Saying can’t for a problem with a short term solution is the worst kind of clickbait. “This might delay the process by a few weeks.” Is really just an abundance of caution situation.
Anything that doesn't say "We will do just that! It might take up to 30 days" and asks for up to two extensions afterwards is not compliant, so this would be an exceptionally dumb response.
I completely agree. It is the short timescale that makes toughing it out worth considering. If the project had several months to go and not just six weeks then speaking up or getting out would be the correct courses of action. From the problems described in the OP it seems unlikely any fixes can be applied to avert disaster.
The better solution along these lines is to give them a week to render a decision (with stated reasoning that can be immediately appealed) or the application is automatically approved. Then they can request more resources if they don't have enough to be thorough but what they can't do is delay rendering a decision.
Basically if they make excuses and are not willing to take any actual, definite action soon. "We'll look at this in a couple months." "We'll address this after you finish X." A smooth talker can stall for years.
That's all well and good until you have to explain that the reason building something they think should take a week will take 6 months because you have to fix tech debt, or avoid adding new tech debt.
The problem is people hear what they want to hear. Much like telling a PM that a project is probably going to take 2 weeks but might extend to 2 months. Guess which number they are going to remember and hold you to?
I love taking my own time just as much as the next engineer, but if there are extrinsic factors calling for short-term solutions, one can’t take several weeks or months to “research the system” before the crisis is solved.
> This is the most annoying question in the world.
But this is exactly the information that other people need to plan around to get on with their own work. You need to see things from their perspective. The inner workings of your processes and the long-winded explanation, from their side, is "the most annoying" response in the world.
It's a simple question. The ETA is the only information that is actionable for them. If the answer is "anywhere from a couple days to a month", then flat out say that. If you think that sounds wishy-washy and absurd and that it must then require a long-winded explanation to soften, chances are that it does sound absurd and the long-winded explanation will not soften it, but instead the person may start to think that you are unorganized and clueless. They might start to cringe at the thought of their next interaction with you. Just give them a straight answer.
FWIW, I don't know anything about your system, but it sounds like you need to invest in making triage in your system more efficient.
Not very easy to accomplish, from the company perspective. You have to have contracts, NDAs, and a whole bunch of stuff in place, even if the person is gonna only work for a couple of days, or for a week.
The most important thing to realize in a situation like we’re facing is that, chances are, you cannot act too quickly, but you can easily act too slowly. For this reason, I decided that we had to come up with, and execute on, a cost-savings plan within two weeks. There is little upside in pushing out hard decisions like this slowly because of the simple fact that you’re burning gas while you’re deciding.
What? He's got three years of runway, but he can't afford to think about a 10% layoff for more than two weeks?
"give a week warning before closing out if you can. It's not too much to ask"
Do you think that the "one week period" is going to get continued funding? I doubt most are given that much time ahead to prepare, let alone able to prepare to give the users the ability to prepare.
That's more a matter of budget than anything else. If you problem is valuable enough spending the money in a short time-frame rather than waiting for weeks can be well worth the investment.
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