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Accountability Sinks

250bpm.substack.com

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Re: Accountability Sinks

#31

Post by amos-burton »

roenxi wrote: post #11

Another fun one is asking for a higher salary - for obvious reasons moderately sized companies have formal systems that make it logically impossible to do on an employees initiative (the boss doesn't control salaries, payroll doesn't control salaries and all the formal systems point to the boss and payroll). The real approach is that a worker has to somehow convince one of the people with serious power to overrule th…

If the incentive is the culprit, then the airport employee acted out of her mind because her own survival was more important than to act human... therefore, she is biologically similar, but spiritually guided differently. she would never tell you she gave herself or sacrificed (big word) to it (big word), she never knew anything else really, she saw things through the window all along her life, but never got to really experience it, it is so inconvenient to her, she whispered.

she feels more than a children of the cities, she has embodied them.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#32

Post by bflesch »

gsf_emergency wrote: post #29
bflesch wrote: post #20

The reader can feel a glimpse of the author's ego the moment he explains his skills as a Google Site Reliabiliy Engineer and his glorious work on improving gmail post-mortems right after the section where a hospital team saves various people in a mass casuality situation by empowering nurses to perform formally doctor-only tasks. Only with a healthy dose of cynicism I can understand where he's going. While the topic…

Maybe he thinks it's too early to get sued over a blog-- he's only just got to the HN frontpage for the first time this year? Subtext of his previous blogpost: Capitalism is powered by greed. https://250bpm.substack.com/p/per-tribalismum-ad-astra EDIT: another post of his that got traction ~5 yrs ago was about the Swiss political system (Swiss are a pragmatic culture though afaik he's Slovak so we might have to accou…

Maybe he quit google after 6 months, I don't know. It's easy to talk about greedy capitalism once you've made it. It's a bit harder to live by these kind of ideals for the whole duration of your career.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#33

Post by rollcat »

nicbou wrote: post #15
Tepix wrote: post #8

I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of solo non-stop around the world sailing: You have no one to blame other than yourself. It puts you into a mindset that is unique in this day and age. The sailors, when interviewed after their ordeal, also mention it a lot.

Same with overland travel. You either caused the problem or allowed it to happen. Either way it's your job to fix it and it's the only way to keep going. It requires preparedness, flexibility and resilience. I remember many messes where I just stood there thinking to myself "alright nicbou, what did we learn today?"

In 2012 I've spent almost the entire year hitchhiking around Europe. Mostly alone, sometimes in a small ad-hoc group that would part whenever we had to take different turns. Sometimes there is someone else to blame: a driver who dropped me off in a far worse place (like in the middle of a busy highway); a mate who almost blew all of us up when mishandling a gas cylinder; unsolicited exhibitionism; etc.

Well, shit happens. Pick your stuff up and carry on.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#36

Post by cheschire »

I always remind myself when I have to go to the DMV[0] that I should plan on leaving with nothing more than another action or set of actions to take. I never enter the DMV expecting to complete a process, and the workers behind the counter always have this visible, visceral response when I DONT lose my fucking mind at their response to something. When I continue to be pleasant and understanding it’s like they suddenly come alive. It’s a depressing state of affairs because I understand exactly what they expect and why.

0: for non-Americans and for Americans from other states that may use different terms, the DMV is the department of motor vehicles in many US states and is the central place to get your drivers license, take the drivers test, register your car, get vehicle license plates, etc. Many processes that have many requirements that often are unfulfilled when people show up asking for things.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#37

Post by oleggromov »

I once booked a plane ticket from my home town airport to another country. The purchase notification said something like "PVA" instead of "POV". I looked it up and turned out, the newly built airport that had this exact code was about to open. In a week or so, so I assumed that I'm indeed flying from the new one and forgot about it. The purchase was made through a booking aggregator similar to Expedia.

On the day of travel I took a taxi to the new airport, which is 40 km outside the city. The taxi driver couldn't care less about where I was going. Upon arrival, there was much fewer people than I expected but I shrugged it off. At the entrance though I was asked where I was going and if I was an employee. Apparently the new airport was still closed and my fight was from the old, still functioning one. The one with the code not shown in the ticket purchase receipts.

Panicking since it was only about an hour until departure, I took a taxi back to the old airport, which was a desperate 40-50 minute drive to only realize the plane had already left.

I was flying abroad, with a connection the next morning, about 10 hours later. So I thought that the problem could be solved by just arriving there by any other flight, which I booked almost immediately. However, the airline representative (yes, there was a human to speak to that I could reach easily by phone) told me that a no-show for any segment of the flight invalidates all subsequent ones. There was no way I could convince her that it wasn't my fault. Perhaps there was a rigid process in place that disallowed her from helping, even though I'd make it to the second flight on time.

I ended up buying 2 new tickets, of course more expensive and less convenient ones. This taught me an important and rather expensive lesson on why connected flights with a single airline are sometimes the worst.

Funnily enough, I was bitten by this rule one more time when I didn't show to a flight in to the country due to visa issues (it was covid time) and wasn't allowed on the flight out of it because I didn't show up to the 1st flight, the flights being 1 week apart - but booked in one go.

As to the previous situation, I managed to get compensated by the airline (not even the intermediary!) about a year later after posting a huge rant on Facebook and getting their attention to the situation.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#38

Post by pyrale »

blueflow wrote: post #26
Etheryte wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous conflicts worldwide where one side is trying to systematically destroy the other population, civilians and all. Whether they are exactly the same or how you define that is pretty secondary to that fact.

Whatever. Since my last Wikipedia spree on that topic i feel such comparisons are highly inappropriate.

That way of saying that the holocaust is a thing of its own, that can be compared to nothing else is simply a way of separating genocide victims into first-class and second-class victims. The only outcome would be to weaken the collective "Never again" outcry against barbary.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#39

Post by throwanem »

queuep wrote: post #28
bflesch wrote: post #20

The reader can feel a glimpse of the author's ego the moment he explains his skills as a Google Site Reliabiliy Engineer and his glorious work on improving gmail post-mortems right after the section where a hospital team saves various people in a mass casuality situation by empowering nurses to perform formally doctor-only tasks. Only with a healthy dose of cynicism I can understand where he's going. While the topic…

So the author gives what, 10 examples, and one of them is about himself and his own experiences, and one of them is from a hospital. And from that you convey that the author must have some kind of ego? I don't think that's justified critique.

Frankly, if the author has Google-style FU money and can find no better way than this to spend that and his time alike, ego isn't the first of his faculties I see cause to question.

Doesn't surprise me to learn he's big on LW, though. A bloodless, passionless dork who mistakes dollars for IQ points and of whom it's not obvious he ever had an original thought? He might have been made in a lab for those sad nerd wannabes to identify with.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#40

Post by DangerousPie »

Interesting article, but picking Johnson and Cummings's handling of Covid as a positive example is a very odd choice, given their falling out and the numerous corruption allegations and parliamentary inquiries into their actions since then.
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