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Depends.

I’d rather know, up front, that someone isn’t open to my PoV, so I don’t waste time, trying to give help, where it is not wanted.

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ghaff 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I worked for a CEO once and I really disagreed with a decision—admittedly probably too late to take another path. He talked about it with me. Obviously neither was going to change the other’s mind. So we agreed to disagree and moved on.

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ChrisMarshallNY 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Sounds like a good manager. It's the manager's decision, but also, their Accountability.

One thing that I've learned, over the years, is that folks don't take me seriously. I'm pretty sure that it's my affect. I come across as a bit "goofy," and open, which is often interpreted as "naive," or "stupid." Used to really bug me, but I've learned to deal with it.

Anyway, I'm pretty good at "playing the tape through to the end," and anticipating long-term ramifications. These are often unwelcome observations, in the planning phase of things.

I've learned to start quietly preparing remediations, for when the wheels inevitably come off. I guess that it's nice to be a "hero of the day," but it would have been even better, if we hadn't gotten to this point in the first place. Remediation is not as good as Prevention or Mitigation.

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ghaff 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, he was basically the guy who hired me. They had been small clients in the past and we liked each other. Part of me was saying what’s done is done but I felt I had to give it a shot so I emailed him and we had a cordial phone call. Which is more than a lot of CEOs of moderately large companies would do. And it says a lot about the company culture that I never felt I was risking being fired.

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ChrisMarshallNY 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> And it says a lot about the company culture that I never felt I was risking being fired.

Yes. I feel that insecure upper managers are a pox on the tech industry (probably other industries, as well). They create a really toxic culture.

I used to work for a Japanese company. My manager didn't speak English, and was 7,000 miles away, but was willing to listen to me. However, I had to deal with the way my interaction developed. Sometimes, the Japanese can be quite ... strident ... when they feel as if they are not being approached with respect.

They had a consensus-based style, which welcomed input from all levels, but would also be pretty brutal, to bad input.

Helped me to develop a habit of making sure all my ducks were in a row, before opening my mouth.

	▲	ghaff 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Relationships also matter. I worked directly for people who really feared this senior person for reasons I never really understood. But I knew how far I could push things and tell the exec they were just wrong. Which is probably one of the reasons they hired me. To be honest, I was probably in a position where if I pushed a bit too far I’d probably have been ok.