How To Not Fetch and Still Be A Good Dog?

6footblondwhiteguy asks: "Having just finished a major system design review at work, I have collected many of what I call GFAR (Go Fetch a Rock). These are pointless, time-wasting actions, proposed by the clueless executives invited to these reviews... e.g. 'This other project is using SUN servers, see if you can use theirs'. I instantly know the answer to each of the GFAR's: (not in this lifetime, no way, or sometime after the sun burns out). So, how do you avoid your boss's boss's boss's newest bright idea without either highlighting it's futility or arguing its merit in a public forum? Surely the Slashdot community has some wise architects that have strategies for deflecting these actions. I suspect the window of avoidance to be about one minute (before it's written down)."

Comments

What's the problem?

[HRbnjR]

Uhh... dude, I'm a /consultant/, I encourage this kind of management behavior! :-)

Re:My solution...

[quintessent]

Or you might try explaining the real pros and cons as you see it and let the super-boss decide against it using the actual facts. These people are paid to run the company, you know. Usurping authority is probably not as helpful as helping them see a little more light.

I don't get it.

[Jon Peterson]

This is the second time we've had someone asking 'My boss is stupid, what can I do?'. Look, it's really simple.

1. Management's idea is either good or bad.
2. If it's bad, and you know why, you can explain that to management.
3. If it's good, but for some reason you don't want to do it, because, say, it involves language X that you think sucks or OS Y that you think sucks, then just f***ing grow up, eh?

Now, it may be that you explain why it's a bad idea, but management don't change their minds. This could be:

1. There are arguments supporting the idea that you do not understand (maybe they are financial or business related, not technical).
2. Management do not understand your (technical) arguments against the idea.
3. There are arguments supporting the idea that you have not been told about, because management does not think it relevant.

In case 1, that's kind of tough. If you are interested in other aspects of the business, then generally managers will be thrilled and will be happy to spend time explaining these things. but, if you don't care, then don't be surprised when someone says "OK, maybe the technology isn't ideal, but with this balance sheet, we ARE going down this route"

In case 2, that's also kind of tough. Try to find someone who is good at making technical issues comprehensible to managers. Every team should have a person able to to do this. Find them and get them on your side.

In case 3, guess what, that's kind of tough. Maybe managment figure that it's not your job to care about non-technical aspects of the idea. Personally I don't like this approach - I always let the geeks see the profit/loss sheet even if I'm pretty certain they won't understand it. That way they might let me see the database schema, and I will understand that :).

So, this knee jerk "Whoa, my PHB is so dumb, he said this [...]" is really an attitude I expect from junior members of my team. Senior members can either shut up and code, or they can make a proper job of presenting a case supporting why the idea is so dumb.

Speak the right language

[ebbe11]

Work out how much their "solution" will cost compared to the one you prefer. Don't stack the numbers (too much :-). Things to consider are:

• Amount of extra work needed multiplied with normal hourly rate.
• Reduced earnings caused by project delay
• ...whatever else that will add to the total cost.

Tell the PHBs how much more their smart solution will cost in actual currency (dollars, kroner, euros...).

Then they'll understand.

Re:Speak the right language

[dubl-u]

Amen!

All businessfolk understand cost/benefit calculations. They also should all understand risk vs reward. If an idea is obviously dumb to you, then you should be able to explain it in one of those models. E.g.:

Using the other team's servers would create a common failure point and an opportunity for one project to interfere with another. Although this would save us $100,000, we estimate that this would take our uptime from four nines to three, which is outside your requirements for the project.

Also, you should work on changing your attitude. They think their questions are all smart and reasonable. That's because they know different things than you. If you take the time to help educate them, then they will ask better questions next time. Your goal should be to leave them feeling like smart people who just happened to be missing a fact, rather than pathetic assholes who are lucky they have you around.

Re:Speak the right language

[Da Schmiz]

Excellent point.

It's very simple: 90% of working effectively with people is communication. If you understand each other, you will at least know why the boss wants to do things a certain way.

And the flip side of that: 90% of communication is LISTENING. No, seriously. Shut up. Listen. And when you listen, don't just parse the words -- try to shift your point of view to understand not what he's actually saying, but what he's trying to say. Then, when you respond, don't respond to the words he used; instead, respond to the ideas he was trying to communicate. If you don't quite know what he was trying to communicate, there's no shame in saying, "I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. Do you mean we should do X or do you mean Y? Keep in mind that there are A, B, and C that would affect X" or something to that effect.

If you can learn how to really listen, listen and grok, then you will quickly become a skilled communicator. If you are a skilled communicator, if you can learn to speak bureaucrat-eese, then you will have no problems explaining to your boss why his idea is wrong, without offending him or making him look stupid.

A good way to do that is to say "Do you mean we should replace our entire infrastructure and lose our existing technology investments [exaggerate his bad idea ad absurdam and make it obvious by your tone of voice that that would be a bad idea], or do you just mean that we should look into using Sun servers in new deployments [come up a good idea based loosely on his idea]." Now, you're not insulting his idea, you're presenting options.

Use "look into" as much as possible. If he later asks you about it, just say, "Oh, I looked into it, but I found that [cost/benefit didn't justify it; it's impossible or impractical from a technological standpoint; the amount of time needed to implement the solution would cost us more than what we could hope to save]." Then, suggest a good idea to do instead.

See? It's easy... :-)

Anticipate!

[north.coaster]

I used to receive a lot of these kinds of tasks, until I learned that if I spent a small amount of time before the review anticipating these questions I could defect them before they got any momentum. So the secret is to:

1) Spend some time learning about what others are doing in your company/group/whatever.

2) Anticipate the questions that you're likely to be asked regarding synergy, re-use, etc.

3) Have the answer waiting in your back pocket (or better yet, in your presentation back-up material).

In a few cases, during this pre-work you may even discover a better way to do something, and you can make it part of your proposal. And if you're clever, you might even find a way to make the bosses think that it was their idea! And then you're a hero for making them look good.

/Don

How about

[jsse]

go to his house, strike an axe on his skull, burn down his house with his corpose and everthing else inside and piss on the ashes?

...or just talk to him with your rationale?

Man, sometime I really don't know which option is the best. :)

Re:My solution...

[kevin42]

Let me know what you think again *after* you get a job in the real world.

The ultimate business test.

[BitGeek]

This is one of those life tests, and you should not fail.

When some clueless executive suggests something, the correct response is *always* to respond taking them seriously. IF what they suggest doesn't make sense, explain why. You don't have to go into detail, for instance: "We can't run IIS on our Linux servers because Microsoft doesn't support Linux for IIS, however Apache does the job well and is proven technology. This route saves us about $250,000 in annual license fees."

Geeks have a tendency to get huffy. Or worse, to pretend like its legitimate and put it on the "will investigate" list hoping it will just be dropped. Doing that will only make you look bad when you don't provide the results of the investigation later.

IF what you have is a PHB (as opposed to merely a non-geek executive) then you MUST respond, or you will eventually be out of a job. IF you let PHBs tell you that you HAVE to install IIS on linux, then the gauntlet is thrown-- either you stand up to them right then and there, or they make you their bitch.

There are some managers with the stupid idea that you have to be strong and force people to comply with your wishes when it seems like they don't want to, so if they don't want to install IIS on linux, then by golly you better make them, or they will never respect you! And unfortunately, sometimes these managers pick absurd things to get huffy over. But you have to respond immediately pointing out the fallacy of the idea.

IF they disagree with you, then you should understand their issue-- likely they are considering something other than technology-- like they got a great deal on sun boxes and it sure helped that other project. This is always in your best interest-- because if you blow them off and ignore thier issues, then you will not get support later when the time comes. IF you stand up to them and tell them why some idea won't work, then you may well get a variation of the idea back in response that DOES. That that variation will likely accomplish some goal you know nothing about but is directly related to your job security.

At my last job (I'm freelance now) the engineers groused constantly about management and marketing. They acted as if everyone who wasn't an engineer was an idiot. They didn't know how good they had it-- at that company executive management and marketing actually listened to what engineers said, rather than undermining them, but still you heard nothing but bitching from the engineers. Everything was a fight, and thus, nothing worked-- cause they were fighting amongst themselves as well.

The definition of "Competent" for an executive is not being able to recompile a linux kernel. IF you want to go far, you will learn to bridge that gap and figure out how to meet the issues he's concerned about, even if he fails to phrase them in the engineering-correct way. Most executives really are competant - and that includes marketing guys-- you just have to add their value to yours, not fight it. And you have to understand what they really are bringing to the table.

Occasionally you get a PHB that's really just out to make your life miserable, but even then, answering the questions on the spot makes his job harder. A competent executive will respect and appreciate the quick answers.

It might even make the meeting worthwhile.

Counter with more important stuff

[zoward]

I find I am almost always in a position where I have more to do than I'll ever finish. Sometimes, someone comes up with an idea that doesn't make sense but they're in a position to push for it to happen anyway. At that point I don't argue about whether it should happen, but rather say, "Okay, I'll add it to my list of things to do", and always find other things that are higher priority until the submittor forgets they ever asked for it. If the submittor keeps asking about it and you're their direct report, this won't work, and you'll need to take care of it. But hey, that's what they're paying you to do, right?

Re:Sell it to your manager

[booch]

Excellent points. I agree that those are almost exactly the things I look for in a good manager. There's a lot of politics in my current position. So much that it was pissing me off so much that I was ready to quit. But the new manager does an incredible job of sheilding us from bull-shit. We just have to be sure to make him aware of the BS as soon as we run into it. When it comes time to get stuff we want, we have to sell it to him well enough so that he believes in it and he can sell it to his management.

The most frustrating thing in a job is not being given the chance to do your job well. It doesn't make any sense for management to be an obstacle to you doing your job, but I've seen a lot of it.