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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]

#201

Post by al_borland »

seaourfreed wrote: post #41

The opposite. Department heads get fired for allowing blow-ups in their area, that should have been avoided. "Getting credit" means keeping the job managing the department via preventing problems.

I’ve seen it mean the department head is told to cut staff. If things run smoothly with 100 people, let’s see how runs with 90, then 80, and so on. The preventative measures start taking a backseat as the staffing issues are felt. The cuts keep coming until something falls over and the department head is pushed out after failing to maintain the service.

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

#202

Post by ahsteele »

zinssmeister wrote: post #141
wolverine876 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.

Great approach! For the past 2 years I keep experimenting with different ways to track day to day productivity. It has helped me tremendously in assessing how I should feel at the end of the day about my work day and the amount of time I put towards work. (I tend to overwork myself significantly). It is of course a lot harder to apply this approach to individual productivity tracking across my teams. But I do now bel…

What are some approaches have you used to measure your productivity?

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

#203

Post by hot_cereal »

jqcoffey wrote: post #190
wolverine876 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.

> Work with honest, intelligent people This is good advice that’s well intentioned, but (sorry), it can be interpreted as elitist, and in a way that’s detrimental to the reader. I am no way suggesting that this is the intention or belief of the parent, but while I’ve got more miles on my odometer than I’d prefer, they’ve informed me that “reasonable” is better than “intelligent.” My god how I’ve found that working wi…

Totally get where you're coming from, but it's also kinda splitting hairs.

Being reasonable is part of being intelligent. Surrounding yourself with intelligent people doesn't necessarily mean "surround yourself with the highest IQ individuals you can find." (not saying you're saying that explicitly, just that i think you're just using a definition of intelligence that's narrower than the parent) Working well with others, understanding when one has made mistakes and being able to admit to it, understanding both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of a problem...these are a better mark of intelligence than a mensa membership.

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

#204

Post by AbraKdabra »

I'm both a developer and a security consultant, both jobs deal with this problem. Being a security person, you go from being a no-one until something happens, then every eye is on you. And with the dev side, I work mostly on backend, so my work goes unnoticed always, the frontend dev gets all the credit, no matter how many thousands lines of code I commit, if something looks prettier or just works it's because of the frontend dev.

There's two choices, you either don't give a flying fuck and deal with it, or you go as loud as you can to make yourself visible beforehand and try to get credit for your work, your choice.

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

#205

Post by dasil003 »

zx8080 wrote: post #149
wolverine876 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.

> your days will be much better and the odds will be with you. In the context of one's effort valuation it seem to be a very bad advice. Unfortunately.

This kind jaded, reductive answer reeks of sour grapes. I've seen so many adopt a transactional mentality as a sort of defense mechanism against the indifference of the universe, and in the process they unintentionally blind themselves to numerous daily examples of people just trying to do the right thing. Sure the world has problems, but if we can't see both the good and the bad then we become embittered and small, hateful to ourselves and those around us.

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

#206

Post by iisan7 »

aquarkortwo wrote: post #172
eszed wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work with honest, intelligent people That's such good advice. On the same note, it's so discouraging when someone who is not/neither takes over, those people leave (one way or another), and you have to start the search again. Or when someone is intelligent enough you don't figure out they're not honest until it's too late. Anyone who's been around the block a time or two will accumulate those experiences. I hope I'…

> Or when someone is intelligent enough you don't figure out they're not honest until it's too late. Very true, and it may not even be malicious on their end, just avoidance and their brain rationalizing/minimizing without them realizing it.

(Otherwise known as pathological lies). To do as the saying says, and "know thyself" is difficult. People are prone to be overly harsh or generous when evaluating themselves.

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

#207

Post by lr4444lr »

hakunin wrote: post #27

I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.

I hate to ask the obvious question, but maybe your job title is wrong?

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

#208

Post by strgcmc »

crestfallen wrote: post #64

My memory is a bit hazy but it's a good story. At one place, there was some important order processing taking place. As is fairly typical, couldn't rely on getting all the required info. Or critically, getting all the required info correctly . Some extra data, slightly missing pieces but enough to work, etc. etc. Some could be pretty gross. We built validation to massage some inputs, modify processing, what have you…

There is a simple but undeniable element of genius to the idea of, instrumenting the number of validations triggered. I would hazard a guess that 90+% of teams would focus on an "order success rate" type of metric and call it a day, instead of a "# of times bad data was handled" metric, which is exactly how you escape this trap of good work going unnoticed.

Thanks for sharing! Shamelessly stealing and applying this concept at work next week!

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

#209

Post by kibwen »

jqcoffey wrote: post #190
wolverine876 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.

> Work with honest, intelligent people This is good advice that’s well intentioned, but (sorry), it can be interpreted as elitist, and in a way that’s detrimental to the reader. I am no way suggesting that this is the intention or belief of the parent, but while I’ve got more miles on my odometer than I’d prefer, they’ve informed me that “reasonable” is better than “intelligent.” My god how I’ve found that working wi…

Contrary to the example set by the loudest voices in tech, "intelligent" and "reasonable" are not mutually exclusive.

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

#210

Post by jqcoffey »

hot_cereal wrote: post #203
jqcoffey wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work with honest, intelligent people This is good advice that’s well intentioned, but (sorry), it can be interpreted as elitist, and in a way that’s detrimental to the reader. I am no way suggesting that this is the intention or belief of the parent, but while I’ve got more miles on my odometer than I’d prefer, they’ve informed me that “reasonable” is better than “intelligent.” My god how I’ve found that working wi…

Totally get where you're coming from, but it's also kinda splitting hairs. Being reasonable is part of being intelligent. Surrounding yourself with intelligent people doesn't necessarily mean "surround yourself with the highest IQ individuals you can find." (not saying you're saying that explicitly, just that i think you're just using a definition of intelligence that's narrower than the parent) Working well with oth…

Yes you’re right. I guess I was mostly trying to underscore the point you’re making here by being a smidge provocative. +1.
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