Count to ten when a plane goes down • Hacker News Board

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#261

Post by samspot » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

nathanb wrote: post #235

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment. A small amount of unintentional carelessness that causes huge damage could still be punished. One could argue that a certain degree of mindfulness in critical situations is a job requirement, and casually making a careless -- though unintended -- mistake demonstrates a lack of mindfulness indicating that the person is not pr…

I got a strong impression from the article that he had no idea there were extra people there, or that there was even a critical situation. He wrote as though he was doing a mundane daily task, and said he was really surprised his boss was even there. Given those details, he had no reason to have a heightened sense of awareness. He also mentions that a reset of all workstations should have had no impact at the time.

In this situation, the secretary playing the game is just as culpable as the intern, which is to say, not really responsible.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#262

Post by 67726e » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

nathanb wrote: post #235

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment. A small amount of unintentional carelessness that causes huge damage could still be punished. One could argue that a certain degree of mindfulness in critical situations is a job requirement, and casually making a careless -- though unintended -- mistake demonstrates a lack of mindfulness indicating that the person is not pr…

There is a wholly different level of responsibility and ability to ensure quality in your scenario that is simply not present in the article.

In one case accidentally pressing the wrong key deleted incredibly important data, while in your case you have plenty of time to review and ensure quality at your leisure.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#263

Post by SilasX » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 5:24 PM UTC

pooper wrote: post #90

viraptor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This helps: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/customizable-... Also, I made a mistake, it doesn't close the window. It closes all windows at once. Be afraid!

ctrl + q very appropriately quits the application. If this came as a ticket to me, I'd close it as working as expected.

... and then you'd spin it off as a feature (or design review) request for better handling of accidental quit actions, right?

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#264

Post by genericuser » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #216

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

He's used a longer version of that story to view this as a management lesson – it's definitely not just “blame the intern”: http://globis.jp/774-2

I find it surprising that the exact key he fat fingered wasn't burned into his long term memory. Not that it would of been helpful to him down the line, actually the level of obsessing which would of taken place after the fact to remember it this many years later would of been quite counter productive.

It is simply that given the simplicity and consequences of the error, it is the type of thing I generally see people beating them selves up over until they can not forget it.

(In case you are saying to yourself but he did remember the key, look at the two versions in one he says F6 machine reboot F7 all reboot, and in the other he says F7 machine reboot F8 all reboot, indicating that while I hope he knew the keys functions then, he has since forgotten the exact key, or is substituting F keys for story telling purposes)

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#265

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 5:42 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

[deleted]

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#266

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#267

Post by jaredandrews » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

The author has actually responded to this on his blog: http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92502108047/so-what-did-you....

    So what did you do after you got fired from the embassy?

    What I didn’t say is that it was the last day of my summer internship. The next summer they invited me back again. Everyone understood it was a mistake, but by officially firing me, someone had been punished … :)

So I guess it wasn't a big deal after all.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#268

Post by evilduck » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #173

maaku wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow minded position. Gosh I hope you never screw up even once, cause you'll never live it down.

Would you say that making a mistake in software is equal to taking a human life?

If you were the developer for a Therac-25, yes, yes I would.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#269

Post by privatedan » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 7:08 PM UTC

My first thought after reading the article was that it was ridiculous to fire/scapegoat the author for hitting the wrong key, too. This has happened to me before, where a single keystroke ( in my case, a line break in a config file ) caused me to take down a production system. My punishment? Designing a more robust system that would protect itself from a badly formatted config file. To this day, ten years later, a similar error has not been repeated, despite several attempts of people to push bad config files to our production systems. If I had been instead fired, no doubt a similar, but perhaps not exact, error would have been repeated every year or so.

If I had made the same mistake twice without any attempts to fix the situation long term, then, yes, I think that would have been a fire-able offense.

If you're working with people who care primarily about their own positions and egos without regard to the team as a whole, well, be prepared to be thrown under the bus when it comes time for those people to protect themselves.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#270

Post by hackuser » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

nathanb wrote: post #235

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment. A small amount of unintentional carelessness that causes huge damage could still be punished. One could argue that a certain degree of mindfulness in critical situations is a job requirement, and casually making a careless -- though unintended -- mistake demonstrates a lack of mindfulness indicating that the person is not pr…

> it was OK, because they hired smart, competent people who understand the need to triple-check, if necessary, before committing. People who understood the gravity of the situation, and who didn't phone it in if they weren't feeling it that day.

In my experience that is not nearly sufficient for implementing any process that can't tolerate errors. It is necessary to have conscientious people of course, but they still are humans. Given the opportunity for 2,000 hours a year, year after year, they will screw up.

Humans are very bad at following procedures. For recent examples, consider the people operating our nuclear missiles and those protecting our bomb-grade nuclear materials. If even they don't have enough motivation to follow procedure ...