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by galaktor 2479 days ago
> until the burden of evidence favours another opinion over yours, be prepared to hold and defend your opinions stridently

It might seem obvious, but this part is extremely important and can be very difficult to live by because it encourages (healthy) disagreement and conflict. "Strong opinions, weakly held" is explicitly _not_ about giving in to a majority opinion or because the opinion is coming from a position of higher authority. It's essentially the scientific method. It does not mean you should agree with other peoples' opinions just because they said it louder and/or more often than you did.

I've witnessed senior engineers and managers misunderstand this mantra and (mis)use it to punish ICs who disagreed with ideas of other more/tenured engineers but lacked evidence for being "better".

If you intend to use this framework as a value in your organisation, make sure you and everybody else understand what it means (_especially_ your engineering managers).

1 comments

> It's essentially the scientific method.

I had never considered this before and it is right and true.

Thank you for enlightening me.