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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]

#221

Post by dilyevsky »

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…

Your manager probably just doesn’t like you, find a new one if you can, there’s no point swimming against the current - you’ll just get tired and get nowhere

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

#222

Post by antihipocrat »

dasil003 wrote: post #205
zx8080 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your days will be much better and the odds will be with you. In the context of one's effort valuation it seem to be a very bad advice. Unfortunately.

This kind jaded, reductive answer reeks of sour grapes. I've seen so many adopt a transactional mentality as a sort of defense mechanism against the indifference of the universe, and in the process they unintentionally blind themselves to numerous daily examples of people just trying to do the right thing. Sure the world has problems, but if we can't see both the good and the bad then we become embittered and small,…

That's a tremendous amount of assumption being piled onto that one line comment.

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

#223

Post by steelframe »

Having spent several years as a manager, as a once-again IC I now include lack of problems with my features in production in my written self-assessment. I'll often refer back to major features I shipped ~2 quarters ago with a statement like, "Project Foo continued to function as expected, scaling as designed under load while incurring zero production incidents." I'll often include the words "engineering and operations excellence" and "commitment to product quality" when doing so.

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

#224

Post by marviel »

thret wrote: post #194
baxtr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an underrated way to deal with this phenomenon is proper self-marketing. Talk endlessly what you have done to prevent catastrophe. Describe the avoided catastrophes vividly so that people get a clear picture.

Self-promotion is incredibly difficult for some people.

fair, but it's better to point out the solution:

"learn how to be better at self promotion"

Do you have another solution to this issue?

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

#225

Post by doubloon »

It seems like many of these TQM discussion miss one key factor of TPS.

Respect. Engineers and management respect line workers. They have a word for the expert line workers, ("craftsmen"), Takumi. https://www.allaboutlean.com/toyotas-takumi/ and Takumi have a valued place in the company.

Without that basic level of respect... i dunno.. seems like it wont work

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

#226

Post by notimetorelax »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #151
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…

Well, you could dust off the old email and 'mistakenly' send it again. Though it will seem petty, a small fraction might rethink the past few months.

This can be framed constructively, do an analysis of what was fixed during the outages from the originally identified and now lobby for funding to fix the rest.

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

#227

Post by cornellwright »

IshKebab wrote: post #81
reaperducer wrote: post #79

Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf] I'm reminded of this every time I see some YouTuber or other social media click bait claiming that the Y2K bug was no big deal. The reason it was no big deal is because thousands of graybeards, like myself, stayed up many long nights for months ahead of time making sure things would work. I still remember the tension during the countdown to…

I still don't quite buy that. Surely it's because computers mostly use epoch time for dates, not dd/mm/yy? Guess we'll find out in 2038.

Interesting that everyone is responding to the first half of your comment. I think 2038 is going to be more interesting than Y2K...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

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

#228

Post by chii »

ajmurmann wrote: post #78
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.

Or worse: People get stuck quite frequently and ask you for help pretty quickly. You get everyone unstuck, but your own work falls behind and when your boss's boss asks for metrics on developers you have few points delivered and few LOC changed. Your boss tries to explain, but your head is the one that rolls next when layoffs happen.

> your own work falls behind

which is why one should not self-sacrifice. It garners no reward for one. Secondly, if the boss doesn't realize how much of an enabler you are, then it's time to start looking for a new job before the layoffs even starts as a thought in the boss' head.

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

#229

Post by wolverine876 »

jqcoffey wrote: post #190
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 This is good advice that’s well intentioned, but (sorry), it can be interpreted as elitist, and in a way that’s detrimental to the reader. I am no way suggesting that this is the intention or belief of the parent, but while I’ve got more miles on my odometer than I’d prefer, they’ve informed me that “reasonable” is better than “intelligent.” My god how I’ve found that working wi…

As the GP, yes good point about reasonableness. I didn't word it well: I meant people who act intelligently; intelligence by itself certainly doesn't yield that!

> it can be interpreted as elitist

If "intelligent" is taken as 'naturally superior intelligence', then I can see what you mean (and I think that idea is a egomaniacal delusion). What I mean is people who choose to act intelligently; that's quite democratic.

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

#230

Post by nomel »

pyrolistical wrote: post #103
nomel wrote: post #19

In our org, this was brought up. People who had problems, then fixed them, were the ones being seen and recognized by higher level management, and awarded for fixing the problems, when they, often, shouldn't have happened in the first place. Now we have something akin to a "person that prevents problems" award. It's a nice gesture, but, even though I received one, I think it's mostly nonsense. You don't get the face…

Award everybody with a bonus that can be deducted with every bug report

Oh, maybe adversarial salaries. You each, meticulously, go through the others code, trying to find as many bugs as possible, in your spare time. Each bug you find transfers a percentage of their salary into yours. End result: everyone's code is perfect, and everyone hates each other. :D
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