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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]

#101

Post by SteveGerencser »

I began migrating from network/hardware/IT work and into marketing after nearly 2 years of heavy lifting getting ready for Y2K. In the end, "nothing happened," so all that time and money was wasted, according to nearly every company I worked with. Even had one demand a full refund. I agreed as long as I could revert all the work that I had done. They agreed, and the next day after that their entire system collapsed.

I couldn't even get my own dad to pay for network support for his company since he would never pay my rate for anyone no matter what. After 2 other people failed to solve his problem I fixed it in 15 minutes and then he "really" didn't want to pay because it only took 15 minutes.

I was very good at what I did but got no appreciation for keeping things from breaking, only for fixing things after they broke. Marketing paid better, and I could point at real world numbers daily and justify my pay. I don't like it anywhere near as much, but at least it gets more respect than any other IT work I did.

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

#102

Post by Tsarp »

Ian Rush said it best: "It's best being a striker. Miss five, score the winner, you're a hero. The goalkeeper plays a blinder, lets one in, and he's a villain."

Every place I've worked rewards the firefighter over the person who made sure nothing ever caught fire. And the worst part is the math is obvious to everyone except the people who set the incentives.

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

#103

Post by kristiandupont »

fugaziboutit wrote: post #38
timmg wrote: post #9

There are a lot of things like this. My favorite is how elegant solutions often look simple in retrospect. So if you noodle on a problem for a while and then come up with a clever solution: once you explain it to someone they'll be like, "yeah, of course." Meanwhile the guy next to you that overcomplicates the problem ends up getting kudos for building something so difficult :D

"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." ("I have made this longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.") Blaise Pascal

I am reminded of this course in university where there was a written assignment with a minimum page count. Even at that time, I remember thinking: "If I am able to express everything necessary in just one page, that should give me the absolute top grade!".

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

#104

Post by pulse7 »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #101

I began migrating from network/hardware/IT work and into marketing after nearly 2 years of heavy lifting getting ready for Y2K. In the end, "nothing happened," so all that time and money was wasted, according to nearly every company I worked with. Even had one demand a full refund. I agreed as long as I could revert all the work that I had done. They agreed, and the next day after that their entire system collapsed.…

I'm sorry your dad didn't respect your IT work...

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

#105

Post by roncesvalles »

timmg wrote: post #9

There are a lot of things like this. My favorite is how elegant solutions often look simple in retrospect. So if you noodle on a problem for a while and then come up with a clever solution: once you explain it to someone they'll be like, "yeah, of course." Meanwhile the guy next to you that overcomplicates the problem ends up getting kudos for building something so difficult :D

Every company where I've worked at as a SWE openly rewarded "engineering complexity" as a criteria for getting promoted, which I've always found to be absurd because complexity can always be manufactured (both of the problem and the solution).

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

#106

Post by __patchbit__ »

pbreit wrote: post #94
keyle wrote: post #17

I've been in those companies where "struggling departments" ended up getting all the praises and raise in budgets the following quarter because of the heroic saves they did, and raising awareness on how important they are... For stuff they totally caused on themselves. Meanwhile, my perfectly purring department was struggling to keep the lights on. It's a serious problem in this industry due to the disconnect between…

Since it's entirely possible (extremely likely?) the "problem" would never materialize, this is quite reasonable.

SpaceX almost has a full grip on the planetary consciousness extinction problem.

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

#107

Post by kristiandupont »

rmunn wrote: post #6

Article published in the Summer 2001 edition of California Management Review, yet it never mentioned Y2K, the first thing I thought of when I read the line "fixing problems that never happened". Perhaps it was actually written in 1999 and took a while to get published, because otherwise that seems a very strange omission. The Y2K problem was very much over-hyped by the American news media at the time (no, at no point…

>no, at no point would airplanes have been falling out of the sky

The assertion may have been unfounded, but I think it's just as unreasonable to assert the opposite. Bugs have cascading effects and in a sufficiently complex piece of software they can create chaos with unpredictable outcomes.

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

#108

Post by ocimbote »

timmg wrote: post #9

There are a lot of things like this. My favorite is how elegant solutions often look simple in retrospect. So if you noodle on a problem for a while and then come up with a clever solution: once you explain it to someone they'll be like, "yeah, of course." Meanwhile the guy next to you that overcomplicates the problem ends up getting kudos for building something so difficult :D

There was a thread recently on HN about Claude Shannon and how his papers were filled with clear descriptions and explanations. Then someone commented how they had found an elegant solution to a problem that either could be described shortly and beautifully so that a high schooler could understand or take the long and tedious path of a convoluted explanation.

The director then clearly advised that they should use the complicated way because that's how you get published: not because you're clever, but because your solutions sound complicated.

It resonates perfectly with your comment and it's an unfortunate reality that most people don't bother for beautiful solutions and praise complicated processes. That's how we neded up with bureaucracy, probably :D

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

#109

Post by renegade-otter »

keyle wrote: post #17

I've been in those companies where "struggling departments" ended up getting all the praises and raise in budgets the following quarter because of the heroic saves they did, and raising awareness on how important they are... For stuff they totally caused on themselves. Meanwhile, my perfectly purring department was struggling to keep the lights on. It's a serious problem in this industry due to the disconnect between…

Ah, yes - the person who comes in at 7AM and gets shit done by 11 is a slacker, and the one in the office just doing nothing after 6PM is the hard worker. Same thing.

You can't fix this. Out of sight, out of mind. It is hard-wired into us. It's all about the optics, and will always be.

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

#110

Post by atoav »

keyle wrote: post #17

I've been in those companies where "struggling departments" ended up getting all the praises and raise in budgets the following quarter because of the heroic saves they did, and raising awareness on how important they are... For stuff they totally caused on themselves. Meanwhile, my perfectly purring department was struggling to keep the lights on. It's a serious problem in this industry due to the disconnect between…

I run the media tech at an university solo. Needless to say I am underfunded. But more importantly, the infrastructure was underfunded too. I made it my first policy to also report near misses up the chain with their full implications, e.g. a list of events that we would not have been able to make.

E.g. that time a central media controls power supply broke down which would have made using one of the most prestigious rooms impossible. I fixed it myself by swapping in a spare power supply from a used unit, then went on to remind them twice a year that we are now living on borrowed time and I take no responsibilities if a fault I predict to happen and get no funds to fix will in fact happen. 4 years later I got the funds.

Having stuff costs money. Everybody wants to invest funds once, but nobody wants to keep paying for maintenance.

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