[loose-cannon]

There is value in critically evaluating ideas and possible endeavors. On the other hand, demanding an answer to every little pocket of uncertainty creates a huge burden that prevents exploration. It's one thing to be exhaustive in the criticism by examining individual scenarios, evaluating cost benefit in a measurable way, etc. That doesn't seem to be what the author is describing. He's describing critical & low effort cheap shots.

[bawolff]

> He's describing critical & low effort cheap shots.

The examples he used included: the plan depends on a different team providing labour and that team is not on board, the business plan for the idea does not make sense.

I suppose they are low effort in the sense that they are very basic 101 criticisms, but i wouldn't call them cheap shots.

Literally no plan is ever going to work if it involves the labour of others without their (or their supperiors) consent. It seems to me a very valid criticism to make. That doesn't mean its the end of the idea, it means you need to have a plan to either get the other stakeholders on board, or a plan to do it without them.

[sfink]

It's not a plan, it's an idea. You're shooting down an idea for not being a plan. The best person for coming up with the idea will probably also come up with some of the pieces of the plan, but they're unlikely to be the best person to figure out all of it. That's why you have a company not a sole proprietorship.

[zephen]

The problem with this is, that the article literally says:

> The person proposing has been thinking about this for weeks or months. They've tested pieces of it in their head or even built proofs of concept. They understand things about the idea that aren't obvious yet. And they're trying to explain all of this to a room full of people encountering it for the first time.

If they did that much upfront work, it's more than an idea. And if it's that easily shot down, they should have done even more upfront work and probably slowly gotten others involved.

Honestly, it sounds like someone so desperate for credit, so worried that someone will steal the idea, that they feel compelled to unveil it in a large gathering that was convened for some other purpose. And that never goes well.

Ideas truly are a dime a dozen. If one gets shot down, then you can reflect whether that was warranted, and try again with the same idea if not.

If you're really emotionally invested in it, as the guy writing the article seems to be, then you damn well better have more than just an idea, and you should understand enough about human nature to slowly try to bring individuals onboard to help before you put it out in front of a big crowd.

[bawolff]

> You're shooting down an idea for not being a plan.

If you are pitching an idea out of nowhere, than i think it better have a semblence of a plan, otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time.

Like maybe its a bit different if you are brainstorming for an acknowledged problem, but that is not what the article made it sound like.

The article made it sound like the idea was being pitched unsolicited, with no clear problem it was trying to solve and no clear plan on how to do it. After all 2 of the so-called cheap criticisms were people asking why we want to do this ("the customers aren't asking for it") and how are we going to do it when it has dependencies on stakeholders who have not bought in ("devops doesnt like it").

Why would anyone care about such an idea? Like if you want to work on something by yourself, you dont have to convince anyone, but if you want other people on board, you are going to have to answer basic questions. Questions like: what benefit would implementing this idea bring me, and will my effort on this idea be a waste because neccesary stakeholders aren't on board.

There are a lot of details that can be sorted out on the way. Things like, why would we even want to do this in the first place, is not one of them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you are pitching an idea out of nowhere, than i think it better have a semblence of a plan, otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time

Depends on context. Shooting the shit is valuable.

[Jensson]

And shooting down shit is also valuable. It is fine to have ideas without thinking them through, and it is also fine to criticize those ideas without thinking through the criticism. That is how we figure out how the ideas could work.

[derangedHorse]

No one should care about devops’s consent when they’re given a work item that comes from someone higher up on the org chart. Their consent is willful employment. Similarly, no one should care about an engineer’s consent when given a work item in a similar context.

If the engineer proposes an implementation the devops team doesn’t like, the devops team should come up with a counter proposal that still fulfills their requirements. And if their counter proposal fulfills the requirements but the engineer objects, then whoever’s at the top of both their branches in the org chart should be making the decision.

[wakamoleguy]

These are all risks. Not all risks need to be mitigated, but some can be. Others can be accepted. Saying “Python is too slow for production scale, but our goal is a small proof of concept,” is a valid answer even if it doesn’t “solve” the complaint. And if you don’t even have that answer, then the burden is not your problem. The lack of due diligence is.

[Dylan16807]

These are the table stakes of uncertainty, not delving into every little pocket. If the language and ops are under question, this sounds like an entire new project or significant extension. The bit of time it takes to answer all those questions is worth it.

[torben-friis]

>On the other hand, demanding an answer to every little pocket of uncertainty creates a huge burden that prevents exploration.

How do you explore an idea, other than trying to shoot it down and seeing if it survives the shot?

[jbay808]

You can fire the shot and then patch the hole at the same time, proposing solutions to the same problem you pointed out, rather than just shooting and letting one person handle defense from every attack.

[majormajor]

By proceeding with things that will gather more data—such as prototyping, or further independent research—vs spinning indefinitely on "hypothetical" discussion-only shots.

How do you know if it survives the shot without that, if it's just person A saying "I don't think Python perf will be an issue" and person B saying "I think it will"?

[Jensson]

> How do you know if it survives the shot without that, if it's just person A saying "I don't think Python perf will be an issue" and person B saying "I think it will"?

That is the point, knowing that it is a point we want to test is valuable. If person B there didn't say he thought it would be an issue you probably wouldn't have tested it, it was valuable for him to say that.