i think the reason this works is an implication that the article doesn't explicitly cover:
if you tell somebody you're going to to do something, you're not asking them to take responsibility. you're telling them that you're taking responsibility for whatever you're going to do. If you ask somebody's permission, you're asking them to take some portion of responsibility for what you're doing.
which is the same risk that the sibling comment is warning about - if you're trying to do this for things that you aren't ultimately responsible for, you're goign to piss people off. only take responsibility for things that are actually within your area of responsibility.
This is a point that tends to kill introverted/insecure people I think. They assume that asking for permission is making things easier for people, but there's a limit where you're not allowing others to delegate responsibility onto you. Your job is for others to not have to think about the things you take care of.
huh, that's an interesting perspective. I've never thought of it that way. This framing could explain some of the bullshit I went through with a politicking manager and a less experienced leader.
Personally, I tend to assume accountability for things I lead, but as a manager, of course, I am also responsible and accountable for my team; including both things I signed off on and things I didn't (because I entrusted that independence to them.) It's an interesting line to walk.
You can only take responsibility if you also have ownership. Large organizations very quickly become like communist state, nobody own anything and any individual action is suspicious.
Another reason is that you're making a choice for them.
We think we like more choices, but it's generally proven that having less makes it easier to decide.
One path is: "fuck sake, I need to review all of this and make an informed decision". The other is: "If I have time I'll check it otherwise who cares".
There's another benefit in the change of tone: you're preserving their authority, while at the same time making things easier.
This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
There's a big difference between "I'm going to put this into prod on tuesday unless you tell me otherwise" vs "I'm going to put a prototype together for review on Tuesday unless you tell me this is a waste of time"
> This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
Not really. The advice is prefixed with this context.
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to
Basically it's saying if it's your job to make this decision, but it's something where the boss needs to know (or you need them to know because you need a small amount of reassurance), then asking for "yes" fails to communicate your understanding in that regard.
Asking for "yes" says it's the boss's job to make this decision - but we're talking about decisions where you believe it's your job make it.
Huge disagree, as a manager. It depends on the thing, of course. If you're rushing into a giant re-architecture by Tuesday, that's dumb. If you have some change you want to make, go for it.
My default is to trust engineers based on my experience with and expectations for them. If they want input—anything from a deep review to a gut check—I'm happy to help. If you're looking for a gut check, this is a fine way to do it. It communicates your level of confidence, which is an important data point for me.
If someone is adding a GH action, do we need a prototype? Maybe! But also maybe not. Bias towards action. Not YOLOing, not hacked together crap, not vibe code merged without review. But I've found that great engineers are often more hamstrung by permission checks than the issues they're meant to prevent.
I have always used this method and my managers love me because they know I get important shit done without much supervision or needing dozens of planning meetings.
It doesn’t even feel like there is any leash at all.
Of course the company i work at isn’t extremely disfunctional and a growing startup, so once we move into enterprise territory it might change the culture and it’s more about saving your ass and less about doing actual work.
> This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
If abused.
I've used this a few times for things that are in my remit, or very close to, that need doing or there will may well be more problems down the line for me or the local team more generally. If there isn't a particular problem with the intended action, I'm removing the need for someone else to make a proper positive decision. It is particularly useful when things are getting delayed by too many cooks trying to season the broth, or when it is going to require out-of-hours work and I want to push things towards a timeframe convenient for me.
Of course there are some large caveats:
* You need to be trusted, i.e. have a record of doing things both right and well, being appropriately careful with back-out plans and such, and if there have ever been mistakes on your part you need to have owned and rectified them quickly. It isn't going to fly if you are new or otherwise unknown, etc.
* You have to be complete but concise in the description of what you are doing, including what your “oh, fuck” roll-back plans are.
* You have to include everyone relevant in the announcement of your planned action, and send the notification at a time when they are likely to read it before you do the do. If there is someone key missing and others notice they will stop you, and if they don't notice and something goes wrong you have lost your trusted status for quite some time for being deceptive.
* Be prepared to be told no. Check just before the appointed time, and delay yourself a little and check again in case of a last minute “shit, no, don't do that” if someone spots a problem with the plan a little late.
* You need to trust the others around you to speak up if there is a problem, though getting negative decision can be a lot easier than getting a positive one so this isn't the most important part of this point. The most important part is you need to trust them to speak up and not enjoy watching you make a mess so they can hang you out later :)
Though having been taken over by a larger company this year, I don't think I'll ever do this again because the layers of bullshit are just too vast for it to be a safe tactic. Younger me might still have taken the chance, but I have a healthier level of not giving a shit these days - instead of “I'm doing X at time Y unless you say no” because “I really should do X at time Y otherwise problems A, B & C will arise” and if I don't get the go-ahead and problems do arise I'm the one enjoying schadenfreude⁰ and demanding overtime rates if they want me to work extra to deal with issues due to not doing the thing.
--------
[0] I know this is a slightly unhealthy attitude, and this is one of the reasons that I'm increasingly thinking that I need a significant career change¹.
[1] the main two reasons being not being happy working remote², it isn't good for my mental health, and not caring to engage with A-bleedin'-I, two massive things that increasingly mark me as not fitting in with the dev industry.
[2] I know I'm fairly unusual here and it seems to work better for many (most?) people, no need to take this as an insult to those of you gleefully working on remote teams or wanting to and jealous of those that can!
Do NOT do this with your manager. The key part of this article is:
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to, it’s common to reach out and ask them for permission. Don’t. Don’t ask for a yes. Instead, offer a chance to say no, but with a deadline.
If something is not in scope for your responsibility, obviously you must ask for permission.
If something is in scope for your responsibility, then just do the thing.
If it's in some weird edge case where you "feel" it is "in scope for your position" but you "want a bit of reassurance", then pick a lane. Either do the thing or ask for permission. Probably default to asking for permission unless a knowledgeable colleague tells you it's your call.
But setting some kind of deadline for your manager to opt-out is extremely disrespectful. If I ever had a report try to pull a stunt like that, it would be the first thing we'd talk about in our next 1-1.
Because if you have a manager who usually responds promptly, then you can ask for permission and get a quick reply. "Asking for no" is not making it more convenient for your manager, it comes across as trying to usurp their authority. "Hey, I'm going to tell HR you gave approval for a raise unless I hear from you by noon." That's... just not how anything works.
And if you have a manager who often misses e-mails or takes forever to respond, then it comes across as trying to take advantage of that to do stuff they wouldn't approve, in a sneaky way.
This is a bad look in every possible situation. Do not do this.
Like, if you're a journalist telling a source you'll print the story unless you get a correction by a deadline, OK fine. If you're looping in a peer as a courtesy (NOT a manager), then OK. But with your manager? That's crazy.
I think missing from these conversations is the work environments involved. At a large company, a lot of what you said is true. At a startup, almost everything is in scope for everyone. I mean, someone has to do the thing. Part of the ask-telling is broadly communicating "I'm doing this unless someone else has already started on it or strongly wishes to do it themselves."
> And if you have a manager who often misses e-mails or takes forever to respond, then it comes across as trying to take advantage of that to do stuff they wouldn't approve, in a sneaky way.
I strongly disagree with that. Such a person is not a good manager. Their job is to be on top of things and keep their reports unblocked. If their reports are stuck waiting on them, or they claim ignorance of things they've been told about but neglected, they're not doing their job and have to be routed around.
It works with teams, when you have the authority to do something, but do a non-blocking check as a courtesy:
"Heads-up: I plan to delete the old scratch volume at Tue 14:00 ET, unless anyone objects before then. (It only contains the old Debian APT cache, and 974 copies of the same YouTube video.)"
This is one of the articles where I'm immediately grateful to the author to have written it down. Very good and easy to pick up point, actionable advice. I would just slightly modify it, don't create a time bomb. "I would like to... until date XY" should achieve the same effect -- not inviting bikeshedding or delaying action, sending "I got this" -- without pressurising anyone else for taking a decision or too much responsibility.
I've heard this called "lazy consensus". Basically, rather than say, "Is it OK if I do X?" Say, "I'm going to do X on date Y unless someone objects." Particularly useful as the number of stakeholders grows.
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.
This would work only in a high trust, structured environment. I know at my job if we said this it would be met with a likely scolding not to assume anything and to ask for a YES.
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.
i think the reason this works is an implication that the article doesn't explicitly cover:
if you tell somebody you're going to to do something, you're not asking them to take responsibility. you're telling them that you're taking responsibility for whatever you're going to do. If you ask somebody's permission, you're asking them to take some portion of responsibility for what you're doing.
which is the same risk that the sibling comment is warning about - if you're trying to do this for things that you aren't ultimately responsible for, you're goign to piss people off. only take responsibility for things that are actually within your area of responsibility.
Absolutely!
This is a point that tends to kill introverted/insecure people I think. They assume that asking for permission is making things easier for people, but there's a limit where you're not allowing others to delegate responsibility onto you. Your job is for others to not have to think about the things you take care of.
huh, that's an interesting perspective. I've never thought of it that way. This framing could explain some of the bullshit I went through with a politicking manager and a less experienced leader.
Personally, I tend to assume accountability for things I lead, but as a manager, of course, I am also responsible and accountable for my team; including both things I signed off on and things I didn't (because I entrusted that independence to them.) It's an interesting line to walk.
You can only take responsibility if you also have ownership. Large organizations very quickly become like communist state, nobody own anything and any individual action is suspicious.
*failed communist state
In proper function, ownership is an essential identity of any government.
I would love to hear an example of a successful communist state. You can even restrict it to a limited period in time (USSR 1959-1968 or something).
I promise that I will not try to discredit your answer. I'm just curious what people think.
But if you come back with "the communism I have in mind hasn't been tried yet" then I will definitely make fun of your answer.
The end goal of communism is supposed to be the elimination of government - a stateless, classless and functionally anarchist society.
Unsurprisingly no state which ever implemented communism ever took that part seriously.
There's many different communist philosophies.
Another reason is that you're making a choice for them.
We think we like more choices, but it's generally proven that having less makes it easier to decide.
One path is: "fuck sake, I need to review all of this and make an informed decision". The other is: "If I have time I'll check it otherwise who cares".
There's another benefit in the change of tone: you're preserving their authority, while at the same time making things easier.
This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
There's a big difference between "I'm going to put this into prod on tuesday unless you tell me otherwise" vs "I'm going to put a prototype together for review on Tuesday unless you tell me this is a waste of time"
> This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
Not really. The advice is prefixed with this context.
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to
Basically it's saying if it's your job to make this decision, but it's something where the boss needs to know (or you need them to know because you need a small amount of reassurance), then asking for "yes" fails to communicate your understanding in that regard.
Asking for "yes" says it's the boss's job to make this decision - but we're talking about decisions where you believe it's your job make it.
Well a prerequisite is knowing what you’re doing. If you don’t, then yeah, don’t use this approach.
Huge disagree, as a manager. It depends on the thing, of course. If you're rushing into a giant re-architecture by Tuesday, that's dumb. If you have some change you want to make, go for it.
My default is to trust engineers based on my experience with and expectations for them. If they want input—anything from a deep review to a gut check—I'm happy to help. If you're looking for a gut check, this is a fine way to do it. It communicates your level of confidence, which is an important data point for me.
If someone is adding a GH action, do we need a prototype? Maybe! But also maybe not. Bias towards action. Not YOLOing, not hacked together crap, not vibe code merged without review. But I've found that great engineers are often more hamstrung by permission checks than the issues they're meant to prevent.
Completely inverse to my lived experience.
I have always used this method and my managers love me because they know I get important shit done without much supervision or needing dozens of planning meetings. It doesn’t even feel like there is any leash at all.
Of course the company i work at isn’t extremely disfunctional and a growing startup, so once we move into enterprise territory it might change the culture and it’s more about saving your ass and less about doing actual work.
> This is great advice to become a pain in the ass that managers know they need to keep on a short leash.
If abused.
I've used this a few times for things that are in my remit, or very close to, that need doing or there will may well be more problems down the line for me or the local team more generally. If there isn't a particular problem with the intended action, I'm removing the need for someone else to make a proper positive decision. It is particularly useful when things are getting delayed by too many cooks trying to season the broth, or when it is going to require out-of-hours work and I want to push things towards a timeframe convenient for me.
Of course there are some large caveats:
* You need to be trusted, i.e. have a record of doing things both right and well, being appropriately careful with back-out plans and such, and if there have ever been mistakes on your part you need to have owned and rectified them quickly. It isn't going to fly if you are new or otherwise unknown, etc.
* You have to be complete but concise in the description of what you are doing, including what your “oh, fuck” roll-back plans are.
* You have to include everyone relevant in the announcement of your planned action, and send the notification at a time when they are likely to read it before you do the do. If there is someone key missing and others notice they will stop you, and if they don't notice and something goes wrong you have lost your trusted status for quite some time for being deceptive.
* Be prepared to be told no. Check just before the appointed time, and delay yourself a little and check again in case of a last minute “shit, no, don't do that” if someone spots a problem with the plan a little late.
* You need to trust the others around you to speak up if there is a problem, though getting negative decision can be a lot easier than getting a positive one so this isn't the most important part of this point. The most important part is you need to trust them to speak up and not enjoy watching you make a mess so they can hang you out later :)
Though having been taken over by a larger company this year, I don't think I'll ever do this again because the layers of bullshit are just too vast for it to be a safe tactic. Younger me might still have taken the chance, but I have a healthier level of not giving a shit these days - instead of “I'm doing X at time Y unless you say no” because “I really should do X at time Y otherwise problems A, B & C will arise” and if I don't get the go-ahead and problems do arise I'm the one enjoying schadenfreude⁰ and demanding overtime rates if they want me to work extra to deal with issues due to not doing the thing.
--------
[0] I know this is a slightly unhealthy attitude, and this is one of the reasons that I'm increasingly thinking that I need a significant career change¹.
[1] the main two reasons being not being happy working remote², it isn't good for my mental health, and not caring to engage with A-bleedin'-I, two massive things that increasingly mark me as not fitting in with the dev industry.
[2] I know I'm fairly unusual here and it seems to work better for many (most?) people, no need to take this as an insult to those of you gleefully working on remote teams or wanting to and jealous of those that can!
I've never seen anyone just "put something into prod" unless it was for a very small org.
Putting managers on babysitting duty is a workplace smell. A reckless dev is the least of your worries.
> I've never seen anyone just "put something into prod" unless it was for a very small org.
Missed the whole "move fast and break things" period?
No. Everyone else who survived was too busy building or fixing things.
I'm going to cause an expensive outage that will ruin the company, and our careers unless you say no to sugar in the coffee!!!!
Do NOT do this with your manager. The key part of this article is:
> When you have something you want to do and that you feel is in scope for your position, but you want a bit of reassurance or to let the boss know what you are up to, it’s common to reach out and ask them for permission. Don’t. Don’t ask for a yes. Instead, offer a chance to say no, but with a deadline.
If something is not in scope for your responsibility, obviously you must ask for permission.
If something is in scope for your responsibility, then just do the thing.
If it's in some weird edge case where you "feel" it is "in scope for your position" but you "want a bit of reassurance", then pick a lane. Either do the thing or ask for permission. Probably default to asking for permission unless a knowledgeable colleague tells you it's your call.
But setting some kind of deadline for your manager to opt-out is extremely disrespectful. If I ever had a report try to pull a stunt like that, it would be the first thing we'd talk about in our next 1-1.
Because if you have a manager who usually responds promptly, then you can ask for permission and get a quick reply. "Asking for no" is not making it more convenient for your manager, it comes across as trying to usurp their authority. "Hey, I'm going to tell HR you gave approval for a raise unless I hear from you by noon." That's... just not how anything works.
And if you have a manager who often misses e-mails or takes forever to respond, then it comes across as trying to take advantage of that to do stuff they wouldn't approve, in a sneaky way.
This is a bad look in every possible situation. Do not do this.
Like, if you're a journalist telling a source you'll print the story unless you get a correction by a deadline, OK fine. If you're looping in a peer as a courtesy (NOT a manager), then OK. But with your manager? That's crazy.
I think missing from these conversations is the work environments involved. At a large company, a lot of what you said is true. At a startup, almost everything is in scope for everyone. I mean, someone has to do the thing. Part of the ask-telling is broadly communicating "I'm doing this unless someone else has already started on it or strongly wishes to do it themselves."
> And if you have a manager who often misses e-mails or takes forever to respond, then it comes across as trying to take advantage of that to do stuff they wouldn't approve, in a sneaky way.
I strongly disagree with that. Such a person is not a good manager. Their job is to be on top of things and keep their reports unblocked. If their reports are stuck waiting on them, or they claim ignorance of things they've been told about but neglected, they're not doing their job and have to be routed around.
It works with teams, when you have the authority to do something, but do a non-blocking check as a courtesy:
"Heads-up: I plan to delete the old scratch volume at Tue 14:00 ET, unless anyone objects before then. (It only contains the old Debian APT cache, and 974 copies of the same YouTube video.)"
This is one of the articles where I'm immediately grateful to the author to have written it down. Very good and easy to pick up point, actionable advice. I would just slightly modify it, don't create a time bomb. "I would like to... until date XY" should achieve the same effect -- not inviting bikeshedding or delaying action, sending "I got this" -- without pressurising anyone else for taking a decision or too much responsibility.
I've heard this called "lazy consensus". Basically, rather than say, "Is it OK if I do X?" Say, "I'm going to do X on date Y unless someone objects." Particularly useful as the number of stakeholders grows.
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?
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.
> 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.
Good point. I didn't mean to be dismissive.
This is what advertising companies do to use your data unless you explicitly request to opt out. Hasn't worked out well
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.
This would work only in a high trust, structured environment. I know at my job if we said this it would be met with a likely scolding not to assume anything and to ask for a YES.
Some previous discussion:
2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144611
Covered in Chris Voss book Never Split the Difference. Works well in practice based on my own personal experiences.
Far canal, why is this news?
Another great Life Pro Tip is "Never accept 'no' from someone who can't say 'yes'."
Incapable of saying yes or not authorized to approve?
I don't think "incapable of saying yes" is a thing.
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.
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.
If it didn't work sometimes (in other cases), we wouldn't call them sociopaths.