Normalization of Deviance (2015)
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Normalization of Deviance (2015)
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Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#2I like the bit about
Let's look at how the first one of these, “pay attention to weak signals”,
interacts with a single example, the “WTF WTF WTF” a new person gives off
when the join the company.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#3In The Field Guide to Human Error Investigations by Sidney Dekker, he quotes someone else saying something like:
> Everything that can go wrong will go right.
Murphy's Law then manifests from escaping disaster through repeated iterations of taking risks where most things play out well anyway.
I have to laugh at the "append z to the end" strat at Google, though. That's a good one.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#4These stories ring so, so true. Once worked at a company whose infrastructure issues were so deep and festering that after fighting a fire, my boss told me, "If you go to the press about this, the client will sue us and everyone who works here will lose their jobs."
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#5I like the bit about Let's look at how the first one of these, “pay attention to weak signals”, interacts with a single example, the “WTF WTF WTF” a new person gives off when the join the company. and kinda wonder if a company that prioritized not getting this reaction from new hires might find it is the most impactful thing they can do in terms of culture.
Been told that before. When I spoke up, I was told that I was new and shouldn't talk about things I know nothing about.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#6I'm still reading, but I just got to the part about flaky, and I got annoyed because there are clear use cases for flaky or pytest-retry.
If you have an integration test that relies on an unreliable system you do not control. Sure you can mock it out for a unit test, but if you want to make sure you catch breaking API changes, you need to hit the actual system. And if it works after retrying it a few times, then so be it. no need to throw shade.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#7I like the bit about Let's look at how the first one of these, “pay attention to weak signals”, interacts with a single example, the “WTF WTF WTF” a new person gives off when the join the company. and kinda wonder if a company that prioritized not getting this reaction from new hires might find it is the most impactful thing they can do in terms of culture.
That doesn't seem like a healthy standard b/c it grounds decision making in appearances rather than principles and prudential judgements. Certainly, such feedback or opinions can be worth considering as a way of getting at what principles are being violated and deciding whether these violations are tolerable or what ought to be done about them. A fresh pair of eyes could help. But an untrained pair of eyes might also not be qualified to discern the right course of action.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#8This is a big term in aviation, because in most cases in order for something catastrophic to happen it requires a lot of things to have failed. And one way to ensure that enough things fail is to start deviating from your maintenance, inspections, or general responsibilities. Related: the swiss cheese models.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#9I like the bit about Let's look at how the first one of these, “pay attention to weak signals”, interacts with a single example, the “WTF WTF WTF” a new person gives off when the join the company. and kinda wonder if a company that prioritized not getting this reaction from new hires might find it is the most impactful thing they can do in terms of culture.
Been told that before. When I spoke up, I was told that I was new and shouldn't talk about things I know nothing about.
It's not (1) "reacting to the reaction" which is the endpoint but (2) not having that reaction. If (1) is important it as because that is the path to (2).
I'd say a company that has accomplished (2) has cut the workload in hiring employees by 30-50% in the sense that every employee who has reaction (1) either internally or externally is at risk for being disengaged or leaving soon. Not only that but you are probably wasting your dev's time and could get dramatically more productivity out of them if you aren't WTFing them to death.
Re: Normalization of Deviance (2015)
#10I like the bit about Let's look at how the first one of these, “pay attention to weak signals”, interacts with a single example, the “WTF WTF WTF” a new person gives off when the join the company. and kinda wonder if a company that prioritized not getting this reaction from new hires might find it is the most impactful thing they can do in terms of culture.
Been told that before. When I spoke up, I was told that I was new and shouldn't talk about things I know nothing about.
There's often a wise tradeoff between criticizing systems you've just seen after being at the company 5 minutes and actually spending some time at the company to learn the historical context of why the thing you think is insane/shit is insane/shit before telling everyone who built it how insane/shit it is.
People generally don't wake up in the morning and go into work motivated to make insane/shit things - context, tech debt and business realities all mount up and even the best of us can end up making choices that in isolation look crazy.
There are of course companies who are really bad and you may well be right, but so many times I have seen in my career a young new hire storm in and think everything is shit without paying heed to the context and historical pressures. The best thing you can do in many cases is spend the first ~six months at a new tech company trying to understand that context, and indeed I think more mature engineers generally do.