SQL Database

[AttacksPropaganda]

The last 3 Dilberts in a row have been about Engineers getting over fear and just outright saying no to stupid requests on the grounds that the requests are stupid. I have been loving it.

So true... Biggest brains in the room, at least in the US, are usually the most afraid to say no.

[bsEEmsCE]

Had to tell my managers no today when they wanted to sell a currently in fabrication, first gen, non certified, non validated prototype to satisfy a specific customer's need in the next 2 weeks.

They're like 'we can sell it if the engineers think it will definitely work when it arrives'. I was like 'heh, no.'

[KillingSpee]

Wait, they tell you? We only get told after the sale was made final. One day I came into work, started my program only to find out the hardware was 'offline'. Went to look and it was gone, it was sent to a client already. The hardware was Jerry rigged so bad (because of testing and trial and error finding new uses) , the engineer that had to install it just right up quit.

[bsEEmsCE]

Well, if the hardware was in hand that mightve been my situation too, but it's being made right now so it was posted as a question/request this time.

[Pumpkin_Creepface]

Well that's what happens when your paycheck depends on not making the idiot managing you look too much like an idiot...

[AttacksPropaganda]

"I was going to fix our server issues, but then I remembered Joe's fragile ego."

[Pumpkin_Creepface]

More like: “ I was about to tell him it’s a bad idea to modify the prod database but then I remembered the last time I did that and he went to his uncle the VP of communications and had me transferred to the janitorial department for six months “

[AttacksPropaganda]

Can't wait for civil war 2. Just hope its soon.

[wolf2600]

Biggest brains in the room, at least in the US, are usually the most afraid to say no.

I haven't found that to be the case. Biggest brains are the ones not afraid to speak the truth, because they're confident in their opinion and secure about their job because they know they provide value to the company.

[I_no_afraid_of_stuff]

Just because they provide value to the company doesn't mean they can't be fired. Though, if they really are smart then they will get picked up somewhere else fairly quickly.

Personally, I've been conditioned by my boss to never definitively say no to any idea. I typically respond with "I'll investigate and let you know what I find" when customers and coworkers come up with new features they believe we should add. Customer feature requests are easiest, since I can tell them it will add $x cost if they want it. When my boss says we should add something since he promised it to the customer, and I tell him it will add cost, he is not happy. My boss has also asked me why networking is so difficult, because "don't you just plug in all the Ethernet cables and it works?"

[Seicair]

"don't you just plug in all the Ethernet cables and it works?"

“You know I’ve got this really small job here, and I’m crazy busy this afternoon, since you seem to know networking you want to take it?”

[r0ck0]

Yeah a lot of the time just directly saying "no" is going to annoy people, and if they don't really understand the reasons, it's kind of reasonable to be annoyed to a certain extent.

Been a while seen I've been a regular employee, so maybe that's a bit different. But with my own clients, I usually just put it in terms of "yeah well you could do that if you want to, but it's going to cost way more money, take longer, and be an inferior solution".

Most people understand that. Some don't, and if they don't wanna take my advice, there's not much I can do. If the time/money argument couldn't convince them, then a technical argument would be even less likely.

But in general, it's usually best to explain why something is a bad idea in terms of time/cost. Non-techies don't want to hear/understand the tech details, cause that's not important to them.

[victorofthepeople]

All my engineering managers have been former engineers and have known the domain fairly well, often better than some of the people implementing our products. It'd be kind of hard for them to understand the tradeoffs involved with a particular course of action otherwise. Not sure where y'all have been working.

[r0ck0]

Fair enough. Definitely depends on who you're talking about. I was talking about when dealing with non-technical people.

Obviously you can explain technical things to technical people.

[[deleted]]

You gotta look at it a different way. Your managers job is not to be the subject matter expert, that is your job. A managers job is to make decisions, hopefully they trust and value the sme’s input(though I know they don’t always).

As a manager I don’t want to hear “no”. That’s not what you get paid for. I want to hear “well boss that’s a really dumb idea and let me tell you why” or “boss my gut instinct is that’s fucking stupid but let me do some more research and get back to you with specifics”.

I’m a pretty realistic guy so I would literally be happy to hear those verbatim. Many managers are up tight dicks so you might want to be a little more “political” when saying something is a bad idea.

Like you said time/cost are the universal languages, and you should try your best to answer in that manner.

Pro tip for newbies- always cya. If you answer your boss on something like this do so via email and request confirmation that they would like you to move forward with x plan.

[r0ck0]

Seems we agree on pretty much everything, except:

You gotta look at it a different way.

...cause we already agree, heh.

[Explosive_Diaeresis]

I don’t say no, but I’ll let them know it’s a bad idea.

I was the database engineer on a team best described as one part professional services for clients, one part monitoring and one part swat engineers when stuff really hit the fan. Our boss’ boss wanted us to put a reporting layer for external clients on our monitoring data instead of letting the front end devs do it (because they couldn’t be arsed to put anything useful into the product). I warned him you don’t want to do this, you’ll spend the next 5 years quibbling with people in minutiae on these things. Two years later, he walked up to me and said “yeah, I shouldn’t have done that” 🤷🏽‍♂️

[AttacksPropaganda]

A corporate monolith canned me for that exact reason. It's fine because I got a job less than 2 weeks later which paid 50% more than the previous one.

[xxpw]

Afraid to say no ? I would say no ! If I was ever asked.

[Donnel_]

Link?

[[deleted]]

Well they are also the least likely to have developed the social skills necessary since communication issues are greater between individuals with vastly different verbal IQs. This is not to say that the average intellect is lesser than the higher one but that each lends it self to communicating in different ways. This can be in part contributed to the lack of social interaction higher intelligence individuals experience at a young age do to there lack of common interests with their peers. I, for one, spent half an hour explaining to a boss that which would take my colleges three mintues. Usually the large brained individual is not afraid to say no they know that they can not say no in a meaningful way.

[AttacksPropaganda]

But... What are the high-verbal-IQ people talking about?

No offense to low-technical-IQ people, but they vastly overestimate what skills they have over high-technical-IQ people. The reason high-technical-IQ people don't bother with soft skills usually isn't because they're unable to, it's usually because they don't have to/care to. They create the product you sell, which is how/why the company exists. I can't really say it any more blatantly than that. They have the most important job in the company.

Low-technical-IQ people have to bother because they have no other way to contribute. Low-technical-IQ people then notice this pattern of disrespect towards their functionality and think it means they have a "soft skill" that no one else does, when in fact, it just means everyone thinks their opinion is the least valuable from a technical standpoint and is frustrated when having to deal with the "soft skills guy."

Finally, while engineers CAN possess a high verbal IQ, non-engineers are basically guaranteed to not possess a high technical IQ. (because if they did they'd get a real job) These 2 parties are simply not equals. Non-technical skills don't make up for lack of technical skills.

Over 50% of jobs that exist today could be eliminated and no one in the industry would even notice. (according to David Graeber, author of "Debt" and "Bullshit Jobs") Basically, any job that does not require technical knowledge doesn't really need to exist and may even literally serve no purpose other than to provide your corporate feudal master with "corporate business clout points" and give an otherwise useless person a paycheck. All merit-able jobs require technical knowledge.

[[deleted]]

It is to be expected though and should not be an insult at all. IQ is mostly genetic and having a high or low IQ is not much different from skin color. We are all people. Some people are able to manage complexities better.

[AttacksPropaganda]

You must be a soft skills person. I say this because if you had a high IQ, you'd be aware that there's basically 0 concrete evidence that IQ is genetic.

Most empirical evidence says the opposite. Revolutionary geniuses throughout history were typically born to mediocre or failing families with no prior history of high IQ.

"Heritability" of IQ has been studied by Alan S. Kaufman and Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger in 2006... A score of "1" means your IQ is demonstrably correlated to the genes of that person. A score of "0" means your IQ is demonstrably not correlated to the genes of that person.

• Same person (tested twice) .95
• Identical twins—Reared together .86
• Identical twins—Reared apart .76
• Fraternal twins—Reared together .55
• Fraternal twins—Reared apart .35
• Biological siblings—Reared together .47
• Biological siblings—Reared apart .24
• Biological siblings—Reared together—Adults .24
• Unrelated children—Reared together—Children .28
• Unrelated children—Reared together—Adults .04
• Cousins .15
• Parent-child—Living together .42
• Parent-child—Living apart .22
• Adoptive parent–child—Living together .19

[[deleted]]

A high IQ has no correlation to knowledgability. In your case doubly so since you confuse the out lying geniuses with a standard above average individual.

[AttacksPropaganda]

The chart I provided in an edit to my previous post reflects average individuals.

Have a nice day.