[jmull]

The db access is just an example. I used upward and downward working off the terminology of the article. But I can put it like this:

For a given call or request, there's input, some work done with that input, and the result. (This is true, whether we're talking about a functional or imperative style.) Your code will have some structure that reflects the work to be done. You want to push your parsing toward the input if it's concerned with the input, and toward the result if it's concerned with the result.

Whether you want to call the processing closer to the input "upward", or "earlier" or whatever, that's fine with me. If you call the processing closer to the input and closer to the result both "upward" then I think it's not a useful metaphor and you should choose a different one.

[jakelazaroff]

Any given callee is going to deal with a bunch of both inputs and results. And it’s not clear to me what those terms mean — e.g. is the response from the database an “input” or a “result”?

I think your point of view would make more sense looking at the call stack — database access happens deeper than the code that handles the response, so you can’t push it “up” from there. And I mean, sure? But I don’t think that’s an inherently better frame than the one in which external sources are “upward” and your own application code is “downward”.