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Is there a long German word for when the developer says a fix will take months of work but it’s really a five-line change that’s done in an hour?
I’m asking because I saw this happen three times in the last two weeks and now I’m curious
I think the lesson here is that even a system’s owners can have brainfarts, like all of us. And all the extra context might make it harder to see a plain solution. So it’s always worth asking for reasoning and not be fully convinced by authority (“X said so...”).
It can be especially tempting to defer to authority when you’re often on the receiving end of well-meant but poorly-reasoned “can we just do X”. You don’t want to be obnoxious.
The way I usually get around this is by asking and restating. Eg: “could you please explain why doing X won’t work?” And make sure to keep digging until I can restate their reasoning. Overall it’s probably sound but sometimes I’ll find misunderstandings or different assumptions.
To do this in a non-obnoxious way, you need to actually restate what they’re saying. And if something doesn’t match up, ask about that. People love to provide extra context. It only gets annoying when it’s clear the other person isn’t listening and doesn’t try to understand.
Importantly, this usually happens not because the other person is lacking imagination or bad at problem solving. They can be an amazing expert, but we are all humans and can make logical lapses.
The tone should be “can you help me understand”, not “here’s how you do it”. This is important so that no one feels that they need to get defensive. Otherwise you risk derailing the conversation and missing out on good solutions they could come up with.