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Discussion (41 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Arguing with your boss in private, now that's a completely different deck of Magic cards. Totally helpful, productive behaviour if done respectfully and constructively. You're there to solve problems together, having differences of opinion is natural. Thrash it out between you in a 1:1, book time to engage and brainstorm.
Be nice, be prepared, find solutions that move things forward without bruising egos, try and get them to think it was their idea.
Importantly, you're coming to a decision in which they get the final say, because it's their team. Once a decision is made, after consultation, you just gotta roll with it. Don't bitch, or moan, or rub it in if things go wrong. Chain of command. One of these days you'll be there too.
If you keep on "losing" or finding yourself in constant conflict with your boss, that suggests a deeper problem. Jobs are like relationships, they've gotta work both ways. Maybe this isn't the right one for you (or them, but just as likely you).
Anyway. Never argue with your boss _in public_. Debate in private, come to a decision and move forward.
Never do that if you're working under a toxic boss, in which case arguing in public is better if at all but one should anyways be working hard to find a new boss!!!
No I don't think it's how it works at all. If you want to show value you should absolutely point out you were right.
Honestly, I've never stuck around with a bad boss long enough to get into this sort of situation with them. Life is too short.
Most managers I've had a long-term relationship with have been, at worst, overwhelmed or utterly beholden to bad priorities set further up the chain. They all have been decent enough folks, trying to do their best for the organisation.
You gotta spend all your time with these people. Rubbing your correctness in their face ain't going to make either of your work lives better.
Try doing the same with your partner, see how that goes.
I think the issue is not disagreeing with one's boss, but what relationship you have with your boss.
There's a big difference between hostility and wanting to win against the other person vs. trying to find the best possible solution for the team, and clashing on what that should look like.
Some of this is about communication (continually centering on what goal one is trying to reach and validating the other party's perspective) other stuff is basic manners (don't make a public spectacle of your disagreements, especially in front of your boss's boss), but much of it boils down to relationship skills.
I think more people in tech should understand basic relationship skills and how they apply at work. Work is more transactional than a friendship or a marriage, but the core parts still matter: everyone wants to feel seen and heard, not invalidated and attacked.
But sure, ultimately your role is to provide your opinion as an expert, but you should step aside if your manager decides otherwise after hearing you. I think it's also correct: you are responsible for the decisions you make (which is true for you and your manager too).
So I think the author should have softened the discussion rather than going for a full confrontation. The boss surely didn't react rationally, or didn't surface their reasoning properly.
But being able to argue with your superiors (and peers) "the right way" is one of the most important skills to have in the workplace imo.
Do it respectfully and accept the decision if it goes against your advice. Your boss is either aware of issues you are not, or might otherwise have good reasons. In any case there is very seldom 1 "best" solution to a problem.
If your boss is genuinely an idiot, then still accept the decision, but start looking for a new job or assignment to a different team.
Absolutely this. Nothing wrong with disagreeing, but don't have a screaming row with your boss in front of the team.
Sure, I agree, for when I worried in for example Singapore, I would not agree for Scandinavia
The being direct thing only applies when they can be mean to you, not when they did something wrong.
I've worked in multinationals and I've noticed that in the US ( east coast in particular ) it's much more hierarchical - where arguing with your boss in public could be a firing offence.
This is less so in Europe.
> This is less so in Europe.
On the other hand, in big German companies there often exist more hierarchy levels. In this sense, I would rather call German companies more hierarchical.
The difference is (also from your description) rather that in the USA, bosses often expect their underlings to be much more "ideologically aligned" to their principles [1], which they often don't state/disclose from beginning. Enforcing such an ideological alignment is much less accepted in big German companies (at least in the lower hierarchical levels).
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[1] In German, there exists the word "[die] Linientreue" for this, which can literally translated to "line loyalty". Dictionaries give the translation "true to party principles", but I would claim that this "politically connotated" translation is rather restrictive.
This is also why you shouldn't gossip negatively about anyone, and you shouldn't make jokes about employee termination. People will view you as a threat. The threat perception will become dislike and they won't even know why they dislike you, they just do. Then they will hallucinate that you're a hopeless poor performer whatever your performance actually is, because they've already emotionally decided that you're awful.
There is no boss involved in the HN discussion. :-)
In academia arguing is sort of your job, or at least part of it.
So when a supervisor can't/won't understand their student's argument, the situation feels very futile.
Probably there's examples of constructive resolutions somewhere out there
I think it's just respecting hierarchy, disagree, raise your concerns, if your boss overrules just accept it, you made your concerns known, they and the team heard of you, if they proceed anyways they accept the risk.
No point in forcing yourself to be the shot caller when it's not your job or responsibility to make the final decision.
Accepting the team consensus and respecting hierarchy is part of the game, unless you are a business owner, you are paid to do as told as an expert give your opinion. Nothing more you can do beyond that.
Directly arguing has the downside that people with big egos will harden their positions even (or rather: especially) if they suspect they they might be wrong. If your goal is to let of steam while causing destruction, that is a valid strategy, if your goal is to reframe a topic, refute a point and/or win over the room, it often is not.
That all being said, we are talking about a public argument, not about private discussions. If you can make good points, bring the receipts arguing for those points is a good idea. However if given the chance it is a good idea to make these point in a smaller circle, in writing or in a one-in-one with your boss first, to give them the chance to agree with you when it is easy, instead of feeling put on the spot in front of everybody.
Either the boss wants to hear your opinion or they don't. You need to look at body language, tone and wording to decide. In any case, they must decide.
Disagreeing in front of other employees is especially risky... It can work in your favor sometimes, but only if it serves the boss... For example, you might be providing the boss with an opportunity to demonstrate humility over a topic which they don't pride themselves on. If the boss switches and agrees with you, can improve your image in front of other employees and the boss gets to look like they are a good listener and rational decision maker. Everyone wins.
It also rests heavily on the boss' personality. Some people always have to be right, else they hate you.
||righteousit.com^
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Therefore sorry, no vote.
This is not so much about free speech (because if it was, the problem wouldn't exist so much in countries that have a different concept of free speech than the USA), but rather that a scientific education strongly nudges you into becoming a "truth-seeker", and in pursuit of this argue for your point.
This is why in particular geeks/nerds love to argue with their boss when they believe he isn't correct.
So, I rather fault employees that they look for employees with a university degree, while in reality they want employees that don't want to start scientific disputes with their both (i.e. exactly what the scientific education at a university drills you towards).
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Addendum: In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48918117 silentmafia writes down a related observation:
> In academia arguing is sort of your job, or at least part of it.
But does a East Asian Confucian perspective always require it? Not necessarily.
From the Confucian viewpoint, an organization is not simply an arena for individual logical debates. Everyone has their own role and position, and when those roles collapse, the order of the community collapses.
'A superior must decide like a superior. A subordinate must remonstrate and support like a subordinate.'
What the OP's post did was not just make the boss look wrong. It declared that the boss 'could not function as a boss.' That's why the colleagues felt fear. It wasn't 'technically correct.' It was 'that person can publicly destroy the team's hierarchy.'
In Confucian terms, this is called 'remonstration without propriety.'
Good remonstration usually involves speaking privately first, respecting the other person's social face, and presenting options while preserving the form that the superior is the decision-maker. Those options should include risks and alternatives, so that it leads toward the direction you want.
In other words, you start by acknowledging that the boss's point is valid, then frame your disagreement as a risk you are worried about, but you're concerned about certain risks. If you say it that way, team members will later remember that you warned them, and the boss can't avoid responsibility either.
Of course, the boss also needs to have the right 'virtue' for that position. They need to listen to why subordinates object, and have the ability to make technical judgments. Storming out of a meeting saying 'I don't need this shit' is not boss-like behavior, so in an East Asian perspective, both sides are at fault. But many would see the subordinate who shattered the other's face as more at fault.
And of course, human relationships don't always have a right answer. I don't always follow this myself either—I fight with clients every day.
Sometimes it's the plane that collapses:
“The Korean culture has two features—respect for seniority and age, and quite an authoritarian style,” said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You put those two together, and you may get more one-way communication—and not a lot of it upward,” Kochan said. The Asiana pilots on Flight 214 apparently did not discuss their predicament, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing cockpit voice recordings. As a general point of reference about the Korean language, you speak to superiors and elders in an honorific form that requires more words and can be more oblique. Less, “Yo! You want water?”; and more, “It’s a warm day for a nice refreshment, no?” This may sound trivial. But put this in the context of a cockpit, where seconds and decision-making are crucial and you get an idea of how communication and culture matter."
"Nearing the end of the 1990s, Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline around the globe. Cockpit miscommunication has been a persistent factor in these accidents. For example, the Korean Air Flight 801 crash was attributed to the pilot’s decision to land despite the junior officer’s disagreement, evidence of high power distance — a culture that denotes a heavily hierarchical society. Gladwell argues that this innate behavior of deep reverence towards elders and superiors highly contributes to cockpit miscommunication, especially on planes designed to be flown by two equals. Unsurprisingly, it has been found that the safest airlines are often from countries whose cultures do not value strict hierarchies."
https://www.cnbc.com/2013/07/09/korean-culture-may-offer-clu...
https://leonogas.medium.com/thinking-beyond-cultural-legacy-...
In reality, if you take extreme assumptions about most situations, counterexamples are bound to appear. But the cases we usually talk about tend to be about 'boundary issues'. things that happen near a certain line.
Your example is actually a typical pathology of East Asian culture. The ideal is what I described, but when it doesn't work ideally, it leads to uncritical acceptance of a superior's orders
If you take extreme examples for any situation, there are many difficult points. Conversely, we can't say that extreme cases never occur. So it's more accurate to say that I'm speaking based on cases that fall within the general distribution.
You brought up a counterexample to my point, but that's actually a problem that frequently materializes in East Asian societies. I have no intention of denying that. But what I'm describing is the ideal theory.
As always, finding the balance is the difficult part.
There are things that managers are good at and things that their staff are good at. For technical roles, a manager doesn't need to be superior to their staff when it comes to technical decisions - in fact if they are, it implies a problem.
Once you start viewing work as a collaborative exercise, a lot of these problems disappear.
Steve Jobs famously said, "I don't hire smart people to tell them what to do. I hire them to tell me what to do". He didn't always live up to that but his point was valid.
Management is all about choices with limited information - there is rarely one clear and obvious route forward, but a strategy of following all routes simultaneously will lead to failure as there needs to be focus.
So somebody has to make that choice and then drive that focus through the organisation.
This can be very difficult when the choice isn't clear and obvious - as lots of smart people will have different views.
That's the art of management - you need to make the right choices most of the time. and when you've made the wrong one correct quickly, but you also need to be able to get the organisation to rally behind that choice, even if not everyone agrees.