Ex Amazon engineer here. The disagree and commit principle is a double edged sword.
The good: it's taken relatively seriously, it's not just some empty PR line. It allows you to prove to managers and colleagues that you know what you are doing instead of following the heard. It encourages people to prove their ideas with prototypes instead of talk and more talk. It discourage "design by committee" and blame shifting. It's refreshing to be able to disagree openly and challenge popular views.
The bad: It takes a lot of self confidence. Some people might feel insecure due to impostor syndrome, upbringing or belonging to minorities and this creates a disadvantage. Also, it's really exhausting in the long term.
Neutral: if you disagree, commit and fail it becomes a very public failure. On the bright side it teaches people not to disagree too lightheartedly.
> Neutral: if you disagree, commit and fail it becomes a very public failure.
I don't understand this part - if you publicly disagree with a decision, and then that decision results in failure, weren't you just proved right? Or does it just get assumed that the failure was your fault due to you not committing sufficiently?
Been with the company 3 years and this has happened to me once.
I agree with op. I disagreed but committed in an issue I saw. It soon turned out to be a production issue for a different team, as I had correctly called out and warned about...
I got called out in 1 on 1 by my senior manager for not having enough backbone.
What is wrong with self confidence? In software engineering there are lots of ways to build solutions to problems, most of the cons of a design are not foreseen and become evident in future life of the product. Therefore, to convince a team of your idea/direction/design/solution I consider self confidence a prerequisite.
In my experience self-confidence is a core attribute of a leader, lacking this means you doubt yourself or are uncomfortable owning your idea. If you cannot own your idea how do you expect the rest of your team or company to own it?
Not OP but I think some people feel that if someone doesn’t have confidence in an idea they probably haven’t through it through. And if someone doesn’t have the drive to push an idea through, they won’t have the drive to push the plan through.
I don’t really agree, but I sort of understand the Darwinism of it.
In an organization where management isn’t good at supporting contributors, it’s probably a good indicator actually. In an organization with strong support structures, you can use good ideas from people who aren’t natural leaders. But organizations who can really support ideas originating from those people are rare.
If I rightly understand the reply to my sibling comment (which seemed perfectly valid, I don't see why it got nuked into oblivion?) it's that if you 'disagree and commit' and then the thing you committed to fails, you get blamed (either directly for it failing, or for committing to an idea which you knew would fail - which I thought was the point?)
But that is not true. I can say idea X is bad and it can succeed due to any number of reasons. That doesn’t disprove that it is a bad idea (relative to some better idea, let’s say).
If you say "X is bad, it's going to fail", and it succeeds, it certainly doesn't make you look good, and I think that's what the previous comment was getting at.
But it's rarely a "it's going to fail". Normally it's "it'll make more effort for people down the line" or "we'll get more customers if we do X instead".
The good: it's taken relatively seriously, it's not just some empty PR line. It allows you to prove to managers and colleagues that you know what you are doing instead of following the heard. It encourages people to prove their ideas with prototypes instead of talk and more talk. It discourage "design by committee" and blame shifting. It's refreshing to be able to disagree openly and challenge popular views.
The bad: It takes a lot of self confidence. Some people might feel insecure due to impostor syndrome, upbringing or belonging to minorities and this creates a disadvantage. Also, it's really exhausting in the long term.
Neutral: if you disagree, commit and fail it becomes a very public failure. On the bright side it teaches people not to disagree too lightheartedly.