Stop talking

Everyone can talk and give opinions. The real question is if you can actually make a difference. I tell people there's a gap between knowing how to do something and actually doing it. And that gap is a big part of our engineering skills.

If I'm not going to change something, I'd rather not talk or give opinions.

Related: https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-...

> If no one asked and no one is on the hook to change anything: Stop talking.

It seems like a matter of knowing who to talk to about what. I don't think the solution is to stop talking to everyone.

Presenting a rationale for something worthy of addressing (need/problem/opportunity) needs to be communicated somehow, and convincingly. In person, in writing, or a simple business case.

From my non-tech background, priorities are fluid, and things that are rationalized as urgent and important are given resources and attention.

If there is someone like the author spinning wheels in frustration, then maybe there's a problem with the organization aligning everyone on goals/objectives/outcomes -> leading to misaligned solutions being raised, and deaf ears. Or, maybe there's no opportunity to raise solutions with the right people.

Bad idea. I want people working around me to notice, be uncomfortable and especially speak up if something is amiss. Unless you work in a malignant environment, this should be normal behavior.

Bad advice. If you're thinking this way and you don't think people will listen is it really better to just shut up? How about starting small and implementing fixes or starting with small refactors in the direction of a better code base? I have absolute autonomy at my current employer so it's a different world, I mostly ask for forgiveness rather than permission, but to just shut up? Weak.

I know some people that need to apply this advice. Majority shouldn't, this is just a mitigation for a specific personality trait

Strategically, “stop talking” means nothing unless you would otherwise be slamming out ideas. You don’t need people who don’t talk, we have plants for that. You need your silence to say something.

In many companies (especially in non-tech departments) there’s a culture where the first person to speak up is given credit for an idea as the “visionary”, even if they have no skills to actually implement it. In those environments, speaking loudly and often allows one to “lay claim” to an idea. This can be beneficial as a way to control workload, if you “claim” the idea first, you can control people’s expectations and timelines around building it.

Absolutisms like this are challenging to strike right because an establishment of context is needed. This post's sentiment sounds like regret and resentment over past events (there is trauma), and the author knows to not put their hand on the stove.

Sometimes not speaking up is the best thing for future situations. Other times, it's too costly to not speak up, and what should follow is the speaker making right by their words: action.

It can be helpful to flip the lens from critic to creator. Instead of asking "what's wrong with this thing" instead ask:

  Who deserves praise?
  What spark here deserves to grow?  
  What new thing am I trying myself?
  Who left today better because I showed up?
  What's something I (personally) could have improved?
  What mistake or new facts have I learned from/ widened by view?

> unsolicited wisdom

A big problem I see constantly is the mindset that it's "wisdom". It's audible in the voice every speaker that thinks it true. No matter when it's said, no matter how many self-aware disclaimers precede it, it comes out annoying as hell (e.g. Lex Fridman). Some people, even when they know they're are doing it, can't stop themselves.

It's more about picking battles.

I noticed a glaring problem and pushed to refactor a product to fix it, and kept pushing, and kept pushing. In this case, there was a critical need to fix the product, and I was rewarded for it. It lead to a nice tenure for me for almost a decade. (And, I got to stay long enough to get bored.)

More recently, I noticed a glaring problem, and pushed up to the CEO because he frequently complains about the consequences of the glaring problem. The difference is that I can't fix the problem in a few months. There's a lot more coordination and working around other business needs. But again, as long as I'm persistent, I'll have a nice tenure for a decade or more. (And, the work is large enough that I don't think I'll get bored for a long time.)

I get it. This is roughly me, I don't always have the best answers, but I know most things can always be done better. I've coined a few different terms over the years such as "marketing driven development" when I wind up working in places where the marketing team is driving the devs off a cliff, and pushing new features at the expense of ever having time to deal with technical debt. The industry really needs "Tech Debt Thursdays" or something.

There's always way more work to do and those key enhancements or research stories that could improve everything get deprioritized.

Most problems have been solved except the ability to align incentives.

Until the desired outcome is defined and documented, holding off on solutions and effort would benefit both parties.

Communication bandwidth is a finite resource, as several years of managers have reminded me.

(Although, it's worth noting that in this era of more remote work, perhaps a little more read-in and context is useful to avoid burning time on back-and-forths that used to take minutes in front of someone's desk but can now take hours over Slack).

In a technical environment the first step is probably to write your ideas down. Sleep on it, review, and then share with a few people you trust for candid feedback. From there you can share more widely, fine tune and adjust, or realize that you mis-assessed.

what this misses (and unfortunately is not always an option, especially in larger orgs) is that instead of talking (read: complaining), just fix the damn thing and present the solution on a platter (on company time, of course). more often than not, if you've already addressed the issue and it's ready for primetime, people will not refuse the change.

if they do, there's an equal chance that you either didn't understand the situation to begin with, or you work in a team with poor leadership and strategy. learn from the former, leave the latter.

There’s an unrelated/related topic to this: people who want to be heard doing something. They themselves won’t do much, so you can expect the royal “we” to be tossed around a lot.

This is terrible advice that will hurt your career progression. The problem isn't that people speak out too much. It's that basically no one is proactive enough to speak out. In my experience the people who speak are the people who get promoted.

> The difference between “annoying senior sysadmin” and “good consultant” is often just whether you’re in a room that opted in.

So much that. No one likes "drive-by advice" - if you want something to be fixed, there should be a person responsible for that. Maybe it's you doing all the work, or you convincing management, or management who is asking for an advice... But if you are just saying "we should fix FOO by doing this and that" with no plans as to whom those "we" are, it's only annoying.

I'd say - Stop proposing strong solutions until either the room is ready, or you've found or founded the right room

If ever someone should take their own terrible advice, it’s the author of this sad post. Because one reason to shut up is if you what you are saying is BS.

There are times and places and reasons to hold your tongue, of course. None of which are covered by the author.