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by grepLeigh 1123 days ago
Most of these kinds of questions have to do with feasibility, where the question asker doesn't have all the context needed to:

1) Decide: is this worth it for the business? NOW?

2) Delegate: ok, we've decided it's worth it NOW. Who is best equipped to execute?

So, that's not a "bad question."

Most of the time, saying "no" also comes with helping the requester de-scope to meet the crux of their obligations, save face on any commitments they won't be able to meet.

Saying "yes" means figuring out what the work will displace.

A significant part of my job as a staff infrastructure engineer was carrying this kind context between planning rituals with various time horizons, ranging from weekly to quarterly to annually.

Occasionally I would drop down into execution mode myself to knock out something particularly gnarly, or set up some pins for someone else to knock down (e.g. promo season).