I think it's important to differentiate between people who have the right knowledge to request a change and those that think they have the right solely because of seniority; but it's also rather disrespectful to 'cheat' and make fake changes just to make the someone happy. No-one deserves to be treated like a 'mark' for our tricks.
My experience has been that being honest, polite and knowledgeable is a much better approach.
I would guess you've never browsed through clientsfromhell.net.
Being honest, polite, and knowledgeable doesn't change the fact that the person who hires you may be ignorant, too busy, dead set on cheating you, or needs to assert his/her sense of control by insisting on changing something you considered finished.
that may be so, but tricking them into making the right decision is not a good long term decision. If they can't respond to reason perhaps changing teams and companies is a better approach.
"Quit your job" is not a reasonable solution to intractable problems. The duck isn't either, but the change jobs mentality is even more damaging than a duck.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found this approach childish. Adding "ducks" has one of two outcomes:
-Best case: Someone sees your duck and you've all wasted time adding and then removing it.
-Worst case: No one notices your duck, or maybe even likes your duck. You now have a sub-par creation.
Instead, try communicating. If you think a change to your work is bad, say so. You might even learn something about a manager/PM's reasons for adding and removing things. They might learn something from you if you communicate your reasoning well. If your managers aren't open to discussing projects, find a different job.
But why does it sound like cheating? If the manager is not susceptible to this phenomenon, then they will let the duck stay. Why does it matter either way? It just makes any revisions easy if the manager is prone to this effect.
We none of us are perfect, we all have our flaws, but being tricky is not something we need to do; at the very least, it's not something I would wish to spend any time in my life doing.
Yes, overall the approach of adding ducks smells pretty passive-agressive. In an ideal world I suppose the "duck-adders" should have enough authority to push back on questionable changes. It is unfortunate that so many people identify with the need for these tactics. I wonder if the "nit-pickers" in authority are just randomly distributed, and we only see the bad instances (i.e. there is no particular selective pressure on them). Or if we're seeing another manifestation of the Peter Principle of those in authority. Or if the duck adders are somehow self-selecting to be in a position of avoiding responsibility by not being assertive enough?
I think it's important to differentiate between people who have the right knowledge to request a change and those that think they have the right solely because of seniority; but it's also rather disrespectful to 'cheat' and make fake changes just to make the someone happy. No-one deserves to be treated like a 'mark' for our tricks.
My experience has been that being honest, polite and knowledgeable is a much better approach.