[_jal]

>"Find people who you think will be contrarian, and have them poke holes in the design"

Socializing the design is good advice.

Seeking out contrarians is not.

It costs you much more to defend particular engineering tradeoffs than it does to raise questions about them. So unless you have a good relationship with your "contrarian" and they will operate in good faith, you'll quickly end up exhausted and dispirited after the anklebiters attack.

Architecture astronauts and other armchair engineers will suck up all your energy with half-baked ideas they aren't even invested in, if you let them.

[ska]

Contrarian probably isn't the right term, but there is real value in having someone come at the problem with a different set of blinders than you have - particularly if they understand their role is not to redo the design but to stress test the existing one. I suspect this is what you mean by "good faith" and "good relationship".

[beebeepka]

I think the poster you replied to understand this. What they're saying is that asking for input often invites malicious behaviour. It's really painful to experience. I think this person knows what they are talking about.

There are people who somehow manage to ruin even the simplest code reviews with their precious input that ultimately goes nowhere. Such people will absolutely destroy your spirit when you invite them to consider your something substantial. Those guys so everything in their power to get themselves into such position.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

I think it's the right term, a contrarian is someone that not only will disagree, they're not afraid to do it publicly.