November 17th, 2020

One senior executive’s warning about escalating conflicts to upper management

One of my friends was contemplating ways that they deal with others who disagree with them at work and wish to escalate a decision to upper management.

I was reminded of one senior executive who explained, “If two of you can’t resolve an issue and escalate it to me, then you both have failed. You are two experts on the subject, asking for a final decision from somebody who knows nothing about it.”

“The one thing I can say with near-certainty is that both of you are going to be equally unhappy with me making the final decision.”

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Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

16 comments

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  • Mystery Man

    Oh, yes. I think everyone knows it. 20 years ago, Microsoft became famous for the fact that its managers never took sides. Rather, in the event of a conflict, they'd sit both conflicting parties down and help them form a consensus. It was around the same time that I also heard about the "Why manholes are round?" interview question, and how it originated from Microsoft.

    I doubt that's the case right now. These days, Microsoft program...

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    • Neil Rashbrook

      I always thought that the interview question was why manhole covers are around… but manholes are probably round as it’s the strongest shape to make them in, as you’re basically boring a vertical pipe.

      • Gunnar Dalsnes

        Actually, I have never seen a round manhole. They have all been like rooms, possibly square, but always a lot larger than the cover itself. Edit: so the point of the cover and its size is to get a man thru the cover hole, and since a persons body is more round than square, I guess that’s the reason.

      • Aged .Net Guy

        The underground gallery is typically a more or less rectangular concrete box. The vertical pipe leading down to the gallery is round in cross section and made of iron or of concrete. The cover receptacle at the surface is typically round and iron. So the cover, the hatch at the top, is round to mate with the receptacle.

        Why round? The traditional "official" answer is that only a round cover can't be inadvertently...

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      • cheong00

        I have one fun story about the lesson on “properties of different shapes”.

        When the teacher was asking us to provide characteristics about “parallelogram”, I throw out the idea that “parallelogram is a shape made with exactly 2 pairs of parallel lines”, and the teacher goes panics because this wasn’t listed on the textbook.

      • cheong00

        > The traditional “official” answer is that only a round cover can’t be inadvertently dropped though the hatchway

        Oh, this was taught in primary 3 level of e-TV programme here, which talks about properties of different shapes.

        Btw, you would probably be surprised to know how many adult have forgotten primary school level mathematics that they would have been taught in syllabus. Say, what is the "exact time in fraction number" when the "hour pointer" and "minute...

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    • Thomas C

      She’s not wrong. You cannot have the .NET Framework 4.x series installed side-by-side. If you have 4.7.1 and install 4.8, then you only have 4.8.
      And there are similar restrictions in the .NET Framework 3.5 where you cannot install 2.0 or 3.0 alongside 3.5.

      With the later .NET Core series and now .NET 5 and beyond, you can have everything many versions of .NET installed side-by-side, even down to the patch level (but I think the...

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      • Mystery Man

        I'm afraid no amount of word-splitting on your part can ever so slightly legitimize her goofy speech. She outright claimed that if you installed a version of .NET Framework (say 4.8,) all .NET apps, including those built in on the other versions (say 1.1), will take a dependency on it and thus break! She went as far as saying that upgrading .NET Framework has always been a company-wide strife! She was promoting .NET Core and...

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      • Daniel Sturm

        "Your original claim was that the runtime included every single version of the assemblies “down to the patch level”.’ (It was and still is.) "
        And that's simply nonsense.

        Go on and show me where the .NET 4.5.2 assemblies in the current 4.8 runtime download (here's the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4503548/microsoft-net-framework-4-8-offline-installer-for-windows ) are. Or simply execute a .NET 4.5.2 compiled app, run it under .NET 4.7 and check the file versions of various system assemblies. You'll be very...

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      • Daniel Sturm

        "NET Framework 4.8 encompasses all .NET 4.x release assemblies before it, down to the patch level"
        That's not the case - just imagine the file sizes that would require. I think the confusion comes from the fact that the SDK includes the reference assemblies for all previous frameworks to avoid the problems we had with 1.1 and 2.0 (i.e. the compiler being unable to decide whether your 1.1 framework app used any 2.0 features)

        The framework...

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      • Mystery Man

        Dishonest word-splitting again.

        Apparently, you can reason that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" but say weird things like 'Your original claim was that the runtime included every single version of the assemblies “down to the patch level”.' (It was and still is.) You want to deliberately deceive yourself to take side with a speech you've never heard, by a woman you've never seen, who is only one of the many Microsoft program managers...

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      • Daniel Sturm

        "It would require exactly 13.62 megabytes. .NET Framework 4 updates are iterative, not cumulative"
        Your original claim was that the runtime included every single version of the assemblies "down to the patch level".

        Which is very different from arguing that obviously you can do an iterative upgrade from version A to B. But you won't retain the version A assemblies. If I download the current .NET 4.8 something I won't find the 4.5.2 assemblies or...

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      • Mystery Man

        just imagine the file sizes that would require
        It would require exactly 13.62 megabytes. .NET Framework 4 updates are iterative, not cumulative. But .NET Core is fully cumulative. For each version, it requires (as of today) ~65 MB for Core Runtime, ~85 MB for Desktop Runtime, and ~20 MB for ASP.NET Runtime. SDK size wildly varies though.

        Also, each version of Windows 10 updates .NET Framework 4.x. Despite this forced biannual update, I haven't seen a...

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      • Thomas C

        "The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installer installs .NET Framework versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 side-by-side."
        Thanks for letting me know. It's a shame they didn't keep that practice.

        "She outright claimed that if you installed a version of .NET Framework (say 4.8,) all .NET apps, including those built in on the other versions (say 1.1), will take a dependency on it and thus break!"

        Would you have preferred it if she said "all versions of the .NET...

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      • Mystery Man

        Neither would cause strife because they are your imaginations. And hers. I already explained why.

    • anonymous

      this comment has been deleted.