You shouldn’t be afraid of failure, but it’s a bad fetish. If failure can help future endeavors great, but there’s nothing inherently interesting about failing a lot.
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Let there be more biographies of failures
41–50 of 155 posts
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#42The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
Not so many ways to _recover_ from failure and go on, though.
That's usually seen as success though.
I'm fairly confident in saying no success has come without recovery from failure
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#43The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
Reminds me of a quote from Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#44Henry Petroski has written several excellent essays and books about engineering failures, why it is inherent in engineering pursuits that there will be failures, why it is important to learn the right lessons from these failures, and why each new generation will forget past lessons. Start with: "To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" (1985)
My thinking is that many of the kinds of engineering failure stories you refer to are about the failure, itself, or the victims of the failure (Therac-25, for example), but not often primarily about a single individual's life of failure (or even a single individual's sole role in a failure).
They might also be about the engineering teams/groups involved (Challenger explosion) and sometimes about a specific engineer (Allan McDonald).
I'd argue that all of these have immense value. The Allan McDonald story can be seen as both success/failure (failure to stop the launch, success for being right and standing firm on that belief). And while "pure failure biographies" related to engineering failures probably exist, I was able to come up with a number of examples while writing this comment for every other form of engineering failure that doesn't qualify, but couldn't think of a good example that does which I have seen/read. Many on business failures that focus on a CEO (and sometimes those CEOs are the engineer, but, again, nothing that wouldn't require reaching out to Google).
Thinking about it -- I'm glad about that. The kinds of "excellent essays and books about engineering failures" that you mention are the kinds of things I love to read. I wish there were more of them.
What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories: "I pulled up to the diner at 8:00 PM, the paint on the door was clearly done in another era; when this small part of (nowhereville) was an up-and-coming metropolis, and the place that Bob Thomas grew up and learned that hard work and determination can do anything. The "O" in the "Open" sign had failed long ago, leaving only "pen". It was a sign from the universe as I was here to write about the startup-to-empire-to-bankrupcy of ePens Custom Pens. Though I was a half-hour early, Bob was waiting for me, his hair and beard flowing together not knowing where one begins and the other ends. One can't help but being reminded of the race condition that would ultimately lead to the unraveling of the machine he'd spent his life building".
No thanks. Tell me what went wrong. Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person. And I care even less about the guy writing about the person... :)
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#45The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
Not so many ways to _recover_ from failure and go on, though.
The lesson is: failure is an indespensable step towards success, so we need not to gloss over failure as if it's taboo
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#46The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
There are categories of failure though. Those not only tell you where to look but give you starting points and substitutions.
Substitute one set of problems for a better known set, and go from there. When engineering figures out how to solve the less known set, then you can do something “new”.
Today you might solve liquefaction by running pillars to bedrock and then design for earthquake damage caused by being anchored to bedrock.
Some day you might use the Dutch trick of building houses that can float instead.
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#47Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved that show and think it finished rather than was cancelled. But many of the folks I recommended it to, didn’t like it. Various reasons provided but I remember stuff like “depressing” and “failure” coming up a lot.
I tried watching it, couldn't get past the first season because of the characters. I've dealt with enough asshole Steve Jobs wannabes and the 10x rockstar programmer types in real life that watching them on screen gives me PTSD.
At least with Silicon Valley you get to laugh through the tears.
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#49The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
You can derive pattern though. You can learn about recuring weak links. And you can learn about solutions. Those are nice.
Re: Let there be more biographies of failures
#50The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…
Reminds me of a quote from Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Like most proverbs, it only seems insightful and true if you don't think about what it is claiming at all.