The economist who helped Walt Disney's theme park dream become what it is today[1] said that the most important thing he learned through it all was the profound difference between a "no, because" person and a "yes, if" person.
If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full of them.
Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.
A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software! We can do anything!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with that person on your team?
The risk with saying "Yes, if.." is that a lot of managers (or clients or whatever) stop listening after the word "Yes".
With "No, unless ...", it's a different story. Then success is dependant on the conditions mentioned and they're much more likely to do their part in making sure those conditions are met. If you said "Yes, if" they'll often just remember you promised you could do it and leave it at that.
Bingo. It's a management problem, not an individual problem. Management can turn "Yes, if..." people into mindless drones over time by constantly shooting them down and feeding them negativity. And where does that negativity come from? The next level up; someone above that manager telling them they can't do things and what they should be doing instead, or rewarding them for aligning their team's goals with the status quo. More often than not, it's driven by fear and the danger of getting fired, or a strong desire to fit into an existing structure and climb the ladder.
In my opinion, most people will be "Yes, if..." people given the right cultural conditions; this looking at people as dichotomous types set-in-stone is dangerous and in my experience incorrect. It is as divisive and ineffective as the current US political climate. If someone has become a No person, it's likely because they're being moulded into that by their management, or has been in the past. Fix the environment and create an innovation-positive management structure and they'd probably jump at the opportunity to take more risks. I have seen this happen first-hand.
I take management blaming here to mean that this is a systemic problem that can can only be solved at an organisational level (rather than blaming a caste within that org).
I had the misfortune of working with a salesperson who only read the "yes" part in an email and sold a lemon to a client for not enough cash.
I protested immediately after the sale (when I was informed of the technical specification) that all the conditions were meticulously described but ignored and presented the email. Management decided to take the risk of going forward. The project failed. I was still blamed for it because by then I was an easy scapegoat.
Never received an apology and lost a good chunk of my reputation at the time. I haven't been an employee and have been my own salesperson since then (15 years ago). Less politics and ass covering between my ears.
Tiny little things like this can make or break you.
I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but I don't like this point. Sure, often people stop listening after Yes,... but...
You don't have to accept that. The general excuse, "Managers man... they suck", is something that really bothers me.
Why not stand up for your idea, insist upon the Yes, IF... and hold management accountable?
Document concerns and don't be shy about raising them. In my experience I have seen people make the assumption that management will not listen and therefor not act more often than I've seen management ignore feedback.
That's not to say that management wouldn't ignore you, or dismiss negativity in favor of the "yes", but the defeatist attitude as it relates to 'management' troubles me.
Again, Michh, not to give you a hard time. Maybe I'm naive.
If you have the power to hold management responsible, great. But you probably don't. See your sibling comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6999303 . Documented concerns ignored, including after they were proven right. Credit rises, while blame falls.
If you have a boss like that then you could always form a habit of saying the "if" part first.
If we just deal with the issue of X and solve the Y problem, then yes, we can most certainly do it. I have some ideas on how to deal with X and I think that if we bring Marketing into the discussion then we should be able to make a plan to address Y.
The above paragraph is still "can do" and it is arguably a better way to answer such questions because it is not as easy for a listener to misinterpret it.
I love this comment; it so beautifully and unintentionally proves the OPs point. It's like the perfect comment to represent Hacker News.
In an article about Can Do vs Can't Do culture, it piggybacks on an insightful top comment that takes an optimistic approach and provides the kind of cynical pessimism and tries to shoot down the Can Do nature of the OP's comment. But the best part of it, the most beautiful part, is that it places the blame on the cause of all problems for hackers: the manager. Literally, managers are the only reason the world isn't amazing, they're the ones that shoot down all my brilliant ideas.
It seems somewhat unfortunate to distil this down to where there are only two possible interpretations of someones idea, right and wrong. I don't think you could have straw manned his point any more either.
The entire idea of "can do vs can't do" is such a platitude anyways, it's not even remotely interesting. It takes all nuance away from communication. As if just because someone has to make their position clearer than a statement like "yes, if" in order to manage the expectations of others that they just don't have a "can do" attitude and by implication are destined to fail.
Why is that only a problem if you start a sentence with 'Yes' ?
Cynics always have scapegoats. It's always everyone else's fault. Dumb colleagues, idiotic managers, stupid customers. Just remember you control your situation and how those around you interact with you.
The 'Yes, if' thing is one of the major reasons I love startups.
This kind of reply has become such a meme. Of course, it's always some "bigger" problem that are at the heart of disfunction. The problem is the _people_ who are often at the heart of such disfunction are usually the ones that judge their "reports" by how often they say "no, because" vs. "yes, if", typically because of some quote they read paraphrased in some internet discussion.
We typically call this middle management.
Regardless I'm not really interested in the blame game on who's responsible management or engineering. Both are irrelevant to this discussion. "Can" or "can't", as the article discusses, is an issue of leadership in a business. If it isn't there, it isn't going to matter whether the engineer says "how high?" whenever their asked to jump.
I disagree; as long as we're generalizing about how "Hacker News" any one comment is, let's call yours the perfect HN comment: Bikeshedding (as if the world is black and white, no less) about who is the most wrong in a discussion. The commenter above you was at least still on the point, made an attempt at an alternate solution, and still left reasonable room for shades of gray.
The only thing that could top your comment is mine; now we're two meta levels deep, not even discussing the original article anymore.
One person's cynical pessimism is another person's realism borne from 20+ years of professional experience.
I prefer "yes, if" but reality says that the "ifs" will never be made part of the planning and then blame will come back to you because you said "yes"
I find it similar to the "estimates" of when we'll finish something, that get turned into hard delivery deadlines once the project scribe commits them to the first draft of the project plan.
I marvel at how much effort is being poured into "proving" that one wording is "better" than the other, with people arguing about culture and paradigm shifts and worldview and audacity.
Are there really only two answers you can offer when asked whether we can do X? Am I still allowed to say "It depends on A, B and C" or "Maybe, but I don't think it's a good idea because of P and Q" or "It would be great, but how do we solve Y and Z?"
I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.
The words we use have a hidden subtext that reflect our unconscious biases. Strangely, using different words to frame an idea is often enough to break through many distortions and biases. It's a mainstay of cognitive behavioral therapy.
And as it relates to the business of building software, which is a tricky and hard thing to do, having a positive outlook and focusing on the end possibilities rather than oncoming challenges is a better attitude for long term success. If you're the type to get caught up in the challenges of implementing stuff, you spend a lot more time saying no and less time finding clever ways to make it a yes.
There's more to it. When you say: No, because ..., you are pointing out SOME of the dependencies that must be resolved before you can get to the final goal. When you say: Yes, if ..., you are enumerating ALL of the dependencies, that when overcome, you can achieve the final goals. In addition to the negative/positive connotations, the former implies that you might have stopped thinking about the problems half way, whereas the latter shows that you've thought about ALL the details.
I used to be in the No, because ... camp when I first got out of college, until I met a mentor who led by example with a "Yes, if ..." attitudes, and I am now firmly in the second camp. Usually comprises and trade off needs to be made, but stop thinking about the problem definitely doesn't help.
> I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.
I disagree. I've worked as a consultant for many years and I used to be a "no, because" person, and I noticed a very clear shift in my demeanor and that of clients when I started saying more "yes, if"s.
Initially I didn't know what I was doing so every project was fraught with the fear I'd be found out, this meant that on really difficult things, I'd try to talk myself and the client out of doing them, because I didn't know enough and thought something simpler (that I could do) would be better. As I became a much better software developer, all of a sudden, nothing was impossible, and it translated into my speak with clients.
Instead of presenting problems, I could tell clients exactly how to do what they wanted and how much it would cost them technically and monetarily.
I'll just tell you from experience. People respond to "yes, if"'s a whole lot better than no-anythings
"I think words are abstractions, and abstractions become expressions that frame our understanding of our experiences, expectations, culture—everything. Language is an interface, and if an interface can mold behavior and perception, than language does that to your life."
While I think the grandparent is focussed on a non-issue (the two phrases offered are obviously metonymic, not literal), I have to note that this is a much stronger claim than you might gather from a glib programming analogy made by an armchair philosopher. Linguistic relativity is a thing [1], but statements like this widely overstate the extent to which language molds cognition. More importantly, though, I don't think the notion is relevant to the discussion at hand. We're not talking about alternative phrasings of the same idea, but different ideas entirely: yes and no. That different ideas expressed differently carry different semantic payloads is hardly a controversial assertion.
Engineers are often beaten into a "no, because" mentality by managers who only hear the "yes" or the "no" and not the universe of constraints under which that conclusion is given. Being a "yes, if" person can be a recipe for disaster unless you really trust the people you're working with to be able to understand the challenges that need to first be overcome. Let's be real: the overwhelming majority of business people are not as brilliant as Walt Disney.
In my opinion, a better approach for an engineer in typical real world conditions is to be a problem solver while controlling the message. "Yes, if" gives up control of the message. Instead of saying "yes" rephrase and reformulate the idea into your own words while adding the necessary constraints. It's a small difference, but it allows you to take full ownership and control of what you're signing up for.
Well, I think that you can probably write a compiler from "yes, if" to "no, because" and vice versa.
Example:
Yes, if the '"yes, if" attitude' is defined as 'never disagreeing with anyone ever, since no one ever attempts to abuse positive-thinking engineers.'
But the real question is like the programming language question - what's the most expressive and useful in a given situation? Sometimes an idiom is not a good fit.
I always responds 'yes, if' -- to people I know won't abuse it.
That's most of the people I work with. But some entrepreneurs, Project Managers, clients and so forth are simply not to be trusted with a "yes, if."
The goal is to avoid those kinds of shady operators, crappy projects, and hostile clients. But sometimes you end up working with them, at least as bit players in a business relationship that is a good fit. Especially as a freelancer, I don't know anyone who can avoid it 100% of the time.
For instance: even when working with a great organization, some project could have a weak link in a project management role. It will happen to you. And all you can do is try to do good work while extricating yourself as soon as possible.
What should I tell one of those not-very-trustworthy people if they ask something ridiculous?
Does compiling it to Yes-If prove more expressive?
Examples:
Yes, if the laws of space-time, human nature, physics and the combined sum of human experience weren't arrayed in battle order against you and your terrible idea.
Yes, if I could trust that you, a non-software PM who shifted into this job from Accounts with no training heavier than that provided by Clippy, have correctly assessed the stakeholder requirements and risk around this new feature that you think is required by 'EOD Thursday.'
Sometimes, there is an answer, and it is No. Because.
Sometimes you should signal risk and danger in your response, because risk and danger are present in their requests, and you must be sure that they are weighing those dangers. 'No, because' (or 'I'd advise against it, but here's what it would take', which is closer to what I actually say in those situations) definitely has its place.
NOTE: this is not non-technical PM hate. I may currently have two PMs, on projects for two separate fortune-50 companies. Both PMs may be non-technical, but one might know how to be a PM, and specifically on a software project, and the other might not.
Exactly my thought reading them. The original comment laid it all out and then the troops of people who just don't get it decided to parade around their misunderstanding.
I dunno. Sounds like there's a chance that the economist's own biases are coming into play here. I'd apply the Principle of Indifference...."No, because" and "Yes, if" pretty much sound like the same thing to me. It's how you react to those phrases that makes all the difference.
If you let "Yes, if" evoke a different emotional response than, "No, because", even though they provide more or less the same information content, what does that say about you?
I won't argue that "No, because" and "Yes, if" are mathematically equivalent statements. But I hold that the immutability implication you mention is something added by the listener, not information "carried" by the bits of the "No, because."
They may not be proper synonyms, but a listener that's forgiving of input errors can interpret them as synonyms, at least until proven otherwise through further conversation.
Where then does the "learn to say 'no!'" attitude comes in if we are to say "yes, if..." to every idea coming our way? How to find the right balance between being a "can do" person, and NOT being the over-committer?
Weinberg talks about relevant things in "The Secrets of Consulting". Unfortunately I don't exactly have perfect memory, but it's something like:
- Don't say no to clients "crazy" demands, just calculate what it would actually cost, or what you would need to do what they ask, and quote them that.
- A good price is when you are OK either way: You're OK if they say yes, and OK if they say no.
The point is that if you instead of saying no ask a lot in return, you either get a great reward, or "get off the hook". If it's not a quid pro quo type of relationship, a personal relationship for example, I guess this does not apply (just say no =).
If I was to pull a rubber band back a small bit, and let go, it will fly a small ways. If I pull it back too far, it might break. However if I pull it back as far as it can go right before the breaking point, then let go the rubber band will fly across the room.
these "no because," people are a common resistance to new ideas. In engineers, they're almost the default. It's much easier to say no; to say yes is to deal with an increasingly larger amount of resistance. However, that resistance is also what makes the idea go far.
as a guy responsible for technology, I have said "no" a lot. For focus reason. Because you can only grow your team so much, you can only manage so many pieces of software at once, and, well, having a million non-interconnected pieces of software helps you getting many non-related software contracts, but it doesn't make a product.
Technically my answer was more "yes if we dump some other pieces of software, and we try to be the best player at this new idea".
Being a "yes, if" person, I can tell you that most of the times I reply with that, everything else is taken as a joke. the more complicated the problem, the more of a joke it seems to the others.
After all, they want a simple "yes, we can". If they hear about the half a dozen other problems that need to be solved first, they think "oh, yeah, that would be great, haha. But we won't do it because we want to focus on solving E, not A, B, C and D"...
The question always comes up "Can the system do this, that and this other thing?" My response is always "With technology, pretty much anything is possible, it only comes down to a matter of time and money." The conversation almost always changes very quickly into my favor.
Then I'm a "No, because" type of person. The thing is tough that most often it's not because I don't think things are possible but that I make assumptions based on who I'm talking to. For example, if I'm talking to my boss I know what costs his willing to take, so if he has an idea and I know hes not willing to pay for it, then I can just say no directly instead of getting a doomed project on my neck.
And to be honest, most projects actually go way out of time and budget. The realist would have said no, because the scope was not realistic. Now if you wilfully or just by ignorance accept the terms and scope thinking you can always stretch other peoples time and budget, that's in my book immoral, but then again, those people will end up getting the jobs i decline.
I'm with you. Pessimism and cynicism is underrated in certain circles. I wish there was more pessimism before the U.S. decided to invade Iraq (remember "slam dunk"?), before the TSA was formed, or before someone decided to make Grown Ups 2.
If anything, there's a problem with too much optimism in project management. If there isn't enough budget and schedule to let a project slip by 10%, then the answer shouldn't be "yes, if we're lucky". It should be "No, let's pick something with better margins." or "Yes, because even losing money on this is worth it for strategic reasons."
If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full of them.
Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.
A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software! We can do anything!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with that person on your team?
[1] - https://d23.com/harrison-price/