How to make an engineer to accept your crazy idea

  • Invite him/her to a 2-6 hours meeting. It may also be several meeting. But within one day. The important meeting has to be the last in the row.
  • Don’t send an agenda beforehand. They might prepare themselves. It is better to be spontaneous.
  • Speak loud. The louder you are, the smarter you seem.
  • Don’t bring any objective proofs or measurements that support your idea. Operate with the terms that nobody can measure. If engineers provide measurements for their wrong ideas, ignore it.
  • Interrupt often
  • Use a killer feature to support your idea. For example: “my solution is better because we have to build microservices”, or “this architecture allows decoupling”, or “spark is an industry standard”, or “we have to reduce technical dept”.
  • Refer to a higher management or collective decisions. For example “this topic was already aligned with our lead”
  • If you feel they are winning, change the subject
  • Never confess you don’t understand what you are going to build
  • Don’t allow them to think in quiet. You should keep talking constantly. Sometimes you can find an ally within the team that likes to talk. Use this person. He/she will help you to fill periods of silence during the meeting.
  • If engineers are too frustrated they may leave the company. You don’t want it because then you have to find new ones. Promise them something nice. For example that they will work on a very interesting topic next quarter. But now they have to implement something else.
  • Change the requirements every time you discuss the topic.
  • If engineers provide their prototypes or objective measurements find a flaw and emphasize it.