Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture

http://recode.net/2014/01/01/can-do-vs-cant-do-culture/

by minimaxir • 13 years ago

342 129 13 years ago

abalashov3• 13 years ago

Ultimately, in 1842 English mathematician and astronomer George Biddel Airy advised the British Treasury that the Analytical Engine was “useless,” and that Babbage’s project should be abandoned. The government axed the project shortly after. It took the world until 1941 to catch up with Babbage’s original idea, after it was killed by skeptics and forgotten by all.

Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appeared?

There has always been utility for mechanical computation, but it's entirely possible that the world simply did not have an application for The Analytical Engine in the 1830s-1840s because other sectors of technology and the economy simply hadn't evolved to a level where they could effectively utilise it, especially given its physical properties--its size, scale, and energy consumption.

I don't know that for a fact, and can't effectively gauge the merits of my own suggestion, as I am neither a mathematician nor a competent historian of the intellectual, scientific and commercial zeitgeist of that period. But, for the sake of argument, is it not possible that this invention fell into the "interesting, novel, but useless" category?

Now, as for the telephone:

1) From the point of view of the telegraph establishment, it was a competitor;

2) Unintelligible voice really is useless. They just weren't far-sighted enough to see that the voice quality could improve, and indeed, it was a quite a long time before it did. Local loop quality improved first. Long-distance toll voice really didn't begin to sound good until digital trunking came along. Ask your grandparents or great-grandparents what coast-to-coast long distance phone calls sounded like in the era of analog lines and waveguide-type multiplexing technology;

3) In the heyday of the telegraph era, deploying lines was an extremely expensive and capital-intensive process, and it wasn't until other technological advancements that made possible various multiplexing and aggregation schemes (frequency-division, and later digital TDM) came along that the idea of running a copper line into every home really got to be realistic[1]. I agree that Western Union was a bit shortsighted in turning down this patent, but one could hardly blame them for thinking that universal telephone service wasn't economically possible. That's like selling a business idea today that relies on everyone having a 10 terabit fiber cable run to their home. Yeah, it's possible, and I have no doubt someone will make fun of me in a decade or two for naysaying it in any way, but would you invest $2bn in a related patent today?

What mistake did all these very smart men make in common? They focused on what the technology could not do at the time rather than what it could do and might be able to do in the future.

I don't disagree, but that needs to be fleshed out. No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically possible for the technology to someday do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one day. There is a need to realise a return in a usefully short period of time that is also unanimously acceptable to a coterie of investors with varying needs in terms of payoff time frame and patience.

Thus, you need a practical plan for getting to point B, making the technology do X. Even the most far-fetched, high-risk, R&D-driven ventures entail a proposal to concretely deploy and commercialise technology in a period that is usefully short and politically palatable, and that means everyone involved is somewhat constrained to what can be practically envisaged in terms of today's possibilities. One can make some leaps of faith, some intelligent extrapolations and some prescient forecasts, but ultimately, it's something expressed largely in the observational language and ontology of today.

Thus, I can't bring myself to fault someone for doubting, in 1995, that the consumer web is going to be what it is today, or even be what it was six or seven years later, in the early 2000s. It was possible--perhaps even reasonable--to suppose so, but would you have bet the farm on it? Your retirement savings? I'm not sure I would have (not that I have a farm or retirement savings, pero bueno).

[1] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=451163...

firebones2• 13 years ago

Both seem to be cases suffering from a horizon problem.

In Airy's case, the benefits of the Analytical Engine may not have been realizable in the area extending to the horizon of his ability to make recommendations. Had he been making recommendations with a 100-150 year timeframe, perhaps he might have been more generous.

The telephone case is more damnable, and reads like a combination of a short horizon for ROI combined with Innovator's Dilemma.

A lot of pragmatic negativity is simply evaluators making very rational recommendations based on a time horizon in which they are both technically correct and for which they are given incentive to be correct. Extend the horizon (stretch the time) or change the incentive (change it from spending today's cash flow to an investment for the long term) and the evaluations may change as well.

protomyth• 13 years ago

"The telephone case is more damnable, and reads like a combination of a short horizon for ROI combined with Innovator's Dilemma."

I think it was a bit simpler than that. I really don't think they understood how much more enabling voice[1] was over morse code. It really seems like they didn't get the model would change via voice because you didn't need the morse code operators.

1) they mentioned voice quality in the report and it sounds like they weren't willing to be fix it as part of a NIH mentality

smacktoward• 13 years ago

No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically possible for the technology to someday do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one day.

I think the real trick here is to learn how to distinguish between objections that are just examples of people not getting it, and objections that really do point up a fundamental problem you will have to overcome or find a way around in order to succeed. This can be trickier than it sounds.

A common mistake advocates for new technologies make is to fall in love with their new toy and dismiss any skepticism of its prospects as examples of cluelessness -- often with glib responses like the one in the OP, "don't hate, create" (ugh). Not everyone who comes to you with a critique is a "hater." Some of them are coming to you because they have learned something through hard experience that they think will be helpful to you. Ignoring those people can lead you to walk right into the same well-hidden minefields that have blown up countless other bold explorers over the years. So there's value in learning how to spot the one guy in the crowd of people telling you to watch where you step who's sporting a peg leg.

abalashov3• 13 years ago

Indeed. Also, about "haters":

It'd be nice if the tech startup community looked like the OP imagines it, with innovative companies boldly challenging ingrained assumptions and disrupting conventional wisdom with forward-thinking solutions to hard problems worth solving.

I think a lot of the "hating" is directed at the latest pump-and-dump social plugin or other VC-funded sausage party. The lack of mood emoticons on Twitter is not a problem worth solving, and failure to see its utility is not for a paucity of vision or ambition.

guiambros• 13 years ago

It's a fine line.

There's a world of difference between skeptics and haters, with the latter not deserving comments.

Some skepticism may be indeed healthy and comes naturally with experience. But it's also easy (particularly for the curious and well educated types, like the HN crowd) to become overly skeptic and jaded with time.

The problem with skeptics is that they tend to default to "yeah, saw that before", which makes you more conservative and ready to shut down others' ideas y. That's why innovation is often associated with people with limited experience in the field, as the Steve Jobs no-people-with-phone-experience-on-the-iPhone-team story above.

The hard part (for me, at least) is to always balance a healthy dose of skepticism, and still think outside the conventional way, and keep a can-do attitude.

mtrimpe• 13 years ago

From the perspective of the advice-giver you can still choose how to phrase your hard-learned lessons though.

Over the past few years I've learned to never try to shoot down someone's passion.

At most I'll acknowledge that what they're trying to do is going to be difficult, but the brunt of my communication will be focused on what I believe will give them the best shot at achieving their objective.

Unless they're betting the house, bank or their marriage on a truly hare-brained scheme of course.

dreamfactory2• 13 years ago

Think about any big project you've been a part of. With the benefit of hindsight, is it not true to say that you might well not have taken them on in the first place if you'd known what would be involved?

kamaal• 13 years ago

The point is this, person who built the first brick never realized Pyramids could be built using them.

Aloha5• 13 years ago

"3) In the heyday of the telegraph era, deploying lines was an extremely expensive and capital-intensive process, and it wasn't until other technological advancements that made possible various multiplexing and aggregation schemes (frequency-division, and later digital TDM) came along that the idea of running a copper line into every home really got to be realistic[1]. I agree that Western Union was a bit shortsighted in turning down this patent, but one could hardly blame them for thinking that universal telephone service wasn't economically possible. That's like selling a business idea today that relies on everyone having a 10 terabit fiber cable run to their home. Yeah, it's possible, and I have no doubt someone will make fun of me in a decade or two for naysaying it in any way, but would you invest $2bn in a related patent today?"

I disagree - Multiplexing didn't play a significant role in the local loop until the 1980's. There were multiplexing techniques for toll lines prior to the paper you cite - look up phantom circuits. [1]

If you want to check out about what drove the creation of the telephone network check out "Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System" [2], its a great book on how local toll traffic (among other things) drove the creation of the telephone network.

Western Union didn't see the future in the telephone network because it disagreed with its existing model - wich is to say office to office messages - also their network was multiplexed from very early, telephones for practical reasons couldn't be until the invention of the vacuum tube.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_circuit

[2] http://surface.syr.edu/books/18/

abalashov3• 13 years ago

I was given to understand that primitive multiplexing of interoffice trunks was quite essential to proliferation of universal service. But I'll definitely take the book recommendation, thanks!

ScottBurson• 13 years ago

Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appeared?

Oh, but it would have been very useful! Recall that one of the first uses of mechanical calculators was to produce tables for aiming artillery. They certainly had artillery in 1830! And precision aiming would surely have been valuable.

Other uses are likely as well -- astronomical calculations for navigation, perhaps; tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions, which were already being produced by hand; probably more.

Maybe in 1500 it wouldn't have been so useful, but by 1800 I'm quite certain it would have been very useful indeed.

_delirium• 13 years ago

I kind of wish the startup community looked like the picture painted in this post. :)

More audacity and innovation, less audacity-lacking "innovation" of the form, how to get users to click ads more often and exit this company for a multiple ASAP.

fudged714• 13 years ago

I see this all the time in the consumer 3D printing space. Sometimes high tech people act like laggards. "I can't make a metal part on my desk, so it's useless!" "okay, we're almost there, but how about you look at the progress in this industry and all the other applications that we CAN do right now!"

Crito• 13 years ago

The state of metal printing is much better than many people suspect, though of course the state of the art in metal printers are not exactly Rep-Raps: http://blog.solidconcepts.com/industry-highlights/worlds-fir...

fudged714• 13 years ago

For sure, there are a bunch of industrial grade metal printers.

On the desktop, the Vader printer seems pretty dangerous to have in a home (plus, possibly being vaporware). Then there's the Mini Metal Maker which uses clay, but you need a kiln. And actually there is an arc welding RepRap now, but the parts are low quality and again dangerous.

iamwil• 13 years ago

I hear this all the time as well, Tom. Most people don't understand at all how things are made, and that most of the things around us are made from plastics, not metal.

Even then, 3D printing is just weird enough, outside the scope of the experience of most people, that unless you've done hand-on work in it, it's hard to see the value.

fudged714• 13 years ago

Absolutely. This will be another big year for 3D printing coverage in the media so hopefully educating the public continues. And it almost seems like schools are the best place for 3D printers because there isn't the barrier of expectations and criticisms from adults.

chiph• 13 years ago

James Burke (BBC presenter and historian) said in his "Connections" series that around the late 1960's, things made of plastic became their "own things".

Previously, items made of plastic had to imitate some other existing thing for them to be accepted. Notebook covers had to imitate leather, complete with fake stitching. Telephones had to look like the older ones made of Phenol resin. And so on.

3D printing is at that stage right now. We're using it to imitate items made in traditional ways, and not treating it as a new process in it's own right. But given time, people will adopt it as something totally distinct from subtractive manufacturing.

starky• 13 years ago

I'm probably somewhat the person you are complaining about here. The current desktop 3D printers are pretty useless for anything functional (but fine for initial aesthetic models). All these people have grand ideas of being able to print functional products at their desk and there are some significant technical challenges that need to be solved yet. I don't believe that any of the current printing methods are ever going to get to the point where typical consumers will truly be happy with them, especially when compared to injection molded parts. I think the technology that may eventually accomplish what I consider to be fully functional will not look at all like we have today and it at least 15-20 years away.

Joeri2• 13 years ago

On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a continuous path from the current 3D printing technology to the eventual mass market technology.

I see strong parallels to the early history of inkjet printers. From the 1976 IBM 4640 "ink jet" to the Thinkjet took 8 years, but the technology shows a clear lineage. Inkjet printers struggled with many of the same teething issues. See this 1985 article explaining the challenges: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

That just depends on what functions you need.

I recently mounted a 3D printer, because I had a need for it. Now, some parts for my design are stopped at customs, so I still didn't use it (except for a small fixing at home), but I already have a new project that will need the printer.

lmm2• 13 years ago

While 3D printing is a cool thing, the hype it's received has been entirely out of proportion with what has been delivered (so far). So I think it's reasonable to be a bit negative.

austenallred• 13 years ago

I love the comment from Robert Scoble:

"My friend Andy Grignon worked for Steve Jobs and was on a very small team building the original iPhone. Steve told him "sorry, you can not hire anyone who has worked on a phone before."

Why not? For exactly the reasons laid out here. He didn't want his team to find out what they were attempting to do was "impossible." Andy learned that when he went to AT&T to pitch them on what became visual voice mail. Andy and his team thought it was possible. The AT&T folks thought they were nuts. It took lots of work by Steve Jobs to convince AT&T to try."

Aloha5• 13 years ago

Not all telecom people are sticks in the mud, that said modern at&t (SBC) is not known for being progressive, forward looking or flexible.

mathattack• 13 years ago

They are too big and mature to be reinventing the future. For better or worse, the modern AT&T came about by Southwestern Bell being the most disciplined of the baby bells. While other telecoms invested in pie in the sky projects that didn't work, SBC invested in operations and financial discipline. Their increased market cap relative to size allowed them to buy their less efficient competitors. They won on efficiency, not product development.

grecy• 13 years ago

I work at a telcom. The vast majority of people are sticks in the mud, and those that aren't are leaving, fast.

kenjackson2• 13 years ago

Steve was probably very correct here. The thinking at the time at places like RIM was that the iPhone would not technically work -- even after they saw it. Capacitive displays weren't ready. A full screen display would drain the battery. On-screen keyboards were unusable.

The great thing about "yes, if..." is that the discussion continues. People drill into the "if". "No, because ..." tends to end the discussion. "Oh, that will drain battery life? OK, lets not consider this any further."

mech4bg• 13 years ago

That Alexander Bell quote sounded way too good to be real, looks like I wasn't the only person to think that, some interesting sleuthing:

http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest...

Joeri2• 13 years ago

The interesting thing is that apparently the kernel is true, but the actual quote is invented. It's a shame that people in the real world rarely give us quotes ready to be made into a movie.

elwell2• 13 years ago

When I'm overworked or simply lazy, and my co-founders want to add some feature, it becomes a "can't do" culture pretty fast. Yes, I'm the only technical co-founder.

seivan• 13 years ago

Not being snarky, but what domain knowledge do they have that you can't get?

elwell2• 13 years ago

My two co-founders handle the business aspects of company, though there is some overlap between our roles. Is that an answer to your question?

lsc• 13 years ago

eh, with business... it's not so much what skills you can't get... as what you don't want to do.

I'm all for helping technical people negotiate from a strong position... but personally, were I able to send messages back in time to advise myself before going in to it? I would advise taking on a business person.

It's a lot of work, and perhaps more importantly, while business people /say/ they have this "give 110%" or "can-do" attitude, in reality? if it looks like you aren't going to make money, they are gone in a flash. And frankly? that's a good thing.

tlb• 13 years ago

A fine editorial. Stirring. It has inspired me to not write off recode simply because 90% of what's on their front page today is crap.

xux• 13 years ago

The article was written by Ben Horowitz.

smokeyj• 13 years ago

Looking at you Krugman.

zach• 13 years ago

The economist who helped Walt Disney's theme park dream become what it is today[1] said that the most important thing he learned through it all was the profound difference between a "no, because" person and a "yes, if" person.

If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full of them.

Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.

A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software! We can do anything!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with that person on your team?

[1] https://d23.com/harrison-price/

shuaib• 13 years ago

Where then does the "learn to say 'no!'" attitude comes in if we are to say "yes, if..." to every idea coming our way? How to find the right balance between being a "can do" person, and NOT being the over-committer?

swalsh• 13 years ago

If I was to pull a rubber band back a small bit, and let go, it will fly a small ways. If I pull it back too far, it might break. However if I pull it back as far as it can go right before the breaking point, then let go the rubber band will fly across the room.

these "no because," people are a common resistance to new ideas. In engineers, they're almost the default. It's much easier to say no; to say yes is to deal with an increasingly larger amount of resistance. However, that resistance is also what makes the idea go far.

gizzlon2• 13 years ago

Weinberg talks about relevant things in "The Secrets of Consulting". Unfortunately I don't exactly have perfect memory, but it's something like:

- Don't say no to clients "crazy" demands, just calculate what it would actually cost, or what you would need to do what they ask, and quote them that.

- A good price is when you are OK either way: You're OK if they say yes, and OK if they say no.

michh• 13 years ago

The risk with saying "Yes, if.." is that a lot of managers (or clients or whatever) stop listening after the word "Yes".

With "No, unless ...", it's a different story. Then success is dependant on the conditions mentioned and they're much more likely to do their part in making sure those conditions are met. If you said "Yes, if" they'll often just remember you promised you could do it and leave it at that.

thirdsight• 13 years ago

Exactly this.

I had the misfortune of working with a salesperson who only read the "yes" part in an email and sold a lemon to a client for not enough cash.

I protested immediately after the sale (when I was informed of the technical specification) that all the conditions were meticulously described but ignored and presented the email. Management decided to take the risk of going forward. The project failed. I was still blamed for it because by then I was an easy scapegoat.

Never received an apology and lost a good chunk of my reputation at the time. I haven't been an employee and have been my own salesperson since then (15 years ago). Less politics and ass covering between my ears.

Tiny little things like this can make or break you.

calinet63• 13 years ago

Bingo. It's a management problem, not an individual problem. Management can turn "Yes, if..." people into mindless drones over time by constantly shooting them down and feeding them negativity. And where does that negativity come from? The next level up; someone above that manager telling them they can't do things and what they should be doing instead, or rewarding them for aligning their team's goals with the status quo. More often than not, it's driven by fear and the danger of getting fired, or a strong desire to fit into an existing structure and climb the ladder.

In my opinion, most people will be "Yes, if..." people given the right cultural conditions; this looking at people as dichotomous types set-in-stone is dangerous and in my experience incorrect. It is as divisive and ineffective as the current US political climate. If someone has become a No person, it's likely because they're being moulded into that by their management, or has been in the past. Fix the environment and create an innovation-positive management structure and they'd probably jump at the opportunity to take more risks. I have seen this happen first-hand.

W. Edwards Deming, 8th point: "Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

benihana• 13 years ago

I love this comment; it so beautifully and unintentionally proves the OPs point. It's like the perfect comment to represent Hacker News.

In an article about Can Do vs Can't Do culture, it piggybacks on an insightful top comment that takes an optimistic approach and provides the kind of cynical pessimism and tries to shoot down the Can Do nature of the OP's comment. But the best part of it, the most beautiful part, is that it places the blame on the cause of all problems for hackers: the manager. Literally, managers are the only reason the world isn't amazing, they're the ones that shoot down all my brilliant ideas.

RokStdy• 13 years ago

I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but I don't like this point. Sure, often people stop listening after Yes,... but...

You don't have to accept that. The general excuse, "Managers man... they suck", is something that really bothers me.

Why not stand up for your idea, insist upon the Yes, IF... and hold management accountable?

Document concerns and don't be shy about raising them. In my experience I have seen people make the assumption that management will not listen and therefor not act more often than I've seen management ignore feedback.

That's not to say that management wouldn't ignore you, or dismiss negativity in favor of the "yes", but the defeatist attitude as it relates to 'management' troubles me.

Again, Michh, not to give you a hard time. Maybe I'm naive.

aaronem• 13 years ago

That's why you start your response with "Here's how we can do that:"

boomlinde• 13 years ago

If this is what your managers do, I feel sorry for you

memracom• 13 years ago

If you have a boss like that then you could always form a habit of saying the "if" part first.

If we just deal with the issue of X and solve the Y problem, then yes, we can most certainly do it. I have some ideas on how to deal with X and I think that if we bring Marketing into the discussion then we should be able to make a plan to address Y.

The above paragraph is still "can do" and it is arguably a better way to answer such questions because it is not as easy for a listener to misinterpret it.

_sabe_• 13 years ago

Then I'm a "No, because" type of person. The thing is tough that most often it's not because I don't think things are possible but that I make assumptions based on who I'm talking to. For example, if I'm talking to my boss I know what costs his willing to take, so if he has an idea and I know hes not willing to pay for it, then I can just say no directly instead of getting a doomed project on my neck.

And to be honest, most projects actually go way out of time and budget. The realist would have said no, because the scope was not realistic. Now if you wilfully or just by ignorance accept the terms and scope thinking you can always stretch other peoples time and budget, that's in my book immoral, but then again, those people will end up getting the jobs i decline.

humanrebar• 13 years ago

I'm with you. Pessimism and cynicism is underrated in certain circles. I wish there was more pessimism before the U.S. decided to invade Iraq (remember "slam dunk"?), before the TSA was formed, or before someone decided to make Grown Ups 2.

If anything, there's a problem with too much optimism in project management. If there isn't enough budget and schedule to let a project slip by 10%, then the answer shouldn't be "yes, if we're lucky". It should be "No, let's pick something with better margins." or "Yes, because even losing money on this is worth it for strategic reasons."

auggierose• 13 years ago

All toplevel comments on this comment are basically saying, "no", yes-if doesn't work, "because" ....

:-)

crusso• 13 years ago

Exactly my thought reading them. The original comment laid it all out and then the troops of people who just don't get it decided to parade around their misunderstanding.

mr_luc• 13 years ago

Well, I think that you can probably write a compiler from "yes, if" to "no, because" and vice versa.

Example:

Yes, if the '"yes, if" attitude' is defined as 'never disagreeing with anyone ever, since no one ever attempts to abuse positive-thinking engineers.'

But the real question is like the programming language question - what's the most expressive and useful in a given situation? Sometimes an idiom is not a good fit.

I always responds 'yes, if' -- to people I know won't abuse it.

That's most of the people I work with. But some entrepreneurs, Project Managers, clients and so forth are simply not to be trusted with a "yes, if."

The goal is to avoid those kinds of shady operators, crappy projects, and hostile clients. But sometimes you end up working with them, at least as bit players in a business relationship that is a good fit. Especially as a freelancer, I don't know anyone who can avoid it 100% of the time.

For instance: even when working with a great organization, some project could have a weak link in a project management role. It will happen to you. And all you can do is try to do good work while extricating yourself as soon as possible.

What should I tell one of those not-very-trustworthy people if they ask something ridiculous?

Does compiling it to Yes-If prove more expressive?

Examples:

Yes, if the laws of space-time, human nature, physics and the combined sum of human experience weren't arrayed in battle order against you and your terrible idea.

Yes, if I could trust that you, a non-software PM who shifted into this job from Accounts with no training heavier than that provided by Clippy, have correctly assessed the stakeholder requirements and risk around this new feature that you think is required by 'EOD Thursday.'

Sometimes, there is an answer, and it is No. Because.

Sometimes you should signal risk and danger in your response, because risk and danger are present in their requests, and you must be sure that they are weighing those dangers. 'No, because' (or 'I'd advise against it, but here's what it would take', which is closer to what I actually say in those situations) definitely has its place.

NOTE: this is not non-technical PM hate. I may currently have two PMs, on projects for two separate fortune-50 companies. Both PMs may be non-technical, but one might know how to be a PM, and specifically on a software project, and the other might not.

jasonwocky2• 13 years ago

I dunno. Sounds like there's a chance that the economist's own biases are coming into play here. I'd apply the Principle of Indifference...."No, because" and "Yes, if" pretty much sound like the same thing to me. It's how you react to those phrases that makes all the difference.

If you let "Yes, if" evoke a different emotional response than, "No, because", even though they provide more or less the same information content, what does that say about you?

vbuterin• 13 years ago

Actually, it's "no, unless" and "yes, if" that are synonyms. "No, because" carries the implication that the listed justifications are irresolvable.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Engineers are often beaten into a "no, because" mentality by managers who only hear the "yes" or the "no" and not the universe of constraints under which that conclusion is given. Being a "yes, if" person can be a recipe for disaster unless you really trust the people you're working with to be able to understand the challenges that need to first be overcome. Let's be real: the overwhelming majority of business people are not as brilliant as Walt Disney.

In my opinion, a better approach for an engineer in typical real world conditions is to be a problem solver while controlling the message. "Yes, if" gives up control of the message. Instead of saying "yes" rephrase and reformulate the idea into your own words while adding the necessary constraints. It's a small difference, but it allows you to take full ownership and control of what you're signing up for.

mbesto• 13 years ago

The question always comes up "Can the system do this, that and this other thing?" My response is always "With technology, pretty much anything is possible, it only comes down to a matter of time and money." The conversation almost always changes very quickly into my favor.

pnathan• 13 years ago

We can do Anything, but we don't want to be run into the ground by overwork and screamed at when Anything takes Forever.

So the answer is "no" to people in "suits" until they prove they aren't going to be abusive and nuance-free.

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

There's a third type of person- the ones that ask, "... Can we do X?". Seriously, that's a separate variety.

jotm• 13 years ago

Being a "yes, if" person, I can tell you that most of the times I reply with that, everything else is taken as a joke. the more complicated the problem, the more of a joke it seems to the others.

After all, they want a simple "yes, we can". If they hear about the half a dozen other problems that need to be solved first, they think "oh, yeah, that would be great, haha. But we won't do it because we want to focus on solving E, not A, B, C and D"...

CodeMage• 13 years ago

I marvel at how much effort is being poured into "proving" that one wording is "better" than the other, with people arguing about culture and paradigm shifts and worldview and audacity.

Are there really only two answers you can offer when asked whether we can do X? Am I still allowed to say "It depends on A, B and C" or "Maybe, but I don't think it's a good idea because of P and Q" or "It would be great, but how do we solve Y and Z?"

I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.

skunkworks• 13 years ago

The words we use have a hidden subtext that reflect our unconscious biases. Strangely, using different words to frame an idea is often enough to break through many distortions and biases. It's a mainstay of cognitive behavioral therapy.

And as it relates to the business of building software, which is a tricky and hard thing to do, having a positive outlook and focusing on the end possibilities rather than oncoming challenges is a better attitude for long term success. If you're the type to get caught up in the challenges of implementing stuff, you spend a lot more time saying no and less time finding clever ways to make it a yes.

tannerc• 13 years ago

Words matter. To quote Frank Chimero:

"I think words are abstractions, and abstractions become expressions that frame our understanding of our experiences, expectations, culture—everything. Language is an interface, and if an interface can mold behavior and perception, than language does that to your life."

boomzilla• 13 years ago

There's more to it. When you say: No, because ..., you are pointing out SOME of the dependencies that must be resolved before you can get to the final goal. When you say: Yes, if ..., you are enumerating ALL of the dependencies, that when overcome, you can achieve the final goals. In addition to the negative/positive connotations, the former implies that you might have stopped thinking about the problems half way, whereas the latter shows that you've thought about ALL the details.

I used to be in the No, because ... camp when I first got out of college, until I met a mentor who led by example with a "Yes, if ..." attitudes, and I am now firmly in the second camp. Usually comprises and trade off needs to be made, but stop thinking about the problem definitely doesn't help.

trustfundbaby• 13 years ago

I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.

I disagree. I've worked as a consultant for many years and I used to be a "no, because" person, and I noticed a very clear shift in my demeanor and that of clients when I started saying more "yes, if"s.

Initially I didn't know what I was doing so every project was fraught with the fear I'd be found out, this meant that on really difficult things, I'd try to talk myself and the client out of doing them, because I didn't know enough and thought something simpler (that I could do) would be better. As I became a much better software developer, all of a sudden, nothing was impossible, and it translated into my speak with clients.

Instead of presenting problems, I could tell clients exactly how to do what they wanted and how much it would cost them technically and monetarily.

I'll just tell you from experience. People respond to "yes, if"'s a whole lot better than no-anythings

hessenwolf• 13 years ago

I like working in software because I am an all-powerful deity. It's just made up, so of course I can make up anything new I want.

Now, let's discuss the deadline...

joelandren• 13 years ago

Let's also remember that there is valid criticism of startups and how they operate their business.

If a startup founder is an asshole, let's not excuse the behavior because they are building something worthwhile.

If a startup makes a mistake due to lack of concern about its users (i.e. Snapchat and their security hole), they should be criticized.

All told, I'm all about "can do" culture, but let's not use it as an excuse for boorish behavior or bad business practices.

temphn• 13 years ago

Let's also make sure the person criticizing said "assholes" is not paid to be a professional asshole themselves, like Sam Biddle or Nitasha Tiku at Valleywag.

KaoruAoiShiho• 13 years ago

Not even sure why this needs an article. The great majority of people in the world are "can't-do" people. It's entrepreneurs who buck the trope and create the things that end up being valuable. It's risky and scary and you'll probably face opprobrium. Fuck the noise.

XorNot• 13 years ago

You might also fail because you refused to consider reasonable objections (because people didn't put them in a tone you approved of), and then blow a lot of money and put yourself in debt you might never escape.

So you know, it's a trade-off.

dingaling• 13 years ago

The great majority of people in the world are "can't-do" people.

Well I think that's a bit harsh!

In my experience, most people are 'won't-do'. I haven't encountered many who aren't open to doing new things, but why would they do so without an incentive?

Particularly in the workplace, where people are already over-loaded with tasks, there can be an agreed list of 'great ideas' but no-one has time or freedom to tackle them.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

One thing to ponder: this is a strong counterpoint to the "Lean Startup" culture, which basically states that unless you have people telling you not just that something can be done, but that they will pay you for it yesterday, it's not worth working on.

argonaut• 13 years ago

I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. The lean startup methodology doesn't care at all what people think about the feasibility of something. What matters in that methodology, however, is whether people will pay for something, if implemented.

A side note is that people telling you they will or won't pay for something can be quite misleading. The act of talking is quite disconnected from the act of actually paying you.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

"Why would I ever need anything other than a horse to get around? Mine gets me where I need to go just fine. And more cheaply, too."

The short-sightedness of the people cited in the article doesn't just come from critics, but from the potential market as well.

Aloha5• 13 years ago

This goes back to the glass half full/glass half empty discussion. It's not anything really new or different. The problem is half full people, tend to turn into half empty people as they age, get more conservative and have power/established interests to protect.

In short, disruption seems scary when you are part of the powers that be.

altero• 13 years ago

A few years ago the iPad mania just started. I worked for harware company on admin software. It was written in Java, 15 years old (1998) and never had major rewrite.

All managers were like 'be like apple' and 'we must release iPad app' and 'PC is over'. Programmers on other side wanted to rewrite some critical parts, introduce automated tests and fix some very old bugs.

I was speaker for programmers, soon I became 'tablet hater' (kind of funny since I had Android tablet). Latter we even bough some iPads for developers to learn, those were locked in managers office :-). I left company shortly after that.

So for me 'Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture' is just sort of bullshit to mask real problems. Sure Jobs made iThinks, but he pulled massive resources towards the problem. Apple actually bought factories for touch screens before iPhone was made.

praptak• 13 years ago

I don't buy this division into can - the good and cannot - the bad. It's just two strategies with different outcome distributions. The critic will be right more often, invest in boring tried ideas, earn less on average but with less variance. The enthusiast will often fail but when he's right against the common knowledge, he hits the jackpot.

And picking those jackpots and their critics ignores the majority of crazy ideas that indeed fail - "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

Here's some criticism of a crazy idea that actually failed (CueCat): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html

Obviously there is a lot of criticism for the sake of proving oneself smug. Unfortunately sounding smug does not automatically make one wrong.

yalogin• 13 years ago

He is concerned about this because it directly impacts him and his line of work. But this is nothing new even in technology. The one glaring example is Apple. When the first iPhone came out Apple was the savior but soon the number of people hating Apple is greater and more vocal that the so called fanboys. I think its simply that success begets hate on a superficial level and in some cases makes people look into certain aspects of that success with more scrutiny which might beget dislike(or hate). Its just what it is. Point being, even the most educated, practical thinking people on the planet succumb to mob mentality, particularly online. Deal with it.

lmm2• 13 years ago

I've found the best places to work are quite negative about their own products (I wish I could find the release announcement Facebook had for one of their open-source libraries, with endorsements like "okay, I guess" and "oh, that thing") and ideas. If you're able to shoot down bad ideas fast, and have a culture where that's ok, people are much more willing to make all sorts of crazy suggestions, and you have a better chance of finding one that will actually work.

jasonkester• 13 years ago

I wonder how much of this is just a visibility issue.

We notice this same thing here on this site, where every new idea seems to get immediately piled on with negativity. The feeling is that it didn't used to be this way, and many of us old timers will remember a time when new ideas were mostly met with encouragement and constructive criticism.

But I bet if you look at the threads today and then, you might find that the absolute number of constructive, encouraging comments hasn't changed much at all. Rather, they are simply lost in a sea of negativity spouted out by the peanut gallery that seems to have washed in from other places where people dump all over tech news. We used to be conspicuously entrepreneurial here. Now we're a lot more representative of the tech world at large.

So yeah, I think that there are still plenty of people with the right entrepreneurial mindset out there. It's just getting harder to find them.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

The visibility / selection bias issue works both ways. Only successful entrepreneurs are visible, not the many more that have failed despite their "can-do" attitude.

Maybe we're just slowly reaching a more realistic equilibrium.

daemonk• 13 years ago

How about just being reasonably rigorous in your assessment instead of being overly cautious or overly idealistic? This division into can-do and can't-do seems to represent two opposite extremes that might not reflect the majority.

What's the real data here? From a practical standpoint, isn't it just risk vs reward? Can-do's probably get a bigger reward than can't do's, but they fail more. A can't-do gets smaller reward, but succeeds more.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Here's my problem with the implied attack on skeptics: sure you can point to the cases when the skeptics are wrong, but for every poo-pooing of what turns out to be a tremendous invention, there are 99 cases where skepticism averts disastrously misconceived projects. There is tremendous economic value that is preserved by people who say no. People like to use the example of Jobs launching a tablet in the face of skeptics, but this doesn't give Jobs enough credit. Apple is tremendously skeptical. A huge part of their success is the products they don't launch.

rikacomet• 13 years ago

My thumb rule: As long as you are young, given the time, you can do anything that you can conceive in the mind.

I firmly believe, that its a practical thing, that with time, most people who aren't way successful become pessimist, yet.. their kids always have the fresh start.

It is upto the young generation, to carry the baton of HOPE! If young people won't dream, who will?

devhinton• 13 years ago

Any one else notice the self-justification of the comments?

Cherrypicking. A great majority of startups fail and their ideas are proven as unworkable or impractical, so it is not unreasonable to summarily dismiss most of them.

Clearly read the article but is trying to justify his own negativity in the past and undoubtedly.

Would love to see a post on how you define "great" in this context, Ben.

Who the fck, address someone they don't know by their first name like that?? Ending the statement with his name also seems a bit passive aggressive.

Enlightening check out the comments and see how many people actually respond to the article. All too often when reading articles or listening to other people, instead of listening or understanding, the goal is: 'let me read until I think think of something I can say'. This really hurts that person and just isolates people in their own point of view

(note this post could be ironic. Its not though, the article was freakin awesome! I will try to change my mindset towards a more positive one after reading and rethink what it means to innovate)

michaelochurch• 13 years ago

One more quote to start this off.

I do not bring a weapon. I am the weapon. -- Michael O. Church

I like the overarching theme of what the OP is saying. Good companies provide multiple ways to succeed. Shitty firms provide multiple ways to fail, and only one way to succeed. That's why closed allocation is such a pile of 9/11 nukular buttfail: because it's founded on the idea that a person is only admitted one avenue for success (but there are numerous ways a person might lose face).

Good institutions provide multiple ways for the people within them to succeed. This encourages creativity. Bad companies lay down multiple ways to fail, and only admit one way to succeed. It is known.

I don't think this is only an artifact of company size. I've seen small companies with that negative, embarrassment-averse culture; I've also seen large companies create pockets of the positive, open-allocation type culture.

Hardly a day goes by where I don’t find something in my Twitter feed crowing about how a startup that has hit a bump in the road is ”fu&%@d,” or what an “ash%le” a successful founder is, or what an utterly idiotic idea somebody’s company is.

I am all for product risk and innovation. If someone tries to cure cancer and fails, I'm going to praise her to the moon for trying. On the other hand, moral failure (asshole founders) I cannot support. There is a huge difference between a scientist who tries for 20 years to cure cancer and falls short (but probably delivers a lot of useful research along the way) and an Evan Spiegel, who fails morally. "We're a startup" has been used too many times to justify reckless management and moral bankruptcy. Well I say: fuck that shit.

I am all for removing the stigma against good-faith failure. The problem in the VC-funded startup world is all the bad-faith failure that is out there. When someone gets fired with no severance because his 24-year-old, inexperienced, technically incompetent manager turns out to be a wad, no one should congratulate the company for "taking a risk". Recklessness, the defining trait of the current crop of VC-funded cool kids, is not a virtue.

It seems like there is a movement to replace today’s startup culture of hope and curiosity with one of smug superiority.

That "culture of hope and curiosity" is long gone. Snarky people like me are working our asses off in the effort to bring it back. We do it by taking down the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world. We need to take out the trash so there is some fucking space for the good guys.

Some people would like to turn the technology startup world into one great big company with a degenerative Can’t-Do Culture.

That's VC-istan, not in some future dystopia but right now. With all of the co-funding and note-sharing and collusion, VC has degenerated into a feudal reputation economy that behaves like a large and dysfunctional company where people are too busy padding their resumes and manicuring their reputations to even consider doing anything remotely ballsy. That's exactly what has already happened.

oznathan2• 13 years ago

"Bitcoin could never succeed as a currency. It's too unstable"

al2o3cr• 13 years ago

If you bought at the beginning of December, it's certainly "succeeded" in turning 1/3rd of your money into nothing...

oznathan2• 13 years ago

sure that's a clever argument?

what if you bought it at any other time during the few years it exists?

anyway that was not the point. The point was people failing to see the innovation and seeing only the problems. Which was the point of this article.

brianzelip• 13 years ago

Pleasantly surprised to find the son of David Horowitz is a rap fan. Not only does this article start with a Rick Ross (ugh) quote, but most of his blog posts all start with music lyrics too. [http://bhorowitz.com] Seems he's on the Board of Rap Genius.

sopooneo• 13 years ago

No, [your "Soylent" food replacement will not work] because...

crazygringo• 13 years ago

Of course, too much of a 'can do' attitude can lead to completely unrealistic expectations, spread your resources too thin, and bankrupt a business or lead you to waste years or even decades of your life.

The smart choice is obviously a happy medium. Too much of a "can do" attitude is just as harmful as too much of a "can't do" attitude. We all need reality checks.

And this is why diverse teams and groups are so important -- one person says "of course we can't do", another says "of course we can do", and everyone hashes it out until they've come up with a realistic assessment that is neither clouded by overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic thinking.

mrbrowning2• 13 years ago

He's making a good point in the abstract, but I think Horowitz is too close to the matter to understand that a lot of the negativity he cites is a natural reaction to the totally overblown rhetoric of the start-up scene. He inadvertently proves this by referencing such epoch-defining inventions as the telephone and the internet. Many tech start-ups are creating interesting, useful, and sometimes even novel products, but it's nonetheless annoying to anyone with a sense of perspective to hear from every angle that Start-up X is going to change the world by revolutionizing, you know, shoe-resoling.

lazyant• 13 years ago

"Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone," obligatory to mention the other inventor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray

robgibbons• 13 years ago

Ben, your site is so Goddamn frustrating on mobile.

aetherson• 13 years ago

I don't believe that quote that purports to be a Western Union memo on the telephone. I don't think that 19th Century businessmen put words like "idiotic" into business communication, and I don't think that they used phrases like "the technical and economic facts of the situation," as the word "economy" at that point was much more strongly meaning "being thrifty at home" and much less about economic systems.

This blog post claims that the quote is fake: http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest...

Slate says it "may" be fake and is awaiting verification: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_p...

MichaelMoser123• 13 years ago

And venture funds also have to be picky about start-ups that they are going to fund; I understand that the author is working for a venture fund, and that he tries not to be a 'hater'. Is the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio really breathtakingly innovative, or is it more of the same?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments

"In February 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter,[2] becoming the first venture firm that holds stock in all four of the highest-valued, privately held social media companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga"

http://a16z.com/

Otherwise its a great article.

The lesson that I took home: I always held that asking/questioning of assumption is also of value; but this article told me that I have to be careful here, and that style of communications is often also very important - style determines how a person is evaluated by others.

jeffdavis• 13 years ago

Way too general to be useful.

I think it's useful to be optimistic when it comes to visions of the future and how a business can accomplish it. Electric cars for everyone? Sure, give it a try. All that can be lost is a little money, and maybe you make a huge fortune and change the world. Isolated government programs can be a similar story -- e.g. NASA, which is unlikely to lose anything but a small amount of money but can be really inspiring or create some great things.

However, when it comes to government policy, the downside can be utter disaster. It pays to be a little skeptical that the "help the poor" bill (or whatever other utopian title) will actually deliver as advertised. Or skeptical that a war will be a simple in-and-out proposition.

Or some things just have little upside. We see this all the time in engineering. Someone wants to use a fad technology or model of some kind, or wants to reimplement something to be a little faster, or whatever. There's huge project risk that it could derail other projects and destabilize the entire product -- which is fine if you're going to change the world with it, but not fine for a 10% speedup on some specific workload.

Moral of story: optimism and "can do" attitude is good when the upside is huge and the downside is contained (like in a startup). Not exactly a profound revelation.

stevewilhelm• 13 years ago

I have found that there are many more ideas than time or energy to do them all.

How does one foster a successful "Should-Do" culture instead of a "Can't-Do" culture?

annnnd• 13 years ago

I think this article missed a point. It is not a battle between "Yes, if" and "No, because" - each has its own place and each should be used with care.

The first stage of innovation should use "Yes, if" approach. This is similar to brainstorming session, where negativity should be kept to minimum. This mentality lets people find ways around the obstacles.

When the idea is ready for evaluation, it should be evaluated in light of resource constraints and similar. In this phase "No, because" approach should be used to identify all possible downsides. If the answer is "No", the idea can be either retired or returned to brainstorming session, until it is ready for re-evaluation.

So it is not a question of Yes/No, it is a question of appropriate answer in appropriate moment.

Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture

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