Ask and It Shall be Given | Hacker News Reader

Ask and It Shall be Given

steveblank.com

56 pointspeter12313 comments

I remember when I had my version of this lightbulb moment. I was the sole developer on a project that was chronically late. It had been passed off to me with the description of "there are three things left to do, do you think you can do them and launch at the end of the week?"

Of course, three more things popped up every week and the project slipped by months. I spent the entire project feeling guilty. Then one friday it dawned on me that there was a world of un-finished requirements that had never been captured. I had never done anything "manager-y" so I went to Borders, bought Rapid Development by Steve McConnell, and read it over the weekend.

When I showed up that Monday, instead of getting to work on the "last remaining three things," I hid out in an abandoned office and started specing and estimating the remaining parts of the project. Then I went to my managers with a full re-estimation that was months out. Of course, they weren't happy with the projection, but having data gave me the back-bone to stick with it.

Until that point I had thought my career was entirely dependent on being smarter, on developing programming chops like the gurus that I read about on Slashdot. Afterward I thought of it as being extremely dependent on what I consider "personality traits" but which seem to be trainable. For example, the initiative to fix something that's broken rather than just complaining about the status quo, or the calmness to stick to my guns without taking it personally that the people around me were wrong.

Great comment. I often wonder why my own employees frequently don't do something like this. I can think of many examples where one of our reasonably intelligent employees could get way ahead by just asking me for more responsibility in some area where it's clear that we're lacking, instead of focusing on their precisely defined job. I try hard to give everyone developmental projects and new responsibilities, but regardless it is true that I would be very susceptible to giving new and additional growth opportunities to people who ask for it.

I think a lot of it comes down to people just not knowing this is an option, not having many examples of how to go about it, or not having much success in trying. We are trained to stick to the job description, not to rock the boat, etc. and we are good at doing that but it tends to blind us to the bigger picture, and so we are not very good at taking initiative. However I would expect most people, even if they knew how, would not suddenly start asking for more responsibility - some just do not want that - but a small minority would and those are the ones you would want to focus on.

A lot of people know it's an option, but there is no reward for doing so.

Why make my job harder without getting anything for it? Only management benefits from it.

I think there's almost always a reward, especially for people in the tech sector. Either you get a raise and/or promotion at your current company or you get a stronger resume and better relations with coworkers who may be looking for jobs elsewhere. Plus there are non-financial rewards that can range from increased job satisfaction to your manager stops yelling at you.

But the other thing I wanted to point out is that a lot of time taking the initiative makes your job easier. Granted in the story above I did read a 300+ page book over the weekend, but after that I was able to do more of the work I wanted to do in the same amount of time I'd already been giving.

I agree -- and I've personally tried to create those incentives, whereby those people who have gone out of their way to improve things get the promotions and raises, and I make sure everyone knows why they're getting paid more. They see it going to the quiet guy who just kept tackling things he saw needed to be fixed, and then asking for more, and it certainly helped open some eyes. But not as much as you might expect.

One thing I did recently was go on a two week vacation where I was barely reachable. When I got back my company was in better shape than when I'd left and all of the people working for me had stepped up to do the things I had been doing. It was really eye opening for all of us.

This seems to be a common experience. Felix Dennis mentioned the same thing in his book - earlier on in his career, he'd just 'flip out' and go somewhere remote for a couple weeks, without even telling people ahead of time (more quirky and unplanned than your vacation!). But the same thing happened; he found that rather than adding tremendous value every second he was there, the company did much better when he got out of their way.

It's probably a good thing to do.

There are very few cases where it is not rewarding, if only from a personal development standpoint. Asking for, and receiving greater responsibility allows for accelerated personal growth and oftentimes gives you a great specific example to use in an interview if you ever change jobs.

There's a great quote from the article:

"most of your peers wouldn’t even get into the game due to some unspoken belief that in a meritocracy, good things will come to those who wait. Perhaps if you have a union job based on seniority, but not in any startup I’ve ever seen."

You have to have a very specific culture in order to enable employees to feel as if it is acceptable to ask for more responsibility. It may not seem counter intuitive to you, but to an employee receiving a paycheck for a specific set of responsibilities, the cognative leap can sometimes be pretty large.

There are a number of reasons for this. Not wanting to appear dissatisfied is one. The false understanding that if a manager wanted them to step out into another area they would ask is another. Perhaps most difficult to overcome is the feeling that if you haven't been given more responsibility in an area, it is becasue your superiors do not see you as competent in that area.

There is a fairly well studied phenomena that highly skilled people don't necessarily feel that they are competent. Sometimes the fact that you have not be specifically asked to step into a roll is enough to confirm any suspicion that you may be less than competent in that role. Given that, it is very easy to fall into a "If they need me, they will ask" attitude.

Great article -- and its lessons need not apply only to companies and entrepreneurship.

From the rather limited perspective constituting my own life, I have found a proactive attitude (coupled with a healthy disregard for "rules") tends to beget a considerable payoff.

This reminds me a lot of a part of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/). One of his biggest pieces of advice was basically "if it's worth having, it's worth asking for". This is something that is surprisingly hard to live out, but the few times that I've consciously gone out of my way to ask for something I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen his lecture have paid off very nicely for me.

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