Ask for forgiveness, not for permission Any sufficiently large institution has something to lose. Credibility, money, power, you name it. Ergo, any request for something new and risky is met with caution. Be it a new proposal or a new project, it is safer to say ‘No’. Corporate systems are optimized for saying no. Maintain the status quo. No risk of failure and a spectacular blowout. This is exactly why you are better off going ahead and doing something without asking first. If you don’t ask, no one can tell you to not do it. Have an interesting idea for a side project? Go code it up. If you ask someone first, you’ll probably get told “Go consult with team X,Y and VP Z” and face an endless spiral. Want to write a blog post on something you care about? Go do it. Obviously, you need to know what you’re doing. Don’t do something obviously stupid. Making a post about unannounced feature X? Bad idea. Checking in code without telling anyone? Very bad idea. Sending an angry flame mail to the wrong VP? Depends (but typically not a bad idea). Like with any risk, there are downsides. This won’t work all the time. You will fail, sometimes spectacularly. That is OK (see next heading for why). In fact, if you don’t make a complete ass of yourself from time to time, you’re probably doing something wrong.