I worked at a Japanese corporation for most of my career.
They are not a “warm and fuzzy” bunch.
But they respect apologies. If I screwed up, I quickly learned to cop to it. The absolute worst thing I could do was cover it up.
Their attitude was not a punishing one, but we were expected to fix our mistakes, and ensure they did not happen again.
If we said we did not know something, it was assumed we would learn, or find someone who did.
Lot of “personal responsibility” stuff.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
My biggest win, mentoring: a new guy put in charge of 'Engineering data' e.g. putting ad-hoc document solutions under one umbrella. He was worried, not an Engineer, thought he'd make a fool of himself. I said "Here's the trick. If you don't know something, say out loud "I don't know what that means. Can you explain it to me?" And because Engineers usually are happy to explain their shit, they'll not think badly of you but instead become helpful. Never bluff or fake it.
Fast forward 2 years. Everybody now respects him. He's the most generally knowledgeable guy in the company, the CEO consults him. Moved to manage the new products. He's on the road to Director now. Still the same helpful guy with the reassuring voice and the insistence everybody in the room understand before moving on.
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
It's specific to company cultures, not Americans in general.
My first job out of college was at a dysfunctional company with a lot of internal competition. Making a mistake or taking responsibility for a failure was something that would be remembered for years and brought up at every opportunity. I remember my manager coaching me through covering up a simple mistake because he knew another team was eagerly waiting for me to slip up so they could attempt to take over our almost-finished project.
My second job was the polar opposite. When someone made a mistake, other teams jumped in to help fix the problem and kindly educate the person about how to avoid the problem in the future. Mistakes were a learning opportunity, admitting fault was a show of leadership, and the only real way to fail was to be chronically careless or to lie.
The biggest difference between the two companies was that the first company felt like a zero-sum game. We always felt like we were competing against other teams for bigger slices of the company budget, limited attention from executives, or just to keep our jobs through the next round of layoffs. It was every team for themselves, and other teams' mistakes were an opportunity to take them down a notch.
Meanwhile, the better company operated like everyone was on the same team. We all succeeded or failed together. Mutual respect an taking responsibility for your actions were not only encouraged by management, it was a requirement if you wanted to work there. I've tried to model my management style after this.
> I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
IMO this is one of the fringe benefits of a good math education. Almost everybody who does math for long enough, especially if you work in small groups with your peers, will have a moment of "oh, I see, I am totally wrong and you are totally right" and find out that being wrong does not make someone a bad person. And you will see your peers do the same.
It's one underrated side effect of clear and unambiguous reasoning. Yes, many things are grey areas, but there's value in a place where you can't throw up a muddle of goalpost-shifting and rhetorical tricks to run away from your own errors.
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
So true. And people wonder why others don't apologize - we teach them to not apologize, because an apology is an admission of guilt and then we destroy them.
>Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
Shoutout to all the foreigners working in the US that don't say that know everything, are quiet in meetings when everyone is yelling out stupid ideas, regularly give up their design when a competing one gets promoted loudly, then never get promoted. Eventually you'll learn never to admit failure or ignorance and eventually start demanding who made the error.
I don't know about any research supporting this (see what I did there) but in my experience the best performing teams provide a safe space - where you are not immediately judged or criticised for mistakes, uncertainty or asking questions - but this necessary to bleed upwards to not holding teams to unrealistic deadlines, to careful assessment of quality of definition of work set, even towards what Incall "outcome driven development" where we set metrics to be changed and then assert commits will change said metrics
Conversely my worst work has been done when i have bullshitted and now need to keep up the lie.
Pro-tip - don't do this
Pro-tip-2 - confidence that you can do something you have not done before, when having a history of success in the field is not the same as bullshitting
Anyway it's hard to measure objectively- but you tend to reward the right people when you do.
And no, markets don't do that nearly as well as you might think
I couldn't agree more! The hallmark of a good team is to provide an environment where you do not have to be constantly on the lookout for 'losing face' or 'losing status', but in fact, an open and honest environment is being fostered. Thanks for sharing your tips---it's appreciated!
> And no, markets don't do that nearly as well as you might think
Markets depend on Good information To function well. Market participants can distort the information in the market for profit. In so far as this profiteering can be maintained, markets won’t function so well.
Some conjecture that might not be too far off the mark.
> I don't know about any research supporting this (see what I did there) but in my experience the best performing teams provide a safe space
The term in organisational behaviour is "psychological safety" and it comes up probably in the first couple hours of your manager training at any competently run company in 2020. Hell, it's in Steven Covey's 7 Habits.
As you're saying, it's the bedrock of promoting actionable feedback and exceeding zero-sum behaviors.
Excellent blog post. One of the big issues, unfortunately, is that there are too many of THEM. I just sat through a job interview where they bombarded me with topics and asked me to rate myself on a scale from 1-know nothing, 2-familiar and 3-expert.
I immediately understood that this was a pointless exercise for me. I knew That I don't consider myself an expert. I haven't studied any topic long enough to call myself an expert. On the other hand, I like to believe that I don't fall in the "clueless" part either. I have worked in the computer industry form many years now and have overall pretty good problem-solving skills and am able to produce work that generates value for my employers.
Still, I learn every day and improve on my skill, but it will require a lot before I dare to call myself an expert. Others call me an expert, a wizard, and other nice things, but this is never anything I would use to describe myself.
I never got the job offer. Good riddance! I doubt I would have accepted the job anyway.
This type of rating system is always disappointing. Candidates and interviewers each have different ideas of what expertise means -- I guess because there is no real context around the question. Maybe it's a trope to say, but it seems like competence and likelihood to rate oneself an expert are inversely correlated (barring hubris or real expertise!).
I used to ask candidates to rate themselves from 1-10, e.g., in database performance analysis, and often would get people rating themselves a 9 or a 10 without being able to articulate anything about the topic. It just seems very meaningless, since we were going to have a discussion anyway -- and the conversational part of the interview is more revealing, in any case.
The THEM in the article are "The Elders of Mathematics" though, and in particular his professor, who _didn't_ have any issues admitting ignorance. When you say that there are "too many of THEM" you probably meant the "wrong crowd" people.
Also, are you supposed to answer on a relative basis, or absolute? If I was running the intervied and was asked that question in response, I would consider it a Good Sign.
A related passage from Socrates' Apology: "Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
One of the things I've read from folks who know a lot about startups used to amaze me. Intelligence is not necessarily a critical factor in whether founders will be successful or not. In fact, it can be counter-indicative! The more intelligent you are, you more likely you're one of the people like the author mentions. I've also read that it's not the geniuses, necessarily, that make it. Most times it's just the slow plodders. A genius may become overly-attracted to one of their own ideas. They may stick with it too long, or they may be overly-defensive when they receive honest feedback. A plodder just keeps trudging along, happy to take whatever feedback comes their way, happy to change if needed, happy to learn from others.
I captured this concept in my first book with a phrase I call "profound ignorance". It's not just admitting you're ignorant, it's admitting you're probably ignorant about everything. And that's fine. Ignorant people don't know yet, and if they're curious, they go try to find out. Even when they do find out, they're still quite open to being wrong. They are, in fact, ignorant.
I found this had a profound impact in my programming and consulting career. Frankly, it's bad for your career and good for your life. People want to hire people that know a bunch of stuff, and to be open, honest, and curious about being profoundly ignorant is not reassuring. Other programmers many times want to play posturing games. It is, after all, part of our social programming. Ignorant people usually don't do so well in these games. But on a personal level? It was liberating. I could find whatever I wanted to and deep dive in it. Since I didn't know much of anything, I was able to talk about topics I have a ton of experience in without feeling like I had to attack or defend any pre-held opinions. It was, in fact, what I consider "growing up", both as a human and as a professional.
When we think of how much programming is skewed towards youth, we should keep in mind that most really young people have not had this growing up experience. We should wish them well and cut them a bit of slack if they're acting like we did when we were their age. After all, it's human.
That's why when stuff is being advertised as "everyone can do it", everyone gets excited but I run away. I don't want to be overcome by hard workers, so I am looking for stuff for which you truly have to be a genius to do it and hard work is not a shortcut.
This only demonstrates that people with high status in academia can admit ignorance and get a good result. I can speculate that the author would get very different results if he professed ignorance at his first job--I think coworkers who followed "fake it til you make it" would get promoted faster.
But there's something to the status thing, and I think he illustrates it: if you have any status or credibility at all, you also have the ability to set the tone.
And you probably should. The few managers and executives I've met with who can't take "I don't know" and "this was a mistake" in stride without losing their cool immediately start getting lied to and shielded from bad news.
In the light of amelius's comment: Is the first promotion that relevant? If you learn faster by asking questions, you are a more skilled programmer much sooner. If your first employer doesn't honour that, you then have the skills to switch and earn according to your much higher skills at another company.
The fake till you make it people quickly top out. Someone who is afraid to admit they don't know something will end up not learning.
My personal anecdote contrary to your point is my first programming interview. My answer to pretty much every question was "I don't know, but I'm excited to learn". I thought the interview went horribly, but I was offered the job. The owner who hired me (who ended up becoming a friend and we worked together at multiple companies), told me later that my confidence to say I didn't know something is what put me ahead of other candidates. Without knowing me well yet, he felt he would be able to trust me.
That's not necessarily my take from the story---but I can see where you are coming from! The prof was not saying that he does not know anything, he was just elucidating the 'boundaries' of his knowledge.
My take was that you can be confident about the skills that you _do_ have, and honest about the skills you _don't_ have.
I think this touches on a general point which the author misses.
If you are already viewed as an alpha intellect in the group (or say you are viewed as one of the best software engineers in your company), then you have the luxury of being able to be modest and in fact expressing such modesty will even enhance your reputation among your peers.
If you are somewhat insecure about your abilities or if your reputation is unestablished or you are not particularly recognised, then admitting ignorance in front of your peers is unlikely to enhance your reputation or feeling of self-worth.
When I hear those at the top-of-the-hierarchy - whether in a management structure or in "technical ability" structure - being modest about their abilities or admitting ignorance, it often comes across as insincere to me.
I am surprised nobody is talking about the math part of the story.
For me - I had the exact same experience with topology as the author. I was taking a normal math class and in the middle of the normal class the professor started talking about topology. He got the whole class excited about topology to the point that we all enrolled in topology the next quarter.
Imagine our disappointment when we discovered our new topology professor did not love topology. He taught the class by rote. Topology is not a subject I could learn on my own. I dropped the class and sadly still wonder what I missed.
The lesson for me is that it is not enough to admit ignorance. You also need an enlightened guide and mentor.
There also seems to be this misconception that being intelligent gives you a license and even a propensity to be a jerk. I just don't buy it. Sometimes smart people are jerks. But if you're a jerk the onus is on you in my mind to prove you are smart. I won't make that assumption.
When I was younger I loved ideas for their own sake and was constantly disappointed when I went to have fun with some idea and found that everyone gathered around it viewed it as an opportunity to assert dominance. I fled so many fields because I believed ultimately I would find some place where people were there for the ideas themselves, not for the zero-sum battle for status. Ultimately I left academia and became a programmer because it seemed the ego battle was less a part of the process. I hate the competition-based culture of early academia -- olympiads and whatnot -- for the same reason. The reward isn't in the ideas themselves or the work but in the ranking.
Two telltale signs of a mature mind: if someone readily admits he does not know something, or if someone readily admits he was wrong. Call it metacognitive skills if you want.
Similarly, the instructors I really hate are the ones who don’t know the answers to questions but they’ll try to come up with answer on the spot because they think you (or the eavesdropping student) doesn’t know better. Just say you don’t know!
My least favourite instructor, upon being asked whether a certain convergence criterion was just necessary or also sufficient, assumed a very ponderous face and replied sagely---or so he thought---with a simple 'it depends'. The rest of the course went downhill pretty fast from there.
I've always readily admitted when I don't know something. Might be that I was raised in Arkansas, where ignorance is a little more acceptable.
It's usually a great benefit for me, for the same reasons the article describes. However the problem I've found is that--as an engineer--if you don't profess complete knowledge, there's a limit to how effective you can be in leadership. Engineers don't take you seriously, if you act as though you have any doubt in yourself. It's a wall I keep hitting and I've about decided I need to start feigning full-bore 10x brogrammer ego just to herd some cats.
Developing a sense of what you know or do not know is a big part of learning. In ML, this is called confidence estimation and is harder than actually learning the task. Most ML models just learn to solve the task and have shit confidence estimations. I presume with humans it takes many years of learning a subject to really know how much you do not know. It's a process of calibration of confidence based on lots of background knowledge on the topic (going from unknown unknowns to known unknowns).
"I do not have enough knowledge of this subject to hold an informed opinion" is a statement that should be respected, not ridiculed.
We have a tendency to view people who change their views as "wishy-washy" and "flip-floppers", instead of respecting them for informing themselves and reevaluating their positions.
The truth is that egomaniacs tend to be the ones who get all the fame and glory. Just look at Musk, Trump, and anyone else who's managed to acquire a massive cult following.
"The power of admitting ignorance", or, the folly of refusing to learn something you don't know. I dunno. It seems self-evident. The issue here is ego. Self-awareness. Humility.
I have to note this: a typical classroom may have up to a couple hundred students and some kind of schedule to uphold. If everyone asks questions all the time, there would be no progress done, and "fast learners" would be bored out of their minds, while the "slower" ones would still have a hard time. Also, schedule would just be trashed by such approach
Thanks for sharing this — I needed it. I think this explains why I often say “I get it” when I really don’t: I don’t want to look stupid. But being able to admit ignorance means that I can test my mental models and make them even better. I need to be able to admit my ignorance to myself to be able to ask myself the questions that strengthen my understanding of new or unfamiliar concepts.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
They are not a “warm and fuzzy” bunch.
But they respect apologies. If I screwed up, I quickly learned to cop to it. The absolute worst thing I could do was cover it up.
Their attitude was not a punishing one, but we were expected to fix our mistakes, and ensure they did not happen again.
If we said we did not know something, it was assumed we would learn, or find someone who did.
Lot of “personal responsibility” stuff.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
It’s crazy.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|5 years ago|reply
Fast forward 2 years. Everybody now respects him. He's the most generally knowledgeable guy in the company, the CEO consults him. Moved to manage the new products. He's on the road to Director now. Still the same helpful guy with the reassuring voice and the insistence everybody in the room understand before moving on.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|5 years ago|reply
It's specific to company cultures, not Americans in general.
My first job out of college was at a dysfunctional company with a lot of internal competition. Making a mistake or taking responsibility for a failure was something that would be remembered for years and brought up at every opportunity. I remember my manager coaching me through covering up a simple mistake because he knew another team was eagerly waiting for me to slip up so they could attempt to take over our almost-finished project.
My second job was the polar opposite. When someone made a mistake, other teams jumped in to help fix the problem and kindly educate the person about how to avoid the problem in the future. Mistakes were a learning opportunity, admitting fault was a show of leadership, and the only real way to fail was to be chronically careless or to lie.
The biggest difference between the two companies was that the first company felt like a zero-sum game. We always felt like we were competing against other teams for bigger slices of the company budget, limited attention from executives, or just to keep our jobs through the next round of layoffs. It was every team for themselves, and other teams' mistakes were an opportunity to take them down a notch.
Meanwhile, the better company operated like everyone was on the same team. We all succeeded or failed together. Mutual respect an taking responsibility for your actions were not only encouraged by management, it was a requirement if you wanted to work there. I've tried to model my management style after this.
[+] [-] papeda|5 years ago|reply
IMO this is one of the fringe benefits of a good math education. Almost everybody who does math for long enough, especially if you work in small groups with your peers, will have a moment of "oh, I see, I am totally wrong and you are totally right" and find out that being wrong does not make someone a bad person. And you will see your peers do the same.
It's one underrated side effect of clear and unambiguous reasoning. Yes, many things are grey areas, but there's value in a place where you can't throw up a muddle of goalpost-shifting and rhetorical tricks to run away from your own errors.
[+] [-] threatofrain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|5 years ago|reply
So true. And people wonder why others don't apologize - we teach them to not apologize, because an apology is an admission of guilt and then we destroy them.
[+] [-] swayvil|5 years ago|reply
They have a manual of corporate philosophy.
In there they explicitly advise, "never admit fault".
Which makes sense from a business, legalistic warfare perspective. $>truth after all.
Maybe our corporate philosophy is leaking into our common philosophy.
[+] [-] rb808|5 years ago|reply
Shoutout to all the foreigners working in the US that don't say that know everything, are quiet in meetings when everyone is yelling out stupid ideas, regularly give up their design when a competing one gets promoted loudly, then never get promoted. Eventually you'll learn never to admit failure or ignorance and eventually start demanding who made the error.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|5 years ago|reply
Conversely my worst work has been done when i have bullshitted and now need to keep up the lie. Pro-tip - don't do this
Pro-tip-2 - confidence that you can do something you have not done before, when having a history of success in the field is not the same as bullshitting
Anyway it's hard to measure objectively- but you tend to reward the right people when you do.
And no, markets don't do that nearly as well as you might think
[+] [-] Topolomancer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] state_less|5 years ago|reply
Markets depend on Good information To function well. Market participants can distort the information in the market for profit. In so far as this profiteering can be maintained, markets won’t function so well.
Some conjecture that might not be too far off the mark.
[+] [-] blueboo|5 years ago|reply
The term in organisational behaviour is "psychological safety" and it comes up probably in the first couple hours of your manager training at any competently run company in 2020. Hell, it's in Steven Covey's 7 Habits.
As you're saying, it's the bedrock of promoting actionable feedback and exceeding zero-sum behaviors.
[+] [-] khebbie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makach|5 years ago|reply
I immediately understood that this was a pointless exercise for me. I knew That I don't consider myself an expert. I haven't studied any topic long enough to call myself an expert. On the other hand, I like to believe that I don't fall in the "clueless" part either. I have worked in the computer industry form many years now and have overall pretty good problem-solving skills and am able to produce work that generates value for my employers.
Still, I learn every day and improve on my skill, but it will require a lot before I dare to call myself an expert. Others call me an expert, a wizard, and other nice things, but this is never anything I would use to describe myself.
I never got the job offer. Good riddance! I doubt I would have accepted the job anyway.
[+] [-] zig|5 years ago|reply
I used to ask candidates to rate themselves from 1-10, e.g., in database performance analysis, and often would get people rating themselves a 9 or a 10 without being able to articulate anything about the topic. It just seems very meaningless, since we were going to have a discussion anyway -- and the conversational part of the interview is more revealing, in any case.
[+] [-] rossvor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Topolomancer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
-- Confucius
[+] [-] munichpavel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
-On the wall of a classroom in my past -can’t remember where.
[+] [-] ooobit2|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|5 years ago|reply
I captured this concept in my first book with a phrase I call "profound ignorance". It's not just admitting you're ignorant, it's admitting you're probably ignorant about everything. And that's fine. Ignorant people don't know yet, and if they're curious, they go try to find out. Even when they do find out, they're still quite open to being wrong. They are, in fact, ignorant.
I found this had a profound impact in my programming and consulting career. Frankly, it's bad for your career and good for your life. People want to hire people that know a bunch of stuff, and to be open, honest, and curious about being profoundly ignorant is not reassuring. Other programmers many times want to play posturing games. It is, after all, part of our social programming. Ignorant people usually don't do so well in these games. But on a personal level? It was liberating. I could find whatever I wanted to and deep dive in it. Since I didn't know much of anything, I was able to talk about topics I have a ton of experience in without feeling like I had to attack or defend any pre-held opinions. It was, in fact, what I consider "growing up", both as a human and as a professional.
When we think of how much programming is skewed towards youth, we should keep in mind that most really young people have not had this growing up experience. We should wish them well and cut them a bit of slack if they're acting like we did when we were their age. After all, it's human.
[+] [-] Rerarom|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deathgrips|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeefirst|5 years ago|reply
But there's something to the status thing, and I think he illustrates it: if you have any status or credibility at all, you also have the ability to set the tone.
And you probably should. The few managers and executives I've met with who can't take "I don't know" and "this was a mistake" in stride without losing their cool immediately start getting lied to and shielded from bad news.
[+] [-] toohotatopic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matwood|5 years ago|reply
My personal anecdote contrary to your point is my first programming interview. My answer to pretty much every question was "I don't know, but I'm excited to learn". I thought the interview went horribly, but I was offered the job. The owner who hired me (who ended up becoming a friend and we worked together at multiple companies), told me later that my confidence to say I didn't know something is what put me ahead of other candidates. Without knowing me well yet, he felt he would be able to trust me.
[+] [-] Topolomancer|5 years ago|reply
My take was that you can be confident about the skills that you _do_ have, and honest about the skills you _don't_ have.
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
Then we would schedule their termination.
[+] [-] derriz|5 years ago|reply
If you are already viewed as an alpha intellect in the group (or say you are viewed as one of the best software engineers in your company), then you have the luxury of being able to be modest and in fact expressing such modesty will even enhance your reputation among your peers.
If you are somewhat insecure about your abilities or if your reputation is unestablished or you are not particularly recognised, then admitting ignorance in front of your peers is unlikely to enhance your reputation or feeling of self-worth.
When I hear those at the top-of-the-hierarchy - whether in a management structure or in "technical ability" structure - being modest about their abilities or admitting ignorance, it often comes across as insincere to me.
[+] [-] maire|5 years ago|reply
For me - I had the exact same experience with topology as the author. I was taking a normal math class and in the middle of the normal class the professor started talking about topology. He got the whole class excited about topology to the point that we all enrolled in topology the next quarter.
Imagine our disappointment when we discovered our new topology professor did not love topology. He taught the class by rote. Topology is not a subject I could learn on my own. I dropped the class and sadly still wonder what I missed.
The lesson for me is that it is not enough to admit ignorance. You also need an enlightened guide and mentor.
[+] [-] WesternStar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DFHippie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kieckerjan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Topolomancer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mytailorisrich|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkanciscan|5 years ago|reply
It's usually a great benefit for me, for the same reasons the article describes. However the problem I've found is that--as an engineer--if you don't profess complete knowledge, there's a limit to how effective you can be in leadership. Engineers don't take you seriously, if you act as though you have any doubt in yourself. It's a wall I keep hitting and I've about decided I need to start feigning full-bore 10x brogrammer ego just to herd some cats.
[+] [-] visarga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|5 years ago|reply
We have a tendency to view people who change their views as "wishy-washy" and "flip-floppers", instead of respecting them for informing themselves and reevaluating their positions.
[+] [-] brenden2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|5 years ago|reply
Edit: now the link works.
[+] [-] blueboo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Topolomancer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curlcntr|5 years ago|reply
"in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few" - Shunryu Suzuki
[+] [-] joerickey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|5 years ago|reply
It is so hard for these people to just admit they don't know and have to ask someone or escalate the case.