--On Friday, April 12, 2013 23:50 +0000 Pat Thaler <pthaler@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > +1 on for John's response. > > I will argue with my manager if I think they are wrong and > I've gotten positive results from giving managers feedback on > their performance. Of course, disagreeing with management > won't always get the decision changed, but I've never felt I > lost anything by raising the discussion. I should probably have added that, for some specific classes of issues and for those who are members of ACM, IEEE, and several other professional societies, failure to do so is a violation of the standards of professional ethics to which they have agreed. Then again, so is discriminatory behavior. See, e.g., http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics and http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html . > I've also seen some bad decisions made when someone had good > reasons why a decision was wrong but didn't surface them > because they didn't feel they could argue with management. Yep. I didn't say it always worked out well or that all managers are competent and secure enough to tolerate feedback. > IETF participant to IETF leadership isn't the same as employee > to manager of course. We are all volunteers collaborating to > get good results and if we feel there is a process problem we > can discuss it. IETF formalizes this by having open mike > sessions for example. And appeal procedures as an integral part of the decision-making process. I've said this before, but I believe we don't use those enough for "normal" situations where issues and tradeoffs have not been considered properly. That lack of use has led to an impression that appeals were the tools and refuge of crazies and trolls, which was certainly never the intent. > A thread on whether there is a problem with the IESG review > process is appropriate, IMO. Oh, indeed. And, at a slightly more indirect level, I believe that the ways in which carefully thought-out constructive discussion and suggestions have sometimes been belittled and suppressed lies at the root of some of our larger problems. Unfortunately, noise from crazies, people who strongly push suggestions or comments without bothering to try to understand the actual situations or history, a few people who think that making IETF more like some other body would automatically make it better, fear of change by those in leadership positions, and miscellaneous trolls has made those more constructive conversations difficult as well. john