Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#61

Post by HappyRobot » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #19

kqr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> team orders for Bottas to lose to Hamilton are a meme in F1 (“Valtteri, it’s James”). After the season was underway, they really only let them race after Hamilton had secured the drivers championship. Is this not an extension of "we win as a team, we lose as a team"? Would this be possible with the same consistency in teams where both drivers are in clear competition with each other for the seat next season?

Well I think this is a bad example in general, because unlike most businesses, success is actually a zero sum game in top flight sports. If somebody does good enough to earn a seat, it will always mean that somebody else did bad enough to lose theirs. It’s also not a very faithful characterization of Mercedes. They were seriously considering letting Bottas go last year, it was honestly a surprise that they kept him (…

Adding to this, Rosberg took advantage of the "win as a team" culture to win his championship. He fought a psychological war with Hamilton where the team refused to take sides. It was the only way to beat Hamilton.

Mercedes had to protect themselves from this and made the smart choice in choosing Bottas as he was well known for a calm and team focused demeanor. With Bottas, Mercedes could further build the team around Hamilton without causing issues between the drivers.

It would've been really interesting to see the team structure if Rosberg returned in 2017. Mercedes dodged a bullet by getting Bottas at the right time.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#62

Post by sdegutis » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #59

sdegutis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having everyone on the team be as familiar with English, especially its idioms and figures of speech, is a great reason to avoid using them and stick to (legalistically) simplistic vocabulary. Unfortunately it also makes its usage feel cold and dry which in turn affects the company culture. There have been plenty of times I wanted to use a phrase that was perfect for the situation at hand and all its connotations…

> but couldn’t because I wasn’t sure if certain people on the team would understand due to past misunderstandings among the team. If someone doesn't understand an idiom, why can't they ask?

They might feel self conscious. Or maybe they think they understand it fine even though they’ve misunderstood it. That seems to be what happened to the man who was ostracized for using the perfectly legitimate ”play the straight man” phrase. People don’t always make the best choices and sometimes it’s not immediately obvious why they make terrible ones.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#63

Post by Ididntdothis » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

raihansaputra wrote: post #57

Ididntdothis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me a little of the time when Berger and Senna were teammates. Two very good drivers but there was no dispute who was the number one and two driver. It’s much easier to keep peace in a team where the hierarchy is clear. It would be interesting if Mercedes hired Verstappen next to Hamilton. I doubt they could keep the peace then.

No way. They already learned that having 2 number 1 drivers doesn't work (Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg on 2016 season). They won that season, but if it weren't for the totally superior car, they were on a tight margin. Distributing the winning points to two drivers doesn't work to secure both the Driver's championship and the Manufacturer's championship. There's a reason why Red Bull picked Max Verstappen over Car…

I think Bottas is in a comfortable spot but has to give up his dreams of a title as long as Hamilton is around. Some drivers are ok with that, some aren’t. Ricciardo probably could also have stayed with Red Bull as a very good number two driver but he didn’t want to give up the title dream. Unfortunately he seems to have bet on the wrong team...

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#64

Post by the_af » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #50

the_af wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact I argued it's a metaphor in active use! But I also guessed metaphors taken out of context are likely to be misinterpreted. I know plenty of native English speakers who don't know what "straight man" means.

But metaphors are always taken out of context. Nobody says it's time to bite the bullet with a bullet in their hand. Referring to a situation that is not presently happening in order to explain one that is is the definition of a metaphor.

That's not what I meant by context. "In context" doesn't mean "the literal meaning" and it's easy to see that "straight man" wasn't taken literally by the person who took offense, either. Metaphors must be used in context, they just aren't meant to be taken literally; a metaphor about comedy/theater is always in context when watching (or acting) in one. You don't have to explain it.

Likewise, if I talk about a "foil" while cooking in the kitchen, I'm likely to be interpreted one way; if I talk about the same while discussing comedy, it's likely to be taken differently.

Context matters.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#65

Post by quartz » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

I'm a cofounder at Kintaba (https://kintaba.com) where we spend a lot of time with companies that are implementing postmortems as part of their larger incident management process and it has been fascinating to see how varied the adoption of the practice is even in SV despite the value being well accepted for over a decade in tech (longer in other research circles).

I often recommend anyone who is interested in the topic to check out Sidney Dekker's Field Guide to Understanding Human Error [1].

It's a very approachable read and goes into great detail about the underlying theories of safety research that support the value of blame-free cultures and postmortems and addresses common counter-arguments, particularly around the idea that lack of blame = lack of accountability.

Also worth checking out the (free) google SRE Book chapters on Incident Management [2] and Postmortem Culture [3].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error...

[2] https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-in...

[3] https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/postmortem-...

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#66

Post by whatshisface » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #64

whatshisface wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But metaphors are always taken out of context. Nobody says it's time to bite the bullet with a bullet in their hand. Referring to a situation that is not presently happening in order to explain one that is is the definition of a metaphor.

That's not what I meant by context. "In context" doesn't mean "the literal meaning" and it's easy to see that "straight man" wasn't taken literally by the person who took offense, either. Metaphors must be used in context, they just aren't meant to be taken literally; a metaphor about comedy/theater is always in context when watching (or acting) in one. You don't have to explain it. Likewise, if I talk about a "foil"…

>a metaphor about comedy/theater is always in context when watching (or acting) in one

Calling someone in theater a Straight Man isn't a metaphor, that would be an example of a literal usage. A metaphor is when you refer to a distant situation or thing to explain a present one. If you demand that metaphors only be deployed in their "context" you are saying you can only compare situations to themselves.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#67

Post by jiveturkey » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #29

I once worked somewhere that did blameless technical postmortems very well. Whenever something broke, we kept asking questions until we had uncovered what went wrong, and we constantly reminded each other that our failings were in the process, not the people. It worked great, and we ended up with much more robust systems than most other places I'd worked. Sadly, they didn't apply the same ideals to social faux pas. W…

> But after explaining his actions and the expectations/assumptions behind them, he was reprimanded, ostracized in the office

sounds like a horrible place to work anyway, blameless postmortems aside.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#68

Post by the_af » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

sdegutis wrote: post #55

the_af wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact I argued it's a metaphor in active use! But I also guessed metaphors taken out of context are likely to be misinterpreted. I know plenty of native English speakers who don't know what "straight man" means.

Not having everyone on the team be as familiar with English, especially its idioms and figures of speech, is a great reason to avoid using them and stick to (legalistically) simplistic vocabulary. Unfortunately it also makes its usage feel cold and dry which in turn affects the company culture. There have been plenty of times I wanted to use a phrase that was perfect for the situation at hand and all its connotations…

If the meaning you (incorrectly) infer is offensive, you might have a hard time asking... Consider this: what if the person who took offense was gay, was recently harassed at a past workplace, was sensitive about the issue, maybe wasn't a native English speaker, and was told by an older coworker that he would play "the straight man" to his team pitch.

And even then, consider that the offended person replied "say what!?" and in turn the older coworker didn't understand the reaction.

Talking to people is hard. Maybe funny metaphors shouldn't be used unless you know the other person's sense of humor. By the way "playing the straight man" while listening to another person's technical plan for a feature doesn't really parse for me; it sounds like a clumsy use of a figure of speech. I'd be surprised too by this usage.

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#69

Post by jiveturkey » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #4

Only tangentially related but I have to get it out of my system anyway: I watched the latest season of the F1 documentary on Netflix, and what stood out beyond anything else to me was that every team pitted their own drivers against each other, had a "you win or you lose" mentality, screamed at people for messing up, and so on. All teams except one. One team iterated how they "win as a team and make mistakes as a tea…

you are mistaking a drama-mentary as reality

Re: Blameless post-mortems and a just culture (2012)

#70

Post by Ididntdothis » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

frank086 wrote: post #53

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't vouch for ostracism specifically, but we just had someone at our company add a Slack bot to correct anyone who says the word "guys", and let me tell you I did not feel like it would be appropriate to complain.

With everyone remote HR has sadly discovered a sudden love of policing slack. I saw another engineer get hit for talking about triggering a job since "using triggering improperly downplays the trauma of survivors". Not sure what that means other than it is time to set the LinkedIn status to looking.

"I saw another engineer get hit for talking about triggering a job since "using triggering improperly downplays the trauma of survivors". "

This is nuts. Where is this? Silicon Valley?