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Normalization of Deviance (2015)

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Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#191

Post by Cthulhu_ »

analog31 wrote: post #176
bartread wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's worked really well for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic... . I worked for a company that swallowed the (so-called) Toyota schtick hook, line, and sinker. About 14 years ago I tolerated some Toyota UK fossil coming in and berating me, in front of my entire team, for being a crap project manager, in spite of I was the most reliable and accurate product manager said (very succ…

I don't dispute this, but at the same time, the cars from Toyota and Honda during the 1980s were vastly higher quality than their American and European counterparts. This could have contributed to the desire to emulate TPS.

Could it be an example of... well not survivorship bias, but, TPS gave them a competitive advantage in the 80's, and since then, other car companies have adopted it or something similar and upped their game, normalizing it to the point where people don't care about it anymore?

That is, once something is normalized you don't notice it anymore. Like how people that saw the 'rona epidemic was under control (ish) thought the measures were no longer needed.

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#192

Post by Cthulhu_ »

notduncansmith wrote: post #132
evilduck wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both parties would feel like they're dodging a bullet. People still griping about $TODAYS_HOT_JS_FRAMEWORK are clearly out of touch in 2023. It was funny commentary in 2013. It still rang a little true until around 2016. Now it's just an indicator you are the one not to be taken seriously. It's React, Vue, or Angular and it's been that way for many years now.

React underlies a lot of the “new hotness” like Next.js and Remix.run (I’m not sure if Vue, Angular, or Svelte have equivalents but I wouldn’t be surprised).

I still take those newer frameworks with a big grain of salt, but tbh, that's because of ignorance on the one hand, and fear of sunk cost on the other (e.g. spending time to invest in acquiring knowledge only for it to go obsolete).

Angular is still used in a surprising number of large companies my employer works for, so that, and React, and Vue are all solid investments IMO.

The other ones I think will only be used if one developer dares to take and sell the risk.

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#193

Post by rightbyte »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51
chaps wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't able to reliably install security daemons on a client's machine because the entire automation system didn't account for autoscaling. The issues were raised well before I joined and the project head legitimately didn't understand it as a problem that needed solving. The hosts were for a presidential candidate's webserver, and they noticed the webservers were missing security daemons days before the election…

Maybe I'm missing a joke, but was your client HRC's campaign?(?!)

I think she should have gotten more hacker cred for running her own mail server.

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#194

Post by lmm »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #153
lmm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing respectful about asking something that someone has very blatantly made a deliberate decision to leave out of their post, for completely understandable reasons.

On the contrary, I don’t think there’s anything respectful about assuming that the OP doesn’t have the agency to decide for themselves whether they want to respond to my question or not. Additionally, I don’t have a lot of respect for anyone with the ego to assume they know what information was withheld “deliberate”ly or not in a discussion like this. How do you know that?! How do you not see that the OP can make thi…

> On the contrary, I don’t think there’s anything respectful about assuming that the OP doesn’t have the agency to decide for themselves whether they want to respond to my question or not.

If being respectful means anything it means reading their post closely and trying to understand what they were trying to convey. You can't talk about denying someone agency if you won't pay attention to what they're telling you.

> How do you know that?! How do you not see that the OP can make this decision for themselves?!

They did make that decision for themselves! It was clear from their post!

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#195

Post by euroderf »

kurthr wrote: post #23

There's been a lot of work on reliability of complex systems and how they operate. What has been found is that it is almost always necessary to have failure (degraded operation) modes that prevent system failure, and the more complex and more hazardous failure is the more modes develop. In these systems it is found that they are almost always operating (or transitioning between) failure modes. Often multiple operatio…

"When a fail-safe system fails, it fails by failing to fail-safe."

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#196

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

rightbyte wrote: post #193
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm missing a joke, but was your client HRC's campaign?(?!)

I think she should have gotten more hacker cred for running her own mail server.

Right? Of all things to self host.

Although if it was an IRC server then that would have been truly 1337.

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#197

Post by quickthrower2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #157
aj7 wrote: post #107

“Let's say you notice that your company has a problem that I've heard people at most companies complain about: people get promoted for heroism and putting out fires, not for preventing fires.” My first day at work at big-laser-company. Manufacturing engineer for a laser (then) so complex, it required a PhD to solve problems to get units out the door. The product was a ring laser. What that means is that the laser bea…

One of the key questions in my due diligence practice is whether people are allowed to 'be negative' and to literally stop the line to avoid shipping a defective product. This one question tends to separate out a very large fraction of companies that take unacceptable risks and allows the ones that don't to be justifiably proud of their attitude towards risk. These are not trivial things either, medical devices and s…

Or … can the first officer order a goaround? Reading too much Admiral Cloudberg!

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#198

Post by hef19898 »

aj7 wrote: post #107

“Let's say you notice that your company has a problem that I've heard people at most companies complain about: people get promoted for heroism and putting out fires, not for preventing fires.” My first day at work at big-laser-company. Manufacturing engineer for a laser (then) so complex, it required a PhD to solve problems to get units out the door. The product was a ring laser. What that means is that the laser bea…

Hah, that is so me! Well, not for lasers, but the dynamics are the same. You point out issues and risks, are ignored and labelled negative. Then when those things cannot be ignored, people come crying to you for help. And when they hear the solutions, aka stop doing what you are doing wrong, they again label you as negative, up to the point of blaming for everything that went wrong.

You are not getting points for preventing fires, you get them for putting them out. Unfortunately, some folks seems to conclude that lighting fire up, just to put them out later, is a good and easy way to earn that "hero" reputation.

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#199

Post by hef19898 »

jacquesm wrote: post #174
bartread wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's worked really well for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic... . I worked for a company that swallowed the (so-called) Toyota schtick hook, line, and sinker. About 14 years ago I tolerated some Toyota UK fossil coming in and berating me, in front of my entire team, for being a crap project manager, in spite of I was the most reliable and accurate product manager said (very succ…

As soon as something becomes a religion it loses most of its value. To me the 'Toyota way' was more of an illustration than an exact guideline to follow and I've found this to be true for most of these things that tend to become a religion. Scrum, TDD etc all have this potential to become fodder for consultants that essentially sell a dream that they can not deliver on. But that doesn't mean there isn't a kernel of t…

Form over substance. Toyota, and other Japanese companies, are living the substance of Lean and TPS. Most other companies implement the form and hope they magically get where Toyota is without any additional effort. Same goes for Agile and any other management "philosophy".

Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)

#200

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #188
xyzzy123 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of "quality first" / stop the line is getting killed in market by a worse but faster or cheaper solution. You are locked in game theory with your regulators (if you have any) and your competitors. It's disappointing (and career limiting) to do the "right" engineering and lose because you didn't correctly gauge the risk tolerance of the market. I don't think there's any one answer for this. My observatio…

This is mostly true but for things like medical devices, aerospace, industrial control and so on any corner cutting should be allowed. I'm pretty sure that Philips right now has some thoughts on this as does Medtronic. Those two should have never happened and personally I'm all for liability of executives in such cases.

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