How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #149

vinceguidry wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you seriously believe that all (or most) companies disallow anyone not in leadership to improve things, I'd consider getting out of your current situation and seeing things again with clear eyes. I've been around a bunch, including the US Air Force, and I can confidently tell you that heavily hierarchical organizational culture is the norm, individuals contributors who want to have effects beyond their job scope…

Not sure why you are getting so many replies disagreeing with you. Narrowly-defined roles are indeed the norm, even in the tech world. When I was an "individual contributor" I'd get frustrated with Worst Practices all the time, but was told that I was hired to write code not to change our infrastructure or suggest different product features or improve our testing practices--MANAGEMENT makes those decisions. But even…

Post by harigov » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #89

kbenson wrote: post #87

> It’s sort of funny that this ends up being a problem about incentives. As an industry, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to incentivize consumers into doing what we want. But then we set up incentive systems that are generally agreed upon as incentivizing us to do the wrong things The longer I live, the more I realize that everything is a market, and incentives control it all. The reason you follow company…

Everything is a system—and some systems are markets. A market is also a system. This is why it's important to know how to think in systems, and about psychology, statistics, variation, knowledge and everything else that influences systems—if you want to work in one. There's more to most systems than just incentives. They are a small part of what goes on.

Post by hibbelig » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #93

momzer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unspoken implication here is that 99% reliability is considered bad. This may not be clear if coming from a different field where 99% sounds pretty good.

When you say 99% is bad, are you making a normative or positive statement?

Post by bewuethr » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 11:05 PM UTC

lnanek2 wrote: post #164

klenwell wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually come across this scenario quite often in retail outlets with poorly designed queue layouts (e.g. an H&M with with 2-4 registers behind a long counter and a single ad-hoc queue lined up in front of one of them). My reasoning is a little different (and a little more charitable I suppose in its generalization about human nature): I don't want to go step in front of the register with no one waiting in it becau…

Actually, scientifically, one queue for all registers is the superior solution. It reduces wait times for customers in general vs. one queue for each register (where one of the lines might get stuck for a long time). That's why you find banks and other places are all setup to have one queue used by all the clerks. The only real problem with H&M is that they haven't put stuff in the way of people forming multiple line…

Post by gertef » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 11:13 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #90

danso wrote: post #10

I immediately thought of the "5 monkeys and a ladder" psychology study, in which the first monkey attempts to climb the ladder to get a banana and all of the monkeys are sprayed with water. Then one of the monkeys is replaced with a newcomer, who then tries to climb the ladder, but this time, the remaining original monkeys attack it. And so the replacing of the monkeys continues, until none of the monkeys knows what…

It's a bit like when there's two cash machines, with a long queue at the first but no-one at the second. You can see people looking at it, wondering whether it's worth the humiliation of finding it's broken and having to go to the back of the queue, or the joy of finding it is working and getting one over everyone else. Often nobody cracks.