.

> The problem is not that incontrovertible proof cannot be provided real time. Yielding evidence from complex, esoteric systems is always difficult and time-consuming.

This is why we've started to write down larger decisions, the reasons and spots of uncertainty for these decisions in a central, public place. I'm jokingly referring to this as our growing constitution of tech.

I think this is right, because some of these decisions are not entirely comfortable, but a lot of bright people have thought about this over time and this compromise is what we figured is the most effective and workable one.

I'm entirely willing to up-end one of these decisions, but only if something strong comes up that hasn't been discussed in the past many times. But, our reasoning is here, and everyone can take all time they need to make a case why it's wrong, or some case needs further consideration and detail.

That's excellent - many organizations write down very little, and certainly not meeting minutes / decision details, which only makes this problem worse.

this is a good idea, as it allows those who aren't the "great orators of their time" some space to breath and think. Not everyone is a fast on their feet debater. Lots of quieter people have great ideas, but don't speak up because they don't have the best debate skills, but are great with making a bullet list of facts and data to back up their side, but are nervous in confrontations during a meeting.

Yeah there's not a huge overlap of great talkers and great thinkers, thats for sure

Agreed and in my experience most people claiming "strong opinions, loosely held" are actually "strong ideas, tightly held". Probably 9:1.

Dispassionate debate is a mark of grown ups, and we work with a lot of children in this industry.

> The problem is not that incontrovertible proof cannot be provided real time. Yielding evidence from complex, esoteric systems is always difficult and time-consuming.

Most of the heated discussions that I saw in low performing teams was because of that specific aspect.

Being more specific: if we have 3 people with different levels of knowledge, most of the time if the person that has more in depth knowledge and sense of craft will take the heated position.

Yes, someone who truly wants greatness should be able to hear a poorly thought our argument, cognitively question the counter party to help them articulate exactly what they are thinking, or even articulate it better themself. Then you can weigh and measure competing arguments.

A high-functioning team is going to have at least one person who does this. For a perpetually high functioning team this is going to be second nature.

It's hard to do but my current boss is pretty good at that. It can require an amount of forced agreeableness and sometimes sidebars to get each party to fully spell out their line of thinking so the strongest voice doesn't simply win.

Often you want to do this simply to map out the min/max risk matrix to either side of a debate, so you can make informed decisions.

> Prima donna developers who publicly call managers/teammates stupid in meetings ... (snip) ... telling newer team members to get a new job if they don't like how things are done.

I think the author covers that point to some extent:

> The focus stays on the problem: “This approach might not scale” instead of “Your idea sucks.”

As soon as you deviate from that focus, the discussion becomes toxic.

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