Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late
20 hours ago
- #technical-debt
- #organizational-culture
- #risk-management
- Architectural disasters often occur not due to a lack of knowledge, but because people who foresee issues remain silent due to social and career risks.
- Companies like Nokia, TSB, Boeing, and Microsoft experienced failures where engineers recognized problems early, but dissent was suppressed in favor of alignment or schedules.
- Speaking up is discouraged through labels like 'not a team player' or deference to the highest-paid person's opinion (HiPPO), leading to a culture of learned helplessness.
- Real pushback involves making problems visible by asking concrete questions about costs, risks, and alternatives, rather than outright confrontation.
- Creating a safe environment for dissent requires structural changes, such as blameless postmortems and mechanisms like 'disagree and commit,' to separate objections from personal risk.