My mom used to do faux decorative wall painting for rich clients. They would pick a sample and she would paint the walls to match but she found that they often complained after the work was done, even when it was exactly what they wanted.

She ended up getting a spray bottle with water that had a bit of food coloring and called it a “toning layer” that she would spray on the wall. It didn’t change anything but it made the clients think their feedback mattered, she said it almost always worked and they’d be elated afterwards.

producers and engineers do this to musicians too, pretending to turn up the monitor mix on the console while looking at the artist until they signal "ok"

In the same idea, artist will give the clients multiple samples with one being terrible to help them select the better options.

I once worked at a place that had a piece of equipment that still had one of the old analog drives and a few operators would complain and complain until they found an electrician to adjust it and then it would run like crap until we hooked up a scope to it to fix it. So I told one of the senor electricians to mount a potentiometer to the panel and run the wires to ground and just tell everyone to use that to make adjustments. Worked great for years.

This doesn’t always work. Sometimes clients pick the terrible option. T_T

Except sometimes they selected it and thus hilarious examples of modern art and corporate identity were brought to light

Leland never realizing the producers were just invisibly throwing up their hands and thinking ‘that’s just what this guy sounds like…’

He's played with everyone. Just take a look at his Wikipedia page. He knows how to handle producers.

Bikeshedding - where people feel the need to give feedback even when none is needed, resulting in inane comments about things that don't matter.

Pro tip, if you're a software engineer, especially working on UIs - leave something annoying on your UI in the demo. Something small enough to not be a huge deal but big enough so that an exec or director would notice it. Make a button slightly too big, or the width of a divider too large. They'll call that out, feel like they contributed, and likely the entire demo will be spent talking about the inane thing on the page. Then go fix the 2-ish lines of code and move on with your day.

That's why you always hide a duck in it

This is valuable advice I wish I had known decades ago. You can't always avoid shit managers.

Heard a similar story from bassist Chuck Rainey about being asked by a producer before session not to play slap during a certain section of a song. Same guy kept saying "something is missing but I don't know what" and kept making them retake. Then the one time Chuck decided to slap again, the guy said "yes that's exactly what I'm looking for"

Your tip is also known as The Queen’s Duck.

Been in contexts to give feedback and people pressure me when I say things like "I'm not a stakeholder, so no standing to give feedback" or "Ok, seems fine". It's evidently not "leadership" if I'm actually content with something or content to leave something alone I have no right to meddle with.

or customers.

it works everywhere, even on me

I use it with customers, to hide something I haven't quite figured out yet or know will result in a lengthy conversation that's been had a dozen times before with no change in outcome

my team knows that there's only so much time for review, so if they put dumb things to catch in reviews of their work, they can slip larger things by the quality review process. they also understand that that's on them — if there's so much wrong with something that it would simply take too long to point it all out, the problem is with their work, not with the reviewer.

only somewhat related, but shout out to the guy who would repeatedly make the same mistakes on drawings over and over again. he would put up a review package of 100 drawings, the common mistake would be noted explicitly on the first couple, and then on the 3rd the note would read "applies to all subsequent drawings". that guy would then only fix the ones that were explicitly called out. either a complete dumbass or lack of giving a shit, I don't know which. I've probably worked with both.

Peg - Steely Dan, I think that was.

Hide-a-Duck sounds like a lawn ornament you put your spare key in.

Well they should at least turn up their monitor if they ask lol geez.

When I was a software pm I loved being able to tell someone "you nailed it that's awesome can't wait to show this to [person relevant to their review packet]!"

That's the value that the engineers wanted me to add.

monitors are for the artist only, and if they're too loud, they start messing up the mix coming through the mains--after a lot of time spent by the sound guys ringing out the monitors, pre-sound check, depending on the acoustics of the room. a lot of artists don't know and don't care how any of this works-- they want what they want and don't care what "problems" they're causing for everyone else.

hence the pretend turning up the monitors

Illustrators know this as the “hairy arm”: adding an undesirable minor detail to give the art director something with whose removal they can put their stamp on the project, without wrecking the rest of it or making too much work for the artist.

I understood some of those words

The 'DFA slider' (does fuck all), just move it and ask if it sounds better.

Yeh, this is common.
I've heard of PPI (Producer Pleaser Indicator) which is a mixing desk channel not routed anywhere but can be fiddled with to meet client demands.
And there is the DFA (Does Fuck All). Similar concept

They gave it a knob that don't do nothin

Actual leadership is, "This work looks good, let's not waste any more time talking about it."

Don't be noncommittal, instead approve the work and push for moving forward. When someone suggests that more criticism is needed, indicate that they're the one holding up progress.

Lots of audiophiles buy lots of gadgets which do this same thing or make the sound worse, but they love it.

I have a friend that is a producer. They've had people try stuff like this before.

They just assume the artist/client is... Uh...Eccentric, and politely move on, making a note of it for later.

Similar story, not mine: TV repairmen back in the day would have frequent in-home callbacks, with the TV owner stating the TV picture wasn't as good as before the repair.

So, after a repair the repairman would adjust the v-hold so the image would slowly rotate. "Tell me if the picture is getting better or worse." If it was getting worse, they'd flip it back the other way until the customer was satisfied they were seeing the best picture.

Apparently cut callbacks to near zero.

The resignation in this comment is palpable and I laughed a lot. Thank you.

I like how the comment ✨ evolved ✨

The origin of the DFA control.

When designing, I try to provide options and typically one is a "throw away" simple option that took no effort. Like I change a color or a minor element. Just to provide the illusion of choice.

If I don't provide multiple options on the initial drafts people lose their damn minds. They try to redesign something that shouldn't have their input. This let's them talk about which one they like better and not fixate on one design and tear into it.

Also I get the low effort feedback. Everyone has some opinion on visuals, because it's easy to say "what if...". Big part of the job is coming prepared knowing what people will start picking at with answers ready to why you did what you did. Or just bullshitting on the spot.

Though you do run the risk that they love something you intended to be annoying. "The dart board value selector widget will make our product fun and exciting for gen Zs, I must report this to the board immediately so we can invest in converting all of our widgets to darts-based!"

Or make it too annoying and they might question your competence. "Yeah, he did quickly change the button that counted how many times you pressed it to a text box where you can enter a value but why would he have thought we'd have wanted that button in the first place!?"

:(

It's important not to be rude

Leland is a freaking legend...this just elevates that status more.

Yeah we had a DFA slider on our board! Good for placating meddlers, but also excellent for pranking new people. "If it starts to sound too tinny, lower the DFA very gradually till it sounds right" and then watch them very seriously fiddle with it for ages or until someone laughs lol.

I use to run sound mixers for events and local bands, and had a dummy slider that I'd move when a family member wanted to hear their special boy or whatnot. Everyone in the industry knows this trick. Almost everyone plays along.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/#5-a-duck

This leaves out the tidbit that Leeland says he flips the switch and plucks the strings from a different position, which does significantly change the tone. He just doesn't want to turn the knobs, which he might reasonably be reluctant to do for any number of reasons. It's not "I'm just gonna do what I want. Fuck the recording engineer" its "Ok. You want a different sound, but I know the better way to change it, so here, I'm gonna flip a nothing switch so we don't have to argue about it".

Or a sexy-time game.

I've had it the other way around, not even on purpose. As the designated nooby sound engineer for the evening I had to mix the bands monitoring as well as the live mix for the audience. During the sound check one of the band members wanted their vocals to have a bit more "pop" in the mix, and not knowing what that exactly meant I asked them what they wanted. I don't really remember what it was they said, but it was something about boosting certain frequencies. Now, I have never had to do this before, and while I in principle knew how to do it the request kind of took me out of the flow so in the moment I completely forgot. So while this musician was looping his vocals so I could make the change, I was just selecting random menus on the console hoping I would end up at the right one. And, at some point, the guy was like, "oh yeah that's perfect!"

I had not changed any EQ at all. I wasn't even close to the right buttons, so to speak. But he still liked it, so I shut up and let them do their thing. Honestly I think it might've been his on inflection into the mic that made him change his mind, not the actual EQ, but whatever, he was happy with the mix and I was happy that I did not look like a total noob (even tho I was)

I think bikeshedding is more commonly that people will argue about the materials of the bike shed over more important points of discussion. ex a bad thing because it detracts from more important decisions, not because it requires unnecessary change

queens duck as mentioned below better fits the tip (which is valid)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Sklar

Ahem.

Ah, sounds like you accidentally found the DFA slider!

I use this a lot in presentations, and have taught this to colleagues I have mentored.

However I kind of understand the urge, when I'm on the other side and have to give feedback, saying "everything looks great" seems kind of lazy, or a cop-out. I have to fight the need to find something to nit-pick.

My father would tell a story about an IBM tech from back in the pre-PC days. She had one of those Dick Trickle kind of names, where the name parses as a phrase? To not outright dox her I'll call her Robin Banks.

Robin would be at a customer's site working on an IBM minicomputer or unit record equipment, when a secretary would flag her down and ask her to adjust the "tension" or "weight" or something on a Selectric typewriter. IBM Selectric typewriters don't have any kind of adjustment on the key travel or typing feel. What she would do is walk up to it, type a little, agree that it felt off, take a small flathead screwdriver, stick it through an opening in the side or back of the case, pretend to adjust something, she'd take a cloth, damp it with some of the light oil they used on all the intricate little mechanisms in old computer hardware, wipe the key caps with it. Then say "Okay, try that" and inevitably they were happy with it.

Another story from Robin, in an office with a good size secretary pool, one of the secretaries kept bitching about her typewriter. It doesn't type right, it doesn't work right. Robin noticed that this particular secretary had been issued a blue Selectric, all the other secretaries had red ones. She swapped out the case with one of the other typewriters, just the shell, same machine, and wouldn't you know it typed much better!

Such a bassist move.

Or just bullshitting on the spot.

ah, so like pretty much every job ever. got it.