I don't want the details
- ID
- 27874
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 23 Sep 2026, 9:04 PM
- Fetched
- 24 Sep 2026, 4:22 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://michaelheap.com/i-dont-want-the-details/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 7.0
- Created
- 24 Sep 2026, 4:24 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_founders
What happened
Michael Heap recounts an incident review call where an SVP cut off his explanation with 'I don't want the details' — not out of dismissiveness, but because they already assumed competence and wanted to skip straight to corrective action. Heap argues that asking 'why did this happen?' produces reasonable explanations that defuse urgency, while asking 'what are we changing so this class of failure is less likely?' actually drives change.
Why it matters
If you run postmortems or incident reviews, reframe the core question from 'why did this happen?' to 'what are we changing?' — Heap's concrete examples (ambiguous ownership when someone is on leave, requirements changing inside a launch window, alert fatigue) show exactly how the old question lets teams nod and move on without fixing anything. Adopt this framing in your next postmortem template.
Discussion angle
Try running a mock postmortem on a recent issue using only 'what are we changing?' as the prompt — does it surface different actions than your usual 'root cause' write-up?