Yeah, I hate to be this person that has to constantly say no and no. Sometimes it's like I will say "yes" just so that everyone would see that I'm not saying "no" for nothing after the consequences.
I'm not saying it's just your fault, but that's not professional and will hurt the quality of your team. It's more fun for all to have less stress in your team. If you are the one responsible for having to say 'no' to things, than you should say no. A 'no' in work context, is nothing personal, it should not be regarded as such.
If that doesn't suit your character, as it can be, than you can discuss with your team how to come up with a better process. Perhaps someone else has no problem with that, or you rotate the responsibility, etc.
I'm "that guy" that questions everything, leaving no stone un-turned and no assumption unquestioned. I came to this point after being told that saying "no, here's why" all the time made me "difficult to work with".
New lesson learned: They don't like you questioning everything and being super thorough either. And no matter how politely[1] you say it, they think you're difficult to work with too. The decision to rewrite, or do something a certain way was made by someone that is "in the decision room", and they'll play along with you for a while, but you best eventually acquiesce to the way they want it done.
Being a bit more meta about it: I'd say the real problem is that the tech field has ridiculous levels of "flat hierarchy". In this case it means that simultaneous everyone and no one has a say in any one particular decision. And even if there is a title for whatever responsibility or area you are to have final say in, there is always the room for suggestion and criticism, which means you have to "consider it". Thus opening the flood gates of all this non-sense.
[1]. I don't even know the word to use here. Politely doesn't do it justice to how much I have to bend over backwards to be considerate, calm, and appreciative of everyone.
Can be a cultural thing. Here in the Netherlands, it's expected that you give honest feedback. In other cultures Dutch people are known to be blunt or impolite because of this trait.
In general you can ask beforehand; "Would you like some feedback on your proposal? I have some thoughts about it I'd like to share".
> Thus opening the flood gates of all this non-sense.
Am I misunderstanding you? It seems here you call suggestions and criticism non-sense. Where earlier you say that when you give suggestions and criticism, you hate it when it's viewed as non-sense.
I'd say that if there is so much negativity regarding feedback, you need a process to structure it. This at the very least stops it from 'hanging in the air' all the time.
Sounds like they're right. That attitude is difficult to work with.
> no assumption unquestioned
That's just unhelpful and a hindrance. Assumptions are good! They are huge time savers. Occasionally they are wrong and that can lead to bad things but questioning every assumption is just pointless and going to piss everyone off.
People have told you you're difficult to work with, and you can't really argue with that anymore than you can argue with someone saying they don't like you. You can't say "yes you do!".
> there is always the room for suggestion and criticism, which means you have to "consider it".
Erm yeah! Why would you not want to consider people's suggestions?
Maybe instead of complaining about people finding you difficult to work with you could try and change your attitude so that they don't?
I think you took my comments a bit too literally and out of context. I'm not sure why you felt the need to be so uncharitable and mean-spirited, other than because I decided to have my little side-rant in your sub-thread.
> Erm yeah! Why would you not want to consider people's suggestions?
This was in the context of a lack of definitive authority and a flat-hierarchy. People that work with me know I genuinely consider everyone's opinion, and everyone always gets a clean slate with me.
I mean, if I don't say it, then there's no one else to say it. It's saying no to other engineers and to product and leadership as well. Also it's not just about saying "no", but then spending energy and time on why something should not be done. If it stopped after me saying "no" it would be easy enough.
I've picked a strategy at times where I will say that something is a bad idea for the reasons X, Y and Z, and then when they still want to go on with it, I'll let them, so it would be possible to win some trust with them so I don't have to spend so much energy again on explaining why something should not be done. I will refrain from "I told you so", hoping that it allows to build some confidence to move on quicker next time.
But then at some point people rotate and I have to start building that trust all over again.
I guess with other engineers I just hate it when someone is really enthusiastic about something and I think the idea is truly impractical and will do more harm than good. I have to kind of find a way to direct them to do something else without hurting the enthusiasm.
I'd reframe what your task is. Your task is not explaining what should (not) be done, but helping both of you get a clear picture of what the situation (goal, challenge, problems, risk, etc) is.
If you made things clearer for both of you, you can feel good about what you did. You helped the other person make better choices. Now this still can be something different than your choice. But if it's their responsibility, then that's fine.
In situations where I don't agree with my boss or colleague I focus on two parts:
First; do we fully understand each other? Are we aiming for the same thing, and do we agree that X, Y, Z are risks? Are there other aspects you perhaps didn't know that are important for the other to weigh, etc.
Second; what is the earliest we can test who's right on the important part where we differ. You can suggest a short brainstorm for a proof of concept, etc.
I think all of it just doesn't fit very neatly to this type of framework. It's a combination of very many things, different teams, systems, legacy systems, lack of data, bureaucracy, politics, so it is overall just very messy. In many cases it feels impossible to make others understand what the true risks are if they are not intimately familiar with everything that's going on. It's the kind of thing like, not sure, if you've seen Krazam videos, but the one with Galactus (microservices). You kind of have to explain why some simple thing can't be done or some seemingly simple thing is just way too risky or time consuming.
I would actually rather not work on something like this, but it pays more than anything else I could currently get.
