alt Hacker NewsAsk for no, don't ask for yes (2022)
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Do NOT do this with your manager. The key part of this article is:
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to, it’s common to reach out and ask them for permission. Don’t. Don’t ask for a yes. Instead, offer a chance to say no, but with a deadline.
If something is not in scope for your responsibility, obviously you must ask for permission.
If something is in scope for your responsibility, then just do the thing.
If it's in some weird edge case where you "feel" it is "in scope for your position" but you "want a bit of reassurance", then pick a lane. Either do the thing or ask for permission. Probably default to asking for permission unless a knowledgeable colleague tells you it's your call.
But setting some kind of deadline for your manager to opt-out is extremely disrespectful. If I ever had a report try to pull a stunt like that, it would be the first thing we'd talk about in our next 1-1.
Because if you have a manager who usually responds promptly, then you can ask for permission and get a quick reply. "Asking for no" is not making it more convenient for your manager, it comes across as trying to usurp their authority. "Hey, I'm going to tell HR you gave approval for a raise unless I hear from you by noon." That's... just not how anything works.
And if you have a manager who often misses e-mails or takes forever to respond, then it comes across as trying to take advantage of that to do stuff they wouldn't approve, in a sneaky way.
This is a bad look in every possible situation. Do not do this.
Like, if you're a journalist telling a source you'll print the story unless you get a correction by a deadline, OK fine. If you're looping in a peer as a courtesy (NOT a manager), then OK. But with your manager? That's crazy.
This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
There's a big difference between "I'm going to put this into prod on tuesday unless you tell me otherwise" vs "I'm going to put a prototype together for review on Tuesday unless you tell me this is a waste of time"
It works with teams, when you have the authority to do something, but do a non-blocking check as a courtesy:
"Heads-up: I plan to delete the old scratch volume at Tue 14:00 ET, unless anyone objects before then. (It only contains the old Debian APT cache, and 974 copies of the same YouTube video.)"
> "hey, boss, can we install action X?"
> "Hey, boss, I am going to install action X."
The tone change don't really effect my decision path, both triggers "reviewing of the XYZ problem", a.k.a "why?". People who don't do that either trusts you a lot, or never worked professionally before and maybe about to learn a lesson from it.
This is one of the articles where I'm immediately grateful to the author to have written it down. Very good and easy to pick up point, actionable advice. I would just slightly modify it, don't create a time bomb. "I would like to... until date XY" should achieve the same effect -- not inviting bikeshedding or delaying action, sending "I got this" -- without pressurising anyone else for taking a decision or too much responsibility.
This is an AWS (and other FAANG) tenet.
It has to come with appropriate information, not just a date.
I usually ask for a twisted "STAR" if this is presented to me.
Give me context (who, what, where, when), the planned action in short (and other choices that were considered and why they were abandoned), and the result that the choice will have.
If i have all these, i can quickly context switch, and ask follow ups if needed, or just let it move forward. This is conceptually what AWS asks for in a one pager.
I've heard this called "lazy consensus". Basically, rather than say, "Is it OK if I do X?" Say, "I'm going to do X on date Y unless someone objects." Particularly useful as the number of stakeholders grows.
Hello $BOSS!
I have a code change that is so vital to the survival of our company that:
1. It requires your immediate review.
2. If you fail to respond by Monday, I will push it to production.
---
Can anyone suggest what is wrong here?
This is something that I've always believed. It's not new advice.
It's different from "Ask forgiveness; not permission," because it still loops in the manager.
The only problem, is that if you ask Legal, they say "no," pretty much by default.
This was in my staff documentation and it’s now in my AGENTS.md: tell don’t ask.
If there is a decision that you need to make don’t ask me for input, do the thing that you think makes sense and then write down what you did and why.
If it’s the wrong thing I’ll update the docs to make it clear for next time.
Without this I would always wake up in the morning to an inbox full of questions and no work done, rather than an inbox full of finished tasks and maybe a couple of corrections.
With LLMs if I ask for a code analysis and plan to fix something they tend to put a list of questions at the end about which they want confirmation.
Then I have to waste time saying yes or no or coming up with the solution. If I tell them to instead just make assumptions and record them all at the end then I only need to correct 1 or 2 assumptions if required.
This is what advertising companies do to use your data unless you explicitly request to opt out. Hasn't worked out well
This would work only in a high trust, structured environment. I know at my job if we said this it would be met with a likely scolding not to assume anything and to ask for a YES.
Some previous discussion:
Another great Life Pro Tip is "Never accept 'no' from someone who can't say 'yes'."
Covered in Chris Voss book Never Split the Difference. Works well in practice based on my own personal experiences.
Far canal, why is this news?
Does this also work when asking someone out? Or raising capital?
Answer: no, because you need the other person to actually do something.
These kinds of things work when you’re already in a relationship.
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i think the reason this works is an implication that the article doesn't explicitly cover:
if you tell somebody you're going to to do something, you're not asking them to take responsibility. you're telling them that you're taking responsibility for whatever you're going to do. If you ask somebody's permission, you're asking them to take some portion of responsibility for what you're doing.
which is the same risk that the sibling comment is warning about - if you're trying to do this for things that you aren't ultimately responsible for, you're goign to piss people off. only take responsibility for things that are actually within your area of responsibility.