The futility of “I told you so” in software engineering teams
&gt; <i>Your “I told you so” only highlights that you need to construct stronger arguments.</i><p>Most of the time I&#x27;m not been listened to and should have been, I feel like it is out of apathy or laziness, not out of whether the argument was sufficiently strong. My request &quot;this will not work for X reasons&quot; is almost always followed by &quot;and Y is what we need to do&quot;, but Y implies … additional work.<p>The culture of current corporate workplaces are especially insidious for the original person ever learning <i>anything</i>. The additional work implies a scope change, or tickets slipping into the next sprint, which is implicitly frowned upon. You&#x27;re supposed to be a team player, so when something does — as predicted — break, <i>you</i> fix it (not the original person) as it now needs to get done, and the company doesn&#x27;t really care who or how the job gets done so long as it is done. (Or, even, the breakage is in your area of expertise, and even more knowledge — and work — is required to fix it than to have avoided it in the first place, enough so that now you&#x27;re the one who <i>must</i> take care of it.) But, what has the original person learned? Half the time, even if gently prodded, &quot;Hey $coworker, I&#x27;ve taken care of Y here to fix the Z breakage.&quot; is just left unresponded to in chat. Did they read it? Who knows. In person is usually just a &quot;Oh, okay.&quot; But do they <i>understand</i> that <i>this</i> is what they were warned about, and that it has cost me time, which causes me to be stressed and frustrated? Who knows. (And all the &quot;emotional intelligence&quot; stuff suggests that one must simply suppress that stress &amp; frustration, as emotion has no place in the workplace.)<p>But… I do agree that outright saying &quot;I told you so&quot;, IME, rarely results in a positive impact. But, I&#x27;m not sure what does.