Answer: no, because you need the other person to actually do something.
These kinds of things work when you’re already in a relationship.
if you tell somebody you're going to to do something, you're not asking them to take responsibility. you're telling them that you're taking responsibility for whatever you're going to do. If you ask somebody's permission, you're asking them to take some portion of responsibility for what you're doing.
which is the same risk that the sibling comment is warning about - if you're trying to do this for things that you aren't ultimately responsible for, you're goign to piss people off. only take responsibility for things that are actually within your area of responsibility.
Personally, I tend to assume accountability for things I lead, but as a manager, of course, I am also responsible and accountable for my team; including both things I signed off on and things I didn't (because I entrusted that independence to them.) It's an interesting line to walk.
This is a point that tends to kill introverted/insecure people I think. They assume that asking for permission is making things easier for people, but there's a limit where you're not allowing others to delegate responsibility onto you. Your job is for others to not have to think about the things you take care of.
If there is a decision that you need to make don’t ask me for input, do the thing that you think makes sense and then write down what you did and why.
If it’s the wrong thing I’ll update the docs to make it clear for next time.
Without this I would always wake up in the morning to an inbox full of questions and no work done, rather than an inbox full of finished tasks and maybe a couple of corrections.
With LLMs if I ask for a code analysis and plan to fix something they tend to put a list of questions at the end about which they want confirmation.
Then I have to waste time saying yes or no or coming up with the solution. If I tell them to instead just make assumptions and record them all at the end then I only need to correct 1 or 2 assumptions if required.
It's different from "Ask forgiveness; not permission," because it still loops in the manager.
The only problem, is that if you ask Legal, they say "no," pretty much by default.
It will be new to someone.
But even amongst those for whom it isn’t, sometimes a reminder of things you know is useful and may come at just the right time.
I have a code change that is so vital to the survival of our company that:
1. It requires your immediate review.
2. If you fail to respond by Monday, I will push it to production.
---
Can anyone suggest what is wrong here?
"Heads-up: I plan to delete the old scratch volume at Tue 14:00 ET, unless anyone objects before then. (It only contains the old Debian APT cache, and 974 copies of the same YouTube video.)"
slowcache•40m ago
There's a big difference between "I'm going to put this into prod on tuesday unless you tell me otherwise" vs "I'm going to put a prototype together for review on Tuesday unless you tell me this is a waste of time"
awesome_dude•38m ago
internet2000•36m ago
tyre•35m ago
My default is to trust engineers based on my experience with and expectations for them. If they want input—anything from a deep review to a gut check—I'm happy to help. If you're looking for a gut check, this is a fine way to do it. It communicates your level of confidence, which is an important data point for me.
If someone is adding a GH action, do we need a prototype? Maybe! But also maybe not. Bias towards action. Not YOLOing, not hacked together crap, not vibe code merged without review. But I've found that great engineers are often more hamstrung by permission checks than the issues they're meant to prevent.
furyofantares•33m ago
Not really. The advice is prefixed with this context.
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to
Basically it's saying if it's your job to make this decision, but it's something where the boss needs to know (or you need them to know because you need a small amount of reassurance), then asking for "yes" fails to communicate your understanding in that regard.
Asking for "yes" says it's the boss's job to make this decision - but we're talking about decisions where you believe it's your job make it.
icantevenhold•31m ago
I have always used this method and my managers love me because they know I get important shit done without much supervision or needing dozens of planning meetings. It doesn’t even feel like there is any leash at all.
Of course the company i work at isn’t extremely disfunctional and a growing startup, so once we move into enterprise territory it might change the culture and it’s more about saving your ass and less about doing actual work.