Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Be Kind

briangilham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 458 posts

Re: Be Kind

#211

Post by brazzledazzle »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #186
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

In my experience, while someone might be extra careful not to repeat a mistake that has burned them in the past, making a serious mistake is often a sign that someone is careless, and more likely to make other, different mistakes in the future.

This doesn't jibe with my experience. As long as the person doesn't evaluate their mistakes in a vacuum they become more careful in general because they learn that things can bite you in the ass in totally unexpected ways.

So I'd say it depends on your environment combined with the individual. Someone who is apathetic and/or lacks critical thinking skills will probably learn very little beyond avoiding that specific mistake again.

Re: Be Kind

#212

Post by ifdefdebug »

77pt77 wrote: post #93
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case angrily confronting that person would further justify their ill will towards you and strengthen their resolve to sabotage you. How is that productive or tactful?

And becoming passive implies the message that you're a pushover to whom anything can be done because there will never be nefarious consequences. To those people the mindset is: If I do X I might gain something (or feels good) and no mater what I'll never suffer any retaliation for it. Why shouldn't I do it?

You sound like the one who'd have called BG back from his camping trip to fix up his code - a 3 hours drive and a ruined weekend for him, instead of maybe a 5 minute rollback to the latest stable version for you.

So with your mindset, it's no wonder people react to you the way you describe it. But believe it or not - most probably you are the problem, not them.

Re: Be Kind

#213

Post by johnwheeler »

If someone asked, "what I'd learned" in the above context, I'd assume it was more to satisfy their needs of feeling important and superior than genuinely caring.

Much better is: "Shit happens." That's an empathetic attitude that reflects experience in our field.

Re: Be Kind

#214

Post by dredmorbius »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #169
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

There are two schools of thought, especially in stock trading. 1) Reversion to the mean. This is what the above person believes and that this likely won't happen again. 2) Indication of a trend. The pilot is actually incompetent, and this will happen more frequently with this pilot than an average pilot.

There's also differences in management and industry style.

If labour is so abundant that there's little problem in replacing any given worker, people can and will be fired for trivial offences. If there's a shortage, or there's a considerable on-boarding process, less so.

The threat of a firing-at-any-moment also makes for a more tractable workforce, at least from a management perspective.

Re: Be Kind

#215

Post by sparrish »

cema wrote: post #195
Raphmedia wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Client, Friday 4PM]"Hello, client here. I know it's Friday 4pm but we messed up and did X. Could you deploy Y fix, thanks!" [Client, Friday 4PM] "We are having a big sale this weekend we told nobody about. Could you quickly deploy a fix where all the product's prices are red and bold? That shouldn't take you long, right?" [Project manager, Friday 4:45PM] "Hey team, X just released an important security fix for Y pla…

In my opinion, only the last one may be justified.

And my own darn fault for using platform Y from team X that would release a security update on a Friday. Yes, fix it. But if this isn't a one-off, get off of platform Y.

Re: Be Kind

#216

Post by kbenson »

solatic wrote: post #189
scraft wrote: post #109

Nice little read. There is that little answer in the back of my head of: "It is a good question why I caused this problem. It is weird to think there is a competent company that has been around for so many years, yet they have no procedures in place to stop this from happening. You would think that any changes that could cause downtime on a clients website would go through an automatic test suite and only after passi…

I worked for a boss once who essentially engineered this kind of problem to exist: he knew not having automated testing etc. was a problem, and instead of asking his (too junior) programmers to build up a test suite, he decided to let them fail and discover for themselves why writing up test suites is a good idea. His reasoning (later revealed) was that you can't give people fish and expect them to become expert fish…

> His reasoning (later revealed) was that you can't give people fish and expect them to become expert fishermen.

I think you can, it's just not nearly as efficient. College and trade schools are essentially about mixing a very small amount of actual necessity (deadlines, tests, etc) with copious amounts of being told what's best and how to accomplish something. This works well because it's both more palatable to a wider audience of people, and it accounts for people's different interpretation of events. There may be multiple things to learn from any particular failure, and without some guidance you may come away having learned few or none of them the first time. Being told what to expect before hand, or what you could have done to mitigate problems afterward, goes a long way towards making sure you consider all the useful aspects of the problem.

Will you learn any one single lesson as thoroughly or as fast as you would in the real world when it affects you so much? Likely not, but then again, that assumes you actually saw a solution to the problem, and that still might just be one aspect.

Re: Be Kind

#217

Post by tehwalrus »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #169
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

There are two schools of thought, especially in stock trading. 1) Reversion to the mean. This is what the above person believes and that this likely won't happen again. 2) Indication of a trend. The pilot is actually incompetent, and this will happen more frequently with this pilot than an average pilot.

Isn't regression to the mean a phenomenon of random variables?

Humans aren't perfect improvement machines, but they surely beat a random variable?!

Re: Be Kind

#218

Post by sjcsjc »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #126
justifier wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a great anectdote, but the reason i am replying to your comment is because of your user name i am a huge fan of the turn of the century dancer isadora duncan and her lover who she first had a child with, the theatre set design theorist, edward gordon craig who she affectionately called endymion a complete aside, but if you have, or anyone reading this has, yet to read duncan's autobiography 'my life' i highly…

Seems like something my wife would like to read. Just bought her a copy. Thanks for the tip.

Good idea. I've just done the same. Thanks both

Re: Be Kind

#220

Post by rconti »

sparrish wrote: post #35
phn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he'd have to sooner or later. Better start learning as soon as possible :)

Nobody should be deploying to production on Friday... Nobody.

I can see not PLANNING to deploy to prod on a Friday, but rules were meant to be broken. When a change is needed, a change is needed.
Post reply on HN