I guess the people who say "yes" allow you to hope that someday something may yet get done.
They get out of the immediate situation with good feelings all around.
The trick is to give a positive answer that doesn't contain any specific performance criteria on your part. Parenting is good practice for that.
Why is it a cultural divide, rather than a personal one?
Or that makes your action contingent on waiting to see if they give enough of a shit about it to follow up. Such as asking them for send you a minor piece of information or forward you a document. If they don't even bother (because some people use asking you to take an action the way decent people use "let's have lunch some time"), you know you are either off the hook or they never even noticed they were putting you on a hook.
7: In some parts of the country, people are raised to be less direct about saying "no". Not like Japan or anything, but still not willing to tell somebody to fuck off.
I've never tried saying "yes" and then just not doing it. But I will say, "yes, but I'm going to need to check back with you at steps 2,3,5, &7 to make sure that it's what you want" with the hope that at one of those points I'd send them a status update, they'd never get back to me, and then I'd be off the hook.
(I see Moby is ahead of me in 8).
7: Oh, I just meant department culture. Norms within our small department.
We don't have any Norms. Unless you mean fat guys who drink beer.
The type of thing I'm picturing is vague aspirational, "We should really do more of X!" Often times it's a curriculum thing - we should really cover more projects and real world examples! - or whatever. My actual answer is, "ORLY? Do you want to sit down with me and discuss which material we're going to neglect to make room for your current whim?" But it's much better to just agree that we ought to do it, some day.
I'm definitely a "yes" person. Every once in a while I may wind up actually having to do something.
Also a yes person. I used to be a no person and I'd get pushback against realistic scheduling, so I've completely thrown that out the window. Sure, I'll try to do it, but I've already burnt myself out a few times so no guarantees. Yay flakiness and small tech companies.
12 There's always a Norm. If you're looking around and can't figure out who the Norm is, you're the Norm.
The cultural divide in my organization seems to be between people who say "yes, I can do A by date B," but really mean something more like "it's theoretically possible that I could just barely finish A by date B, assuming C, D, and E were already done perfectly by someone else," and people who don't like to leave that stuff as subtext. Most people in the first group seem to be engineers but I've caught myself doing that once or twice.
17: I tend to make the dependencies explicit, but sometimes wonder whether they're actually processed. Sometimes bosses are just listening for the yes, and won't recall the caveats.
You can't recall the caveats as they are out eating coffee berries so you can sell the pooped beans.
Ugh I'm a flaky 'yes' person and I'm so ashamed of it.
7: No is a stable equilibrium in subcultures that punish lying and reward agreeability. Yes is a stable equilibrium in subcultures that punish disagreeability and reward lying. The former requires a justified expectation that people will keep track of the relationship between promises and performance over time.
To some extent Yes cultures can prey on No cultures. For instance, startups often end up overvalued by VCs in exchange for preferential terms. Neither side to the transaction is actually fooled. The suckers are people like employees, who take the valuation literally when evaluating their stock options.
17: Huh, that's interesting. So, some people interpret "I can do it by date X" as a preliminary statement about one possible outcome (if optimized for) and other people take it as an unconditional commitment? That sounds like there's actually a pretty deep divide in what sort of conversation people think they're having.
20: If it makes you feel any better, you probably face very salient social incentives to be a flaky yes person.
Also if it doesn't make you feel any better.
13: I think most people, when they say "we should do X," mean "X is desirable all else equal," not "X is desirable net of expected costs." Have you tried answering as though they said the first thing?
13: I think most people, when they say "we should do X," mean "X is desirable all else equal," not "X is desirable net of expected costs."
That makes me think of this post praising a co-worker for his willingness to ask the question "What should I prioritise that ahead of?"
I admire this formulation because it's so realistic. It recognises the reality of the trade-offs, and keeps them front and centre where they can't be ignored. It militates against the attractive tendency to always assume there's time and effort to add one more thing into the pot.
22: Valuations are pretty literal in a tender offer situation during a round of funding. What's a case where people get suckered? Deciding whether to stay at a company or move on? (Not disinterested questions, I'm afraid.)
23
17: Huh, that's interesting. So, some people interpret "I can do it by date X" as a preliminary statement about one possible outcome (if optimized for) and other people take it as an unconditional commitment? That sounds like there's actually a pretty deep divide in what sort of conversation people think they're having.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone dumb enough to say "yes, I can do A by date B" and not even mention all the dependencies until after the deadline has already gone by. The difference is between people who list the dependencies exhaustively before even uttering date B, and people who say "yes, I can do A by date B," and then pause for breath and start talking about all the dependencies in a rambling tone, after someone already wrote down the first part. Then the person who wrote it down has to go back and figure out if date B is completely unrealistic, or is possible but not likely due to other stuff going on, or actually reasonable to hope for.
28: Tender offers seem much less sketchy. I'm talking about early-stage VC funding where funders can get concessions like guaranteed returns.
I'm terrible at estimating how long something will take. My schedule from this semester said 1 week for one set of results and 1 week for the other. Then I did them in 1 day and 3 weeks respectively. Then, of course, I got results that didn't match up with someone else's and now I'm deep into that rabbit hole. Again, I will say that CS people are (can be?) so sloppy on details.
Anyway, I have a meeting with my boss and it will be lots of 'and when will that be done?' and me shrugging my shoulders and him pinning me down on a date (that I don't believe in).
As a stupid angry person I was in the forthright No! category for the warm glow of sanctimony I derived from being "honest." As a tired stupid angry person whose career aspirations are limited to being retired on the job, I try to slip into the cultural divide itself by avoiding being around and getting asked questions that require answers of the Yes or No variety.
I've said yes to doing some things where I was very wrong about being to get to them sooner, and feel bad.
I've also said yes to things where I made it very clear that it would take a long time, progress would be slow, expect delays, but I won't forget about them. I feel less bad about that. Those things tend to be more important than things I was wrong about not being able to do quickly, so I try to manage the expectations carefully.
I've failed doing things for myself on numerous occasions and am mostly ok with that because the consequences are almost entirely on myself for those things. Although I guess I'm vain enough to think someone might make use of research I never wrote up and published.
Worse than the coworker that yesses you and fails to deliver is the boss, as you have little or no leverage to get them to perform. Some of my most spectacular career fails were due to a combination of a forceful and overly enthusiastic personality (on my part), matched with a passive-aggressive boss who probably just wanted me to calm the fuck down. Tearing into a new project that has been given the verbal go-ahead only to figure out, after way too much time/energy/political capital has been expended, that it was never going to get the support it needed is one of the most frustrating experiences in the history of anything (she says as she enters her 5th month of unemployment with no sign of work on the horizon).
My work culture is a yes one. I now ask people to do things and then set calendar reminders to follow up weekly. These things are not unusual, just parts of their job. Like I will put in work request to repair a broken lock, and then it might be closed, but the lock will still be broken. So I have to e-mail to ask what the status is. Usually, the first one gets no answer. Then, I send a second. Most of the time, that one gets a response. By the third e-mail, I cc my boss and their boss. Then, the lock will be repaired. I resent that it takes me that much effort to convince someone else to do their job.
My boss is weirdly OK with the flaky yes. He would much rather have a yes and then move a deadline the day before something is due, which is weird to me, but I'm getting used to it. I hope it doesn't become a habit, though, because I can see it being crippling in my next job.
36: Gaaaaah. Luckily, I don't rely on other people for too many critical functions. I couldn't take much higher levels of this than current (2 calendar reminders at present).
A month ago, I gave a notice that there was a Very Important Task that needed to be done today. I gave everyone the needed information, with the last piece sent on Monday. I asked today when it would be sent, underlining again the criticality. He said they had more important tasks in queue and it might get done Monday. Then he lied about how safe my work practices were to my trainee and sideways hinted I was approaching a stop-work notice, which is entirely, completely false.
34: West Virginia pain clinics must have openings. They seem to be losing lots of doctors to federal investigations.
34 I'm sure Arrakis would love to have you. They've been building massive state of the art medical facilities here.
34 I'm sure Arrakis would love to have you. They've been building massive state of the art medical facilities here.
34 I'm sure Arrakis would love to have you. They've been building massive state of the art medical facilities here.
Damnit, all three and none to me? Gonna start researching whether Arrakis needs me. Can I bring my cats?
Moving halfway around the world to somewhere really sunny and hot where all the buildings are new and there's no way to get around but by driving sounds deeply unpleasant. Possibly Pittsburgh has gotten into my head.
Best of luck to you, Dr. Oops. Best of fortitude to ydnew and Barry.
Don't step on my pitch, Moby, I'm trying to make an Unfogged outpost here. The pay is good an no taxes on the first 108k plus an insane number of paid leave days and close to many great travel destinations.
Money is always nice. And I do only get four weeks of vacation (not counting sick days, personal days, holidays, and the week between Christmas and New Year).
an s/b and
The food is very good too. Seriously an MD of any specialization would live like royalty here.
It doesn't matter how good the perogies are if it's too hot to want to eat them.
Related: I'm so happy fall finally decided to happen.
Cosign 53. Plus numerous degrees Celsius.