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Posted by skogstokig 2 days ago

Ask for no, don't ask for yes (2022)(www.mooreds.com)
188 points | 90 commentspage 2
Stratoscope 2 days ago|
Hello $BOSS!

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?

chrisra 1 day ago||
In general, the harder it is to undo and the broader the consequence, the more you need to check.
ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago||
This is something that I've always believed. It's not new advice.

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.

latexr 2 days ago|
> It's not new advice.

It will be new to someone.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

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.

ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago||
Good point. I didn't mean to be dismissive.
dools 2 days ago||
This was in my staff documentation and it’s now in my AGENTS.md: tell don’t ask.

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.

EGreg 2 days ago||
Does this also work when asking someone out? Or raising capital?

Answer: no, because you need the other person to actually do something.

These kinds of things work when you’re already in a relationship.

badlibrarian 2 days ago|
If it didn't work sometimes (in other cases), we wouldn't call them sociopaths.
reader9274 2 days ago||
This is what advertising companies do to use your data unless you explicitly request to opt out. Hasn't worked out well
unstatusthequo 2 days ago||
Covered in Chris Voss book Never Split the Difference. Works well in practice based on my own personal experiences.
tuatoru 2 days ago||
Far canal, why is this news?
davidmurdoch 2 days ago||
Another great Life Pro Tip is "Never accept 'no' from someone who can't say 'yes'."
roughly 1 day ago||
Learned this one dealing with bureaucracy at uni - and don’t leave someone’s office until you know where you’re going next. “I can’t do that” - no problem, who can, and where can I find them?
metabagel 2 days ago||
Incapable of saying yes or not authorized to approve?
davidmurdoch 2 days ago||
I don't think "incapable of saying yes" is a thing.
kstrauser 2 days ago||
Some people are so terrified of saying yes, having it go wrong, and getting blamed for the consequences that they come across as pathologically incapable of saying yes. I have worked for such people. Briefly.
vzaliva 2 days ago||
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SwtCyber 1 day ago|
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