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Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

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Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#61

Post by hackerlight »

hakunin wrote: post #27

I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.

Really good bosses make up for this. They push teamwork and collaboration, but at the same time they know the details of what every individual is doing and how they each contribute to the whole, and they can ~accurately compensate/promote/terminate. This prevents demoralization of team members. Team members psychologically need to be recognized for their individual contribution.

These bosses tend to be competent ICs who became team leads, they are best positioned to judge the ICs they manage because they themselves are masters at the craft.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#62

Post by quickthrower2 »

hakunin wrote: post #27

I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.

Modern “agile” systems don’t work well with you. They want you to deliver X points of features in 2 weeks. Sounds like you’d be better off as a consultant? But then you need to do all that biz dev stuff! Or find a great CTO to work for (or be the CTO) who understands. You only need one job.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#63

Post by quickthrower2 »

Pikamander2 wrote: post #58
ortusdux wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: The Locksmith's Paradox - https://medium.com/@pk.patrick.kelly/the-locksmith-paradox-6...

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

There is a quote about the job being free but you are just paying for the 20 years experience.

The opposite is the lemons market. It is why getting some wet building work done that is actually waterproof is a fucking dark art. Even the pros hiring pros get fucked because the “is waterproof” part is invisible.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#64

Post by crestfallen »

My memory is a bit hazy but it's a good story.

At one place, there was some important order processing taking place. As is fairly typical, couldn't rely on getting all the required info. Or critically, getting all the required info correctly. Some extra data, slightly missing pieces but enough to work, etc. etc. Some could be pretty gross. We built validation to massage some inputs, modify processing, what have you to address as many of those as we could think of. The team put in some metrics to identify which validations were "triggered" for each order. Neat. If we'd add more, we'd add a date to it.

It was great. We reported those stats so anyone could see anytime, but we'd also send out some comms about it every now and then. It also helped tremendously when a coworker or customer or whoever would say "Oh no! What happens if XYZ?" and we'd say no worries, we already addressed it, and we prevented #### orders from getting stuck for XYZ.

It showed that the team was thoughtful, that we were invested in making this work, that work needed to continue to keep things running smoothly, and we had data to back that up.

Really helped switch the conversation in the org because folks could see it. If someone pointed out that we hadn't thought of something, it honestly was more about what do we do vs. why didn't we think of this. (Yes, there is a comment here about poor org thinking or blame culture, but some of that exists everywhere.) More proactive. Recognition of preventive quality. People gave us accolades and it bubbled up to some good and real recognition at higher levels too.

I'm mangling the words here a bit but I hope you get the idea.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#65

Post by farhanhubble »

runamuck wrote: post #29
hakunin wrote: post #27

I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.

Easy - half a$$ your code and when it breaks - swoop in, "fix things" (actually do it right) and play the role of hero! (I've seen so-called "Rock Stars" at places I worked do this over and over)

This is exactly what happens at many software companies. People,sometimes under pressure to meet deadlines, apply totally crazy fixes to stop one problem and create new problems.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#67

Post by sudosteph »

Reminds me of a place I used to work. Every time they asked for feedback, my refrain was "nothing here gets prioritized without a PIR (post-incident response)". Towards the end of my time there, whenever a PIR-related ticket showed up, I would mark it as a duplicate of whatever actual ticket I had dying in the backlog that would have prevented it. It really hurt team morale to have no influence in preventing foreseeable issues in our domain area. Most of the rest of the team had even stopped suggesting improvements altogether because management refused to let us pull our own tickets in.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#69

Post by jgeada »

Reminds me of this cartoon (which I have posted on my office): https://naksecurity.medium.com/the-detriments-of-hero-cultur...

This is why in many corporate cultures it pays not to proactively stop a problem that you know how to fix if the problem is not in your immediate problem area. Let it be noticed, let it become someone else's emergency, then fix it. Much better path to a reward that way. Of course, you should also be planning to leave said organization, in the long run it won't do well.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#70

Post by cutemonster »

somethoughts wrote: post #52
hakunin wrote: post #27

I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.

One approach to showing value is as follows: 1.) Create a spreadsheet with all of the features of your group's/company's products(s) listed in rows. 2.) Create a column for every team member in the group and highlight the lead developers for each feature. 3.) Then ask each team member to add a checkmark in their column for every feature for which they would be willing to be on hook for 24x7 triage pager duty. Over th…

Couldn't there then be a risk that now some people want to avoid higher risk projects, and just build the simpler features, and get more checkmarks

What if the table in fact shows which people are best at dodging the hard work

Combined with showing who has the most friends in the office (giving checkmarks to features built by one's friends)

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