Earlier quoted context omitted.
or a simpler version: "A stitch in time saves nine...but I charge by the stitch"
literally one of the main reasons america spends so much on healthcare
And law.
Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
261–270 of 274 posts
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#262Pendatically speaking, people do get credit for fixing problems that never happened. E.g. if the problems are quantifiable and there's a record, like dropping homicides from 100 per year to 20 per year in a city. Those extra homicides "didn't happen", but the improvement is understood. For an one-off problem, it depends on how clear the path to the problem is. An electrician doing an inspection and noticing and fixin…
> An electrician doing an inspection and noticing and fixing big electrical issues in the installation, would be appreciated, even if the accidents didn't happen. Not if nobody knew he'd fixed it.
Electricians are no celebrities for people in general to know what they fixed or didn't fix.
The person / building owner who comissioned them to do the check, will know what they fixed or what they didn't fix, from the report they give.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#263The 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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Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#264There 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.
Things I won't work with: printers.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
My car (Honda Prologue) is a little bit of a nervous Nellie, warning me to brake when someone is turning out of my lane, but it has definitely noticed developing situations many times before I have.
I’m curious, what’s an example of a developing situation it detected for you? I ask because after car pooling with a friend in their Tesla a few times I can confidently say I would never trust what Tesla calls FSD. Forget developing situations, there were some close calls with what’s immediately in front of it. Think- about to miss a left turn at 40mph or drive into construction cones that are blocking a lane. I thin…
My car doesn't drive itself beyond adaptive cruise, but the brake warning is a little sensitive. It's noticed cases where traffic was coming to a stop before I did.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#266The 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…
or a simpler version: "A stitch in time saves nine...but I charge by the stitch"
Can we measure preventive medicines or projects which have been designed with care from the beginning? Can we have metrics and measure/compare projects over lifetime production bugs?
This reminds me of perverse Amazon practice of hiring people only to fire them to meet quota. This could have been avoided if they measured the average lifetime of hired individuals. If they were fired the very next firing round, it means the process is broken. Ideally a fixed percentage of freshly hired developers should have moved upward displacing senior slacking developers.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#267I'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…
Isn’t this a universal problem though, not just software industry? Even at home, if one kid just does his thing quietly but another kid is difficult, what do we say? “John has his problems but he is trying, we gotta encourage him”. While his brother gets no praise or attention for just doing his thing quietly without fuss. When things run smoothly, very few people notice. When things break, everyone notices
when you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#268I wonder why the whole topic of system thinking comes (self-enforcing/balancing feedback loops etc.) only come up in older literature from the 80s til late 90s. Why did it become out of fashion with the start up culture.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mor…
> Can't we just get to the pop culture version of the DK effect by deduction?
Maybe, but the DK paper doesn't add anything here.
Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
#270I'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…
Isn’t this a universal problem though, not just software industry? Even at home, if one kid just does his thing quietly but another kid is difficult, what do we say? “John has his problems but he is trying, we gotta encourage him”. While his brother gets no praise or attention for just doing his thing quietly without fuss. When things run smoothly, very few people notice. When things break, everyone notices
I thought that was where the phrasing:
"John! Why can't you be more like your brother?!"
comes from.