If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself. The only smart move is to coordinate them and, at best, give your opinion.
I don't really google "what's the best suturing technique" and demand my doctor to follow those exact instructions.
"You hired me as your UX expert. I use A/B trials, prior trials, studies, and knowledge I've pieced together over the past 20 years." The question of "What are you even paying me for if you're going to ignore my advice?" is one I'd love to ask but fear getting fired for pointing it out.
The alternative to micro-managing is asking for the impossible [0]. Which also happens frequently. I was once asked to make a transparent .jpg because .png are "too heavy". I had to explain how .jpg's work, tell them I could make it a .gif, but that the .png compressed better and would be more lightweight than the .gif. They insisted on the .jpg at which point I gave up, matched the jpg's background color to the blue background they had and saved it as a .jpg. Which turned out to still be a bigger file size than the equivalent .png.
Or even just rename to foo.jpg and figure the MIME type and file header would be enough for browsers to still render it like a PNG.
I wish people felt this way about economics, instead of constantly voicing their "market solves everything, government is bad" opinions and trying to apply econ101 solutions to complex problems.
My approach is to hold myself from telling the designers what to do, and instead tell them what the problem is and let them come up with a solution.
I agree with your second point. Still, there's a very thin line between "telling them what the problem is" and burning out your best employees.
I guess experience and empathy do help us get such balance.
While this would all be solved if requirements were decided as a team, much of the time that's not the case. Alas.
I have to deal with an army of VPs spread out over a dozen sub organizations who each have their own idea of what should be done both in the real world and in the software world. You can't teach all of them. I don't even know who most of them are. And all I get is filtered demands through another dozen teams who try to interpret what the VP's latest vague demands really mean, and often fear choosing a detail for fear they will be wrong. And then I have to write something in code which is likely wrong because I have no freaking clue WTF it's supposed to do and get dinged because I didn't meet a schedule agreed to a year ago based on whatever the hell the VPs wanted back then.
"I know I said I loved it yesterday, but looking at it now, I hate it."
I usually ignore this kind of humor, but wow, there is a non-zero chance that this is an accidentally verbatim quote of an old boss of mine.
(Before you think I am talking about you, ask yourself: has your interest level in the Transformers franchise ever exceeded healthy levels for a grown man by two sigmas? Well there is your answer.)
Q: What's An IBM Man-year? A: 730 People Trying To Get A Project Done Before Noon. (EOM!)
Uggg. I know this is a lost cause but in May this would be PDT, not PST.
It’s important for the brand to look and feel human. We’re a tech company. Tech is the opposite of human, so we have to make the brand human. Humans attract humans. I’ve got some human ideas. What if our website is just covered in skin? Please, someone mock up the skin site. Play around with it. Make sure these humans know how human we are.
-D. CEO & Founder, Spunk Labs.
So, for the logo. What if it’s something random? Something unexpected? Hear me out. What’s minimal, human, wordless, and edgy? I’ll tell you what…a toe. Exactly, it’s brilliant. I’ve mocked up a few designs myself. I’ve attached them to this email, and I have to say, they’re pretty damn good. I’d love to see 20 more options for the toe by EOD, but we’ll probably go with one of mine, but do it anyway.
d. CEO & Founder, Spunk Labs.
http://clientsfromhell.net/ (newsletter popup alert)
Edit: the good ones are where the client asks for a slight change, acknowledges it but doesn't want it to be quite so much, then is happy, but the designer didn't do a thing for any of it, aside from maybe changing a filename.
[0] http://27bslash6.com/p2p2.html (I believe this one touches on a similar theme)
CEO: Who approved that?
Designer: You did...
CD: ...at the last review.
CEO: I did? Well ...it needs to change. I was thinking...
[1 month later, 48 hrs to launch.]
CEO: When did we change that?
https://devchat.tv/freelancers/191-fs-establishing-trust-wit...
I think CEOs where companies are versatile and skillful in the core operations of the business (think Bill Gates, Satya Nadella) will always have a huge advantage over companies led by people only proficient general purpose management and general purpose operations research.
The ideal role of a CEO is "Head of Operations + Chief Architect". His workflow should be top-down (market assessment) => bottom-up (product design) => top-down (operations management) => bottom-up (operations) reloop.
The more distance he is able to travel between the bottom and the top, and the faster he can do it, the greater the competitive advantage of the company is.
The CEO of this satire seems to be rather on top of his business ;)
This thread is the first thing to remind me of all the stress I endured just a few years back.
My question is, how do we change this? That work was fun, but the high stress from either directors or CEOs or clients constantly changing their mind was overwhelming.
