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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]

#171

Post by leovander »

0ooo0000o0o0o wrote: post #135

Yup My manager just told me I got a 3/5 on my eval yet again because in the past six months - I did everything that was asked of me and - I did a lot of things that weren't asked of me and - I didn't catch anything on fire and - I put out someone else's fire and - I prevented several fires from ever being started in the first place, but that's not good enough. The person who started the fire that I put out is getting…

Don't take it personally, managers at bigger companies have to evaluate their teams on a bell curve. The whole team can't score a 5 and someone has to be worse than the group.

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

#172

Post by aquarkortwo »

eszed wrote: post #170
wolverine876 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.

> Work with honest, intelligent people That's such good advice. On the same note, it's so discouraging when someone who is not/neither takes over, those people leave (one way or another), and you have to start the search again. Or when someone is intelligent enough you don't figure out they're not honest until it's too late. Anyone who's been around the block a time or two will accumulate those experiences. I hope I'…

> Or when someone is intelligent enough you don't figure out they're not honest until it's too late.

Very true, and it may not even be malicious on their end, just avoidance and their brain rationalizing/minimizing without them realizing it.

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

#173

Post by renewiltord »

wolverine876 wrote: post #48
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the legendary politician's fallacy: 1) We must do something. 2) This is something. 3) Therefore, we must do this.

I thought that was the voter's fallacy.

The voter's fallacy is "this happened while this guy was in power; we should replace him" repeated ad inf.

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

#174

Post by marcus_holmes »

I thought this was going to be about Y2K, since it was written just after.

I worked for years in the late 90's on Y2K projects, helping to stop the UK's critical infrastructure from just stopping at midnight. Wales would not have water or gas without our efforts, for example.

But I've heard people since say things like "why did we spend all that money on Y2K, when it clearly wasn't a problem since nothing happened?" and even "Y2K was a hoax invented by the IT industry".

We won. We successfully stopped the Y2K bug, and it was hard work, and it wasn't obvious that we had caught it all by midnight. Yet rather than celebrating, some people saw it as evidence that we had been ripping them off. People are weird.

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

#175

Post by notzane »

esafak wrote: post #20

This happens in organizations that don't measure and respect precursors or leading indicators of success/failure -- organizations that do not practice organizational observability, to coin a phrase. Which is to say, most of them, because this is not something one thinks of until one has suffered its absence. Your managers have to think like SREs, and be technically sophisticated enough to model and address this probl…

The High Velocity Edge had a lot about this subject.

The most memorable example was at a hospital, nurses would occasionally pick up the wrong vial. They always noticed before injecting, but there were lots of close calls that didn’t get tracked anywhere. Once they started tracking that as a leading indicator, it became pretty obvious that the vials needed a better design to prevent even the possibility of grabbing the wrong one. Also, if the hospital never realized this problem and someone got hurt, they would’ve ended up with a much worse solution like “double check really close”

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

#176

Post by al_borland »

paxys wrote: post #144

Went through this exact scenario at my job recently. As the tech lead/architect of an org I reviewed a bunch of recently released projects and identified areas that needed critical improvements because they had major reliability/performance issues. One team had multiple releases at the top of the list, and their PM and eng manager (and really everyone else up the chain) simply ignored all concerns because they had to…

Performing some heroics once in a while shows someone can be relied on. However, if heroics are the norm, it’s either bad work or bad management, and it should be looked at with some scrutiny.

I also find it more impressive when someone fixes someone else’s problem. I’m not one to shower praise on someone for fixing their own mistake, nor do I expect any praise if I fix my own mistake. I would be apologizing to everyone for screwing up in the first place.

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

#177

Post by s-lambert »

epolanski wrote: post #166
quickthrower2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always laughed about those X points targets. In the end people ended up simply inflating the value of stories. In my previous team I had to argue with a person that 2 story points to add translation keys were ridiculous. To which the EM argued that 2 was okay because he also needed to write few accompanying tests. I have nightmares thinking about this stuff. It was literally quicker to add the translation keys and…

Company has a goal for 5% increased velocity, what they want: teams get more efficient at pushing stories through to completion, what they get: teams just estimate 5% higher.

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

#178

Post by zmgsabst »

sharess wrote: post #76
runamuck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Another option is to work at a consultancy where you hop aboard a new customer project every 3-6 months. Approach every customer as an opportunity to do some resume-driven development and pick a bunch of untested new technologies to experiment with. Be sure to do at least a couple of presentations to tell everyone about the hottest new things you are doing to bring value to the customers. Leave the project once it sl…

For maximum results, trade-off with a buddy:

Spend Q1 each crashing your respective project; spend Q2 as a fixer undoing that damage using his knowledge of his own work.

You’re both cutting edge and a proven fixer!

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

#179

Post by lanthade »

My background is systems operation. The exception I could see to this is when there are rewards/incentives/etc for uptime or non-change-window uptime. Usually this would be coupled to meeting the goal of 4 9's or 5 9's of uptime, meeting SLA requirements, etc.

Granted, in my time working for a major 3 letter tech company on account with a major finance company my highest exposure to VP/C*O types was fixing the fallout from a whole chain of corporate culture related mistakes. If I hadn't already had a job lined up elsewhere I probably could have gotten a good bump out of it. I doubt that would have happened if I'd identified and fixed the problems. Part of that busted corporate culture. We didn't have metrics around uptime/SLAs there though which considering the clients business was pretty ridiculous.

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

#180

Post by jongjong »

Nobody gets credit for fixing:

- Problems that never happened.

- Problems that people don't realize are happening (where people cannot relate visible symptoms to their root causes). You only get credit for addressing visible symptoms. Though, disturbingly, you will get credit even if the fix is only temporary... This creates an incentive to only address symptoms since not solving the root problem allows you to get credit over and over again for fixing the (recurring) symptoms... In fact, people will praise you even more as a 'Relentless hero who dedicated their entire life to the problem' LOL.

Also, nobody gets punished for creating new problems if the visible symptoms cannot be traced back to the root cause. That's why I oppose complexity in all matters - It obscures root causes and sends everyone off on a wild goose chase addressing symptoms... Complexity turns everything into a frustrating game of whac-a-mole.

The person causing a problem can even get the credit for solving symptoms of that problem.

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