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Be Kind

briangilham.com

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Re: Be Kind

#411

Post by ramchip »

hughes wrote: post #276
patio11 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a perhaps apocryphal story about the time when Mizuho Securities lost ~$225 million by attempting to sell 610k shares at 1 yen instead of 1 share at 610k yen. When asked whether he intended to fire the person who physically keyed in the order, the relevant department head stated that he did not intend to waste the firm's substantial investment in teaching them to act with due deliberation.

I wish that story ended with the developer of the trading software learning a lesson about user interfaces

It ended up with order sanity checks being implemented for all manual trading systems at Mizuho. Things like blocking an order if it's more than 10% away from the market mid, etc.

You shouldn't fix an issue like this with UI validation alone - it needs to go between the component that creates orders and the stock exchange, so that it also protects against software bugs. For instance, a possible bug is a developer multiplying the order size by the lot size in the backend, when it has already been multiplied in the frontend, causing huge orders to be sent. Sanity checks can catch this.

Automated trading systems have traditionally been under a lot of scrutiny, and nobody in their right mind would run one without sanity checks and a kill switch. That incident taught Mizuho that manual trading can, in fact, also be quite dangerous :)

Re: Be Kind

#412

Post by tominous »

justifier wrote: post #87
endymi0n wrote: post #25

When he returned to the air field, Bob Hoover walked over to the man who had nearly caused his death and, according to the California Fullerton News-Tribune, said: “There isn’t a man alive who hasn’t made a mistake. But I’m positive you’ll never make this mistake again. That’s why I want to make sure that you’re the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won’t let anyone else on the field touch it.”

this is a great anectdote, but the reason i am replying to your comment is because of your user name i am a huge fan of the turn of the century dancer isadora duncan and her lover who she first had a child with, the theatre set design theorist, edward gordon craig who she affectionately called endymion a complete aside, but if you have, or anyone reading this has, yet to read duncan's autobiography 'my life' i highly…

I can't resist chiming in with another Endymion reference: the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. Fantastic series.

Re: Be Kind

#413

Post by mrep »

rak00n wrote: post #392
grossvogel wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

never, ever push changes on a Friday. I think this goes a little too far. I personally push code every Friday morning, and keep my Friday schedule relatively open so I have time to deal with any surprises. Many successful companies brag (justifiably) about their continuous deployment systems and speed of deployment. I can't believe they suspend all of that every Friday. http://product.hubspot.com/blog/how-we-deploy-3…

Pushing twice a day in that Facebook story gave me a shiver.

If they were deploying to their entire fleet all at the same time, I would also shiver.

However, most likely that have many stages in their deployment with testing and monitoring that exponentially deploys and if any of those stages don't pass, they auto-rollback.

The End game: minimizing risk with code changes.

1. Deploying more often allows easier root cause analysis to identify the code breaking change.

2. exponential deployment allows developers to monitor their services as it partakes in more variation (more users = greater chance of edge case breaking bug)

3. proper monitoring and test coverage while using auto-rollbacks allows developers to deploy without fear as any unintended effects will be detected at the soonest possible moment while minimizing cost to the users of that breaking change. Then, auto-rollbacks will redeploy code changes that previously worked which should automatically mitigate that code breaking change.

Re: Be Kind

#414

Post by haalcion3 »

nostrademons wrote: post #363
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #313

As software engineers: As beginners, we're over-confident in our ability, even if we actually suck and make lots of mistakes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect The opposite seems to become true - experienced engineers (who have learned from their mistakes) seem to be extra paranoid. I've seen also older engineers that seem to be confident still, talk a bit game, but they just never learned.…

Overconfidence is a huge benefit in playing the political game - getting people to take you seriously, managing up, interfacing with the outside world. Like it or not, humans are primed to respond to confidence; for most people, listing the dozen ways a system may fail signals that you shouldn't use the system, while for engineers, it signals that these are a dozen things to be fixed. The trick - when getting to high…

This is why I don't really want to get back into management, even though sometimes I think at some point it will be the only thing I'll have the patience and mental capacity to do. I saw the best and worst of myself when I was a manager- the worst is what scared me. But moreover, I learned after I stopped being a manager that I didn't deserve the accolades I got. If you were to take the best manager in the world, give him/her a shitty team, a hell of shitty code, shitily designed application and infrastructure, a shitty relationship with the customers/users, shitty support team, and shitty project/product/upper management, and you don't let that manager work to fix these things, they'll quit or fail, guaranteed. If you give them the best of all of these things, they will succeed, guaranteed. Being a good manager- knowing how to manage well and doing it, can be critical. However, it is nothing on its own.

Re: Be Kind

#415

Post by blacksmythe »

haalcion3 wrote: post #414
nostrademons wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overconfidence is a huge benefit in playing the political game - getting people to take you seriously, managing up, interfacing with the outside world. Like it or not, humans are primed to respond to confidence; for most people, listing the dozen ways a system may fail signals that you shouldn't use the system, while for engineers, it signals that these are a dozen things to be fixed. The trick - when getting to high…

This is why I don't really want to get back into management, even though sometimes I think at some point it will be the only thing I'll have the patience and mental capacity to do. I saw the best and worst of myself when I was a manager- the worst is what scared me. But moreover, I learned after I stopped being a manager that I didn't deserve the accolades I got. If you were to take the best manager in the world, giv…

One big difference is that a good manager can take an average team and build a good team over time. If you can't do that, you aren't a good manager.

A manager that can't tell who on their team is good will (in the long run) take an average team and turn it into a bad team.

Re: Be Kind

#416

Post by Bakary »

gavman wrote: post #78

This was so nice to read. I think back to my very first coding internship after my freshman year of college when I messed up big time. I made a bad mistake that ended up forcing my supervisor to put down everything he was working on for a full afternoon and do an emergency fix. I so vividly remember sitting down in his office, trying to just calm down and keep it together. He never got upset or annoyed (at least he n…

Maybe he made the same promise you did back in the day?

Re: Be Kind

#418

Post by enraged_camel »

sheepmullet wrote: post #345
enraged_camel wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about laughing. It's about laughing at someone's work in a derogatory manner. I hope you can tell the difference and understand the extremely negative impact the latter can have on culture.

I hope you can understand the extremely negative impact firing someone over a simple mistake can have on culture. Laughing in this situation is merely inappropriate. Firing someone for being inappropriate once or twice is incredibly toxic behaviour.

I disagree. Firing assholes is never bad for culture. On the contrary, it increases morale and makes the workplace better.

Keep in mind that I don't categorize laughing at someone's work as a "simple mistake." Bugs can be simple mistakes. Offensive jokes can be simple mistakes. Laughing at someone's work however is deeply troubling behavior that actively undermines trust and discourages cooperation in the workplace. That's why you have to kill it with fire.

Re: Be Kind

#419

Post by stevenhuang »

enraged_camel wrote: post #418
sheepmullet wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you can understand the extremely negative impact firing someone over a simple mistake can have on culture. Laughing in this situation is merely inappropriate. Firing someone for being inappropriate once or twice is incredibly toxic behaviour.

I disagree. Firing assholes is never bad for culture. On the contrary, it increases morale and makes the workplace better. Keep in mind that I don't categorize laughing at someone's work as a "simple mistake." Bugs can be simple mistakes. Offensive jokes can be simple mistakes. Laughing at someone's work however is deeply troubling behavior that actively undermines trust and discourages cooperation in the workplace.…

Everyone seems to be taking this too far--parent just mentioned a laugh. It could be anything from a well meaning jab to a mean put-down, and I'm reading it as just something funny for the junior to learn.
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