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NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

bloomberg.com

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Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#91

Post by gonzo41 »

wrldos wrote: post #23
mellosouls wrote: post #22

These "issue traced to staffer" stories sound like management cover up for management/system shortcomings to me. Systems with such significant potential impact, and in industries where lack of financial investment in their continuity is a deliberate choice have very little excuse to be passing the buck to grunts for basic process flaws that can be triggered by individual error.

This. If an individual's mistake can take out your business you have a process control problem and that is owned by management.

Everyone makes mistakes. HOWEVER, Mordern leaders get to the heads of large organizations by never making mistakes, by blaming the little guy, or coworker and hustling up. They'll only fix this because they have too. There isn't a problem until it happens.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#92

Post by itsoktocry »

cm2187 wrote: post #56
wrldos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If an individual's mistake can take out your business you have a process control problem and that is owned by management.

If you have processes where there is nothing an employee can do to affect the outcome of the company you successfully built a legacy bureaucracy that is waiting to be disrupted.

>If you have processes where there is nothing an employee can do to affect the outcome of the company you successfully built a legacy bureaucracy that is waiting to be disrupted.

Exactly.

I wonder if any of the people claiming "it's management's process fault!" would be the first to complain about their workplace where they have no autonomy.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#93

Post by xyzelement »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #87

> That misled the exchange’s computers to treat the 9:30 a.m. opening bell as a continuation of trading, and so they skipped the day’s opening auctions that neatly set initial prices. I didn't even know about this process. I don't know much about trading, but it surprises me that there is a separate process for setting prices at the start of trading, and that if it's missed, chaotic prices result. Is this related to…

That's right. In short it's something like this: stocks trade on their primary exchanges during specific hours. For example 9:30 to 4 in the US.

Part of it is legacy from when trading was done by actual humans being at the exchange physically to trade during those times and part of it (I would guess is still the case) is to allow plenty of non-trading hours for back-office jobs and settlement.

So yes there's a special start of day process that runs at 9:30 that runs through all the orders on the books at that time and determines a price at which some optimal set of those orders can trade, trades them at that price, and also posts that price as the Open price for the day.

The process is different during continuous trading since orders are one by one matched against the order book.

Source: ran one of the world's largest equity platforms for 5 years.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#94

Post by itsoktocry »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #58

Is it normal to simply accept the word of an anonymous source for something so important? I genuinely don't know, anymore, but it doesn't seem like a good idea. I'd rather wait for a more thorough investigation. Especially when the story from these sources boils down to "Kevin was in charge of booting the NYSE App that morning, but he was late for work. He had a good excuse, though, he flaked! We'll have the chap str…

>Is it normal to simply accept the word of an anonymous source for something so important?

Anonymous means they aren't revealing the source, not that Bloomberg doesn't know who the sources is, or what they do.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#95

Post by hgsgm »

itsoktocry wrote: post #90
thisarticle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of management taking responsibility for anything are over. See: not a single CEO stepping down for over hiring.

> See: not a single CEO stepping down for over hiring. Wait, what? You think a CEO should step down because their management over-hired a relatively small proportion of employees and had to do some layoffs?

It's not relatively small. All the companies are experiencing similar chaos to the NYSE because people in the middle of important operational work suddenly vanished. The people laid off weren't idle like H&R Block tax preparers in May or Target clerks in January.

The people laid off and the people not needed were a different set of people, at the time of the layoff.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#96

Post by dogleash »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #52

While we're on the subject, if your company uses technology in an capacity, read the book The Phoenix Project. https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

I wanted to like that book but it's a big Just-so story.

tl;dr: The brave knight implemented devops and everyone lived happily ever after!

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#97

Post by hgsgm »

cc81 wrote: post #47
thisarticle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of management taking responsibility for anything are over. See: not a single CEO stepping down for over hiring.

They only take responsibility for the profit margins. Over hiring affects those but often not significant enough and can be corrected with layoffs.

No, they only take responsibility for short-term market cap. Margins and profit don't matter. That's why they chase whatever fad hits the investor class.

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#98

Post by hgsgm »

noisy_boy wrote: post #72
thisarticle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of management taking responsibility for anything are over. See: not a single CEO stepping down for over hiring.

I don't see why we reward scale-out/scale-in in the cloud but punish CEOs when they do the same with real people /s

How will those poor decommissioned computers get enough bytes to feed themselves?

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#99

Post by hgsgm »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #79
duckmysick wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of companies replacing their CEOs. Just today Toyota announced theirs.

The CEO of Toyoda is becoming the chairman of their board, that doesn't feel like a CEO being replaced as punishment for poor performance in the way that people are talking about in this thread. But even when CEOs are fully ousted over issues, the golden parachute makes it barely feel like a punishment anyway. I'm having trouble thinking of a case where a CEO actually seemed to be significantly financially impacted b…

Are the golden parachutes bigger (as % of annual comp) than employee severance packages?

Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running

#100

Post by hgsgm »

cm2187 wrote: post #56
wrldos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If an individual's mistake can take out your business you have a process control problem and that is owned by management.

If you have processes where there is nothing an employee can do to affect the outcome of the company you successfully built a legacy bureaucracy that is waiting to be disrupted.

On the contrary, if a single employee can take out the whole business, you are guaranteeing disruption.

There are many kinds of "outcomes". A simple backup would make outages far more rare.

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