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One of the biggest time wasters is when the request doesn't come with the context. It's like they try to save time by keeping everything on a need to know basis but the "why" or the context is a really important aspect of providing a good solution because without that you don't know what they've thought of beforehand.

For example, "we need to block requests from X country". No problem, that's easy enough with most firewall services but why are we doing it? If it's to make contractual guarantees that no traffic will originate from that country then that's not going to work because anyone can easily bypass country code detection mechanisms in 2 minutes with a VPN.




Sounds like an XY Problem:

- user wants to do X but doesn't know how

- they think that Y will work, and asks for help on Y

- others are confused because Y seems strange

https://xyproblem.info/


the vpn vs country thing is the canonical example of engineering vs management and present in most organizations.

lot's of ppl died on that hill already and it was implemented regardless, don't be another victim.




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