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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]

#181

Post by t43562 »

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

On the other hand, I don't help people with their computer problems anymore because I've found that the more difficult the problem, the longer it takes me to rescue their data or whatever the less impressed they are. The more miraculous the save the more likely they are to tell me the story about their nephew who solved a trivial issue instantly as if to point out that I didn't.

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

#182

Post by markus_zhang »

The title reminds me of an interesting ancient Chinese anecdote. And it is also a bit ironic that Toyota has gotten itself into some scandals recently (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo).

King Wen of Wei asked Bian Que:

“Of you three brothers, all physicians, who is the finest in the healing art?”

Bian Que replied:

“My eldest brother is the finest; my second brother comes next; I, Bian Que, am the least of the three.”

King Wen said:

“May I hear why?”

Bian Que answered:

“My eldest brother sees illness in the spirit, before it has taken shape, and removes it unseen; therefore his name is known only within our household.

My second brother treats illness when it is but a hair’s breadth from appearing; therefore his name does not travel beyond our village lane.

As for me, Bian Que: I pierce the blood vessels, administer strong medicines, and cut open the flesh. Thus, by such visible acts, my name has spread among the lords.”

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

#184

Post by wccrawford »

eru wrote: post #160
mrweasel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous job the CEO/owner had the idea that you'd get some percentage of any cost saving your could find as a bonus. Something like 20% of the savings for the first year. My colleague in the IT department had one idea, replace our commercial certificates with Let's Encrypt and drop the EV requirement. In total he'd stand to get a bonus of a little over €2000. He never got the money, because things like that was…

Wow, that's pretty silly. 2000 Euros is almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, and it would have showed that the policy was sincere.

Even dumber, they've now got a disgruntled employee, and everyone around them knows they were cheated by the company.

If the policy is wrong and needs to be more specific, pay it out this time and change the policy. Don't just break your word.

The policy they think they've implemented is stupid. "Save money in someone else's department" is just going to create a ton of anger as people rush to step on each other's toes, and then those people have to constantly re-justify all the decisions they've made.

It's absolutely brain-dead.

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

#185

Post by swiftcoder »

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'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.

This is a very game-able system, and I'd wager a decent amount that any senior engineers on those teams know exactly what they are doing. In a lot of (broken, but aren't they all) management structures, it's better to be seen to swoop in with the save than to quietly fix it ahead of time.

And if your management is structuring rewards like this, it leads to your seniors anticipating a bunch of these failures, lining up 90% of the fix before hand, so that they can jump on the oncall escalation with a 100% "Hail Mary" of a fix...

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

#186

Post by pimlottc »

netfortius wrote: post #164
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…

In my 35+ years in IT, the "hero attitude" was the one in the top three I most hated traits in a person working with or for me. And talking about traits, I considered crucial to always have in my teams a "saboteur" engineer - the one who thoght, found, come up with all the way we could break a design, service, infra components, app, etc., when all the others were designing or operating for perfect or normal condition…

Genuine heroism - a willingness to step up when needed - isn't a bad thing in itself. But /needing/ a hero just to function means the system is fundamentally broken. Maybe it's a bad process, maybe it's understaffing, maybe it's neglected maintenance, maybe it's a lack of contingency planning. But there's no reason everyone can't go home at 5 PM every night and still get things done.

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

#187

Post by bluGill »

atoav wrote: post #114
antonvs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's systemic. Ultimately, pain needs to come from outside. As long as society rewards incompetence, we'll have incompetent organizations.

No it does not need to come from the outside. If you're an underfunded IT department and your network has an issue twice a week, you will get that funding. If you're heroically obscuring the fact that things are falling apart you won't. That means even if you could somehow, heroically fix it, it isn't perceived as such if nobody ever felt the problem and saw you fix it. This is a pain signal. Some IT dude saying thin…

The problem is sometimes management knows who the heroes are and so by not fixing things they know you are not competent. Thus letting things bubble up isn't always a good plan. It is really hard when you are on the bottom to know which case things are.

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

#188

Post by HlessClaudesman »

bmacho wrote: post #174
eru wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunning Kruger's paper didn't even show the Dunning Kruger effect everyone loves.

In the original DK experiment they asked students after they had taken a test that where would their score end up compared to their classmates (which they had no knowledge of). Obviously they picked scores around the middle* Which resulted in top students 'undervaluating themselves' and bottom students 'overestimating themselves'. Or under/overvaluating a random future variable that they don't have knowledge of, at l…

Can't we just get to the pop culture version of the DK effect by deduction?

It seems reasonable to assume that for some group of intellects they are not smart enough to know how not smart they are. There is no definite boundary where this effect is either on or off, therefore there are probably some gradations to this awareness as you climb up the intelligence ladder.

Another way of putting it: if dumb people had more insight they would cease to be dumb.

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

#189

Post by sdfsd233fsdf »

fabianholzer wrote: post #147
dfhgdfghdfgdf wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's a problem in most industries and even humanity in general. I don't believe it's a business problem at all. Heroes are lauded even if they solve problems they themselves are the cause of - which is conveniently either forgotten or denied - or they are solving non-issues that are deemed important by the ignorami-class. Politics, for example, is utterly dominated by this dynamic. It's the first instinct:…

Bell Labs is an outlier in basically every aspect. Mr Kernighan lists stability of the environment with regard to funding, structure, mission as well as technical competence of the management as main drivers of the culture. This is just not the reality in companies that look for financial results on a quarterly basis and where the executives are MBA types.

If one of the most successful engineering organizations in history attributes part of its success to capable management, that undermines simplistic narratives where management is inherently the problem and engineers would naturally thrive if left alone.

If anything, the Bell Labs example supports the idea that exceptional outcomes require both strong technical talent and strong management working together.

Not saying the "MBAs" are helping the situation, but the hero developers and their resume driven development practices aren't exactly angels either.

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

#190

Post by tom2026hn »

markus_zhang wrote: post #182

The title reminds me of an interesting ancient Chinese anecdote. And it is also a bit ironic that Toyota has gotten itself into some scandals recently ( https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo ). King Wen of Wei asked Bian Que: “Of you three brothers, all physicians, who is the finest in the healing art?” Bian Que replied: “My eldest brother is the finest; my second brother comes next; I, Bian Que, am the leas…

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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