In my experience, the ones who most fervently believe they have such “clues” are often the same ones who lack them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve encountered engineers who become indignant when someone tries to redirect them to safe, scalable, and operable ways to solve problems. What they often want is to have the problem solved their way because it would be less work for them or otherwise advance their own personal interests, regardless of the problems that doing so would create or the risks it would pose. They don’t want a discussion; they want a rubber stamp.
Can confirm, I had a coworker doing that a while ago and it was incredibly frustrating. After going through the whole quizzing you still end up with no answer to your actual question, as if they were more interested engaging with their own process and not what you were actually asking
Back when I worked at Google there was an internal page someone put up that denoted what they called "the YX problem": the observation that the XY problem, applied to a sufficiently great extent, creates an environment where more productivity is lost convincing one's interlocutor that X is in fact the correct problem to solve than would be lost by chasing X and having to later pivot to Y if that turned out to be wrong.
It's extraordinarily aggravating when it happens. I really wish it was something we talked about more.
I think it depends on the individual and the culture. In a strong culture, engineers don’t their egos get in the way of healthy conversations and will be capable of defending their position against probing questions without it upsetting them.
Yes it's called being XYed and it's infuriating when some condescending person decides they know so much better than you that even your question is wrong.
The funny thing is, this works well with people too. Not to literally not answer, but dig into the question or problem they bring up to understand their mental model and whether there was just a miscommunication or an actual disagreement.
“well the answer to your immediate question is X but that’s a pretty strange thing to ask for because of reason Y. Can you tell me more about the wider problem you’re trying to solve?”
This is the right way to answer these questions. SO was famous for the infuriating "You shouldn't do X, so as a favor to you I'm not going to tell you how." or "Before I answer thee, thou must first answer me these questions three!" kinds of answers.
Edit: Don't want to take credit for this. It's a quote from the article.
Your way is good because it answers my question first. I've been wanting to do a weird thing X and had to first spend half an hour convincing people that yes, I really do know what I'm doing, so they'd give me the one-liner answer I came for.
Ultimately, it should be on me to choose whether I want to risk doing X or whether I want to take up your offer to explain Y, not the "as a favor to you, I'm not going to tell you how" way you described.
If, as you admit, X was a “weird thing,” what’s wrong with taking the time to persuade your peers that it’s worth pursuing? That’s how you build consensus on a team and construct a decision record to help future teammates and other stakeholders understand it.
Domo is now apparently "Governed Data for AI Agents".
The desperation for commodity services and second-tier products to stay relevant is widespread. See also intercom.com "The only helpdesk designed for the AI Agent era".
Back when I worked at Google there was an internal page someone put up that denoted what they called "the YX problem": the observation that the XY problem, applied to a sufficiently great extent, creates an environment where more productivity is lost convincing one's interlocutor that X is in fact the correct problem to solve than would be lost by chasing X and having to later pivot to Y if that turned out to be wrong.
It's extraordinarily aggravating when it happens. I really wish it was something we talked about more.
This is the right way to answer these questions. SO was famous for the infuriating "You shouldn't do X, so as a favor to you I'm not going to tell you how." or "Before I answer thee, thou must first answer me these questions three!" kinds of answers.
Edit: Don't want to take credit for this. It's a quote from the article.
Ultimately, it should be on me to choose whether I want to risk doing X or whether I want to take up your offer to explain Y, not the "as a favor to you, I'm not going to tell you how" way you described.
The desperation for commodity services and second-tier products to stay relevant is widespread. See also intercom.com "The only helpdesk designed for the AI Agent era".