I find some startup leaders really struggle with this if they come from a Big Corp environment. If you're a CTO or VP or Director of Engineering for like 20 people, you're actually going to have to decide things. Yes at your previous roles you could follow a flow chart or whatever but here you have to actually take accountability. Watch them tap dance trying to avoid committing to anything.
Accountability Sinks
171–180 of 407 posts
Re: Accountability Sinks
#172I 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 suddenl…
Off-topic, but since you mention it, I've always been confused about what Americans always seem to be doing at the DMV. It seems to be a staple of pop culture that people are always there and the queue is always very long, but I've never known what anyone is actually trying to achieve. The DVLA in the UK doesn't have a high-street presence. I took my driving test once, then received my driving licence in the post. Wh…
Remember US has no National ID card. America has 50 states, each state has its own ID and DMV.
Plenty of Americans move states, remember some of our states are reasonably small enough that you might commute to the same NYC job from any of 4 different states. I have a friend who sequentially moved NY->NJ->CT->NY in something like 6 years.
Also I forget why but when I moved WITHIN a state 10 years ago, it required a DMV trip. edit: apparently within NY moving COUNTIES at the time required DMV trip (insane)
Oh and the recent push for "Real ID" enhanced IDs requires a trip to DMV. I've avoided this and just been prepared to fly domestically with my passport.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#173> The card design only allowed for 24 characters, but some applicants had names longer than that. They raised the issue with the business team.
> The answer they've got was that since only a tiny percentage of people have names that long, rather than redesigning the card, those applications would simply be rejected.
Long names are a pain. This happened to me when I tried to open a bank account in Vietnam. Similarly bank tellers in China were always puzzled and needed to call supervisors when having to enter the information. Also airport auto gates frequently fail for me, and systems that want me to enter your full name in a form will reject my input more often than not. When I'm asked to sign my full name with my signature, it hardly fits and I need to write in tiny letters.
If I ever have children I'll name then with something short, with no special characters. Something like Tim, Kim, Leo... Otherwise they will always end up the edge case.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off-topic, but since you mention it, I've always been confused about what Americans always seem to be doing at the DMV. It seems to be a staple of pop culture that people are always there and the queue is always very long, but I've never known what anyone is actually trying to achieve. The DVLA in the UK doesn't have a high-street presence. I took my driving test once, then received my driving licence in the post. Wh…
It's different in every state, but mostly it's an outdated stereotype that still sticks around even though it's not really indicative of reality. Most states let you do almost everything online, and when you do have to go in you can usually schedule an appointment and not wait in line at all.
Lol. I went the NY DMV a month ago to exchange my out of state license. Even with an appointment, a preapproved application completed online, and all the correct paperwork I had to wait 2 hours.
My experiences with the CA DMV were similar. Only in IL have I had quick, easy visits to the DMV
Re: Accountability Sinks
#175My go-to example of a whole mesh of "accountability sinks" is... cybersecurity. In the real world, this field is really not about the tech and math and crypto - almost all of it is about distributing and dispersing liability through contractual means. That's why you install endpoint security tools. That's why you're forced to fulfill all kinds of requirements, some of them nonsensical or counterproductive, but necess…
I wonder what the difference is between cybersecurity and civil aviation safety. At a glance they both have a lot of processes and requirements. Somehow on one side they are as you said, a way to deal with liability without necessarily increasing security, while on the other safety is actually significantly increased.
I think a big part of it is that failures in aviation safety cost lives, often dozens or hundreds per incident, in quite immediate, public and visceral fashion. There also isn't much gradation - an issues either causes massive loss of life, or could cause it if not caught early, or... it's not relevant to safety. On top of that, any incident is hugely impactful on the entire industry - most people are fully aware how likely they'd be to survive a drop from airliner altitude, so it doesn't take many accidents to scare people away of flying in general.
Contrast that to cybersecurity, where vast majority of failures have zero impact on life or health of people, directly or otherwise. Even data breaches - millions of passwords leak every other week, yet the impact of this on anyone affected is... nil. Yes, theoretically cyberattacks could collapse countries and cause millions to die if they affected critical infrastructure, but so far this never happened, and it's not what your regular cybersecurity specialist deals with. In reality, approximately all impact of all cyberattacks is purely monetary - as long as isn't loss of life or limb, it can be papered over with enough dollars, which makes everyone focus primarily on ensuring they're not the ones paying for it.
I think it's also interesting to compare both to road safety - it sits kind of in between on the "safety vs. theater" spectrum, and has the blend of both approaches, and both outcomes.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's what they do in Germany. They teach it as a unique thing that can never happen again... which leads people to never question whether it could happen again... which may lead to it happening again, because any sign that it was happening again would be dismissed, because "it can't happen again" is drilled into people.
The default attitude of any human is to support the status quo, but you'd think Germany in particular would do a better job of changing that default with education. It seems like it doesn't.
Obviously, if someone was doing another holocaust, it would be in their best interests to make you think the very notion of more holocausts was prima facie completely absurd.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#177> Bad people react to this by getting angry at the gate attendant; good people walk away stewing with thwarted rage. Notwithstanding the rest of the column, this particular example brings the following thought to mind: It could actually be argued that getting angry at the gate attendant is not a "bad people" response. Suppose that under those circumstances, the typical individual passenger would demand the gate atten…
Still wouldn't change a thing. The gate keeper has no say into who gets let on the plane and who doesn't, they are there just to enforce the decision. The only way to get this solved is if in the executive meetings one person goes "Our processes that bumps people resulted in xxxxxx cost, that's too much". The way those costs are incurred doesn't matter, if its direct compensation or fines, but unless you can attach a…
You misunderstood the point they tried to make. If a gate attendant was told to punch someone in the face, they still wouldn't. They'd probably get fired for not punching someone in the face, then win some civil suit for their lost income.
If rejecting people from flights without explanation was socially considered the same way as punching in them the face, they wouldn't do that, either.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#178My go-to example of a whole mesh of "accountability sinks" is... cybersecurity. In the real world, this field is really not about the tech and math and crypto - almost all of it is about distributing and dispersing liability through contractual means. That's why you install endpoint security tools. That's why you're forced to fulfill all kinds of requirements, some of them nonsensical or counterproductive, but necess…
Honestly is is just like Insurance. You understand the value of things you are protecting (and simple compliance has a value to you in penalties and liabilities avoided) and make sure it costs more than that to break into your system. At a corporate level, it is contractually almost identical to insurance, with the product being sold liability for that security, not the security itself.
Right. I sometimes call it meta-level insurance, because it's structurally what it is. Funnily, actual insurance is a critical part of it - it's the ultimate liability sink, discharging whatever liability that didn't get diluted and diffused among all relevant parties.
And, I guess it's fine - it's the general way of dealing with impact that can be fully converted into dollars (i.e. that doesn't cause loss of life or health).
Re: Accountability Sinks
#179The conclusion of Davies' second extract — about e.g. being bumped off a flight — is recognisable but the conclusions are actually wrong. The situation in these cases is actually more subtle. The person you're speaking to does normally have some capacity to escalate in exceptional cases. But they can't do it as a matter of course, and have to maintain publicly that it's actually impossible. The people who get what th…
Yes unfortunately I've observed this in some support systems. The best way is to thread the needle between being extremely personally polite to the other human on the line, but going through the required machinations on their runbook to trigger an escalation. That is - you don't really have to behave unpleasant (raise voice, swear, be impolite, threaten) but you should just refuse to get off the line, demand escalati…
I ask for something, when they say they can’t do that. I say the magic words “Maybe your manager can do it?” You just don’t accept the possibility of your request not being fulfilled, say they are contractually obliged to do, even if you’re not sure, if all else fails reverse the charges on your card. Threatening small claims court works well. I now do that on the on the second email, do I look like a fool? Yes. Do I have a lot of time to investigate your platform's org structure and capabilities when I have dozens of companies like this I deal with daily? No.
Re: Accountability Sinks
#180One example that's missing from the list is the TV series 24. A recurring plot point was that, yes, of course torture is bad and it's against the rules and we don't do it, etc etc, but it just so happens that here is such an exceptional, unprecedented, deeply urgent emergency situation where we need to have the information now or horrible things will happen, we need the hero who breaks the rules and goes on torturing…
There is no connection between Ab Ghraib and 24, a fictional TV series. If you think this stuff didn't happen before 24 then I'd like some proof. TV reflects reality (or a very stretched version of it), not the other way around, and 24 also wasn't the first version of such a thing. It's just that Abu G they used people who were young and not professionals so it leaked. It has probably been happening as long as the USA has had police forces like the CIA, military intelligence, and even cops.