I think something that really helped with this was realizing that fundamentally it did not really matter if I won an argument, especially in a workplace. Because really I was just giving my opinion, and it's not like I was smarter than anyone else.
There is no technical disagreement in basically any context that if were to "lose" that would result in my life getting worse. I'm sure other people may feel differently, but this reframes these arguments as what they should be - technical discussions, and if a person is particularly passionate I can use that as a sign to trust them.
Because really I was just giving my opinion, and it's not like I was smarter than anyone else.
I think even in your proposed situation, "losing" an argument doesn't actually mean that your being on the hook for overnight support of a system is a problem, or should make you feel differently about the stakes for that argument. Mostly because you may very well be wrong. Or because actually both sides of the argument are valid and the actual impact of the decision comes out in the wash. Or because this decision basically doesn't matter compared to the big chunk-o-tech-debt that actually causes all of your outages. Or, or, or...
Lots of decisions in software engineering matter quite a lot. But that doesn't mean that winning an argument is in and of itself particularly important. If you lose, and you were right, and you can clearly see how your on call pages have gone up dramatically since that decision, then you have a remarkably clear case for reversing the decision. And if all of that happens without you appearing vindictive, because you didn't die on the original hill, then maybe in the future you'll end up having your opinion respected somewhat more. And if not, then maybe the problem is that your team doesn't respect your opinion — which is rather independent from whether you're losing all of your arguments.
I've had a mixture for sure: times when my life would get worse if I lost, and times when it felt that way but I was just over-reacting or already burnt out, or other kinds of team dysfunction like poor ownership.
Tech work can be a double-edged sword: we often get a lot more power to choose what we work on than other kinds of workers, but we also get a lot of variance in the kinds of work we might be expected to do. Like that time my employer started a lawsuit with Amazon and decided that meant everyone should migrate to Azure. That's still in my job description, but a migration like that could be soul-crushing. I left for unrelated reasons, but I was very fortunate to have the ability to leave and still pay rent, unlike many other fields.
Isn't that exactly the attitude from the article and what the person you're replying to are critiquing?
If you assume you're right in every conversation, then yes, every decision feels vital. But if your colleagues are roughly as smart as you but coming at things from different perspectives (which seems likely, statistically speaking) then you're probably going to be wrong roughly as often as you're going to be right. Irritatingly, you can't tell in advance which times are which, so it makes sense to be humble about all your opinions because you never know which ones are actually going to turn out to be bad ideas.
(The corollary of this is that you're going to be right roughly as often as you're going to be wrong, which means that it makes sense to also be confident about all your opinions because you don't know which ones will turn out to be good ideas either.)
Of course, this implies that you trust your team reasonably well, which is what most of the article expands on (and well!): how you can build trust in a team, how you can address conflicts in a healthy way, etc. If you don't have that trust, then maybe it is easier to just assume you're right in every case and then you're back to square one. But you're also going to be less effective now, because everyone in the team is going to be vehemently arguing for decisions that, roughly half the time, are going to be wrong.
The fact is 99.9999% of technical disagreements have absolutely no effect on the success of a company, and if your opinion mattered that much to effect things so dramatically you'd be in a position where you could just tell people what to do
mplant | 8 hours ago
I think something that really helped with this was realizing that fundamentally it did not really matter if I won an argument, especially in a workplace. Because really I was just giving my opinion, and it's not like I was smarter than anyone else.
There is no technical disagreement in basically any context that if were to "lose" that would result in my life getting worse. I'm sure other people may feel differently, but this reframes these arguments as what they should be - technical discussions, and if a person is particularly passionate I can use that as a sign to trust them.
Student | 7 hours ago
If you’re on the hook for overnight support of a system you might feel differently.
smoores | 7 hours ago
I think even in your proposed situation, "losing" an argument doesn't actually mean that your being on the hook for overnight support of a system is a problem, or should make you feel differently about the stakes for that argument. Mostly because you may very well be wrong. Or because actually both sides of the argument are valid and the actual impact of the decision comes out in the wash. Or because this decision basically doesn't matter compared to the big chunk-o-tech-debt that actually causes all of your outages. Or, or, or...
Lots of decisions in software engineering matter quite a lot. But that doesn't mean that winning an argument is in and of itself particularly important. If you lose, and you were right, and you can clearly see how your on call pages have gone up dramatically since that decision, then you have a remarkably clear case for reversing the decision. And if all of that happens without you appearing vindictive, because you didn't die on the original hill, then maybe in the future you'll end up having your opinion respected somewhat more. And if not, then maybe the problem is that your team doesn't respect your opinion — which is rather independent from whether you're losing all of your arguments.
[OP] cetera | 7 hours ago
I've had a mixture for sure: times when my life would get worse if I lost, and times when it felt that way but I was just over-reacting or already burnt out, or other kinds of team dysfunction like poor ownership.
Tech work can be a double-edged sword: we often get a lot more power to choose what we work on than other kinds of workers, but we also get a lot of variance in the kinds of work we might be expected to do. Like that time my employer started a lawsuit with Amazon and decided that meant everyone should migrate to Azure. That's still in my job description, but a migration like that could be soul-crushing. I left for unrelated reasons, but I was very fortunate to have the ability to leave and still pay rent, unlike many other fields.
Johz | 4 hours ago
Isn't that exactly the attitude from the article and what the person you're replying to are critiquing?
If you assume you're right in every conversation, then yes, every decision feels vital. But if your colleagues are roughly as smart as you but coming at things from different perspectives (which seems likely, statistically speaking) then you're probably going to be wrong roughly as often as you're going to be right. Irritatingly, you can't tell in advance which times are which, so it makes sense to be humble about all your opinions because you never know which ones are actually going to turn out to be bad ideas.
(The corollary of this is that you're going to be right roughly as often as you're going to be wrong, which means that it makes sense to also be confident about all your opinions because you don't know which ones will turn out to be good ideas either.)
Of course, this implies that you trust your team reasonably well, which is what most of the article expands on (and well!): how you can build trust in a team, how you can address conflicts in a healthy way, etc. If you don't have that trust, then maybe it is easier to just assume you're right in every case and then you're back to square one. But you're also going to be less effective now, because everyone in the team is going to be vehemently arguing for decisions that, roughly half the time, are going to be wrong.
LenFalken | an hour ago
Your life gets worse if your company that employs you dies.
mplant | an hour ago
The fact is 99.9999% of technical disagreements have absolutely no effect on the success of a company, and if your opinion mattered that much to effect things so dramatically you'd be in a position where you could just tell people what to do
bitshift | 46 minutes ago
Got me smiling right at the start.