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by SftwrSvior81 400 days ago
What is the point of being great at persuading if one is persuading peers, reports, and leaders to do the wrong thing? Persuasion is necessary but it should be second to the suggestion actually being a step in the desired direction.
4 comments

The more time I spend in engineering roles the more I think too many people are great at persuading but suck at the underlying thing they're persuading _for_.
Any direction is the desired direction if one can be persuaded so.
What is the point of knowing the right thing to do if you fail to persuade peers, reports, and leaders?
Like I said,

> Persuasion is necessary

If you're persuading people to do the wrong thing you're still proving how great and influential you are — if things go sideways you can still move to the next place /s

There are people whose entire careers are built on this!

Counterintuitively this is precisely why the people who care more about things being right than about winning need to work on their persuation skills: Otherwise the wrong thing will get done and guess who will have to deal with it.