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I am often wrong

345 points · 226 comments · bcherny

  1. infamia · · focus · HN ↗
    > Something that people learn quickly when they work with me is that my approach to pretty much every problem is: > ... > 6. Act with urgency to achieve the goal

    If everything is urgent, then nothing is. This guy sounds miserable to work for and with. Assuming this is accurate and not just hyperbole, he is essentially saying he has no prioritization skills because everything is urgent. I think most people who have been around the block have worked with people like this, and unbeknownst to them, their coworkers develop a default snooze button associated with most of their requests and projects.

    1. goostavos · · focus · HN ↗
      Heavens. Is it possible you're reading into it a bit? He's miserable to work with? From this one blog post?

      A more generous read, or, at least the reading I took: "once we (think we) know what we're doing, we violently execute."

      So, "boo" on you. This guy sounds awesome.

      1. saghm · · focus · HN ↗
        If someone literally publishes on the internet that they require their employees to act like every problem is urgent, it's not clear why you think we shouldn't take them at their word. It's a pretty common thing for bad managers to expect people to work full-tilt 100% of the time rather than understanding that tends to burn poorly out. I'm honestly not sure how someone could spend a decent amount of time in this industry and not be able to recognize that pattern and have thoughts about how to avoid it unless they just don't really care about it much, so while you're entitled to disagree, it's hard not to get the impression that being so affronted by the parent comment pointing out that the blog post doesn't seem to address the very real pattern of phrases like the article uses being euphemisms for pretty horrible work cultures that you just also don't particularly care about it.

        Personally, I've seen far too many talented people in tech be worked too hard for too long by management that either is too clueless or too uncaring to the point where it can take years for their health and happiness to recover not to find it extremely alarming when someone says stuff like "everything is urgent". The likelihood that they mean pretty much exactly what they say rather than mean something more nuanced is high enough that the fact that don't seem concerned about the implication says more than enough.

        1. tayo42 · · focus · HN ↗
          It's not saying treat every problem as urgent, it's saying go through 5 steps that are defing the problem correctly then treat it urgently.
          1. saghm · · focus · HN ↗
            I don't see the difference. The idea that every task ends up in a state with an urgent problem to solve during its lifecycle is crazy to me.
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