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I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

jdstillwater.blogspot.com

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Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#301

Post by hinkley »

refulgentis wrote: post #212
hinkley wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few things in my career have granted me more power faster than taking ownership of decisions. Some people are so terrified of having to say "I was wrong" that they either will do nothing, or just happily follow decisions that someone else makes. It's one thing when that's a line employee behaving that way, but there are managers so terrified of making a mistake that all they really are is scribes, tracking who said w…

Taking ownership of decisions in this way breeds another problem: people love to police when they perceive other people taking authority that's not rightfully theirs. I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and do…

If anything people would fault me for saying “no” so much. It’s part of why I tried my hand at security for a bit but found it exhausting. I was never more “the adult in the room” than in that position.

I’m not saying own all the decisions. With a largish team you want at least three people who will stand by a decision even when it’s not a unanimous vote. (Don’t ever do four or six unless you have a good boss. Jesus Christ that was awful.) When I do say something will definitely work, I’m almost always right.

What I left out and thought of later is that it’s more important to own the cleanup than the decision. Once you do that people trust you more, and the trust leads to other opportunities. So it’s not really, “I was wrong” although that already filters out way too many people. It’s the “here let me help you fix it.” That makes it stick.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#302

Post by hinkley »

msteffen wrote: post #250
refulgentis wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking ownership of decisions in this way breeds another problem: people love to police when they perceive other people taking authority that's not rightfully theirs. I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and do…

Interestingly, I was at Google during I think the very end of its golden years (2011-2016). I loved it and when I heard about how sclerotic it had gotten was pretty surprised. Looking back, IMO the seeds of its downfall had already been planted by the time I was there, including the culture of blameless postmortems. There was this idea that any problem—any outage or whatever —reflected not stupidity on the part of th…

I think I’m pretty good at Five Whys, for two reasons. One, I have enough of a chess player’s mind where I can see at about the third Why that someone is steering us toward a toothless solution and steer us toward a better one.

But the other one is that blameless doesn’t mean we don’t talk about the person who fucked up. The entire point of the NTSB’s version of the process is to get pilots and ground crew to be vulnerable. To explain how they pushed the wrong button or signed off on a maintenance deferment or whatever. I was tired, I got asked tangential questions during a critical moment. I misinterpreted the text, etc.

I’m neurodivergent. I spend way too much of my day analyzing my errors. But the way my brain works on a Tuesday is the way everyone else’s works in the middle of a high stress situation. For me it still feels like a bad Tuesday. The tools and steps I build for keeping me from looking stupid also work for the team, once they give them a chance. And during Five Why’s I just have to say the quiet parts out loud, and I can speculate rather well on whether other people had similar experiences.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#303

Post by hinkley »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #256
msteffen wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I was at Google during I think the very end of its golden years (2011-2016). I loved it and when I heard about how sclerotic it had gotten was pretty surprised. Looking back, IMO the seeds of its downfall had already been planted by the time I was there, including the culture of blameless postmortems. There was this idea that any problem—any outage or whatever —reflected not stupidity on the part of th…

It seems this is a common problem with larger organizations, that everything turns (corrupts) into a process. I've even seen processes for following processes. To make the problem worse, nobody dares to remove from a process as that would mean they would be accountable for the consequences of the "missing steps", and at the same time adding to a process is almost always safe - another step in a process to clarify or…

When I remove steps I brag about it. I don’t know or recall if I ever consciously reasoned that as trying to normalize that activity, but that is certainly what I’m doing.

Shorter processes in clock time matter more than step count, but it’s hard to do one without the other.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#304

Post by hinkley »

treflop wrote: post #260
refulgentis wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking ownership of decisions in this way breeds another problem: people love to police when they perceive other people taking authority that's not rightfully theirs. I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and do…

I regularly take authority and you’re right about how people can feel, but that’s where your social skills come to play. Your average person doesn’t even take authority. The next “level” per se (not that you have to take authority — only if you want to) is the person taking authority. Then the next level above that is the person that takes authority but understands how it looks to other people, so they sure everyone…

I’ve worked at too many places that only promote you once you’re doing 99% of the job title. It’s a joke at some places. “I thought you already were ”

If you don’t act like a lead dev you’re not going to get much practice at being one. And I’m not talking about the bossing people around part, but the fostering teamwork and taking care of people parts.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#305

Post by Aeolun »

close04 wrote: post #273
kazinator wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that manager expected to have a job by deciding not to cut power to submerged equipment, and have it flushed of the brine and cleaned, ASAP. It looks completely idiotic/incompetent from where I'm sitting.

Different industries prioritize different things. I'm speculating but being the military they may consider that the enemy is planning an incursion exactly when some critical detection systems are expected to be down. So they'd rather kill some equipment while they mobilize a contingency measure. No idea what was in the manager's head or if the threat model makes sense but things aren't always super obvious and don't…

Potentially, but if your intelligence is so terrible you have no idea of that attack beforehand, or your radar coverage so sloppy that you can’t take any of them offline without losing that coverage, you probably failed already.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#306

Post by Spivak »

silisili wrote: post #240
Aeolun wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me at all. This seems perfectly in line with “I don’t care what it is, or how well I perform it, as long as I have a job.”

Because that's what companies incentivize for, sadly. The handbook or SOP somewhere probably does call for a risk assessment. So they have two choices. Choice A is to do what's obvious, cut power and get to work. That has two branches. One branch is saving the day and potentially millions of dollars. For what? A side mention at the next all hands, maybe. Branch 2 is something goes wrong, and the company says you didn…

Ding ding ding! As an employee you're not there to do good work, you're there to what you're employer asks of you which is sometimes good work. When its your own electronics you can do whatever you want but as a rando employee you're not in a position to accept the risk.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#307

Post by Animats »

varjag wrote: post #267
Animats wrote: post #255

I'd use de-ionized water and Simple Green (a citrus-based cleaner which evaporates at about the same rate as water), but I'd expect a toaster to survive once dry. I've cleaned several Teletype machines that way. The problem isn't water; it's solids left behind when the water evaporates, and corrosion. Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper…

Oh speaking of. I have this really gunked up Model 35 tape typing unit and was about to dunk it in motor flushing oil. But then I see it has felt pieces and the magnets appear to be coated in shellac. Do you submerse your units completely or do you remove the sensitive parts?

I've done the older machines, Teletype Model 14 and 15, nearly a century old. I remove the magnets and the motor and immerse everything else. The Model 35 has many plastic parts and some electronics, so I can't speak from experience. Look up Greenkeys Digest and ask there.

("All gunked up" usually means the wrong lubricant was used at some point. Usually something that has heavy fractions. The short, light hydrocarbon molecules in the oil evaporate, leaving behind the long chains that are basically asphalt.

The original Teletype oil was whale oil. I lubricate Teletypes with 0-20W fully synthetic motor oil, which is supposed to be a consistent length of hydrocarbon. So when it evaporates over a few years, it just leaves dry metal. Especially avoid WD-40. All wrong for this.)

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#308

Post by tonymet »

The line is between people who work in the real world and people who are mostly online.

In the real world, like a job site or auto shop, the hammer and flathead screwdriver are the two top tools. Generally abused and rarely mentioned in service manuals.

In the "online" world, every tool has strict boundaries and restrictions.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#309

Post by autokad »

kragen wrote: post #77
Alupis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the water that's the issue generally - it's the minerals in the water. The article author got lucky this time - when electronics die from water contact, it's usually the minerals bridging connections and creating shorts. Letting the device dry does not remove those shorts. Some places have such hard water (lots of minerals) that evaporated water leaves calcium, limestone and other deposits on the surface of…

dried calcium carbonate is not a very good conductor, and neither calcium carbonate nor calcium oxide is deliquescent (edit: i said 'calcium chloride' which is of course both wrong and irrelevant) i think the bigger issue with electronics is overheating their electrolytic capacitors

you do realize the reason why fires get started is because things become a BAD conductor right?

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#310

Post by nomel »

askvictor wrote: post #246
nomel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a detergent selection problem. There are many detergents (like enzyme based) that are specifically designed for not corroding metals.

In part, sure, but given that we're talking about a dishwasher here (as opposed to an electronic device washer), I think it's not a stretch to assume using dishwashing powder. Which won't be highly corrosive, but certainly does interact with aluminium. But even without detergent, contact with water can start things rusting pretty fast.

I'm talking about dishwasher detergents. If you use your dishwasher for copper/aluminum pans, there's a good chance you're already using them.
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