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Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

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Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#81

Post by marcus_holmes »

rmunn wrote: post #6

Article published in the Summer 2001 edition of California Management Review, yet it never mentioned Y2K, the first thing I thought of when I read the line "fixing problems that never happened". Perhaps it was actually written in 1999 and took a while to get published, because otherwise that seems a very strange omission. The Y2K problem was very much over-hyped by the American news media at the time (no, at no point…

my first thought too. I've met a few people who assert that Y2K was a complete waste of money.

I earned my first house deposit helping the team fixing the water and gas company in Wales, UK. Their entire system was running off a set of COBOL programs on a mainframe, none of which had been properly documented over the years, and the whole thing used 2-digit dates. It would have caused actual deaths if not fixed; everything would have shut down, and no water and no heating in a British winter is potentially lethal. And then it would have sent everyone in Wales a bill for 100 years of water and gas.

They were bribing retired software devs to come out of retirement with huge stacks of money, because that was cheaper than training new COBOL devs and getting them familiar with the spaghetti system.

It worked, no-one died, life went on. So obviously it was all fake rolls eyes

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#82

Post by hattmall »

didgetmaster wrote: post #40

We all learned this back in first grade. The kids that behaved in class and did their homework did not command most of the teacher's time and effort. It was the problem children who refused to follow the rules and needed constant praise for every bit of actual effort that they put into their studies; that got the teacher's attention.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, is how I always heard it phrased.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#83

Post by warumdarum »

keyle wrote: post #17

I'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…

Car industry best practices

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#84

Post by JimsonYang »

tikhonj wrote: post #78
whatever1 wrote: post #47

I never gave credit to my electricity company for delivering electricity to me. I only get mad when there is an outage.

Counterpoint: I absolutely give credit to Sonic for being a great ISP and recommend them to everyone. I got my parents to switch when Sonic finally rolled out to their neighborhood. If online comments are anything to go by, I'm not alone. If you're in the Bay Area and you can get a Sonic fiber connection, I would highly recommend them over AT&T/Comcast/etc.

Its either end of the spectrum-you do the best job(top 10%) or your everyone else.

If you only do middle of the pack(for one reason or another-cost, talent, etc) you become incentivized to cause problems then fix it.

Thus a net negative to society

*Also recommend sonic-their pricing and service is top tier

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#86

Post by rmunn »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #81
rmunn wrote: post #6

Article published in the Summer 2001 edition of California Management Review, yet it never mentioned Y2K, the first thing I thought of when I read the line "fixing problems that never happened". Perhaps it was actually written in 1999 and took a while to get published, because otherwise that seems a very strange omission. The Y2K problem was very much over-hyped by the American news media at the time (no, at no point…

my first thought too. I've met a few people who assert that Y2K was a complete waste of money. I earned my first house deposit helping the team fixing the water and gas company in Wales, UK. Their entire system was running off a set of COBOL programs on a mainframe, none of which had been properly documented over the years, and the whole thing used 2-digit dates. It would have caused actual deaths if not fixed; every…

I'm curious why things would have shut down when the system thought it was 1900. What part of the logic had the effect of "shut the system down if current date is less than (X date)?" (If you can remember the code 25+ years later, that is).

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#87

Post by rmunn »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #22
takinola wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with this version of explaining the lack of severity of Y2K is that there were lots of countries that were being derided for not taking the issue seriously but did not seem to suffer any ill effects.

This is interesting, do you have any links? A couple of possible confounding factors I can think of: 1. Plenty of countries use software developed elsewhere. 2. I suspect that the more recently you computerised your economy, the less likely it would be to have code vulnerable to Y2K.

It's also possible that in some places there were a few issues, but people looked at bills for 100 years of electrical service and said "Yeah right," and fixed the now-easier-to-find code that still used 2-digit dates. If that only happened a few times, the extra work involved in working out the January bill by hand (or waiting until February then billing for 2 months) wouldn't cause too many issues in the economy, and anyone looking in from outside wouldn't even realize there had been an issue. If it happened everywhere the economic impact would be more noticeable from outside.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#88

Post by jesterson »

whatever1 wrote: post #47

I never gave credit to my electricity company for delivering electricity to me. I only get mad when there is an outage.

Well in a way you do. They send you a fine bill every month and you do credit some of your allegedly hard earned bucks.

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#89

Post by barrenko »

nullhole wrote: post #25
timmg wrote: post #9

There 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

The passage that comes to mind for me whenever this idea comes up, from the Brett version of the Holmes story "The Dancing Men": H: So, Watson. W: Hmm. H: You do not propose to invest in South African securities? W: How on earth do you know that? H: Now, confess, you are utterly taken aback. W: I am! H: I should make you sign a paper to that effect. W: Why? H: Because in a few minutes you will say it is all so absurd…

Liking it, but I think it's even better captured by the more lauded quote -

H: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

Re: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]

#90

Post by kshacker »

bruce511 wrote: post #80
kshacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol. I hate presentations. I like to run a tight ship. But that does not shine, so they made me do presentations every quarter. If you do some work, you must "take" credit. It is kinda a need when you manage people since you need to build their careers. I finally moved on to be an IC. Same story, same pressure :) You need to present to directors not because they need to know, but because your managers have a quota of…

You define "productivity" as coding. The business defines it as "meetings, presentations, support, coding, whatever". Your productivity remains at 100% when you are doing what they want. I get that you thought you were hired as a coder, and thus measure your productivity by that. That's what I thought too. I ended up doing a lot of support (which is good, but that's another thread). Until I recalibrated my definition…

When did I say I code?

I have been on the industry for 35 years. I have seen my share of technology evolutions and o have seen the work from a dozen different dimensions. If after all that time, I find the process painful, just trust me -- they can't change me, and I can't change them. You take the warts with the wins and move on. 2-3 bad weeks, 10 good weeks. Life moves on to next quarter. Complete CEO mindset :)

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