Heikniemi Hardcoded

What do you mean "you can't"?

Every now and then I come across a situation where a person gets asked to do something, usually a work assignment, and he replies resolutely: "I can't". The voice inevitably conveys the lack of desire for the task. But what on earth you mean you can't???

Ability to do something is an interesting factor in human behavior. At worst, it goes like this: Unless you think you can X really well, you can't X. Not at all. If you're asked to X, you refuse. Well then, if you think you can X rather well, you're insanely smug about it. At this point, your skills aren't at the level of your bragging. If you spend some time with people who really know X, you probably degrade to the level of not being able to X at all.

Most of the people aren't really that bad, but surprisingly many make themselves look like clowns by making foolish statements on their abilities (or lack of them). But what's worse, people who stop at their "I can't" send out a really negative signal.

A book called The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management describes quite a few interesting management aspects from the Microsoft world. One of the key points is about recruiting smart people. There's an interesting paragraph on job interviews:

"The questions also search to see if the candidate can think. One of the old favorites at Microsoft was to ask how many gas stations there are in the United States. The interesting part was not the final answer, but how people went about solving it. Some candidates would give this question only 30 seconds of thought and then say they didn’t know. No further thought or attempt. At that time it didn't matter what else they could do. If they were incapable of turning on the brain, they were not good enough."

While Microsoft's recruiting practice certainly isn't a universal standard, it's safe to say that qualifying to work at MS means you'd probably qualify for most of the other tech companies as well. Regardless of any recruiting issues, "turning on the brain" is becoming more and more necessary as IT solutions get increasingly complicated. Saying "you can't" and stopping there essentially means you're going to perform routine tasks only. That's fine, but you don't belong in IT development then.

Spend some time on introspection. Learn to know what you can and what you can't. Keep people's impressions on a realistic level. If you're not familiar with something, say it - but don't let that stop you from doing your best. Few things are more motivating than lifelong learning.

Ps. Unless you already read JobsBlog at MSDN, I suggest you take a look. It's written by a couple of Microsoft recruiters and provides pretty interesting insights into tech jobs world. Again, from a Microsoft perspective only, but much of the psychology applies for everyday life even outside the IT world.

Posted by Jouni Heikniemi at September 6, 2004 08:17 PM
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